Debbie Harry claims she once escaped from a late-night encounter with serial killer Ted Bundy in New York City in the early 1970s.
The 73-year-old lead singer of Blondie stands by her story, which she is expected to discuss in-depth in her upcoming memoir Face It, which is due to be published in October, according to Rolling Stone.
According to Harry, she met Bundy while hitchhiking in Manhattan’s East Village in 1972.
She says the encounter took place when she climbed into a stranger’s car on Avenue C after being unable to hail a cab, according to Interview Magazine.
Debbie Harry (left), the lead singer of the hit group Blondie, has long claimed that she was nearly abducted by Ted Bundy (seen right in the late 1970s) in New York City in 1972
Harry (seen above in 1979) says the incident took place in Manhattan's East Village
‘This was back in the early ‘70s,’ Harry said.
‘I wasn’t even in a band then … I was trying to get across town to an after-hours club.
‘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.”
‘I got in the car, and it was summertime and the windows were all rolled up except about an inch and a half at the top.
‘So I was sitting there and he wasn’t really talking to me.
‘Automatically, I sort of reached to roll down the window and I realized there was no door handle, no window crank, no nothing.
‘The inside of the car was totally stripped out.’
Harry then said she noticed that there was a hole where the radio and glove compartment should be.
Feeling unsafe, she quickly decided she needed to get out.
In order to open the door, she reached out of the window and grabbed the door handle from the outside.
‘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,’ she said.
Harry said the driver took her two blocks to Avenue A.
In 1989, Bundy, who killed at least 30 women in seven states over the course of just five years, was executed by way of the electric chair in Florida.
Bundy is seen right giving an interview to FBI agent Bill Hagmaier on the eve of his execution in January 1989. Harry says that after seeing news reports of Bundy being put to death, she realized he was the driver of the car that she escaped from in the East Village in 1972
Harry said that when she saw Bundy’s face on the news the next day, she realized he was the driver from whom she escaped in the East Village.
‘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”.’
‘Very scary,’ she said.
‘Truthfully, I hadn’t thought of the incident in 15 years. I’m one of the lucky ones.’
In the biographical book Blondie: Parallel Lives, Harry told a similar story of nearly being abducted in the East Village.
She added a few more details about her would-be abductor.
'It was late at night and I was trying to get across Houston Street from the Lower East Side to 7th Avenue,' Harry says in the book, which was released in 2012.
