Elizabeth Kloepfer has a macabre claim to fame; she was the longtime girlfriend to one of America’s most disturbing serial killers: Ted Bundy. Such was Bundy’s psychosis that he was able to mimic charm, and his narcissistic intensity confused many people into thinking he couldn’t possibly murder.
Kloepfer’s story is back in the public eye through the new Netflix movie, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. She’s called Liz Kendall. The movie, which stars Zac Efron as Bundy and Lily Collins as Kloepfer, is titled after a line uttered by the judge after one of Bundy’s sentencings. When Judge Edward Cowart imposed a death sentence on Bundy, he memorably said, “The court finds that both of these killings were indeed heinous, atrocious and cruel. And that they were extremely wicked, shockingly evil, vile and the product of a design to inflict a high degree of pain and utter indifference to human life.”
The movie endured criticism early on because of its portrayal of Bundy as a mendaciously albeit alluring figure (played by the heartthrob Efron no less.) Some have accused the movie – and society – of sexualizing the serial killer. However, as the real Elizabeth Kloepfer AKA Liz Kendall could attest: Bundy was able to present a charming and utterly false front. He was the reliable boyfriend by day, and an utterly horrific serial killer by night, murdering college coeds. That a psychopath could so seamlessly masquerade as normal is one of the most frightening aspects of Bundy’s personality because it means that Elizabeth Kloepfer could easily have been any one of us.
By 1974, Bundy had launched into one of the country’s most notorious murder sprees, ultimately slaying at least 30 women (some believe the death toll exceeds 100).
However, where is Kloepfer today? Here’s what is known about Ted Bundy’s former girlfriend now.
Kloepfer Changed Her Name to Make Herself Initially ‘Not Findable’
The movie says that, today, Elizabeth Kloepfer and her daughter are living in Washington State.
Elizabeth Kloepfer once told her own story in a book. That was back in 1981, though, and it was called, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy. She wrote the book using a pseudonym, Elizabeth Kendall, and, according to Vanity Fair, later changed her name. The Extremely Wicked screenwriters understandably wanted to talk to her but, the magazine reports, filmmaker Joe Berlinger determined at first that she was “not findable.”
The book is out of print, Esquire reports, and, today, Berlinger told Esquire, “She was very ambivalent…She does not want the spotlight. For example, she didn’t want to come to Sundance. She doesn’t want to participate in the press. She wants to remain anonymous.” She hasn’t spoken publicly about Bundy since the book.
However, her friend, Marylynne Chino, who was with her when she first met Bundy in Seattle’s Sandpiper Bar, spoke in 2017 to Utah television station KUTV. Kloepfer eventually told Chino she had suspicions of Bundy after finding “women’s underwear there and the plaster of Paris,” Chino told KUTV.
“I’ve never forgotten this,” Chino said to the television station. “I walked in, and across the room, I saw Ted (Bundy) for the first time. I will never forget the look on his face, it wasn’t evil but he was staring nursing a beer.”
A marriage license obtained by Heavy shows that Elizabeth Kloepfer married another man in 1978 with Chino as a witness. He appears to have died in 2018, per a public obituary. Online records show Elizabeth took her husband’s last name. Heavy is not printing his name or the document to protect her privacy.
According to Biography.com, Kloepfer describes herself in the book “as a shy, insecure and lonely single mom, divorced, and struggling with alcoholism.” She was the daughter of a Utah doctor, according to Women’s Health.
“I handed Ted my life and said, ‘Here. Take care of me.’ He did in a lot of ways, but I became more and more dependent upon him. When I felt his love, I was on top of the world; when I felt nothing from Ted, I felt that I was nothing,” she wrote in the book, according to Biography.
However, she also wrote in the book that she turned from alcoholism to spiritual faith after the jarring revelations, writing, “My spiritual growth is extremely important to me now. I try to live my life according to God’s will. I pray for Ted, but I am sickened by him. The tragedy is that this warm and loving man is driven to kill.”
Elizabeth Kloepfer Did Visit the Set
Lily Collins, 30, met Ted Bundy’s girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer to get into character for Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile movie. t.co/7C3ZgTsZea
Ted Bundy’s former girlfriend did cooperate with the Netflix movie, though. Berlinger was eventually able to track her down, Vanity Fair reports, but the magazine didn’t provide many details, only that she met with Collins and Berlinger, and has a daughter named Molly – the daughter for whom Bundy was once a somewhat father figure.
“She brought out photo albums—photo albums that had not been seen by many,” Berlinger told Vanity Fair. “…There’s a father figure, a mother, and a daughter—camping, skiing, birthday parties—all the things that you would expect from family photos. But the man is Ted Bundy.” Molly and Kloepfer also visited the set.
Collins told ENews that Elizabeth Kloepfer was “willing and actually passionate about meeting me.” Collins said she was trying to see “through the victim’s eyes” when she played the role.
Elizabeth Kloepfer has been called Meg Anders and Beth Archer by other authors on Bundy, also to protect her privacy. Kloepfer clearly still values privacy. Esquire notes that she’s called Elizabeth Kendall, her former pseudonym, in some of the Netflix promotional materials. She was called Liz Kloepfer in the Sundance Institute promotional materials, though.
“1969. Ted (Zac Efron) is crazy-handsome, smart, charismatic, affectionate. And cautious single mother Liz Kloepfer (Lily Collins) ultimately cannot resist his charms,” the movie’s Sundance “about” section reads. “For her, Ted is a match made in heaven, and she soon falls head over heels in love with the dashing young man. A picture of domestic bliss, the happy couple seems to have it all figured out … until, out of nowhere, their perfect life is shattered. Ted is arrested and charged with a series of increasingly grisly murders.”
Elizabeth Kloepfer Dated Ted Bundy for Five Years
FBITed Bundy victims number at least 30.
Elizabeth Kloepfer’s relationship with Ted Bundy was a significant one. It lasted five years. According to Vanity Fair, Kloepfer began dating Bundy in 1969; that was before he, by some accounts, started killing. Others think he murdered a child in his teenage years.
Kloepfer was divorced, a mother, and working as a secretary when she met the University of Washington college student, according to Vanity Fair, which describes their activities as pretty mundane: “birthday parties, camping outings, ski trips, and discussions of marriage.”
Bundy discusses Kloepfer in the Netflix docu-series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, saying, “I loved her so much it was destabilizing. I felt such a strong love for her but we didn’t have a lot of interests in common like politics or something, I don’t think we had in common. She liked to read a lot. I wasn’t into reading.”
However, according to Women’s Health, he once tried to poison her with chimney smoke.
Elizabeth Kloepfer Gave Ted Bundy’s Name to Authorities
FBI archivesTed Bundy – Wanted by the FBI
According to Esquire, the seemingly domestic bliss was shattered when Kloepfer began to suspect Bundy as the killer being described in Seattle news reports. Young women were vanishing or turning up dead, and the city was on edge.
The clues were fairly significant, including that police said the killer had given the name Ted and drove a VW. Kloepfer had once spotted plaster of Paris in his desk, and news reports said the killer wore a cast, Esquire noted. The magazine quoted Kloepfer’s book as saying, “He said that a person never could tell when he was going to break a leg, and we both laughed. Now I keep thinking about the cast the guy at Lake Sammamish was wearing—what a perfect weapon it would make for clubbing someone on the head,” she writes.
Chino told KUTV that she helped convince Kloepfer to go to police with her suspicions, saying, “I remember calling my dad and he said, and I never forgot it, I just don’t know, and this is what he said to me: ‘Marylynne, if he did it once he’ll do it again,’ and that’s’ exactly what happened.”
Bundy Married Carole Ann Boone in a Courtroom & She Bore His Child
The Netflix movie shows Bundy moving on from Elizabeth with a sycophantic former co-worker named Carole Ann Boone.
In one of the most bizarre twists in the Bundy real-life tale, he did in fact marry Carole Ann Boone in a courtroom, and she gave birth to his daughter, Rose Bundy. Boone was being questioned on the stand when Bundy asked her to marry him in the courtroom. He was on trial for the murder of a 12-year-old girl.
Bundy was acting as his own attorney. “Bundy’s proposal at the time was considered legal thanks to an arcane Florida law that stated as long as a judge was present for a marriage declaration in court, the transaction would be allowed,” Cosmopolitan reported. Boone and Bundy had worked together for the Department of Emergency Services in Washington State.
Boone told the Associated Press it was no one’s business how she managed to get pregnant by Bundy while he was incarcerated.
You can read more about Carole Ann Boone here. Boone divorced Bundy three years before he was executed, according to true-crime author Ann Rule, who knew Bundy.
As for the daughter Boone had by Bundy (Rose), she leads a private life. “I have deliberately avoided knowing anything about Ted’s ex-wife and daughter’s whereabouts because they deserve privacy,” Rule wrote. “I don’t want to know where they are; I never want to be caught off guard by some reporter’s question about them. All I know is that Ted’s daughter has grown up to be a fine young woman.”
Ted Bundy’s Murders Might Have Been Motivated By Another Woman – Diane Edwards
Elizabeth Kloepfer may not have been the most significant woman in Ted Bundy’s life. Diane Edwards was Ted Bundy’s first serious girlfriend, and she bore a striking and eerie resemblance to some of the pretty brunette women that he later murdered. Sometimes, Diane Edwards has been referred to by the pseudonym Stephanie Brooks or is called Marjorie.
Her full name was Diane Marjorie Jean Edwards, and she was from Burlingame, California.
In the tapes that were played on the Netflix show, Bundy admitted: “The relationship I had with Diane had a lasting impact on me.”
He also explained what drew him to Diane. “Mumbled sweet nothings into each others’ ears and told each other how much we loved each other,” he said at one point. “She’s a beautiful dresser, beautiful girl. Very personable. Nice car, great parents. So you know, for the first-time girlfriend, really that was not too bad.”
Ann Rule, in her 1980 book about Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me: The True Crime Story of Ted Bundy, described how Bundy and Diane met when they were students at the University of Washington.
“He saw a woman who was the epitome of his dreams,” Rule wrote. She “was like no girl he had ever seen before, and he considered her the most sophisticated, the most beautiful creature possible.”
They met again in 1973, writes Rule. This time the power dynamic completely shifted. Ted was starting to “be somebody” and was working for the Washington Republican Party. They went to dinner, and she flew to Seattle. He spoke of marriage, and she was in love with him, according to Rule. Suddenly, though, he became “cold and distant” to Stephanie. He skipped Christmas presents and made love to her in a “perfunctory” fashion.
She later decided that he had coldly and calculatingly lured her back just to dump her like she had once dumped him. He never gave her an explanation. The following year she married – to someone else, Rule writes.