Highlighted Crime
Story of the Week -
On August 11, 1980, Carol Bundy, a nurse, confessed to co-workers her connection to the “Sunset Slayer,” the killer who had been murdering and mutilating young women in Hollywood, California, all summer. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m supposed to save lives, not take them,” she reportedly said. Her confession was relayed to police, who immediately arrested Douglas Clark, Bundy’s accomplice and boyfriend.
Bundy and Clark met in a North Hollywood bar in January.
Clark was a self-described “king of the one-night stands.” But when he met
Bundy, he soon discovered that she was willing to assist and indulge in his
sick fantasies.
In June, Clark abducted two teenagers, sexually assaulted
them, and then shot them in the head. He dumped their bodies off the freeway
and then went home to brag about it to Bundy. Two weeks later, Clark struck again,
killing two young women in separate incidents. In the second attack, Clark cut
the head off the woman and took it home, insisting that Bundy apply cosmetics
to it. Because most of his victims had been abducted from the Sunset Strip in
Los Angeles, the press had taken to calling the serial killer the “Sunset
Slayer.”
Clark proved to be more of an influence than Bundy
expected. When she blabbed about Clark’s activities to a former boyfriend, she
felt compelled to kill the man to make sure that she wasn’t implicated. On
August 5, Bundy stabbed John Murray to death and then cut off his head. Within
a week, she was tearfully confessing to her fellow nurses. During his trial in
1981, Clark tried to pin all of the murders on Bundy, but the jurors found his story
hard to believe and sentenced him to death. Bundy attempted an insanity
defense, but she eventually pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 52
years-to-life.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of seven books that includes In the
Company of Evil Thirty Years of California Crime 1950-1980. Visit Michael’s
website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchase from Amazon through the
following link:
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