One of the mysteries of the Bundy case still is who the hitchhiker he confessed to picking up, kidnapping, and murdering on September 2, 1974 was, on his way from Washington to Utah, and dumping her remains into Idaho's Snake River. This confession was one of two he made to Idaho detectives, along with Lynnette Culver in Pocatello on May 6, 1975. And he provided enough specific details about what she was last seen wearing and knowing details about her family life that investigators and the Culver family do satisfactorily accept his confession as genuine, along with Idaho detectives saying they were 99% certain Bundy was telling the truth that he killed Culver as well. And he also admitted to dumping her remains into the Snake River, too.

Sources:

https://www.deseret.com/1989/2/10/18794734/detectives-seek-missing-link-in-bundy-admission-he-killed-idahoan/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4PZf0fx8qo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftuqYh_SvPI

https://anotherbundyblog.com/tag/lynette-culver/

So, to get back to the hitchhiker, Bundy said he never got her name, but described her as being white, between 16 - 18, 5'6", had light brown hair, and was wearing a green backpack with a beaded necklace, and believed she was on her way to Montana, along with taking her backpack with him to Salt Lake City, and eventually discarding it there, also.

Source: https://anotherbundyblog.com/tag/lynette-culver/

To this day, no positive identification has been made still about who he was referring to, and LE said they couldn't find any missing person's reports of girls who fit the description he gave. And Ada County LE had launched a new effort to to identify who this was in Nov 2024: https://adacounty.id.gov/sheriff/news/acso-seeks-publics-help-to-identify-teen-abducted-by-ted-bundy-in-1974/

And Bundy confessed to death row appellant attorney Polly Nelson that he killed this hitchhiker, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCL2mGM7EtQ

If she presumably existed, then I suspect/presume the reason they couldn't find any reports that matched Bundy's description is because she didn't live locally to the Boise area and/or might've not really been from the state at all. So, it could be a name that's buried deep in a plethora of statewide missing persons reports in Idaho, or the FBI's database.

Though, it's certainly possible too that no report was ever filed that she was missing. But that didn't seem Bundy-like to target a girl no one would report a missing person case for.

Excerpts from the article below:

The Zodiac Killer: A Solvable Case With No Usable DNA

"If the Golden State Killer case demonstrates what forensic genetics can achieve, the Zodiac case demonstrates the hard limits.

Holes is openly skeptical of the periodic announcements claiming the Zodiac Killer has been identified. His skepticism is not theoretical — it is the scar tissue of the Golden State Killer investigation, where he watched brilliant, circumstantially compelling suspect theories collapse under DNA testing again and again. "With Zodiac, I kind of have that very skeptical stance: until I see that objective DNA evidence, I'm not going to say you've got the guy," he said.

The DNA challenges are specific to each crime scene and unusually severe:

Crime Scene	Potential DNA Source	Problem
First two shootings (1968-69)	Offender stood outside car	No physical contact; no DNA transfer likely
Lake Berryessa (1969)	Rope bindings left at scene	Handled months before crime; degraded or mixed DNA
San Francisco (1969)	Victim's shirt cut by offender	Mailed portion contains only victim's blood; other half untested
Letters and envelopes	Saliva on stamps and flaps	Postal workers licked stamps in the 1960s; mixed profiles generated

The envelope evidence is particularly problematic. Holes revealed that investigators in the 1960s "would take our letters into the post office and the postman licked the flap and licked the stamp." When those envelopes have been tested in subsequent decades, the results have produced multiple conflicting DNA profiles, none clearly attributable to the offender.

Holes's preferred target is the Lake Berryessa bindings — the rope the offender used to restrain victims. The bindings were brought by the killer, presumably handled repeatedly over months or years before the attack, and left behind at the scene. "The best evidence in the case," Holes called it. If usable DNA can be extracted from the bindings before the remaining sample is exhausted, the case might finally produce a definitive profile.

Taken together, the three threads of Holes's career — the Golden State Killer success, the Zodiac stalemate, and the Marilyn Monroe impossibility — map the entire range of outcomes that forensic genetics makes possible. When the sample is large and well-preserved, a third cousin in a public database can identify a killer who evaded capture for 40 years. When the sample is contaminated by the postman who licked the stamp in 1969, even a famous serial killer case can stall indefinitely. And when the evidence has been deliberately destroyed, no technology — not even AI reconstruction — can substitute for what is gone."

Full article: https://finance.biggo.com/news/4c8b32e8a21220fa

If the back of the 1969 stamps seem to yield inconclusive DNA results that has lead to multiple non-matching DNA profiles being found — which seems to be the case judging by Holes's comments here — I'm glad that he's expressed optimism over the assailant leaving the bindings behind at the lake, being the next best source offender DNA.

The bindings are great, at least in theory, because we know for sure the knifeman personally brought them to the crime, as he walked up to Hartnell and Shepard with them already attached to his holster.

So, hopefully at the very least, Napa County will be able to conclusively put a name and a face to a deceased offender as the guy in the mask at the lake.

And I've bolded two key words here: useable and definitive. Beyond finding a DNA sample, there absolutely must be the non-negotiable ability to prove it definitely came from the person who perpetuated the crime, and not investigators and such, who were handling stuff like the bindings without wearing gloves back then, and got their DNA accidently mixed with the perp's, which is what's causing all of these inconsistent profiles to pop up that don't match each other.

An era where there was no CGI, no greenscreens/bluescreens, AI, deepfakes, photoshopping, ect — even rear projection couldn't have achieved all of this.

Really must've been an overwhelming out-of-body experience to watch cinema take such a tremendous leap forward when this came out in 1968. Mind-boggling to think that slit scan stuff existed in the '60s for all of this to be filmable.

There might be no Star Wars without 2001. One of the all-time titans of cinema for sure.

10/10 film, imo.

First film Kubrick did with John Alcott as the DP for the entire film as well before Barry Lyndon and The Shining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRya0BMickE

Also, somebody pointed this sound out in the comments. Credit to sound effects editor Frank Warner as well.