Carol Lubahn: Disappearance, Conviction, and Confession

Carol Lubahn, a 26-year-old mother of two and architecture student, was killed by her husband Michael Lubahn Clark inside their Torrance, California home on the night of March 31, 1981. For more than 30 years he told police, family, and his own children that she had walked out. In October 2012 a jury convicted him of second-degree murder on entirely circumstantial evidence, and on the morning of his sentencing in January 2013 he finally admitted he had killed her and dumped her body in the ocean. Her remains have never been recovered.

The Night She Disappeared

Carol Jeanne Meyer Lubahn was born on October 28, 1954. She had married her high school sweetheart, Michael Lubahn, and by 1981 they were raising two children — Michael Jr., 10, and Brandi, 7 — in a house on the 17600 block of Cranbrook Avenue in Torrance. Carol was studying architecture at El Camino College. Michael worked as a house painter. The marriage was in trouble; Carol had been having an affair with a classmate, and Michael had recently found out.¹

On the evening of March 31, 1981, the couple argued, ostensibly about whether to sell the house, and Carol left. By the account Clark would give decades later, she came back around 1:30 a.m. and told him she had been with another man.² Clark did not report her missing for several days. He told police he had woken up to find her gone, the garage door open, and her car missing. On April 6, 1981, her red 1979 Audi Fox turned up in the parking lot of the Red Onion restaurant in Redondo Beach; a manager said it had been sitting there all week.¹

Why the “She Left” Story Never Held Up

Police initially treated it as a voluntary disappearance. Carol’s family did not. She had left all of her personal belongings behind. She never picked up two outstanding paychecks. Her Social Security number and credit cards were never used again. And her family insisted she would never have abandoned her children.¹

Torrance detectives suspected Clark from the start but had no body, no forensic evidence, and no witnesses. The case went inactive in June 1981. It was briefly reopened in 1987 after an inquiry about Carol’s dental records, and again in 1996, and each time Clark was reinterviewed he gave a slightly different version of that night.³

Clark, meanwhile, rebuilt his life. In 1987 he legally changed his last name to Clark, his middle name. In 1988 he married Kerry Dunki-Jacobs and had two more children with her; the marriage lasted about 20 years before ending in divorce.⁴ He moved to Huntington Beach and took over the painting business of Carol’s father, Milton Meyer, when Milton retired. Carol’s family kept including him in holidays, not knowing what he had done.³ His children grew up believing their mother had walked out. Michael Jr. later said he spent about 20 years thinking that.⁵

How the Cold Case Came Back

Around 2002, Torrance Detective Walt DelSigne came across Carol Lubahn’s inactive file while going through old cabinets. He read through the record and noticed what he called “subtle changes” in Clark’s statements over the years, small shifts in detail that struck him as suspicious.⁶

In 2010, DelSigne showed up unannounced at Clark’s home. Clark volunteered new details he had never offered before, including a claim that Carol had told him “you make my skin crawl” and that he had set traps around the house afterward — baby powder on the floor, paper wedged in a door — to see whether she ever came back. Working with Detective Jim Wallace and Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, DelSigne concluded that Clark’s memory had “grown in areas where it shouldn’t.”⁶ About six months later, on April 13, 2011, detectives arrested Clark at his Huntington Beach townhome and charged him with murder.⁷

A Murder Conviction Without a Body

The prosecution had no body, no DNA, no weapon, and no eyewitness. Lewin built the case by stitching together the inconsistent accounts Clark had given over three decades to police, family members, friends, and reporters.⁸

The jury heard Carol’s children and other relatives describe her as a devoted mother who would not have abandoned her family. A neighbor testified he had been outside all day on the day Clark claimed Carol returned to the house and had never seen her. Witnesses described Clark’s “explosive” temper and his oddly nonchalant reaction to his wife vanishing. The prosecution pointed to the total absence of any Social Security activity after March 1981, and to the fact that Clark had been the last known person to see her.³

Clark had turned down a pre-trial plea offer for voluntary manslaughter, reportedly on advice that he could not be convicted of murder without forensic evidence.⁸ After a six-week trial in September and October 2012 in Torrance Superior Court before Judge Eric C. Taylor, the jury deliberated about four hours and returned a verdict of second-degree murder.⁹

The Sentencing-Day Confession

On the morning of January 7, 2013, hours before he was sentenced, Clark confessed. Talking with Lewin and his defense counsel, he said that when Carol came home around 1:30 a.m. on March 31 and told him she had been with another man, he punched her hard in the face. She fell and hit her head on a coffee table. He believed she was dead.⁸

Clark said he hid the body in the garage behind a roll of carpet, then drove Carol’s Audi to the Red Onion parking lot to stage the disappearance. Later, he wrapped the body in cloth and blankets, tied cinder blocks to it with 50 feet of nylon rope, loaded it into his truck, and drove to Point Vicente on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Using a raft, flippers, and a wetsuit, he paddled several hundred yards out past the kelp line and sank her.²

Lewin said in court he did not believe Clark was telling the full truth even then. Clark had failed parts of a polygraph about that night, and Lewin pressed him for further testing.² Judge Taylor sentenced Clark to 15 years to life in state prison.⁸

The Search That Never Found Her

Two days after sentencing, on January 9, 2013, Clark went out on a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dive boat to the stretch of water off Point Vicente he had identified. Heavy fog made it unsafe for divers to enter the water, and the search was called off.⁷ Clark had passed a polygraph on the dumping location, but nothing was recovered. Investigators had also searched the backyard of the couple’s former home at some point during the investigation, without result.³

Then Clark changed his story again. In an interview with the Daily Breeze after the failed dive, he said searchers would not find Carol’s remains at that spot because he had “never put her there.”¹⁰ Carol’s sister, Terri Meyer Samuelson, said the family did not really expect a recovery but still hoped for proof of what happened so they could “rest easier.”² Carol’s remains have never been found. The California Department of Justice still lists her as a missing person.¹¹

The Appeal

Clark appealed, arguing the circumstantial evidence could not support second-degree murder and that jurors should have been instructed on voluntary manslaughter as a lesser charge. On September 3, 2014, a three-justice panel of California’s Second District Court of Appeal, in an opinion by Justice Flier, affirmed the conviction. The court held the circumstantial evidence was “sufficient to show malice and second-degree murder,” pointing to Clark’s shifting accounts over three decades and his conduct after Carol’s death.¹² The justices wrote that the evidence showed Carol was “a devoted, capable and loving mother who would never have abandoned her children.”³ The California Supreme Court declined further review.

Carol’s Children

Both children testified at trial. Michael Jr., 10 when his mother vanished, described Carol as a “good, doting, affectionate mother” who would not have left. He recalled hearing a thud “like a door slamming” that night. Brandi, then 7, testified that she heard her parents discussing selling the house that evening and later heard a car start. Both rejected their father’s past suggestions that Carol had been physically rough with them.³

Carol’s mother, Melba Meyer, moved in within a day or two after Carol disappeared and helped raise the children. Clark never spoke about Carol; Michael Jr. testified that whenever her name came up his father would visibly stiffen and change the subject.³ Michael Jr. said he began to suspect his father in the early 2000s, after watching how differently Clark reacted when his second wife left him.⁵

At a December 2012 hearing, Michael Jr. asked the judge for leniency: “Thirty-two years ago I lost my mother. Today, I still have the same questions as I did before, but now I stand to lose another parent.”² He continued to visit his father in prison and take his calls, saying he was in a “weird position” — reckoning with the fact that his father had killed his mother while still not wanting to lose his only remaining parent.⁵ Melba Meyer said she could not fathom what Clark had done: “I just couldn’t understand how someone could do that to his children.”

Clark was later held at California State Prison, Sacramento, and a March 2020 parole calendar listed him for a subsequent suitability hearing at that facility. The outcome and his current custody status are not reflected in available records.¹³

1
The Charley Project. Carol Jeanne Lubahn
2
Los Angeles Times. Man Admits Killing Wife Who Vanished in 1981
3
CaseMine. People v. Clark, B246263
4
Press-Telegram. Arrest in 30-Year Mystery
5
Daily Breeze. Killer Michael Lubahn Clark Changes Story Again on Torrance Wife’s Death
6
Internet Archive. Dateline NBC, Carol Lubahn Segment
7
NBC Los Angeles. More Than 30 Years Later, Search Begins for Body of Torrance Woman
8
Daily Breeze. Michael Lubahn Clark Confesses to 1981 Killing of His Wife in Torrance at Sentencing
9
ABC7. Man Whose Wife Was Last Seen in 1981 Convicted of Murder
10
Doe Network. Carol Jeanne Lubahn
11
California Department of Justice. Carol Jeanne Lubahn Missing Person Record
12
Daily Breeze. State Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Appeal in Michael Lubahn Clark’s Murder Case
13
CDCR Board of Parole Hearings. Parole Hearing Schedule, March 2020