C is for...Cross-Dressing Cannibal
Even his mother thought he was evil.
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It was a hot summer in Silverspring Maryland, and young six-year-old Michelle Dorr was spending the memorial weekend with her father Carl Dorr. Her parents were going through a divorce and a custody battle. Michelle often played with her neighbor and playmate, Elizabeth Clark, who lived two doors down. Carl set up a pool in the backyard for Michelle to play in. After a while, Carl went back to check on Michelle and she had disappeared. Assuming she had gone to play with her neighborhood friend he went to the Clark’s house to check.
Jeff Clark told Carl, he had not seen Michelle and that they had been away all day. He called the police to report Michelle’s disappearance. This became the largest hunt in Maryland to find Michelle Dorr.
Carl’s wife told the police she thought Carl had done something to their daughter. She told police he was abusive and he threatened to take Michelle away from her. Carl was taken in to do a polygraph test and he failed. Carl was now the prime suspect and police would do everything in their power to pin the disappearance of Michelle on him. Constant interrogation tactics were forced on Carl to get him to confess to murdering his daughter. Three days later, Carl confessed telling authorities he killed his daughter. He told them she was in the crawl spaces of Carl's house and the other location he claimed Michelle was buried in the grave site where his father was. After searching these places, Michelle’s body was nowhere to be found.
With the brutal interrogations, police accusations, and the loss of his daughter, Carl began to go crazy. He thought the TV was talking to him, he began hallucinating and hearing voices. At one point he was convinced he had the power to find Michelle and bring her back to life. He checked himself into a psychiatric hospital for help. After releasing himself from the hospital he told the press he did not confess and that he was forced into submission of guilt by the police and asked to take a polygraph test again. This time he passed.
Police still focused their suspicions on Carl for months even years after the disappearance of his daughter. With the lack of evidence to convict Carl, the investigation hit a dead end.
Six years later, (1992) in what seemed to be an unrelated case - 23-year-old Harvard graduate Laura Houghteling was reported missing. Eyewitnesses said they spotted Laura leave the house that day, which puzzled authorities. Her family went to the press claiming they know what happened to her.
Laura’s killer had done an unusually thorough job cleaning the crime scene. No one, not family or police even suspected Laura to be murdered in her own home with how clean the crime scene was.
Chilling evidence was uncovered when searching the woods and surrounding areas for Laura. Women’s shoes and a bloody pillowcase were found. After this discovery, forensics conducted a luminol test in Laura’s room and the bed lit up blue.
The killer also left behind a hair, it wasn't human hair. It was from a wig. Hadden Clark, the Houghteling’s 39-year-old gardener was known to be a cross-dresser. The wig found in Laura’s bedroom matched the wig found in Hadden’s possession. Police believed Hadden left the scene of the crime dressed in women’s clothes in broad daylight without creating any suspicion.
Police also found a check made out to a hardware store for rope and duct tape signed by Hadden Clark and on the memo of the check he wrote “Laura.”
In 1992, Hadden first met Penny Houghteling at a church program and she hired him as her gardener. That same summer, Penny’s only daughter, Laura came home from the University. Hadden grew jealous of Laura and Laura began to feel uncomfortable with Hadden’s presence. Penny had left one weekend for a conference leaving Laura home alone. One morning, Laura didn't show up to work, and the family began to worry.
Hadden confessed to authorities to the murder of Laura Houghteling. Hadden had cut out Laura’s eyes with a kitchen knife, stabbed, and suffocated her. Then cooked and ate parts of her body on a barbeque. The remains of Laura’s body were then buried just twelve miles from her mother’s home.
After being sentenced, Hadden’s mother came to authorities and asked what she could do to keep him in jail because he is “evil.” Police realized they had heard the Clark name before, years ago when Michelle Dorr went missing.
Back in 1986, Hadden Clark had been living with his brother-in-law who was two houses down from where Michelle Dorr had disappeared. When questioned about Michelle, Hadden became physically sick with diarrhea. He was dismissed by the police as a possible suspect because of his mental illness. He was home alone packing his things after his brother-in-law kicked him out after numerous times masturbating in front of his kids. Hadden denied having anything to do with Michelle’s disappearance and police had little evidence to convict him.
Hadden’s family was affluent but dysfunctional; his parents were both alcoholics who physically and emotionally abused their four children. His two brothers were both arrested as adults when officers found a woman’s body chopped up in the back of their car. Evidence showed parts of the woman had been cannibalized.
As a child, Hadden’s mother would dress him in girl's clothes and as a result, he grew to identify himself as a woman and would often wear women's clothes. He exhibited sadistic tendencies from a young age, delighting in torturing animals and bullying other children.
As an adult, Hadden did a number of things to terrify the neighborhood children, one being the butchering of a rabbit in front of the kids.
In 1982 Hadden enrolled in the navy. He was a cook on the ship, often harassed by a number of shipmates for wearing women's underwear. He was beaten aboard, received head trauma, and was released from the navy for paranoia and schizophrenia.
On one account, Hadden sought revenge on a family he rented a room from when they had told him his lease was up. He retaliated by killing their cat and rigging a bucket of oil so it would fall on them when they opened the door. He even went to the lengths of wrapping fish in newspaper and hiding them around the house so the rotting smell would wreak havoc.
Hadden was also spotted by police one day dressed as a woman in a parking lot going through a bunch of purses. Hadden had gone into a church and stolen several purses.
Thirteen years after the disappearance of Michelle Dorr and Hadden’s cellmate was able to get a confession out of him. Hadden claimed he killed Michelle in the small bedroom of his brother-in-law's house. Hadden convinced 6-year-old Michelle to come inside his house where she thought her friend Elizabeth was. Hadden slit her throat, drained and drank some of her blood, and canalized some of her flesh before throwing her into a garbage bag and heading to work. After Hadden’s cellmate went to the police to tell them of Hadden's confession they went back to the house where Michelle was murdered, 13 years after her death hoping they would find some evidence.
After spraying the floor in the house, long lines along the slats of the floorboards glowed from a luminol test. They removed the floorboards and with further testing, they compared the blood samples to Michelle’s mother. The tests found a similar match, it was in fact Michelle’s blood on the floor.
Hadden directed police to the body of Michelle Dorr which was buried under a mattress in the park. He was convicted for both Michelle and Laura’s murders for a combined 60 years.
On the morning of April 9, 2000, dressed in a woman’s wig and underwear 47-year-old Hadden Clark was handcuffed and escorted by police through the woods in search of more bodies after Hadden revealed several claims of over a dozen other murders in Cape Cod. He told authorities he would not show them where the bodies were unless he could wear a wig, a women’s bra and panties. Clark claims his alter ego, “Kristen Bluefin” tells him to kill.
Hadden then directed officials to the property of his grandfather where they unearthed a plastic 5-gallon bucket holding over 230 pieces of jewelry. Hadden stated these were his “trophies” of the women he murdered. One of the items was identified as Laura’s. An FBI behavioral science estimated that he may have murdered anywhere between 12 and 22 people.
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Disclaimer: by creating this blog & podcast on this topic, I am covering facts I have believed to be the most reliable from conducting my own research. If there are any details that are missing or inconsistent between this blog or podcast and the real case please feel free to leave a comment with any suggested edits. See the references below for more information.
REFERENCES:
Blanco, Juan Ignacio. “Hadden Clark: Murderpedia, the Encyclopedia of Murderers.” Hadden Clark | Murderpedia, the Encyclopedia of Murderers, https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/clark-hadden.htm.
“Dressed to Kill.” Jordan, Michael, director. Forensic Files, season 7, episode 25, 29 Mar. 2003.
Our Life. The Horrifying Crimes Of Hadden Clark (Born To Kill). YouTube, YouTube, 14 Aug. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt6niKOnjpw. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.
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