Naman Shrestha
Linked with two gruesome murders — one of Michele Dorr and the other of Laura Houghteling — Hadden Clark was not an ordinary killer, as the police had a tough time dealing with him and getting a confession out of him. Investigation Discovery’s ‘Born Evil: The Serial Killer and The Savior’ sheds light on the crimes of Hadden and the investigation that followed. Thanks to the insightful interviews with the loved ones of the victims and the officials connected to the investigation, the viewers get a detailed account of the killer’s crimes and confessions.
Hadden Clark’s Life Turned Upside Down After Being Diagnosed With Paranoid Schizophrenia
Hadden Irving Clark was brought into the world by Hadden Clark Sr. and Flavia Clark on July 31, 1952, in Troy, New York. While the former was a Korean War veteran and an engineer, his wife was a homemaker. According to him, he was raised in a dysfunctional and toxic household in Wellfleet along with his siblings, including Geoff and Bradfield, as both his parents were alleged alcoholics and constantly fought with each other. In order to punish Hadden, his mother used to dress him in girls’ clothes and send him to school, as per his claims. He went to Bucks County Technical High School in Pennsylvania, where he used to be bullied by his peers. Around the same time, he allegedly began torturing and killing animals owned by his bullies.
After graduating high school in 1974, he attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Soon after completing the course, he worked as a chef at a Provincetown restaurant and later at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, Colorado. During his stint in restaurants, some of his co-workers claimed that they had witnessed him drinking blood that drained from the meat he prepared. Having a significant amount of experience under his belt, Hadden served as a chef in the United States Navy from 1982. However, when his Navy psychiatrist diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia in 1985, it led to his discharge from the service soon after. Over the next few years, he took random menial jobs just to get by.
Hadden Clark Gave Into His Violent Tendencies and Committed Two Murders
In 1986, he took shelter at Geoff’s place in Montgomery County, Maryland. But by May of the same year, things had turned sour between them, so much so that Goeff ordered him to pack up and leave his house. On May 31, 1986, Hadden was home alone and in the middle of packing his belongings when a neighbor’s daughter, Michele Dorr, showed up to play with his niece, Elizabeth. He directed her to Elizabeth’s room, where he stabbed her to death and buried her in a wooded area several miles away. At the time, the police could not find enough evidence, and the case went cold. Once he left his brother’s house, he reportedly stayed at a Bethesda property, the former landlord of which filed charges against him in 1988 for defacing the property by hiding fish heads in various spots.
Besides getting convicted for that, he was also found guilty of theft and retaliation in the following years. Eventually, he became homeless and began living in his pickup truck. In 1992, Hadden was working for Penny Houghteling as her property’s gardener and the two had formed a close bond over time. But things took a sinister turn when Penny’s 24-year-old daughter Laura paid a visit to her. He ended up killing her in her bedroom and cleaned the crime scene. While walking out of the house in a trenchcoat and a wig, a neighbor saw him and mistook him for Laura. The following year, Hadden Clark was convicted of murdering Laura Houghteling and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Hadden Clark is Serving His Sentence at a Maryland Prison
Not long after, he led the police to the place where he had buried her body. While serving his time, he began confessing his crimes to his cellmate, Jack Truitt, believing that he was Jesus Christ. He even told him about killing Michele Dorr and eating her flesh before burying her. Several years later, in 1999, he pleaded guilty to killing the 6-year-old girl in 1986 and received another 30-year imprisonment sentence. On December 15, 2000, the suspected serial killer told the authorities about a buried plastic bucket at his grandparents’ former property. He claimed that it contained more than 200 pieces of jewelry, which were the trophies of his crimes.
Furthermore, he confessed that he had been involved in the murder of dozens of people from the mid-1970s to 1992, including that of the then-unidentified woman victim known as “Lady of the Dunes” in 1974. Since he had paranoid schizophrenia, the investigators doubted if his confessions had any merit to them. Decades later, in August 2022, “Lady of the Dunes” was finally identified as Ruth Marie Terry, and just a year later, her husband, Guy Rockwell Muldavin, was officially named as the perpetrator of the crime, despite Hadden’s confession. At present, the suspected serial killer is incarcerated at Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover, Maryland, serving his two 30-year sentences for killing Michele Dorr in 1986 and Laura Houghteling in 1992.
Read More: Jack Truitt: Where is Hadden Clark’s Cellmate Now?
