07x25 - Dressed to k*ll

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

-[SINGING] He's still working on me.

To make me what I ought to be.

NARRATOR: An unemployed gardener with a history

of mental illness was a vital witness

in the case of a missing six-year-old girl.

-[SINGING] He's still working on me.

NARRATOR: Between songs, he provided details

about events which took place more than a decade earlier.

Investigators weren't sure the man could be trusted

and left it up to forensic science to determine the truth.

[theme music]

-Memorial Day weekend, .

In Silver Spring, Maryland, it was so hot,

six-year-old Michelle Dorr asked her father

if she could play in the small pool in their backyard.

CARL DORR: She was playing in the backyard pool for a while

and showing how me how she could blow

bubbles in the water and that sort of thing.

NARRATOR: Michelle was spending the weekend with her father.

Her parents were going through a bitter divorce.

And custody arrangements for Michelle, their only child,

were still being worked out.

Michelle's mother, Dee Dee, wanted

full custody of her daughter.

CARL DORR: I got an ex parte order saying that I was

a threat to Michelle and a threat to her,

and I was physically abusive, and she needed

court-ordered custody right then.

NARRATOR: But those problems were put aside

for what Carl believed would be a pleasant weekend

with his daughter.

After Carl made lunch, he went back outside to check

on Michelle, but she wasn't there.

So he walked to his neighbor's home, the Clark family,

to see if Michelle was there visiting her friend Elizabeth.

But they hadn't seen her.

CARL DORR: And he said, no she's not here.

And I looked at Elizabeth and-- she's not with you?

I couldn't believe what Geoff was saying.

It just didn't register at first that she

couldn't be with Elizabeth.

And at that point, I realized that she's never

gone any further than the Clark house, that something's wrong.

NARRATOR: Carl Dorr immediately contacted police.

DEBRA L. DWYER: She was not a little girl

who roam off indiscriminately.

She was not a little girl who would roam off, and wander

away, and take up with strangers.

-I mean, the Clark house was feet away,

so I never, never had to worry about her crossing the street

or going wandering off.

If I wanted to find her, I knew where to find her.

NARRATOR: When police contacted Michelle's mother, Dee Dee,

she told them she knew what had happened to Michelle.

-She point blank told them that I

did it-- I did something with Michelle.

DEBRA L. DWYER: Michelle's mother told the police,

he had threatened to harm his own daughter.

He had threatened, in the heat of anger,

in the heat of a very horrible divorce, to take the daughter,

take Michelle away so that her mother

couldn't have her anymore.

-You have to take it in the context

that she's a mother who is in this very nasty divorce

separation custody battle and also somebody who

her daughter has just disappeared.

So you have take it that context.

NARRATOR: Carl Dorr was outraged by his ex-wife's accusation

and demanded to be given a polygraph test.

He failed.

-He's trying to tell me that I didn't pass a polygraph test.

That's an impossibility.

I didn't have anything to do with Michelle disappearing.

Don't tell me I failed a polygraph test.

That didn't happen.

NARRATOR: Carl Dorr was now the prime suspect.

And soon, he would tell police of the role he'd played

in his daughter's disappearance.

In the days after Michelle Dorr's disappearance,

missing posters were placed throughout the area,

but there was no sign of the little six-year-old girl.

Investigators were convinced her father, Carl,

had either kidnapped or k*lled her.

Carl Dorr had failed a polygraph test.

And the detective on the case was pressuring him to confess.

CARL DORR: He kept insisting, you know,

you've done something.

I know you've done something with Michelle.

And we're going to find her body.

And when we find her body, I'm coming to get you,

is what he told me point blank, finger in the face,

in my face screaming and yelling, you need to confess.

NARRATOR: Just a few days later, Carl Dorr confessed.

DEBRA L. DWYER: On three different occasions,

he told the police he'd k*lled his daughter

and told the police where they could go and find her body.

And one of them was underneath the,

I guess, the crawl space of his house.

Another was in his father's own grave in a cemetery in DC.

NARRATOR: Police checked the crawl space of the home

and found nothing.

They also checked the local cemetery

where his father was buried, but nothing was found.

DEBRA L. DWYER: He felt a lot of pressure.

And the police put a lot of pressure on him.

And as a result of that pressure and the guilt and shame that he

felt about his daughter's disappearance, he cracked.

There's no doubt about that. He cracked.

-I had no-- I couldn't deal with what they were telling me,

that we're not going to find Michelle alive.

I just was trying to go into some sort of denial about that.

NARRATOR: He then checked himself into a local hospital.

He thought the television was talking to him

and that he had the power to find

Michelle and bring her back to life.

-I was starting to lose it, I mean, in a psychiatric sense.

I mean, I was having a nervous breakdown.

I was hallucinating.

I was seeing things that weren't there.

I was hearing people that weren't there.

NARRATOR: After three days of much needed rest and sedation,

Carl was released from the hospital

and told the press that he had never confessed.

He said his statements were twisted

into an admission of guilt.

To prove his point, he asked to take

a second polygraph examination.

This time, he passed.

Investigators now began to wonder,

was it possible that someone else had taken Michelle Dorr?

-In my experience, in a case where somebody confesses

or where the police have the wrong suspect,

they seem to try to make all the facts fit around that person.

So they're so busy doing that, and they have the tunnel vision

that we have the right suspect, this

is who it is, that they forget about looking

at any other options.

NARRATOR: Months went by and then

years with no sign of Michelle.

The investigation came to a dead end.

In the minds of police, Carl Dorr remained a suspect,

but they had no evidence to charge him.

Then six years later, there was a new development.

- days after -year-old Laura Houghteling disappeared

from her Bethesda home, her family

tells reporters they believe they know what happened to her.

In what seemed to be an unrelated case,

a Harvard graduate, Laura Houghteling,

was reported missing.

She lived a few miles away from Michelle and Carl Dorr.

Laura Houghteling had been stabbed to death in her bedroom

while asleep.

Her k*ller left behind few clues.

He had done an unusually thorough job

of cleaning up the crime scene.

-Normally, we would have found blood splatter elsewhere

in the room or some indications of a fight or something.

But that area, that bedroom, the crime scene itself

had been cleaned up and cleaned up very good.

NARRATOR: But he made one mistake.

In Laura Houghteling's hair brush was one foreign hair.

It wasn't human.

It was from a wig.

The Houghteling's gardener, -year-old Hadden Clark,

was a known cross-dresser.

-He had mental problems.

We also discovered that he was a cross-dresser.

He would dress in women's clothing.

NARRATOR: The wig hair in Laura Houghteling's hairbrush

matched a wig found in Hadden Clark's possession.

Investigators believe that after k*lling Laura Houghteling,

Hadden Clark dressed in women's clothing, put on the wig,

and left the scene of the crime in broad daylight

without creating any suspicion.

Hadden Clark was convicted of Laura Houghteling's m*rder.

Then, police made a startling discovery.

-The police say to themselves, hey, wait.

We've heard this name before.

This was a guy that we were looking

at who lived in the house where Michelle Dorr was last supposed

to have been seen or have gone.

And so at that point, they started really pressing

Hadden on the Michelle Dorr case and looking

at him as a very serious suspect.

NARRATOR: Hadden Clark lived just two houses away

from Michelle Dorr at the time of her disappearance.

His niece, Elizabeth, was Michelle's playmate.

When Michelle first disappeared, Hadden Clark

was questioned about his whereabouts that day.

And something unusual happened during his interrogation that

should have aroused police suspicions.

Hadden Clark confessed to the m*rder of -year-old Laura

Houghteling, but he denied having anything

to do with the disappearance of Michelle Dorr.

But on the day Michelle disappeared,

police discovered that Clark was alone in his brother's home,

just two doors away from Michelle's home.

He was packing his things, since his brother had kicked him

out because of what he called, inappropriate behavior

with the children.

-What happened that day, back in ,

was that Hadden was very angry.

His brother, his brother's wife, and his children

had left the home in order to give Hadden an opportunity

to get his things and get out.

And they had given him a deadline to get out.

NARRATOR: That same day, police questioned Hadden Clark

and asked him if he knew anything

about Michelle's disappearance.

-He was answering questions, and was cooperative.

When the nature of the interview changed and Michelle Dorr's

name was mentioned, Hadden's entire demeanor changed.

He began to shake violently.

He began to rock back and forth in his chair.

He actually became physically sick

and had to leave the room at the mere mention

of Michelle's name.

NARRATOR: Although police knew his behavior was unusual,

it was discounted once Carl Dorr allegedly confessed.

DEBRA L. DWYER: There was no evidence

to suggest that Hadden Clark had k*lled Michelle

Dorr, other than his own quirky, bizarre behavior, which could

be attributed to a number of things, one of which

being his own mental illness.

So that's why the police stepped away from Hadden Clark

and focused on Carl Dorr for months and years

after Michelle's disappearance.

CARL DORR: How can you not suspect this guy in if you

even spend an afternoon with him?

You don't have to go to Kmart to figure out he's crazy.

-Once in prison for Laura Houghteling's m*rder,

Clark refused to answer questions about Michelle Dorr.

-I know what's going on I'm not talking about nothing

because my lawyer told me not to.

I told you honestly.

I wouldn't-- I answered some of your questions,

whatever you want to ask.

But some questions I'm not going to answer.

And that's just the way it is.

-This is Jim Beckette.

At one time, he was incarcerated with Hadden

Clark in the same prison cell block.

He had more luck getting Hadden to talk about his crimes

than the police.

JIM BECKETTE: I just wanted to find out the truth of it,

so I got in real close to him.

And I sort of felt it was a window of opportunity

to find out the truth through him.

Rather than intimidating him, I became a good friend.

And I talked to him on many, many occasions.

NARRATOR: One day, while Beckette and Clark were

in the prison cafeteria, Beckette

asked Hadden about Michelle Dorr.

JIM BECKETTE: He was saying she was

such a lovely young girl and all.

And I could see it was bothering him.

I looked at him. And I said, Hadden.

I said, why did you do it?

And when I said it like that, he blurted out.

He says, I didn't mean to do it. You know, he didn't repeat it.

But he says, I didn't mean to do it.

And it was like he knew what was being said.

And he knew he had just confessed

to me that he had k*lled her.

NARRATOR: Beckette then told police that Clark confessed

to k*lling Michelle Dorr in a small bedroom

in his brother's home.

But police had no physical or forensic evidence

to charge Clark.

But then, they remembered how expertly Clark cleaned

the crime scene after Laura Houghteling's m*rder.

DEBRA L. DWYER: The police put two and two together

and realized that he had been able to clean, meticulously

clean, a crime scene where there was a lot of blood shed.

He was able to remove evidence from a crime scene,

to the point where family members had

no idea that a m*rder had taken place there.

NARRATOR: It had been years since Michelle's disappearance.

And Hadden Clark's brother had sold the home.

And a number of families had occupied it since.

Police wondered whether any forensic evidence remained.

Hadden Clark's prison roommate told police

that Clark admitted k*lling Michelle Dorr

in a bedroom in his brother's home.

But years had passed.

And the home had been owned by a number of families since.

The bedroom was only by feet.

It had no rugs or carpet, but it did

have the original oak wood floor.

Unfortunately, it had been sanded and refinished

with polyurethane at least once, possibly more, which might have

destroyed any evidence that existed.

To find out, police used luminol, a chemical which

glows when it comes into contact with the iron

component in blood.

After spraying the floor, investigators

noticed a faint glow along the seams of the oak panelling.

-What actually appeared was long luminescence lines

along the slats of the floorboards,

not on the surface of the floor, but deeply

embedded in the actual slats themselves.

NARRATOR: The entire floor was taken apart for further tests.

Investigators wanted to know if the blood

between the floorboards was human, and if it was,

whose blood was it?

Forensic scientist, Susan Ballou,

used Q-tips to swab the side of each seam of every floorboard.

The Q-tips were rinsed with phenolphthalein,

then with hydrogen peroxide.

Only two tiny areas turned purple,

a positive presumptive test for blood.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a large enough sample for DNA testing.

SUSAN BALLOU: So then we had to decide what else can be done

with this particular blood, these samples

that we definitely want to determine

where they originated from?

NARRATOR: So scientists decided to try

a mitochondrial DNA test.

Mitochondria exists outside of the cell's nucleus.

And they're passed on genetically from a mother

to her children.

It's not as precise as nuclear DNA testing,

but it still can be used for identification.

-There's a lot more mitos, as we call them,

present in a cell than the one nucleus.

So the theory is because of those mass numbers

in each individual cell, you have a better opportunity

to get a higher level of the mito DNA

that you might be able to get results with.

NARRATOR: The mitochondrial DNA from blood

between the floorboards matched the mitochondrial DNA

profile of Michelle's mother.

-In other words, somebody from their family

left blood at that location.

NARRATOR: Since Michelle had been inside the home and not

her mother, the blood was believed to be Michelle's.

Prosecutors believe that after Carl Dorr went inside

to make lunch, Michelle left the pool

to look for her friend Elizabeth.

In a freak, tragic coincidence, when Michelle knocked

on Elizabeth's door, no one was home

except Hadden, who was packing his things,

since his brother had ordered him to move out.

DEBRA L. DWYER: We believe that he saw Michelle.

He saw her as an opportunity to vent his rage.

We also believe that he saw it as an opportunity

to get revenge on his brother.

NARRATOR: Police believe Hadden k*lled Michelle in the upstairs

bedroom then cleaned the blood from the floor.

He probably removed Michelle's body in one of the duffel bags

neighbors saw him carrying when moving out later that day.

CARL DORR: I don't believe he has an ounce of remorse

for what he's done to Michelle.

And he doesn't deserve-- he doesn't even

deserve to live as far as I'm concerned.

He's is one completely worthless as a human being.

I have nothing to say to him I don't need his apologies.

I don't need anything from him.

NARRATOR: Fortunately, the sanding, polyurethane,

and years worth of detergents hadn't

destroyed the mitochondrial DNA evidence.

Carl Dorr has since remarried and moved on with his life.

But he has kept Michelle's letters

and this crayons self-portrait she drew

just days before she was m*rder*d.

CARL DORR: She had just lost one of her front teeth

before she disappeared.

So she had a little bit of a gap in her front teeth.

A really sweet, innocent little girl.

NARRATOR: Hadden Clark was convicted of Michelle Dorr's

m*rder and was sentenced to a second life term in prison.

Shortly after his conviction, Hadden Clark

directed police to the shallow grave

where he had buried Michelle's body.

It was just miles from her home.

-I believe when Hadden asked the police,

or told the police that he would show them where Michelle Dorr's

body was, he asked to be able to dress as a woman.

The police went and got him women's clothes and a wig.

NARRATOR: Hadden Clark now claims his female persona, whom

he refers to as Kristen Bluefin, is the real k*ller.

SHARON WEIDENFELD: He dresses as this woman.

He writes letters as this woman.

He speaks as this woman.

And it is the woman that commits the crimes.

NARRATOR: Psychologists say that Clark,

here apparently unaware of being videotaped before his police

interrogation, is a paranoid schizophrenic who cannot

control his compulsion to k*ll.

-[SINGING] How loving and patient he must be.

He's still working on me.

NARRATOR: Everyone who knows him is convinced

he would k*ll again if given the chance.

-He's intelligent.

I think he was able to get away with crimes for a long time.

And I think that he knows what he's doing.

He's good at his job.

-He is a definite skilled criminal in making sure

that the crime scene is cleaned up,

all little loose ends are tied up.

However, there's always been some small bit of evidence

that we have found to still pinpoint

that crime to Hadden Clark.

[theme music]