Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  Carol’s confession

  Back at work, she started to arrive late and was unable to concentrate. Finally she blurted out to a colleague that Doug had killed several women and that she couldn’t take any more. She verbally handed in her resignation and her terrified co-workers didn’t exactly beg her to stay. Instead they rushed to the phone and called the police - but by the time they arrived at the hospital the killer was on her way home.

  At home, Carol phoned the police herself and asked a detective to meet her that lunchtime for a coffee. It was clear that she wanted to control the way she turned herself in. And given Carol’s level of emotional neediness she probably managed to convince herself it might turn into a romantic date.

  The detective agreed - but the police who had been to the hospital arrived at her home just then. They arrested her as she put together a bag filled with evidence against her lover. This evidence included photographs of Doug in sexually compromising positions with eleven year old Theresa - Carol was about to make him pay for spurning her. She was immediately taken into custody, as was an outwardly calm Doug.

  Carol’s side of the story

  Carol was edgy and over talkative but lucid when the police arrived and insisted on giving them the underwear that Doug had kept as trophies from his victims. She willingly admitted that she’d killed Jack and cut off his head, saying that he was ‘an asshole who deserved to die.’ She also told of the sex sessions Doug had had with Theresa, though it’s unclear if at this stage she admitted her part in the child’s abuse. Photos would be discovered of herself and Theresa together and the little girl would ultimately testify in court that Carol had been involved in many of the sexual acts. Doug Clark’s supporters believe that Carol was given immunity against her paedophiliac crimes in return for testifying against Doug.

  Even now, Carol was intent on finding herself a new man, openly propositioning one of the police officers. She talked in great detail about her sex life and said that killing was fun. When she was accompanied back to her apartment by police officers to gather further evidence she asked if they would have sex with her, explaining that it might be years before she had access to a man again. They declined.

  Carol apparently found it difficult to orgasm and needed up to an hour of manual stimulation to get there, so it’s clear that she wasn’t a nymphomaniac. It seems that she wanted sex for what it represented to her - the chance to be held close, to feel as if she mattered to someone for a while. Both of her parents had constantly told her that she was fat and ugly but she could convince herself that she was desirable as she lay in a man’s reassuring arms.

  Doug’s side of the story

  Meanwhile, Doug denied that he’d committed any of the murders. Instead he said that Carol and Jack had committed them - but Jack’s wife was able to give her dead husband an alibi for three of the homicides. Jack clearly hadn’t cut off his own head, so Doug admitted that Carol had done that. Doug added that his only crime was to help her dispose of Jack’s head in a dumpster. (It has never been found.)

  A bloody footprint found at one murder scene matched Doug’s boots and traces of blood in Doug’s car were matched to other girls that had been killed - and the girl he had stabbed but failed to kill would identify him. Later this stabbing would be removed from Doug Clark’s record as it transpired the girl had originally given a very different description of her assailant and had only been able to identify Doug Clark after being hypnotised by the authorities to supposedly recover her memory.

  Carol in jail

  In prison awaiting trial, Carol received a letter from a male prisoner who was in the same institute as Doug. She wrote back and was soon smearing her vaginal juices on the notepaper and telling him she’d done so. Even in jail she was desperate to hook a man.

  Her attitude to Doug varied from one day to the next, so that sometimes she said she’d act insane and take the full blame for the murders. At other times she said that she’d act middle class so that no one would believe she was involved with the deaths. She wrote to him ‘Remember I look innocent. Impression is worth as much as facts.’ Carol the homicidal accomplice had transmogrified into Carol the jailhouse lawyer. When it came to a sense of her own identity she was in some ways a blank slate, ready to be written upon.

  Ironically she stabilised in jail because, as her estranged sister Vicky would later put it, she no longer had to make any decisions. It’s indicative of her lonely life that whilst she was awaiting trial she didn’t have a single visitor.

  The court case

  Carol could have faced the gas chamber but instead plea bargained for a life sentence in return for testifying against Doug at his trial. There she said that he was the best lover she’d ever had and that ‘Mr Clark had virtual total control over my personality and behaviour, my wants, my desires, my dreams.’ She neglected to mention that she’d managed to break this hold the second he said that he was leaving her, the second she wanted revenge.

  She spoke of how she’d watched him kill Cathy (but she, Carol, would be charged with Cathy’s death) of how he’d brought her Exxie’s head, of how he’d told her about the murders of Exxie’s friend Karen Jones and the pretty prostitute Marnett and the half-sisters Cynthia and Gina. She added that he’d said he’d killed at least fifty times.

  Her testimony - and that of Theresa, now fourteen, plus the forensic evidence - helped convict Doug and he was sentenced to die on all six counts of murder and was sent to San Quentin to start his inevitable appeals.

  Meanwhile Carol sent the judge a Christmas card and a note that said it was a pity they couldn’t meet for coffee some time.

  She also got religion after being befriended by a religious volunteer. Carol had been ostracised by the other women because she had given evidence against Doug Clark and this is looked down upon in prison. She spent her time deciding on her defence, telling her volunteer that she wanted to ‘appear ladylike and respectable, a middle-class housewife type.’

  Carol’s sentence

  Carol had initially maintained that she was not guilty by reason of insanity. And, indeed, the jury at Doug Clark’s trial saw her as a woman to be pitied, a sad woman who needed help. But she must have known that she’d acted rationally, wearing gloves to buy the chest that they planned to dump Exxie’s head in, sending away her sons so that the apartment was free for paedophiliac sex and acts of cranial necrophilia. She’d also had the forethought to cut off Jack’s head so that the bullets couldn’t be traced to her gun.

  Apparently realising that the insanity plea was unlikely to work, Carol burst into tears on the day of her trial (May 2nd, 1983) and withdrew it. Instead she pleaded guilty to killing Jack and to killing one of the girls.

  The judge sentenced her to a minimum of twenty-five-years for the two murders, with the possibility of life imprisonment. She was given a further two years for the use of a firearm. Still intent on placating men, she sent him a thank you cartoon that she’d drawn and added that she was a decent woman and that’s why she’d ultimately gone to the police.

  She was sent to the California Institute For Women at Frontera, one of four women’s prisons in California. A photograph of her taken in the yard there in 1990 shows a woman with a placating smile and with shoulders that are slightly rounded. She is still trying to please, sending her signature to those lost individuals who collect serial killers autographs.

  Psychological profile

  So what kind of woman watches her lover kill young girls, taking part in at least one of those murders? What kind of woman kills her former lover and cuts off his head?

  Patricia Pearson, in her interesting overview about female killers When She Was Bad, suggests that Carol Bundy was a ‘highly intelligent and remorseless psychopath.’ The highly intelligent part is in doubt for Carol’s IQ only tested at 109 in prison, slightly above average. She may well have been a psychopath, though, for she showed no compassion for her victims and even told the police that - although she initially disliked the fact tha
t Doug came home covered in blood or that he wanted her to watch him shoot a prostitute - she ultimately found that killing was fun. Her psychiatrists said that she had woefully poor judgement and was unable to benefit from experience, the latter being a common psychopathic trait.

  Many sources have suggested that Carol Bundy was totally insane, that she believed she was the secret wife of the serial killer Ted Bundy. She didn’t - one of her sons once asked her if Ted was a relation and Carol looked horrified and said no. Ted went on to marry a woman called Carol, making her Carol Ann Bundy and Carol’s full name was Carol Mary Bundy. Doug Clark must have noted this for later use.

  It gave him yet another idea for his defence so he said in court that Carol was fixated on Ted Bundy and that she tried to commit a murder for every murder that Ted committed. Doug said that she ultimately planned to kill Theresa when she turned twelve because Ted had killed a girl who was twelve. Doug Clark’s supporters say that Carol wrote to Ted Bundy. This may be true as she wrote to everyone she could think of from prison.

  Two psychiatrists thought that Carol had been a volunteer in the murders, that she hadn’t been coerced. This seems likely, given that Doug was often away from the house and she could have phoned the authorities to report him. They thought that she had deep reserves of hostility towards her father and towards Jack Murray. Given the way both men treated her, this also makes sense.

  The psychiatrists didn’t say so, but it may be that she also felt such hate towards her mother who had physically and emotionally abused her for fourteen years. Gladys had been pretty and slender - as were the girls who Carol helped Doug kill.

  The psychiatrists noted that Carol liked to shock and that she would make increasingly outrageous statements until she got their attention. Her remarks were often highly sexual. Again, this isn’t surprising given that her father and most of the subsequent men in her life only showed her love when they wanted sex. The desire to shock in this way can also be a form of sadism and Carol clearly had both a strong sadistic and masochistic streak.

  Other victims

  It’s unclear just how many victims that Doug and Carol’s sadism claimed - as we’ve seen, she was charged with two deaths and he was charged with six. Some of the internet crime sites have exaggerated this and state that they ‘tortured fifty to death.’

  The number fifty has arisen because Carol suggested it in court and because there were approximately this number of corpses found in the area during their 1980 crime spree. It’s likely that they killed some of these Jane Does - but they’d have had competition from the many men and occasional other killing couples who take their violence out on highway prostitutes.

  Aftermath

  Grant Bundy, Carol’s ex-husband, killed himself within days of Carol being found guilty, as he knew he had lung cancer. His death left their two sons effectively parentless. They were then sent from foster home to foster home and didn’t see their mother again for several years. When one set of foster parents did take them to visit Carol in jail she didn’t seem apologetic about sending them away or about beating them or about failing them. She didn’t seem as pleased to see them as they’d thought she would be.

  Carol continues to see herself as a basically good woman who was briefly in thrall to a bad man. She still says she likes Doug and has told psychiatrists that her father was a good guy with whom she had an intense rapport. She will be eligible for parole in 2012 when she is seventy years old.

  12 It’s my turn

  Aileen Carol Wuornos strikes back

  Aileen was born on 29th February 1956 to Diane Pitman, a seventeen-year-old single parent. Diane had been married to Aileen’s father, Leo Pitman, since she was fifteen, but he had left her during the pregnancy. He would later be diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and would become a convicted paedophile, serving time in mental hospitals for sodomising children as young as ten. He would ultimately commit suicide, and be found hanging in his prison cell.

  Aileen never met him. She came into the world to find that she already had a year-old brother, Keith. Her young mother found it increasingly hard to cope so when the children were still infants she ran off, leaving them with her emotionally-distant parents, Lauri and Britta. They legally adopted the children and gave them their own surname of Wuornos. (Their parents had been Finnish, hence the unusual name.) The four of them lived in Rochester, Michigan, USA.

  The older couple didn’t tell Aileen and Keith that Diane was their real mum. Instead they described her as their sister - and this ‘sister’ figure soon lost touch.

  Lauri Wuornos was a heavy drinker and a violent wife-battering man. He also beat the children with a belt and constantly told them that they were evil. He had been in the army and was obsessed with discipline. He was equally cold towards his wife, a timid woman who worked in a supermarket. She failed to intervene when her husband beat the kids. There was clearly a strong humiliation - and possible sexual - aspect to the punishments for he would make little Aileen strip.

  The family had few outings and were miserable when cooped up together in their poorly heated home. Lauri wouldn’t let them open the curtains and the children weren’t allowed to bring friends back to the gloomy and draughty house. A photo of Aileen taken at her elementary school shows her as a child with backcombed fair hair and a tensely smiling mouth.

  With Lauri now drinking up to three bottles of wine a day and flying into wild rages, she had little to smile about. Britta, her pretend-mother was also drinking during Aileen’s formative years but she did so in secret. She was made desperately unhappy by her domineering husband who only allowed her to make one phone call a week.

  Aileen was often sent to school inadequately fed so she found concentration difficult. Her eyesight and her hearing were bad, which didn’t help. Bored and broke, she and Keith began to start fires for fun, using lighter fuel. Unfortunately the flames set her on fire, badly burning her face. She would bear the scars for the rest of her life, and they would doubtless make her later prostitution more difficult. At the time of the accident she was only six years old.

  Aileen Carol Wuornos’ sad, loveless life continued. All that she had was her younger brother and the various animals that lived in their dilapidated backyard. She dreamed of being a singer or an actress and tried to block out the sessions of physical - and by now possibly sexual - abuse.

  As she moved towards adolescence, she started to offer sexual favours in return for a lunchtime sandwich and a drink. By the time she was twelve she was offering the older boys sexual satisfaction in return for cigarettes and beer. She would also offer sex for mood-altering pills, anything that would take her mind off her real life. Lauri’s attitude towards her remained brutal and he was always hitting her and locking her in her room.

  Early motherhood

  At thirteen or fourteen a male friend of her grandparent’s drove her into the woods and raped her. By fourteen she was pregnant. Even today it isn’t clear who the father was. Aileen at first claimed it was the rapist’s baby, and said that Lauri wouldn’t believe that she’d been assaulted and kept calling her a harlot. Then she blamed Lauri himself (his sex life with his wife had seemingly been abysmal) then she said that she’d been having an affair with her older brother, Keith. Whilst it’s certainly true that abused siblings sometimes turn to each other for sexual comfort - Rose West used to masturbate one of her younger brothers - people who knew Keith didn’t believe that he would have acted in this way.

  Whoever the father was, he did not come forward to claim paternity and Aileen was sent to a home for unmarried mothers. There, on the 23rd March 1971, she gave birth to a boy who was immediately put up for adoption. Hopefully he had a better life than the physically and emotionally battered one that his mother had.

  A few months later Britta died. The medical explanation was liver cancer, not an unusual death in heavy drinkers, but her daughter Diane suspected that Lauri might have killed her. He certainly threatened to kill Keith and Aileen if they weren’
t removed from his home.

  Diane, Aileen and Keith’s natural mother, now said that both teenagers could come and live with her in Texas, but they refused and briefly became wards of court. Aileen soon left, dropped out of school and became a prostitute. Because she had slept with all of the local boys for money she had a very bad reputation and no one wanted to date her so she was very much alone. Keith had also lost his way by this stage and was breaking into various premises and selling the goods he found there in order to feed his increasing dependence on drugs.

  In the spring of 1976 their hated grandfather Lauri committed suicide by locking himself in his garage with the car engine running and inhaling the fumes. Aileen didn’t attend his funeral. Four months later Keith died of throat cancer. He was only twenty-one. Interestingly his father Leo’s grandfather had also died of the same disease.

  Aileen marries

  Twenty-year-old Aileen now had only one remaining relative, her estranged mother Diane. But within weeks the lonely young prostitute would acquire an elderly husband, Lewis Fell. The sixty-nine-year old found her hitchhiking and fell hopelessly in love with her. Aileen at this time still had a good figure and nice hair. To the consternation of Lewis’s acquaintances they swiftly married and he bought his new wife jewellery and a car.

  But Aileen hadn’t had the kind of childhood that makes for a stable marriage partner. She kept on drinking heavily and going out to parties without her elderly husband. She asked for more and more money and when he objected she hit him with his own walking stick. She alleges he hit her back. She also assaulted a bar room attendant, hitting him with a pool cue. She continued to drink and drive. Within weeks Lewis had a restraining order issued against her and she went back on the road as a hitchhiking prostitute.