Free Ted and Ann - The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy by Rebecca Morris

the lone red thread and the toe print on the outdoor bench.
    They took more photos of the outside of the house, and tried to get fingerprints off a downspout that Don had told them about. It had been pulled loose from a gutter on the northwest corner and might have been used as a handhold. It was beneath Greg’s bedroom window (who was asleep in the basement that night). There were no fingerprints on the southwest window, which they thought was the way the kidnapper had entered the house. Then they searched the living room again; it was the living room, and the window, the Toby jugs, the doors, and the furniture that should hold clues.
    Late that night, the young, agile officer and his partner wrote in their report that the latest search was in vain. It was too late to find clues that might have been overlooked. There would be no latent fingerprint. A well-meaning relative of the Burrs had dusted the living room, top to bottom.
    Bob Drost was the only member of the police force who believed Ann was alive. He thought she had been taken by someone she knew (that’s why the family didn’t hear any screams), someone who was desperate to have a little girl, someone who didn’t live in Tacoma and could raise Ann without the family knowing or others becoming suspicious. Someone who—he went so far as to say— “cherished” the little girl, yet was busy brainwashing Ann. He didn’t think it would take long for an eight-year-old to forget her family and cleave to a new one. Whoever abducted Ann, Drost said, didn’t leave “five cents worth of clues.” He described the result of the investigation as “a handful of nothing—it was like grabbing clouds.”
    Drost was Captain of Detectives and had been away with his family on their annual fishing and camping trip to Lake Chelan, three hours east in the central part of the state. He returned to the biggest missing persons case since the Weyerhaeuser and Mattson kidnappings. But this case was more puzzling. The Weyerhaeuser boy was kidnapped off a city street, and a ransom demand came quickly. And Charles Mattson’s siblings saw him taken from their house; his body was found two weeks later. But with the Ann Marie Burr case there was no evidence, no witnesses, no body, and no credible ransom demand.
    The newspapers reported that police could find no proof that anyone had entered the house. They were told there was no sign of a struggle in Ann’s bedroom. Ann’s disappearance was still not officially considered an abduction.
    Drost was friends with Detectives Zatkovich and Strand, but especially Tony Zatkovich. Tony’s brother Al had married a close friend of Drost’s wife, Betty, and they considered themselves family—the kind of extended family that got together for Thanksgiving and birthdays. Drost had been a member of the same vigilante group of police as Detectives Strand and Zatkovich. When he got back from fishing, Drost officially put into place the major roles in the investigation: Strand and Zatkovich would be the lead detectives; Det. Richard Roberts would be in charge of the underground search, including the city sewer system; Police Inspector Emil Smith was overall search director.
    Part of the detective’s job was to get to know as much about Ann as they could. They found that opinions of Ann varied greatly. Her grandmother, Marie Leach, had told police she thought Ann was “a little irrational.” Ann spent time with Becky B___ who lived a block away. Both of Becky’s parents worked, so the children would often spend time with Mrs. B___’s mother during the day. Becky had seen Ann on Wednesday. “I last saw Ann in the neighborhood between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. the evening before she disappeared. I think Ann has quite a temper and she throws tantrums,” Becky told police. Becky’s mother, a schoolteacher, said she considered herself “very good friends” with the Burr family. “It is my impression that she (Ann) is the favorite in the family. She most