The murder of Michelle Dorr
Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland · 1986
Overview
Michelle Dorr, six, spelled Michele in most press reports, vanished on May 31, 1986, from the back yard of her father's rented house on Sudbury Road in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she had been playing in a wading pool in a pink polka-dot bathing suit. Montgomery County police spent months on her father, who broke down under the questioning and gave irrational confessions that led nowhere. A neighbour two doors away, Hadden Clark, a Navy-discharged cook with paranoid schizophrenia who was moving out of his brother's house that day, cried and vomited when questioned and said he might have blacked out, but his time card seemed to clear him. The case went cold until October 1992, when Clark killed Laura Houghteling, 23, in Bethesda; he pleaded guilty in June 1993 and was given 30 years. In prison, fellow inmates got him talking, and he told them he had cut Michelle with a knife in his niece's bedroom and carried her out in a duffel bag. In 1995 investigators pulled up that bedroom's floorboards and found blood in eighty-five places. Clark was charged on September 23, 1998, convicted of second-degree murder in October 1999 without a body, and sentenced to a further 30 years. On January 7, 2000, he led police to her grave in a ravine off Route 29 in Silver Spring. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the conviction in September 2001.
How it was solved
The case turned on what Hadden Clark said, first to other prisoners and finally to the police. Clark had been questioned within days of Michelle's disappearance in 1986 and had cried, vomited and said he might have blacked out, but detectives were focused on her father, and Clark's time card, punched at 2:46 p.m., seemed to leave him no time. The file sat until October 1992, when Clark was arrested for the murder of Laura Houghteling in Bethesda after his bloody thumbprint was found on her pillowcase. Detectives reopened the Dorr file the same night. Clark pleaded guilty in June 1993 and led police to Laura's body, but a detective said they still had no physical evidence in Michelle's case. According to the Court of Special Appeals, in August 1994 two inmates hoping for leniency told Clark they would write a book about his life and asked whether he had killed Michelle; he said yes, and described finding her in his niece's bedroom, cutting her with a twelve-inch butcher knife, putting her body in a trash bag inside a duffel bag, cleaning the room and driving off toward work. In September 1995 investigators pulled up the floorboards of the niece's bedroom and found blood in eighty-five places. A third inmate at Hagerstown told police Clark had admitted the killing and said he did not mean to do it. Prosecutors hesitated for years, mindful that Michelle's father, with his irrational confessions and his signed statement about the time, was reasonable doubt personified, and insisted on every forensic test first. The last, a mitochondrial DNA test, excluded both Michelle and Clark as the source of the blood that could be typed, so DNA never identified anyone. Clark was charged on September 23, 1998, and in a videotaped interview said he might have seen Michelle alive in the house that day. A month later a prison caseworker heard him refer to the time she was killed, when nobody had said she was dead. A jury convicted him in October 1999 after an eighteen-day trial with no body. With his appeal pending, Clark chose to cooperate, and on January 7, 2000, he led police to her grave near Route 29.
Sources
- Hadden Irving Clark v. State of Maryland, No. 2123, September Term 1999, Court of Special Appeals (filed September 26, 2001)
“After Clark filed this timely appeal, he elected to cooperate with Montgomery County, Maryland, authorities. On January 7, 2000, Clark led police to a wooded ravine near Route 29 in Silver Spring, Maryland. There the police found Michelle's grave site.”
- Appeals Court Rejects Clark Appeal in Michele Dorr's Murder (September 27, 2001)
“After years under suspicion and his conviction in a different murder, Clark was found guilty of the second-degree murder of Dorr in October 1999. Dorr was last seen playing in a pool in her father's back yard in Silver Spring on May 31, 1986.”
- Hadden Clark's murder conviction affirmed (September 26, 2001)
“An appeals court yesterday upheld the second-degree murder conviction of Hadden Irving Clark”
- Murder Charge Is Filed In '86 Case of Missing Girl (September 24, 1998)
“Twelve years after Michele Dorr vanished from her father's back yard in Silver Spring, Montgomery County police arrested the little girl's former neighbor yesterday, charging that he killed the 6-year-old and carried her body off in a duffel bag.”
- Suspect charged in 1986 slaying of 6-year-old (September 24, 1998)
“Montgomery County police investigating the 1986 slaying of 6-year-old Michelle Lee Dorr yesterday charged a neighbor who is serving 30 years for another murder.”
- Prime Suspects: The Michele Dorr Story, Part One (August 10, 1997)
“He means Michele Dorr, age 6. She vanished 11 years ago from her father's back yard in Silver Spring. She's still missing, presumed dead.”
- Prime Suspects: The Michele Dorr Story, Part Two (August 10, 1997)
“Detectives checked his time card. They saw that Hadden had punched in at 2:46 p.m. They also learned that he'd arrived at work with a bandage on one of his hands.”
- Prime Suspects: The Michele Dorr Story, Part Three (August 10, 1997)
“The investigation didn't end; it simply lost momentum. The reporters and TV crews decamped from Sudbury Road.”
- Prime Suspects: The Michele Dorr Story, Part Four (August 10, 1997)
“A pillowcase from Laura's bed was discovered in woods a few hundred yards from the house. A technician turned up a bloody thumbprint on it: Laura's blood, Hadden's print.”
- Prime Suspects: The Michele Dorr Story, Part Five (August 10, 1997)
“In August 1994, about a year after he entered Maryland's prison system, Hadden underwent a six-month evaluation at the Patuxent Institution, a prison that provides intensive psychological therapy to eligible inmates. While he was there, a fellow inmate coaxed him into talking about Michele Dorr”
- Murder Suspect's 'Lifestyle is Getting Even' (November 15, 1992)
“Clark's next involvement with the police occurred after Michele Dorr disappeared in May 1986. Clark was questioned about the girl's disappearance, but was never charged.”
- Search for body fruitless; suspect steered police to N.J. (November 10, 1992, archived Usenet copy)
“Police also said yesterday that Clark will be questioned again about the 1986 disappearance of 6-year-old Michele Lee Dorr from her father's home in Silver Spring.”