It runs in the family – it’s a saying I’ve heard many a time when someone discusses my family’s penchant for sass. But in the case of Hadden Clark Jr, it wasn’t sass that ran through his family.
Hadden Clark Jr. was born on July 31st, 1952 in Troy, New York. He had an older brother, a younger brother, and a younger sister. The siblings were born to an affluent family, and were considered very well off. Clark’s mother would also often boast about having ancestors who arrived to the United States on the Mayflower, and whom were war heroes in the Revolutionary War.
The family patriarch, Hadden Clark Sr. moved the family often, up to twice a year, in search of bigger, and better jobs. He held a Ph.D. in chemistry, and was very highly in demand in his field. The constant instability did not a happy home make. Neither did the rampant alcoholism of the Clark parents.
Hadden Clark Jr. was often physically beaten by his father, while his mother dressed him up in women’s clothes while drunk, and called him Kristen. His father would also mock his son’s seeming lack of intelligence, referring to him as a slur any and every chance he got. As he suffered at home, Clark Jr. tended to act like a bully towards his classmates, taking his powerlessness out on them.
As Clark grew older, he tended towards fantasies of revenge. Instead of bullying his classmates, he would torture and kill the pets of those who bullied him. At this time, Clark also began wearing women’s clothing of his own volition.
After graduating from high school, Clark attended the Culinary Institute of America. He graduated as a chef, and seemed to really thrive in his career. But he could never stay at one job for too long.
Between the years of 1974 and 1982, Clark held over 14 jobs. While he was a skilled chef, his erratic, bizarre behaviour often cost him his employment from luxury cruise lines, to five-star restaurants and hotels.
In one particular instance, Clark was let go from a position for urinating in a bin of mashed potatoes. He felt the need to retaliate after his colleagues had apparently affronted him. Of course, after this, he lost his job, though it’s unclear if his colleagues discovered what he’d done, or Clark himself bragged about it later.
In 1981, Clark joined the Navy and served a chef. He did not get along very well with his shipmates. He was beaten, got into fights, and was bullied mercilessly. They did not take kindly to Clark wearing women’s underwear beneath his uniform.
Eventually, Clark was formally discharged for his continuously erratic behaviour. Following his discharge, Clark was formally diagnosed with schizophrenia of the paranoid type. He was prescribed medication, but he never took it. He would tell anyone and everyone that he was fine, and he didn’t need to be medicated. Most would disagree.
By the time Clark was discharged from the Navy, his family had scattered. His younger sister, Alison cut the family off, and left without a trace. Meanwhile, in 1984, Clark’s brother Bradfield was in prison.
In 1984, Bradfield showed interest in a woman whom he worked with. The woman was married, and was not at all interested, but this didn’t deter Bradfield. He invited the couple over for dinner, but the husband couldn’t make it.
Bradfield made his advances, and he was rebuffed. In a seemingly fit of passionate rage, he strangled the woman to death. He then proceeded to dismember her, and cook parts of her body on a grill. Then, he placed her body in bags, put the bags in the trunk of his car, and turned himself into police, where he confessed willingly.
Shortly after the dust had settled there, Hadden Clark Sr. committed suicide, while their mother denounced all of her children.
Clark Jr, meanwhile, had moved in with his brother Geoff. However, things there didn’t last. Clark was asked by his brother to leave when he was caught masturbating in front of his young nieces and nephews.
On May 31st, 1986, Clark was packing up his belongings. Geoff and his family had left the house in order to give Clark the time he needed to get packed up and leave.
Two doors down lived Carl and Michelle Dorr. Michelle was friends with Geoff’s daughter. On May 31st, she knocked on her friend’s door, wanting to play. Clark opened the door.
He told six-year-old Michelle that her friend was upstairs. He showed her the way. Once in a room upstairs, Clark stabbed Michelle several times, causing her death. Then, almost methodically, he set about cleaning up after himself.
He went out to his truck and gathered garbage bags and rags. Slowly, he cleaned up all of the blood with the rags, and then tossed them in the bags. He then placed Michelle in a bag, then in a duffel bag, and took the whole lot out to his truck.
From there, he drove himself to the Chevy Chase Country Club, where he worked as a chef. He was worried about being late. If he was late, that was noticeable, and he didn’t want to be noticed.
After his shift, Clark pulled off onto a dirt road. There, he buried Muchelle in a shallow grave – but not before he tried a taste of her flesh. Having buried her under leaves, dirt, and a filthy old mattress, he then drove to the room he’d rented following his eviction from his brother’s house.
During the afternoon, Michelle’s father, Carl, realized that his daughter was missing. He called the police, and filed a missing peron’s report. At the time, Carl was in the middle of a very contentious divorce from Michelle’s mother. Her mother immediately put suspicion on Carl, believing he’d killed Michelle as a means of hurting her. Police seemed to agree, and honed in on Carl immediately.
Carl took multiple polygraph tests – one where police believed he was being deceitful, and another where he was fully truthful – and went under hypnosis. He was continuously hounded by police, and put under extreme pressure. Eventually, the pressure caused him to break.
On three separate occasions, hounded, pressured, and exhausted, Carl “confessed” to killing Michelle. But police were never able find enough evidence to prove Carl had harmed Michelle in any way. He was never charged, though he was suspected of having harmed her for well over a decade.
The day after Michelle’s murder, a police officer saw Hadden Clark Jr. tinkering with his truck in Geoff’s driveway. Stopping to speak to Clark, the officer asked him where he’d been the day before. Clark confirmed that he’d been in the neighbourhood. The officer found this suspicious, and did some digging. The officer found that Clark had a reputation around the neighbourhood for being rather odd. Not taking any chances, he took Clark in for questioning.
As he was being questioned, Clark was able to provide a seemingly airtight alibi – his job. He was able to provide his punchcard, showing when he had clocked in and clocked out of work. The timing didn’t match the window the police were working with.
Based on what police had been told by Carl, they were working with a specific timeframe, which didn’t leave much room for Clark to have committed the murder. However, Carl had gotten the time wrong – the window had actually been much larger. Clark had more than enough time to harm Michelle.
When he was asked about Michelle, Clark had a very extreme reaction. He ran to the restroom in order to be very violently, and loudly, ill. When asked, specifically, if he’d done anything to Michelle, Clark replied: “I don’t know, I may have done something, I black out and do things I can’t remember”.
Despite this statement, and Clark’s overall odd behaviour, police fell back on examining his punchcard. To them, the timing just didn’t fit. They let him go.
For a while, Clark spent the late 80s in and our of prison for minor offences, such as petty theft of women’s clothes, or destruction of property. On one occasion, his mother pressed charges against him after he beat her. During this time, Geoff, his brother, was also convicted of spousal abuse.
When Clark was released from prison after assaulting his mother, his mental health grew worse and worse. Until he found himself some steady employment in 1992.
In 1992, Clark was employed by Penny Houghteling as a gardener. Clark grew very attached to Penny, and saw her as a mother figure. He enjoyed her company, and wanted to make her proud. He was also given access to the house, and would take items in order to feel closer to Penny.
When Laura, Penny’s 23-year-old daughter, returned from college, she found Clark highly suspicious. Things came to a head in October when Laura accused Clark of stealing tools from the garden shed. Clark was furious.
On October 14th, 1992, Clark went to a hardware store, and made purchases. He was planning. He paid for his purchases by cheque. On the memo line, he wrote down one word: Laura.
Four days later, on October 18th, 1992, Clark scoped out the Houghteling home, and made sure that Laura would be home alone. He then dressed in some of Penny’s stolen clothing, donned a wig, and broke into the house through the backdoor.
Clark went up the stairs, and into Laura’s bedroom. There, he woke her up, and demanded to know why she was sleeping in his bed. He also demanded that she call him “Laura”. Clark had built up a fantasy that he was Penny’s daughter, Laura, and her return had threatened his happy fantasy.
As Laura complied with his demands, Clark bound her with duct tape, purchased at the hardware store, covering her mouth, nose, and eyes. He then suffocated her, and stabbed her. Clark then put her body in a sheet, and carried it out to his truck.
Clark went back inside the house, and cleaned up after the murder. He also stole a few of Laura’s personal items. Then, he went to lie down in her bed, and went to sleep.
The following morning, Clark left the house, still dressed in a wig and Penny’s clothes. A witness later came forward, stating that they’d seen Laura leave for work at around 8:00 AM.
Clark left the Houghteling home, and took Laura to a wooded area around a half-mile away, where he buried her in a shallow grave, as he had Michelle Dorr. He left behind a pillow. The pillow had his bloody fingerprint on it.
When Laura didn’t arrive at work, police were called quickly. They began investigating, but found nothing. Eventually, they decided to bring in the K9 Unit to assist with the search. The K9 Unit were quick to track Laura’s scent to the woods.
As they discovered some of Laura’s clothes, they aslo discovered the pillow with the fingerprint. Bringing it back to the station, they were able to match the fingerprint on the pillow to Hadden Clark Jr.
In 1993, Clark easily confessed to the murder, and plead guilty to second-degree murder. He received a 30-year prison sentence. Eight months later, he led police to Laura’s body.
While in prison, Clark believed that a fellow prisoner, with long hair, was actually Jesus. He began making confessions to “Jesus”; confessions that lent to a much more vast criminal history than anyone had ever imagined.
Clark confessed that he had killed dozens of people over his life, starting in his teen years. He also readily confessed to the murder of Michelle Dorr, finally clearing Carl Dorr’s name.
Hadden Clark Jr. was also tried for Michelle’s murder, and sentenced to an additional 30 years in prison. In January of 2000, he led police to her body, where she was identified by her dental records.
Police later found a plastic bucket in Clark’s grandfather’s garden. The bucket contained more than 200 pieces of jewelry. Laura’s high school class ring was among the items.
In 2004, Clark sent a letter alleging that he had been responsible for the murder of an unidentified woman known infamously as “the Lady of the Dunes”. This could never been proven conclusively.
Clark also mentioned that he had buried evidence of the crime in his grandfather’s garden. He informed police that he knew the woman’s identity, but refused to tell police, as they had mistreated him, and this was his revenge.
Police have not been able to prove Clark’s claims, nor link any additional murders to him conclusively.
The Clark children grew up in violence, and spent most of their lives embroiled in violence.
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Sources:
Was suspected serial killer Hadden Clark a victim of the system? – Bethany Wade – Film Daily
Serial Killer and Cannibal Hadden Clark – Charles Montaldo – ThoughtCo.
True Crime All The Time podcast – Episode 33 – Hadden Clark
Hadden Clark Wikipedia page