I see now how transparent I must have been. A child tap-dancing pitifully to get away from circumstances that were rapidly changing her world for the worse. But somehow it worked, and he agreed. We moved toward the bedroom.
Suddenly, he said, “Hey, I know . . . would you like me to get in bed with you and read you some Uncle Wiggily stories?” These are the books of Ted’s childhood and he has been reading them to me. Uncle Wiggily is a rabbit who wears a suit of clothes, complete with top hat.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m tired.” My escape plan is crumbling.
My memory of what happened next is fragmented. Ted challenges me. I am not going to be able to get away.
I get into the bed, which happens to be a top bunk, which is prone to collapsing. Ted was very agile and easily hops up there and lies behind me to read the book to me.
“You peed!” I blurt out, dismay and surprise overriding fear. The sheet was all wet. I don’t remember what he said to explain this. I do know I tried to keep on acting like nothing was wrong. Loving, in fact, as the voice had instructed me to act.
My next memory is of him leaving my room. I lay awake in fear for a very long time, watching the door. Hoping he would not come back. He did not.
I never said one word to my mother about this until many years later. We loved Ted. He had been such a positive figure in our lives, such a help to her. I did not want him to get in trouble. I knew it wasn’t right that he had been naked. I did not, at this point, understand the concept of sexual arousal. It was long after this that I figured out that penises were not always erections. Still, I did not want him to have to go away. I kept Ted’s weird behavior to myself.
He stayed away for more days than was typical, and I thought that maybe he would never come back. Finally, he did, and there was some awkwardness between us at first that soon turned into more or less the usual dynamic that we had. Except that I no longer trusted Ted to act correctly toward me.
I began to guard myself more physically, trying to control his hands, which were on me too much for my comfort. Ted had always been very physical with me. Carrying me, swinging me, unmercifully tickling me. But now it was a much different experience.
In the pictures printed in this book from Christmas 1974, I am smiling but I remember feeling very uncomfortable and confused about how to behave. We are on a visit to my grandparents’ house in Ogden. The night before this, Ted had grabbed a camera and run into the bathroom where I was naked in the tub. He took a picture of me, cringing and embarrassed. He told my grandmother, who was an avid photographer, “She will appreciate having this picture later!”
In the past, there had been other incidents that had troubled me. One was how he would carry me: he would put me in kind of a crotch hold. I remember that a couple of times his fingers had slipped inside my underwear and touched me.
This isn’t right, my mind told me, but I was confused. Maybe it was accidental or maybe grown-ups just didn’t care about what areas they touch you on. Maybe I was supposed to just accept it as normal, even if it made me feel gross.
One night at dinner, Ted scooped me onto his lap and did the crotch hold in front of my mom. “Ted!” she roared. “Do not hold her like that!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it, Liz, geez. You are completely overreacting!” And then it was over, and he didn’t do that anymore. There were always rational explanations, all of them involving the fact that we were misinterpreting or overreacting. By this time, I had been conditioned not to trust my own feelings. I pushed these incidents far beneath the sea of good times and memories that vastly outnumbered them. I loved Ted, and I wanted everything to be all right again.
THE TRUTH SINKS IN
It had been all over the local news that two women had been abducted from Lake Sammamish State Park near Seattle. Although my mother was tortured by her suspicions about Ted, she had not discussed them with me. I had teased Ted when the profile of the suspect came out. “Your name is Ted, his name is Ted, you drive a Volkswagen bug and so does the suspect! You know it’s you!” He laughed it off. “Yes, that’s right, Monkey, it’s me. Ha-ha, real funny.”
It wasn’t funny now that Ted had been arrested. The situation had changed shape rapidly, in ways that confused me. Ted was charged with erratic driving and possession of burglary tools, then attempted abduction, and finally he became the chief suspect in multiple murders and disappearances. Shockingly, my mother had finally told me that she believed he might be guilty of these things.
I continued to love Ted and believe in his innocence with a child’s unwavering steadfastness. I believed that in the end he would be exonerated of all wrongdoing. I awoke every day, suffocating in grief, as it sunk in that this was not a bad dream, this was happening, worsening. Day after day, the television talked about it, the papers talked about it, my friends’ parents talked about it.
One day I gathered all the girls in my fifth grade class who I considered to be my friends. Some of them thought Ted was my father because over the years they had seen him do all those things a dad would do. I told them that I knew they might have heard these accusations against Ted, but I knew he was innocent and would be cleared. If they had any questions, they should come to me and ask me.
I believed with my whole heart that Ted was innocent. I wanted to tell everyone in the entire world that they were wrong, wrong, wrong. Even after he was convicted of attempted kidnapping, I thought it must be a case of mistaken identity. I could not believe the man who made my cocoa and taught me to ride a bike could do anything like this.
Ted had given my mom a copy of Papillon. A story of a wrongly accused man who escaped many times from multiple prisons. I was reading well above my grade level, and I devoured this book. It spoke to my belief in Ted’s innocence. While awaiting trial for the murder of a woman in Colorado, Ted made his own daring escape, leaping from the second-story Colorado courthouse window. If people were talking about him before, suddenly it reached epic proportions. He was now a folk hero with a media frenzy of clever jokes and banter, even novelty T-shirts. I still wanted to scream it from the rooftops, how it was all a mistake.
He was recaptured within a week. But seven months later, Ted escaped a second time. This time I felt afraid. I had now realized that he knew my mother had gone to the police with her suspicions about him. For the first time I allowed myself to wonder, What if he did these things? What if he comes here and tries to kill us?
Instead he fled to Florida, where, we would later learn, he raped and murdered two sorority sisters at the Chi Omega house. He attacked three other women who did not die. He raped and killed and mutilated a girl of twelve, like me, Kimberly Leach.
When Ted was captured in Florida, the truth permeated my stubborn heart, that this was who he was, a murderer. I knew he called my mother the night he was recaptured, and, as she said, he “confessed without confessing.” But it took a very long time for it to fully sink in, that this man I loved was a deranged monster who took great pleasure in hurting and killing women.
It was during the trial for the Chi Omega murders that I forced myself to assimilate the undeniable evidence presented. My mother had remained in Seattle, while I was with my grandparents for the summer as usual, only nothing was normal. Every day the first nationally televised murder trial played out before my eyes.
I don’t think my grandparents understood what I was watching as I sat there day after day. As pictures of bloody gore that had been beautiful, vibrant young women, people’s children, were displayed. As deep bite marks that fit the crooked, nightmarish teeth of Mr. Theodore R. Bundy were analyzed.
I learned all kinds of things during this trial. About types of sperm, forcible rape with objects, smashing of heads and garroting of necks.
Later, during the penalty phase of the Kimberly Leach trial, I learned that Ted now “loved” Carole Boone, as he proposed to her after putting her on the witness stand while acting as his own attorney. Remorseless doesn’t begin to cover the circu
s-like way Ted used the televised proceedings to stroke his own ego at this trial for the rape, murder, and mutilation of a child.
This killing of the girl who was my own age has haunted me for many years. It is only recently that I have been able to stop the brutal details of her death from regularly playing out like a horror film before my eyes. I have grieved for her and her loved ones continually. In fact, for the majority of my life I have grieved over all the women who Ted murdered and attacked.
THE LAST LETTER
In the late 1980s, my mom went through an accelerated period of spiritual growth. She took classes, read books, prayed, and meditated. Ted was going to be executed. I think, in part, she was preparing herself for this.
I was living at home and had begun earning my associate’s degree at North Seattle Community College. For the first time since Ted was arrested, I was doing well. I was on the dean’s list. At this late date, I had finally learned what it meant to “apply yourself” to the process of learning. I went around meeting with my professors, explaining what was happening in my life. That I might have difficulty focusing, or might cry in class, but that I would be doing my best to keep on with my good work. I’d be damned if I would let Ted screw me up again.
Over the past years the guy had continually resurfaced. Running his mouth. Manipulative lies, all of it. Nothing he ever said was the truth. I was filled with a deep, cold hatred as I watched him. Evil asshole. I was looking forward to death silencing him for good.
One day when I arrived home from school, a letter had come in the mail. It had the prison address on it. My mom was still at work. Although it was addressed to my mother, I opened it. Somehow, over thousands of miles, Ted had been able to seize on just the right things to say to hook my mom into his toxic drama again. He talked about how he found God and was working on his spiritual program. I can’t remember what else he professed. The reason I can’t remember? I burned that letter in the fireplace, right then and there, and never said one word about its arrival.
It was all the things my mom would have wanted to hear. I was unwilling to watch her be ripped to shreds again by this “love.” Fuck that. Leave us alone. Leave the whole country alone. Nobody, save your mother, cares that you say you found God, as you try to bargain with the remains of the women you tortured and killed, to save your sorry life. Time to die.
I remember nothing of the day of the execution.
The next thing that I remember happening is that Ted’s civil rights attorney from death row contacted my mother. Apparently, one of his last wishes was for us to be told that he really had loved us. Because, as she put it, “he knew you would wonder, given the circumstances. Also, Liz, he wondered why you did not respond to his letter.”
I had to confess to my mother that I burned it. She understood the reasons I gave as to why I did it. She accepted my reasons in a quiet fashion. It was her mournful manner that made me see that if you turned the situation another way, I had robbed her of some closure.
As for robbing Ted of his precious Liz? Not sorry. Not one bit sorry. I honestly would have taken him out back and shot him myself rather than let him hurt one more person.
COURAGE
For many years I tried to drown my grief in alcohol, drugs, smoking, and reckless behavior of all kinds. As anyone who is a recovering addict can tell you, that didn’t work. It only gave me more things to be remorseful over. I finally was able to become sober when I decided to turn around and face what I was running from. As of this writing, I have thirteen years of sobriety.
Another action I took to move forward was to attempt to join a local support group for the families and friends of victims of violent crimes. I say attempt, because when I told them what my link to violent crime was, they let me know that it would be potentially upsetting to the other members of the group for me to join, since they were connected to Ted’s crimes through his victims.
After the understanding of that sunk in, I asked if they would please ask around and see whether any of these group members would be willing to exchange a letter with me. They found someone: A mother of one of the victims was willing to receive my letter. I told her about my anguish over her loss of her daughter and how much I thought about these young women every day of my life. She wrote me the most healing reply.
I was shocked when I read her words, that over the years she had wondered how my mother and I were doing. I’d feared that she hated us; far from it, she had hoped we were able to heal. She said that undeniably, it was beyond shattering for her to go through the experience of losing her daughter to murder, but that as the years passed, she was choosing to bravely move forward and be happy once more.
Her refusal to let Ted Bundy take the rest of her life from her inspired me. What a remarkable, strong person. I wanted to be like her and do the same.
I decided to begin by reclaiming Lake Sammamish State Park as a place of peace and freedom for me and my dogs to walk. I was so frightened of it, even by the name. I went to great lengths never to go anywhere near the place.
It was terrifying to visit there the first time. With my heart in my throat, I practically ran down one of the trails, stiffly dragging my dogs along. Fearing what was behind each bend in the path, I felt my heart hammer in my chest.
I have spent countless hours there now. Most often in the rain. Without a human companion, but with my beloved dogs, I have walked everywhere a person can go in those 512 acres, no matter how remote. There is no path that I have not walked down, and I have seen some amazing things:
A large stag with a full rack, kneeling to rest in the tall grass.
A coyote who seemed to be dancing and leaping beneath a tree. Who, upon catching sight of me and my dogs, did an up-close, run-by viewing, all the while looking as if he was grinning at us.
A juvenile eagle who, with a fierce cry, flew at eye level between me and a strange man who was making me nervous, making the man jump back and hurry away. Maybe the eagle was saying thanks for my solitary version of a Native American fancy dance, done to pay tribute the first time I saw him in the sky over the field.
And best of all, two adult eagles who, after singing all day in the rainy woods, grabbed each other’s feet and did a barrel roll out of the sky right toward my head, parting at the last second and flying away.
And now I am moving forward by allowing myself a voice. For years I have quietly listened as others have told parts of my story. I stayed quiet out of fear. Fear of exposing myself publicly. And because I wanted to live a life of my own creation, not one that endlessly orbits this evil man’s story. But most of all, I remained quiet out of fear that my perspective would further hurt the others—the victims’ loved ones and Ted’s family—who, like me, have been repeatedly hurt by the continual reemergence of this story.
I have come to realize that I am not protecting anyone by silencing myself. By doing that, I only throw away my ability to live life fully. It is healing to share my perspective. I look forward to hearing the experiences of the other people impacted by Ted Bundy when the time feels right to them. The bravery and perspective of those who have told their stories already have been an inspiration.
And now I go forward, with my new mantra: Life is a gift and you still have it. Have the courage to be happy.
Liz, Ted, and Molly on vacation to visit family. Ogden, Utah, 1970
Molly “learning to ride” Ted’s bike. Green Lake, Seattle, 1970
Molly and Ted. Green Lake, Seattle, July 1970
Ted and Molly. Green Lake, Seattle, July 1970
Molly and Ted watching the “veg-o-matic man” at the Washington State Fair. Puyallup, Washington, 1970
Molly and Ted baking cookies. Green Lake, Seattle, 1970
Waiting to go waterskiing. Flaming Gorge, Utah, 1970
Ted swinging Molly in the water. Flaming Gorge, Utah, 1970
Molly and Ted fishing for rainbow trout. Flaming Gorge, Utah, 1970
Visiting family. Ogden, Utah, 1970
Ted delig
hting Molly by jumping onto the already moving carousel. Seattle Center, 1970
Molly and Liz at the Pacific Science Center. Seattle, 1970
Molly and Ted, celebrating Christmas. Green Lake, Seattle, 1970
Ted turns Molly’s world upside down for Christmas. Green Lake, Seattle, 1970
Ted during our first camping trip. Pacific Northwest, 1970
An unhappy Ted who just woke up from a nap. Green Lake, Seattle, 1971
Ted in Wyoming on the way to Flaming Gorge, Utah. 1971
Molly’s fifth birthday. Ted made the banner. Look past the ’70s floral slipcover and note kitty Loretta wearing Molly’s tinfoil birthday crown as a necklace. Green Lake, Seattle, 1971
Ted making rain for Molly and friends. University District, Seattle, 1972
Molly and Ted driving the boat. Flaming Gorge, Utah, 1971
Ted and Liz. Hood Canal, Washington, 1973
Ted and Liz get warm after a day at Snowbird. No skiing, as the lines were too long. Ogden, Utah, December 1974
Christmas. Ogden, Utah, 1974
Ted and Molly at Grandad and Granny’s house for Christmas. Not sure how to handle the uncomfortable touching. Ogden, Utah, 1974
Ted tickling Molly. Liz hoping her secret call to the police is never revealed. Ogden, Utah, December 1974
The Phantom Prince Page 20