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he's still working on me to make me what i ought to be an unemployed gardener with a history of
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mental illness was a vital witness in the case of a missing six-year-old girl [Music]
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between songs he provided details about events which took place more than a decade earlier
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investigators weren't sure the man could be trusted and left it up to forensic
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science to determine the truth [Music] memorial day weekend 1986 in silver spring maryland it was so hot
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six-year-old michelle dorr asked her father if she could play in the small pool in their backyard
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she was playing in the backyard pool for a while and showing me how she could blow bubbles in
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the water and that sort of thing michelle was spending the weekend with her father
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her parents were going through a bitter divorce and custody arrangements for michelle their only child were still
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being worked out michelle's mother dede wanted full custody of her daughter i got an ex parte order saying that i
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was a threat to michelle and a threat to her and i was physically abusive and she
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needed court-ordered custody right then but those problems were put aside for what carl believed would be a pleasant
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weekend with his daughter after carl made lunch he went back outside to check on michelle
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but she wasn't there [Music] so he walked to his neighbor's home the clark family to see if michelle was
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there visiting her friend elizabeth but they hadn't seen her he said no she's not here and i looked
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at elizabeth and she's not with you and i couldn't believe what jeff was saying i just
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didn't register at first you know that she couldn't be with elizabeth and at that point i realized
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uh you know she's never gone any further than in the clark house that this is there's something's
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wrong carl door immediately contacted police she was not a little girl who would roam
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off indiscriminately she was not a little girl who would roam off and wander away and take up with strangers i
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mean the clark house was 50 feet away so i never never had to worry about her crossing
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the street or going wandering off i if i wanted to find her i knew where to find her
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when police contacted michelle's mother dee dee she told them she knew what had happened
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to michelle she point blank told him that i did it i did something with michelle
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michelle's mother told the police he had threatened to harm his own daughter he
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had threatened in the heat of anger in the heat of a very horrible divorce to take the daughter take michelle away so
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that her mother couldn't have her anymore you have to take it in the context that
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that she's a mother who is in this very um nasty divorce separation custody battle and also somebody who her
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daughter has just disappeared so you have to take it in that context carl door was outraged by his ex-wife's
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accusation and demanded to be given a polygraph test he failed he's trying to tell me that i didn't
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pass the polygraph test that's an impossibility i didn't have anything to
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do with michelle disappearing don't tell me i failed a polygraph test that that didn't happen carl doerr was
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now the prime suspect and soon he would tell police of the role he'd played in his daughter's disappearance
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[Music] in the days after michelle dorr's disappearance missing posters were
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placed throughout the area but there was no sign of the little six-year-old girl
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investigators were convinced her father carl had either kidnapped or killed her carl door had failed the polygraph test
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and the detective on the case was pressuring him to confess insisting you know you've done something
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i know you've done something with michelle and we're going to find her body and when we find her body i'm
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coming to get you is what he told me point blank finger in the face you know in my face screaming
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yelling um you know you need to confess just a few days later carl door confessed
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on three different occasions he told the police he had killed his daughter and told the police where they could go and
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find her body and one of them was underneath the the i guess the crawl space of his house
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another was in his father's own grave in a cemetery in dc police checked the crawl space of the
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home and found nothing they also checked the local cemetery where his father was buried but nothing
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was found 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
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guilt and the shame and that he felt about his daughter's disappearance he cracked there's no doubt about that
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he cracked i i had no i couldn't deal with what they were telling me that we're not going to find
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michelle alive i just was trying to go into some sort of denial about that he then checked himself into a local
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hospital he thought the television was talking to him and that he had the power to find
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michelle and bring her back to life i was starting to lose it i mean in a psychiatric sense
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i mean i was having a nervous breakdown i was hallucinating i was seeing things that weren't there i was hearing people
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that weren't there after three days of much-needed rest and sedation carl was released from the hospital and
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told the press that he had never confessed he said his statements were twisted into
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an admission of guilt to prove his point he has to take a second polygraph examination
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this time he passed investigators now began to wonder was it possible that someone else had taken michelle
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door in my experience in a case where somebody confesses or where the police have the wrong suspect
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they seem to try to make all the facts fit around that person so they're so busy doing that
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and they have the tunnel vision that we have the right suspect this is who it is
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that they um forget about looking at any other options months went by and then years with no
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sign of michelle the investigation came to a dead end in the minds of police carl door remained a suspect but they
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had no evidence to charge him then six years later there was a new development ten days after 24 year-old laura hodling
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disappeared from her bethesda home her family tells reporters they believe they know what happened to her
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in what seemed to be an unrelated case a harvard graduate laura hoteling was reported missing
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she lived a few miles away from michelle and carl door laura hoteling had been stabbed to death
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in her bedroom while asleep her killer left behind few clues he had done an unusually thorough job of
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cleaning up the crime scene normally he would have found blood splatter elsewhere in the room or some
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indications of a fight or something but that area that bedroom the crime scene itself had been cleaned up
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and cleaned up very good but he made one mistake in laura hotelling's hairbrush was one
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foreign hair it wasn't human it was from a wig the hoteling's gardener thirty-year-old
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hadden clark was a known cross-dresser he had mental problems we also discovered that he was a
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cross-dresser he would dress in women's clothing the wig hair in laura hoteling's
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hairbrush matched the wig found in haddon clark's possession investigators believe that after killing
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laura hoteling haddon clark dressed in women's clothing put on the wig and left
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the scene of the crime in broad daylight without creating any suspicion adam clarke was convicted of laura
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hotelling's murder then police made a startling discovery the police say to themselves hey wait
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we've we've heard this name before this was a guy that we were looking at
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who lived in the house where michelle door was last supposed to have been seen or have gone and so at that point they
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started really um pressing hadden on the michelle door case and looking at him as
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a very serious suspect hadden clark lived just two houses away from michelle door at the time of her
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disappearance his niece elizabeth was michelle's playmate when michelle first disappeared
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haddon clark was questioned about his whereabouts that day and something unusual happened during
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his interrogation that should have aroused police suspicions [Music] haddon clark confessed to the murder of
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23 year old laura hoteling but he denied having anything to do with the disappearance of michelle dorr
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but on the day michelle disappeared police discovered that clark was alone in his brother's home just two doors
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away from michelle's home he was packing his things since his brother had kicked him out because of
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what he called inappropriate behavior with the children what happened that day back in 1986 was
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that hadden was very angry his brother his brother's wife and his children had left the home in order to
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give haddon an opportunity to get his things and get out and they had given him a deadline to get out
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that same day police questioned haddon clark and asked him if he knew anything about
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michelle's disappearance he was answering questions and was cooperative when the nature of the interview changed
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and michelle dorr's name was mentioned hadden's entire demeanor changed he
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began to shake violently he began to rock back and forth in his chair he actually became physically sick and had
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to leave the room at the mere mention of michelle's name although police knew his behavior was
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unusual it was discounted once carl dore allegedly confessed there was no evidence to suggest that
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that hadn't clark had killed michelle door other than his own quirky bizarre
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behavior which could be attributed to a number of things one of which being his own mental illness so that's why the
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police stepped away from haddon clark and focused on carl door for months and years after michelle's disappearance
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how can you not suspect this guy in 1986 if you even you know spend an afternoon with
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you him you don't have to go to kmart to figure out he's crazy once in prison for laura hotelling's
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murder clark refused to answer questions about michelle door i know what's going on
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i'm not talking about nothing because my lawyer told me not to i told you honestly i wouldn't i answer some of
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your questions whatever you want to answer but some questions i'm not going to answer that's just the way it in
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this is jim beckett at one time he was incarcerated with haddon clark in the same prison cell block
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he had more luck getting him to talk about his crimes than the police i just wanted to find out the truth of
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it so i i got in real close to him and i sort of thought it was a wind of opportunity
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to find out the the truth through him rather than intimidating him i became a good friend
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and i talked to him on many many occasions one day while beckett and clark were in the
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prison cafeteria beckett asked hadden about michelle door he was saying she was such a lovely
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young girl and all and i could see it was bothering him i looked at him and i said
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hadn't i said why did you do it and when i said it like that he worded it out he says i didn't mean to
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do it you know he didn't repeat it but he he says i didn't mean to do it and it was
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like he knew what was being said and he knew he just confessed to me that he had killed her
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beckett then told police that clark confessed to killing michelle door in a small bedroom in his brother's
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home but police had no physical or forensic evidence to charge clark but then they remembered how expertly
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clark cleaned the crime scene after laura hotelling's murder the police put two and two together and
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realized that he had been able to clean and meticulously clean a crime scene where there was a lot of bloodshed he
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was able to remove evidence from a crime scene to the point where family members
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had no idea that a murder had taken place there it had been 10 years since michelle's
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disappearance and hadn't clark's brother had sold the home and a number of
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families had occupied it since police wondered whether any forensic evidence remained
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hadden clark's prison roommate told police that clark admitted killing michelle door in a bedroom in his
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brother's home but ten years had passed and the home had been owned by a number of families
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since the bedroom was only seven by ten feet it had no rugs or carpet but it did have
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the original oak wood floor unfortunately it had been sanded and refinished with
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polyurethane at least once possibly more which might have destroyed any evidence
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that existed to find out police used luminol a chemical which glows when it comes into
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contact with the iron component in blood after spraying the floor investigators noticed a faint glow
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along the seams of the oak paneling what actually appeared was long luminescence lines
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along the slats of the floorboards not on the surface of the floor but deeply embedded in the actual slats themselves
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the entire floor was taken apart for further tests investigators wanted to know if the
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blood between the floorboards was human and if it was whose blood was it forensic scientist susan baloo used
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q-tips to swab the side of each seam of every floorboard the q-tips were rinsed with
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phenolphthalein then with hydrogen peroxide only two tiny areas turned purple a positive presumptive test for blood
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unfortunately it wasn't a large enough sample for dna testing so then we had to decide what else can
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be done with this particular blood these samples that we definitely want to determine where they originated from
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so scientists decided to try a mitochondrial dna test mitochondria exists outside of the
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cell's nucleus and are passed on genetically from a mother to her children it's not as precise as nuclear dna
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testing but it still can be used for identification there's a lot more midos as we call them
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present in a cell than the one nucleus so the theory is because of those mass numbers in each individual cell you have
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a better opportunity to get a higher level of the mido dna that you might be able to get results
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with the mitochondrial dna from blood between the floorboards matched the mitochondrial dna profile of
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michelle's mother in other words somebody from their family left blood at that location
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since michelle had been inside the home and not her mother the blood was believed to be michelle's
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prosecutors believe that after carl door went inside to make lunch michelle left the pool to look for her
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friend elizabeth in a freak tragic coincidence when michelle knocked on elizabeth's door no
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one was home except hadden who was packing his things since his brother had ordered him to
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move out we believe that he saw michelle he saw her as an opportunity to vent his rage
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we also believe that he saw it as an opportunity to get revenge on his brother [Music]
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police believe hadn't killed michelle in the upstairs bedroom then cleaned the blood from the floor
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he probably removed michelle's body in one of the duffel bags neighbors saw him
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carrying when moving out later that day i don't believe he has an ounce of remorse for what he's done to michelle
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and he doesn't deserve he doesn't even deserve to live as far as i'm concerned
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he is one and completely worthless as a human being i have nothing to say to him
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i don't need his uh apologies i don't need anything from him fortunately
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the sanding polyurethane and 10 years worth of detergents hadn't destroyed the
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mitochondrial dna evidence carl doerr has since remarried and moved on with his life
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but he has kept michelle's letters and this crayon self-portrait she drew just days before she was murdered
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she had just lost one of her front teeth before she disappeared she had a little bit of a gaff in her
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teeth but just really sweet innocent little girl kevin clark was convicted of michelle
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dorr's murder and was sentenced to a second life term in prison shortly after his conviction
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hadn't clark directed police to the shallow grave where he had buried michelle's body
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it was just 12 miles from her home i believe when hadden asked the police or told the police that he would show
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them where michelle dora's body was he asked to be able to dress as a woman the police went and got him women's
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clothes and a wig adam clark now claims his female persona whom he refers to as kristen bluefin
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is the real killer he dresses as this woman he writes letters as this woman he speaks as this
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woman and it is the woman that commits the crimes psychologists say that clark here
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apparently unaware of being videotaped before his police interrogation is a paranoid schizophrenic who cannot
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control his compulsion to kill how loving and patient he must be he's still working on me
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everyone who knows him is convinced he would kill again if given the chance he's intelligent i think he's he was
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able to get away with crimes for a long time and i think that um he he knows what he's doing he's good at
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his job he is a definite skilled criminal in making sure that the crime scene is
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cleaned up all little loose ends are tied up however there's always been some
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small bit of evidence that we have found to still pinpoint that crime to haddon clark
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you