Have you heard of a serial killer called “The Sunset Slayer?” He terrorized the prostitutes in the Sunset Strip. Behind him was his girlfriend, who allowed him to assault, murder sexually, and perform necrophilia on the victims. Why would a woman do that? Let’s discuss Carol Bundy. 

Carol Bundy in her Childhood 

On August 24, 1942, Carol Ann Peters was born to Charles and Glady Peters. They both were in the entertainment industry when they met. Carol’s mom became a hairdresser when she settled down. She also had an older brother Gene who did a bit of acting. Her mother Gladys was said to have been beautiful, and so her parents thought that Carol would be like her mother. Her younger sister Vicky was born when she was around preschool age. When Carol started getting older, she started becoming overweight and also started retreating within herself. To make it even worse, Carol had to wear massive bottle glasses. This caused her to be bullied at school and home. Her siblings were mean to her, and her mother ignored her. One incident was one time Gladys locked eight-year-old Carol out of the house. Even with the girl pleading to come in, the mom ignored her. Finally, her dad Charles told his wife to let Carol in, and she did. However, she still ignored her. It reminds me of “Welcome to the Dollhouse” or “Nothing’s Fair in 5th Grade.” As a few female killers we have featured, Carol started to lose herself in fantasy and science fiction books. 

Her mother Gladys would pass away from a heart attack, and her alcoholic father, who had always been physically abusive, started to abuse Carol and Vicky sexually. He would tell them that it was their job to take their mother’s place in bed. The night of Gladys’ passing, he made 13-year-old Carol and 10-year-old Vicky decide who would go with him to bed. They played rock, paper, scissors, and Vicky lost. Carol would say that she carried the guilt inside her when she heard her sister’s cries. Sick individual. The sexual abuse would last for eight months, according to Carol, which is when Charles remarried. Her sister Vicky has a different recollection in that the sexual abuse continued. Carol would insist her man was a loving, good man. However, one thing they can agree on is that he continued being physically abusive. To Carol, he would call her fat and ugly.  

One day Carol returned to see the cat in a pool of blood. Her dad would nonchalantly tell her that he meant to kill her and the rest of the family, but he had only gotten as far as the cat before his new wife took away the gun. His wife decided that she’d had enough, and she left home and filed for divorce. 

Carol and Vicky would go to foster homes, grandmother, and uncle for a time, but they would eventually return to their father’s home. Their brother Gene had left home before Glady had passed away, so that is why he didn’t see the abuse his sisters went endured. 

 Carol became oversexualized due to the trauma. She slept with different classmates, as well as a bus driver. She also had a habit of masturbating in public to be caught and even running naked around the neighborhood at night. 

Leaving Her Childhood Home 

When she was 17, Carol left her father’s home and married a 56-year-old man who happened to be an alcoholic like her dad. She would leave her husband and start dating a man named Richard Geis. Richard seems to have been a good influence in Carol’s life and even influenced her to start writing. She seems to found success doing it. 

In 1962, her alcohol, pedophile father hung himself. This caused Carol to start going back to her self-sabotaging ways. She started having sex with numerous male and female lovers. After a while, Carol would go back to Richard. The two would move from California to Oregon. Robert would find out that Carol was working as a prostitute. He loved her so much that he offered to help her pay for nursing school. Carol went and was even the valedictorian. Robert seems to have been a positive force in Carol’s life. Even so, Carol and he parted ways romantically but remained friends. 

Carol would meet her husband Grant Bundy and would then become Carol Bundy. Everything was going well with the couple until their first son was born. Carol says that is when the beating started. What was even worse was when her second son was born, Carol’s eyesight had gotten severe to the point that she was becoming blind. Grant became even more violent. Maybe it was the stress of having to deal with a blind wife and two kids. Even so, man up. But Grant didn’t, and Carol had enough. She took her two boys and herself to a women’s shelter around 1979. Two weeks later, Carol was able to find an apartment at the Valerio Gardens apartment complex. A married couple Jeannette and Jack Murray, were the managers there. Jack started helping Carol. Jeannette didn’t feel threatened because she saw Carol as ugly and fat, and she knew that her husband’s most recent mistress was the opposite of Carol. Jack was physically abusive and a serial cheater. Therefore, Jeannette usually left him to do what he wanted.

However, Jeannette was wrong because Carol and Jack started a sexual relationship. Jack was extorting money from Carol. As I said before, Carol had a degenerative eye disorder that was making her lose her eyesight. He took her to get disability payments. Jack also lied and said Jeannette had cancer, so Carol gave him money for “Jeannette’s cancer treatments.” Carol was hoping that Jack would leave Jeannette for her. He said he would, but it would be years before that happened, but it would. Carol, during this time, started an affair with Jeannette’s younger brother.

Carol offered to pay for them to spend the weekend in Las Vegas, which they did, except it wasn’t the weekend getaway Carol imagined. Jack disappeared until he met up with her at the end of the weekend. When they got home, Carol left her suitcases in Jack’s car. Jeannette found them and brought them to Carol. Carol asked her how she was feeling. Jeanette was confused and said she was fine. This was when Carol realized that the money she was giving Jack was not for Jeannette’s imaginary cancer. 

Even so, Carol tried bribing Jeannette to leave Jack. Jeannette said she would take the money, but only if Jack agreed. Carol was excited until Jack came and told him that he would not leave his wife. 

In January 1980, Carol went to a country-western bar that Jack played at. However, she saw him having a good time with Jeannette. She was devastated until she saw a man across the room. His name was Doug Clark. 

Sunset Slayer

Doug Clark seemingly moved in almost right away. He asked one night if he could come over for dinner. Carol was a bit hesitant cause of her sons, but she said sure, and Doug never left. Even though he didn’t pay for anything in the apartment, Carol was fine because her job as a nurse covered the cost of the household. It was even more sickening that she was doing this because Doug was sadistic. Carol was so enamored that she became like his slave, who did whatever he wanted her to do. Very similar to Karla Homolka.

Carol’s oldest son was old enough now to see what was happening. He begged his mom to leave Doug. Instead of leaving Doug, who was no good, carol didn’t, and Doug and her would beat the boy. 

He would have sex with multiple women, usually very young-looking ones and in front of Carol. Doug would tell Carol that she was no longer physically attracted to him. Carol would allow him to. She even started participating by becoming his photographer. Even when his twisted fantasies turned to pedophilia, carol, who was a mother, still complied.  

One night, Doug brought an 11-year-old girl to the apartment. The girl was in front of a rollerskating rink and he talked her into getting into his car. With carol snapping pictures, Doug sexually assaulted the young girl. The girl left alive and never told anyone.

Before the murders, Doug came home covered in blood. He picked up a young prostitute named Charlene. Doug requested oral in the car, and before she could, he started stabbing her repeatedly. The girl survived the vicious attack, but Doug was unfortunately not caught.

Murders

A couple of months later, on June 11, 1980, Doug picked up two runaways, half-sisters, 15-year-old Cindy and 16-year-old Gina, at a bus stop. Pointing a gun at the girls, he forced the teen girls to perform fellatio on him. He would run home excited to tell Carol that he shot him in the head right after each made him climax. The two girls were found the following day near the Ventura Freeway. Before he placed the girls’ bodies there, Doug brought them home. He placed the bodies on a mattress and practice necrophilia. 

Carol did call the police and told them what her boyfriend Doug did. However, the police didn’t take her seriously.

Two weeks later, on June 24, 1980, 24-year-old prostitute Karen Jones was found dead. Shot in the head as well. Later that same day, a headless body was found. Even so, they found out the victim was 20-year-old Exxie Wilson. What happened to her head? Well, Doug brought Exxie’s head home. He then told Carol to put makeup on the face. She would say in an interview, “We had a lot of fun with her. I was making her up like a Barbie with makeup.” Necrophilia also happened with the head. A few days later, Exxie’s head was found in a wooden box. 

The media started calling Doug Clark “The Sunset Slayer.” 

Caught

Two more victims were found. Both were shot in the heads, just like the previous victims. 

Throughout all of this, Carol was still seeing her past lover Jack Murray. She would frequent the country-western club to see him. They would talk, and Carol started telling him what Doug was doing. Jack told her that he was calling the police. Carol panicked because she didn’t want Doug to go to jail. On August 5, 1980, Carol followed Jack Murray into his van to have sex. Instead, she murdered him by stabbing him nine times and slashing his butt. She also decapitated him.   

Jack Murray’s body was found. It seems that this made Carol feel like they would eventually catch. She confessed to a coworker. She said to the other nurse, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m supposed to save lives, not take them.” The nurse called the police. When the police went into Carol’s house, they found three of the victims’ underwear. They also found pictures of the 11-year-old girl. 

Doug Clark was arrested. He tried saying that it was John Murray and Carol Bundy who murdered the victims. However, the evidence against him proved otherwise. On January 28, 1983, Doug was sentenced to six counts of first-degree murder. He was given the death sentence. 

Carol Bundy was given 27 years to life plus another 25 years to life. Bundy received consecutive terms of 27 years to life on one count and 25 years to life. On December 9, 2003, Carol Bundy died of heart failure in prison. 

Closing Remarks

Carol Bundy is the epitome of looking for love in all the wrong places. She just went with abusive, sadistic sick men. This caused her to become a killer herself. Her dad caused Carol to have this twisted sense of love. She pretended everything was excellent and would do anything to keep her men. I feel awful for her sons, who said that their dad to them and put them on a plan to their grandparents on their dad’s side. I hope the boys could deal with the trauma that their mother caused and find some normalcy. 

Carol didn’t know her self-worth, and it could be because she never dealt with her childhood scars caused by a mother who treated her like she was beneath her siblings and her, and a father who decided to traumatize his daughters instead of consoling them when their mother died.