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Elizabeth Kloepfer a.k.a. Elizabeth Kendall survived a relationship with infamous serial killer Ted Bundy and then wrote a revealing tell-all about it.

Ted Bundy 's infamous string of 1970s killings has immortalized him in American history as one of the most disarmingly charming and macabre murderers of the 20th century. But while his story has been told time and again, relatively little is known about those on the periphery of his life.

Such is the case with Ted Bundy's girlfriend-turned-author Elizabeth Kloepfer a.k.a. Elizabeth Kendall.

Her relationship with Bundy has most recently been depicted in the Netflix-produced, Zac Efron-starring thriller, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile. Kloepfer's own memoir (published under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kendall) served as the basis for the film.

The 1981 book, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, chronicles the couple's rocky relationship and was published eight years before Bundy was executed on January 24, 1989.

According to , she was entirely unaware of her boyfriend's nightly bloodlust - until she saw a composite drawing of the primary suspect in a local newspaper in 1974. The illustration included the name "Ted" as its only piece of information and immediately raised her suspicions.

Bundy's murder spree, of course, was already well underway and would end with 30-something homicides across seven states. Though the true number of victims is unknown, Bundy confessed to 30 murders.

While much of Bundy's life has been explored in true crime novels, fictionalized films, and the Netflix documentary, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, it is Elizabeth Kloepfer and her time with Bundy that can provide us with relevant context, background, and harrowing details previously unknown.

When Elizabeth Kloepfer Met Ted Bundy

Elizabeth Kloepfer first met Ted Bundy at the Sandpiper Tavern in Seattle. It was October 1969: the peace and love era was coming to an end and Charles Manson's followers had committed the Sharon Tate murders two months earlier.

The 24-year-old secretary had just recently graduated from Utah State University. Unlike Ted Bundy, however, she wasn't alone. Kloepfer was raising a two-year-old daughter by herself and had recently gotten divorced.

"The chemistry between us was incredible," she wrote in her book. "I was already planning the wedding and naming the kids. He was telling me that he missed having a kitchen because he loved to cook. Perfect. My prince."

Though the memoir was published under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kendall, her friend Marylynne Chino told in 2017 that Kloepfer did indeed have a relationship with Bundy. Chino's accounts of her experiences with Kloepfer and Bundy in Seattle mirror those detailed in Kendall's book.

"I've never forgotten this," said Chino. "I walked in, and across the room, I saw Ted for the first time. I will never forget the look on his face, it wasn't evil but he was staring nursing a beer."

Kloepfer became Ted Bundy's girlfriend soon after meeting at the Sandpiper Tavern and quickly noticed some strange items and behaviors. Chino revealed that Kloepfer called her one night to discuss what she had found.

"There were women's underwear there and the plaster of Paris," said Chino, referring to plaster used for construction that he'd stolen from a medical supply house. When Kloepfer asked Bundy about this, he threatened her life.

"She said 'what is this?' And he said to her, 'if you ever tell anyone this I'll break your effing head."

Being Ted Bundy's Girlfriend

The early days of Bundy and Kloepfer's relationship were seemingly flawless. Once the handsome, well-dressed man across the bar asked her to dance, their fates seemed to be set in stone. Unfortunately, Kloepfer had no idea what she had gotten herself into - and how bad things would get.

The first night the couple spent together ended with Bundy cooking her breakfast the following morning. The thrilling new relationship was off to a great start, with the pair taking a trip to Vancouver the following weekend.

It only took a few months for Kloepfer to meet Bundy's parents. The new couple and Bundy's parents - army hospital cook Johnnie Bundy and Methodist church secretary Louise Bundy - had a delightful dinner at the killer's childhood home.

"I loved her so much it was destabilizing," Bundy told Stephen G. Michaud, whose interviews comprised the Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes narration. "I felt such a strong love for her but we didn't have a lot of interests in common like politics or something, I don't think we had in common."

"She liked to read a lot. I wasn't into reading."

Elizabeth Kloepfer Becomes Pregnant

In February 1970, a mere four months after they had their first dance, the couple applied for a marriage license. She was no longer going to be Ted Bundy's girlfriend, she was going to be his wife. But like numerous life-changing moments in Ted Bundy's life, things didn't quite go as planned.

"I had never been so happy, but it bothered me to be practically married to a man I wasn't married to," said Kloepfer about their relationship. "When I talked to him, he agreed now was the time to do it."

Their trip to the courthouse was successful in garnering a marriage license but a few days later the couple had a substantial fight. It ended with Bundy ripping up the document. Nonetheless, the two continued working on their relationship and decided to stay together.

Kloepfer then became pregnant in 1972.

"Both of us knew it would be impossible to have a baby now," she wrote. "He was going to start law school in the fall, and I needed to be able to work to put him through. I was distraught. I knew I was going to terminate the pregnancy as soon as I could. Ted, on the other hand, was pleased with himself. He had fathered a baby. " Kloepfer did, however, terminate the pregnancy.

Abuse And Death Threats

Kloepfer's memoir published under the name Elizabeth Kendall contains numerous accounts of abuse she suffered thanks to Bundy. Though he didn't physically assault her, his venomous verbal abuse was serious and disconcerting. His coiled-up rage showed its true face when Kloepfer confronted him about his stealing, which seemed to have become a habit.

"If you ever tell anyone about this, I'll break your fucking neck," he told her.

It didn't take long after news reports of a suspect named "Ted" who drove a Volkswagen were a daily occurrence that Kloepfer suspected her lover of being a murderous sociopath. The disappearances, suspect descriptions, and a report claiming the man's arm was in a cast were enough for her to alert the authorities.

Though Bundy's arm wasn't broken, her memory of the plaster of Paris in Bundy's desk drawer confirmed her suspicions.

"He said that a person never could tell when he was going to break a leg, and we both laughed," she wrote. "Now I keep thinking about the cast the guy at Lake Sammamish was wearing - what a perfect weapon it would make for clubbing someone on the head."

When Kloepfer found a hatchet in his Volkswagen, Bundy waved her fears away by claiming he chopped down a tree at his parents' cabin a week earlier. On August 8, 1974, however, the wary Kloepfer called the Seattle Police Department.

Though she confessed that her boyfriend matched the reported suspect description - that she found crutches in his room, similar to an unsolved attack involving crutches - she was essentially dismissed.

"You need to come in to fill in a report," the police told her. "We're too busy to talk to girlfriends over the phone."

Kloepfer gave up and hung up the phone. When Bundy moved to Utah two months later, and disappearances began to sharply increase in the state, she tried once more. She called the King County Police, but to no avail: They said Bundy had already been cleared as a suspect.

A Close Call With Death

"There is something the matter with me... I just couldn't contain it," Bundy told Kloepfer over the phone while incarcerated in Florida. "I fought it for a long, long time...it was just too strong."

Bundy had been arrested for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch in March 1976. While on trial, Bundy and Kloepfer maintained communication through an extensive series of passionate letters. She'd often visit him and truly believed his lies that he was innocent.

Kloepfer and Bundy's parents sat in the courthouse together throughout the killer's legal battles. When she joined Alcoholics Anonymous and became sober, however, she started emotionally detaching and physically distancing herself from him.

Eventually, she asked him if he ever tried to kill her.

Bundy admitted that he did, once. The urge to kill her took control of him one night when he went to her house and closed the chimney damper. He put a towel under the door and intended to let the room fill up with smoke as she was drunk and asleep.

Kloepfer explained in The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy that she remembered waking up one night in a coughing fit.

Elizabeth Kendall And Life After Bundy

In order to direct Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile without stepping on Kloepfer's toes, Joe Berlinger made sure to discuss the project with her beforehand. Though hesitant, she agreed to sign off on the script. Both Berlinger and Lily Collins, who portrayed Kloepfer in the film, met with her.

"She was willing and passionate about meeting me - her and her daughter, too," said Collins.

"She was very ambivalent," Berlinger added. "I think that's why the book continues to be out of print. She does not want the spotlight. For example, she didn't want to come to Sundance. She doesn't participate in the press. She wants to remain anonymous."

"She trusts us with her story. She agreed to do the movie, obviously, so it's not being done without her cooperation. I think she's very ambivalent because she doesn't want attention to herself today."

Fortunately for Kloepfer, she's lived a quiet, peaceful life ever since Bundy's imprisonment and subsequent execution. After being Ted Bundy's girlfriend, the decision to stay out of the media and have a calm life in Washington with her daughter seems fair, earned, and honest.
After learning about Ted Bundy's girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer a.k.a. Elizabeth Kendall, read up on Ted Bundy's wife, Carole Ann Boone. Then, learn all about history's most infamous serial killers.

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Meet Elizabeth Kloepfer: The Woman Who Survived A Relationship With Ted Bundy

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Ted Bundy 's infamous string of 1970s killings has immortalized him in American history as one of the most disarmingly charming and macabre murderers of the 20th century. But while his story has been told time and again, relatively little is known about those on the periphery of his life.

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Elizabeth "Liz" Kloepfer, Ted Bundy's longtime girlfriend and former fiancé, disappeared from the public eye nearly 40 years ago.

Before she did, she wrote a book, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, detailing her turbulent, six-year relationship with the infamous serial killer, who had led a double life as a loving partner and a heinous serial killer. (Bundy eventually admitted to killing 36 women across several states in the 1970s, although experts and people close to him speculate his actual number of victims was closer to 100.)

Written under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kendall, and published in 1981, the 183-page memoir details the night she and Bundy met in a Seattle bar in 1969 and the hot-and-cold relationship that followed. It concludes with the tearful calls Bundy made to her from jail prior to his death. The book focuses on love and vulnerability, not murder. It was published when Kloepfer was 36 years old, and Bundy was on death row.
READ MORE: How Ted Bundy's Education Facilitated His Career as a Serial Killer
Kloepfer gravitated towards Bundy because she was lonely and he took care of her

Kloepfer describes herself in the book as a shy, insecure and lonely single mom, divorced and struggling with alcoholism, when she moved from Ogden, Utah to Seattle to try and change the course of her unhappy life. She desperately wanted to be loved and married, and have a father for her young daughter, Tina.

She found a job as a secretary at the University of Washington Medical School. One night, her friend suggested she get a babysitter and come out for a few drinks at a local bar. It was something she never did, given she was scraping by financially.

In her book, Kloepfer says she was trying to escape a creepy guy in the bar when she saw Bundy sitting alone and approached him. Thinking he looked sad, she said to him, "You look like your best friend just died." The two began to talk. Conversation flowed naturally, and the chemistry was instant. Bundy ended up spending a platonic night at her house, but they became a couple a short time later.

"I handed Ted my life and said, 'Here. Take care of me.' He did in a lot of ways, but I became more and more dependent upon him. When I felt his love, I was on top of the world; when I felt nothing from Ted, I felt that I was nothing," she said in the book.

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Despite having a volatile relationship, Bundy and Kloepfer almost got married

His feelings toward her were strong but inconsistent, she said. "We would be getting along fine and then a door would slam and I would be out in the cold until Ted was ready to let me back in. I'd spend hours trying to figure out what I had done or said that was wrong. And then, suddenly, he would be warm and loving again and I would feel needed and cared for," she wrote.

One story in the book takes place in February 1970, after Kloepfer told Bundy that she wanted to call him "my husband Ted" rather than "my boyfriend." They went to the courthouse, borrowed $5 from a friend and got a marriage license. A few days later, before Kloepfer's parents arrived in Seattle for a visit, she asked him to move his stuff out of the apartment, fearing it could upset her conservative parents. This made Ted angry, and she recalls him saying, "If you're that hung up on what your parents think, then you're not ready to get married." He tore up the license in pieces and walked away.

Kloepfer suspected Bundy was committing crimes

Things started to get strange in 1974 after news reports surfaced of murders and rapes of two women in the area. The name "Ted" was being mentioned by witnesses, as well as a Volkswagen, like the one Bundy drove. Kloepfer was suspicious but reluctant to believe that Bundy was capable of murder.

When she questioned him about some strange behaviors - like when she found a meat cleaver on his desk, a surgical glove in his coat pocket or drove hundreds of miles to Colorado one night to de-stress from work - he used his intelligence and charm to talk his way out of it.

Eventually, she made the difficult decision to betray the man she loved and go to the police. They didn't think Bundy was the killer, and she stayed with him and never told him she'd gone to the authorities.
READ MORE: Inside Ted Bundy's Troubled and Disturbing Childhood
Bundy tried to murder Kloepfer

Their relationship began to fizzle when Ted moved to Olympia for a job, and then Utah. They saw each other less and less, started dating other people, but always stayed in touch. His love letters and calls, even from jail, always sucked her right back in. "Ted's letters made me feel loved," she wrote.

When news reports of missing women surfaced in the new places he lived, Kloepfer was increasingly convinced he was involved and approached the police again in 1975. This time, the information she provided help them charge Bundy with the murders.

One of the book's most gripping accounts is when Bundy called Kloepfer at 2 a.m. from his Florida prison. He confessed that he tried to stay away from her when he "felt the power of his sickness building in him," according to the book, but couldn't resist his impulse. Once he even tried to kill Kloepfer, he told her. He had closed the fireplace damper so the smoke couldn't go up the chimney, and put a towel in the door crack so the smoke would stay in the apartment.

"I remembered that night well," Kloepfer wrote. "My eyes were running and I was coughing. I jumped out of bed and threw open the nearest window and stuck my head out. After I had recovered some, I opened all the windows and the doors and broke up the fire the best I could. I had gotten on Ted the next day for not coming back with the fan."

Even though he was a serial killer, Kloepfer calls Bundy "warm and loving"

The two parted ways permanently, and in 1980, during the penalty phase of his murder trial, Ted Bundy married Carole Ann Boone, a mother of two whom he'd dated previously. She gave birth to a daughter, Rose, in 1982 and named Bundy as the father.

Kloepfer wrote that she struggled to come to terms with the man she loved being the same man who committed all these murders. Since their split, she battled alcoholism, struggled to be close to people and relied on her faith to guide her through dark times. "My spiritual growth is extremely important to me now. I try to live my life according to God's will. I pray for Ted, but I am sickened by him," she said. "The tragedy is that this warm and loving man is driven to kill."

The spotlight Kloepfer shuns is about to shine on her again. A movie about Bundy's crimes told from Kloepfer's perspective, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, will debut at the Sundance Film Festival - almost 30 years after Bundy was put to death by electric chair. It stars Zac Efron as Bundy and Lily Collins as Kloepfer.

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Meet Elizabeth Kloepfer, Ted Bundy's Former Girlfriend

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Elizabeth "Liz" Kloepfer, Ted Bundy's longtime girlfriend and former fiancé, disappeared from the public eye nearly 40 years ago. Before she did, she wrote a book, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, detailing her turbulent, six-year relationship with the infamous serial killer, who had led a double life as a loving partner and a heinous serial killer.

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"Falling for a Killer" Docuseries with Liz and Molly Kendall

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"Falling for a Killer" Docuseries with Liz and Molly Kendall

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After years of silence, Ted Bundy's long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall, her daughter Molly, and other survivors come forward for the first time in a docuseries that reframes Bundy's crimes from a female perspective. The series reveals how Bundy's pathological hatred of women collided with the culture wars and feminist movement of the 1970s in one of the most infamous crime stories of our time.

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ted bundy: falling for a killer - season 1

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Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer - Season 1

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After years of silence, Ted Bundy's long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall, her daughter Molly, and other survivors come forward for the first time in a docuseries that reframes Bundy's crimes from a female perspective. The series reveals how Bundy's pathological hatred of women collided with the culture wars and feminist movement of the 1970s in one of the most infamous crime stories of our time.

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Netflix created a Movie of Ted and Elizabeth Kendall with Zac Efron and Lily Collins

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Netflix created a Movie of Ted and Elizabeth Kendall with Zac Efron and Lily Collins

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Video and Article about Elizabeth and Molly Kendall's life with Ted Bundy

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Video and Article about Elizabeth and Molly Kendall's life with Ted Bundy

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Elizabeth Kendall said it feels "strange" to flip back through old photos of her former boyfriend, to see him smiling at the camera next to a younger version of herself, to see him playing with her daughter who was a child at the time, to see him being silly.

It's because that man was Ted Bundy, one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.

"I sometimes can't believe this has really been my life," Kendall told "20/20." "I kept those photos of us when we were happier, before we knew what he was capable of."

Speaking out for the first time in 40 years, Elizabeth Kendall and her daughter Molly Kendall sat down exclusively for Amazon Original's five-part docuseries, "Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer," which will be available Friday on Amazon Prime Video. They then also sat down with ABC News' Amy Robach for a two-hour "20/20" report on ABC.

"I really felt we needed to hear their stories so we could reframe this finally once and for all from the perspective of the women," Trish Wood, the director and producer of the series, told "20/20." "And that was important to me also because I think we need to call this what it is. It's misogyny, it's hatred of women. We don't need... to figure out what the diagnosis was for Ted Bundy. Simply, he killed women because he hated them. He obliterated them. So I thought it was important to reframe it."

Even after all these years later, Elizabeth Kendall has kept photos from her and her daughter's life together with Bundy. There's one showing him holding Molly as she rode his bike and another showing him laughing in the grass. These photos are published in an updated and expanded edition of her book, "The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy," published by Abrams Press.

"That's my childhood," Molly Kendall said. "Unfortunately, the memories that are attached to those pictures have lost their original emotional content and become something different."

Bundy mercilessly and viciously kidnapped, raped and killed dozens of innocent women across the United States in the 1970s in a trail of terror that took him from the Pacific Northwest to Florida.

Days before his 1989 death by electrocution, Bundy confessed to killing 30 women in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Florida between 1973 and 1978, but authorities believe it's possible that there were many more.

"I still have a sense of disbelief that this man that I loved and that seemed to be a great guy could go out and do such horrific things," Elizabeth Kendall said. "It's just so hard to accept."

Elizabeth Kendall said she and Bundy dated for about five years, from 1969 to 1974, which overlapped with some of his gruesome crimes. She and her daughter said that at the time, they had no idea the man they spent so much time with was a serial killer.

"I always felt loved," Elizabeth Kendall said of the man she once planned to marry. "But with Ted, it's impossible to tell. It could've been love, it could've been just another manipulation."

She once thought Bundy was the man she was going to marry, she said, and she has wondered why he spared her and Molly.

"I hate to even say this because it makes him sound normal, but I do think he loved us," Elizabeth Kendall said.

"I heard a story told by one of his attorneys he had. He said Ted told him that he would play games with these animals, I don't remember if they were mice or something else," her daughter Molly Kendall added. "And he would let some of them live and some of them die, and to me, that's us, we're just these mice that were allowed to live."

Elizabeth Kendall said she met Bundy in at a bar in Seattle. A single mother who had just moved to town from Utah at the time, Kendall said she was "pretty smitten" when she saw Bundy, who had grown up in Tacoma, Washington.

"I saw him sitting at a table. I went over and talked to him because I told him he looked lonely," she said.

When they were dating, Bundy was earning a degree in psychology at the University of Washington. He drove a Volkswagen Beetle, worked on political campaigns and had aspirations of going to law school. To Kendall, he appeared to be a smart and doting boyfriend.

"[He] put a lot of energy into making us happy, doing fun things... he always seemed to embrace us as a family unit," Elizabeth Kendall said. "I loved going to places with him. He was never at a loss for words, whereas I was on the shy side."

While they were together, Kendall recalled some oddities about Bundy's behavior. She said one day he showed up at her apartment with a pair of ski boots he had stolen from the university's student union.

"And he said, 'If I hadn't stolen them, somebody else would've, so I just took them,'" Kendall said.

Authorities later learned that Bundy's crimes had started with animal mutilation and petty theft, then evolved into peering into people's windows and then brutal killings.

By the summer of 1974, Elizabeth Kendall said her relationship with Bundy had started to sour.

"He would start walking home late at night, rather than spending the night at my house. Just subtle changes where I felt like maybe I was losing him or maybe he was seeing somebody else," she said.

"Never in my dreams did I think he was out stalking women and then eventually ... abducting and murdering women. There was no context for that," she added.

Years later when he was on death row in Florida, Bundy confessed to FBI Special Agent Bill Hagmaier that by the summer of 1974, he had been abducting and killing women for months.

"When he was with Liz, he said he really enjoyed being a family man," Hagmaier told "20/20" in a previous interview. "I mean, he said the things that I would expect my brother to say about his family."

One of his victims that summer was 18-year-old Georgeann Hawkins, who Bundy strangled to death in June 1974. On July 14, 1974, Bundy abducted and killed both Janice Anne Ott, 23, and Denise Naslund, 19, at the popular Lake Sammamish State Park.

Kendall said she had seen Bundy that July morning, and he had asked her what she was going to do that day.

"I said I was going to go to a park and lay in the sun. Molly was in Utah. And he asked me which park," Kendall said. "And I think he was just wanting to know, if [I was] going to Lake Sammamish, then he wouldn't be going that way. He'd go to another park."

She said Bundy then called her hours later that same day, around 5:30 p.m. She said she later learned it was right after Nasland had gone missing, but Bundy gave no indication that he had spent the day committing two brutal crimes.

"We went out to eat," Elizabeth Kendall said. "Just so hard to believe that's what he was doing."

"It's heartbreaking," Molly Kendall added.

Looking back now, Elizabeth Kendall said there were some red flags that her boyfriend at the time could be the suspected abductor police were looking for in those cases, but she said she kept "talking herself out of it."

Kendall said a co-worker gave her a newspaper article that had a composite drawing of the suspect because that person thought it looked "similar" to Bundy. She said police had identified the suspect's car as a Volkswagen Beetle but the color they noted didn't quite match Bundy's car.

Even a report about the Lake Sammamish disappearances that noted witnesses told police the suspect was a handsome young man who called himself "Ted" struck her as odd, Kendall said, but she still tried to talk herself out of believing this could be the Ted she knew.

"It wasn't something that I looked at and thought, 'Oh my God.' It was like, 'Oh, that's weird,'" she said. "Even the idea that this man went up and introduced himself by 'Ted,' I think, 'Oh, you know, if you're going to abduct somebody, you'd never say your real name.'"

One month before the Lake Sammamish abductions, Georgann Hawkins, a University of Washington student, had gone missing. Kendall said she had read that witnesses reported seeing a man on crutches near the sorority house where Hawkins had been heading. When she spotted a pair of crutches in Bundy's room, she asked him about it.

"He said that his landlord had hurt himself and was on crutches, but he was going to take the crutches back to the rental place. So that made sense to me," she said.

Elizabeth Kendall said she even read some of these newspaper reports out loud to Bundy while they were together, but he brushed them off.

Listening to these conversations, Molly Kendall said at one point she had teased Bundy about the similarities between him and the man police were looking for.

"When they had a profile of him, I brought up the similarities to him," Molly Kendall said. "I said, 'This guy's name's Ted. Your name's Ted. This guy has a Volkswagen. You drive a Volkswagen. You know it's you,' and he just laughed. [He said], 'No, Monkey, of course, I would never do anything like that.'"

In September 1974, a grouse hunter discovered the remains of Ott, Naslund and Hawkins one mile east of an old railroad trestle outside of Issaquah, Washington.

"Once I started to worry, like, 'Could this be true?' I didn't feel safe bringing it up," Elizabeth Kendall added. "I didn't want him to know what I was thinking."

By the fall of 1974, she said Bundy was attending law school in Utah and called her regularly.

"I loved talking with him or being with him because he was just Ted. He was just the Ted I knew. Nothing was amiss," Kendall said. "And then I'd hang up and think, 'What was I thinking that this could possibly be true?'"

Eventually, Elizabeth Kendall said she began talking with authorities. All the while, Bundy was continuing his vicious spree of abducting, raping and murdering young women. In a matter of weeks, Bundy had murdered four women in Utah that fall.

In November 1974, at a mall in Murray, Utah, Bundy approached 18-year-old Carol DaRonch and identified himself as a police officer. He said someone had tried to break into her car and he wanted her to come down to the police station. Once DaRonch was in Bundy's car, he attempted to attack her, but DaRonch managed to get out of the car and run for help. It was the first and only known instance of someone's escaping a Bundy abduction, and she later became a key witness for the prosecution's case against Bundy.

His killing spree continued the following year, when he kidnapped and killed 23-year-old Caryn Campbell in Colorado and several others.

Then by chance, on Aug. 16, 1975, Bundy was arrested in Granger, Utah, after he was spotted parked outside a house where two young women lived.

A Utah Highway Patrol officer came across Bundy in his Volkswagen Beetle loitering outside the house that morning at 3 a.m. When the officer approached, Bundy drove off. After a brief chase, the officer stopped and then searched Bundy's car and found a ski mask, pantyhose with eyes cut out, gloves, rope, a crowbar and handcuffs. He was arrested under suspicion of evading a police officer but was released the next day on bail.

By then, Elizabeth Kendall's relationship with Bundy had ended, but she said they kept in touch. She said she found out about the car search incident from Bundy's Washington state landlord, who told her detectives had been by his apartment there.

"It was just very frightening to see it all laid out together, and I was devastated," Kendall said. "Eventually, I ask him about it after I told him that I'd gone to the police, and he tried to just brush it off. 'Oh, for God sakes, Liz,' he said ... 'I need the crowbar for if I get in a wreck and need to pry cars apart. I need the ski mask for when I'm shoveling snow. Sometimes I wear a pantyhose mask under that just for warmth.'"

After Bundy's 1975 arrest, police linked him to the attempted abduction of Carol DaRonch, who had identified him in a lineup. Bundy went on trial for aggravated kidnapping and was convicted in March 1976. He was sentenced to a minimum of one to a maximum of 15 years in a Utah state prison.

He was later extradited to Colorado where he was charged with Campbell's murder. But in 1977, he escaped from police custody in Colorado twice, then made his way to Florida, where he continued his murderous spree.

On Jan. 15, 1978, Bundy brutally attacked four young women at the Chi Omega sorority house near Florida State University. Two women, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, died of their severe injuries. That same night, Bundy also brutally attacked Cheryl Thomas, whose house was just blocks away from the sorority house. She survived.

About three weeks later, on Feb. 9, 1978, Bundy kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. She was one of Bundy's youngest victims and his last murder.

Bundy was arrested again on Feb. 15, 1978, after a police officer saw him driving very slowly in the early hours of the morning. Running his car's license plate, the officer realized the car had been reported stolen. Bundy refused to give his real name at first, but then told police he would identify himself if they let him make a phone call, which police granted.

The person Bundy called was Elizabeth Kendall, who had already seen news reports about the Florida murders when the phone rang.

"He said, 'I've been arrested,' and I said, 'Where are you?' And he said, 'Florida,'" Kendall said. "Oh, my heart just dropped. And I said, 'Oh, I was afraid that you were going to be in Florida.'"

On a later jailhouse phone call, Kendall said Bundy confided in her that he felt he was "sick."

"It took him telling me himself that he had something wrong with him," Kendall said. "It was awful, and yet it took me so long to really fully accept that he did those things. Even after he told me that, I still was spending endless hours trying to figure out how this could be, how this man that I thought I knew could do these things. It was really a struggle."

In 1979, Bundy was found guilty of murdering Levy and Bowman and the attempted murder of three other women. The following year, he was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Kimberly Leach. He was sentenced to death for the murder convictions.

Molly Kendall was particularly shaken by the Leach case. They both would have been the same age if Leach were alive today.

"It's hard to find words for how devastating it is, the loss of this girl, and the things that he did to her," Molly Kendall said. "It's been a lifelong source of agony, thinking about her parents, her friends, and... just the loss of personal relationship that we thought we had to this person."

Looking back on her relationship with Bundy, Elizabeth Kendall said she still carries a lot of guilt with her.

"Guilt about ... causing this in my daughter's life, guilt about what he had done, guilt that I had loved this man that was so gruesome."

She said she worked hard to rebuild her and her daughter's lives, and she hopes that sharing their story now will serve as an inspiration for others trying to overcome hardships.

"I hope [others] will see that it's possible to have terrible, traumatic experiences and it's possible to rebuild your life," Elizabeth Kendall said.

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Serial killer Ted Bundy's former girlfriend, her daughter wonder why he spared them

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Elizabeth Kendall said it feels "strange" to flip back through old photos of her former boyfriend, to see him smiling at the camera next to a younger version of herself, to see him playing with her daughter who was a child at the time, to see him being silly.

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Liz had coffee with one of the men she worked with. Her coworker showed her a newspaper clipping of a police sketch of the man named Ted. Who was the suspect in the series of murders of young women. Her coworker asked if the sketch looked like anyone she knew. Liz thought that sketch looked kind of similar to her Ted.

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The killing and raping of young women started.

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Ted, Liz and Molly went to Northgate Mall to buy a new dress. Ted picked out a black one. When they were on their way back to the car Ted suddenly threw the box at Liz and took of sprinting. Ted chased a purse snatcher and corned the guy in a dead end alleyway. He came back to Liz and Molly with a security guard.

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Liz and Ted's family had a salmon dinner at her place. To celebrate Ted graduating with honors from the University of Washington.

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Liz found another apartment that was closer. to Ted's home in the University District.

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Molly had her first birthday party. She turned 5. Ted Made a sign, blew up balloons, and made a chocolate cake for her.

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Ted help Liz find a nice apartment near Green Lake in North Seattle. It was for not much more that she was currently paying.

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Liz met Kathy who was a detective on the "Ted" case if she knew someone named Susan. Liz said she didn't know, Kathy then showed her a picture of Ted with his arm around Susan. She then told Liz that Ted and Susan had a lovely visit in 1973 and were discussing marriage. Liz was outraged and took a copy of the picture and put it in her purse.

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Ted and Liz had been together for 2 years now. Liz wanted to get married she thought they were comfortable.

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Liz started to get her life back together and made amends with her friend Angie. In “Chapter 16.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 164–164.  Liz states, "I bought a new house, got a promotion at work, and no longer hated myself every minute of every day. Angie cam for a visit. She had moved back to Utah. One of the steps to sobriety is making amends to those you have hurt. For a long time, I foolishly denied that I needed to make amends to anyone. Face to face with Angie and telling her I was so sorry for the way things worked out was a tremendous relief. When she went back to Ogden, we ran up big phone bills getting to know eachother again.

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Liz had party for being one year sober  and recovering from alcoholism. As well as dealing with her profound depression. She cried while talking about it to her support group.

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Carol Boone sent forward a letter to Liz that Ted had wrote her. And several weeks later Ted called her. In “Chapter 18.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 181–182.  Liz states, " I got a strange letter from him, it was addressed to me but had been sent to Carole Boone who forwarded it to me with an odd, light-hearted cover letter. Ted wrote that the had heard i had gone to the police and had been saying some 'fairly uncomplimentary things' about him. He said he was having a hard time believing I would do something like that. As sickened as I was by the letter, the guilt trip didn't work any more; it didn't change the truth. Several weeks later he called and sheepishly told me that he had never intended to mail the letter and that he was very sorry he had ever written it. It was the shortest phone conversation we had ever had , and it was also the last time I talked to him." In the letter Ted wrote that he had done everything to keep her name out of the press and not embarrass her and said that she wanted to hurt him.  As she said in her book he was trying to guilt trip her with this letter.

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Ted called Liz and said he would ask any questions she had . In “Chapter 17.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 176–178. Liz asked, '"Did you ever. . .' How was I going to put this? 'Did you ever want . . . to kill me?''' Ted said yes we had by telling her, "'I closed the damper so the smoke couldn't go up the chimney, and then I left and put a towel in the crack under the door so the smoke would stay in the apartment.''' Liz says at the end of the chapter that, "I didn't understand Ted Bundy and I never will."

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Ted was on trial for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch. In “Chapter 14.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 125–125. Liz states, "Monday, February 23, 197, Ted's Trail began in Salt Lake City. The charge of attempted murder had been dropped. He would be tied for attempted kidnapping . Ted called and asked me not to come. My name ahd appeared on the list of possible prosecution witnesses when it was issued a month before the trial, but no one contacted me about testifying. His attorneys were afraid they might try to put me on the stand if they knew I was in Salt Lake City." Liz almost testified against Ted.

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The FBI starts to ask Liz questions. In "Chapter 17.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 170–171.   Liz states, "Soon the FBI started to come around during work. The FBI had entered the search for Ted on the theory that he had fled across state lines. He asked me if he could see the last letter Ted had sent me. He had been sending me Cathy comic strips that he clipped from the newspaper. He said Cathy reminded him of me. SHe had this self centred, egomaniac boyfriend named Irving. The FBi agent pounced on the signature. 'Does he go by Irving."'  The agent asked this because in his nores Irving was a name Ted had supposedly gone by and in the letter with the comic strip he sent Liz. He told her Irving was his "siamese twin."Chapter 17.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 170–171.

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Liz watched Ted Bundy's Trial. In, “Chapter 1.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 1–1. Liz states. " I watched Ted again as another verdict was read. This time the trial was in Florida and I was seeing it on TV. THis time i was sure that Ted was guilty as charged: Guilty of raping and beating to death two young women as they slept in their Florida State University Sorority house and severely beating three others."

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KENDALL, ELIZABETH. PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition. HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021.

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Liz called the King County Police a second time. The Police man she talked to was a man named Hergesheimer.  In “Chapter 9 .” The Phantom Prince My Life WIth Ted Bundy, by Elizabeth Kendall, Harry N Abrams, 2021, pp. 69–69 she states, "I didn't know how to begin. ' I'm scared a friend of mine is involved in the missing women cases. I know I'm wrong but there are some coincidences. My friend moved away and the crimes stopped, and now where he loves the same kind of thin is happening. Most of the time I think I'm crazy , but then I get scared that I'm right."' She goes on to say that her "friend" boyfriend Ted had a VW and talks in a formal way, and saw crutches in his room. Liz asked, " Could you call Salt Lake city and find out what is going on there."  She had an inkling that Ted was involved in those murders.

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Liz called the Police for the first time. In “Chapter 8 .” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 64–64.  Liz says, "For my morning coffee break, I took my cup of coffee and the morning paper out into the sun. The story headlined was UW coed's Encounter with a Man like 'Ted'. A young female student had been walking in front of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, She encountered and man on crutches carrying a briefcase, He was having trouble and dropping the briefcase every few seconds. She helped carry the case as far as her boyfriends and told him she would be out in a few minutes and could help him to his car. She stayed over an hour and had last been seen about 1:00 am. I'd seen crutches in Ted's room, I had to call Angie. I told her about the crutches and about the story in the news paper. 'There's only one thing you can do.' she   said. 'You'd better call the police.' I went out to a pay phone and looked up the number of the Seattle Police Department's homicide unit, I asked to speak with someone who was familiar with the 'Ted' case." Liz decided to call the police to make sure that the "Ted" wasn't her Ted.

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Elizabeth (Liz) and her 2 year old daughter Molly moved from Ogden Utah to Seattle Washington. Met Ted Bundy at a bar she went with her friend Angie on Saturday. In “Chapter 2.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 6–8. Liz states, "I fell in love with Seattle at first sight. Within a few days I found an apartment I could afford about twelve blocks from Angie's. I was sitting at Angie's kitchen table, when one of her roommates' boyfriend came in. 'What you need,' he said, 'is a night out, Let's find you a babysitter and go out and get rowdy.' When Angie and I got to Sandpiper Tavern I decided that this was exactly what I needed. After a few more beers I didn't feel shy. A tall sand- hiard man invited me to dance."

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Liz talks about Ted's accomplishments and his stealing problem. In “Chapter 6.” PHANTOM PRINCE: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition, by ELIZABETH KENDALL, HARRY N ABRAMS, 2021, pp. 43–43. Liz states, "Spring 1973, Ted was appointed Assistant Chairman of the Washington State Republican Central Committee. It upset me very much that with such a great job Ted continued to steal. One day in a hardware store, he began putting them in a tool chest. "You're not going to steal those, are you?' 'of course not,' he said. But several days later I saw the tool chest in his car. I had had enough confrontations, so I said nothing." She has had fights with Ted about stealing before.