There was a two-minute wait while the doctors examined McDuff and pronounced him dead. The curtains were opened for the witnesses to view the body. Mrs Brenda Soloman, mother of one of McDuff’s victims, was moved to say, ‘He looked like the Devil. He’s going where he needs to go. I feel happy … I feel wonderful.’
The cost of the drugs administered to take McDuff’s life was $86.08.
* * *
‘The sad thing about this particular case is that if Colleen had screamed and someone had heard her, it would have been McDuff’s mother. She would have been in earshot because she lives just a few hundred yards away,’ commented Investigator Tim Steglich.
Enquiries into the life and crimes of Kenneth Allen McDuff included interviews with his mother, Addie, his schoolteachers and several residents of Rosebud who knew the McDuffs well. I spoke to Falls County Sheriff, Larry Pamplin; McDuff’s accomplice, Roy Dale Green, who now lives in a flea-ridden shack in Marlin; US Marshals, Mike and Parnell McNamara; the State prosecutor, Bill Johnston; and Tim Steglich. Background research included a visit, accompanied by Tim Steglich, to the lonely track where McDuff murdered Colleen Reed. ‘In the dead of night, that would be a terrible place to die,’ said States Attorney William ‘Bill’ Johnston, with just a hint of tears in his eyes.
The McDuff family are a tough lot, with a reputation to match. The ‘Pistol Packin’ Momma’, Addie McDuff, has never given an interview, and even refused to speak to the police, but she made a rare exception by speaking to me. Such is her reputation for pulling a gun that the Waco police offered to keep watch, outside her isolated ranch at Belton, and waited until I emerged unscathed. Although I was expecting immediate hostility, a frail, confused old lady appeared at the door offering a traditionally cautious Texas welcome.
Addie is a protective mother, despite her son’s evil deeds. Over coffee – and she apologised that she didn’t have tea – she explained that one of her sons had been shot dead, while sleeping with another man’s wife, and that a daughter had died in a road crash. Mr. McDuff had been buried way back, and now she had no one except a niece. Addie was about to sell up and move in with her.
Asked how she had acquired the name ‘Pistol Packin’ Momma’, she smiled. ‘Rosebud was a tough place to live in the early days,’ she said in a cracked voice. ‘The driver of a school bus threatened to throw Ken off as he had spent the fare. It was dark, and no boy of mine was gonna walk a long ways home. So, I just visited the bus depot the next morning, and pulled out my .22. Told him that next time he did it, it would be his last.’ Then she chuckled, ‘No one never did talk down to my family again.’
She rooted through cardboard boxes of mementoes, looking for documents or any picture of Ken in his early days, but there was precious little to find. She had destroyed everything years ago.
The next port of call was Rosebud itself. A dusty, one-horse town, and, with just over 1,000 inhabitants, it has the pretension to call itself a city. Main Street is nearly always deserted, even on weekends. During a ‘Texas Barbeque’, a mid-afternoon indoor feast, the town manager, a reporter, several residents, and the 70-old Chief of Police, recalled the young Ken McDuff. Clearly, they had been terrorised by the youth in those days, a feeling supported by Falls County Sheriff Larry Pamplin, whose father was the sheriff before him. Driving me around in his beat-up, unmarked police cruiser, which was stocked full of shotguns and pistols, Larry explained that McDuff and his older brother, John, were among the roughest hooligans he had ever met. Larry Pamplin has since been dismissed from office, after committing aggravated assault, official misconduct and racketeering. It was proved that he had misspent funds to feed his prisoners, keeping a tidy sum back for himself.
Interviewing Regenia Moore’s mother in a Waco motel proved a harrowing experience. She is now a mental wreck who, for several years, drove the dirt roads of Waco, with a spade, in search of her missing daughter’s body. ‘I don’t wish ill on McDuff,’ she sobbed, ‘I just want to give her a Christian burial, just as Addie McDuff will want for her son.’ Her wish has now been granted.
Finally, there was the much-anticipated meeting with Kenneth McDuff, on Death Row, Ellis Unit, Texas. In life, he was a tall man, well built, with greasy, black hair. Wearing a constant sneer, he whinged on for an hour about the injustices committed by the judicial and prison system. He argued about the merest technicalities of his case yet, ever the hypocrite, he admitted all of the crimes attributed to him, while refusing to say where his victims were buried, unless he was paid a handsome fee.
‘I don’t think that the State of Texas will let me live, unless they want me to have a long drawn-out, slow life. I have sugar diabetes, so at some point I am going to have some serious problems. But the bottom line is – I want to be the one to decide when I’m to die. And I will do this by deciding when I’m going to drop my appeals. I’ve never been one to run, and I won’t grant them the satisfaction of running me all the way to the ground. I believe there is a good possibility that both my convictions may be reversed.’
Asked why he had not settled down and started some form of meaningful relationship with a woman, he replied, ‘I feel very old and tired. Once I wanted a wife and family just like other people do. Right now I’m like a man in the desert that is thousands of miles from the nearest water, with no possibility of reaching water, but keeps walking anyway. I don’t know why I keep walking. Is it some inter-instinct [sic] to strive on?
Now, let’s talk about money. Well, on this one, I’m like the man in the desert that struck gold, and can only carry out what he can carry. I only have need for a few thousand dollars, like for burial expenses, and to maintain myself while I live. I will charge whomever, $700 per body. Use an international money order or postal orders will do. Have it sent to my inmate’s trust fund in my name. When the first amount clears, I’ll give you and the law a body. That way I don’t get shafted, you know.’
Now, that is an expression of true evil.
This chapter is based on exclusive, videotaped Death Row interviews between Christopher Berry-Dee and Kenneth Allen McDuff within Ellis Unit, Huntsville, Texas in 1995, and extensive correspondence.
DOUGLAS
DANIEL
CLARK &
CAROL MARY
BUNDY
USA
‘I used to be a good-looking guy, ya know. But, see what they done to me in here. My hair is falling out, my teeth are rotten and still they want to kill me. Still we all gotta fuckin’ die some time. I’ve outlived the judge, and the prosecutor; it’s just they’re killing an innocent man.’
DOUGLAS CLARK TO THE AUTHOR AT SAN QUENTIN STATE PRISON 1995
A small piece of yellow metal, found in a North California millstream in 1894, precipitated the Gold Rush. At that time, San Francisco was home to 459 inhabitants – by the end of the following year, the population was almost 25,000.
The ‘Forty-Niners’, named after the year, 1849, when they arrived, came from all over the world. They were dreamers, schemers, adventurers, young and old, but all turning up with the single ambition of striking it rich. Gold was everywhere and the streets of towns such as Columbia, Sierra City, Hangtown and that crown jewel of cities, San Francisco, were literally paved with gold.
While life was fast and hard, so was justice. The miners, whores, and saloonkeepers were a rough bunch. There were fights over mining claims, and fights over women. Stealing was an easier way to obtain the much-sought-after, precious gold than labouring all day, panning in a muddy streambed. Participants in the Gold Rush drank heavily and gambled unwisely; they also killed each other.
By the time California became a State, in 1850, it needed a State prison, so they built San Quentin. Driving north on US Highway 101, from the Golden Gate Bridge to Interstate 580, San Quentin comes into view as a massive white concrete construction on a 30-acre site.
Originally called Point Quentin, the isolated area was named after a minor Indian chief who lost a battle against Mexican soldiers in
1824. Squat, buttressed walls with a red roof, this is a correctional cathedral, set in green flatland that tips into the north San Francisco Bay area.
The California Department of Corrections has an annual operating budget in excess of $3.4 billion, with around 124,000 inmates being confined at any one time. San Quentin – also known as ‘SQ’ – is not only the most notorious prison in the State; it is arguably the toughest in the country. It houses the State’s Death Row where, at any one time, up to 500 men may be awaiting execution. These days, in a gesture towards more humane methods, death is administered by lethal injection. Douglas Daniel Clark is one of these Death Row inmates. He costs about 50 dollars a day to keep fit and well for his execution.
It is a 500-yard walk from the gate of ‘SQ’ to the menacing front portico. Once through this entry, and just 30ft down a corridor, is an interview room. Opposite, there is a secure holding area and a tirade of foul language is issued by Clark, who is chained to a strong point on the wall. He is also shackled; handcuffed to a body belt, and his ankles are bound with steel chain.
Forget Doctor Hannibal Lecter, because Clark looks the epitome of evil and he is not acting. His blue eyes are wild and demonic. His hair is unkempt and prematurely grey. But, it is mouth that is so foul, in every way. The teeth in it are rotten and he spouts an incessant stream of venomous filth. Assisted by guards, he shuffles forward to meet his visitor, with intimidating hatred emanating from every inch of his powerfully built, 6ft frame. He is wearing a grey prison sweater and loosely fitting slacks, and a baseball cap is perched, cock-eyed, on his head. He is also sweating profusely.
However repulsive they may be, looks and foul language don’t make a killer and, as Clark’s story unfolded, it would prove to become an enthralling whodunit. Moreover, his life may even be a monument to the frustrated protestations of an innocent man.
During the summer months of 1980, a string of horrifying murders rocked Hollywood. All of the victims were hookers, trading sex for dollars along the notorious Sunset Boulevard. This prompted the press to dub the, as-yet-unknown, serial killer ‘The Sunset Slayer’. The principal players in this dance of death were Carol Mary Bundy, Douglas Daniel Clark, and John ‘Jack’ Robert Murray.
Carol Bundy (no relation to the serial killer, Ted Bundy) is short and unattractive. Her mother, Gladys, was part-Algonquin Indian, and her father, Charles Peters, was a French-Canadian with a build that might be described as roly-poly. Carol once remarked that, ‘He was a male version of me with a bald head. He had blue eyes, a pleasant appearance, and a dynamite personality. He was a good father. He worshipped me because I was bright.’
Born in 1943, Carol was the second of three children and the family lived in various cities across the USA. She claims to have attended 23 different schools before the ninth grade. By the age of 11, she had already started shoplifting, and stealing money from her parents and neighbours.
Gladys Peters died of a heart-attack on Sunday, 10 June 1957. The following night Carol says she was in bed with her father who ‘performed oral sex on me and sexually abused my 11-year-old sister’. One night, just after her sixteenth birthday, she was sent out to a local store, by her father, to buy provisions. When she arrived home, she claims, she found ‘globs of blood everywhere and a rifle on a chair’. She explained that her father, who was remarried by then, couldn’t take life any more and had planned to commit murder. ‘That’s why he sent me to the store,’ she said. ‘He was going to kill his new wife while I was gone, then kill me when I got home.’ Apparently, the plan literally backfired when he and his wife wrestled with the rifle, which discharged, blowing off his thumb.
After this incident, Carol’s stepmother arranged for the children to be taken to a foster home. This was a temporary arrangement, for then they were packed off to Indiana to live with an uncle. Two years later, Charles Peters hanged himself. He was 52.
Carol was married in 1960, to a 33-year-old pimp whom she had known for two weeks. The marriage had lasted only six days when Carol left because her husband apparently wanted her to have sex with his friends. She was not prepared to tolerate that sort of treatment, although she later told psychiatrists that she had been involved in sex for gain before marrying, and also claimed to have been a prostitute in Portland, Oregon, in the mid-60s.
Following her divorce from the pimp, Carol says she tried to pull her life together by attending the Santa Monica City College, where she studied to become a vocational nurse. Unfortunately, the college is unable to support her claim that she graduated class in 1968.
The following year, she married a hospital orderly, called Grant Bundy. This marriage lasted 11 years and the couple had two boys. But Grant was a women beater, and court records show that, in January 1979, Carol sought refuge, in a battered-women’s shelter, before leaving him and going on welfare. She attempted suicide on two occasions. After taking a job as a licensed vocational nurse at the Valley Medical Centre in Los Angeles, Carol, now overweight, moved with her two children to Valerio Gardens, an apartment block in Van Nuys, which was managed by Jack Murray.
John ‘Jack’ Murray – full name John Robert Murray – was a 41-year-old Australian who lived with his wife and two children. He had a reputation as a ladies’ man and, in no time at all, he and Carol were in the throes of an affair. Recently divorced from her second husband, whom she called a ‘homosexual screaming faggot’, Bundy received half the sale proceeds of her previous home. This was a substantial amount and randy Murray, to give him a more appropriate name, soon got wind of Carol’s good fortune. Lavishing love, care and attention over her, Murray encouraged her to have her eyesight examined. She had appalling vision, to the extent that she was subsequently declared blind and therefore eligible for monthly disability payments from the Social Security.
Murray was not known for being a philanthropist, or even charitable, for he conned money out of his friends and frequently cheated on his wife. On one occasion, he was caught pocketing wads of notes from a Telethon charity collection with which he had been involved, and there is no doubt that Bundy’s disability payments found their way to Murray’s pocket, too.
When he eventually learned of Carol’s sizeable bank account, the relationship changed direction, becoming one of prostitute and punter in reverse. Now completely infatuated with Murray, she started paying him for sex and, by the end of that year, he had wheedled $18,000 out of her on the grounds that he needed the money for his wife’s non-existent cancer operation. In reality, he used half to pay off the outstanding debt on his Chevrolet van, a vehicle that he frequently used as his mobile sex den. The balance was used to refurbish the vehicle’s interior.
By Christmas 1979, Bundy was so obsessed with Murray’s sado-sexual performances on her, that she approached his unsuspecting wife, offering her $1500 in exchange for her husband. The woman was so furious that she insisted that Bundy vacate the apartment complex, while Jack timidly agreed to keep the peace. For him, it was a matter of selfish economics, as his wife cooked his meals and laundered his clothes, services he could not afford to lose. Also, from a purely cynical viewpoint, Carol was simply his subservient sex partner. Now that he had acquired most of her money, she was of no further use to him. Nevertheless, he did arrange for her to move into an apartment on Lemona Avenue, Van Nuys, and some three miles from his home.
On arriving at Lemona Avenue, in May 1980, Carol was immediately attracted to a neighbour’s 11-year-old daughter, called Shannon. The girl was mentally and physically well-developed, and the unlikely pair established a relationship by trading adult jokes. Inevitably, this arrangement took on a sexual dimension and Bundy encouraged the minor to cross the bridge from gentle petting and cuddling to full-blown lesbianism.
Despite their apparent split, Jack and Carol continued their clandestine affair, but in a less evident manner. Progressively, the sex turned increasingly deviant, and the couple tried to encourage other young girls to indulge in three-way sex with them. Fortunately, they were all put o
ff by Bundy’s unsavoury looks and, now totally dejected, she took her two sons out of school and sent them to the Midwest to live with their father’s parents.
* * *
‘Carol Bundy, that half-blind bitch? She shit-canned her kids
and sent them in a hand basket to Hell.’
DOUGLAS CLARK DURING HIS INTERVIEW AT SAN QUENTIN STATE PRISON
Douglas Clark had been born Daniel Clark, in 1948, in Pennsylvania, where his father, Franklyn, was stationed in the Navy. He was the third son of five children. In the third grade, he decided that he wanted to be called Doug instead of Daniel. The family moved regularly, from Pennsylvania to Seattle, to Berkley and Japan. By 1958, Franklyn had retired from the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander. In 1959, he moved, with his wife Blanch and their children, Frank Jr, Carol Anne, Doug and Jon Ronlyn, to Kwajalein, an atoll in the Marshall Islands, where he took up a civilian position running the supply department for the Transport Company of Texas. Blanch worked as a radio controller.
They spent two years in Kwajalein, living a life of colonial privilege, in a housing complex that was built specifically for the many American families who lived on the atoll. When they returned to America, they lived in Berkley for a short time before moving to India. The Clarks lived in a manner reserved for only the very wealthy back in the States, with a number of servants who would wait dutifully on the children and parents alike.
Other Americans living in the area described the Clark family as pleasant people who kept themselves to themselves. As for Doug, none could remember any startling behaviour problems, although they had found that if Doug was ever in trouble for any of the usual childhood pranks, his father would defend him aggressively, refusing to acknowledge his son’s responsibility for his behaviour.
Talking with Serial Killers Page 25