The Sunset Strip Killers: Los Angeles’ Forgotten Nightmare

The Dark Cloud Over L.A.’s Sunset Strip

Between 1980 and 1983, Los Angeles was in the grip of something dark, something that hung in the air along the Sunset Strip like a fog no one wanted to see. Women were disappearing—vanishing off streets and sidewalks, their fates unknown, while the city, despite its endless sunshine, grew dim with fear. It took law enforcement a little time to start connecting the dots (and who could blame them? L.A. has always had more than its share of lurid mysteries). But when they did, they uncovered a nightmare woven by not just one, but several predators.

Doug Clark’s Troubled Beginnings

Among them were Doug Clark and Carol Bundy, a disturbingly matched pair whose shared appetite for cruelty would earn them the name “The Sunset Strip Killers.” Together, they left a permanent scar on the city—a mark that still feels fresh all these years later.

Let’s begin with Doug Clark, a man raised in a household as volatile as the one he’d go on to create. Doug claimed he moved over thirty-seven times as a kid—a constant whirlwind due to his father’s career as a Naval Admiral, later Naval Intelligence Officer. Despite the chaos, the Clark family had money and the prestige that came with it, offering Doug and his four siblings a good education at top-tier schools. But as we’ll see, privilege didn’t stop Doug from spiraling into something far darker, leaving behind a trail of horror that would come to define him.

But with the money also came the drawback of having to move every year.

As a result, Doug found it difficult, if not meaningless, to form real connections with his peers. He had few real friends and by the time he became a teenager, his view on women had been set in stone. Even back then, Doug would record his time and sexual encounters with girls without their knowledge and keep the videos as a form of trophy or a prize. But a seemingly, relatively harmless compared to what would follow next, gesture would build the foundations for some truly dark and twisted ideas.

Again, Doug’s tastes first ran relatively normal. Secretly videotaping girls morphed into notions of power plays and then to sadomasochism, but then his fantasies continued to grow and shift. Creeping into Doug’s desires was the urge to mutilate, rape and murder. He now even wanted to commit the especially egregious act of necrophilia.

For a while, Doug managed to keep these urges in check. He graduated from high school and entered into the Air Force. After retiring from the military, he then drifted around, never really staying in one place for very long and supporting himself by finding work as a mechanic.

By day, Doug would appear to be a normal, functioning member of society by showing up for his innocuous job, but by night. Well, by night, Doug was a different person entirely.

He usually spent his time scouring the local bars and clubs for women. He specifically targeted older women, ones who had established lives but seemed lonely. They were prime pickings for a man looking to make some extra cash, and Doug wasn’t shy about asking.

Now aged about thirty-one, Doug would approach these women and con them into getting whatever it was that he wanted. Maybe they were going through a divorce and suddenly found themselves with a divorce settlement. Maybe they had their own place for Doug to move into and set up a new home for himself.

Whatever Doug wanted or needed, he’d get by taking advantage of these lonely women.

Meeting Carol Bundy: A Twisted Connection

And it was in the local bar, on Christmas Day 1979, that Doug found his next target. She was the then thirty-six-year-old recently divorced mother of two, Carol Bundy. Carol hadn’t come to the bar that night looking for love. In fact, she’d been there with an old flame, a man named John Murray, who just so happened to be the lead singer of the country band that usually performed there.

Carol was newly single, though she and John had been seeing each other on and off for some time by then, but there was more to Carol’s story than just her recent divorce.

Rumor has it that Carol came from a broken, abusive home, only to find herself the victim of domestic violence in all the marriages that would follow. It was after leaving her last, particularly vicious ex-husband that Carol met Doug.

Doug was kind. Doug was sweet and charming. Doug had already moved into Carol’s apartment only a few weeks later.

With Doug, Carol’s world grew to include a taste for sadomasochism. Doug pushed boundaries and tested limits, but whenever he pushed her, Carol discovered that she enjoyed it.

Soon Doug was bringing home sex workers that the new couple could enjoy together, but his next choice of victim would turn out to be incredibly unsettling.

Doug then targeted the couple’s eleven-year-old neighbor and instead of discouraging her new boyfriend, Carol agreed to help him get what he wanted. Carol lured the girl into their apartment, where she convinced her to pose for pictures. Exactly to what extent Doug was involved in ensnaring this young girl, or how far the abuse went, is unknown, but this abuse taught Doug that Carol would bow to his every whim.

He confessed then that his desires ran even darker. He told Carol that his biggest fantasy was to kill a woman during intercourse so he could feel how her body tightened as she neared death.

Instead of being repulsed, Carol then bought Doug two guns.

The Horrors Unfold: The Sunset Strip Killers

It was then that the number of abused and murdered women along the Sunset Strip truly began to rise.

During the summer of 1980, a friend of Doug would receive a chilling phone call. “I shot them, and then I made love to them, and it felt so good… You’re next.”

What Doug was referring to in this terrifying phone call involved two young girls: fifteen-year-old Gina Narano and sixteen-year-old Cynthia Leigh Chandler. Doug had kidnapped them from the Sunset Strip before holding them at gunpoint and forcing them to perform oral sex on him. He then shot both of the girls in the head, raped their bodies, and then unceremoniously dumped them on the side of the freeway.

Doug not only confessed to his friend over the phone, but to Carol as well. Torn by what she had just heard, Carol then called the police and implied that she knew something about what had happened to the two girls, though she kept Doug’s name out of it entirely.

Realizing that he had possibly pushed Carol too far too quickly, Doug then told her that if they were ever caught by the authorities, he would take full responsibility for his actions and do whatever he could to keep Carol out of jail.

This seemed to ease Carol’s concerns, and Doug’s malicious, sadistic game continued.

Only a few weeks later, the headless remains of twenty-year-old Exxie LaFaye Wilson were discovered at Studio City. She’d been found alongside another victim, both of whom had been shot and killed with a gun, but only Exxie’s head had been removed.

It turned out that Doug had kept Exxie’s head not only as some sort of sickening trophy, but so that the fun could continue. Back at Carol’s flat, Carol enjoyed putting makeup on Exxie’s face and preparing her for Doug. He’d then use her remains to perform oral sex on himself before returning the head to the fridge for safe keeping.

When Doug had had his fill, the couple then placed Exxie’s head in a box and dumped it in an alleyway.

Although their exact number of victims is unknown, it’s believed that Doug killed at least seven women, but it was when Carol finally had a go of things herself that the couple would finally face the consequences of their actions.

A Deadly Partnership Unraveled

A few weeks after their mutilation of Exxie, Carol was back at a bar, visiting an old flame. John Murray, or Jack as he often went by, had been many things to Carol over the years. Former landlord, lover and now confidant, Carol, broke ranks after a few drinks and told Jack everything that she and Doug had been doing.

At least that was what the courts would argue happened that night. Others believe that what Carol would do next was simply an act to prove her love for her new boyfriend, Doug.

After the show that night, Carol lured Jack back to his van. There, she shot and killed him before stabbing him multiple times with a knife. She then decapitated his body and ran home to Doug, who helped dispose of Jack’s head. It has never been recovered.

Distraught over what she had done, it took Carol two days to confess to her co-workers, who then in turn called the police. With her arrest, the floodgates opened and Carol spilled the beans on everything she and Doug had done together.

At court, Doug made the controversial decision to represent himself. He’d still refer to legal counsel from court-appointed lawyers, but would base most of his defense strategies on what he’d learn during his two hours a day allotted time in the prison library.

But, strangely enough, to a certain extent his tactics worked. Doug managed to delay the proceedings and draw them out as long as possible, but there would be no avoiding the inevitable.

When Doug finally took the stand, he reneged on his promise and tried to pin everything on Carol, but by then Carol had already turned on Doug. She’d agreed to testify on the condition of getting a lesser sentence, and Doug’s fate was sealed.

Carol would get fifty-two years behind bars. Doug would get the death penalty, but both would die behind bars before their sentences could be carried out. Carol died in 2003 of heart failure and Doug in 2023 of natural causes