Murder of Georgann Hawkins


Georgann Hawkins was an American college student from Tacoma, Washington, who disappeared from an alley behind her sorority house at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Serial killer Ted Bundy confessed to Hawkins's abduction and murder shortly before his 1989 execution. Bundy claimed that partial skeletal remains belonging to Hawkins were recovered from one of his many crime scenes on September 6, 1974. According to Bundy, the sections of Hawkins's body he had not buried were recovered in Issaquah alongside the bodies of two other victims he had murdered on July 14.
Bundy's statement regarding the identity of the partial skeletal remains being those of Georgann Hawkins has never been confirmed. Although Hawkins is presumed dead, she is still officially listed as a missing person and no public records indicate that she has been declared legally dead in absentia.

Background

Childhood

Georgann Hawkins was born on August 20, 1955, in Tacoma, Washington. She was the second of two daughters born to Warren B. Hawkins and his wife, Edith "Edie" Hawkins. She and her older sister, Patti, were raised in an upper-middle class Episcopalian household in Sumner, Washington. As a child, Hawkins was reported to be a spirited, vivacious, and outgoing individual. Her mother later described her younger daughter as a "wiggle worm" who was unable to sit still and who had a talkative nature. These observations were well-documented in report cards that her parents received from her grade-school teachers. Adored by her peers, Hawkins's mother dubbed her "the Pied Piper". Her mother later recalled of her daughter, "she had quite a following but she was not the kind of person who stuck to one group or clique. She had friends among everybody, older than her and younger than her. She was a very self-confident little girl... she wasn't vain, she wasn't arrogant and she wasn't snooty. That's why kids liked her."

High school

At one stage in her childhood, Hawkins had a brief bout with Osgood-Schlatter disease which left a few small bumps visible just below her patellae. Despite this, she was a star athlete and swam competitively throughout grade school and won numerous AAU swimming medals. She later transitioned to cheerleading as a teenager, and was a member of the Lakes High cheerleading squad for four consecutive years. In addition to being a star athlete, Hawkins was an honors student and maintained a straight A record throughout her school years. She was a graduate of Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington, class of 1973.
During her senior years of 1972 and 1973, she was named a princess to the royal court of the annual Washington Daffodil Festival. As a Daffodil Princess, Hawkins traveled around the state of Washington with the other court princesses, regularly being featured in newspapers, attending concerts, meeting children, riding in parades, and signing autographs at charity events. A highlight for Hawkins was in the spring of 1973 where she made a speech addressing lawmakers at the Washington state Legislature.

University of Washington

Hawkins's elder sister, Patti, attended Central Washington University in Ellensburg, 120.6 miles away from their hometown of Tacoma. When Georgann announced her intentions to enroll at college, her mother did not want her to move as far afield as her elder sister had. At her mother's request, Georgann enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle, which was only 30 miles from her hometown. Hawkins's parents paid for her tuition, books, room and board; she worked all summer to pay for other expenditures, and occasionally returned to her family home at weekends. Georgann last saw her parents on the Mother's Day weekend of 1974.
During her freshman year, Hawkins joined the on-campus sorority Kappa Alpha Theta. After her experiences as a Daffodil Princess and having observed the ongoing news media coverage of the hearings relating to the Watergate scandal, she formed aspirations of becoming either a broadcast journalist or possibly a television news anchor. She was looking into majoring in broadcast journalism around the time of her disappearance.
As had been the case while attending high school, Hawkins maintained a straight A record while studying at the University of Washington. She also enjoyed attending campus parties, dance formals, and Kappa Alpha Theta events, although she rarely walked around the campus alone at night. She also found a steady boyfriend, Marvin Gellatly, who was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
By the spring of 1974, Hawkins had found a summer job in her hometown of Tacoma, which was set to commence on Monday June 17. The money Hawkins was to earn from this employment was intended to pay towards her second year of studies at the University of Washington. She is known to have discussed this employment with her parents shortly before her disappearance, and intended to return to her parents' home on June 13.

Events of June 10–11, 1974

On June 10, 1974, Hawkins went with a sorority sister to a party on campus, where the two drank a few mixed drinks. She did not stay at the event for too long as she intended to study for her upcoming Spanish finals, for which she had earlier expressed worry to her mother. Before leaving the party, she told her sorority sister that she was going to the Beta Theta Pi House to both say good night to her boyfriend and to pick up some revision notes from him.
While ordinarily she was a cautious person, the area along the sorority houses had become very familiar to the alley behind the houses was brightly lit by streetlights approximately every ten feet, and there were generally people around that she knew. On the warm night of June 10, most students were still awake cramming for their finals well past midnight. The fraternity house of Hawkins's boyfriend was six houses down from her sorority a distance of approximately.
Hawkins arrived at the Beta Theta Pi House at approximately 12:30 a.m. on June 11; she is known to have remained in the company of her boyfriend for approximately half an hour. After retrieving the Spanish notes and saying good night to her boyfriend, Hawkins exited the fraternity house for the short walk to her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. One of the Betas, Duane Covey, heard the back door slam shut and stuck his head out the window; recognizing Hawkins, he called out "Hey George! What's happening?" The two talked for approximately two minutes, with Hawkins mentioning her upcoming Spanish exam. She then continued to walk towards her residence, jokingly shouting, "Adios!"
Hawkins was last seen wearing navy blue cotton bell-bottom pants, the waistline of which had been slightly reduced with a safety pin. She was also wearing a white backless T-shirt, a sheer red, white, and blue top, and white open-toed wedge sandals. Hawkins also had two rings: on her left middle finger, a rectangular black onyx ring with a small diamond in the center set in yellow gold; on her right ring finger, a cultured pearl ring with a slender gold band in a Tiffany setting.
Hawkins was also carrying a tan leather satchel-type purse with reddish stains. The contents of her purse included her large royal purple wallet, her school identification card, her checkbook from Seafirst Bank Lakewood Branch, a small quantity of cash, a mini hairbrush with black bristles, a bottle of Heaven Sent perfume, a small jar of Vaseline, and the Spanish notes she borrowed. Several weeks before her disappearance, Georgann had trimmed a few inches off her waist length brown hair and her roommate reported that Hawkins's hair was approximately mid back length at the time she went missing. She had also spent a great deal of time laying in the sun in the weeks leading up to June 10, and her typically fair skin complexion had taken on a rather deep tone.

Events prior to disappearance

In the months prior to Hawkins's disappearance, the state of Washington experienced a string of disappearances of young Caucasian women.
The disappearances baffled law enforcement officials, and many questions began to arise concerning the connections between the cases. There were many similarities to the cases of missing women that the detectives noticed. The girls all shared the same basic physical characteristics of being young, attractive, slender, of Caucasian descent, with long hair that was parted in the middle. They were all also considered to be of more than average intelligence with some sort of gifted talent and came from stable backgrounds. During the times of their disappearances, they were all reported to have been wearing slacks and vanished in the hours of darkness within a week of a midterm or final at a local college or university. Strangely enough, there was also construction work being done on each girl's respective campus when she disappeared.
Lynda Ann Healy's case was the only one with physical evidence in the form of a blood stained mattress and nightgown. The timeline of Donna Gail Manson's last whereabouts was difficult to construct due to the fact that she was not reported missing for six days. This was because Manson often hitchhiked to nearby locales and could disappear for several days at a time without notice, and her peers initially believed that she decided to travel without sharing her plans beforehand. Manson was also depressed at the time of her disappearance, and law enforcement could not rule out the slim possibility that she may have left of her own account to commit suicide.
Susan Rancourt was also physically different from Lynda Ann Healy and Donna Manson, in that she had blonde hair that was just past her shoulders, in contrast to Healy who had waist-length chestnut colored hair, and Manson who had long dark brown hair down to the middle of her back.
Captain Herb Swindler was convinced that Roberta Parks's disappearance was linked to the others but other law enforcement officials doubted his claims, feeling that the city of Corvallis in Oregon was too distant for a victim of the perpetrator who prowled the campuses of Washington colleges. And although Parks had long hip-length hair that was parted in the middle, her hair color was ash blonde, while all the other girls were brunette or dark haired. Police also could not rule out the possibility that, like Donna Manson, Parks may have disappeared on her own account to commit suicide. It was a plausible theory as she had a history of mood swings, recently broke up with her boyfriend, was feeling homesick for her hometown in Lafayette, California, and two days before she went missing got into a verbal altercation with her father, who then had a near fatal heart attack that same day. The Willamette River, which was near the city of Corvallis, was briefly seen as a place of interest where Parks's body might have been found, in the event that she had chosen to end her life by throwing herself off the river bridge. But after being dragged, the Willamette was ruled out.
Brenda Ball was also not reported missing until after Hawkins's disappearance. Like Donna Manson, Ball was somewhat of an adventurous spirit and may have taken off on a whim. With no bodies found, very few clues to go on, and given the limits of forensic technology at the time, the disappearances became more complex to piece together.