Carol Bundy was a vocational nurse in the San Fernando Valley who, in the summer of 1980, lived with the man later convicted of the "Sunset" murders of six young women in Los Angeles. On August 11, 1980, she called the police and confessed that she had killed her former lover, John Robert Murray, known as Jack. She told them that the man she lived with, Douglas Daniel Clark, was the killer the police were looking for. Clark was taken into custody that day.
In 1983 she pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder: one for Murray's death and one for her part in the killing of a young woman who has never been identified. She was sentenced to 52 years to life and died in a California women's prison in 2003. Clark was convicted by a jury of six counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. He died on death row in 2023. The two have been known for decades as the "Sunset Strip Killers", but the six Sunset murders were his convictions, not hers. Her convictions were for two killings, one of which she carried out alone.
Only the outline of her early life was reported. Los Angeles Magazine, in a 2020 account of the case, described a childhood in an abusive home with parents who were violent alcoholics, and a first husband who was also abusive. At her sentencing in 1983, her lawyers told the court, as UPI reported, that she had been abused as a child, had been a battered wife, and was not mentally sound.
By late 1979 she was a nurse in Van Nuys and the mother of two sons, who lived with her. Los Angeles Magazine gave her age then as 37. The defense in Clark's trial described her as a vocational nurse, and that is how news reports still described her more than four decades later.
In late 1979 she lived in an apartment complex that Murray managed. The California Supreme Court's 1992 opinion in Clark's appeal describes Murray as her lover at that time. Los Angeles Magazine called the relationship on again and off again.
John Robert Murray managed apartments and sang. In the evenings he sometimes performed at a country-western club in the North Hollywood area. A family friend, who was a teenager in 1980 and whose family shared a driveway with the Murrays, told Fox News in 2023 that Murray was working his way toward a career as a performer, and that the boy had looked up to him. Murray was married. Fox News reported that he left a wife and a newborn baby. His widow told the court at Bundy's sentencing that she feared for her children's safety if Bundy were ever released, UPI reported, and asked for the longest sentence the law allowed.
Bundy met Douglas Daniel Clark in December 1979, at the country-western club where Murray sang, according to the court record. Los Angeles Magazine placed the meeting around Christmas and said she had gone there to watch Murray perform. Clark was 31. The magazine described him as the son of a well-off family and a former member of the Air Force who had a habit of seducing lonely older women he met in bars. He worked as a licensed steam engineer at a plant in Burbank, the court record says.
Early in 1980, in January or February by the court's account, Clark moved into Bundy's apartment in Van Nuys, where she lived with her sons. In late June 1980 they agreed to take an apartment together in Burbank, a few blocks from Clark's job. He moved in about a week before she did.
Bundy told police in 1980 that she had been "overwhelmed" by Clark's dominance and charm and had fallen in love with him, City News Service reported in 2023.
In April 1980, the court record says, Bundy bought two .25-caliber Raven pistols at a Van Nuys pawnshop at Clark's direction. One, nickel-plated, was later matched to every bullet recovered from the six women in Clark's case. Clark kept one gun and Bundy the other, but he had access to both.
She also owned the two cars that became central evidence. Clark had nearly constant use of her blue Buick station wagon, which she sold on July 17, 1980, and regular use of a Datsun she bought. Bullets and casings from one of the Raven pistols were later found in both cars, according to the court.
A jury convicted Clark of each of these murders; Bundy was not reported charged with any of them.
On April 27, 1980, at about 10 p.m., a woman was attacked. She survived. Clark was convicted of attempted murder and mayhem for that attack, but the California Supreme Court reversed both convictions on appeal in 1992.
Marnette Comer was 17, according to Fox News. Bundy testified that Clark told her he had killed a girl he called "Foothill", meaning Comer, around May 31, 1980. Her body was found on June 30, 1980, in the Los Angeles area. Los Angeles Magazine wrote that Clark is reported to have begun killing on his own, starting with Comer.
Cynthia Chandler, 16, and Gina Marano, 15, were stepsisters from Huntington Beach. Los Angeles Magazine wrote that they often ran away from home and spent time on the Sunset Strip. The court found that they were probably killed on June 11, 1980, or in the early hours of June 12. Their bodies were found in the Los Angeles area on June 12. Around June 12 or 13, Bundy testified, Clark telephoned her at work and told her to watch the television news about two teenage girls whose bodies had been found. He later told her he had killed them.
Karen Jones and Exxie Wilson were killed between midnight and 2 a.m. on June 23, 1980, the court found. Both were working as prostitutes. Wilson was 20 and had come to Los Angeles from Arkansas, Los Angeles Magazine reported; it described Jones as her friend and co-worker. Fox News gave Jones's age as 25. Both bodies were found in the Los Angeles area on June 23. Bundy testified that Clark came to her at about 4:30 or 5 in the morning that day and told her he had killed two prostitutes.
The sixth victim in Clark's case has never been identified. She is known in the court record as Jane Doe 18. Her body was found on August 26, 1980, in the Antelope Valley, after Clark's arrest. Bundy testified that Clark told her, in late July or early August, that he had killed a prostitute he picked up in Hollywood.
From June 1980, Bundy knew that Clark was killing young women. The court record says she learned of his involvement in June. By her own testimony she helped him dispose of evidence after the killings and helped clean out a garage he rented in Burbank. In the court's account, what she knew of the six murders came from what Clark told her afterward. The opinion does not place her at any of the six killings in his case.
Los Angeles Magazine gave a different and broader account in 2020. It wrote that after Clark told her what he had done, she joined him in the killing of a woman they picked up in Hollywood.
That killing is the second count in Bundy's guilty plea. The woman has never been identified. UPI reported in 1983 that Bundy admitted helping Clark kill her, and that the woman's remains had been found in a rural canyon in 1981. Los Angeles Magazine described her plea as an admission that she handed Clark the gun used to kill an unidentified sex worker.
Whether this woman is the same person as Jane Doe 18 in Clark's case is not settled. The court record dates the discovery of Jane Doe 18 to August 26, 1980; UPI's 1983 report dates the discovery of the woman in Bundy's case to 1981. Both were unidentified and both cases involved a woman picked up in Hollywood, but no report connects the two.
Los Angeles Magazine wrote that she had confided in Murray. By her own account, as the court record gives it, she came to fear that he would go to the police about the killings she had learned of. UPI reported in 1983 that she said she shot him so that he could not testify against Clark. The California Supreme Court's opinion records that she shot Murray, that she gave fear of his going to the police as her reason, and that Clark helped her dispose of evidence afterward.
Murray was killed in his van. His body was found in Van Nuys on August 9, 1980, Los Angeles Magazine reported. The court record places the discovery on the night of August 9 to 10. That same night, according to the court, Clark went to his workplace to collect the pistols; Bundy had asked him to get rid of them.
Los Angeles Magazine reported that Bundy told co-workers she had taken lives. Los Angeles Magazine quoted her as saying she was supposed to save lives, not take them. Her co-workers contacted the police, the magazine reported.
On August 11, 1980, Bundy telephoned the police and confessed to killing Murray. In the same statement she accused Clark of the Sunset murders and said she had known since June that he was involved, the court record says. Clark was taken into custody that day, at first on suspicion of involvement in Murray's death, and was then questioned about the Sunset killings.
Los Angeles Magazine wrote that her interviews unsettled detectives. Two female detectives on the case, Helen Kidder and Peggy York, were described by the magazine as California's first female detective team.
Bundy's account was not the only evidence. On August 15, 1980, a co-worker of Clark's found the two Raven pistols hidden in a cosmetic bag high in the boiler room at the plant where Clark worked. Ballistics tests showed that every bullet recovered from the six victims in his case had been fired from the nickel Raven.
The court listed other evidence. Two witnesses identified Clark's voice from recordings of telephone calls they had received. Telephone records linked calls to a number connected to his workplace. Blood the court described as matching was found on a painting from the apartment, on a boot print in his rented garage, and in Bundy's Buick. Officers recovered slugs and casings traced to the Raven from the Buick, and a bullet from the nickel Raven from the passenger door of the Datsun. Clark told police he carried a .25-caliber automatic in his boot and that he knew one of the victims.
Jury selection in Clark's trial began on September 7, 1982, before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ricardo A. Torres. Clark represented himself from October 13, 1982, with two lawyers on standby. The court revoked it on December 6, 1982, and his lawyers conducted the rest of the trial.
His defense was that Bundy and Murray were the real killers and that Bundy had killed Murray to frame him. In his opening statement he promised to prove it. He testified that he had not committed the murders and blamed Murray, though, as the Supreme Court later noted, without any supporting evidence. Letters he wrote to Bundy urged her to testify that Murray was the killer.
Bundy did not testify for the prosecution. She took the stand only when the defense called her. Before she testified, the district attorney granted her immunity. She did not implicate Murray. She testified that Clark had committed the crimes, and much of what she said came from what he had told her.
The jury convicted Clark of six counts of first-degree murder, with multiple-murder special circumstances and findings that he personally used a firearm. It also convicted him of a count involving human remains, and of attempted murder and mayhem. UPI reported that the verdicts came in January 1983. The jury set the penalty at death. On March 16, 1983, he was sentenced in Los Angeles County to six consecutive death sentences plus further terms on the other counts, and he was received on death row on March 24, 1983, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Bundy faced two counts of first-degree murder. Shortly before her own trial was to begin, she pleaded guilty to both, UPI reported. Los Angeles Magazine gave the date of the plea as May 2, 1983. The prosecution did not seek the death penalty, according to UPI. Fox News reported in 2023 that she avoided a death sentence through a plea deal tied to her testimony against Clark.
In court she called herself a "reluctant partner", according to Los Angeles Magazine, and said it had been "a fantasy that just got badly out of control."
She was sentenced on May 31, 1983, to 52 years to life. UPI reported that she would not be eligible to be considered for parole for 26 years. She was 40.
At the sentencing her lawyers pointed to her history of abuse as a child and in marriage and to her mental state. The prosecution asked that she never be freed. Murray's widow asked for the maximum term and told the court that Bundy should be locked away for good.
Bundy served her sentence in the California state prison system. She died in 2003, at 61, at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, City News Service reported in 2023. Fox News reported that she died in December 2003. Los Angeles Magazine reported that she died of heart failure.
On July 30, 1992, the California Supreme Court affirmed Clark's six murder convictions and his death sentence. It reversed the attempted murder and mayhem convictions and set aside all but one of the multiple-murder special-circumstance findings. Two justices dissented on questions about his right to represent himself.
Clark spent the rest of his life on death row at San Quentin. He maintained that he was innocent, Los Angeles Magazine reported. He died of natural causes on October 11, 2023, at 75, at an outside medical facility, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced; the Marin County coroner was to determine the cause.
Accounts of Bundy have never agreed on how much of the summer of 1980 was her doing. She presented herself as a reluctant partner drawn in by a dominant man. Her lawyers argued that years of abuse had damaged her. Clark, for his part, blamed her and Murray for everything.
Others who studied the case saw her differently. Los Angeles Magazine quoted the journalist Mark McNamara, who interviewed her in jail, as writing that she seemed driven by real sociopathy. Louise Farr, author of The Sunset Murders, a book about the case, told the magazine that after hours with the pair she had trouble sleeping, and called them both manipulators.
Murray's death left a widow and a baby. When Clark died in 2023, the family friend who had known Murray as a boy told Fox News that he was glad both Bundy and Clark were gone, that he blamed Clark almost as much as Bundy because Clark was the reason Murray was killed, and that his one regret was that his mother and stepfather had not lived to hear the news.
Proven by final judgment against Bundy: two counts of first-degree murder, on her own guilty pleas in 1983, for the killing of Jack Murray and for her part in the killing of an unidentified woman.
Proven by final judgment against Clark, not Bundy: the murders of Marnette Comer, Cynthia Chandler, Gina Marano, Karen Jones, Exxie Wilson and the woman known as Jane Doe 18. Bundy was not convicted of any of these.
The unidentified woman in Bundy's plea: UPI (1983) says her remains were found in 1981, while the court record dates the discovery of Jane Doe 18 to August 26, 1980. Whether they are one woman or two is not settled in the reports.
Who fired the shot that killed the unidentified woman in Bundy's case: Bundy said she handed Clark the gun and he fired, according to Los Angeles Magazine. No court finding on the point has been reported.
Whether Bundy's testimony was part of a bargain: UPI says only that the prosecution did not seek the death penalty, and Fox News says she avoided it through a plea deal tied to testimony against Clark. The California Supreme Court records that she testified only when the defense called her, under a grant of immunity from the district attorney.
Fox News wrote in 2023 that the pair killed at least six people. That is wrong as a matter of law: Clark was convicted of six murders, and Bundy of two different killings.
December 1979: Bundy, a vocational nurse living in Van Nuys, meets Douglas Clark at a country-western club where Jack Murray sometimes sings.
January or February 1980: Clark moves into Bundy's Van Nuys apartment.
April 1980: at Clark's direction, Bundy buys two .25-caliber Raven pistols in Van Nuys.
April 27, 1980: a woman survives an attack; Clark's later convictions for it are reversed in 1992.
Around May 31, 1980: Marnette Comer, 17, is killed, by Clark's account to Bundy; her body is found on June 30.
June 11 to 12, 1980: Cynthia Chandler, 16, and Gina Marano, 15, are killed; their bodies are found on June 12.
June 1980: Bundy learns that Clark is involved in the killings.
June 23, 1980: Karen Jones and Exxie Wilson are killed; their bodies are found the same day.
Late June 1980: Bundy and Clark agree to share an apartment in Burbank.
July 17, 1980: Bundy sells her Buick station wagon.
August 1980: Bundy shoots Jack Murray in his van; his body is found in Van Nuys on August 9.
August 11, 1980: Bundy calls the police, confesses to killing Murray and names Clark; Clark is taken into custody.
August 15, 1980: the two Raven pistols are found hidden at Clark's workplace.
August 26, 1980: the body of Jane Doe 18 is found in the Antelope Valley.
September 7, 1982: jury selection begins in Clark's trial.
January 1983: Clark is convicted of six counts of first-degree murder.
March 16, 1983: Clark is sentenced to death.
May 2, 1983: Bundy pleads guilty to two counts of first-degree murder.
May 31, 1983: Bundy is sentenced to 52 years to life.
July 30, 1992: the California Supreme Court affirms Clark's murder convictions and death sentence.
2003: Bundy dies at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, aged 61.
October 11, 2023: Clark dies on death row, aged 75.