The trouble with catching serial killers is that they look like everyone else.
It’d be preferable if they were easily identifiable, but those who commit murders can be so beneath notice that you could walk past one in the street and not know.
There are times when someone might take what seems like an innocuous photo, only for it to later become sinister because the photographer has accidentally captured a view of someone terrible moments before disaster.
One of the worst serial killers in history is Ted Bundy, who kidnapped, raped and murdered at least 30 women and girls, and attacked even more.
Estimates of the number of his actual victims are much higher, with some suggesting that Bundy murdered up to 100 people.
Two of his victims were murdered on 14 July, 1974, and a photo from that day might have captured the despicable serial killer in film while he was searching for his next victim.
Ted Bundy is one of history’s most notorious serial killers. (Bettmann/Getty)
The picture of Lake Sammamish State Park in Washington, Oregon, at first seems little more than an image of cars on a summer day.
However, in the photo is a VW Beetle, which is thought to have belonged to Bundy.
He was later asked about the photograph, to which he denied it was him, calling it ‘an interesting coincidence’ and that he didn’t mean ‘to burst your bubble’, adding: “That would have been fairly memorable. No, that I’m most certain that couldn’t be me.”
He also pointed that the car in the picture was missing a ‘ski rack’ – therefore, it couldn’t have been him.
On that day, however, people remembered seeing a young man in a tennis outfit with his arm in a sling who called himself Ted asking for help, and witnesses said they saw the man approach 23-year-old Janice Ott and she went with him, she wasn’t seen alive again, according to Biography.
Four hours later, 19-year-old woman Denis Marie Naslund went missing from the same area, the bodies of both women would be found on 6 September.
One of the VW Beetle cars in this photo is thought to have been Ted Bundy’s, and the picture was taken on a day where he would murder two women.
Other human remains were also found at the site and identified as 18-year-old Georgann Hawkins, another of Bundy’s victims.
Police received tips that Bundy may be a possible suspect, but they didn’t think he was the killer at the time.
The notorious serial killer would go on to commit several further murders before being arrested the following year in Utah, in his car a ski mask, handcuffs, rope and a crowbar was found among other tools.
However, it was decided that there was not enough evidence to detain him and he was released.
Bundy would later say that the search of his car missed a stash of photos he’d taken of his victims, which he claimed he then burned.
The serial killer would later be charged with crimes, and in 1976, he was sentenced for kidnapping and assault, after which he was sent to prison.
He twice escaped, going on to commit more murders before being apprehended.
Once behind bars, he withheld details about the murders he’d committed in an attempt to stall for time, but it was unsuccessful as he was executed in 1989.
