Sunset Strip Killer's prison death comes with one regret for victim's friend
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Carol Bundy – half of the serial-killing couple dubbed the "Sunset Strip Killers" – lured Nathien Owings' family friend, Jack Murray, to her car with sex, fired two shots into the back of his skull and then beheaded him.
The gruesome attack was Bundy's twisted way to prove her devotion to her boyfriend, Douglas Clark, the other half of the "Sunset Strip Killers."
By 1980, Owings' family moved back to Australia, but news of Murray's murder traveled across the world and warped teenage Owings' psyche.
"His wife told my mom or through my aunt or whatever it was that they couldn't find Jack for a while, but they found his body in a van or something in the underground carpark," Owings told Fox News Digital during a Zoom interview from his home. "And they never found his head."
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He said that weeks went by – he didn't remember exactly how long – but his family received another email saying that police had nabbed the murderers and found Murray's head in the fridge so Bundy "could prove her undying love."
"That was hard," Owings said. "Like you have your head cut off, and it's missing. That always stuck with me. That really did shake me. It shook all of us."
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Years later, they learned that Murray whad been one of the victims of what was originally called the "Sunset Strip Slayers."
"I was devastated. He was such a good friend, and I felt sorry for his wife and the newborn baby and everything," Owings said. "And I always found it really weird that the guy's (Clark's) girlfriend (Bundy) is the one that murdered Jack.
"That's the one thing that I found more disturbing than anything else. The Sunset Strip Slayer, I think is what we were actually calling him at that time, wasn't the one that murdered him (Murray). It was the girlfriend."
Years before Murray was murdered, Owings' and Murray's families shared a driveway, as well as an Aussie background, and saw each other all the time. He was someone Owings looked up to.
Murray was on his way to becoming a famous performer, he said. Murray and his parents were part of the Masquers Club, which billed itself as a social club for actors, "so we had a tight, close connection because of all that," he said.
Owings' mom and Murray's wife were close friends for years, he said.
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"I was just a young teenager, and I thought he was really cool, you know," Owings said. "He could sing. He was a really good singer, and being a member of Masquers Club in downtown Hollywood, where all the famous actors used to go and hang out and have drinks.
"It was mainly him working all the time, but we went down to the Masquers Club, and he'd sit there and chat to us on the sidelines, and then he'd go out and sing or whatever."
Murray often sang at the Little Nashville Bar, a North Hollywood watering hole where Bundy used to watch him play before she lured him into her van with the promise of sex and then executed him.
Decades went by, and neither Owings nor his parents ever let go of their hatred for Bundy and Clark.
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Bundy died in prison in December 2003 at the age of 61. Clark, 75, was on death row when he died of natural causes this month.
"I was ecstatic when I read that they were dead," Owings said. "I mean, she should have been run over by a bus or something. Then her partner died, and there was a last little bit of closure, kind of thing.
"I know, he (Clark) didn't kill him (Murray), but he was the reason why he got killed, so I blame him just as much as Carol. . . . I wish my mom was alive, and my stepfather were alive to hear that son of a b---- is dead."
Clark and Bundy's MO was nearly the same in each murder, except for Murray's death.
They hunted victims in Los Angeles and beheaded them to keep mementos, and Clark often engaged in necrophilia.
Gina Narano and Cynthia Chandler, who were both teenagers at the time, were the first victims.
They were sexually assaulted and fatally shot in the head before they were dumped in a Los Angeles garage and found on June 1, 1980.
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Karen Jones, 25, was shot in the head and raped. Her body was found in a wooded area on June 24, 1980, off the Ventura Freeway.
Exxie Wilson, 20, was sexually assaulted and shot in the head on July 11, 1980.
Her body was found the next day, and investigators said that it had been mutilated post-mortem.
Marnette Comer, 17, was sexually assaulted, fatally shot in the head and dumped near the Forest Lawn Cemetery, where she was found on July 12, 1980.