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Hadden Clark was serving time in prison for murder when he confessed his sins to his cellmate – a long-haired, bearded man he believed to be Jesus.
The cellmate, Jack Truitt, listened as Clark described in detail how he slit the throat of a young girl in a pink bathing suit, drank her blood, and ate a bit of her flesh before burying her in the woods.
He admitted to Truitt that he knew where he’d left the body of six-year-old Michele Dorr was – and in 2000, he led police to her remains.
Investigation Discovery’s new docuseries, Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior, now streaming on HBO Max, delves into Clark’s twisted past, his unspeakable crimes and his shocking confessions.
Clark is a serial killer whose name you may not know. But his sinister crimes are just as horrifying as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.
Over the years, he has confessed to murdering multiple people – but only two victims have been confirmed.
Clark murdered Michele on May 31, 1986. Years later, on October 18, 1992, he killed 23-year-old Harvard grad Laura Houghteling.
But it took years for Clark, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, to confess.
Instead, he sent a sympathy card to Laura’s family, whom he worked for as a gardener. When he was eventually caught and questioned, he insisted that his alter ego, a personality he calls Kristin Bluefin, was responsible for the killings.
The series also explores Clark’s depraved childhood – how he claimed his mother forced him to wear girls’ clothing as punishment, how his father killed someone, and Clark’s hobby of killing and dissecting animals. As an adult, he attended the Culinary Institute of America, and was caught chugging beef blood.
It was only the beginning.
The murder of Laura Houghteling
When Laura Houghteling’s coworkers reported that she didn’t show up for work, her brother noted that their family gardener, Clark, had avoided conversation all day.
He told police, who quickly took Clark in for questioning. But Clark provided an alibi for the night she disappeared and broke down crying.
A few days later, he mailed a chilling sympathy card to Laura’s brother and her mother Penny, according to local magazine The Washingtonian in 1994.
“Just please give me a call when your ready to do some gardening again,” Clark wrote in the card. “And I can also bring you bagels on Friday too,” he added, which referred to his job at a local bagel place.
Clark was later identified as a suspect after police found a bloody fingerprint on Laura’s pillowcase that was found in the woods.
He had suffocated her with a pillow in her bedroom, stabbed her, and later cut off one of her earlobes to discard her earring, police said.
In court, he admitted that he had suffocated Laura to death while wearing a wig and Penny’s clothes at the time of the murder.
Clark pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
It was while behind bars for Laura’s death, that he started confessing to his cellmate about Michele.
The murder of 6-year-old Michele Dorr
Michele Dorr was just six years old when she vanished from her backyard on May 31, 1986.
She was dressed in a pink and white polka-dot bathing suit, and was last seen walking to an inflatable pool, according to her father.
At the time, Clark was living with his brother in Silver Spring, just two houses down from where Michele lived with her father.
But Michele wasn’t found until 2000 following Clark’s confession to Truitt. Her shallow grave was found in a nearby park.
Clark had slashed her throat with a knife before drinking some of her blood and eating a piece of her flesh. She was still in her pink bathing suit.
‘Soulless individual’ who blamed his actions on his female alter ego
In the late 1990s, now-retired FBI special agent Lou Luciano began conducting lengthy interrogations with Clark at the Western Correctional Institute.
Luciano sat down for interviews in the docuseries, where he recalled Clark as “pure evil.”
“You’re dealing with multiple personalities, a guy eating moldy pork patties,” Luciano told Rolling Stone.
“He’s a killer. He’s a soulless individual. Behind those eyes, there is nothing. And he was the guy holding the cards because he had a pretty good idea where the bodies were.”
Luciano said that when they interviewed him, it became apparent that Clark “had multiple personalities” – and Kristen Bluefin was one of them.
Clark insisted that Kristen was responsible for the killings.
He signed his name as Kristen, and claimed that she was a “mean b*tch”, ate “raw” flesh, and loved “hiding stuff.”
“As Hadden started to demonstrate that his more forceful personality and more prolific personality was this woman, he began to become her more in the moment. He would shift back and forth… I think Kristen was probably his wall, his shield.”
The killer also drew chilling images that contained clues of his alleged crimes.
“His drawings are mostly women and landscapes, maps,: Luciano said. “They almost look like postcards, like ‘Wish you were here so I could kill you.’ I’m featured in some of it… But it’s always wide-eyed girls with blue eyes.”
The drawings are eerily similar to the ones done by BTK killer Dennis Rader.
During one of the interviews, Luciano asked Clark for a picture of Kristen, and he handed over a drawing of a blonde woman with big blue eyes.
It resembled FBI Special Agent Desiree Smith, Luciano noticed. When they brought her in to help, Clark smiled and said, “You’re Kristen.”
The investigators were then able to get more information from Clark.
The Confession
In 2000, with the help of Truitt, police were able to narrow down their search and give families a tiny bit of closure.
Truitt spoke about his wild encounters with Clark throughout the docuseries.
He recalled the rancid smell coming from the killer’s cell. Inside Clark’s locker, he had saved 15 cartons of milk.
“He would save them. It’s hot. He’d just let them swell up. It just was just rancid, man,” Truitt said. “I said to him, ‘why would you do that?’”
And he told me, “It reminds me of decaying bodies.”
Luciano credited Truitt for helping investigators’ closure to Michele’s family.
“When Hadden started confessing to Jack because he thought he was Jesus, Jack was like, ‘Man, this guy’s talking about killing, gutting and cannibalizing little kids and cutting the throats of women,’” Luciano said.
“Jack did this at great risk… being locked up in a correctional institution. Calling the police can make a very bad entry to your health record while you’re behind bars. But Jack picked up the phone and made that call.”
Cannibal brothers
Over the course of the series, Clark’s brother, Geoff Clark, shed light on what their childhood was like and the dysfunction in their upbringing.
At times, he sobs over his brother’s crimes.
A third Clark brother is also a convicted killer. Bradfield Clark, now 73, was convicted in 1985 of killing and dismembering a female co-worker in California, allegedly eating parts of her corpse.
In the docuseries, investigators note how rare it is for two brothers to be involved in completely unrelated homicides at around the same time .
Their younger brother condemns his siblings in the docuseries, describing the heartache he feels for their victims’ families.
At one point while being interviewed, Clark claims he himself learned about killing by witnessing his late father murder a woman.
A killer eligible for parole
Director Michael Bay said he spent countless hours speaking to Clark prison so that he could get into the mind and psychology of a person who the FBI refers to as ‘a person of interest’ in over 20 states.
It is unknown if Clark killed other victims - but Bay hopes that his series will bring some answers.
"‘Born Evil’ could potentially open the door to solving many cold case murders," Bay said.
Clark is currently serving two consecutive 30-year prison sentences at the Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover, Maryland.
However, the serial killer is now eligible for parole.
“If you’re comfortable with this guy living in your basement or renting a room from you, then put him out on parole,” Luciano said.
All five episodes of Born Evil: The Serial Killer and The Savior are now streaming on Max.
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