Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (22 page)

After her father’s death, Carol went to bed with a female for the first time, hoping to find genuine love in another woman’s arms. She was ultimately rejected by the woman and returned to having casual sex with men. At twenty-one she was diagnosed as suffering from diabetes, a condition which exacerbated her ever changing emotional moods.

She was still living with the long suffering Richard who could see how talented she was but feared that her terrible childhood had ruined her forever. When she asked if he would support her through nursing school, he said that he would providing she kept up her grades. Carol did - and qualified in 1968 as top of her class.

But she still saw sex as the way to make friends, to keep people on her side, so continued to sleep with both men and women. Her promiscuity strained her long term relationship with Richard past breaking point, though they kept in touch.

Carol now dated and married a fellow nurse called Grant Bundy and had a son by him. But the marriage deteriorated after the birth and Grant sometimes threatened her and slapped her. Foolishly they went on to compound matters four years later by having a second child, another boy. Carol worked hard during these years, though her martyred conversations made it difficult for the other nurses to like her. Still, she was a reasonable mother to her boys, taking them out for hamburgers and giving them rides on her motorbike.

But in an effort to buy their love, she ran up huge credit card debts and this led to many rows. To add to the misery, her ongoing eyesight problems had now worsened to the extent that she was going blind and could no longer work as a nurse or ride her bike or do the sewing that she’d always been so good at. During an argument Grant blurted out that he didn’t want her moping around all day and that he couldn’t afford to support the family alone, then he allegedly ran at her
with his fists raised. Frightened, she sought refuge in a shelter for abused women, taking her sons, now five and nine.

Within a fortnight she’d moved into an apartment house and was flirting with the married housing manager, a womanising country and western fan called Jack Murray. Her feelings for this cowboy-hatted man quickly became obsessive and he was flattered by her attentions, going to bed with her in various empty apartments and in his van. She’d go down on him until he orgasmed but he rarely gave her an orgasm in return. Carol, who had known so little love in her life, didn’t seem to expect sexual gratification - having a new lover to dream about was more than enough.

Jack was physically attractive in a Tom Jones
lookalike
kind of a way, whilst Carol was an older looking mid thirties, still overweight, with large heavy-lensed glasses. To compensate, she spent her savings on new clothes and makeup. She also gave Jack cash and gifts whenever he asked and would wait at home for hours in the hope that he would come round.

Carol was desperately lonely whilst he was at work or with his attractive blonde wife and kids. She’d lost her husband, her house and was facing the possibility
of losing her eyesight. Jack, obviously flattered by the way she looked up to him, found out about an operation she could have to save her sight and even drove her to the hospital for her appointments, albeit getting oral or anal sex from her as a reward each time. Carol convinced herself that this was love and that they’d eventually marry. She overlooked his lies and his numerous faults.

Clearly playing on this unconditional love, he insulted her and broke their rare dates to coffee houses or to the cinema - most of those ‘dates’ simply involved her giving him sexual satisfaction. When she got money from selling her marital home he persuaded her to put it into a joint account. Jack was also treating his wife badly, beating the distraught woman and hitting their children. Carol was sure that he’d leave the marriage and live with her. She even had an affair with his brother-in-law in the hope of making him envious.

Eventually she confronted his wife, and Jack then told Carol to leave them both alone - at which stage Carol’s complete lack of pride became even more apparent. She wrote to Jack begging him to give her a pet name and make her a loving tape recording of his voice. She said that she was tired of belonging to everyone, of sleeping around, that she only wanted to belong to him.

Jack didn’t want to know - he had access to the joint account, which was all that he cared about. He’d found
younger girlfriends to replace the thirty-something Carol. He was tired of her always hanging around.

Devastated, Carol moved to a different housing block - but masochistically went to a country and
western
bar and watched Jack and his wife dancing together. Her mood only lifted when she was approached by a good looking man with a smooth, soft voice called Doug Clark. She wasn’t to know that Doug made a habit of targeting fat, lonely woman and encouraging them to fall in love with him before asking for free accommodation, gifts and cash.

Carol was immediately won over by Doug’s soft voice and firm hands as he manoeuvred her around the dance floor. He phoned her to arrange a second date - and at the end of the evening, which consisted of a meal in her home, he went to bed with her. There he told her that she was intelligent and fun and spent the night concentrating solely on her pleasure. She was in heaven.

Doug obviously realised that he had an especially easy touch on his hands, for the next day he asked if he could move in. Carol was probably ready to tie him to her bedposts by now but she contented herself with just saying yes. He also asked if he could have a pair of her
knickers to wear so that he’d spend the day feeling close to her - he had been wearing women’s clothes since he was four years old.

When Carol bashfully handed over her large colourless panties, he handed them back saying that they were too big for him. It must have been obvious to Doug just by looking at Carol that her panties would be capacious so this was clearly a move to make her feel uncertain about herself, to humiliate her.

Doug Clark would prove to be another Ian Brady or Gerald Gallego, men who pick up insecure women and confuse them with a mixture of insults and pretend love until the woman feels she is nothing on her own.

Carol’s eyesight had now improved enough for her to go back to work as a vocational nurse. Doug was an engineer in a factory but he made it clear that he was an educated man who could do better. He seemed to like Carol’s sons and they initially liked him, so life was looking up. Carol had always enjoyed bondage and humiliation and Doug was eager to try it so they had fun in the bedroom. Doug took her to her sadomasochistic limits and Carol was eager to find out how far she was willing to go.

She got in all Doug’s favourite foods and fixed him all his favourite meals. Soon she was even bringing his lunch to him each day at the factory. She bought a station wagon for herself because he admired it, but when she found it hard to drive she gave it to him. Carol
bought Doug clothes and gifts and praised him lavishly in an attempt to keep him by her side.

Deep down Doug hated almost everyone, perhaps because his parents had sent him abroad to boarding school and hardly ever visited. His mother had migraines and his father worked long hours and was rigid in his behaviour, but psychiatrists were later convinced that something much darker than this must have happened in Doug’s early home life.

Now he no longer had to hide his contempt of Carol - after all, she loved him no matter what he did. She left him notes saying that their minds were exactly similar, that no one had made her feel the way he made her feel.

He started to stay away for days at a time, clearly sleeping with other overweight and unloved women. Carol was so distraught that she drank, which played havoc with her diabetes and her always volatile disposition. She also answered an advert in a singles magazine and started seeing another man through it. Her new partner, who was very rich and very overweight, wanted marriage but soon saw that Carol was emotionally lost. She would sleep with Jack Murray one week if his other girlfriends weren’t available, and sleep with Doug Clark the next.

Carol told this new man all about the sadness in her life and he urged her to start protecting herself from these exploitative men and to close the joint account with Jack Murray. But Carol didn’t want to hurt Jack’s
feelings so kept the joint account open, sure that he wouldn’t abuse the privilege. She simply couldn’t believe that she was a worthwhile companion to be with for her own sake and in the end the new lover walked out of her life.

Reassured that he had her unconditional love, Doug now said that he’d always wondered what it would be like to abduct a girl for sex and commit a murder. Pleased that he was sharing his fantasies with her, Carol asked him for further details. Doug said that he’d like to have a woman fellate him as she died. They started to talk more and more of murder and of keeping love slaves, and Carol convinced herself that this gave them a special bond. Incredibly, she let Doug bring his other girlfriends home and sometimes sleep with them in her bed. Carol felt sad and hurt and worthless as she sat alone in the adjoining room. Doug had said that she was completely unattractive to him and that he
preferred
other women. But at least he was sharing his murderous daydreams with her…

In April 1980 he asked her to buy two guns - and Carol did so. He asked her to come out with him to find a prostitute. The desperate Carol did this too. She even paid the prostitute to go down on Doug in the front seat
whilst she, Carol, watched quietly from the back. The session was not a success as Doug, whose sexuality had always been fantasy and masturbation-based, was becoming impotent during ordinary sex.

Doug now knew that he could do anything he
wanted
and Carol wouldn’t object. He hit her sons - and
persuaded
her to hit them too. She even used a belt on them as her father had done to her. He also took her car and brought it back damaged - he’d later admit that a death struggle with a sex partner had caused the gearshift to break.

He came home with scratches on his face and blood on his clothes and Carol tried to persuade her sons that he’d been in an accident. Later he came back to Carol with blood all over him and told her he’d been in a fight. In truth, he may have stabbed a prostitute who was giving him oral sex in his car, but she had managed to kick the door open and throw herself onto the street. Carol knew that Doug was lying, that he’d started to act out his fantasies, but she pretended to believe his tales.

She now - early June 1980 - sent her sons away to live permanently with their father, who immediately sent them on to his parents. For years she had seen her role
as that of wife and mother, had cooked and cleaned the house and did the laundry, so that her children were well fed and beautifully dressed. Now she had turned her back on that role and found herself a new role as the unshockable accomplice of a potential murderer, a man with whom she was totally obsessed. Carol sold the children’s bunkbeds and planned to move to a house closer to Doug’s work. Her own nursing career had to take second place.

This plain overweight woman with the increasingly damaged psyche had failed to please her father or her many lovers. But she had another chance, could become the most special person in Doug Clark’s big talking but underachieving life. In the next few weeks he would kill several times and she would either assist him or be shown the dump sites where the corpses lay.

A few days after her sons left home, in mid June 1980, Carol found bloody clothes and blood soaked tissues in Doug’s car. Most of us would have run a mile, but Carol apparently threw away the most scarlet-stained garments and laundered the rest, then asked him what had happened. Doug said he’d met two teenage siblings aged fifteen and sixteen and offered them a lift. The girls, Gena and Cynthia, were later described by
one witness as looking totally out of place in their surroundings. They had been regularly whipped by their mother so had run away from home.

One of the girls had gotten into the front with Doug and he’d shot her in the head, after which he shot her half sister. Then he drove both girls to his garage and had oral sex with one and sodomised the other. One girl was dying as he abused her and the other was already dead so he cut off part of her clothing and indulged in necrophiliac sex.

His semen would be found in one girl’s throat and vagina and in the other girl’s rectum - and he would make a phone call to a girl in their address book saying how much he’d enjoyed raping them. This necrophiliac orgy took place in the second week of June 1980, and was apparently Doug’s finest hour.

Thereafter he went to a girlfriend’s house and borrowed her camera to photograph his blood smeared dead victims, spending several more hours with them. Then he wrapped up the bodies and dumped them far away from his rented garage.

Doug told Carol all of this - and she felt flattered that he trusted her with this special knowledge. (Prosecutors would later suspect that Carol witnessed this double murder or at least saw the corpses, but they couldn’t prove it.) Carol would later say that Doug took her out for a drive and showed her approximately where the bodies lay.

He then went on to tell how he’d previously killed another girl at the end of May, in Carol’s car. The victim was a beautiful blonde prostitute called Marnett Comer. That was why the gearstick was broken, as the seventeen-year-old had struggled before he managed to shoot her dead. Doug had then stripped Marnett and sexually abused her corpse.

He would later tell a friend that if you drove to a secluded area and put a dead girl on your car bonnet with the engine running then you could feel the vibrations going through her corpse as you had sex with it. Doug then slit the dead Marnett’s stomach open so that the insects would invade it faster and help it to decompose.

Doug had given some of Marnett’s clothes to Theresa, an eleven-year-old neighbour of Carol’s who he was intent on seducing. He kept Marnett’s panties for himself as he still enjoyed wearing woman’s clothes.

Carol would later tell police that at this stage she thought she’d better co-operate with Doug in case he killed her and her kids. In truth, the children were away at their grandparents and Doug was often at other girlfriends’ houses. She could have phoned the authorities when he was out of the house and he’d have been arrested at his work the next day. The reality is that she wanted to please him no matter what he did - and she
saw no especial worthiness in preserving other young female lives.