Mr. Ballin

The murder had initially been investigated as a personally motivated crime.

But while the case was cold, police had also begun to consider the idea that maybe Barbara had been murdered by the notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, that this was not personal, that she was just one of many victims.

Ted Bundy had been arrested less than an hour away from where Barbara lived in Salt Lake City in 1975, just one year after her murder.

And he had been killing college women all over the West Coast, including several in Utah the same year Barbara was killed.

But investigators in the late 1970s had ruled Ted Bundy out after determining he'd been committing a different murder in Washington state at the same time Barbara was killed, so he could not have been her killer.

But it was still possible that Barbara had been killed by a different serial killer in the area.

1974 is notoriously known as the Year of Fear because there were so many killers operating in the United States at that time.

But as Park read through the notes, he found himself agreeing with the original investigator's first instincts, that Barbara's murder must have been personal.

Also, just the amount of times Barbara was shot seemed emotionally charged.

And so Park believed Barbara's boyfriend, Richard Finder, had to be the killer.

I mean, after all, Richard had been in the area at the time of the murder.

He basically had no alibi.

And, you know, he brought up the fact that there was a missing murder weapon when the public didn't even know that.

So he knows things about the crime scene that he shouldn't know.

But Park felt like there were some other people in this case that also deserved a second look, like Barbara's best friend, Jerry Hicker.

It was true he did have an alibi, and Barbara had told that pawn shop owner, you know, before she was killed, that she was with her boyfriend, which she would not have referred to Jerry as.

But if this was as emotional a crime as Park thought it was, Jerry had to be considered.

After all, he was Barbara's closest friend at school, and maybe he heard she was leaving town and got mad at her.

And then Barbara's roommates, they all seemed to have solid alibis, but maybe one of them had gotten somebody else to kill Barbara.

I mean, Park knew the original investigators hadn't found any evidence of that, but they also hadn't seemed to spend much time on the roommates one way or another.