Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer and No Man of God

Falling for a Killer:

This documentary is probably the best about this much-explored topic, because it was directed by a woman, Trish Wood, and produced by women--Trish Wood and Betty Orr (as well as Michael Kot)--and it is viewed through the female gaze. By that, I mean that it centered the murders that Ted Bundy committed, and his concurrent relationship with Elizabeth Kendall and her daughter, Molly, within women's history in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's. Powerful changes were taking place within and without the home for women and with how men viewed women--and how women viewed men. This documentary centers his violence in this context.

Plus, it interviews people rarely, if ever heard from, such as Elizabeth, Molly, Ted's little brother, Richard, and the family members and friends of the murdered and missing. I especially appreciated how the children's experiences were honored, how Bundy betrayed Molly and Richard's trust and damaged their ability to move through the world in a healthy manner. These voices haven't truly been heard nor honored.

Reading Elizabeth's book is enlightening, but it is more moving, more human, to watch her and listen to her as she tells her powerful story, especially as it is intertwined with Molly's own story.

Elizabeth shared some letters that Bundy wrote her from prison, and one letter really shocked me. He had continued to love bomb her, which didn't surprise me. It was this line. Remember that all of his victims had long hair, parted in the middle:
"I shall love you with every long-haired beauty I see."

He wasn't seeing any women in maximum security, of course. He meant "with every long-haired woman I fantasize about". How horrifying.

I cried when Susan Rancourt's mother, Vivian Rancourt-Winters, said that on the day after Bundy's execution, she called his mother, Louise. She told Louise that, on that day, they were simply two mothers who had lost their children, and she was so sorry for her loss. I can only hope to be that giving and good of a person.

Donna Schram, a psychologist and former colleague of Bundy's, made the most powerful statement about Bundy I have yet come across:

What makes me so angry at him is that he did not do one positive thing for this world, and he killed so many young women who would have.

The documentary, being as long as it was, must have pressed for time, so it honored but didn't talk about two younger victims: Susan Curtis, age 15, and Lynette Culver, age 12. So I will talk about them here.

Susan Curtis is still listed as Endangered Missing, because her body has never been found: her listing in The Charley Project and her listing at Utah.gov. She was fifteen years old on June 27, 1975; when she was last seen, she had brown hair and hazel eyes, braces and pierced ears, and was wearing a full-length yellow ball gown. She was attending the Bountiful Orchard Youth Conference at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah; she was last seen going to brush her teeth at the conference. She was an upcoming sophomore at Woods Cross High School in Bountiful, Utah, an honors student, and on the track and baseball teams. This means she had not even entered tenth grade yet. She was known to leave home for a couple of days at a time, but reliably returned.

Ted Bundy confessed to murdering her and burying her along the highway in Price, Utah before he was executed.

Lynette Dawn Culver is still listed as Endangered Missing, because she has never been found. She has been missing from Pocatello, Idaho since May 6, 1975, a month before Susan. She was last seen wearing a maroon jacket with a fur collar, a red checkered shirt and blue jeans. She has light brown hair (which appears strawberry blonde in the photographs to me), blue eyes, and a mole on her lower left cheek.

She left Alameda Junior High School for her lunch break on May 6, 1975, and never returned. According to a report, that afternoon, she boarded a bus at Hawthorne Junior High School, bound for Fort Hall.

She was a good seventh grade student, and was in a loving family. She occasionally skipped school, but was otherwise stable and happy.

Bundy gave specific details about Lynette's personal life and about her murder: (warning)

He said he abducted her and took her to a Holiday Inn, where he raped her, drowned her in the bathtub and dumped her body in the Snake River. She is still missing.

Further information from her Charley Project page:

Lynette was the first of the girls to go missing, three months before Bundy's arrest. In July 1978, 12-year-old Tina Anderson and 15-year-old Patricia Campbell disappeared. Their bodies were found in Oneida County, Idaho in October 1981. 14-year-old Linda Smith disappeared in June 1981, and her body was found in May 1982. The last murder was that of 14-year-old Cindy Bringhurst, who disappeared in June 1983 and was found a month later, south of Pocatello.

Other girls and women who are still missing and who are known to be or believed to be Bundy's victims:

• Nancy Perry Baird, age 23
• Ann Marie Burr, age 8
• Julie Cunningham, age 26
• Georgeann Hawkins, age 18
• Vicki Lynn Hollar, age 24
• Rita Lorraine Jolly, age 17
• Donna Gail Manson, age 19
• Denise Lynn Oliverson, age 24
• Nancy Wilcox, age 16

Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer (2020) 250 minutes, split into episodes:

After years of silence, Ted Bundy’s long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall, her daughter Molly, and other survivors come forward for the first time in a docuseries that reframes Bundy’s crimes from a female perspective. The series reveals how Bundy’s pathological hatred of women collided with the culture wars and the feminist movement of the 1970s in one of the most infamous crime stories of our time.

The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy by Elizabeth Kendall with Molly Kendall

No Man of God:

my review on Letterboxd:

This is the Ted Bundy movie. It doesn’t elevate him, it doesn’t explore how charming and handsome he might have been, it doesn’t give him a lot of gratifying attention. This movie just shows what he was like by demonstrating the intense manipulation and rage, and by finally revealing the inner monster. Then…it shows the weak, begging man he was at the end.

Viewer warning: it goes into graphic detail wrt his crimes, specific details that aren’t often shared, since this movie is a dramatization of the final interviews between him and FBI Special Agent Bill Hagemeier. Given my post-graduate education in Forensic Anthropology and Sexual Criminology, I knew the details, and it was still hard to digest hearing it in this format.

Masterfully done.

No Man of God (2021) 100 minutes, directed by Amber Sealey, starring Elijah Wood as Special Agent Bill Hagmaier, Luke Kirby as Ted Bundy, and Robert Patrick as Unit Chief Robert Depue.

The complicated relationship that formed between the FBI analyst Bill Hagmaier and serial killer Ted Bundy during Bundy’s final years on death row.

Between Good and Evil: A Master Profiler's Hunt for Society's Most Violent Predators by Roger Depue

The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer by Robert D. Keppel

Since Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer is steeped in the history of the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's, I'll finish this entry with another resource: location photographs thanks to author and researcher Kevin Sullivan. He has visited so many sites involved in the case. Scroll down and you can see Alameda Junior High, Lynette's school. When you look at it, think about the seventh grader in pigtails, who had a happy family, and did nothing wrong beyond approaching a car when she was called over, which wasn't a concern in the early 70's. Send up a prayer that she, and the others, will be found. And understand that we study these dangerous people, not for titillation, but in order to protect all the Lynettes in the future.

Kevin Sullivan's book accompanying these photographs: The Encyclopedia of the Ted Bundy Murders

the ultimate book on the case, written by Ann Rule, who unwittingly was helping to find "Ted" while knowing Bundy: The Stranger Beside Me