Why I Loved America's Most Notorious Serial Killer

As a young single mother, Elizabeth Kendall fell under the spell of a charming stranger, Ted Bundy. Unbeknown to her, he led a heinous double life as a rapist and murderer, killing at least 30 women across the US. Here, Kendall and her daughter open up about the devastating impact on both their lives.

- Laura Pullman

In October 1969, Elizabeth Kendall was 24 and fresh to Seattle from Utah, where she’d been brought up in a Mormon family. She met Theodore “Ted” Bundy, a “tall, sandy-haired” stranger at a bar and recalls being naive, shy and insecure that she was a divorced mum. Drinking made her feel “prettier, smarter, more fun”.

Conversely, Bundy, nearly 23, was confident and polished. “He was very handsome, funny, smart and seemed to fit into our lives effortlessly,” says Kendall (a pseudonym), sitting alongside her daughter Molly in a hotel in Seattle, Washington. “He was an answer to a prayer. I was smitten from the get-go.”

Molly remembers how Bundy, who helped raise her from the age of three, once read her favourite book to her, purposefully making mistakes so she’d laugh. “I thought he was delightful,” she says.

The photos from that time capture a seemingly happy family: the trio dolled up to visit relatives, and dressed down for camping, skiing and fishing trips. They show Bundy as a doting father figure: teaching Molly to ride a bike, helping her bake cookies and sprinkling her with a hose on a hot day. “We played all kinds of games and I felt I was getting his undivided attention, which was a big deal for me,” she says. (Her biological father remained in her life, too.)

The photos, of course, tell only one story. Kendall’s 1981 memoir The Phantom Prince has recently been republished with a new chapter by Molly, now 53, where she details how Bundy once crept into her bed, naked, and ejaculated. He’d also carry her in a “crotch hold”, slipping his fingers inside her underwear. “I kept Ted’s weird behaviour to myself,” she writes.