Ted Bundy’s long-time girlfriend admits that she was smitten by the serial killer from the moment she met him in a Seattle bar in 1969.
‘I loved him from day one, but there were all these coincidences. I couldn’t let it go,’ says Liz Kendall, in a new five-part documentary series which premiers on Amazon Prime Friday.
Kendall and her now adult daughter Molly, who both lived several years with Bundy as a family in Washington state, speak publicly for the first time in ‘Ted Bundy: Falling For A Killer.’
Ted Bundy’s long-time girlfriend, Liz Kendall, admits that she was smitten by the serial killer from the moment she met him in a Seattle bar in 1969
‘I loved him from day one, but there were all these coincidences. I couldn’t let it go,’ says Liz Kendall, in a new five-part documentary series, ‘Ted Bundy: Falling For A Killer,’ which premiers on Amazon Prime Friday
Ted Bundy and Liz Kendall at Snowbird ski resort in Utah in 1974, warming by a fireplace. Kendall met the serial killer in a Seattle bar five years earlier
Mother and daughter in the series describe what it was like living with Bundy, while not immediately suspecting he was a serial killer responsible for the murder of 30 female victims across several states.
Eventually, Kendall became suspicious of the killer and turned him over to cops. Bundy would later die strapped to an electric chair in Florida on January 24, 1989 after he murdered a pair of sorority co-eds and abducted, raped and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach there.
Several of Bundy’s survivors join Kendall and her daughter to discuss Bundy from their perspective.
Kendall, who is also known by the last name Kloepfer, wrote a memoir in 1981, when Bundy was on Florida’s death row, which became the basis for this year’s Netflix movie starring Zac Efron as the killer.
However, she remained notoriously reticent over the years, refusing to attend the adaptation’s premier at Sundance and declining all press interviews about her six-year relationship with Bundy, who confessed to killing 30 women in the 1970s and is suspected of slaying many more.
Bundy and Kendall from an image featured in the upcoming Amazon Prime documentary, ‘Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer’
Among Bundy’s victims were (top row, left to right) Kimberly Leach, Caryn Campbell , Margaret Bowman , Debbie Kent, (seconBundy victims include, (top row, left to right) Kimberly Leach, Caryn Campbell , Margaret Bowman , Debbie Kent, (second row, left to right) Laura Aime, Roberta Parks, Georgann Hawkins , Donna Manson, (third row, left to right) Lynda Healy, Janice Ott, Denise Naslund, Susan Rancourt, (fourth row, left to right) Katherine Devine, Melissa Smith, Brenda Ball, and Lisa Levyd row, left to right) Laura Aime, Roberta Parks, Georgann Hawkins and Donna Manson
Kendall’s memoir, The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy, had been out of print for decades, and rare copies of it sell for hundreds of dollars online.
However, a re-issue of the book with new and expanded material was released earlier this month in conjunction with the new docuseries.
According to Amazon, the new series will share Kendall and Molly’s experiences with unsettling new details about Bundy, the pull he had on women and an abundant archive of never-before-seen family photos.
The series also features interviews with other female voices, including survivors of Bundy’s attacks – some of whom are stepping forward for the first time.
Bundy met Kendall in 1969 while he was a student at the University of Washington in Seattle.
In her memoir, Kendall describes how she was a single mother struggling with alcohol addiction when she saw Bundy gazing at her from across the room in a bar called the Sandpiper Tavern.
In her memoir, Kendall recalls she was a single mother struggling with alcoholism when she saw Bundy gazing at her from across the room in a bar called the Sandpiper Tavern in 1969. He is pictured in an image from the upcoming documentary, ‘Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer’
‘I loved her so much it was destabilizing,’ Bundy told journalist Stephen G. Michaud about his long-time girlfriend Liz Kendall in an interview released in the Netflix docuseries, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes
‘The chemistry between us was incredible. I was already planning the wedding and naming the kids,’ she writes. ‘He was telling me that he missed having a kitchen because he loved to cook. Perfect. My Prince.’
She took him home that night, and the two soon fell hard for one another and moved in together.
‘I loved her so much it was destabilizing,’ Bundy told journalist Stephen G. Michaud about Kendall in an interview released in the Netflix docuseries, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes.
Molly considered Bundy to be her father from ages three to 10. In the upcoming Amazon docuseries, Molly as and adult says, ‘We were like a family’.
In new material added to her mother’s memoir, Molly recalls that Bundy taught her how to ride a bike and even took her skiing. But she also remembers the uncomfortable moment he crawled into bed with her, leaving the mattress wet.
An undated image from the upcoming Amazon Prime documentary, ‘Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer’, shows Liz Kendall (right) with her daughter Molly when they were living together as a family in Washington state
Molly considered Bundy to be her father from ages three to 10. She is pictured in an image from those years with Bundy. Molly said in new material added to her mother’s memoir, that he taught her how to ride a bike and even took her skiing
Liz Kendall and her daughter Molly in an undated image from the upcoming documentary, ‘Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer’
Molly today in the Amazon Prime documentary ‘Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer’
She said she recalls she said to him, ‘You peed,’ as she was too young to think the liquid she noticed might be something else, she writes in the new version of her mother’s book.
As a disturbing series of murders of young women began to unfold in Seattle, Kendall had mounting suspicions that Bundy might be involved.
According to a friend, Kendall confronted him after finding women’s panties and plaster of Paris in the home —the killer was known to use a fake arm cast to lure victims.
‘He said to her, ‘if you ever tell anyone this I’ll break your effing head,” Kendall’s friend Marylynne Chino told KUTV .
Kendall wrote in her memoir that she contacted police with suspicions several times, but was brushed off by investigators.
Despite her suspicions, Kendall supported Bundy when he was originally arrested for kidnapping Carol DaRonch in Utah in 1975, even sitting with Bundy’s parents in court for the trial.
After Bundy escaped custody twice while facing a murder charge in Colorado, and was recaptured and sentenced to death in Florida for a series of grisly murders there, Kendall gradually began to lose faith in his innocence.
‘After he was arrested, he wrote me many, many letters. We were going to start a life together. No goodbyes. Just I love you,’ she recalls in the new Amazon docuseries.
In a phone call from Florida’s death row, Bundy finally admitted the evil inside him.
‘There is something the matter with me,’ he told her on a phone call from Florida’s death row. ‘I just couldn’t contain it. I fought it for a long, long time … it was just too strong.’
Kendall writes in her memoir that she asked Bundy if he ever tried to kill her, and Bundy responded that he had once sealed off the chimney and filled the house with smoke while she was asleep. She recalled waking up coughing after a night of drinking.
After getting sober and going to Alcoholics Anonymous, Kendall broke off contact with Bundy.
An end note on the film based on her memoir says that Kendall and her daughter are living in Washington state, and that she has been sober for decades.
Buncy’s body is taken to the Alachua County Medical Examiner’s office following his execution at 7:16 a.m. Bundy was executed for the murder of Kimberly Leach of Lake City