In recent years, documentaries, biopics, limited series, podcasts & it’s countless forms of media consumption have zero’d in on notorious & ruthless killers. Theodore “Ted” Bundy especially has had his story told a staggering number of times. It’s nearly safe to say that we know most of what is to be said about Ted Bundy.
But, what about the people around him? What role, or influence, did they play in the making of one of the worlds most known monsters. I am choosing to focus on the two women who might have known him best — his mother Louise, and longtime girlfriend Liz.
Liz Kloepfer — you poor thing?
Elizabeth Kloepfer met Bundy in 1970, and within the year she was the mother his child. The early days of their relationship are storied to be flawless and fueled by an intense chemistry. As time wore on, cracks and character flaws began to show, but she opted to stay with him and work on their relationship for the good of their child.
The first bright red flag was waved after Liz found womens underwear and construction plaster. When she asked Bundy about it he, according to reports, affectionately responded “‘if you ever tell anyone this I’ll break your effing head.”
Not amazing. As time wore on, there was increased media attention on countless brutal murders sweeping the nation. A sketch of the suspect paired with the description of a white Volkswagon Beetle, allowed Liz to draw undeniable parallels between these crimes and her mans sketchy travels and behaviors.
Imagine, minding your 1970s housewife (or girlfriend) business, doing the dishes, coming to this horrific realization, then having to ACT NORMAL when he gets home?
“Hun, did you want mashed potatoes,” she asks while already dumping a scoop into his plate. “I have to run to the neighbors after dinner to buy detergent,” she adds and dips out the backdoor to a corded phone next door, trembling while she types 911.
Upon following up on the tip provided by Kloepfer, that the sketch looked like Bundy and matched witnesses behavioral descriptions, the police determined a character like Bundy couldn’t possibly be the serial killer.
Our girl Liz continued to live with Bundy until their relationship ended in 1974. I am not saying this is relatable, but….
All women deserve to be recognized by the Screen Actors Guild for our endless hard work in the act of self preservation.
This quote from a Vanity Fair article on Liz that came out in 2020 has me in FULL scream.
“This is kind of hard to even think about, but if you could put aside the fact that Ted Bundy was a terrible, murderous man, he was [also] a bad boyfriend,” Kendall said. “I hope that people—women—realize that they don’t need to settle. Some of the things were just plain, flat-out codependence on my part—accepting when things were going badly, thinking that it was something about me and that I needed to change. I hope that women don’t do what I did, which was just settle for being treated not 100% truthfully.”
The bar has, arguably, always been in hell.
Eleanor Louise Cowell Bundy - Ma’m
Louise Bundy gave birth to Ted Bundy in a home for unwed mothers. Setting the stage for him to be a bastard, quite literally, of a different variety. She then took him back home the Bundy family home in Philadephia, Pennsylvania.
The first lie of many — that Louise was his sister — was not something he believed for long. Bundy, while on death row, revealed he uncovered the truth about Louise at a young age by doing simple math.
For the duration of Bundy’s time with investigators, mental health professionals, journalists, and trial — he maintained this story, and the sentiment was echoed by his family. This lead the public to believe that Ted Bundy was born deranged and purely evil.
In the hours leading to his turn on the electric chair, psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Lewis met with Bundy and had the opportunity to uncover a vastly different truth. Yes; He did enter the world under undesirable circumstances, and it would be the nurturing and behavior that he was exposed to that caused a monster to be made.
This fact alone heavily deviates from the narrative dear old Ted worked so hard to sell — “I come from a nice family, and I had a typical upbringing.”
1989, the year of his execution, Vanity Fair published details about the serial-killer’s upbringing that were largely unknown. The clear takeaways are as follows:
Louise Bundy hated her son because her pregnancy caused her to be ostracized by the conservative community she was raised in.
Sam Bundy, Louise father and Ted’s grandfather was an abusive man who tended to his garden with more care than he did his family. He would openly murder family pets regularly to set examples for those under his watch.
Louise’s siblings note that she had the same temperament as her father, and was often praised and boasted as an example for his other children. S
“Writers, criminologists, psychiatrists, and investigators who have pored over Bundy's history for clues to explain his brutal acts wonder: perhaps his grandfather really was, as Bundy said on one occasion, his father.”
The question regarding Sam, was he or wasn’t he, is one that can never be answered & will be fodder for gossip and speculation for as long as monsters continue to roam. And if history shows anything at all, that will be forever.