Doug Clark and Carol Mary Bundy | The Sunset Strip Murders - Part 1
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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Episode 123. And I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg. This summer we'll feature a brand new Serial Killer Expo say that I do think you will find interesting. Most everybody are familiar with the name Ted Bundy.

I did a lengthy expose on him a good while back, on this podcast, and there's been a lot of books, films, and documentaries made about him. But did you know, dear listener, that there is another Bundy serial killer that is just as depraved and wicked as old Ted?

Join me on this journey that begins on this balmy summer night in June, as I explore the life and crimes of Doug Clark and Carol Mary Bundy, their crimes most commonly known as the Sunset Strip Murders. Lately, this podcast has gained a number of new producers, in addition to my longtime loyal TSK aficionados.

This podcast would not be possible if it had not been for my dear patrons, who pledge their hard-earned money every month. Instead of reading out their names at the end of the show, I have started to honor their contribution to the show by acknowledging them here, in the introduction to this episode. These 22 of the foremost patrons of the Serial Killer Podcast are...

Amber, Anne, Anthony, Cassandra, Christy.

Evan, James, Jennifer, Jesse, Kathy, Lisa, Lisbeth, Mark, Mickey, Monica, Philip, Russell, Samantha, Skortnia, Troy, Vanessa, and Zashia. You really helped produce this show, and you have my deepest gratitude. Thank you.

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Trying times. However, this podcast is 100% free to listen to, and I, as everyone else, have bills and audio engineers to pay.

So if and only if you can afford a cup of coffee from your local cafe, consider donating the same amount on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast to support your humble host. Donating on Patreon does not come without benefits. If you join the TSK $10 plus club, you get access to 100% exclusive

There is something unique about California.

Perhaps it's its proximity to all the hollow, fake and superficial glittering glam of Hollywood. Perhaps it's the constant burning sun. Or perhaps it's all the attractive California boys and girls that lure out so many of the world's most depraved and infamous serial killers.

The Original Night Stalker, a.k.a. The Golden State Killer, Richard Ramirez, The Hillside Stranglers, The Grim Sleeper, Randy Craft, The Freeway Killer, Juan Corona, Charles Ng, and of course, The Zodiac. They all had sunny California as their hunting ground. So imagine if you will, dear listener,

Donning some shorts and t-shirt as you watch the bright sun in the sky shine down on you It's swelteringly hot the asphalt beneath your sneakers radiate heat so that the very air itself shimmers It's around 1:00 p.m. The day is Thursday the date the 12th of June the year is

Exactly 40 years ago, at the very pinnacle of the golden age of serial murder. 1980. You're working along the Ventura Freeway embankment. Your work buddy suddenly stops dead in his tracks and lets out a surprised and terrified shout. Amongst the trash of discarded fast food containers, soda bottles, cigarette butts, plastic bags and roadkill,

Something looking more like a mannequin than a person lies almost naked face down in the thick brush next to you. When the police arrive, they ascertain that the girl has been shot in the head with a small caliber of weapon. Not far along the same road, a second girl also lay dead. She was blonde, and she had been shot as well, in the head and chest, but her pink jumpsuit had not been removed.

Nevertheless, it was slit up the leg as if whoever had killed her had been interested in some unknown but certainly depraved post-mortem activity. Apparently, the girls had been killed elsewhere and then dumped down the sloping embankment. Dumped very much in the same manner as someone might dump regular trash.

The young girls had no ID on them, and their bodies were bloated from spending several hours that day in the sun. Even for Los Angeles, it had been an unusually hot summer. The police realized that unless someone reported them missing, it would not be easy to make an identification.

The investigators did note that this discovery was near the spot where murder victim Laura Collins had been dumped in 1977, a killing that had not yet been solved. Also, Yolanda Washington, victim of the hillside stranglers, had been killed and dumped on the opposite side of the road, closer to the famous Forest Lawn Hollywood Hill Cemetery.

Her killers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, had been caught the year before and were in prison awaiting trial. But such murders often inspire copycats. It was clear that the two bodies had been placed there perhaps less than a day before and were in plain view as if the killer or killers did not care if they were found, a behavior similar to the infamous hillside stranglers.

The next day, as the Dow Jones hit 876 on the New York Stock Exchange, on Friday the 13th, Angelo Marano of Huntington Beach entered the city morgue to look at the bodies. He was distraught to discover that his worst fears had happened. The dead girls were his missing daughter, Gina, and his stepdaughter, Cynthia Chandler.

Gina was only fifteen, Cynthia sixteen. He and his wife had been looking for them for more than a day, and when he'd seen the news report, he'd gone straight to the police. Despite the family's request to be left alone, there were people who would talk about the girls to reporters, and it turned out that they were drug abusers, truants and frequent runaways.

it was not even clear when they had last been seen although they often hung out on the sunset strip where prostitutes could be picked up in other words the media made it sound as if they had indulged in risky behavior

The phrase victim-blaming was in no way common forty years ago, and the phrase those girls were asking for it behaving like that was probably banded about in lunchrooms all over California at the time. The autopsies indicated that when she was found, Cynthia had been dead for more than twelve hours, placing time of death around midnight. She clearly had been dragged across a rough place after she was killed.

Gina had been shot twice in the head, and there was no obvious sign on either girl of sexual assault, although semen was located inside the vagina of one of them. There was some discussion among the police of possible necrophilic activity. Not long after the media started reporting about the two dead girls, a call came into the station from a woman who implicated her boyfriend in the killings.

She refused to offer details that could help to locate him. She could have just been a crank caller, always an accompaniment to such crimes, but she was correct about how the murders had been done. She knew details that had not been released to the media. Her report that she and her boyfriend had recently washed the car inside and out was consistent with the way a killer would act who wished to remove evidence.

but the line was cut off and she did not call back if she had some lives could have been saved and the woman might not have ended up taking the path she did eleven days passed and two more girls were found shot in a similar fashion

Someone unnamed discovered the body of 24-year-old prostitute Karen Jones on Franklin Avenue just before dawn on the 23rd of June. She'd been shot in the head with a small caliber pistol and dumped behind a Burbank steakhouse, although some accounts say the Burbank studios. Not long after, around 7.15 a.m.,

The headless body of a woman believed to be in her twenties was discovered nude beside a steel trash bin. The bin was at the rear of a Studio City Sizzler restaurant in Los Angeles, California.

Sergeant Al Gestaldo made a brief comment for the paper, and the incident took up one paragraph, just below notices of a bomb threat that had evacuated a British plane and of an earthquake in the riverside area of California. The victim was soon identified as 20-year-old Exie Wilson, also a prostitute and a friend of Karen Jones.

A thorough search of the area failed to turn up her missing head. They had no leads as to who had murdered the girls. Then, on the morning of the 27th of June, Jonathan Caravello went down the alley near his apartment around 1 a.m. He tried to park his car, encountered resistance, and spotted an ornate wooden box that looked like some kind of treasure chest.

It had an oversized lid. Hopeful that he had found something valuable, he went over to it. Part of the wood was shattered on the outside, as if someone had hit it or thrown it. Leaning over, he unlatched the metal clasp and lifted the lid. Inside was some coarse material, but it smelled odd. Rummaging past the material, he got the surprise of his life.

Cradled in some discarded blue jeans and a t-shirt was a human head. He could see that this person was female and brunette, and that her mouth was slightly open. But he didn't pause for a closer look. It wasn't hard to see that this was no Hollywood prop. Caravello ran from the open box into his apartment to call the police. The head, which was considerably colder than the outside air,

apparently had been frozen and then washed. It was soon connected via the cut marks with XC Wilson. The head and body had been placed approximately eight blocks apart.

Inside the skull was a .25 caliber copper jacketed bullet. Ballistics analysis determined that it was likely from an automatic known as a Raven. The bullet that had killed XE was from the same gun that had killed the Step Sisters. So was the bullet that had killed Karen Jones. They had a serial killer case on their hands. One who apparently did two murders at a time.

The police held a news conference in the Parker Center, Los Angeles Police Department, where Lieutenant Ron Lewis was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying that Wilson and Jones had come to the city only two weeks earlier with their pimp, and both were from Little Rock, Arkansas. Jones had been found about three miles from where Wilson was dumped, and two miles from where the stepsisters were found.

The pimp, who went by the name Albright, was questioned but was not considered a suspect.

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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash SerialKiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SerialKiller. In fact, they had no suspects for these four murders and would not even make a public statement that they were linked. Jones said that he did not wish to compromise the investigation with speculations.

It did say that it was likely that Wilson's head had been placed in the alley only a few hours before it had been found, which the press took to mean that her killer had kept the head with him or her for a few days. Jones insisted that the purpose of the conference was not to discuss evidence, but to solicit help from the public.

In particular, he wanted to urge some anonymous callers who had contacted police early in the investigation to call again. The murder rate in the City of Angels that year reached an all-time high, as had the number of serial killers at large over the past several years, and people were calling the city the world's murder capital.

The intense heat wave only exacerbated the violence.

The Hillside Stranglers, killing cousins, had been arrested for a string of murders from 1977 to 78. Team killers Lawrence Bitteker and Ray Norris had tortured and murdered at least five young women in 1979. An unknown killer was targeting hapless men on Skid Row, and since 1972 someone had killed and dumped over 40 young men along the freeways south of the city.

the primary suspect was william bonin there were several other killers who remained unidentified and at large and now the police apparently had someone new to consider the area homicide resources were stretched to the limit no one was safe

Women, men, old, young, everyone was being targeted by killers. And the law-abiding citizens lived in fear, never knowing if they might be next. It wasn't long before snake hunters, roaming around a ravine in the San Fernando Valley on the 30th of June, north of the Golden State Freeway, found the mummified remains of a fifth victim.

She was hidden under an old mattress and was quickly linked to the series, which had acquired a name in the news, the Sunset Strip Murders. Only her reddish-blonde hair was visible to those who found her. The medical examiner believed her to be between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, adding that she was about five foot seven. Her stomach was

appeared to have been slit open, and she'd been shot three times with a small caliber pistol. She had been dead at least three weeks, placing her first in line in the series of five. In another press conference, homicide detectives displayed the box in which X.C. Wilson's head had been found.

offering reporters a chance to photograph it in the hope that someone might recognize its distinctive style. It was described in one article as a stained pine box, crudely made, 10 inches wide, 12 inches high, and 8 inches deep, with a brass clasp in front, brass ring decorations, and a metal border.

Many people called in to the police to say that the boxes, like the one displayed, could be purchased at Kmart and Newbody stores throughout the area. Detectives checked on this but found no other boxes like the one in their possession. The clothing inside, jeans with the crotch cut out and a t-shirt that said Daddy's Girl had drawn no additional leads. Then the first victim was identified.

She turned out to be 17-year-old Marnette Comer, a.k.a. Annette Ann Davis, from Sacramento, who had a history of running away from home, was a suspected prostitute, and apparently had met the wrong person. She had last been seen on the 1st of June. One of the bullets that had killed her was found and was proved to be linked to the four other murders.

In the meantime, the box that held Wilson's head was traced to a Texas manufacturer, Chicago Arts, which imported and distributed the Mexican-made boxes to Newbury stores in the L.A. area. They had narrowed down the possibilities to a few stores and were working on customer leads. Then, the pattern chain, another corpse, was found.

But this one was male. The police would not have thought to link it to the series of female murders, if not for a fortuitous incident. The male victim was found on the 9th of August, five days after he had been killed. He'd been left in a van that turned out to belong to him. But he was in bad shape from being locked inside during the heatwave. He was blistered, blackened and decomposing.

and his head had been severed from his body and was missing. He had been viciously stabbed nine separate times and slashed across the buttocks, from which pieces had been removed. Despite not locating his head, police soon identified him as country singer John Jack Robert Murray, 45, of Van Nuys.

The man sang part-time at the Little Nashville, a bar located two blocks from where he was found. While the killer had removed this man's head, that same person had overlooked something crucial, spent shell casing, which suggested that the victim had been shot. Aside from the beheading, it did not appear to anyone that this murder bore any association with the string of killings that the police were investigating.

But it wasn't long before they discovered that Murray had not been murdered by the Sunset Strip Killer. His demise had apparently come at the hands of a woman who claimed on the phone to be the Sunset Strip Killer's girlfriend. She had broken down on the 11th of August where she worked at the Valley Medical Center in Van Nuys.

telling some co-workers that she had taken lives, and those who heard her say this had called the police. This woman's name was Carol Bundy, and she was an overweight, 37-year-old vocational nurse who was apparently involved with a man named Douglas Clark. The police went to Bundy's home, arrested her, and confiscated what she handed them.

It turned out to be three pairs of panties that she said had been taken from the victims, as well as a photo album of Clark performing sexual acts with an 11-year-old neighbor girl. She also admitted that she had killed Jack Murray herself. Another team had already arrested Clark in Burbank, where he worked as a boiler engineer for the Juergens Corporation.

He went to jail charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor and with aiding and abetting a murder suspect. While awaiting Clark's hearing, police had time to search for evidence of the more serious crimes of which Bundy was now accusing him of. His bail was set at $500,000 and he was assigned a public defender. It was an unusually high figure for bail

But the police feared that if Clark were freed, he would destroy evidence needed for a murder investigation. At Clark's workplace, a co-worker stumbled across the place in the boiler room where Clark had stashed the .225 caliber Raven automatics. The worker turned them in and the police lab linked one of them via ballistics test to the five known victims.

clark was charged with those five murders a pathologist got to work to determine if the same person had beheaded both murray and x e wilson but he determined that two different people had used two different knives just as bundy was telling them

Commander William Booth would not speculate for the press on the motives for the murders or how the two suspects were related, but he was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, and I quote, "...it is believed in several of the killings that sexual activity was involved." End quote.

Carol Bundy was arraigned on the 13th of August, 1980, in the murder of John Murray, an order held without bail until her preliminary hearing in two weeks. The complaint noted that Murray had been killed because he was a witness to a crime, and Bundy wanted to prevent him from offering testimony.

Reporters asked police if Murray had been the anonymous caller who had offered important information, but they declined to say. In fact, the media would eventually learn that it was Carol Bundy herself who had called after the murders of the stepsisters. As often happens in cases of killer couples,

These two killers turned on each other, attempting to place blame for the murders on anyone but themselves. Eventually, their sordid story unfolded, at least according to Carroll, who willingly confessed in detail to police, authors and journalists, and also in court. Clark had his own story, but no one at the time took him seriously.

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And so ends part one of this tale of the Bundy serial killer you probably hadn't heard about. I hope you enjoyed listening to me

telling it to you. The next episode, number 124 in number, will continue the tale of the Sunset Strip murders. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. Finally, I wish to thank you, dear listener, for listening.

If you like this podcast, you can support it by donating on patreon.com slash theserialkillarpodcast, by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, facebook.com slash theskpodcast, or by posting on the subreddit theskpodcast. Thank you, good night, and good luck.

Welcome to the Related Podcast. My name is Carly Bible. And my name is Amanda Bible. And we are two sisters that are obsessed with inner and outer beauty and everything in between. We hope to inspire you and bring you behind the scenes to discuss all things related to our lives. And nothing is off limits. You can download new episodes every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Podcast One.