UTAH'S SOIL KEEPING BUNDY VICTIMS
NEWLY FOUND BONES ARE FROM ANIMALS, FRUSTRATED SEARCHERS SAY

It appears that the bodies of three Utah women Ted Bundy claimed to have killed may never be found.

Utah officials who have spent hundreds of man-hours searching for the victims during the past few months are frustrated and say they've done all that they can.Sue Curtis

"We've exhausted our possibilities. We're just on hold again," said Brigham Young University police Sgt. Dan Clark, who has helped Carbon County officials conduct several searches for the body of 15-year-old Sue Curtis. She disappeared from a BYU youth conference June 27, 1975.

Bundy said he killed her and buried her in an area five to 10 miles south of Price.

"It would've been nice to have something for her family, but it's just not going to happen," Clark said, adding that Bundy's description was too vague and the search area too expansive.

Debra Kent

There was also bad news Monday for those searching for the body of Debra Kent, 17, who disappeared from Bountiful's Viewmont High School on Nov. 8, 1974. Last week, searchers located a human patella (kneecap) in a milelong ravine that officials believe is the location Bundy described during the week before he was executed.

Searchers gathered an additional 60-70 bones in the same area Thursday - hoping others were human and may belong to Kent - and sent them to be analyzed. But the state medical examiner's office determined that the bones belong to animals - "all kinds of animals from small rodents to cows or horses," said medical examiner Todd Grey.

Law enforcement officers are stumped.

"I think we have done as much as we can do right now," said Bountiful Police Chief Larry Higgins, who has coordinated seven different searches with Sanpete County officials and volunteer searchers in the foothills east of Fairview using dogs, aerial cameras and metal detectors.

"We followed all those systematic steps, but there comes a time when you have to say we've done everything we can do right now," he said. "Everyone had one goal in mind - to find the body of Debra Kent and return it to her parents. Everyone's disappointed that we couldn't have done more."

Nancy Wilcox