On 23 June, two more females were found, shot in a similar fashion. The first body found was that of prostitute Karen Jones, 24. She had been shot in the head with a small-calibre pistol. Her body was found behind a restaurant in Burbank. Not long after the first body was found, the headless body of a naked woman believed to be in her twenties was discovered beside a rubbish bin at the rear of another restaurant in Los Angeles. The body was soon identified as that of Exxie Wilson, aged 21, also a prostitute and a friend of Karen Jones. A thorough search of the area failed to find her missing head.
On the morning of 27 June, Jonathan Caravels went down the alley near his apartment at around 1am. He tried to park his car, encountered resistance and spotted a wooden box with 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, which smelt of something odd. Rummaging past the material, he got the surprise of his life. Wrapped in 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, immediately calling the police. An early crime scene examination revealed that the head was considerably colder than the outside air and may have been in a deep freeze and then washed. It didn’t take long for them to realise that the head was that of Exxie Wilson. Inside the skull was a .25-calibre copper-jacketed bullet. Ballistics analysis determined that it was probably from an automatic known as a Raven and that the bullet that had killed Exxie was from the same gun that had killed the step-sisters and Karen Jones. They now knew they had a serial killer on their hands – one who had apparently committed two murders at the same time – but decided not to release all the details to the press.
Snake hunters searching the undergrowth discovered another body, this time in the San Fernando Valley. They came across an old mattress, beneath which were the mummified remains of another woman. The medical examiner believed she was about 17 years old. Her stomach appeared to have been slit open, and she had been shot three times with a small-calibre pistol. She had been dead at least three weeks, placing her first in line in the series of five; police feared that there could be more victims in wilderness areas. The body was later identified as that of Marnette Comer (aka Annette Ann Davis) from Sacramento. She had a history of running away from home and was a suspected prostitute. She had last been seen on 1 June. The bullets taken from her body had come from the weapon that had killed the other females.
On 9 August, the headless body of a man was found locked inside a van; it had started to decompose. The victim had been viciously stabbed nine separate times and also slashed across the buttocks, from which pieces had been removed. It was believed the man had been killed some five days previously. Police soon identified him as country singer John ‘Jack’ Robert Murray, 45, who sang part-time at Little Nashville, a bar located close to where he was found. The killer had removed Murray’s head, but had left behind shell casings, which suggested that the victim had been shot. Aside from the beheading, it did not appear that this murder was connected with the string of killings that the police were investigating. Police recalled the anonymous phone call from the mystery woman who had claimed on the phone to be the killer’s girlfriend and given police precise details about the murder. This woman would turn out to be 37-year-old Carol Bundy (b. 1942), who worked at a local medical centre.
On 11 August, Bundy had become upset at work and told other staff that she had been involved in some killings with a man called Douglas Clark (b. 1948). The police were notified and went to her home, where they arrested her. She handed them three pairs of knickers that she said had been taken from the victims, as well as a photo album of Clark in compromising positions with an 11-year-old girl. She also admitted that she had killed Jack Murray herself.
Another team of officers had gone to arrest Clark. They did not have any direct evidence at that time but managed to charge him with minor unconnected offences. They needed time to gather more evidence. Equally, they were concerned that he would destroy the evidence they needed for a murder conviction. Then the police had a lucky break. At Clark’s workplace, a workman stumbled across the place in the boiler room where Clark had hidden two .25-calibre Raven automatics. They were given to the police and ballistics tests positively linked one of the guns to the five known victims. As a result, Clark was charged with those five murders. In the interim period, a pathologist tried to determine whether the same person had beheaded both Murray and Exxie Wilson, but he concluded that two different people had used two different knives.
Carol Bundy was arraigned on 13 August 1980 for the murder of Jack Murray and was held without bail until her preliminary hearing two weeks later. The prosecution case was that Murray had been killed because he was a witness to a crime whom Bundy wanted to prevent from giving evidence.
It often happens that when two killers are finally caught they try to blame each other. This turned out to be such a case. Carol Bundy stated that she had been having an affair with Jack Murray for some time, and then one night in December 1979 she met Douglas Clark, who started to pay her some attention. Eventually she moved in with Clark, but stated that she still continued to have sex with Murray. Clark dominated her, persuading her to buy two guns and register them in her name. He also had weird sexual fantasies. He wanted her to bring other women into their relationship for a threesome and he also got her to entice young girls into the apartment, specifically an 11-year-old neighbour. The girl was photographed naked and persuaded to get into the shower with the adults. Bundy did not seem to think this was wrong. Instead, she later admitted, she did not feel that this kid was ‘competition’, and believed that letting Clark have this experience was just a way to please him. It was a ‘gift’. They even made a photo album of pictures of the girl with him, which Carol later turned over to the police.
Bundy told the police that by spring 1980, Clark had turned to murder. One day in April, he came home covered in blood. He lied about how the blood came to be on him but she discovered a bag of bloody women’s clothing in the car. Clark then told her about Gina and Cynthia, the two step-sisters found murdered in June. He said he had picked them up at a bus stop. He made Cynthia perform oral sex on him and ordered Gina to look away. When she refused, he shot her in the head. Then he shot Cynthia. When it appeared that they were not dead, he shot them both again and took the bleeding corpses to a rented garage. There he played with them, posing them for his entertainment, and raped the bodies. In the early hours of the morning, he dumped the bodies. Clark also told Bundy about another murder he had committed – a male victim. His name was Vic Weiss and he had been found in the boot of a Rolls-Royce at the Sheraton Universal Hotel. The following morning, he took Bundy out to a ravine and pointed out an area where he had dumped a prostitute’s body after shooting her (this was the mummified victim, the fifth one to be found), but he had kept her knickers, he bragged, as a souvenir. He described the entire incident in explicit detail, getting her as excited as he was about sexual murder. She had once been a partner in his violent fantasy life and she had seen that as a sign of real intimacy. She wanted to taste the feeling of murder and he was quite prepared to fulfil her desires.
On 20 June, Bundy went out cruising around with Clark. They found a young prostitute and lured her into the car on the pretext of giving Clark oral sex. Bundy climbed into the back armed with one of the guns; Clark had the other. They had planned this murder carefully. Bundy was supposed to signal whether or not she wanted to go ahead and shoot the girl herself, but things went wrong. Clark apparently became angry at something the prostitute was doing, so he reached for the gun and shot her in the head. He then covered the body, drove off and then dumped it a short time later, before taking Bundy home. Clark soon returned to the same location, where he picked up Exxie Wilson. He drove her to the Sizzlers restaurant on Ventura Bo
ulevard at Studio City. She began to perform oral sex. While doing this, he shot her in the head. In an involuntary reaction, she bit his genitals, which angered him. He got a sharp knife from the boot of his car and cut off her head, placing it inside a rubbish sack. He drove off, leaving the body behind in the car park behind the restaurant.
He then came across Karen Jones. He had seen her earlier with Exxie Wilson. She agreed to get into the car with him, unaware that her friend’s head was on the back seat. He shot her and pushed her out of the car near the Burbank studios. She was quickly found and Exxie’s body was discovered on the same day a few hours later. He drove back to Bundy’s place and put the head in the freezer. Over the next three days, they both used the severed head as a sex toy, on one occasion making it up to look like Barbie. Clark also used it to perform necrophilic oral sex and he even took it into the shower with him. He then placed it in a box and discarded it in an alley.
By now, police had amassed enough evidence to charge Clark with the murders of six women and one attempted murder. He went to trial in October 1987 and was found guilty on all counts on 28 January 1988, receiving the death penalty. He is still on death row in San Quentin prison, and still protests his innocence, stating that Carol Bundy was the main perpetrator of the murders. He has also suggested that Jack Murray was involved with her in most of the murders.
Carol Bundy came to trial on 2 May 1983 and pleaded guilty to the murder of Jack Murray. She was spared the death penalty for pleading guilty and making full confessions. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with a chance of parole in 2012. However, she died in prison of heart failure on 9 December 2003.
THEODORE ROBERT BUNDY
Ted Bundy (b. 1946) is looked on as one of – if not the most – notorious serial killers in the history of American crime. He spent his early years going through high school just like an ordinary child. But he became a compulsive thief, stealing from shops. He was arrested twice for shoplifting. He also had a fascination with images of sex. Through his college years, he was described as a handsome, articulate young man.
The first serious attack on a female Bundy was known to have committed took place on 4 January 1974. At around midnight, Bundy entered the basement bedroom of 18-year-old Joni Lenz, a dancer and student at the University of Washington. Bundy proceeded to hit her repeatedly with a metal rod from her bed frame while she slept, as well as sexually assaulting her with a speculum. Her room-mates found Lenz the following morning, barely alive and lying in a pool of her own blood. She survived the attack but had no memory of it and suffered permanent brain damage.
On 31 January 1974, Bundy struck again. His next victim was Lynda Ann Healy, another University of Washington student. He broke into her room, knocked her unconscious, dressed her in jeans and a shirt, wrapped her in a bed sheet and carried her away. A basement door leading directly outside was unlocked and was no doubt the point of entry. Healy may even have willingly let Bundy in. Because authorities mistakenly believed at first that foul play was not involved, a forensic examination was never carried out in her bedroom and an apparent semen stain on her bed was never tested. A year passed before her decapitated remains were found in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle.
On 12 March, Bundy kidnapped and murdered a 19-year-old student, Donna Gail Manson, who was on her way to a jazz concert held on campus. She was never seen again, dead or alive.
On 17 April, Susan Rancourt, another student, disappeared from the college campus of Central Washington State College in Ellensburg. She was last seen at a meeting on the campus earlier that day. A man in a sling had been observed the same night attempting to obtain help getting a heavy load of books to his car.
On 6 May, another student, Kathy Parks, fell prey to Bundy. She was last seen on the campus of Oregon State University. She was not reported missing until the middle of the month. Her disappearance was followed by the disappearance of Brenda Ball, who was last seen leaving a tavern on 1 June. She was not reported missing for three weeks.
Bundy now had an insatiable urge to murder. His next victim was Georgeann Hawkins, a student at the University of Oregon. In the early hours of 11 June, she walked from her boyfriend’s dormitory residence to her house, a distance of no more than 30yd. She was last seen by one of her boyfriend’s fraternity approximately halfway down the alley that separated the two buildings. Bundy had been waiting in a car park behind Hawkins’s house, using crutches and pretending to have trouble carrying his briefcase to his car. Hawkins agreed to assist him and he walked her to his waiting Volkswagen Beetle where he had laid a crowbar by the tyre. When they approached the vehicle, Bundy hit Hawkins over the head, knocking her unconscious. He then handcuffed her, pulled her into his vehicle and drove away. He raped and strangled her at a remote location, before disposing of her body.
Only six days after Hawkins’s disappearance, Brenda Baker was found dead in a state park. The 15-year-old runaway had been missing since she left home on 25 May and was a known hitchhiker. Her cause of death could not be determined from her decomposed remains.
Bundy’s Washington killing continued and on 14 July he abducted Janice Ott in broad daylight, at around 12.30pm at Lake Sammamish State Park. Ott was overheard talking to a man in a white outfit with a cast on his arm who said his name was Ted and that he needed help with his sailing boat. Though she seemed annoyed at the request, she left with the man and was never seen alive again.
Denise Naslund disappeared at around 4.30pm the same afternoon. She left her boyfriend to use the toilet. She was seen at the toilet but never made it back to the beach where her boyfriend was waiting.
Bundy had now become careless and complacent. All his previous murders had been at night, but now he had been seen in broad daylight. Five different women told police they had seen a man wearing a white tennis outfit with his arm in a sling who called himself Ted. The witnesses said the man had approached girls on separate occasions asking for help unloading a sailing boat from his car. One went with Bundy as far as his Volkswagen, where there was no sailing boat, before refusing to accompany him further. Two more witnesses testified to seeing the same man approach Janice Ott with the same story, and to seeing Ott in his company, walking away from the beach with her bicycle. Her bicycle was found abandoned in the park the next day, but Ott herself had vanished.
The remains of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were discovered on 7 September 1974 at Taylor Mountain. Also found at the same location were an extra femur bone and vertebra believed to belong to Georgeann Hawkins. The skulls – and only the skulls – of the other missing girls, Healy, Rancourt, Parks and Ball, were found in the same location on 2 March 1975. Although years later Bundy claimed that he had also dumped the body of Donna Manson there, no trace of her was ever found.
That autumn, Bundy moved to Utah to attend law school in Salt Lake City, where he resumed killing in October. Nancy Wilcox disappeared from Holladay, near Salt Lake City, Utah, on 2 October. Wilcox was last seen riding in a Volkswagen Beetle, a car that Bundy still owned.
On 18 October, Bundy murdered Melissa Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of a local police chief. After abducting her, Bundy raped, buggered and then strangled her with her own stockings. He stuffed dirt and twigs inside her vagina and touched up her make-up before disposing of her body, which was found nine days later.
On 31 October, Bundy claimed his next victim. She was Laura Aime, aged 17, who disappeared when she left a Hallowe’en party. Her remains were found nearly a month later by ramblers on the banks of a river in American Fork Canyon. She was naked, had been beaten beyond recognition, buggered and strangled with one of her own socks.
In Murray, Utah, on 8 November 1974, Carol DaRonch narrowly escaped with her life. Bundy approached her, claiming to be Officer Roseland of the Murray Police Department. He lured her into his car, hit her over the head and then attempted to place her in handcuffs. Fortunately, only one wrist was secured. She wrenched her door open with the other hand, rolled out of the car on
to the highway and escaped with contusions to the head, still with one of her wrists in the handcuffs. Police were unable to obtain any fingerprints from the handcuffs, but they did find traces of blood on her coat – it might have been Bundy’s, but there was not a sufficient quantity for any testing.
A few hours later, perhaps frustrated by the failed abduction of DaRonch, Bundy abducted Debby Kent, aged 17, who was attending a school play. She had left the play early to pick up her brother, but her car never left the car park. She disappeared, never to be seen again. Residents nearby reported hearing screams from the car park and a handcuff key that fitted the cuffs left on DaRonch’s wrist was later found on the ground of the car park. Debby Kent was never found, dead or alive.
In 1975, while still attending law school at the University of Utah, Bundy shifted his crimes to Colorado. On 12 January, Caryn Campbell disappeared from the Wildwood Inn at Snowmass, Colorado, where she had been on holiday with her fiancé and his children. Her body was found on 17 February by the side of the road a few miles from the motel. She had severe head injuries and deep cuts on her body.
Four weeks later on 15 March, ski instructor Julie Cunningham from Vail, Colorado disappeared. Bundy later confessed that he used crutches to approach Cunningham, after asking her to help him carry some ski boots to his car. At the car, Bundy hit her with his crowbar and incapacitated her with handcuffs, later strangling her. Her body was another one never found.
The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 18
