Brenda Carol Ball was 22 when she disappeared after spending the night of May 31 into the early morning of June 1, 1974, at the Flame Tavern in Burien, a suburb of Seattle. She left the bar speaking with a man who had his arm in a sling; that encounter in the tavern parking lot was the last confirmed sighting. Friends delayed reporting her missing because she sometimes disappeared on short whims; she was reported only after nearly three weeks without contact.

On March 1, 1975, a human skull found on Taylor Mountain was identified as Brenda’s. The skull showed significant blunt force trauma consistent with being struck by a heavy object such as a crowbar. Other remains recovered nearby linked her death to the series of murders of young women in the area. Theodore Ted Bundy was later identified as the perpetrator in those killings and confessed to Brenda’s murder, giving an account that described strangulation after a consensual encounter; that version does not account for the skull fractures. Her body, aside from the skull, was never recovered.

Did anyone who knew Brenda in Burien or who frequented the Flame Tavern remember details about her last night out or the man with a sling?