Theme vacations are all the rage, whether it’s a fantasy baseball camp, dude ranch, dream deep-sea fishing trip or living the high life in Las Vegas.
Getting down and dirty into the life of one of America’s most notorious serial killers likely wouldn’t be high on most of those bucket lists.
Then there’s Jason Jensen, a Utah-based private investigator who has his own idea for the perfect summer — scouring the mountains and countryside for the remains of Ted Bundy’s victims.
Specifically, Jensen is looking for the gravesite of four Utah women who Bundy admitted to killing and burying both there and in Colorado during his stint in law school in the mid-1970s.
In what Jensen’s calling a “Ted Bundy Summer” in conjunction with the Cold Case Coalition, a missing person nonprofit he helped found, Jensen hopes to finally locate and bring these lost victims home.
The women have been on Jensen’s radar for years. It’s admittedly an ambitious quest, Jensen said, but the timing is right. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Bundy’s first proven murder of University of Washington co-ed Lynda Ann Healy in Seattle in 1974.
Prior to his execution in Florida in 1989, Bundy confessed to more than 30 murders across seven states — including Utah, Idaho and Colorado — between 1974 and 1978, though some experts believe that figure is much higher.
It’s also a good excuse for Jensen to spend some quality time with Lily, his trained human remains detection dog, while getting her more training and experience out in the field.
“It’s like a dream come true, with all of my years of searching for missing people and experience culminating into this perfect moment,” Jensen told Cowboy State Daily.
A locator map of the areas where serial killer Ted Bundy said he buried the bodies of four Utah women whose remains have never been found. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Lily is Jason Jensen's trained human remains detection dog. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
A drawing serial killer Ted Bundy did of the gravesite of Debra Kent, whose remains have never been found. (Courtesy Jason Jensen)
Lost Victims
In that respect, Jensen is a good choice for this mission. Along with his military experience serving in the Gulf War, he also has degrees in criminal justice and years of experience working in the legal field as a certified paralegal.
He’s also a seasoned licensed private investigator with his own agency and decades of experience in the field.
Over the years, Jensen said his passion for finding missing people has steadily become more than just a hobby, and he’s determined to find Bundy’s lost victims to provide some sense of closure for their families.
Bundy’s reign of terror is well documented as is his confession leading up to his execution in Florida in 1989, in which he admitted to killing and burying the bodies of a handful of Utah women, including Susan Curtis, Debra Kent and Nancy Wilcox.
He also confessed to killing Julie Cunningham across the border in Colorado.
And though Jensen suspects there are several more bodies out there in Utah and beyond, he said he’s focusing on these four because Bundy relayed more information about them to investigators prior to his death, and the others he claimed to have thrown in rivers and elsewhere will likely never be recovered.
“We’re probably not going to find them this far down the road at all,” he said. “But the four that he described to law enforcement were described well enough that we have target areas to search.”
Jensen has extensive experience searching for missing people. He was even featured in a pilot for “Dog the Bounty Hunter” during a search for Jamey Holyoak in Moab, Utah, in May 2022. He also appeared on a "20/20" interview, where he and Lily demonstrated how a missing person search is conducted after missing person Gabby Petito was found deceased in Grand Teton National Park in fall 2021.
First, Debra Kent
What frustrates Jensen most about those final confessions is that the interviewers didn’t hone in more on the physical descriptions of where the bodies were buried.
Nonetheless, Jensen’s first search will focus on finding Kent.
She was 17 when she disappeared while waiting to pick up her younger brother from a skating rink in Bountiful, Utah, in November 1975. Bundy abducted Kent after a failed attempt to kidnap a victim from a mall earlier in the day.
Kent’s potential grave is perhaps the most well documented at this point, following the recovery of her kneecap by the Utah state crime lab in 1989, which was determined by DNA in 2019 to belong to her.
Jensen believes the searchers didn’t dig deep enough in the ground to recover the rest of her remains, so he’ll be heading east of Fairview for his first search at the end of June, weather permitting.
Then, Nancy Wilcox
For the second search, also at the end of June, Jensen and crew will look for Wilcox, who also was 17 when she was last seen riding in a Volkswagen Beetle similar to the one Bundy was known to drive.
During his final days prior to his execution, Jensen said Bundy reportedly admitted to hiding her body east of Cove Fort, Utah, on State Route 24 near Capital Reef National Park.
Julie Cunningham After That
Thirdly, Jensen will tentatively go to Colorado to look for Cunningham.
Bundy reportedly abducted her in March 1975 in Vail, Colorado. During his final interviews, according to Jensen, Bundy described burying her “in the high desert” north of Rifle.
Finally, Susan Curtis
Finally, Jensen’s search efforts will focus on Curtis, who disappeared from a youth conference at Brigham Young University in Provo in June 1975 when she was 15.
Jensen said Bundy told interviewers that he supposedly buried her near Price, Utah. He plans to hit this area in mid-July, weather depending.
Other Bodies Out There
In addition to these women, Bundy left other victims in his wake of carnage, some of whom he admitted to killing, such as 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime.
The daughter of a Midvale, Utah, police chief, 17-year-old Melissa Smith was also severely beaten, strangled and sexually assault during fall of 1974.
Other victims include 17-year-old Debbie Smith, who was found dead at Salt Lake International Airport in April 1976, and who Bundy did not admit to killing.
Quest For Justice
In between, Jensen has done his own research and has canvassed witnesses who have helped fill in some holes and narrow down his search areas.
It’s required getting in Bundy’s head and visiting specific areas to get a sense of the terrain and how or where one of America’s most notorious serial killers might have moved and buried his victims.
As he relistens to Bundy’s confessions, his frustration grows in how investigators didn’t physically return Bundy to Utah to have him lead them to the graves.
But ultimately, this is where Jensen, his team and Lily come in to help solve the mysteries and bring the bodies home.
What drives Jensen’s interest in Ted Bundy ultimately boils down to his own interest in helping resolve the crimes of one of the most prolific serials killers in history, as well as his own quest for justice.
“He was active in Utah when I was a small child, and we became accustomed to his name,” Jensen said. “It’s bothersome to realize that there are still remains out there that haven’t been recovered, and I want to find them.”
Utah-based investigator Jason Jensen and his trained human remains detection dog Lily will try to find the remains of four Utah women killed nearly 50 years ago by serial killer Ted Bundy. (ABC and "20/20" via Facebook) 
Florida State University's Chi Phi fraternity celebrates the execution of Ted Bundy with a large banner that says, "Watch Ted Fry, See Ted Die!" as they prepare for an evening cookout where they will serve "Bundy burgers" and "electrified hot dogs." Bundy attacked five women and killed two Chi Omega coeds on the campus in 1978. (Getty Images) 
A Utah booking photo of Ted Bundy. (Getty Images) 
An FBI wanted poster for Ted Bundy, left, and his reaction to being given the death penalty. (Getty Images)
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
