The True Story of Ted Bundy's Relationship With Girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall

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2019 saw the release of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Netflix's long-awaited Ted Bundy biopic. The movie is actually based on a book by Bundy's ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall (also known as Elizabeth Kloepfer). The memoir is titled The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, and it details Kendall's six-year relationship with Bundy and her eventual discovery of his crimes. (Bundy confessed to killing about 30 women and girls in the 1970s—although some reports have that number as high as 100—and he was executed in 1989).

Now, Kendall is coming forward to tell her side of the story, and she's speaking out for the first time in 40 years. The newly released Amazon documentary Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer features interviews with Kendall and some of Bundy's survivors, and Kendall and her daughter also sat down with ABC for a 20/20 special.

Here's what you need to know about Elizabeth Kendall.

Elizabeth Kendall first met Ted Bundy in Seattle.

There aren't many public details about Kendall's early life but some reports say that she was from Ogden, Utah. In the fall of 1969, 24-year-old Kendall was working as a secretary at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Bundy started school at the University of Washington in 1966, but he dropped out in 1968 before returning in the fall of 1969.

Kendall was a divorced single mom, and according to Biography.com, she described herself as "shy, insecure and lonely" in her book. She met Bundy one night at a bar in Seattle, and she says that they had instant chemistry.

According to Oxygen.com, the two apparently picked up Kendall's daughter from the babysitter before spending the night at Kendall's home, although she says nothing sexual happened. Kendall wrote that after getting home, she "was so sick, all I could do was take my shoes off and fall into bed. Ted, still dressed, lying down next to me, then the room turning wildly." The next morning, Bundy made breakfast for Kendall and her daughter.

Kendall and Bundy's relationship was turbulent.

The relationship moved very quickly, and that was partly because Kendall wanted a father figure for her three-year-old daughter. "Talking and eating and taking care of [my daughter] and sleeping together all flowed along so effortlessly that we had become a family," she wrote.

But underneath that happy family facade were some serious cracks. Around 1970, the couple decided to get married, and they went to a courthouse to get their marriage license. But since Kendall's parents were due to visit a couple of days, she asked Bundy to temporarily move his stuff out the apartment that they shared so that her conservative parents wouldn't be upset that they were living together. Bundy became angry, and according to Oxygen he told Kendall, "You’re a grown woman, Liz. You have a daughter of your own and a life of your own. For God's sake, grow up!," before tearing the license into pieces.

The couple made up after that, but the constant up-and-down of their relationship continued on. "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. And sometime around this period, Kendall developed an addiction to alcohol.

The Daily Mail reports that Bundy dated different women while he and Kendall were together, including his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Brooks, whom he had originally met while he was a student at UW, and Carole Ann Boone, a twice-divorced mother of two whom he met while they were both working at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia, Washington.

Kendall didn't find out about Bundy's crimes until much later.

There is no general consensus on when or where Bundy began killing women. In her book, Bundy's lawyer Polly Nelson says that he told her that his earliest homicide was in 1971, but detectives believe that his earliest documented homicide was in 1974. Kendall and Bundy lived together during many of the years that he was committing his crimes, but it took Kendall a while to figure out exactly what was going on. As E! News reports, she noticed weird items in Bundy's possession, like women's underclothing, a meat cleaver, and a surgical glove, but she couldn't piece everything together.

It wasn't until one woman was severely beaten, and about six different women went missing, that Kendall realized that something was very wrong, as Bundy was often absent the same nights that the women were reported missing. Public fear started to increase as more women went missing, but law enforcement didn't have a clear description of the suspect and there was little physical evidence to tie anyone to the crimes.

In July 1974, two women went missing at the Lake Sammamish State Park in King County, Washington. Witnesses later said that the women had been seen talking to a man who introduced himself as "Ted," who drove a Volkswagen Beetle. From the witnesses' descriptions, police were able to put together a description and sketch of the suspect. Kendall realized that the sketch looked eerily similar to her boyfriend, and she decided to contact the police and told them to look into Bundy. The police brushed off Kendall's tip, as they didn't think that a well-spoken, unassuming man like Bundy would be a serial killer.

But even after tipping off the police about his behavior, Kendall continued to date Bundy.

Kendall wasn't really sure if Bundy was truly a murderer. "In my own mind, there were coincidences that seemed to tie him it, yet when I would think about or day-to-day relationship there was nothing there that would lead me to think that he was a violent man capable of doing something like that," she said in an interview with police, as E! News reports.

In August 1974, Bundy received an acceptance from the University of Utah Law School and moved to Salt Lake City, while Kendall remained in Seattle. Bundy dated even more women while he was in Utah, and he killed at least five women during that time. In November, when Kendall realized that women were disappearing in the Salt Lake City area, she contacted the police and sat down for an interview with Detective Randy Hergesheimer of the King County, Washington police—and Bundy started to look like a serious suspect to authorities.

Kendall contacted them again a month later, but since there was no concrete evidence to link him to the crimes, not much happened. Bundy continued to commit crimes in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho throughout 1974 and 1975, while still continuing his relationship with Kendall, who never told him that she had contacted the police on three separate occasions.

Kendall eventually helped the police arrest Bundy.

In August 1975, Bundy was arrested in Utah after he sped away from a police car. Sgt. Bob Hayward had observed Bundy cruising a residential area around 3 a.m., and Bundy had fled the neighborhood after seeing Hayward. Hayward then pulled Bundy over and searched his car, and he found pantyhose, a ski mask, a crowbar, an ice pick, and handcuffs, as Utah's Deseret News reports.

After his arrest, Kendall was questioned by detectives her about her relationship with Bundy, and she told them about the objects she found in their home and his car, and she confirmed that they had not been together on the nights that Bundy's victims were killed.

There was not enough evidence to detain Bundy, but after detectives from Utah, Washington and Colorado met to discuss the case, they decided their best bet was to try and charge him for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch in 1974. He was placed in a line-up and DaRonch identified him immediately. He was charged with aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault in October, and was freed on a $15,000 bail that was paid by his parents.

Kendall stuck by Bundy during his trial, arrest, and escapes from prison.

Kendall and Bundy continued to live together as he awaited trial. In February 1976, the trial for the DaRonch kidnapping started, and Bundy was declared guilty on March 1. On June 30, Bundy was sentenced to a minimum of one year and a maximum 15 years in the Utah State Prison. As The Daily Mail reports, Kendall wrote in her book, "There were questions we didn’t ask each other by unspoken agreement. He didn’t ask me why or what I told the police and I didn’t ask him about his connection to the crimes."

Kendall and Bundy continued to write letters to each other while he was locked up, and she visited him twice in his Utah prison before he was charged with the murder of Caryn Campbell in October 1976. He was transferred to the Garfield County Jail in Greenwood Springs, Colorado in January 1977. In June 1977, he escaped from the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen, and he was captured after six days.

On December 30, Bundy escaped from the Garfield County Jail, and he had reportedly hinted at his plans for escape in letters to Kendall. He was able to make it to Chicago, Michigan, Atlanta, and then Florida. In January 1978, he attacked five students from the Florida State University, killing two. In February, he killed 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach, his youngest victim (Leach was coincidentally the same age as Kendall's daughter at the time).

Kendall didn’t hear from Bundy until he was finally captured on February 15, 1978 and additionally charged with murder and rape. In one of their last conversations he explained why he had been so hot and cold with her. He confessed that he tried to stay away from Kendall when he "felt the power of his sickness building in him."

He also confessed that he had once tried to kill her by closing the fireplace damper and putting a towel in the door crack so the smoke would stay in their apartment. "I remembered that night well," Kendall 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."

Kendall and Bundy parted ways soon after, and Bundy went on to marry and have a child with Carole Ann Boone, whom he had dated previously.

Kendall's book about their life together was released in 1981.

Kendall released The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy under the pseudonym of Liz Kendall. According to Esquire, she didn't do press for the book because she didn't want to reveal her identity. She expressed disbelief, shock, and disgust over what Bundy had done, but she also believed that a part of her would probably always love him. "In spite of all the destruction he has caused around him, I still care what happens to Ted. I have come to accept that a part of me will always love a part of him," she wrote.

The preface to her book is dedicated to Bundy's victims. "Never did I forget that real women had been murdered for no other reason than they were attractive and friendly. The hideous reality of their deaths became my reality, too. Their tragedy was my trauma…I am thankful to have survived, thankful for the chance to work my problems through, thankful for the resiliency God gives humans."

Bundy eventually confessed to many of his crimes, and he was executed in 1989 at the Florida State Prison.

Kendall later retired from public life.

Not much is known about her exact whereabouts, but Kendall has recovered from her alcohol addiction and is living in Washington state, as Cosmopolitan reports. She was supportive of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile and she even met with director Joe Berlinger and Lily Collins, who is playing her in the Netflix film. Kendall shared photos and letters with Berlinger and Collins, but she didn't want to do any press or interview.

"I think that's why the book continues to be out of print," Berlinger said. "She does not want the spotlight...She wants to remain anonymous. She trusted us with her story."

But 2020 saw Kendall come forward to tell her story.

After a private, safe life out of the public eye, Kendall says that she decided to participate in the Amazon documentary because "this story has been told many times by men," as she explains at the beginning of the series trailer. "Now's the time to talk about our own story from beginning to end, because we lived and so many people didn't."

Kendall also told Fox News that she hoped her story would inspire others 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."

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