Ted Bundy’s former girlfriend, her daughter talk about relationship with notorious serial killer in 20/20 interview

ORLANDO, Fla. — Ted Bundy’s longtime girlfriend and her daughter talked about their relationship with the notorious serial killer in a 20/20 interview.

Elizabeth Kendall spoke out for the first time in 40 years in an interview with ABC News’ Amy Robach.

Elizabeth Kendall told 20/20 it feels “strange” to flip back through old photos of her former boyfriend, to see him smiling at a camera next to her and to see him playing with her daughter, who was a child at the time.

“I sometimes can’t believe this has really been my life,” Kendall told “20/20.” “I kept those photos of us when we were happier, before we knew what he was capable of.”

After several years, Elizabeth Kendall told 20/20 she has kept photos from her and her daughter’s life with Bundy.

“That’s my childhood,” said Molly Kendall, Elizabeth Kendall’s daughter. “Unfortunately, the memories that are attached to those pictures have lost their original emotional content and become something different.”

Bundy mercilessly and viciously kidnapped, raped and killed dozens of innocent women across the United States during the 1970s in a trail of terror that took him from the Pacific Northwest to Florida, ABC said.

In 1989, days before Bundy’s death by electrocution, he confessed to killing 30 women in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Florida from 1973 to 1978. Authorities believe it’s possible Bundy killed more women.

“I still have a sense of disbelief that this man that I loved and that seemed to be a great guy could go out and do such horrific things,” Elizabeth Kendall told 20/20. “It’s just so hard to accept.”

Elizabeth Kendall told ABC she dated Bundy for about five years, from 1968 to 1974. She and her daughter said at the time, they had no idea Bundy was a serial killer.

Elizabeth Kendall said she always felt loved. "With Ted, it’s impossible to tell. It could’ve been love, it could’ve been just another manipulation.” At one point, she believed she was going to marry Bundy and she has wondered why he spared her and her daughter.

In the summer if 1974, Elizabeth Kendall said, her relationship with Bundy started to sour.

Looking back now, Elizabeth Kendall told ABC there were some red flags that her boyfriend at the time could be the suspected abductor police were looking for in those cases, but she said she kept “talking herself out of it.”

By 1975, their relationship ended.

When Bundy was arrested in 1978, he refused to give an officer his name unless they let him make a phone call.

Police agreed and Bundy called Elizabeth Kendall, who had seen reports about the Florida murders when the phone rang.

“He said, ‘I’ve been arrested,’ and I said, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘Florida,’” Kendall told 20/20. “Oh, my heart just dropped. And I said, ‘Oh, I was afraid that you were going to be in Florida.’”

In 1979, Bundy was found guilty of murdering Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman and the attempted murder of three other women. The following year, he was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Kimberly Leach. He was sentenced to death for the murder convictions.

Molly Kendall said she was particularly shaken by the Leach case. They both would have been the same age if Leach were alive today.

Elizabeth Kendall said she still carries a lot of guilt with her. “Guilt about … causing this in my daughter’s life, guilt about what he had done, guilt that I had loved this man that was so gruesome.”

Elizabeth Kendall told 20/20 that she worked hard to rebuild her and her daughter’s lives and she hopes that sharing their story will service as an inspiration for anyone overcoming hardships.

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