My family got stalked by a serial killer

More of a personal anecdote than a typical "let's not meet" story.<br><br>Before I had an awareness of the world, Ted Bundy roamed the United States, kidnapping & killing dozens of young women. After his capture in 1975, he became notorious. By the time I was old enough to understand the danger posed by him in the late 1970s, he was already on death row in Florida.<br><br>At the time, my family lived in a small ranch-style house in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. With three children under ten, my parents put a premium on having the largest bedrooms possible for us kids, so we aspired to buy the typical suburban "four bedroom split-level" that was very popular in the 1960s through the 1980s. In this type of house, two of the bedrooms are up a half-flight of stairs from the living room, with the master bedroom and two others on other lower half-flight of stairs from the living room & kitchen. These split-level houses were so common in Denver that thousands of them were built in the space of just a few years.<br><br>In the mid 1970s, we lived in such a house, in an older neighborhood of a couple hundred split-level houses built in the 1960s. Most of the houses in our neighborhood have been "flipped" in the last few years, so I mostly base my assessment on Google maps. I can see that our old house has been completely renovated inside & out, with the backyard now hosting a large in-ground lap pool. I'm sure it wouldn't be recognizable to me inside or out. The neighborhood's houses had been built without window screens, as the typical cold Denver weather meant that windows were mostly closed & there was no need to keep out bugs.<br><br>In the late summer of 1977, my family had moved to a new house in a different neighborhood. Again, this was a four-bedroom split level, but in a more fashionable neighborhood & a nicer house. I remember that it was warm in the early fall that year, so we often kept the windows open at night.<br><br>One night, my parents took us kids to a dinner at my uncle's house. We got home pretty late, I think around 9:00 or 10:00. Before putting us kids to bed, my mother went upstairs to fold some laundry and put it away in our bedroom dressers.<br><br>After stuffing the clean laundry into the dresser drawers, she lifted one dresser drawer up and set it on top of the other in order to empty it. As she lifted the top drawer, she saw a piece of paper she hadn't noticed.<br><br>It was a hand-written note in pencil that said, "I have been watching you for a long time. I love you. I wish I could be with you always."<br><br>It was written in kid's pencil cursive and looked like it had been written by a child, but seemed like it had been there for weeks or months.<br><br>I don't know if my mother had ever heard of Ted Bundy, but it's unlikely he was on her radar. However, she was very creeped out, so she went downstairs and showed it to my father. He was equally put off by it, but a few days of looking around the house and asking neighbors revealed nothing.<br><br>Moving into the fall, the nights were cooler, so we closed our upstairs windows more often. My father decided to install window screens, and the first set he installed were on my parents' bedroom windows.<br><br>One evening in early October, my father hopped through their bedroom window and stood in the shrubs below their bedroom window. He was measuring to see if a burglar screen would be strong enough to support his weight. As he looked down at the dirt in the flowerbed, he noticed an area with fresh footprints. They were partially hidden by the shrubs, but were not in an area of the yard where anyone would be walking.<br><br>After closer inspection, he could see that someone was standing in the bushes below his bedroom window. What made it even more evident was that the window glass had footprints on the outside, where someone was standing on the window sill with their palms against the glass and one foot against the wall.<br><br>He immediately went back inside and called my uncle, a police detective who worked the graveyard shift. He invited him over to the house with a few other cops to check out the scene without sirens.<br><br>When they looked at the window, they easily found the footprints. It was obvious that someone had been using the window for some time. They called the local crime lab, who came out with a photographer and fingerprint expert.<br><br>With the lights from the photographer, they were able to easily lift numerous fingerprints from the window glass on the outside. They were able to match them to a person with a extensive criminal history.<br><br>The fingerprints belonged to a man named Theodor "Ted" Bundy. He had been arrested in Utah earlier that same year, and his prints were in the FBI database.<br><br>In short, he had escaped from jail in Colorado (16 June 1977), prison in Colorado (30 December 1977), and another prison in Florida (1978). If my parents hadn't found that note, who knows how long he would have been watching us. He may have even killed us.<br><br>The local police warned us to keep the window closed and to keep the blinds shut. They told us to turn off the lights if we saw any movement in the area of the window. They were watching our house, as well as the houses of other families in the area.<br><br>I don't know the outcome of their investigation, but I'm sure they were looking for him in the area for several months. At any rate, Ted Bundy was recaptured in June 1978 in Florida. He was executed there on 24 January 1989 for killing dozens of young women while on the run. There's no way of knowing how many women he killed, but it's estimated at around 50.<br><br>So if you're a serial killer who has been stalking my family, then... LET'S NOT MEET.