Culver was last seen in Pocatello, Idaho on May 6, 1975. She left Alameda Junior High School for her lunch break and never returned. That afternoon, she boarded a bus at Hawthorne Junior High School, bound for Fort Hall. She has never been heard from again. Culver was the youngest of three children in a middle-class family, and lived with them on Fairbanks Street. She had a good relationship with her family in 1975. She was in the eighth grade, was a good student and was considered a normal preteen. Investigators initially believed she ran away, perhaps to a nearby Indian reservation, but they began to suspect foul play as time passed and nobody saw or heard from her.

Serial killer Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy confessed to Culver's murder shortly before his 1989 execution. A photo of Bundy is posted below this case summary. He made his claims to Robert D. Keppel, Ph.D., one of the investigators of unsolved crimes believed to be connected to Bundy. Bundy claimed he abducted Culver and took her to a room at a Holiday Inn, where he raped her and drowned her in the bathtub. He said he dumped her body in a river. Bundy is a suspect in many disappearances, including those of Nancy Baird, Ann Marie Burr, Julie Cunningham, Susan Curtis, Georgeann Hawkins, Vicki Hollar, Rita Jolly, Debra Kent, Donna Manson, Denise Oliverson, Nancy Wilcox and other young women. The women continue to be listed as missing persons. Their remains have never been recovered.

Above: Bundy, circa 1980s