In 2019 alone, 350 new minutes dedicated to analyzing the life of Ted Bundy were released, more than four decades after he murdered more than 30 women in the United States. The documentary Conversations with murderers: Ted Bundy's tapes collected his confessions in several archive interviews. And the Netflix fiction tape Extremely cruel, evil and perverse added glamor and sexual appeal to his figure through the interpretation of Zac Efron.
Despite the time she has dedicated to the murderer of women in recent years, director Trish Wood missed something in almost every story about the character: that her victims and survivors were given a true voice. "Everyone knows Ted Bundy, but almost no one can name a single one of the women he killed," Wood tells EL PAÍS by phone.
In the five-chapter miniseries Ted Bundy: in love with a murderer , which is already available on Amazon Prime Video, the narrative of the rise of feminism of the seventies in the United States runs parallel to the murderous impulses of who, this time , is not the absolute protagonist of the story. “Feminism needs to reread many historical facts. And this part of recent history needs more context and less opinions of the murderer ”, defends the filmmaker.
For the first time, the two women who lived with Bundy speak long and hard before a wave of murders and rapes that could affect a hundred women, although there is only evidence of a third of those crimes. Wood interviews what was the murderer's girlfriend at the time, Elizabeth Kendall, and her daughter, Molly, whom Bundy raised when she was a child as if he were her own.
Kendall reviews his emotional album of memories with whom he looked like the perfect man. They met at a party in 1969. He, attractive and elegant, accompanied the young and insecure single mother home at the end of the night. Instead of trying to have sex with her, he laid her on the bed. Waking up the next morning, she found him in the kitchen preparing breakfast for her daughter and thought he was the man of her life.
Elizabeth Kendall, at a time of Ted Bundy: in love with a murderer
But the series is also built from other experiences. For example, those of Carol DaRonch, who managed to flee from Bundy when he tried to kidnap her in 1974, or those of Lynda Healy's roommates, who disappeared that same year.
The objective of the director of the series is not so much to analyze or understand the mind of the aggressor - "it was simply a misogynist," he says - as to explain the consequences it had on a large number of women. Ted Bundy: In love with a murderer offers a concept of victim much broader than usual. In this miniseries, not only the women killed or those who were attacked and survived are. “Bundy's acts changed the way of seeing the lives of women who trusted him, of those who knew the murdered and even of those who saw in the news what was happening near their homes. All of them received a very violent message about what was then supposed to be a woman, ”explains Wood.
From the television comedies to the publicity of the time, these five chapters review the role assigned to women in the society of the sixties and seventies; the one who imposed the law. It was a time when women could not open a bank account without the permission of a man and who were recommended, in case of sexual assault, "not to resist even if it hurts because, otherwise, it will hurt more," as It can be seen in an educational video archive that the director has recovered for the series. The rise of feminism managed to break a good part of that dynamic.
Even if the narrative around Bundy is changed, filming more documentaries or movies about it and publishing articles about it is not a way to continue feeding the myth of a narcissist? “It's a question that always floated in the environment while we worked on the series. But, in short, it was important to include the gender perspective around a figure that is still recurring in the current media. Years after his crimes, a man killed 14 of them with a rifle at a university in Montreal after writing in a note that feminism filled him with anger. It is important to remember that all this happened because, simply, there was hatred towards women, ”recalls the director.