Did Ted Bundy kill Nancy Wilcox? Nearly 50 years later, the case is still cold
Nearly 50 years after Nancy Wilcox mysteriously vanished from Holladay, Utah, her case remains unsolved. Although notorious serial killer Ted Bundy confessed to her murder, her body has never been found.
When did Nancy Wilcox go missing?
Wilcox went missing on Oct. 2, 1974, when she was 16. According to the Utah Department of Public Safety, she was last seen near her home in a yellow Volkswagen Beetle driven by an unidentified man. Bundy confessed to killing her shortly before his execution in 1989, but told police he could not remember the exact location where he had buried her body.
Because Wilcox’s body has not been recovered, her case has never officially been solved.
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Who was Nancy Wilcox?
Wilcox was a 16-year-old student at Olympus High School in Holladay.
As Salt Lake County sheriff’s detective Jerry Thompson, who was originally assigned to Wilcox’s case in 1974, told the Deseret News in 1989, she was last seen wearing a blouse and blue corduroy pants. She left her home to purchase a pack of gum and was never seen again.
“The minute she went out the door I had the strangest feeling,” Connie Wilcox, Nancy’s mother, told ABC4.
Nancy Wilcox was last sighted in a yellow Volkswagen “Bug,” the same car Bundy was known to drive.
Who was Ted Bundy?
Bundy was a serial killer convicted of murdering three women in Florida and believed to have killed at least 30 more in Washington, Oregon, Utah and Colorado.
Shortly before his death, he met with Salt Lake County detective Dennis Couch and confessed to the murders of several Utah women, including Nancy Wilcox. During his taped confession, he pointed to an area near Capitol Reef National Park on a map of Utah and said he hid Wilcox’s body somewhere in the area.
Bundy was executed in Florida on Jan. 24, 1989.
Where does the case stand now?
After Bundy’s confession, police searched Capitol Reef and the surrounding area for Wilcox’s body but never found it.
Although Bundy confessed to her murder, much of the information he gave investigators in his final confessions was misleading and even false, per KSL.
Biographer Ann Rule said in an interview at Utah State University that she believed Bundy was purposefully deceitful in his confessions.
“(It was) a scheme to send police out slopping through the mud in vain, something Ted would enjoy,” she said.
Because her body has never been found, Wilcox’s case is still listed in the Utah Department of Public Safety’s cold case database. Anyone with information regarding her case is urged to contact the Unified Police Department at 801-743-7000.
