Serial killers Carol Bundy and Douglas Clark

The picture of Doug with a gun in the back of his jeans caused Carol to see him as a heroic figure, strong and masterful. She was now totally immersed in the role of Doug's love slave. Doug now had what he would later describe as his own "Stepin Fetchit." Carol would cook for him, clean the house, do his laundry and dishes and even buy him clothes. There was nothing she would not do for him.

Chris was deeply aware of the changes in his mother. Doug completely dominated her and she seemed to like it. He screamed at his mother to get Doug out of the house. She slapped his face. Where she was once protective of her children with the men in her life, now she was the opposite. Doug and Carol regularly beat Chris. Carol would tell herself that she was only taking the black leather, studded biker belt to Chris to save him from Doug's brutality, but she had done so with as much fervour as Doug had.

Carol's willing submission to Doug's demands was complete by the time Doug demonstrated to her how he could kill Chris by sticking a knife in his back right through to his heart. Chris stood helplessly as Doug described in graphic detail how he would kill Chris, as his mother listened impassively. She did not stand up for her son as he hoped she would. He realized that his mother had chosen Doug over her own children and withdrew emotionally. He began to cry easily and suffered from headaches. Doug told him he was a faggot. David had been terrified as he watched Doug punch his older brother in the kidneys and the stomach, one of many incidents that Chris would later be unable to recall. Chris had felt for some time that he and Doug were in a battle for his mother, now he knew that he had lost.

Carol had completely lost the last remnants of her self-respect. The more contemptible Doug's treatment of her became, the harder she would work to try and please him. When Doug told her that he didn't want to have sex with her anymore because she was very unattractive, she was shattered, but still did not end the relationship. Instead she would go with him when he picked up prostitutes and sit in the back seat as the women tried, usually unsuccessfully, to arouse him orally.

As Doug continued to move in and out of her apartment, he would blame her mood swings and possessiveness as the reasons he had to escape. What Carol did not know was that he had tried many times to replace Carol but had been unsuccessful in his attempts to attach himself to another woman. The only reason he had returned at all was because no one else was as willing to oblige his fantasies as Carol was. He had moved in with a new girlfriend, but she kicked him out after only two days, forcing him to move back to Carol's flat. Through this new girlfriend, he met another girlfriend, one that was large-busted and overweight.

He and the heavy girlfriend went to dinner together a number of times but she refused to sleep with him. He took her to an orgy at a house in Hollywood, where she sat at the bar until he was ready to go, then decided to invite him home to stay. The sight of him in a pair of green silk women's underpants sent her into a fit of laughter, spoiling any plans Doug may have had of having sex, although he did spend the night with her. In the morning, he left a gun on her television. Making the excuse that she needed to return his gun, she agreed to see Doug again. Doug was sure that in this new girlfriend he had found another meal ticket but she refused to see him again after he suggested that they should kill her ex-boyfriend together. Doug was far too weird for her liking.

In late May, Doug finally succeeded in his quest. He had met a new girlfriend at the Viking Bar in North Hollywood. Like Carol, she was unattractive and overweight with low self-esteem and had succumbed to Doug's first night seduction, just as Carol had. Doug was soon invited to spend the night and by June 3rd, he moved into her apartment where she lived with her two children her two children.

When Carol scraped the side of the Buick while attempting to park it outside her Lemona Avenue apartment, Doug was furious, telling her that she was incompetent and a bad driver. On the 31st of May, Carol decided to buy herself a new car, a blue 1976 Datsun 710, although she kept the Buick station wagon for Doug. That night Doug took the new car for a test drive. In the morning, the gearshift was fractured and there was an indentation on the passenger-side door panel. He told Carol that he had been cleaning his gun when it had discharged, ricocheting off the shift and the door. Carol did not believe him. The next day she applied to have custody of Chris and David transferred to their father, Grant Bundy. On 9 June, Grant took the boys and sent them by plane to their paternal grandparents.

Things hadn't worked out for Doug with his new girlfriend and he wanted to move back permanently with Carol. As soon as the boys were gone, Carol began looking for a new apartment closer to the Jergen's factory so Doug could walk to work.