“My brother’s sense of reality was always a little askew,” Geoff said, years later.

Flavia Clark at first blamed her son’s strange behavior on a bad forceps delivery. Then she thought he had cerebral palsy and took him to an expensive clinic. His father had no such illusions. After a few drinks, he began to refer to his son as “the retard.” Since Hadden was the second child, and the couple had wanted a girl, his mother often dressed him in frilly girl’s clothing. A taste for female clothing was implanted in him as was the name Kristen--his mother addressed him by that name when she was drunk.

Yet Hadden did not test as mentally deficient. In fact, he could appear to be a genius when it came to chess, a game that required thinking and concentration. On the other hand, emotionally he was a small child who lashed out physically when he was publicly criticized. The only place where he felt a degree of normalcy was at his grandparents’ retirement estate. After his term as mayor of White Plains, his grandfather had purchased a dream house at the edge of a town called Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Nobody called him a retard there and it became as close to heaven on earth as Hadden Clark would find.

“The days we spent there were the most wonderful time of Hadden’s life,” Geoff said once. “They were for all of us.”

Flavia Clark wanted her son to have a trade and so she enrolled him at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, a two-year chef’s school in Hyde Park, New York. There, he surprised everyone by demonstrating a real talent for carving ice sculptures and figures from tallow. His chef’s education was not without incidents. Hadden retaliated against slights by urinating into vats of mashed potatoes. Still, he passed enough courses to graduate from the cooking academy in January of 1974. In a rare display of solidarity, Hadden’s entire family showed up for the graduation ceremony.

The degree from a top-flight chef’s school enabled Hadden Clark to pick and choose employers -- at first. But he was never able to keep a job for more than a few months. His strange behavior, like openly chugging beef blood in a restaurant’s kitchen, did not endear him to fellow employees or employers. His first jobs were in Provincetown on Cape Cod, where years later he would confess to killing several women in the sand dunes nearby. On one such occasion, he claimed to have murdered a young woman burying her nude under a sand dune after first removing her hands at the wrists. Hadden told police he used her fingers as experimental bait for surf fishing, a hobby he had become proficient in while living on the Cape.

After becoming shunned by restaurant owners in the beach towns of Massachusetts, Hadden Clark did a one-year stint on the cruise ship S/S Norway. After that, there were jobs in Long Island banquet halls, and a three-week assignment at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. In all, Hadden Clark would hold 14 different jobs between 1974 and 1982.

During that time his family disintegrated further. His grandfather died and his grandmother, in poor health, entered a nursing home. His parents divorced, with his father dying soon after from cancer. Hadden, an unsuspected murderer many times over, entered the U.S. Navy as a below deck cook. It was his last chance at a career. But his shipmates didn’t understand a sailor who often wore frilly ladies’ panties under his uniform. There were beatings. Once, he was locked in a meat freezer for three hours. The Navy tried moving him to new ships but there were incidents.

After a final beating where he suffered a concussion from his head being banged against an aircraft carrier’s deck, Hadden was given a medical discharge, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He soon showed up on his brother Geoff’s doorstep, which resulted in the brutal killing of little six-year old Michele Dorr, with the police believing that her father and not Hadden Clark was their prime suspect.

Walking Time Bomb

Hadden Clark’s mental state deteriorated over the next five years although his appearance and his behavior weren’t bad enough to get him committed to an institution. He eschewed rented rooms and began living under the cap of his pickup truck, often setting up camp in woods just off an interstate highway. His days as a chef were over. Nobody would hire him. He worked odd jobs as a minimum wage gardener sent out by homeless groups and at night he would toil at fast food shops. Hadden had plenty of money. Living alone in the woods cost nothing. By 1990 he had saved nearly $40,000.

During those years there were plenty of warnings. The legal system that had focused on Carl Dorr and not Hadden Clark continued to look the other way.

In September of 1988, Hadden Clark visited his mother, who was now living in Rhode Island. During his stay he began stealing items from her house. Flavia caught him and screamed in anger.

“What are you doing, stealing from me?” she yelled.

Hadden knocked his mother down and began kicking her. Then he jumped into his truck and tried to run her over. She jumped aside just in time. The next day she charged her son with assault and battery. Hadden got a year’s probation.

Flavia, devastated by Brad’s murder conviction and Hadden’s assault, wanted nothing to do with her progeny anymore. She wrote a letter to Hadden saying she was going to pretend he was dead until he got some help from a veterans’ hospital. “Always remember that your mother and father loved you,” she wrote. The word “loved,” written in the past tense, did not go unnoticed.

In 1988, Hadden Clark was stopped for speeding. Underneath the driver’s seat was a .38 caliber Astra handgun. The same police department that had focused on Carl Dorr and not Michele Dorr’s murderer let him go after he pled guilty to a destruction of property charge that had occurred earlier in the year. He was able to walk away with another suspended sentence and probation, a slap on the wrist that now extended into two states.

The destruction of property charge was particularly egregious and showed his temper was far from under control. In his last rental before going to live inside his truck in the woods, Hadden was bounced from a house in Bethesda, Maryland because as his landlord said, “he seemed crazy and evil.” But before he left, he literally booby-trapped the house.

Hadden began by balancing a 10-gallon can of oil on top of a door so that it would spill when the door was pushed open. After spraying black dye on the living room carpet, he hid rotting fish heads inside the family’s piano, chimney, and stove. As a final act of revenge, he killed both the family cats, placing one dead feline on the front door welcome mat and the other inside the refrigerator. Finally he stole several inconsequential items that ranged from books to tools--even the family’s vacuum cleaner.

“The smell of decaying fish permeated the house and was extremely difficult to eradicate,” the charging document read. Yet, the combination of a gun possession charge and vandalism set off no alarm bells about the man the local cops had once--albeit briefly--suspected of killing a six-year old girl.

There were times that Hadden Clark attempted to get help. He would often show up at a local veterans’ hospital but after staying a few days and getting a few doses of Haldol, the anti-psychotic drug, he would bolt from the ward and return to his woods.

A doctor’s diagnosis was a warning: “his mental state is psychosis with questionable etiology. He states that birds and squirrels talk to him and keep him company . . . he is tearful at times with intermittent outbursts of anger and agitation . . . he is a potential danger to himself through poor judgment and self-defeating behavior.”

Hadden’s own words as recorded by the hospital’s doctors were chilling. “I think I have a split personality,” he said. “I don’t like to hurt people but I do things I am not aware of . . .”

In February of 1989, local police again arrested Hadden Clark. This time there was a 17-count criminal indictment. Fifteen of the counts were for theft. The acts were unusual. Hadden Clark had dressed in women’s clothing and visited a number of area churches. While women inside the churches attended choir practice, he visited the cloakroom and stole both their purses and their coats.

On the day he was arrested, he pulled over to the shoulder of a park road and tinkered with his car. When the police offered assistance, Hadden panicked. He began fumbling around in the front seat, attempting to hide some of the women’s coats and purses.

“No! No!” he told the cops. “You can’t go in my truck.”

It was too late. The police had seen a black gun holster hanging at the top of a seatbelt restraint. They wanted to see what else he had. When they saw the women’s purses and coats they asked if he owned them.  Hadden Clark said he did.

“They’re yours? The incredulous cop asked.

“Yes,” Hadden Clark answered. “I’m a woman.”

The cops searched further. There were women’s wigs, a hypodermic syringe, women’s dresses, and a thick roll of cash.

Arrested, he finally served some jail time. He stayed inside for 45days before he posted bail but later boasted that he did the jail time on purpose because it was more comfortable in the county detention center than outside in the freezing February cold. He began to like the three meals a day, a roof over his head and movies every Thursday. He was almost reluctant to leave when spring arrived.

Although some of the charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on two counts, the sentencing guidelines still called for three months to two years. Again there was probation even though he was already on probation in Maryland and Rhode Island.

Why such a minimal penalty?

“The defendant has serious mental problems and is now addressing them,” Rockville, Maryland Judge Irma S. Raker wrote in her sentencing opinion. His public defender, Donald Salzman, was so sympathetic, he wrote a letter for Hadden Clark and instructed him to hand it to any police officer the next time he was arrested. The note read:

 TO ANY POLICE OFFICER:

I want the help of my lawyer, Donald P. Salzman
and I want my lawyer to be present before I answer any questions about my case or any other matters.

I do not wish to speak to anyone concerning any
criminal charges pending against me or anyone else, or
any criminal investigation regardless of whether I am
charged.

I do not want to be in any lineup, or give any
handwriting samples, or give any blood, hair, urine,
or any other samples unless my lawyer is present.

My lawyer’s address and phone number are:

Donald P. Salzman
Assistant Public Defender
Office of the Public Defender
27 Courthouse Square
Rockville, Maryland 20850
(301) 279-1372}

Below the letter was a place for a police officer to sign and next to that a phrase that said: “To prove that I have read this statement to you or that you have read it, please sign here.”

Hadden Clark was a walking time bomb that now had a “Get Out Of Jail Card” in his back pocket. The courts and the public defender’s offices were doing everything possible to keep him on the streets of Maryland and giving him every opportunity to kill again.

He would do so very shortly. And the beautiful young woman who would be his victim would die a needless, terrible death because of it.

Laura, Sweet Laura

“When I was five years old I got up the courage to ask my mother if she believed in God,” Laura Houghteling once wrote in a high school essay on life and death. “She said no and some things that I didn’t understand. When I asked what would happen when somebody dies if there is no God, she told us she didn’t know. That sounded pretty ridiculous and lonely to me and I was scared because I didn’t want anyone to die anymore and I wished there was a God for my mommy to believe in.”

Laura Houghteling’s divorced mother, Penny, was a psychotherapist and Laura was considered brilliant, someone who was going places in life. Nobody was surprised when she was accepted into Harvard University. Her friends expected great things from the beautiful blonde who friends sometimes called Twiggy because she was six-feet tall.

“She was going to be president of this country one day,” said her close friend, Susanna Monroney. The words were spoken after Hadden Clark killed and tortured her in the worst way possible.

Penny Houghteling’s home in Bethesda, Maryland was about 10 miles from where Hadden had murdered and cannibalized Michele Dorr in 1986. Penny liked to help the unfortunate and thought she was doing a good deed when she hired what she thought was a homeless man from a local church organization in early 1992. She needed a gardener and Hadden proved to be a good worker that soon cleaved to her as if she was his mother. Hadden tended her zinnias and pruned her perennials so well that she began to give him the run of the kitchen. He was allowed to make himself coffee and use the bathroom while working without asking.

Penny was trusting and perhaps not very observing. When a graduated strand of pearls disappeared, she didn’t confront her employee. She also failed to notice that her underwear and other clothing were being stolen, one piece at a time. Penny had once complained to Hadden about some missing gardening tools and her employee had blown up and yelled at her. Maybe she was being too hard on him, she thought at the time.

Laura returned home after her Harvard graduation in the summer of 1992. For Hadden, who had become mentally and emotionally affixed to Penny, it seemed that Penny now had another child. She also appeared to like this child more than him. Within days, Hadden Clark was plotting revenge.

In mid-October Penny Houghteling told Hadden she would be going away to a conference for a week. She gave him the exact dates--from the 17th to the 25th. That was all Hadden Clark needed. The next day he visited a local hardware chain and purchased two rolls of duct tape, some braided rope, and some nylon cord. In the left hand corner of the check he used for his purchases--where the word Memo was printed--he wrote “Laura.”

That Saturday, the 17th of October, Laura went to a horse meet in nearby Middleburg, Virginia. A gala dinner party followed the event afterwards. The next day she slept in and then watched a Sunday NFL football game with her older brother Warren and his housemate. She had taken a temporary job in Washington until she decided whether to go on to law school or become a teacher. There was a big project at the firm due to start the next morning and so she went to bed early, just after ten o’clock.

Around midnight Hadden Clark parked his truck on the street next to the Houghteling house. He went to Penny’s gardening shed and grabbed the spare house key he knew was kept inside.

Hadden didn’t look or feel like himself. For starters, he was wearing a woman’s wig. Next to his skin he was wearing Penny Houghteling’s underwear. He carried a black purse, and over Penny’s lingerie he wore a woman’s blouse and slacks. He also wore a woman’s trench coat and underneath the trench coat, he concealed a .22 caliber rifle. He turned the key in the lock, tip-toed silently to Laura’s bedroom and once inside, used the gun to nudge her awake. His first words to her left the young woman speechless.

“Why are you in my bed?” he asked.

Laura didn’t know how to respond.

“What are you doing in my bed?”

His questions made no sense.

“Why are you wearing my clothes?” Hadden asked.

Tears fell from Laura’s eyes and onto her cheeks.

“Tell me I’m Laura.” he instructed.

“You’re Laura. Please don’t hurt me.”

Hadden asked Laura Houghteling to swear on the Bible that he was Laura. She did. Then, holding the gun on her, he forced Laura to get up, undress, and take a bath. After the cleansing ritual, he led her back into the bedroom and made her lie down on her stomach. His plan was to abduct her, take her to his campsite in the woods and “introduce her to Hadden.” He bound her wrists with duct tape, then her ankles. He turned her over and began covering her mouth with the tape, but got so excited he couldn’t stop and the tape soon covered her nose and eyes. She couldn’t breathe. Laura struggled until the lack of air suffocated her and she lay motionless.

As Laura lay still, Hadden began removing the tape from her face with a pair of scissors. Excited, his hand slipped and the sharp shears pierced her neck and caused blood to flow onto the sheets and pillowcase. He became fascinated with the earrings she was wearing and decided to take them for a souvenir. When he had a hard time removing the second one, he simply snipped it off with the sharp scissors, amputating the lower part of her ear and causing more blood to flow.

Hadden Clark sat by her bed and watched her nude body for nearly an hour. At times he stroked her breasts but would later claim that he neither raped nor practiced cannibalism on any part of her remains. At three in the morning, he wrapped her body in a queen-sized sheet, slung her over his shoulder, and stashed her remains on a narrow bed underneath the cap of the rear of his truck. He went back inside and gathered up the bloody evidence--the sheet, mattress pad, and pillowcase and carried them out along with some trophies. Laura’s high school ring, a crystal unicorn, and other personal effects went into his pockets. Then he lay down on her bed and slept.

Laura’s killer left the house at around eight that morning. He was wearing the woman’s wig and carrying the purse. A housekeeper standing with a child waiting for a school bus would later tell police she thought the person was Laura, headed out to her job. Hadden got in his truck and drove two blocks to the parking lot of a nearby church. He backed his truck into a corner of the lot and went to sleep again. Laura’s dead body was beside him.

While Hadden slept, Laura’s employer began calling the house, each time getting an answering machine. It wasn’t like Laura to miss work and give no explanation. Concerned, she sent someone out to the house to look around. The young woman, a personal friend, got no answer when she rang the doorbell. Alarmed, she telephoned Laura’s brother and began calling her friends. There was no reason to call the police. Yet.

During the interrogation, the cops bluffed.