Clark, Douglas

Doug Clark was born March 10, 1948 in North Middleton, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania . He was the third child in a family of five children. His father, Franklin Clark, was a naval intelligence officer . During his service, Franklin Clark served at US bases in various countries, and therefore Doug's childhood was spent in constant moving and changing places of residence. In total, between 1948 and 1967, Doug Clarke was able to visit 37 seven countries ^[2] . Due to the socially prosperous situation in the family and material security, Douglas Clark from his youthful years began to suffer from a superiority complex , abuse alcoholic substances and demonstrate destructive behavior towards relatives and friends, and therefore, while studying in one of the prestigious schools in Switzerland, was excluded after the end of the 9th grade ^[3] . In the mid-1960s, the family settled in the city of Culver ( Indiana ), where Clark entered the prestigious military school Culver Military Academy , which he graduated in 1967 ^[4] . After graduation, Doug Clark was drafted into the US Army, which at the time was waging the war in Vietnam. Clark served in the US Air Force . In 1970, Clark retired from the ranks of the US Army . In 1972, Douglas Clark married. After the divorce that followed in 1976, Clark moved to Los Angeles ( California ), where he found a job as a steam installation operator in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Energy. ^[5] In the late 1970s, Clark moved to the city of Burbank , where he began working as a boiler room operator at the Jergens soap factory. He led a law-abiding way of life, spent a lot of free time in bars located in the area of ​​West Hollywood and the society of prostitutes, but was not noticed in destructive behavior and antisocial antics and never arrested. In early 1980, Clark met Carol Bundy, 6 years older than him, and soon began to live with her. The woman had a strong influence on Doug Clark's psycho-emotional state, as a result of which his behavior changed dramatically, he began to show signs of destructive behavior towards acquaintances and fellow workers at work, due to which in the spring of 1980 he was dismissed from the Jergens plant. In addition, Clark began to show signs of sexual deviation, due to which he was forced to leave the rented apartment and move to the apartment of Carol Bundy, after which a series of murders occurred in the city ^[2] .

On June 12, 1980, Clark, on Sunset Boulevard, put two hitchhikers, 16-year-old Cynthia Chandler, and 15-year-old Gina Marano, into their car. ^[6] Threatening with weapons, Clark forced Cynthia Chandler to have oral sex with him, after which he shot both girls. As a murder weapon, Clark used a 25-gauge pistol. After the murder, Clark raped the corpses of both girls, and then threw them out near the Forest Lawn cemetery ^[7] . Clark later confessed to the murder of Carol Bundy and one of the friends of one of the victims, whose phone number Clark found in the personal belongings of the dead ^[8] . Early in the morning of June 23, 1980, Clark, acting in the same way, lured 24-year-old Karen Jones and 21-year-old Exie Wilson ^[9] into the car, who worked as prostitutes on Sunset Boulevard. Clark shot both girls. During the post-mortem manipulations, Clark raped their corpses and separated Exie Wilson's head, then left the bodies within the city of Burbank. Wilson Clark kept his head in the fridge ^{[10] for} several days and practiced oral sex with her, then threw it away. The head was found on June 27, 1980 in a wooden box, wrapped in jeans and a pink T-shirt with the inscription “Daddy's Girl”, after which Wilson's identity was finally identified. From the bodies of the girls were later also extracted bullets 25th caliber. A week later, in one of the ravines near one of the highways, the mummified remains of a young girl were found, who was later identified as 17-year-old Marnett Comer. The sister of the murdered police stated that the items found with the head of Exi Wilson belonged to Marnett Comer, because before the disappearance in May 1980, Marnett was dressed exactly in this clothes. The remains of the 25th caliber bullets were also removed from the remains of Komer ^[7] .

Douglas Daniel Clark was arrested on August 12, 1980, on charges of complicity in the murder of Jack Robert Murray. The evidence against Clark was given by Carol Bundy, who went to the police on August 11 and frankly confessed to the murder of Murray. According to her testimony, Bundy was familiar with Jack Murray and maintained an intimate relationship. In mid-summer, Murray was aware that Clark is involved in the serial killings of girls on the Sunset Strip. Fearing exposure, on August 5, during a date, Bundy shot Jack Murray and decapitated his body with the help of Doug Clarke. After the arrest, Douglas Clark denied everything, but during the interrogation and the evidence after searching the apartment, the garage and the suspect's car, it was found out that Clark owned two 25-caliber pistols, which Carol Bundy had acquired in the spring of 1980 shortly before the death series. The pistols were eventually found in the boiler room area at the new workplace of Dag Clark. Forensic ballistic examination of the traces of rifling gun barrel later found that all the victims were killed from this weapon. Based on the examination, it was established that another victim of a serial killer was a young girl, whose skeletal remains were found on August 26, 1980 after the arrest of the suspects. The victim was not identified and was investigated under the name “Jane Dow 18 ″, and bullets fired from pistols belonging to Clark and Bundy were also removed from her remains ^[7] . Despite Carol Bundy’s claim that Jack Murray was also shot in the head with a 25 caliber pistol, Murray Doug Clarke’s murder charge was never filed, as Murray’s head was never found ^[11] Based on this evidence, Douglas Clarke in the fall In 1980, they were charged with 6 murders.

The trial of Doug Clark began on October 30, 1980. He was charged with 6 murders, complicity in the murder of Jack Murray, and was charged with sexual harassment against an 11-year-old girl ^[12] . In addition to the murder tools found, the main evidentiary base was blood stains found in the car and the defendant’s garage as well as the testimony of Carol Bundy, who at the trial received the status of a key witness for the prosecution and stated that she was involved in the murder of one of the victims of Clark, whose identity was never installed. According to her testimony, Doug Clark murdered a girl directly during intercourse. Clark denied all allegations of necrophilia and necrosadism ^[13] , but under the pressure of physical evidence during court hearings, he was forced to admit that he had suffered from sexual deviations from the age of 16 ^[7] . Virtually all court sessions of this trial were accompanied by constant tantrums, outbursts of anger, and Dag Clark’s disputes with the judge and prosecutors. Clark repeatedly filed complaints against the US judicial system , against police actions and against his lawyers, as a result of which he successfully delayed the trial for several years. During the trial, Clark changed three lawyers, citing their incompetence ^[14] , in turn one of his lawyers, Maxwell Keith, shortly before the verdict was announced, stated that his ward was suffering from a serious mental illness and communication with him was impossible. Keith noted that in his legal practice he had no such precedents. ^[15] . In January 1983, a jury found Clark guilty of the serial killings of girls on the Sunset Strip ^[16] , on the basis of which, on February 16, 1983, Douglas Clark was sentenced to death. Clark did not admit his guilt in the incriminated crimes and insisted on his innocence ^[17] . Carol Bundy was sentenced on 1 June 1983 to life imprisonment with the right to apply for parole after serving 26 years of imprisonment ^[18] . In total, during the investigation, Clark and Bundy were tested for involvement in more than 25 murders ^[19] . Speaking at the trial as a witness for the prosecution, Bundy stated that Doug Clarke had confessed to her that he had committed 47 murders since 1965. ^[20]

All subsequent years of his life, Doug Clark spent on death row in San Quentin prison, awaiting the execution of the death penalty. Despite the verdict of guilty and the verdict, there was the possibility of a judicial error and Clark’s guilt was contested by a number of experts and criminologists. During the trial, Clark provided an alibi for 5 of the 7 murders for which he was convicted, and material evidence that justified him in the Jones and Wilson murders, but his lawyer at the court sessions was intoxicated and did not fully comply with his obligations, as a result, defense witnesses were not summoned to court. In addition, during the trial, Clark repeatedly insisted on replacing his defenders with those provided by the state; on the basis of these facts, a violation of the convict’s constitutional rights was revealed. Bundy’s testimony proved highly controversial and showed a large discrepancy in the dates and times of action ^[21] . A forensic biological study of traces of seminal fluid left on corpses in some cases showed a discrepancy with the blood group of Douglas Clark ^[22] . A forensic examination revealed a threshold of IQ of 118 for Clark, as well as schizoaffective personality disorder , but she recognized that she was completely sane and aware of her actions, which was challenged by a number of independent experts. ^[23] . Based on these facts in 1992, Clark filed an appeal, which was rejected ^{[7] [24]} . While imprisoned, Clark became interested in playing bridge. For a number of years, his regular bridge partners were three well-known serial killers, such as Randy Craft , William Bonin and Lawrence Bittaker ^[25] . In 1996, he gave an interview to journalists who visited him in prison, during which he outlined his version of the events of the summer of 1980 ^[26] . On December 30, 2015, Douglas Clark again talked to reporters during their visit to San Quentin Prison. In an interview with Clark, even after more than 35 years of imprisonment, he stated that he was not involved in the serial killings on the Sunset Strip ^[27] . During the journalists' visit, it turned out that Douglas Clark is contained in a block called the “Adjusment Center”, in which there are exceptional detention measures, such as solitary confinement, restriction of movement within the prison territory and others. Those sentenced to the death penalty, being in the “Adjustment center”, spend 23 hours a day in their cells and can be in such conditions of social isolation for decades ^{[28] [29]} . As of February 2019, Douglas Clark, 70, continues to await the execution of the death penalty at San Quentin Prison ^[30] . Doug Clarke’s accomplice, Carol Bundy, died in 2003 while imprisoned. ^[10]

• Unidentified victim at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
• [1] Doug Clark Interview. 1996
• [2] Interview with Doug Clark on the death row of San Quentin Prison. 2015
• [3] Materials from the criminal case of Clark and Bundy. Contains photos of shocking content.