Debbie Harry has quite a story to tell. The Blondie singer claims she came into contact with Ted Bundy in the early 1970s, before he is confirmed to have begun his killing spree. Harry has shared a haunting tale over the years of how she once hitched a ride with a man who she believes was the infamous serial killer. She was able to escape from the car, and it wasn't until years later that she realized the driver may have been Bundy.
That said, Harry's story has its share of naysayers, in part due to the details not matching up in regards to Bundy's whereabouts and description. Nevertheless, the pop star has maintained that it was him. Read on to see if you believe her.
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Harry first spoke out in the late '80s.
Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesIn 1989, Bundy was executed after being sentenced to death three times following his confessing to 30 murders that took place between 1974 and 1978. The same year he was executed, Harry shared that she believed she was once picked up in a car by Bundy.
"This was back in the early ’70s. I wasn’t even in a band then … I was trying to get across town to an after-hours club," Harry told a newspaper in 1989 (via Interview). "A little white car pulls up, and the guy offers me a ride. So I just continued to try to flag a cab down. But he was very persistent, and he asked where I was going. It was only a couple of blocks away, and he said, ‘Well I’ll give you a ride.’”
She noticed something was off when she got in the car.
David Redfern/Redferns via Getty ImagesHarry quickly noticed that there was no door handle or way to roll down the window from the inside. This alerted her to the fact that she needed to escape. Since the window was cracked, she decided to try to stick her arm through and open the door from the outside handle.
"As soon as he saw that, he tried to turn the corner really fast, and I spun out of the car and landed in the middle of the street," Harry recalled.
The news of Bundy's execution brought back the memory.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesHarry said that it wasn't until Bundy was executed that she started to believe the man who picked her up was the serial killer.
"It was right after his execution that I read about him,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about that incident in years. The whole description of how he operated and what he looked like and the kind of car he drove and the time frame he was doing that in that area of the country fit exactly. I said, ‘My God, it was him.'"
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Not everyone believes her story.
Everett Collection / ShutterstockWhile there's no reason to doubt that a scary man picked up Harry in New York in the early '70s, some have said that it couldn't have been Bundy. The website Snopes, which fact-checks urban legends, reported that Harry's story doesn't match up with Bundy's description.
The Blondie singer said that the incident occurred in 1972, but Bundy was not known to be in New York at that time. The website also notes that Harry's description of Bundy's car doesn't match up, since he wasn't known to have driven a car that was gutted inside. He was associated with driving a Volkswagen Beetle, which Harry said wasn't the type of car she was in during a 2016 interview on RuPaul: What's the Tee?
But Harry maintains that it was him.
Debby Wong / ShutterstockHarry has shared the story numerous times. In the interview with RuPaul: What's the Tee?, she said, "I got in the car and it was boiling hot. And this guy was kind of good looking, had on a white shirt, like a business shirt. He had dark curly hair, very good looking. Yet he stank to the high heavens. He smelled so bad."
She also said of her escape, "He spun out as soon as he realized what I was doing, and it actually helped me with momentum to get the door open and fall out." She said that she didn't have to run afterward because "he split."
Harry has also mentioned that she knows the story has allegedly been "debunked." According to Snopes, she said in the 2012 biography Blondie: Parallel Lives, "I've been debunked, actually, by those people that debunk you, or whatever." She added, "They say he wasn't in New York at that time, but I think they're really wrong, because he had escaped and was traveling down the East Coast."
As Snopes notes, however, this would have been a couple of years before Bundy escaped from any jails. But since the notorious serial killer has been dead for decades, you'll have to take Harry's word for it—or not.
