Douglas Daniel Clark Biography

In 1980, a famous Los Angeles, California, boulevard became the haunt of an unlikely pair of serial killers. Together, Douglas Daniel Clark and Carol Mary Bundy prowled Sunset Strip, legendary for its Hollywood nightlife. The 32-year old Clark was a suave womanizer, and Bundy, five years older, was a depressed, overweight divorcee. Their six-month old relationship had descended from obsession and abuse into a lurid vortex of murder, decapitation, and necrophilia. For several weeks, Clark, sometimes with Bundy beside him, drove his blue station wagon up and down the boulevard in search of prostitutes to slay. The crimes ended only when Bundy could take it no more.

The couple's backgrounds could scarcely have been more dissimilar. Born in Pennsylvania in 1948, to a Navy family, Clark spent his childhood traveling around the world. Expelled from his military academy and later abruptly discharged from the Air Force, he held several jobs before settling into a position in the boiler room of a Jergens lotion factory in 1979. After his marriage failed, he took to seducing women with weight problems, boasting of his record of one night stands. Bundy was exactly his type, a nurse whose history of childhood beatings and sexual abuse had left her with low self-esteem. A 37-year old divorcee with two children, who recently had fled for safety to a battered women's shelter, Bundy quickly fell for Clark's endearments. She had struck out attempting to bribe a woman to leave John Murray, the man she loved; Clark would do.

Swiftly, the relationship became abusive and criminal. Clark beat Bundy's children. He had other sexual partners. Ultimately he brought home women as young as eleven years old, ordering Bundy to take photographs of them. Eventually these degradations were not enough; he spoke about his fantasies of committing murder. In June, words became deeds. Clark's first victims were teenaged half-sisters, lured into his car, forced to perform sex acts, and then shot in the head. Later that month, he killed two prostitutes, in one instance decapitating twenty-year old Exxie Wilson and taking home her head to refrigerate.

As the media filled with stories about the so-called "Sunset Slayer," more corpses were discovered. However, Bundy gradually wavered, hinting at the crimes in a conversation with John Murray at a local bar. When they went to the parking lot to have sex in Murray's van, she shot and stabbed him to death. Bundy, believing police might identify her by the bullets in Murray's head, decapitated him. Two days later at work, she broke down. A fellow nurse listened to her agonized confession and called police, who found clothing belonging to victims in her home and a gun in Clark's boiler room.

At trial in 1982, Clark defended himself against six counts of murder. His insubstantial defense--that Bundy and Murray were the true killers--failed, and he was sentenced to death. Bundy initially pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but her defense did not succeed, either. Subsequently confessing to slaying Murray and an unidentified woman, Bundy received consecutive sentences amounting to 52 years to life in prison.