OR OR - Vicki Hollar, 24, Eugene, 20 Aug 1973

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I pass by where Vicki worked and where she parked nearly every day, and think of her often. Her story up until her disappearance is similar to mine in a lot of ways. I hope to see the day when she is found.
 
I came across this article as I was researching the case of Susan Wickersham and I thought I'd add it to Vicki's thread:

sue-wickersham.jpg
 
I wonder if this has been mentioned before, but with all of the vehicles being recovered from deep water, is it entirely possible that Vicki drove into a river or pond? It's one thing to get rid of a body, but a car is a different matter. If Bundy or Forrest or whoever might have been responsible did kill Vicki, then they would also have had to get rid of the car and I don't think that either of them knew anything about disposing of a vehicle.
 
Hi, first post. I have started actively looking for Vicki, I live in Portland but travel to Eugene often. Eugene PD will not share records yet, I have DM’d the two people on this thread who said they or their family knew her without response. They only have one post on here. If anyone has any further information or knows how to get ahold of them directly, please let me know. My goal is to find Vicki by next August.

Thanks
 
This is the most complete chronology of Ted Bundy I could find. According to this document, on 20th of August, 1973, Bundy had clutch to be repaired on his VW. There's even an hour: 13:15. And this makes me wonder... his car was broken down, so he may have hitchhiked. BUT, as he was in Seattle at 13:15 and it takes 4 h and a half to get to Eugene, I think we can rule him out as a suspect, because Vicki was last seen at 17:00. There's a narrow possibility, but I think it's not very likely. She had plans to attend a party, so she wouldn't have picked up a hichhiker, I think.
I would like to know if there was any employer who tried to date her or something. And checking the lakes in the area would be great too.
 
Diane Redfern said:
This is the most complete chronology of Ted Bundy I could find. According to this document, on 20th of August, 1973, Bundy had clutch to be repaired on his VW. There's even an hour: 13:15. And this makes me wonder... his car was broken down, so he may have hitchhiked. BUT, as he was in Seattle at 13:15 and it takes 4 h and a half to get to Eugene, I think we can rule him out as a suspect, because Vicki was last seen at 17:00. There's a narrow possibility, but I think it's not very likely. She had plans to attend a party, so she wouldn't have picked up a hichhiker, I think.
I would like to know if there was any employer who tried to date her or something. And checking the lakes in the area would be great too.
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Ted was using a friends car at that time. It’s unclear if he was present while his car was being worked on. We don’t know how whereabouts exactly for those few days.
 
Diane Redfern said:
This is the most complete chronology of Ted Bundy I could find. According to this document, on 20th of August, 1973, Bundy had clutch to be repaired on his VW. There's even an hour: 13:15. And this makes me wonder... his car was broken down, so he may have hitchhiked. BUT, as he was in Seattle at 13:15 and it takes 4 h and a half to get to Eugene, I think we can rule him out as a suspect, because Vicki was last seen at 17:00. There's a narrow possibility, but I think it's not very likely. She had plans to attend a party, so she wouldn't have picked up a hichhiker, I think.
I would like to know if there was any employer who tried to date her or something. And checking the lakes in the area would be great too.
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This is a very interesting detail. I wonder if EPD are aware? It doesn’t prove he didn’t do it, as another commenter noted that he may have been using a friend’s car, but to me it introduces doubt into the long-accepted theory that only Bundy could be responsible for her disappearance. If he wasn’t, someone else has gotten away with it for a very long time…and I am sad to think that no one has really been looking for her for so long, since she’s been written off as a Bundy victim for decades.

Hard to believe that in a few days, it will have been 49 years since Vicki practically drove off the face of the Earth. Maybe this will be the year she is finally found.

ETA: Reading through this report, another detail stands out to me. It notes that Bundy confessed to 2 murders in Oregon, but it states that one of them is confirmed to be Roberta Parks, an OSU student who was murdered in 1974. I had always read that he said he killed 2 women in Oregon, but it seems a lot of theories speculate that this means he may have killed Vicki Hollar and Rita Jolly—but having one Oregon victim confirmed to be Roberta Parks would leave only one still unknown. Of course, he could well have been lying about the number of Oregon victims, but if he wasn’t, it again makes me think that LE shouldn’t have been so quick to decide that Bundy was responsible for Vicki’s disappearance. I wonder if they have some other reason to connect him to her disappearance that they haven’t publicly shared.
 
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Hi, Ted was using a car of unknown make/model borrowed from a friend with plate # oYH-149 as of 8/18/73. Last known prior use of his ‘68 Beetle plate # IBH 521 was 8/17/63. Presumably the clutch went out days prior to him dropping it off. Ted did maintenance on his own cars up to a point, this would have exceeded his ability. The clutch was repaired at 13:15 on 8/20/73, however the report doesn’t specify if this is drop off time, appointment time or job completion and pick up time. It’s reasonable to think that Ted dropped off the car at the shop any time between 8/17/73 and 8/20/73. Most of the time the car would be towed to a garage at the time of failure and then stored while while waiting for parts to come in.

It is certainly plausible Ted had the time and ability to drive to Eugene and back as we know he did so in one day to take Roberta Parks, however Vicki’s disappearance in my opinion is too sophisticated for this early in his career. At no time did Ted ever take someone and have the issue with disappearing the car as well. Closest he had to this was Janice Ott’s bicycle, but he had obvious means to transport it (bike/ski rack) that he took off later that day. Especially in broad daylight. I do feel that he killed prior to 74, but still am not convinced he did this.

There are several other leads I have come up with, two of whom are still alive which may be why more information is not available from EPD if they feel the same. Without a body, car, purse or witness, there is no chance of conviction.

I think that it’s easy to say this was Bundy, easy for the press, maybe easy for the police (although I have not come across any official statement saying he was suspected. But with the number of missing and murdered girls in Lane county and surrounding areas from 1972 to 1978, I personally think we were dealing with someone local.

More to come on this soon.

“Leads” being based on suspicion, circumstantial evidence etc, obviously no physical evidence is available yet
 
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Kat said:
I don't know dogperson. What gets me is that the black beetle was her car.

Her car has never been found.

There could be a few reasons for that but my first assumption is that the car is located where it can't be seen. My first instinct is a body of water. I don't know if there are any near Eugene. I'd have to look.

But it's very unusual for a person and their car to go missing never to be seen again. JMHO. I'm not certain there is a connection with Bundy, I suppose they thought so because she has long dark hair and he might have been "working" in that area at the same time? JMHO.


ETA: There is Fern Ridge Lake, about 27 minutes from the intersection she was last seen. Pretty straight driving directions too.
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I'm new to this case, but I'm jumping in!

There's water all over the place. It's the PNW. Let me see: there's the Willamette River exactly 7 blocks from this location (a quick walk IME), there's Fern Ridge reservoir westward, but there are reservoirs in every direction... Beyond Fern Ridge about 50 miles, there's the Pacific Ocean.

A major Eugene bridge over the Willamette is anchored almost exactly at 7th and Washington. In the early '70's, that bridge might have been very squirrely.

The Bon was just a few blocks from 7th and WA.
 
One thing that did occur to me about the Eugene 7th and Washington detail. IIRC that spot was where prostitutes would get picked up, or at least a likely spot. There's heavy traffic right there because of the bridge. I don't know exactly how this was configured in the early 70's, but in the early 80's, it was very busy. The current map indicates a park under the bridge ramp. I don't actually recall a park there, but there might have been. This would have added to the potential for assault. However, there's the missing car....

For some reason, I vaguely recall a VW bug being dredged up, but it's so many years ago, and LE for sure would have connected the dots if I'm not making this up.
 
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Kat said:
I don't know dogperson. What gets me is that the black beetle was her car.

Her car has never been found.

There could be a few reasons for that but my first assumption is that the car is located where it can't be seen. My first instinct is a body of water. I don't know if there are any near Eugene. I'd have to look.

But it's very unusual for a person and their car to go missing never to be seen again. JMHO. I'm not certain there is a connection with Bundy, I suppose they thought so because she has long dark hair and he might have been "working" in that area at the same time? JMHO.


ETA: There is Fern Ridge Lake, about 27 minutes from the intersection she was last seen. Pretty straight driving directions too.
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It would actually be easy to drive into Fern Ridge Reservoir from the main road if you oversteered. The road is straight right there (it kind of runs over a dyke in wetlands IIRC), but it drops down to water on both sides IIRC, or it certainly did in the '80's.

However, it sounds like VH would normally go home to South Eugene after work. It really isn't that far, mostly a residential area of small houses. IMO something is much more likely to have happened downtown in the area where she parked the car. Perhaps someone took it, and she hitched? Perhaps the battery went bad or a belt broke, she hitched, and someone stole the car that night after managing to get it started? Or simply put it in neutral and rolled it into a random parking lot where they could get to it later? Lots of possibilities.

This would make room for the Bundy scenario. He could have got her to put down her guard by telling her he knew how to fix VW bugs. The car could have been taken joyriding and pretty much dumped anywhere, even driven off a cliff on the coast.

It was much easier to steal cars in the '70's than it is now, and breakdowns were a lot more common IME. It seemed like an awful lot of things could go wrong, and there were no computers to warn you if something needed attending to before you broke down.
 
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I can likely tell you anything you want to know about Eugene from '82 up to 2006. I think '82 would have been very similar to the early '70's.

Also, there are such things as VW bug graveyards. The photos are out there under that Google. They are copyright or not-approved sources (e.g. blogs), so I can't post them. Those graveyards make me think the car could be some place like that: given new paint color and later abandoned, running boards fixed, parted-out...all kinds of things.
 
The Willamette River is fairly shallow through Eugene, deep enough to hide a car, about 11 ft at the deepest according to 1975 records. Could not find any from 1973. However, the path down to the water’s edge is steep and mostly lined with evergreen trees of 50-75 years growth. There is generally about 15-30 feet of marshy flat ground at the bottom which may be shallow riverbed at times, but water is down in August. So without hitting the top of the hill with enough speed and luck to avoid the trees, I don't think she could have made the deep section. In the few clear areas of the Wilamette, they were mostly industrial at the time and had difficult access.

She was seen entering her car but not actually driving away. Certainly possible that someone was in her vehicle. I have driven from her last known to her house and it takes approximately ten minutes. It's about 1.9 miles.

I don't think she deviated from her plan to go home and then attend a party with a roommate. So I doubt she accidentally went into a body of water as there aren't any along her presumed route.

ODOT records I found showed guardrails on the levy road past Fern Lake Reservoir in 1973. Unlikely that she went through one or over one in broad daylight without anyone seeing. Sun went down at 8:46pm.

I think that yes, Bundy could’ve done this, I just doubt it. He wasn’t this sophisticated this early. Broad daylight, disposing of a car and a body etc.

I think this was a local, and someone who could get rid of a Bug quickly, which wasn’t difficult back then as previously mentioned.

More coming soon
 
Given the fact that Vicki had just driven about 2600 miles just a month before, I’d assume her Beetle was pretty well tuned up. While not impossible that it broke down, I’d bet likely not.
 
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