- The 1980s was a decade
of sex, money, and greed.
Reagan was in the White House,
yuppies were on Wall Street,
and serial killers personified evil.
Their crimes were unimaginable.
The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez,
terrorized Los Angeles.
- Women were raped. They were sodomized.
This was horribly brutal.
- The Highway Hooker, Aileen Wuornos,
turned Central Florida into the killing fields.
- She reached a point in her life
where it was easier to kill.
- And the Sunset Strip Killers,
Doug Clark and Carol Bundy,
preyed upon young women in Hollywood.
- She says, "Leroy, have you ever put makeup
on a frozen head?"
She said, "God, it's a bitch."
- They were psychopaths,
dominated the evening news,
and fueled public hysteria.
- These killers demonstrated
a new level of sexual perversity.
- One of the things that bonded their relationship
was these sexual fantasies.
- She did try to look at it as female payback to the men.
- What it tells you is we're dealing with a very sick person.
- Sex, violence, and gruesome deaths.
What drove these individuals
to commit such heinous acts?
- I'm Soledad O'Brien.
This is "Mysteries and Scandals: Serial Killers of the '80s"
Horror movies like "Nightmare on Elm Street"
were big in the '80s,
but Hollywood fiction couldn't compare
to the real life nightmare happening in Los Angeles.
In the summer of 1985,
L.A. police were on high alert,
searching for a mysterious predator
on a murder binge.
The press first dubbed him The Walk-In Killer
then the Valley Intruder.
But the world would come to know him
as The Night Stalker.
In the go-go '80s,
investment bankers and New Wave pop stars
weren't the only figures who loomed large
in the age when greed was good.
A new scene stealer emerged
that grabbed headlines and appeared on TV screens--
the serial killer.
Their horrific acts of violence tinged with sex
stoked both fear and fascination
and made them infamous.
And no one epitomized this brutality
more than The Night Stalker.
- The same man is suspected
in six to eight murders and 25 to 30 attacks.
- 1985, Los Angeles.
- A pre-dawn break-in, a male victim shot,
the female occupant sexually attacked.
- Between March and July,
a series of gruesome murders paralyzed the city.
- Last night, we had everything locked up.
Rather be safe than sorry.
- The body count stood at 12 dead
with several victims who survived
the vicious attacks.
- It almost got to the point of where every weekend
you were just wondering what's going to happen.
- Law enforcement was feeling the heat.
- With each case you get much more frustrated.
How much longer is this gonna go?
- The killer struck at night.
He gained access to his victim's homes
through open doors and windows.
- There was a pattern that if he entered a home,
and it was a male and a female
he executed the male immediately.
And then, if the female didn't resist,
he didn't kill the female generally.
If she didn't resist,
then that led to other things such as sexual assault.
- Women were raped. They were sodomized.
This was horribly brutal.
- The pattern of sex and violence
suggested one individual was responsible for the carnage.
- Most serial killers get into a pattern,
and that's how you are able to identify your series.
- Still, this serial killer
was anything but typical.
- He used so many different weapons.
He would rape, destroy, rip apart anything he could.
- What it tells you is you're dealing
with a very sick person
and a person that is very violent.
- While the attacker didn't leave behind
any fingerprints,
detectives did discover one signature clue.
- It was this double murder in Whittier, older couple,
and the importance of that case
is that's when the Avia shoe print
first shows itself.
- There was only two or three pairs
sold in California at that time.
- The Avia shoe print almost turned out to be
like a fingerprint
because it was so unusual.
- This was really significant
because this shoe print kept showing up
at a number of other crime scenes.
- The killer rarely left empty-handed.
- What was important was the jewelry was stolen.
He took property from a lot of locations.
It really indicated that at heart
he was just a common thief.
- Or was he?
Chilling evidence found at some of the crime scenes
pointed to an alternative theory.
- We're looking at somebody that maybe was involved
in Satanism.
The Bell Lang case,
we've got pentagrams drawn on the wall,
a pentagram on one of the victim's legs.
That starts tying in with some of the other cases
and the other victims.
- Four months into his murder spree,
a picture of the killer started to emerge.
- Survivors did describe the assailant
as having very bad teeth, a pungent odor,
and dark clothing with sunglasses,
sometimes a cap,
tall and thin.
- But, even with eyewitnesses,
detectives still weren't any closer
to identifying a suspect.
What investigators didn't know
was that the murderer, Richard Ramirez,
was living on Skid Row
just a few blocks from police headquarters.
- Even psychopaths have emotions
if you dig deep enough.
But, then again, maybe they don't.
- Ramirez's niece, Shelly,
says nothing in Richard's early childhood
suggested he would become
one of the notorious serial killers of all time.
- My uncle Richie did have a normal side to him.
Just I think lost it eventually.
Richie did his holy communion.
He was baptized. He wasn't some bad kid, you know.
He was really sweet.
Richie did get along with the family really well.
- Ramirez was born in 1960 in El Paso, Texas,
the youngest of five siblings.
- His mom worked in a paint factory,
and my grandpa worked for the railroad track.
Being the youngest and the baby of the family,
he ended up not having somebody to kind of show him guidance.
The person that he hung around with the most
was my cousin Miguel
growing up as a young adult.
Miguel ended up being a role model for him.
I think that's when Richie started to change.
- Miguel was a Vietnam vet
who showed 15 year old Richie some gruesome pictures
of women he killed overseas.
- He just showed him a lot of the photos
and how to like cut up the body like animals.
And then from there it went on
to him killing his wife in front of Richie.
Richie was hiding behind a couch
and saw the whole thing.
He told my uncle Richie
that's what you do to a bitch.
- Miguel was found not guilty by reason of insanity
and was committed to a state mental hospital.
But did the violence Richard witnessed
turn him into a serial killer?
- Instead of being a horrifying moment of his life
which maybe he had difficulty getting out of his mind
and having to deal with the rest of his life,
he embraced it.
Somehow, it excited him.
- By the early '80s, Ramirez moved to Los Angeles.
Within a few short years,
Ramirez would begin his terrifying murder spree.
- The suspect varies the time,
place, and type of attack,
but he always enters through an open door or window.
- In the summer of 1985,
no one knew Ramirez's real name,
but he had become famous.
- It didn't take much to figure out,
hey, this guy is reading about it.
You know, he's following it in the newspaper.
A 911 call was placed from the victim's home,
and the newspaper made a big deal about that.
From that point on, he either cut the wires
or took the phone with him.
It was telling us, one,
he gets his rocks off by reading about it.
He could be wanting, you know--
might want to be famous.
Later on, he tells us
that he wanted to be known as the greatest serial killer.
- Serial killers do seek attention from society
and sometimes ratchet it up
to the point of killing
because, to them, it's the ultimate attention getter.
- Ramirez reveled in his notoriety.
When he visited his family in El Paso,
he did so in style.
- He was coming and going
in, you know, the nice cars
and partying a lot.
And he seemed to have money.
And nobody really questioned
where he was getting the money from.
- The money came from the jewelry
and other goods he stole from his victims.
By early August, yet another murder,
and two more victims were shot in the head
but survived.
- As the cases went on,
we kept adding detectives
to the point where we had
1/3 of the homicide bureau
assigned to this one case.
- But, despite the added manpower,
detectives were no closer to identifying the killer.
And the public was demanding answers.
- It's nerve-wracking, it's frustrating.
When can we get that lucky break,
get this guy off the street,
and put this thing to bed?
- While the panic in L.A. escalated to epic proportions,
so did the media frenzy
with the Night Stalker leading the evening news.
What would it take to catch this predator?
And what would happen when Richard Ramirez
ended up in court?
- I think he wanted to be the boogeyman.
- By early August 1985,
the death toll from the Night Stalker
stood at 13.
But that month Richard Ramirez expanded his kill zone.
On August 17th, he murdered an elderly man
and left his wife for dead in San Francisco.
Eight days later, Ramirez returned
to Southern California and attacked again.
The clues at the killer's latest crime scene
would provide investigators with a big break.
On August 25th, 1985,
Richard Ramirez surfaced in Mission Viejo,
a town 76 miles south of Los Angeles.
He shot a man, left him for dead,
and then raped his girlfriend.
But this time detectives got a solid lead
from a neighborhood teenager.
- The new witness a few blocks away
from where the tenth murder occurred
was able to recall a partial license plate.
Well, eventually we ran that partial,
and we came up with a stolen car
that matched the description
of what the young man said.
That car was found in a parking lot
in downtown Los Angeles.
And the rearview mirror,
when you reach up and adjust it,
the killer had left a partial fingerprint.
- There were tips coming in right and left,
and it led-- led the sheriff's department
to a couple of informants
who-- who were fencing the jewelry for Ramirez.
- So now we have a name, now we've got a print.
The Orange County homicide detective
took that fingerprint, flew to Sacramento,
and had it compared, physically compared.
- The prints matched Ramirez.
He had fingerprints on file
because he had been convicted of some misdemeanors.
From there, they got a photograph.
They were able to publicize it.
- On August 31st, 1985,
the Night Stalker's murder spree
came to a surprising and dramatic end.
The killer was spotted in East Los Angeles.
Ramirez was chased down and beaten
by a group of neighbors
after he tried to steal a car.
- We rushed him up against the fence,
and, you know, he just fell into the fence.
- News of the Night Stalker's arrest spread quickly.
- I remember my dad's face,
like he got tears in his eyes,
and his face looked like he'd seen a f--- ing ghost.
- What's your name?
- In September of 1985,
Richard Ramirez was formally charged.
- Thirteen counts of murder.
Thirty other felonies involving rape and sodomy,
forcible oral copulation, and burglary.
- Ramirez pled not guilty.
- We were there for the court hearing,
and that's when Richie came out with the pentagram on his hand.
- Serial killers, they are a product of the times,
and these are blood-thirsty times.
- I covered a lot of murder trials.
I sat five feet from Charlie Manson,
and he wasn't scary at all.
Ramirez was a scary dude.
And he was evil.
- While Ramirez waited for his trial to begin,
detectives continued to sift through all the evidence.
- The shoes we never did get.
- But police did recover a number of other items.
- Law enforcement was able to get a search warrant
for a locker that Ramirez had at the bus station.
In that locker was a trove of clues.
There was some jewelry.
There was some live ammunition
and a.25 caliber semi-automatic pistol.
- The same type of gun used in several murders.
- And that's how the prosecution was able to link that gun
to Ramirez even though the gun was never recovered.
- In February of 1989,
nearly four years after he was arrested,
Richard Ramirez finally went on trial.
- He tended to dress like the Night Stalker.
He wore a leather jacket in court,
black pants, black shoes.
He wore sunglasses in court.
- Serial killers, they don't commit their crimes
to become a celebrity.
But once they're caught they have no problem
being a celebrity.
- Ramirez had groupies that came to court,
seemed to follow the case.
- I know that he's-- he's a nice person
because I've met him, and I know.
- I just wanted to see what he looked like.
I think he's cute.
- When he saw that all the groupies
and everybody were starting to follow him,
all these beautiful women,
and I think that's when he realized, like,
"You know, I can work with this."
- But Ramirez didn't impress the jurors.
The trial lasted seven months,
and on September 20th, 1989,
they reached a verdict.
- The verdict was guilty on all counts.
The penalty recommendation was death.
- I remember my grandpa,
he let tears down his eyes.
It was really sad.
- I'll see you in Disneyland.
- You know, you can't even explain something like that.
- Still, the question remained.
What drove Richard Ramirez
to commit these horrible murders?
- Once he was sentenced,
my partner and I, we wanted to pick his brain.
We wanted to know what makes an individual
do what he did.
And there was nothing there
that stood out as to why a guy like this would do this.
- I think he wanted to be the boogeyman.
I think he loved that.
That's what gave him the power
that he never had in the rest of his life.
- Richard Ramirez spent 14 years on Death Row.
The Night Stalker received thousands of fan letters,
and he married one of his admirers in 1996.
- Very, very proud to have married Richard
and to be his wife.
- In 2013, the 53 year old killer
died of complications from lymphoma.
- I think that Richard Ramirez should be remembered...
as a person that was troubled
but not by his own will.
And that's not an excuse for what he did.
- These cases fade from the public memory,
but for the victims' survivors it's forever.
- Every day, you see what people will do and won't do.
Is there somebody else out there like that?
Hopefully not, but, yeah, probably.
- Predators like Richard Ramirez
made national headlines.
But in the 1980s the emergence
of the female serial killer
would further shock and challenge the country.
The case of Aileen Wuornos played out
like a perverse reality TV series.
But was she a victim or a cold-blooded killer?
- In the 1980s,
women enjoyed more career opportunities.
The first woman was appointed
to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And, in a perverse development,
a woman joined the all boys club of serial killers
and achieved even greater notoriety.
Aileen Wuornos was a Florida prostitute
accused of killing six men.
Her sordid story sparked a nationwide debate.
Did the woman known as the Highway Hooker
kill in self-defense?
Or was it cold-blooded murder?
December 1989, Volusia County, Florida.
Two hunters came upon a grisly scene.
- We had a body in the woods.
It was under a tarp.
It had begun to decompose.
- The victim was later identified as Richard Mallory.
The 55 year old had been shot to death.
- As far as Mr. Mallory's death was concerned,
it was almost a dead end
until other matters started to surface.
- Between June and November, 1990
police in Florida discovered five other men
all murdered under similar circumstances.
- They were all white males.
Ages ranged from 40 to 65.
They were all traveling alone in Central Florida.
All their bodies were found in the woods.
Some were nude.
We saw evidence of sexual activity.
All their bodies had indications that they had been robbed.
They were all shot multiple times
with a.22 caliber handgun.
- The parallels between all six victims
suggested a chilling possibility.
- It became evident that we were dealing
with at least multiple homicides
by what I believed to be the same person.
- Given that some of the victims were found nude
and the weapon used was a small handgun,
detectives came up with a surprising theory.
The killer could be a woman.
But the murderer didn't fit the usual profile.
- Most female serial killers
actually do quiet murders
like killing their own children.
But rarely do you have
female serial killers commit a violent crime
and just shoot people.
I mean, that's just extremely unusual.
- Detectives questioned why a woman
would commit such brutal acts.
Was she a psychopathic killer?
Or was there some deeper motive at play?
- Life for her was way different
than we can imagine.
It was much more than just sad.
- From the start, Aileen Wuornos struggled.
She was born in 1955 in Rochester, Michigan.
As a child, Aileen and her younger brother
were abandoned by their parents.
Aileen's lifelong friend Dawn Botkins
witnessed the difficulties Wuornos endured.
- She lived with her grandma and grandpa.
They raised her because she wouldn't live with her mother.
She got pregnant at 13,
went into it unwed, had a baby, and come out.
And her grandfather kicked her out of the house,
and so that's why Aileen ended up sleeping
in people's porches and whoever would let her in.
The kids and most of 'em wouldn't.
- Dawn tried to look after Aileen.
- Went to the mall shopping a lot.
Whatever she wanted to do, she could do with me
in those few hours every day.
- At night, Aileen went to work.
- She would prostitute so she could get cigarettes
and food and stuff like that.
She had a terrible teenage life. She had nothing.
- I think ending up on the streets essentially
when she was a teen
propelled her into a very kind of angry,
vicious lifestyle.
And I think she did develop a great deal of rage.
- I mean, she didn't trust men.
She'd think men were just there for the money
and stuff like that.
- By 1976,
Aileen ended up in Florida.
Within a few years, she was in trouble.
In 1981, 26 year old Wuornos
was convicted of armed robbery
and spent two years in prison.
But in 1986 Aileen finally met someone
who changed her world.
- Tyria Moore had lived with Aileen Wuornos.
They had become lovers.
They were roommates.
- She did love Ty.
She was like her best friend.
You know, somebody she knew was gonna be laying there--
waiting.
Ty was a maid for a while.
Then she just stopped that
and let Aileen take care of it all.
- She knew that Aileen's way of making money
was to go out and to prostitute herself.
- Aileen felt like she had a lot of pressures on her.
She blamed it on her drinking and her lifestyle
and all the pressures from Tyria Moore.
Well, she did, but she created 'em all too,
every bit of 'em.
I know I shouldn't say that, but that is the truth.
- And the truth was about to catch up with Wuornos.
On July 4th, 1990,
Aileen and Tyria Moore
crashed a car on a Florida back road
and then fled.
Investigators would later trace the car back to Peter Siems,
a 65 year old missionary
who went missing weeks before the crash.
- Mr. Siems' connection became evident
for several reasons.
The location of his car
and two women being found in it.
- While Siems' body was never found,
investigators did come across something else.
- A blood-stained fingerprint
was found on the car.
Ultimately, we would be able to match that fingerprint
to Aileen Wuornos.
- Meanwhile, eyewitnesses from the accident scene
helped detectives create sketches of the two women.
- Once the composite photo went out,
we started receiving tips
and very quickly honed in on Tyria Moore and Aileen Wuornos.
- One of those tips led police
to a local pawn shop
where they discovered Aileen's fingerprint
on a pawn ticket.
That ticket was linked to a number of items
belonging to the first murder victim, Richard Mallory.
By the time police identified Wuornos,
she and Moore had split up.
In January of 1991,
Aileen was living on the street.
- Now it was just a question of finding her
and what to do with her.
- On January 9th, 1991,
two undercover police officers spotted Wuornos
at a bar in Daytona Beach, Florida.
- Where we were lucky is that she had an outstanding warrant
for her arrest.
So I didn't have to have her arrested
on Richard Mallory's case,
which at that time I didn't have enough proof.
- With Wuornos in jail,
investigators found Aileen's former girlfriend,
Tyria Moore, at her sister's home
in Pennsylvania.
Moore cooperated with police,
providing some vital information.
- Aileen told Tyria that she had shot
and killed a man in the woods.
Covered him up with a tarp.
Ty gave us something else.
She had insisted that Aileen
throw the gun that had been used
into Rose Bay.
We were able to locate the rusted.22 caliber gun.
She also told us that they had a storage facility.
And in that storage facility we found items
that eventually we were able through investigation
to link to the various victims.
- Moore also assisted police
by agreeing to phone Wuornos in jail.
Detectives recorded the call.
- In those conversations,
Aileen indicated what she had done.
- A few days later, Aileen officially confessed,
admitting she shot all six men
discovered along Florida highways.
- There was enough information given
to be able to now charge her
with Richard Mallory's homicide
as well as the homicide to the other men.
- But what surprised detectives
was why Aileen said she killed the victims.
Aileen Wuornos was eventually charged
with six counts of first-degree murder.
Despite her confession,
Wuornos maintained she was innocent.
The media jumped on the story,
and Wuornos became infamous.
But was Aileen a vicious psychopath
or a victim who fought back?
In January of 1991,
Aileen Wuornos faced six counts of first-degree murder
for shooting six men along Florida's highways.
The press coverage turned the 37 year old
into a media phenomenon.
Wuornos's case raised many questions.
At the top of the list,
"Why would Aileen shoot these men?"
Was she simply a ruthless killer
with a thirst for murder?
Or a prostitute in fear for her life
who acted in self-defense?
- Authorities arrested Aileen Wuornos,
a woman who called herself
an exit to exit highway hooker.
- In the months leading up the trial,
Wuornos's story was TV gold.
- All the ingredients for the perfect media storm.
Sex, money, and murder.
- My mom had just called and said,
"Guess what, Aileen was just busted."
I said, "You're kidding me."
- That's when Dawn decided to reconnect
with her childhood friend.
- Aileen and I had lost touch.
I got the address from the cops and wrote her.
Within a week, I got a letter from her.
Well, she always said that she did it in self-defense.
- According to Wuornos,
she shot the victims because the men became violent.
- I've been framed by law enforcement
as a serial killer
because of the numerous men involved.
But what I was was a prostitute.
What I did was what anybody else would do.
I defended myself.
- I think people who are fascinated with Aileen Wuornos
think of her as a female avenger,
somebody who killed off these bad men
and had the guts to do it.
- But did the highway hooker
pull the trigger in self-defense?
Or can the real motive be traced to her troubled past?
- Aileen Wuornos I believe killed the men she did
because she had a lot of rage in her.
She wanted to get back at society.
She wanted to get back at men
who she considered part of her problem
and part of the reason
she was a miserable human being.
- On January 1992,
Wuornos went on trial
for the murder of her first victim,
Richard Mallory.
- She killed him out of rage.
- For the state, the case was clear-cut.
- This was really a classic homicide-robbery.
- Prosecutors were confident they had enough evidence
to convict.
- It's my belief that her own statements
made to Ty Moore over the telephone
and her protestations, confessions to the investigators
was the most damning piece of evidence.
- She said that she had shot and killed a man that day.
- Aileen Wuornos took the stand
and testified she was the real victim,
that she killed Richard Mallory
after he tried to rape her.
- I thought to myself, "I've got to fight
or I'm gonna die."
This guy is going to play with me and play with me,
and then he's gonna kill me.
- She was a horrific witness.
There was no self-defense.
- I got to fight.
I just got to fight for my life.
- When I seen her on TV,
I could tell she was acting.
- It was obvious that each of the victims
was shot a number of times.
It became obvious to me
that some of these individuals
were executed.
Hardly self-defense.
- The jury reached a verdict
in under two hours--
guilty of first-degree murder.
On January 31st, 1992,
Aileen Wuornos was sentenced to death.
- I sleep soundly at night
knowing that justice was served in her case.
- Wuornos pleaded no contest to the five other murders
and in each case received the death penalty.
- What do you say? - I'm innocent.
- I deeply feel sorry for those men,
and definitely she deserved Death Row
and got her sentence.
I agree with that 100%.
- In 2001,
after spending nearly 10 years on Death Row,
Aileen Wuornos went back to court,
this time to move forward with her execution.
- No sense in keeping me alive
because I just would absolutely kill again.
I've got too much anger, too much hatred in me.
- It was a long ten years.
Every day I wrote her.
At least three hours every night.
She wrote a lot.
"Dawn, thanks a million times over
"for being the greatest buddy.
"I'm so glad we met while we were kids.
"And the best of friends still today.
I'll love you forever, gal. You're the greatest."
- Aileen Wuornos was executed by lethal injection
on October 9th, 2002.
- She was pronounced deceased at 9:47 a.m. this morning.
- Wuornos's ashes were returned
to her childhood friend.
- She wanted me to directly put those ashes in the ground.
I said, "I'll put 'em right in the ground,
"dig it real deep
so you're down in there cozy."
She was a big part of my life.
And I loved her very much.
- She was no Ted Bundy.
She was no Wayne Gacy.
She just wasn't.
She was an angry, violent woman
who had reached a point in her life
where it was easier to kill,
just easier to kill.
- With several movies and books on her life,
Aileen Wuornos remains a captivating
and complex figure.
The '80s witnessed the rise
of female and male serial killers,
but the decade also gave way
to another type of serial predator,
the killer couple.
Carol Bundy and Doug Clark
were a modern day Bonnie and Clyde.
They terrorized the city of Los Angeles
and sent detectives on a desperate manhunt.
Serial killers Richard Ramirez and Aileen Wuornos
were responsible for horrifying acts of violence.
But they acted alone when they committed
their vicious crimes.
What happens when two murderers ban together?
In the early 1980s,
a deranged svengali and his demented girlfriend
prowled Hollywood's legendary Sunset Strip
looking for sex and victims.
June 12th, 1980.
- We received a call at Robbery Homicide
regarding two bodies.
They had been found
on the Golden State Freeway on ramp.
The two girls were found nude
with gunshot wounds to the head.
- There were few clues,
but the autopsy revealed the gunshot wounds
came from a.25 caliber gun.
- Law enforcement was finally able to identify
the two young girls.
Gina Narano was 15,
and Cindy Chandler was 16.
They were step sisters living in Huntington Beach.
Two days after the bodies were discovered,
a phone call came in to the Van Nuys Police Department.
A woman calling herself Betsy
wanted to find out if her boyfriend
had committed the killings.
- The woman said she'd call back,
but she never did.
- We later learned that the caller was Carol Bundy.
- Carol Bundy was a 38 year old single mom
with two young boys,
a vocational nurse,
and, as police would later discover, a killer.
- Carol was plump, matronly.
She had very low self-esteem.
Carol had an absolutely terrible childhood.
The night that her mother died suddenly,
her father came into her bedroom
and had sex with her.
That shaped Carol's future.
- In December of 1979,
a chance encounter at a local bar
would send Carol down a dark path.
- She had gone to Little Nashville
looking for her married lover, Jack Murray.
Jack was dancing with his wife.
Suddenly, there was Douglas Clark
in a pin-striped suit.
He was very, very smooth.
He was a Navy child.
The family lived all over the world.
As a teenager, his parents sent him to boarding school
in Switzerland.
That was really where his taste for kinky sex began.
- Despite his cosmopolitan upbringing,
31 year old Doug Clark earned a paycheck
working 9 to 5 in a factory.
- He was a disappointment to himself
and to other people, to his family.
- Carol was anything but disappointed.
The two instantly connected,
and Doug moved into Carol's apartment.
- One of the things that bonded
Carol Bundy and Douglas Clark
was that Doug confided his sexual fantasies to her.
He told Carol that he wanted to abduct a young woman
as a prisoner and use her as a sex slave.
- The power and the control in sex
often accompanies a serial killer.
Douglas Clark clearly wanted to control
every female that came into his life.
- Carol was thrilled to follow Doug's lead.
- At some point Doug put the idea into Carol's head
that she needed a gun for her own protection.
- On May 16th, 1980,
Carol purchased two.25 caliber automatic handguns,
one for herself and one for Doug.
- Carol referred to the guns as the "the toys."
- Doug had something more sinister in mind.
On the night of June 11th, 1980,
Doug cruised the Sunset Strip looking for sex.
That's where he met the step sisters,
Gina Narano and Cynthia Chandler.
- Doug came home and told Carol
that he had killed two girls.
His ego was that "This is how bad I am."
- Carol didn't seem disturbed by the news.
If anything, she was pulled deeper into Doug's dark world.
- Doug groomed Carol to become his partner in murder
by telling her that any woman who loved him
should be willing to kill for him.
- But how far would Carol go to please Doug?
According to prosecutors,
on June 20th, 1980,
Bundy was put to the test.
- Carol Bundy went out one night with Doug,
and they met a prostitute.
Carol's job was to walk up to the girl
and say, "It's my husband's birthday,
and he wants me to get him a girl."
- Carol told police the prostitute
got inside Doug's car where he had sex with her.
Afterward, Carol claimed Doug shot the woman.
Bundy then helped Clark
dispose of the body.
- I believe that she is way more partner
in this little crime fest,
so I don't see her as a pawn.
I see her as pretty much the chess player.
- Doug was on a killing spree.
On June 23rd, 1980,
police discovered another body.
- Karen Jones was found in the City of Burbank
in the middle of the street fully-clothed
with a gunshot wound to the head.
The next morning, Exxie Wilson's torso was found
behind a Sizzler restaurant on Ventura.
It was just a body, and the head was gone.
They cut the head off.
- Investigators later learned the two women were prostitutes
who recently arrived in Los Angeles
and worked the Sunset Strip.
Detectives had a hunch.
- The first thing we did is compare the bullet
from the skull of Karen Jones to the sisters,
and then a match is made.
We don't know yet
how Exxie was killed.
We don't know if she had a gunshot wound
until the head is found.
- Then four days later on June 27th,
another grisly discovery.
- Witness states that he saw a box
in the middle of the road.
He opens it up, and he finds it's a head
wrapped in a pink t-shirt that says "Daddy's Girl."
- The severed head was identified as Exxie Wilson's.
Investigators recovered a bullet
that provided another match to Karen Jones
and the two sisters.
- We know it's a serial killer
because after Exxie's head's found
that was four of 'em.
- Carol began to worry she could become
Doug's next victim.
- Carol was terrified that Douglas Clark
as going to kill her and her children.
- In August of 1980,
she met with her old boyfriend, Jack Murray,
at the Little Nashville Bar.
- She was telling him about Douglas Clark being a killer.
- She figured she had erred in telling Jack
what they'd been doing.
- On August 3rd, 1980,
Carol decided to eliminate Murray
in order to protect herself.
- Carol lured Jack to his van that night
with the promise of sex,
and she killed him.
- The police get a call regarding his van
because of the smell that was emanating from the car.
They find a body who happened to be Jack Murray.
When the coroner gets there,
they find his head is missing.
- According to police, Carol proudly showed Doug
how she took care of Jack Murray.
- She walked in with a black plastic bag
and tells Doug "Just like you did Exxie,
I got it right here."
And they laughed.
And then they dropped it in the trash.
- Detectives zeroed in on Carol Bundy
after learning she left the bar with Murray
the night he disappeared.
When police brought Carol in for questioning,
she gave up all her terrible secrets.
- During the interview, she told us
that Doug had, you know,
bragged about the killings of the sisters
and the killings of Exxie and Karen.
He admitted to doing all of them.
- Investigators had Carol's confession,
but they had no physical evidence
to tie Doug to the four murdered women.
But that was all about to change.
Doug Clark and Carol Bundy's crimes were horrible.
Still, the police had no idea
about the extent of the couple's sexual depravity.
But Carol Bundy was set to reveal
all their dirty secrets.
Coming up...
- When police got to the garage,
they discovered bloody marks
across the floor as if the body had been dragged.
- In August of 1980,
suspected Sunset Strip Killers
Carol Bundy and Doug Clark were in police custody.
Carol provided detectives with gruesome details
about the murders of five people,
including four young women.
But investigators still needed to find
physical evidence to back up Carol's claims.
- All the victims were killed with one gun,
the same gun, which was Doug's.
- Police searched the couple's apartment.
- There was no weapon.
- Investigators knew of one other location
where Doug could have hidden the guns.
- Carol told us that, regarding the two sisters,
Doug had said he had, after shooting them,
taken them to a garage of a friend in Burbank.
- When police got to the garage,
they discovered bloody marks across the floor
as if the body had been dragged.
- During the interview, Carol mentioned that Doug
had come home talking about killing the two sisters.
When she inquired about it, he said,
"I took 'em to a garage of a friend of mine,
"and I had sex with 'em and then I dumped 'em
up by the freeway."
- Detectives didn't find the murder weapon
at the garage.
On August 15th, 1980,
one of Clark's co-workers made a startling discovery.
- We found both weapons
at the place that Doug had worked.
Another piece of evidence that we had
was the vehicle he was using.
The trunk had what they referred to
as a kill kit.
- During her interview,
Carol didn't hold back on the shocking details.
She told detectives how Doug instructed her
to take care of Exxie Wilson's head.
- He says "What I'm gonna do is put it in the freezer.
"Tomorrow morning, I want you to put makeup on it
and give it to me when I'm taking a shower."
- A serial killer considers his victims objects.
And they're at his disposal
to do what he likes to do with them,
and that he would take that head into the shower
and play with it, have oral sex with it,
not surprising because to him that's a great fantasy.
- She says, "Leroy, have you ever put makeup
on a frozen head?"
I said, "No." She said, "It's a bitch."
And that's why she said she bought the box,
to get rid of it.
- On November 13th, 1980,
Doug Clark was charged with six counts
of first-degree murder,
five counts in connection with the Sunset Strip killings,
and one count for a body
later discovered by police.
- Doug was found guilty on all the charges.
He received the death penalty.
- Doug has never conceded his guilt
in the Sunset killings.
He's still trying to blame either Jack Murray
or Carol Bundy for the murders.
- As for Carol, she was spared the death penalty.
- Carol was charged with Jack Murray's murder
and the murder of another prostitute.
She ended up pleading guilty,
and the judge sentenced her to 25 years to life
on each count.
- In 2003, Carol Bundy died of heart failure in prison.
Doug Clark remains on Death Row.
- In my opinion, for what he did
and what he caused,
there's no such thing in my mind as closure.
- I don't think Carol Bundy
would've ever murdered anyone
if she hadn't met Douglas Clark,
and that was the creepiest of all.
- The most notorious serial killers of the 1980s
continue to haunt us
perhaps because there's no easy answer
as to why they killed so savagely.
The decadence and excess of their crimes
is a horrifying reminder
of an era that left a lasting imprint.
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