My mind started racing. It felt crazy to even contemplate that the drawing looked like Ted. I tried to dismiss my concerns, but I couldn’t. The more information that was revealed about the suspect, the more I worried. I was sure my fears were irrational, but still, I couldn’t stay silent. Then, when police told me he wasn’t their man, I tried to accept it, but I couldn’t. I knew my fears about Ted had to be wrong, because I knew him so well. There was no way I would ever contact the police again, but I did. Given my fear and confusion, I was not strong enough to act on my own. Trying to apply logic to something that made no sense left me feeling helpless. I learned from this that grace isn’t always pretty or ethereal, but grace is always working in my life when I get out of the way. I am grateful for the power of prayer, which gave me strength and guided me to do the right thing.
Most important: I love my daughter, Molly. I have deep regrets about the impact that my decisions have made on her life. Being a better mom is my priority, but I make mistakes all the time. Thankfully, she knows how much she is loved. Ted Bundy has been a part of her life since she was a little girl of three years old. She has faced her own challenges and has blossomed into a remarkable woman.
MOLLY’S STORY
Molly Kendall
As I set out to create a picture of my life with Ted for you, I have a big problem: I can’t remember how it felt to love him. I had loved Ted with my entire heart, but when forced to accept the truth about who he really was, I could no longer sustain that love. I cannot love a person who enjoys torturing, raping, maiming, and killing women. As I gained the knowledge of who Ted was, I lost my faith in human beings, as well as my belief in God.
By creating my own story, one that makes sense to me, I have regained my faith. By surrounding myself with good people, I have found that I can trust the majority of the human race. As far as Ted is concerned, I can recall the things that we did together, but not the feelings of love that went along with them. That becomes a challenge as I invite you to step into my experience.
Yesterday I met with my mom to go through some of the many pictures that we have, hoping they would jog my memory of the feelings. My mom is the opposite of me. She has a hard time forgetting the feelings of love she and Ted shared. Along with the pictures, she also produced a huge box of letters Ted had written her.
As I looked at these letters, I saw more than a thousand hours’ worth of his thoughts written there, pouring out his love for her. His hopes for her. His insights related to anything that he felt might draw her to him. I realized: She’s not imagining this love. They had it. It was true for them. And it had been true for me, too. I left upset that I could not stick my experience back into a box with a tidy label on it: Psychopath, Sociopath, Lies, Ted’s Alibi. All preferred over the label Love.
My mom and I are damn lucky to have lived through the experience of knowing Ted. Neither one of us has had to mourn the loss of the other. I have spent the bulk of my life grieving the loss of Ted’s victims. I have been sickened and depressed by what happened to them at the hands of someone who chose to make me a pet instead of another victim.
Those whose lives were brutally taken away have been a constant presence for me. People have suggested that I have survivor’s guilt. I reject that. We all should be alive. What I have is profound sadness and anger that some worthless dirtbag can come along and take away a family’s bright and shining light, leaving a gaping hole that is never to be filled.
And I loved that worthless dirtbag. I thought of him as bright and shining. He was so smart. Looking at those letters yesterday, I saw that he was using words I still haven’t learned. I forgot how smart he was. I forgot everything good about him. He had so much going for him, and at the core of it all was this hidden, evil, subhuman being. For the sake of this writing I will try to remember my feelings, but it all looks so different now.
I see why people are obsessed with figuring him out. For years, I thought continually about how this same person I loved could do these cruel and violent things. Finally, I was able to let go. I took on this mantra: He’s crazy, and being sane, you will never understand crazy. Just give up. Live your life. You still have it. It’s a gift.
MY HERO
The three-year-old me had loved Ted instantly. He delighted me by mixing up the words to my favorite story to make me burst out laughing at his ridiculous “mistakes.” He knew just how to act to win me over. He was handsome, he dressed well. He made a heck of a first impression on my mother and me.
Ted quickly became a fixture in our lives. Deeming our shabby downtown apartment unsuitable, he helped us find a duplex in the Green Lake neighborhood of Seattle. That was fine with me. In the downtown place, the lady upstairs who watched me during the day had called me a brat for not letting her little boy play with my toys. I can see why she thought that. I piled them all under a blanket and sat on top of it, chasing her son away if he came near. I was afraid he would steal them, and then I would lose the only things that remained of my life in Utah. One night, as she and her family ate their dinner and stared at me sitting mournfully on my blanket mound, she told me that my mom had forgotten to pick me up and would probably never come for me.
The move to Seattle had been hard on me. Being the firstborn grandchild in both my mom’s and my dad’s families, I was very loved and celebrated by grandparents and aunts and uncles alike. We left them all behind, along with a rich family history and a sense of context. In Seattle it was just my mom and me. Strange places filled only with strangers. Constant raindrops on the windshield of our freezing-cold Volkswagen bug, the annoying whine of the windshield wipers a nauseating backdrop for my sad and lonely feelings.
When Ted came into our lives, suddenly we were golden. We had someone amazing to live life with. Ted knew Seattle, where to go, what to do for fun. He was there to hold my hand and play my new favorite game, “swing me,” with my mom holding my other hand as we walked. He was so quick-witted and funny. He was physically expressive with his body and might break out in a dance or run and leap when playing with me. To make me laugh, he would sing in falsetto to the songs on the radio or mimic the cartoon voices of my favorite characters.
His manner was more polished than ours. He knew all the right things to say to any type of person to make a friend. His clothes and possessions, while not numerous, were cooler than ours. He liked our VW bug, though. So well that he ended up buying one for himself. Ours was that funny light blue color; his was tan with a sunroof that he would let my friends and me stick our heads out of while he drove. Ted brought so much joy into our lives. We felt really lucky that he was our guy.
What was it about my mom that made her different to Ted that night they met at a bar in the University District? Why did he not kill her? She was a naive, shy, sweet young woman of twenty-four. She was then, and is now, extremely lovable, but all Ted’s victims were also lovable young women, each with her own list of good qualities.
Did Ted have a normal side to him that was simply a lonely guy looking for a girlfriend? My mom had approached him, saying he looked as if he had lost his best friend. She told him about our move from Ogden and how hard she was working to create a good life for me. Maybe, at that moment, these things put her in a different category for him.
Is it possible Ted could have been looking for a standing alibi to make himself appear more normal? I don’t know. If he was, he sure got more than he bargained for. He eagerly stepped into the role of boyfriend, father figure, protector, and guide for our new life in Seattle.
As a young child, I thought Ted had some funny ideas. He preferred that I wear dresses instead of pants. He asked my mom to make the more conservative choice if asked to weigh in on her style. He thought I should be more respectful to my mom. Basically, he was old-fashioned in his preferences for us.
One night, shortly after Ted entered our lives, we were driving to Herfy’s to eat hamburgers. I was being sassy to my mother. Ted outlined his plan to cure me of my brattiness: He told her that
if I was being mouthy, then they must completely not acknowledge me. All talking to me would stop and they would speak of me to each other only as “the child.” As in, “If the child apologizes and stops behaving that way, then we will speak to her again.”
I had already lost almost every person in my life to this move. Now I only had my mom and Ted, and when they didn’t speak to me, I was awash in loneliness. After the first application of this lesson I quickly learned to be a bit more well behaved. I remember this incident well, even though it made no impression at all on my mom. The scary thing about it was that this new guy was attempting to take charge of me, and I was afraid she just might let him.
We did all kinds of fun things together. Ted was always surprising me. During a visit to Seattle Center, Ted delighted me by leaping onto the carousel once it was in motion, unexpectedly appearing at my side. He was always doing things like that. Through my eyes, he was magical. He broke the rules in little ways that I adored. You could expect the unexpected.
In fact, Ted could run faster and jump higher than anyone I’d ever seen. My mom loved it when he would jump straight up and click his heels together in the air. She is not a very good photographer, though, and we have many pictures of his body doing this maneuver with his head cut off at the top of the frame. He was kind of like an animal in how connected he was to his body. Thought and action did not have the same separation that they seem to have for other humans.
Once, when we were at a friend’s house, Ted was seated with his back to a window that had a radio balanced on its ledge. His chair must have been on its cord somehow, because when he rocked back it pulled the radio off the ledge and sent it careening toward the ground. Without moving his body, even to turn his head, he stuck his hand out behind him and caught it in the air. Just like that. It was like he had eyes in the back of his head.
Another time, my mom and Ted and I were at Northgate Mall. It was not an enclosed mall at that time, and we were walking along outside. Unexpectedly Ted took off running. A man across the parking lot had run past a woman, grabbed her purse, and taken off. She didn’t scream; there was no commotion. My mom and I were oblivious, but Ted had seen the whole thing. He ran after the man and apprehended him, holding him until the police came. He received a commendation from the Seattle Police Department.
You know why he saw it? Because he was watching. He must have been watching her. Like a predator watches prey. Why did he intervene and act the hero this time? Even after all these years, I couldn’t tell you.
We loved to visit Woodland Park Zoo. The reptile house was my favorite. Ted would hold me over the crocodile pit railing and make little moves like he was going to toss me in, saying, “I’m gonna drop you, I’m gonna drop you.” I thought it was a fun game and would shriek and cling to him.
When I was five, my cat Loretta was pregnant. For some odd reason I had wanted to name her Honky Mustard, but lucky for her, I was overruled. She was white (and Honky is a derogatory term for a white person, in case you don’t speak 1970s lingo), but I have no idea why I thought that was a good name. In any case, I knew that she was going to have kittens, but I had no idea what that actually meant.
One morning she started yowling in this strange way I hadn’t heard before. She went behind the couch and started pooping out these pink blobs. “Mom! Mom! Get up! The cat is sick!”
My mom and Ted were sleeping in her room. They came out and told me that these were kittens. They were in sacks that Loretta was supposed to clean off them. One by one they became a bit more kitten-like, except this one that lay there real still. It was dead. My mom and I were heartbroken. Ted snapped into action, cleaning the tiny kitten and massaging its chest. We thought he had lost his mind. After a couple of minutes of this treatment, the kitten sprang to life. Ted made it live. My hero!
Our house was near Green Lake, and we loved to go there and float in our inner tubes. Ted once suggested we should go in after it was already dark. That was scary! He would swim down under the water and startle you by grabbing at you.
One summer day at Green Lake, Ted had brought his yellow inflatable raft. He and I took it out into the lake, and I was swimming around it for quite a while after having jumped out.
Exhausted, I went to get back in and as my hand touched the edge of the raft, Ted made two small strokes with the oars, sending the raft backwards a couple of feet. All the while watching my eyes with his own dead, hate-filled eyes. This was the first time I ever saw those eyes. The raft slipped from my fingertips.
I swam to the edge of it to try again. Same thing: He pulled the raft just out of reach, watching me begin to struggle. Back in those days, children weren’t protected from every possible harm like they are now. I was not in a life jacket and was tired from my swim.
We repeated this scenario two more times. Floundering, I gave up and turned to swim the longer distance to the shore. Fortunately, I had had swim lessons in the summers. I made it to the shore exhausted, panting and crying. I collapsed onto the blanket where my mom was tanning herself. I told her what had happened. I knew he had done it to me on purpose.
My mom yelled at Ted when he rowed back to shore. “Liz, I thought she was a stronger swimmer than that. It was supposed to be a joke.” She accepted this as the truth. So did I. I had been wrong in my perception. Why would Ted try to hurt me? He loved me.
Over the years, there were other variations on this theme of Ted “innocently” hurting me. A sudden body check sending me sprawling to the pavement, a football drilled full force into my face. Each time, I felt he had done it on purpose, but I chose to believe his explanations of why I was wrong.
I had never heard of gaslighting until the past decade of my life. There was a lot of that going on with Ted. You were always wrong if you thought Mr. Perfect could have had any ill intent whatsoever. You ended up feeling bad for questioning the integrity of such a marvelous person.
In 1972, we relocated from Green Lake to the University District. We were moving in, and several kids my age were playing outside on the street. I was terribly shy. Ted was not. “Hey, you kids, this is Molly, she’s going to live here. What are your names? Want a Popsicle?” He worked his magic on them—easy joking and engaging conversation—and just like that, I had friends. I was on my way to being established in my new neighborhood.
YOU’RE “IT”
Our place in the U District was a giant old house that had once been grand. It had been split up into a few different apartments, and the upstairs was shared housing with a common kitchen and bathroom used by university students. Our apartment was in the middle of the house, which had once been the kitchen, dining room, and parlor. Shabby chic, 1970s style. At the back of the apartment was a tiny half bath with a separate shower located around the corner. I was “It.” I stood up against the wall, hiding my eyes and counting to thirty.
Rushing out into the living room, I was surprised to find all the lights out. Spooky! I thought excitedly. I was now seven, and Ted had been appointed my babysitter for the night. It was unusual because if my mom was out, it was usually with him.
I saw him right away, even in the dark. He was curled up in the fetal position on the floor, a blue afghan that Granny had knitted for us covering him from head to toe. Worst hiding job ever! I started to pull the blanket off him and saw that he was completely undressed. “You’re naked!” I accused, frowning.
“I know, but that’s because I can turn invisible, but my clothes can’t, and I didn’t want you to see me!” And with that, he was off running, back to the home base that you touch so that you don’t have to be “It.”
I was confused. That made no sense at all, even though it sounded whimsical and cute. But I didn’t want to be “It,” so I stopped thinking and started running. Running to the back of the house to touch home base before him. We were laughing as we arrived at home base. It was right by the shower; I tried to shove him out of the way, and comedically, Ted fell down to the shower mat where he sat cross-legged, covering
his penis with his two hands. Still cracking up, I wrestled with him, trying to pull his hands away. I succeeded, and I saw that he had an erection.
Being an only child, a girl, who lived with her mom, I’m not sure if I had ever seen a penis before, let alone an erection. It was kind of reddish purple and to my child eyes it looked like when you hit your thumb with a hammer or something, so I said, “Does it hurt?” He stopped laughing and looked up at me.
Something was very wrong. The pupils of his eyes had become tiny, almost as small as the point of a pencil. One was looking a slightly different direction from the other. “No, it doesn’t hurt. . . .”
I wasn’t really hearing him, I was searching for the person who I knew. That person was receding, farther and farther back, away from the eyes. It’s as if the person who I loved was now at the end of a long hallway and we could barely see each other. And then he wasn’t there anymore. But I saw something new seeing me. Something dangerous with those reptilelike eyes.
My mom had been making me go to the Mormon church. I think because I was unruly, but she denies this. We came from Utah, descendants of Mormon pioneers. However, it was the 1970s in the University District, and culturally everything was very bohemian and free. But not at the church. There it was like the 1950s in Iowa, a whole other thing. But I made peace with it and took in the lessons they taught me. I was told that if I was in trouble, or wrestling with what to do, the Holy Ghost might talk to me. They said the Holy Ghost was the part of God that quietly speaks to you and helps guide you to make the right choices.
At that moment, having seen a physical change manifest in the naked man who was no longer my trusted friend Ted, I started to hear something. Maybe “hear” is the wrong word; it was like an invisible typist was typing inside of my head and the words came out as knowing. Somewhere deep inside my brain this quiet presence was feeding me instructions on how to remain safe: Laugh and smile. Act as if nothing is wrong. Tell him you love him. Tell him this game has been really fun but that you are tired, and you would like to go to bed now.
The Phantom Prince Page 19