These are all the real life events the Ted Bundy film missed out

Ok this is a lot

6 years ago | UPDATED 6 years ago

Trash

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile aka the Ted Bundy film everyone is talking about, dropped last Friday.

Zac Efron stars as the real life serial killer Ted Bundy who assaulted and murdered young women and girls during the 1970s. After years of denying his crimes he admitted to 30 murders, but the true number of victims remains unknown. He was sentenced to death by electrocution and died in 1989. The film is from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer (played by Lily Collins).

In 1991, Elizabeth Kloepfer wrote a memoir, under the pseudonym Elizabeth Kendall called "The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy". Despite the book being the basis of the film, a few details were changed along the way. Here's everything the Ted Bundy film missed out, and the real life events that changed in the film.

The real Ted Bundy and Elizabeth Kloepfer, aka Elizabeth Kendall

Elizabeth Kloepfer had suspicions about Ted Bundy before he was arrested

In the true, real life story of Ted Bundy, his girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer spotted clues pointing towards his guilt before he was arrested. She had also been in contact with the police.

She read in the press about a suspect named Ted, wanted in connection to unsolved kidnappings in Washington state in 1974. She noticed a lot of clues that hinted it might have been her boyfriend. He looked like Ted Bundy, they both drove a Volkswagen, and the suspect used a crutch to knock out a victim – Kloepfer recalled seeing crutches in Bundy's home.

She made a phone call to police in 1974, but lost her nerve and hung up. She then saw abductions happening in Utah, just after Bundy moved nearby, and she phoned the police again. She was told Ted Bundy had already been cleared of any crimes. There were other clues she noticed – such as weapons Ted Bundy owned. In the Ted Bundy film, Elizabeth Kloepfer is shown to have believed Bundy when he protests his innocence, until the very end of the film.

He allegedly burned body parts in her fireplace

Lily Collins as Elizabeth Kloepfer in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

Another conversation that was missed out of the Ted Bundy film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, took place between Bundy and a detective. Before Bundy was executed in 1989, he allegedly told Detective Robert D. Keppel he burned one of his victims' heads in his girlfriend's fireplace.

"Of all the things I did to Liz, this is probably the one she is least likely to forgive me for. Poor Liz," he allegedly told the detective.

The French prison-escape novel 'Papillon'

In the Ted Bundy film, Bundy is constantly telling Elizabeth to read the book Papillon. The book is about a man who is in prison for murder, and is obsessed with escaping. Elizabeth doesn't mention the book in her memoir.

There was also a scene in the Ted Bundy film that didn't happen in real life

At the end of the Ted Bundy film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Elizabeth Kloepfer visits him in Death Row to ask one question. She brings a photo of a victim with her head cut off, and says: "You need to release me, Ted. Tell me what happened to her head." In the film, Ted Bundy breathes onto the glass which is in between them and writes out "hacksaw".

"Hacksaw" written in the glass in the Ted Bundy film

However, even though this is one of the most chilling moments in the film, it didn't happen in real life. Director of the film, Joe Berlinger, has spoken about the scene. He said: "95% of the film is extremely accurate. But that final scene is, you know, embellished for dramatic purposes. But it is based on a real conversation that happened. But that was a telephone conversation – and in a movie that's full of telephone conversations, it would have been very anticlimactic to have yet another phone conversation."

Ted Bundy and Elizabeth Kloepfer's final conversation was actually quite different

In her 1981 memoir The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, Elizabeth Kloepfer shared what was said in her final discussion with Bundy – and this isn't exactly how it was portrayed in the film.

She says Ted Bundy told her: "There is something the matter with me. I just couldn't contain it. I found it for a long, long time. It was just too strong.

"I don't have a split personality. I don't have blackouts. I remember everything I've done.

"The force would just consume me. Like one night, I was walking by the campus and I followed the sorority girl. I didn't want to follow her. I'd try not to, but I'd do it anyway."

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy tried to kill his girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer

Another significant moment from Elizabeth Kloepfer and Bundy's last telephone call is cut from the Ted Bundy film. After hinting at his guilt, Kloepfer asks him if he ever tried to hurt her. Bundy admits he once stopped smoke going up the chimney at Kendall’s house while she was sleeping, then he left after putting a towel under a door so the smoke wouldn’t escape. Kloepfer wrote in her memoir she remembered waking up coughing one night.