SERIAL KILLERS: Carol Bundy & Doug Clark

 Carol Bundy and Doug Clark killed potentially eight people in a short few months, their reason, depraved sexual desires.

Carol Bundy was born on August 26th 1942, her parents were both abusive alcoholics, which led to Carol having a very troubled childhood. Her mother died when she was young, most likely around 11. Her father began sexually abusing her at age 11, which is why I believe that was around the point her mother died. The abuse stopped when her father remarried and began putting her in various foster homes.

Not much else is known about Carol’s early life, the next confirmed thing in her life was she got married at age 17 to a 56-year-old man. They divorced for unknown reasons and Carol soon remarried.
The new marriage was abusive and whilst they were together, Carol had two sons. Those boys were young when Carol escaped the abusive relationship, got her own apartment and started her life again.

Her new apartment block was managed by John ‘Jack’ Murray, a married part-time singer. It didn’t matter, Carol and Jack began to have an affair. At one point Carol even tried to bribe Jack’s wife into leaving him. Her attempts backfired and Carol was evicted by Jack, acting on his wife’s orders.
Despite the attempts to end the relationship, Carol still attended all of Jack’s shows, no matter the venue. It was at one of those shows in Little Nashville when she met Doug Clark.

Doug Clark was born on March 10th 1948, he was the son of Naval Intelligence Officer, Franklin Clark. Franklin’s job made the family move around a lot, with Doug claiming that he had lived in 37 countries.
Franklin left his job in 1958, getting a civilian position as an engineer with the Transport Company of Texas, the family still moved around quite a lot.

Doug stopped moving with his father when he attended Culver Military Academy, but his spot in the school didn’t stop his father’s transient nature. Doug graduated in 1967 and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force soon after, getting stationed in Colorado and Ohio. He was discharged from the force for unknown reasons, and Doug became a drifter for the next decade, often taking jobs as a mechanic.

When Doug finally arrived in Los Angeles he was employed as a steam plant operator for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He abruptly quit the job. The next job he got was as a boiler operator at Jergens soap factory in Burbank. He was fired from his role after making violent threats towards co-workers and a high rate of absences.

In 1980, Doug frequented a bar in Little Nashville, the same bar that Carol was at watching Jack Murray perform. The two began talking and somehow, Doug convinced Carol into letting him move in with her. They quickly learned that they shared similar dark sexual fantasies.

Gina Marano (15) and Cynthia Chandler (16) were half-sisters hitchhiking to Los Angeles in hopes that they would be able to start their lives in the big city.
June 1st 1980 the girls attended a party hosted by Mark Gottesman at his home in Hollywood. One of the guests remembered talking to the girls and giving them her number. Gina wrote it in her address book, a book she carried for a book she carried often.
The next time the girls were seen was on the 10th at some point in the afternoon. They were picked up by a moving truck driven by Henry Brigges. Before he dropped the girls off at the entrance of a freeway off-ramp, Henry gave them his business card, it had his, his brother’s and sister-in-law’s numbers written on the card. He was worried about the young girls being alone. That was the last time they were seen alive.

Two days later at 1:30 pm police were called out to a freeway ramp near Forest Lawn cemetery after a highway worker found two young girls’ bodies were found.
Cynthia was found with her pink jumpsuit wrapped around her legs, the inseam had been ripped up to the genital area. There was blood and a spot of grease on the clothes.
Gina was found with her red tube top pulled around her waist, the rest of her clothes were missing. Her address book wasn’t found and neither of their underwear was found and both girls were sexually assaulted.
Both girls were originally believed to be victims of the Hillside Stranger who was also active in the area at the time.

A woman called the investigation team and told them details that had not yet been released to the public. Gina was shot in the head and the heart, the muzzle put up against her skin. Cynthia was shot twice in the head. Both were shot with a .22 calibre pistol called Raven. The woman claimed she knew the killer but refused to share either her name or the killer’s.

Eleven days later, on June 23rd at 2:15 am, an officer was patrolling Sunset Boulevard when he met a sex worker called Karen Jones. He warned her not to loiter before leaving. It was just fifteen minutes later a resident heard a woman scream outside his home. An hour after she was last seen alive, Karen’s body was found lying by the curb with blood pooling around her head, a bullet hole in her head. The bullet matched the pistol used to kill Gina and Cynthia.

Exactly four hours after Karen’s body was found the decapitated body of Exxie Wilson was found in a restaurant parking lot. Her red dress and sash were found in a dumpster by her body, the sash was cut to pieces.
At 1 am on June 27th, a wooden box was found in an alley. Inside wrapped with blue jeans and a pink “Daddy’s Girl” inscribed t-shirt, Exxie’s head was found. It appeared that the head had been frozen and scrubbed before being dumped.

Three days after Exxie’s head was found, the nude body of Marnette Comer was found in a ravine off Foothills Boulevard not too far from the freeway. The lights were visible from the freeway but they didn’t illuminate where Marnette’s body was.
She was shot three times in the chest, two of the shots matching with the previous .22 calibre bullets used. 
Marnette was last seen by her sister on May 21st, she was wearing a pink shirt with “Daddy’s Girl” written on the front and a pair of blue jeans. It’s believed she died shortly after being with her sister.

Another call came in after Marnette was discovered, the same woman claiming to know the killer on the other end. Police were able to keep the woman on the line long enough to find out she was Carol, a nurse working at Valley Medical Center in Van Nuys. Carol revealed to police that she was sexually abused by her father, her first husband sold her for sex and her second husband was emotionally abusive before he left her. She claimed to be involved with a married man, Jack Murray, who she claimed needed to dominate her during sex. She also claimed that he borrowed money from her frequently.

On August 4th, Jack Murray was performing one of his usual shows and Carol still attended all his shows. She had gotten drunk and confessed to what she and Doug had done to Jack. Realising what she had done, Carol lured Jack to his van with the promise of sex. Once she was inside, Carol shot and decapitated Jack.
Five days later and Jack’s body was found still in his van just a few blocks from his Van Nuys home. To this day, his head has never been found.
It was Jack’s death that would weigh heavy on Carol before she confessed two days later leading to the arrest of both her and Doug.

Before getting into the sentencing, there are two more murders of unidentified women that are linked with Carol Bundy and Doug Clark.

A girl was found on August 26th 1980 in Newhall, California. She was shot in the head and found wearing only a red sweatshirt. She was unrecognizable due to skeletonization. It’s believed that she was aged between 15–20, estimated to be 5'5" and white with brown hair.

The second only a few bones were found on March 3rd 1981, buried in a shallow stream bed near Bouquet Reservoir. Their skull was found with a single bullet hole through their head. Carol had confided in another nurse that she was involved in the murder of an unidentified prostitute.
The person is referred to as a prostitute nearly everywhere I saw but how is it known that they are a prostitute if they aren’t identified?

There are no images of what Jane Doe could’ve looked like.

Back to Carol and Doug’s sentences.
In court, Carol pled guilty to 2 murders, that of the Bouquet Reservoir Jane Doe and Jack Murray. She was sentenced to 52 years to life for both murders, the only reason she wasn’t sentenced to death was that Carol testified against Doug. She died from heart failure on December 9th 2003 at age 61.
Doug was charged with 6 murders being sentenced to death after being found guilty by a jury. He is still on death row to this day.