Ted Bundy Revelations from Elizabeth and Molly Kendall in Falling For A Killer

Warning: This article contains material that may be sensitive to some readers.

An onslaught of Ted Bundy movies, television shows, and podcasts featuring interviews with those closest to the serial killer have entered the cultural conversation in the last year. But one person has remained noticeably mum through it all: Bundy's ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall (a pseudonym), who reported him to the police but was turned away. For the first time in 40 years, Elizabeth and her daughter, Molly, are speaking out in Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, now available on Amazon Prime Video.

The five-part docuseries focuses on the perspectives of Elizabeth and Molly, who open up about their most intimate experiences with Bundy on their own terms. "This story has been told many times by men," Elizabeth said in the Falling for a Killer trailer. "Now's the time to talk about our own story from beginning to end, because we lived and so many people didn't."

Here are the biggest revelations from Falling for a Killer.

Elizabeth Kendall today.

Elizabeth hasn't loved anyone the way she loved Bundy.

They met at a Seattle bar in 1969. Elizabeth, a single mother, was new in town. Bundy was sitting by himself at a table, and asked her to dance. She was flattered, she said in Falling for a Killer, because he was "funny, mature, polished." They went home together that night. The next morning, Bundy fixed her daughter, Molly, breakfast. "I’ve not had that with anyone else, just right off the bat where I felt connected with someone," Elizabeth says. "It felt like two pieces of a puzzle coming together. It just fit. It was quite spectacular."

It wasn't long before she fell in love. Together, they taught Molly how to ride a bike. They read her books at night and went out to eat. They became a family. "He settled right in. I was hooked," Elizabeth says. "I felt loved, I didn't have any doubts."

Read Next

Bundy played naked hide-and-go-seek with Molly.

Molly says looking back, there were signs something was wrong. Like when he "hid under a blanket and I came out and pulled it off, and he’s naked. And I say in shock, 'You’re naked!'" Molly says in Falling for a Killer. "He says, 'Well, yeah, I can turn invisible but my clothes can’t and I didn’t want you to see me.'" She didn't tell anyone about the incident until much later. It was strange of course, but what did it mean? Molly says she still doesn't know, only that it made her feel uncomfortable.

Molly Kendall today.

Bundy’s first known victim speaks out for the first time in the documentary.

Elizabeth first noticed Bundy acting "differently" in early 1974—the year of his first known attempt at murder. University of Washington student Karen Sparks was in her room when Bundy busted in, took the bed frame off her bed, and smashed her skull. He used a metal rod from the frame to sexually assault her, leaving her bladder split in half. She lay there bleeding for 20 hours, until a roommate found her. Speaking out for the first time in Falling for a Killer, Sparks said she was permanently brain damaged and lost 50 percent of her hearing and 40 percent of her vision. "I have terrible ringing in my ears, it's just constant," she says. "I had epileptic fits. Luckily I was able to overcome those."

After the Sammamish State Park murders, Bundy took Elizabeth out for hamburgers.

In 1974, Bundy used his old Volkswagen to abduct two women at Lake Sammamish State Park. Shortly after he murdered them, he picked up Elizabeth and took her out on a date. They went to a bowling alley and ate hamburgers. Elizabeth recalls in Falling for a Killer that his eyes appeared "really close together" and looked "weird."

Bundy at his trial.

Elizabeth warned the police about Bundy several times. She also confided in her dad.

When Elizabeth saw a police sketch of the Sammamish perpetrator in the newspaper, she froze. “It looked like my Ted," she says in Falling for a Killer. "I just tried to brush it off, but I was really gripped by fear, like, there’s something wrong here. I looked at it over and over and over again. When I got home, I started going through my photo albums and pulled out a picture of Ted that looked very similar.” She anonymously called a tip line and asked whether he wore a watch on his right arm and if he drove a brown Volkswagen. The officer told her the perp's vehicle was bronze. "I said, 'Whew, that’s not my Ted then!' That night I went to Ted's house and we lay on his floor and talked, and he was just Ted," she says in the doc. "I felt crazy, like why would I even think this? I’d had four years with this man. I knew he wasn’t capable of doing these things. Turns out he was."

When a string of murders happened in Utah, where Bundy was accepted into law school, Elizabeth became suspicious again. "I couldn’t let it go,” she says. “It scared me out of my wits.” Again, she called Seattle detectives. They seemed, she says, disinterested. When Elizabeth confided in her father, he also brushed off her concern. “My dad completely discounted what I was thinking,” she says. “He so liked Ted, as we all did. I feel in hindsight that he chose Ted and not his daughter.”

Elizabeth and Molly with Bundy.

Bundy told Elizabeth he was “sick.”

After Bundy was taken into custody, he called Elizabeth and told her he had a sickness. "He told me that he knew now there was something he couldn’t be around," Elizabeth says in Falling for a Killer. "And when I asked him what that was, he said 'Don’t make me say it.' So, I knew he was meaning young beautiful woman. He was just addicted to killing. And he started to tell me about this 'force,' is what he called it. He said it just started building within him and it would take days before he acted out but once he acted out it was just over."

Bundy told Elizabeth that he remembered taking her out for hamburgers after abducting the women from Sammamish park. "He said... 'It’s not like I had a black out,'" Elizabeth says. "I was just shocked, because I thought if he did do these things he had to have two different personalities, but he was just telling me it was just him.”

Bundy with Elizabeth and Molly.

Molly watched Bundy's trial on television.

She was staying with her grandparents for the summer when Bundy went on trial. Every morning she woke up and watched it on television. “That was the moment for me where my whole world shifted and I saw him as something entirely different,” she says in Falling for a Killer. “It was really so shattering to see these murdered women, to see the evidence that depicted their smashed heads and hear about the physical things that were inflicted upon them and see the evidence as such. It was horrendous. It’s just like, where do you get disbelief, at that point? I couldn’t find it."

Bundy with Molly.

Elizabeth and Molly both struggled with alcoholism.

Elizabeth started drinking to “shut her mind up,” she says in Falling for a Killer. Molly also struggled with addiction. "I tried to drink myself to death," she says. "I drank till I would fall asleep…so I could be done [with Bundy].”

Elizabeth kept a scrapbook of their family photos.

After Bundy was sentenced to death and electrocuted in Raiford, Florida in 1989, Elizabeth kept many of their photos together. "To know he was killing people while we were still in a relationship is still really a hard idea to incorporate to integrate into my life. That fact invalidates what we had," she says in Falling for a Killer. "It seemed like nothing was real between him and my daughter.”

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7prjLnmWcp51ksLa4066pnmedpMOqsdJmq69nkWh9d4WQcnBuZ6SasW6u1KebsmWUpLC2ucSnq5qqqWKzorjLoqWgZZakv26tjKSgpaSVp3qvsdZmm56skZ65tHs%3D