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The Serial Killer Who Signed Letters _Mr Bunny Rabbit · Luke's English Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: I've been in the room with a lot of bad, bad,
0:03
Speaker 1: bad people, but this guy just takes the cake because
0:08
Speaker 1: there's no rhyme or reason for what he did and
0:11
Speaker 1: where he did it, why he did it.
0:14
Speaker 2: He's he's just one percent evil.
0:17
Speaker 3: What if evil isn't an explanation but a way to
0:21
Speaker 3: stop asking questions?
0:23
Speaker 2: If you were in the same room as this guy,
0:25
Speaker 2: he sould us.
0:26
Speaker 3: Evil tells us what someone is. But I want to
0:29
Speaker 3: understand why they became that way. And that's why I've
0:33
Speaker 3: been corresponding with Hadden. Clark convicted of two murders, suspected
0:39
Speaker 3: in others. These are crimes separated by time and place,
0:43
Speaker 3: and at first glance, without a clear motive tying them together.
0:48
Speaker 2: Authorities are still attempting to piece together Clark's movements in
0:51
Speaker 2: the wake of these recent discoveries.
0:53
Speaker 4: A man who came from a home so broken it
0:56
Speaker 4: didn't produce just one.
0:57
Speaker 5: Killer, it produced two.
1:00
Speaker 2: I'm sure you know about his brother, Bradfield.
1:02
Speaker 3: Most families leave behind trauma. This one left behind bodies.
1:07
Speaker 5: How much time do you think he spent with Hadden?
1:10
Speaker 2: Days and days and days and days.
1:12
Speaker 3: That's lou Luciano, a retired FBI special agent and veteran
1:18
Speaker 3: with twenty six years a federal law enforcement experience. Today
1:23
Speaker 3: I'm speaking with him to understand Hadden Clark, his brother,
1:27
Speaker 3: and how one home can manufacture two killers.
1:31
Speaker 2: The debate always is it nature nurture?
1:35
Speaker 1: And I think for Hadden, I think it's a combination
1:39
Speaker 1: of both. Quite honestly, when you're around this guy, it's
1:42
Speaker 1: like being in a room with Satan.
1:45
Speaker 5: I'm James Buddy Day, this is unmarked.
1:51
Speaker 3: How did you catch the Clark case?
1:55
Speaker 2: I was pretty new in the FBI at the time.
1:58
Speaker 1: I was assigned to the Baltimore Field Office and I
2:02
Speaker 1: got sent down to what back way back then in
2:05
Speaker 1: the late eighties early nineties was known as the Hyattsville Office.
2:13
Speaker 3: In the late nineteen nineties, lu Luciano was working violent
2:16
Speaker 3: crimes in Baltimore, Maryland.
2:19
Speaker 5: New to the Bureau, he was.
2:20
Speaker 3: Assigned to a veteran agent named ed Roach and absorbed
2:25
Speaker 3: into a team investigating the disappearance of a twenty three
2:28
Speaker 3: year old woman named Laura Hodling in Bessesta.
2:32
Speaker 2: Ed Roach was knee deep in the Hotling case.
2:37
Speaker 1: And when we merged the squads together, you know, he said,
2:42
Speaker 1: he said, someday all this will be yours.
2:44
Speaker 2: Dure enough, I get a lot of his cases.
2:45
Speaker 6: Montgomery police have identified a groundskeeper named Hayden Clark as
2:49
Speaker 6: a person of interest in the disappearance.
2:51
Speaker 3: The Hotling case would remain open for years, who was
2:55
Speaker 3: finally closed in January of two thousand, when her killer
2:59
Speaker 3: had Clark led lu Luciano and others to her remains
3:04
Speaker 3: very deep in a wooded area near Interstate two seventy
3:08
Speaker 3: north of Washington.
3:09
Speaker 2: It's a good size, heavily wooded area.
3:12
Speaker 1: That's where he had his campsite, and he was able
3:15
Speaker 1: to get his truck up in there, and he had
3:18
Speaker 1: his little treasures.
3:19
Speaker 2: And his dead animals hanging in there and everything.
3:23
Speaker 3: Hadden Clark was arrested one month after the murder of
3:26
Speaker 3: Laura Hodeling after police recovered his fingerprints from her discarded pillowcase.
3:32
Speaker 3: How many people Clark is killed remains unknown. In some cases,
3:40
Speaker 3: he confessed and led investigators to bodies. In others, he
3:44
Speaker 3: confessed to murders he could not have possibly committed, forcing
3:49
Speaker 3: law enforcement to separate truth from performance.
3:52
Speaker 1: I remember, I'm not jojoking, but one time, getting very frustrated,
3:55
Speaker 1: why I said, you know.
3:56
Speaker 2: You claim to have killed John Kennedy.
3:59
Speaker 1: And he said, and he said, well, I'm pretty good
4:01
Speaker 1: with her. I'm pretty good with a rifle.
4:03
Speaker 2: You now, And I'm like, no, you're not. You know,
4:06
Speaker 2: so I think people need to be cautious of being
4:10
Speaker 2: pulled down the rabbit hole with him.
4:12
Speaker 3: There've been documentaries, there have been books, and the accuracy
4:17
Speaker 3: of some of that work has come into question. What's
4:20
Speaker 3: clear is this Hadden Clark is a deeply disturbed, violent
4:25
Speaker 3: offender with a degree of psychopathy that is rarely seen.
4:30
Speaker 3: For my part, I want insight, not just mythology. And
4:34
Speaker 3: that's why I'm not just speaking with lou although he
4:38
Speaker 3: has spent more time with Clark than anyone else.
4:41
Speaker 2: If you saw the eyes on this guy, I'm sure,
4:43
Speaker 2: I don't know.
4:43
Speaker 1: If he sent you a picture of himself, well, I'm
4:45
Speaker 1: sure you've seen some images of them online.
4:48
Speaker 2: But he's got these pale ice blue eyes.
4:50
Speaker 1: There is nothing, zero, nothing behind it except for evil
4:55
Speaker 1: and manipulation.
4:56
Speaker 3: I've also been corresponding with Hadden Clark himsel In a
5:02
Speaker 3: series of unsettling letters. He writes about his love of women.
5:06
Speaker 3: He draws them in skirts and dresses and hangs the pictures.
5:10
Speaker 3: Inside his cell, he talks about his job in prison,
5:14
Speaker 3: cleaning the showers, and then he asks me something very
5:19
Speaker 3: very specific. When we correspond, he insists, I call him
5:23
Speaker 3: mister bunny Rabbit. We'll get to that, but first you
5:28
Speaker 3: need to understand where this man came from. The best
5:32
Speaker 3: place to begin. In the case of Hadden Clark, there's
5:36
Speaker 3: no shortcut.
5:38
Speaker 5: You have to go all the way back.
5:46
Speaker 3: July thirty first, nineteen fifty two. Hadden Clark is born
5:51
Speaker 3: in Troy, New York, the second of four children, three boys,
5:56
Speaker 3: one girl. His birth is marked by a complicated that
6:01
Speaker 3: may have resulted in a brain injury, though records are
6:05
Speaker 3: anecdotal at best. His parents are Hadden Clark Senior, a
6:10
Speaker 3: Korean War veteran and a brilliant engineer, and his wife, Flavia,
6:14
Speaker 3: a homemaker. By early childhood, Hadden is already showing signs
6:20
Speaker 3: of developmental delay. He walks late, he has a speech impediment,
6:25
Speaker 3: he struggles with anger. Doctors evaluate him for cerebral palsy,
6:30
Speaker 3: but no definitive diagnosis is ever made. At the same time,
6:35
Speaker 3: his home life is becoming increasingly unstable. His father, Hadden
6:40
Speaker 3: Clark's senior, suffers from bipolar disorder, periods of mania followed
6:46
Speaker 3: by deep depression. He changes jobs frequently. The family moves often,
6:53
Speaker 3: sometimes as much as once a year. His mother, Flavia,
6:58
Speaker 3: copes through substance abuse. She battles decades of alcoholism. By
7:03
Speaker 3: the time Hadden can walk, he and his three siblings
7:06
Speaker 3: are subjected to violence, daily emotional abuse from an increasingly
7:11
Speaker 3: erratic father.
7:13
Speaker 1: His sister, if you've sat her down and asked her
7:15
Speaker 1: her age, she's going to be about twenty to twenty
7:18
Speaker 1: one years off. She doesn't count the first twenty twenty
7:23
Speaker 1: one years of.
7:23
Speaker 2: Her life as part of her life.
7:27
Speaker 1: She was blocked that off, and her starting point is
7:30
Speaker 1: a point twenty one years into her life.
7:34
Speaker 3: Years later, Hadden will tell a cellmate that he learned
7:38
Speaker 3: everything from his father, even claiming he watched him murder
7:42
Speaker 3: a woman inside the family home.
7:45
Speaker 1: I think hadn't talking about his father killing somebody in
7:48
Speaker 1: one of the bedrooms. I don't think I ever bought
7:52
Speaker 1: into that one.
7:54
Speaker 2: And a lot of times with Hadden like his, you
7:58
Speaker 2: never knew what you were going to get.
8:01
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times he would he would
8:03
Speaker 1: throw things out there like that for the attention.
8:07
Speaker 3: Now There's no evidence this event ever occurred, but the
8:11
Speaker 3: claim itself is revealing. It shows how Hadden perceived his
8:15
Speaker 3: father callous, violent and capable of unspeakable cruelty.
8:22
Speaker 1: There was abuse going on in that house. I'm sure
8:27
Speaker 1: you know about his brother, Bradfield.
8:29
Speaker 3: Hadden's eldest brother, Bradfield Clark would later evolve into a
8:33
Speaker 3: violent psychopath himself. But in the late nineteen fifties and
8:39
Speaker 3: early nineteen sixties, all four Clark children are sent to
8:43
Speaker 3: Cape Cod to spend summers with their grandparents.
8:46
Speaker 2: As we could find in figure.
8:50
Speaker 1: Was that it was abuse when of the kids were
8:53
Speaker 1: left with the grandparents up on Cape Cod and up
8:59
Speaker 1: at a up in Block Island, Rhode Island.
9:04
Speaker 3: Their grandfather is Silas Skidmore Clark, a World War One
9:09
Speaker 3: veteran and former mayor of White Plains, New York. He
9:13
Speaker 3: lives on a sprawling, isolated property in well Fleet, a
9:18
Speaker 3: place meant to be peaceful, a place that would eventually
9:22
Speaker 3: become something else entirely. The FBI later conducts a deep
9:28
Speaker 3: dive into the family's history, and investigators uncover chilling accounts
9:33
Speaker 3: of abuse. According to Luciano Hadden, Clark's grandfather would take
9:38
Speaker 3: the children deep into the woods behind his property and
9:42
Speaker 3: abuse them in a makeshift shelter he had constructed there.
9:46
Speaker 1: The house up there in wall Fleet, it had a
9:48
Speaker 1: couple of outbuildings.
9:50
Speaker 2: He claimed there was a lot of abuse there.
9:52
Speaker 1: Said yep, as little kids, we would be in there
9:54
Speaker 1: with our grandfather quite a bit and kind of left
9:57
Speaker 1: it at that.
9:59
Speaker 3: Ironically, those same woods become a refuge, a place for
10:03
Speaker 3: the Clark children to retreat in order to escape, something
10:07
Speaker 3: Lu and I discussed directly.
10:10
Speaker 7: So that you have these very very abused children who
10:14
Speaker 7: are experiencing psychological abuse, physical abuse from their grandparents and
10:19
Speaker 7: their father at the same time, and they're left to
10:21
Speaker 7: their own devices, often in this huge, massive wooden area.
10:25
Speaker 1: It's all protected land back there, it's Cape Cod National
10:28
Speaker 1: Seashore Area.
10:29
Speaker 5: So what they get up to gives them a semblance
10:31
Speaker 5: of control.
10:31
Speaker 1: What the beds set fires right next it together, there's
10:35
Speaker 1: a cereal dealer.
10:37
Speaker 3: There's no single cause of serial murder. What the evidence
10:41
Speaker 3: suggests is a perfect storm where neurological vulnerability, early trauma,
10:48
Speaker 3: and psychopathic traits collide. If you remove any one of
10:53
Speaker 3: those elements, the outcome changes. In Hadden Clark, the pattern
10:58
Speaker 3: isn't subtle. Neurologic vulnerability comes first, then years of unrelenting abuse,
11:04
Speaker 3: and what emerges from that collision are reoccurring fantasies, rehearsed
11:10
Speaker 3: long before they're acted out. According to some reports, as
11:14
Speaker 3: a child, Hadden's mother dresses him in girls' clothing and
11:19
Speaker 3: calls him Kristen when she's intoxicated. Other accounts suggest Hadden
11:24
Speaker 3: is beaten for this behavior by his father and even
11:28
Speaker 3: sent to school and address as a form of humiliation
11:31
Speaker 3: and punishment. What's clear is that it established a lifelong pattern.
11:37
Speaker 1: I mean, he was he had multiple personalities, and there
11:40
Speaker 1: were days that we would sit and talk to him
11:42
Speaker 1: and if we couldn't figure out who we were talking to,
11:45
Speaker 1: sometimes it was a wasted trip.
11:47
Speaker 2: And he would he would tell us that he was Christin.
11:52
Speaker 2: That was a big one for him.
11:55
Speaker 1: And if we called him Haden't he would say Had's
11:58
Speaker 1: not here right now, Kristen, Yeah, what do you want?
12:01
Speaker 2: It was? It was? It was It was my numbing
12:05
Speaker 2: and exhausting to be with this guy.
12:08
Speaker 3: When I correspond with Clark, I see this behavior firsthand.
12:13
Speaker 3: He asks that I refer to him by an alternate
12:16
Speaker 3: identity when he calls mister bunny Rabbit. In fact, he
12:23
Speaker 3: even signs his letters this way, the handwritten letters themselves.
12:27
Speaker 3: They're a rare window into this kind of dissociative thinking.
12:33
Speaker 3: And we'll be posting the complete letters inside unmarked case
12:37
Speaker 3: files our research portal. It's where you can examine the
12:40
Speaker 3: original documents for yourself. In speaking with Lou, I want
12:44
Speaker 3: to know what it is I'm really looking at.
12:48
Speaker 7: With with mister bunny Rabbit, with Kristen, with these personalities.
12:53
Speaker 7: How much of this, from your perspective, because you've spent
12:56
Speaker 7: time with them, is performance and how much to this
13:00
Speaker 7: his actual dissociative identities.
13:05
Speaker 1: And the problem with that, but he was it would
13:08
Speaker 1: it would stream together, and so in one respect you've
13:12
Speaker 1: got the disassociated personality, the identity in his head at
13:16
Speaker 1: the moment, and then he's back being himself, and then
13:21
Speaker 1: he's just gone.
13:23
Speaker 3: Clark's records list his high school graduation in nineteen seventy two,
13:28
Speaker 3: and if you do the math, he's nearly twenty years old.
13:32
Speaker 3: He drifts through odd jobs, short order cook kitchen work.
13:36
Speaker 3: Before pursuing formal training in the field.
13:39
Speaker 2: He was in the culinary field and from there.
13:42
Speaker 1: He went to the CIA in New York, Culinary Institute
13:45
Speaker 1: of America, and he went to school there for culinary art.
13:50
Speaker 3: And there was reports of him eating raw chicken and
13:52
Speaker 3: things like of that, and sure, yep, I think.
13:55
Speaker 5: You see those again.
13:56
Speaker 7: It's the continuing stories of him just really being comfortable
14:01
Speaker 7: with raw meat.
14:02
Speaker 2: And he would he would drink the drink the bule
14:04
Speaker 2: blood that's documented.
14:05
Speaker 1: He would drink the beef blood, you know, and the
14:08
Speaker 1: food raw food there and would just counter to everything
14:11
Speaker 1: you're learning.
14:12
Speaker 2: And he got he ended up getting thrown out of.
14:15
Speaker 3: There, and this is where the record starts to blur.
14:20
Speaker 3: Clark is only ever convicted of two murders. The first
14:25
Speaker 3: is Michelle d'Or, who Clark unquestionably kills in nineteen eighty six.
14:31
Speaker 3: But investigators on this case, almost without exception, believe Hadden
14:36
Speaker 3: Clark is a serial killer. So when does he begin?
14:40
Speaker 3: When does fantasy cross into violence?
14:43
Speaker 5: We don't know.
14:45
Speaker 3: When speaking with Lou, he tells me the FBI spent
14:48
Speaker 3: years constructing a timeline attempting to track Hadden.
14:52
Speaker 5: Clark's movements throughout his life.
14:55
Speaker 7: Did you guys go pretty deep in looking into those crimes?
14:59
Speaker 7: Because I can't imagine or in those years, I can't
15:01
Speaker 7: imagine that you feel that Michelle Door was his first victim.
15:06
Speaker 1: We built a timeline on him pretty much almost every
15:09
Speaker 1: day of his life.
15:11
Speaker 2: And one of the most consistent things that would happen to.
15:14
Speaker 1: Him is after he killed somebody, he would end up
15:19
Speaker 1: in a hospital, violently ill. We did find him checking
15:24
Speaker 1: into a hospital, and I'm a little fuzzy on this one.
15:27
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventy four up in Massachusetts, he claims
15:31
Speaker 1: to have killed a woman that was in Province Style, Massachusetts, and.
15:39
Speaker 2: She was known as the Lady in the Doom.
15:42
Speaker 3: Clark later claims he committed murders in several states during
15:46
Speaker 3: this time period. Some of those confessions are easily disproven,
15:51
Speaker 3: but one claim stands apart. Clark says he murders a
15:57
Speaker 3: woman long known as the Lady of the Dunes, a
16:01
Speaker 3: formerly unidentified victim discovered on July twenty sixth, nineteen seventy four,
16:06
Speaker 3: in the Race Point Dunes near Provincetown, Massachusetts.
16:10
Speaker 8: You're standing here today to announce that, after nearly a
16:14
Speaker 8: half century of investigative efforts, we have identified the oldest
16:19
Speaker 8: unidentified homicide victim in Massachusetts, known as the Lady of
16:24
Speaker 8: the Dunes. She is Ruth Marie Terry.
16:28
Speaker 1: I mean, hadn't knew that the woman's hands have been
16:31
Speaker 1: cut off? He knew the power of a forum got
16:33
Speaker 1: cut off. Also, he described how he killed her blood
16:36
Speaker 1: forced trauma with a surfcasting rod, described exactly how he
16:42
Speaker 1: folded pair of jeans under her head for a pillow
16:46
Speaker 1: so he left her, and how he took her close
16:49
Speaker 1: and assumed her female identity.
16:52
Speaker 3: There are two things here. First, Clark's description mirrors his
16:56
Speaker 3: mo the way he later kills other victims. The details
16:59
Speaker 3: match no evidence, including the blue jeens found beneath her head.
17:03
Speaker 3: And second, psychologically it fits where Clark is at at
17:08
Speaker 3: this point in his life. His reoccurrent fantasy has evolved.
17:12
Speaker 3: As a child, there are moments, brief ones when his mother,
17:16
Speaker 3: though drunk, lavishes attention on him by dressing him as
17:20
Speaker 3: a girl. For Hadden, it's a temporary refuge, a pause
17:25
Speaker 3: in the violence, a moment where at tension replaces fear.
17:29
Speaker 3: But when that behavior is discovered, it's met with brutality
17:33
Speaker 3: from his father. What forms is not identity, its association, attention, safety,
17:40
Speaker 3: and relief become fused with humiliation, violence, and punishment. That
17:46
Speaker 3: fusion hardens into a fantasy Hadden chases for.
17:49
Speaker 5: The rest of his life.
17:52
Speaker 3: He doesn't want to be a woman, and this has
17:55
Speaker 3: nothing to do with gender dysphoria. What Clark wants is erasure.
18:00
Speaker 3: He wants to destroy himself and replace that self with
18:04
Speaker 3: someone else, specifically with his victims, to eliminate a woman
18:11
Speaker 3: and then assume her identity, to live briefly inside the
18:15
Speaker 3: person he's killed. It's this insight I want to discuss
18:20
Speaker 3: with Special Agent lou Luciano. He is trying to eliminate
18:25
Speaker 3: these women. He's out of, like you say, anger and frustration.
18:28
Speaker 3: He's trying to erase them and then become them.
18:32
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, you assume your identic.
18:35
Speaker 7: In twenty twenty three, Massachusetts authorities dismiss Hayden Clark's confession
18:41
Speaker 7: and announce that the lady of the Doones, Ruth Marie Terry,
18:44
Speaker 7: was killed by her husband. These findings remain in question,
18:50
Speaker 7: and to date the details of the investigation have not
18:53
Speaker 7: been made public.
18:55
Speaker 1: Mastheuse State police said her husband did it due to
18:58
Speaker 1: his DNA being ko mangled with her DNA. My DNA
19:03
Speaker 1: is all over this apartment, and my DNA is at
19:08
Speaker 1: my ex wife's house too, so if she turned up missing,
19:12
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean I killed her.
19:16
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty two, Clarke n lists in the US Navy.
19:20
Speaker 3: He receives an honorable discharge in June of nineteen eighty five.
19:25
Speaker 3: Clark later makes many claims about his service, and there
19:29
Speaker 3: are stretches of time during his overseas deployment that cannot
19:33
Speaker 3: be fully accounted for. What he actually does during those years,
19:38
Speaker 3: like other serial offenders, has been buried under time and lies.
19:43
Speaker 2: He claimed to have killed a whole bunch of people
19:45
Speaker 2: when he was in the Navy. When he had a
19:47
Speaker 2: port of call in Australia. We checked with the Australian authorities.
19:51
Speaker 2: There was no homicides during the time that they were
19:55
Speaker 2: docked there.
19:56
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty five, a Navy psychiatrist diagnoses Clark with
20:00
Speaker 3: paranoid schizophrenia, manifested by persecutory and grandiose delusions. He's formally discharged,
20:08
Speaker 3: but the details of this evaluation have never been revealed.
20:13
Speaker 3: After that, Clark becomes transient, often homeless, living out of
20:18
Speaker 3: a rusted nineteen eighty three dats In pickup truck. He
20:22
Speaker 3: often parks at a makeshift campsite in the woods, and
20:27
Speaker 3: this is where his reoccurring fantasy escalates.
20:30
Speaker 1: He was, you know, a suspect for a lot of burglaries,
20:35
Speaker 1: and I think he probably just went inside these houses
20:37
Speaker 1: to see if he could.
20:38
Speaker 2: Get in there. And this is speculation.
20:40
Speaker 1: You know, if you could steal women's clothing, dress up
20:43
Speaker 1: like them, just be in the house of somebody that
20:46
Speaker 1: you know, It's an empowering thing for him.
20:49
Speaker 5: At the time.
20:50
Speaker 3: Clark's older brother, Bradfield, is living near San Francisco in
20:55
Speaker 3: Los Gatos. Now, we could spend an entire episode on
20:59
Speaker 3: Bradfield Clark, but for now, here's what matters. He's thirty
21:03
Speaker 3: three years old, a product of the same household. It's
21:08
Speaker 3: unclear whether the brothers are in contact at this point.
21:12
Speaker 3: Bradfield is a graduate student in social psychology. He's just
21:16
Speaker 3: one dissertation away from earning his doctorate, and in the
21:20
Speaker 3: summer of nineteen eighty four, Bradfield is arrested for strangling
21:25
Speaker 3: and dismembering a female coworker.
21:28
Speaker 6: Los Gato's police have discovered the body of twenty nine
21:31
Speaker 6: year old Patricia Mack, reported missing on.
21:34
Speaker 3: Friday on the night of July twentieth, nineteen eighty four,
21:38
Speaker 3: Bradfield Clark invites a married co worker, Patricia Mack known
21:42
Speaker 3: to friends as Trish, to his apartment for dinner. At
21:46
Speaker 3: some point that evening, Mack is killed. Three days later,
21:51
Speaker 3: Bradfield calls nine to one one to report his own
21:54
Speaker 3: suicide attempt. It's widely believed to be staged. When police arrived,
22:00
Speaker 3: he directs them to max dismembered remains in the trunk
22:04
Speaker 3: of his dats in two hundred. It's parked right outside
22:07
Speaker 3: his apartment.
22:10
Speaker 1: The Montgomery County homicide detectives spoke with Scots in California.
22:15
Speaker 2: They have missing people all over the place. So if
22:19
Speaker 2: you sat me.
22:20
Speaker 1: Down and said, do you think Bradfield only killed that
22:23
Speaker 1: one woman that he brought the detective MFC absolutely not.
22:29
Speaker 2: I think he was probably doing it, probably for years.
22:32
Speaker 3: After his arrest, Bradfield Clark gives a detailed confession. At
22:38
Speaker 3: one point, he describes the dismemberment of his victim in specific,
22:42
Speaker 3: methodical terms, details that to me stand out because there's
22:48
Speaker 3: a pattern here. As children, both Bradfield and Hadden Clark
22:52
Speaker 3: used the killing of animals to cope with their shared abuse,
22:57
Speaker 3: and that coping mechanism hardens into a worldview one where
23:01
Speaker 3: people are dehumanized, a theme I discussed with Luluciano.
23:07
Speaker 5: They shared that insight that people are just animals.
23:10
Speaker 2: Are you a hunter, buddy?
23:12
Speaker 5: No?
23:12
Speaker 1: No, If you shoot, if you shoot deer, hit the
23:17
Speaker 1: deer with an arrow. There is a very step by
23:21
Speaker 1: step process to field dress that deer. And my recollection
23:27
Speaker 1: of Bradfield's and again I wasn't there, I never spoke
23:31
Speaker 1: to him, but I remember what I either read or what.
23:33
Speaker 2: Was presented to me was he was very methodical about
23:36
Speaker 2: him and just like you said, to him, it was
23:39
Speaker 2: just just an animal.
23:42
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty five, Bradfield Clark is convicted and sentenced
23:47
Speaker 3: to eighteen years to life for second degree murder and
23:50
Speaker 3: mutilation of human remains in the homicide of Patricia Mack.
23:54
Speaker 3: He's currently incarcerated in Santa Clara, though eligible for parole,
24:00
Speaker 3: he's repeatedly waived his hearings. The same month Bradfield is convicted.
24:05
Speaker 3: The very same month, haddn't Clark commits a murder?
24:09
Speaker 1: That was October ninth of nineteen eighty five. I just
24:13
Speaker 1: I was two days in the Marines. At that point,
24:14
Speaker 1: I remember getting a letter at boot camp from my
24:16
Speaker 1: mother and she had said, an awful thing happened. This
24:19
Speaker 1: beautiful young girl has gone missing, and this massive search.
24:23
Speaker 5: Is for her.
24:24
Speaker 3: Hadden would later tell authorities that he abducts nine year
24:27
Speaker 3: old Sarah Pryor on October ninth, nineteen eighty five, near Whalen, Massachusetts.
24:34
Speaker 3: According to news reports, police and Pryor's family believe she's
24:38
Speaker 3: taken while walking alone that evening.
24:40
Speaker 6: The search continues for Sarah Pryor today, last scene walking
24:44
Speaker 6: near Conquered Road. Police are asking for anyone with information
24:48
Speaker 6: to come forward.
24:49
Speaker 1: He had killer only information about this girl. You had
24:54
Speaker 1: to be the guy that did it, or you had
24:55
Speaker 1: to be one.
24:56
Speaker 2: Of her parents. And he had the information he talked
24:59
Speaker 2: about when he grabbed her from the street and he
25:03
Speaker 2: took her through these fields and over these stone walls.
25:08
Speaker 3: Sarah Pryor's body is never recovered, but Clark later claims
25:12
Speaker 3: her head can be found near a specific stone wall
25:16
Speaker 3: along the route. He describes the area is dense with
25:20
Speaker 3: old stone walls markers left behind by early American settlers.
25:25
Speaker 1: He talked about splitting her throat as he was stepping
25:28
Speaker 1: over one of the stone walls carrying her. Her head
25:32
Speaker 1: actually did come off, and he kept walking and when
25:35
Speaker 1: he went back he couldn't find it.
25:38
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, a portion of Prior's skull is discovered,
25:42
Speaker 3: partially corroborating Clark's account.
25:45
Speaker 1: The crown of the skull was found by a man
25:47
Speaker 1: out there walking his dog. The dog picked the bone
25:49
Speaker 1: up and thehold DNA test showed that was Sarah Pryor's
25:54
Speaker 1: bones there.
25:55
Speaker 3: Despite this, Clark is never charged. Luluciano explained to me
26:00
Speaker 3: that Massachusetts State Police ultimately focused on another suspect, John Wordy,
26:08
Speaker 3: a convicted murderer known to be in Whaland on that day.
26:11
Speaker 1: The Massachusetts State Police closed that case on a guy
26:15
Speaker 1: that was a second degree murder parole from Texas. In
26:20
Speaker 1: my heart of Hearts and the Montgomery County Investigators heart
26:24
Speaker 1: of Hearts.
26:25
Speaker 2: Hadden, he's one hundred percent of the guy that killed
26:28
Speaker 2: Sarah Pryor.
26:29
Speaker 3: The prior case remains officially unsolved. Clark has never been
26:34
Speaker 3: held accountable, but the timeline matters. Something I spoke to
26:39
Speaker 3: lou about.
26:40
Speaker 7: I think, you know, it does feel like that there's
26:42
Speaker 7: at least two murders in his past prior to Michelle door.
26:45
Speaker 5: Do you think there's more.
26:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's a u but getting through his flog
26:50
Speaker 1: is hard.
26:55
Speaker 3: And May thirty first, nineteen eighty six, there's no doubt
26:59
Speaker 3: about what happeneds Hadden Clark commits a murder in the
27:02
Speaker 3: upstairs bedroom of his younger brother's house Jeffrey. Like Bradfield
27:08
Speaker 3: and Hadden, their brother Jeffrey also survives the family's horrific abuse,
27:13
Speaker 3: but with lifelong mental health consequences of his own.
27:17
Speaker 5: In the wake of Bradfield's murder conviction, Jeffrey offers Hadden.
27:21
Speaker 3: Room and board, but by Memorial Day weekend, the situation
27:26
Speaker 3: has deteriorated beyond repair.
27:29
Speaker 1: The weekend of May thirty first, nineteen eighty six, that's
27:34
Speaker 1: a long weekend here. Jeffrey had just given had the
27:38
Speaker 1: eviction noticed that morning, so he was extremely angry, extremely upset.
27:43
Speaker 3: Six year old Michelle d'Or is last seen in a
27:46
Speaker 3: backyard pool while her father is inside the house.
27:50
Speaker 1: She went over to Jeffrey's house, where Hadden was staying,
27:55
Speaker 1: to look for Hadden's niece.
27:57
Speaker 2: Hadden. Jeffrey's daughter.
27:59
Speaker 3: Michelle's is later recovered from underneath the floorboards.
28:04
Speaker 5: Of Hadden Clark's room.
28:05
Speaker 1: Michelle Lee Dore, wrong place, wrong time, but she became
28:10
Speaker 1: the object of his anger and extreme frustration.
28:14
Speaker 3: After the murder, Clark drives eight to nine hours north
28:18
Speaker 3: to a cemetery and wealthy.
28:20
Speaker 1: There were people up there that saw his truck there.
28:23
Speaker 1: Eyewitnesses described his truck. You know, it was a small
28:27
Speaker 1: white pickup truck and it had a cab bonnet, and
28:33
Speaker 1: he lived in it a lot. But they described seeing
28:36
Speaker 1: that truck driving up there. They also described him out
28:40
Speaker 1: and around in the exact site.
28:42
Speaker 3: There forensics will later determine that Clark buries the remains
28:46
Speaker 3: near a plot where his grandparents are also buried, an
28:50
Speaker 3: area he's deeply familiar with.
28:53
Speaker 2: He took us right to his grandparents grave.
28:56
Speaker 1: The cadaver dogs were hitting exactly where he was, saying
29:00
Speaker 1: he had drawn a map he had told us where
29:03
Speaker 1: it was where he had buried Michelle Dore's body for
29:07
Speaker 1: a while.
29:08
Speaker 2: Turns out he buried her and then he moved her.
29:11
Speaker 3: Clark later tells Luciano and the FBI that he exhumes
29:15
Speaker 3: the body five years later, on Hallowing Night nineteen ninety two,
29:20
Speaker 3: he moves it into the wooded area behind his grandparents'
29:23
Speaker 3: former property, but investigators are unable to recover it. What
29:29
Speaker 3: matters here is the pattern. Hadden brings the body to
29:32
Speaker 3: the graves of his abuser, then moves it to the
29:36
Speaker 3: woods where that abuse took place.
29:40
Speaker 5: Trauma, like Hadden.
29:41
Speaker 3: Clark experienced, doesn't disappear. It fixes itself into place and
29:46
Speaker 3: resurfaces when control is finally in his hands.
29:50
Speaker 1: He knew the area in Massachusetts, so he could go
29:52
Speaker 1: back and forth and visit them. So I think it
29:57
Speaker 1: was all about him having his body treasure in a
30:02
Speaker 1: location where he could go visit it.
30:04
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety one, Clark finds work as a handyman
30:07
Speaker 3: and gardener for a woman named Penny Howdling.
30:11
Speaker 1: Hadn't had been working for Pennyhldling during the year prior.
30:16
Speaker 1: He was an odd job guy. He was a maintenance guy.
30:19
Speaker 1: He was a gardener, a fix it man, and he
30:23
Speaker 1: was really enamored with Penny Holderman.
30:26
Speaker 2: Really liked her a lot, and she, I guess, gave
30:29
Speaker 2: him a lot of attention.
30:31
Speaker 3: For Hadden, something else is happening. He sees himself filling
30:36
Speaker 3: the role of Penny's daughter, Laura, who's away at Harvard
30:40
Speaker 3: at the time. It's the same recurrent fantasy, but it's
30:43
Speaker 3: now manifesting in a novel way. Instead of replacing a victim,
30:48
Speaker 3: he's replacing an absent person. The fantasy appeases Hadden's violent
30:53
Speaker 3: tendencies until October of nineteen ninety two, when Laura graduates
30:58
Speaker 3: and returns home.
31:00
Speaker 1: Incomes Laura back into the picture. Laura moves back into
31:03
Speaker 1: the house, and now.
31:04
Speaker 2: Laura is the focus of Pennies the apple of Pennies
31:08
Speaker 2: eye if you will.
31:10
Speaker 7: According to police records, on October second, Clark dresses as
31:14
Speaker 7: Laura Hodling. He enters the house through a back door
31:18
Speaker 7: using a hidden key one he knows about. This is premeditated.
31:23
Speaker 3: Four days earlier, he purchased duct tape, braided rope, and
31:26
Speaker 3: a nylon cord.
31:28
Speaker 5: On the check, next to the memo line, he writes
31:31
Speaker 5: one word Laura.
31:35
Speaker 3: On October second, Clark finds Laura in bed. He restrains her,
31:41
Speaker 3: threatens her with a knife, and demands she acknowledge him
31:45
Speaker 3: using her own name.
31:48
Speaker 5: According to the autopsy.
31:49
Speaker 3: Howdling dies in the residence as a result of multiple
31:53
Speaker 3: stab wounds and exphyxiation.
31:56
Speaker 1: He stabs her and then assumes Laura's eye identity, walks
32:01
Speaker 1: out with a wig and her clothes on, and neighbors
32:03
Speaker 1: even thought it was Laura leaving the house.
32:07
Speaker 3: This murder is the full expression of Clark's recurrent fantasy.
32:12
Speaker 3: He eliminates Laura and then becomes her. In his mind,
32:16
Speaker 3: the abuse neurologically damaged child no longer exists, only Laura does.
32:23
Speaker 1: I think by killing Laura dressing up as her in
32:28
Speaker 1: her clothes, that not so much the gender, but the
32:32
Speaker 1: identity would be Hey, now Penny will love me like
32:36
Speaker 1: she did Laura, because I'm Laura.
32:39
Speaker 3: Laura's body is later discovered in a wooded area near
32:42
Speaker 3: where Clark had been living. A pillowcase recovered at the
32:47
Speaker 3: scene bears Hadden Clark's fingerprint, the evidence that ultimately identifies
32:52
Speaker 3: him as the killer.
32:53
Speaker 1: He actually took Laura's body and buried it near a
32:56
Speaker 1: campsite where he was letting. When that campground was taken down,
33:03
Speaker 1: I remember the detectives saying, you know, yep, you could
33:05
Speaker 1: see right to where Laura's body was.
33:11
Speaker 3: At this point, Clark's transformation is complete. He begins living
33:17
Speaker 3: under his new identity and is arrested without incident. What
33:22
Speaker 3: follows is a long, destabilizing cycle interrogations, denials, confessions, recantations.
33:30
Speaker 3: It all stretches across multiple police departments, dozens of investigators,
33:35
Speaker 3: and the FBI. In nineteen ninety three, lu Luciano is
33:40
Speaker 3: with Clark at his grandparents cemetery searching for the remains
33:44
Speaker 3: of Michelle d'Or. Based on a hand drawn map, Clark provides.
33:49
Speaker 2: The dogs had hick.
33:51
Speaker 1: They were right in the spots that he had mapped out,
33:54
Speaker 1: talked about, eventually pointed at, and then that was when
33:58
Speaker 1: we found ut.
34:00
Speaker 2: We found the bucket.
34:01
Speaker 3: The bucket is sealed, a white four gallon pail buried
34:06
Speaker 3: in the ground by Hadden Clark himself. Inside are pieces
34:10
Speaker 3: of jewelry. Clark claims he is taken from victims, items
34:14
Speaker 3: he says he buried after killing Laura Hodling during a
34:18
Speaker 3: period when Maryland police stop actively following him.
34:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, he claimed everything in the bucket was from a victim.
34:24
Speaker 1: Everything was a trophy from a victim. Well, when we
34:27
Speaker 1: laid everything out and started looking at everything, and you know,
34:29
Speaker 1: when we were photographing and cataloging everything, some of it
34:32
Speaker 1: had little price tags on it, like you would see
34:34
Speaker 1: at a flea market.
34:35
Speaker 2: So it's like, all right, dude, come off it.
34:38
Speaker 3: Now the bucket does contain Laura Hodling's class rings, but
34:42
Speaker 3: beyond that it leads nowhere, and when the physical evidence
34:46
Speaker 3: runs out, Clark's mind becomes.
34:48
Speaker 4: The only place left to look. In the letters, Clark
34:51
Speaker 4: writes me, a pattern emerges when I discussed with former
34:55
Speaker 4: special agent lu Luciano.
34:57
Speaker 5: He's a very.
34:58
Speaker 7: Unique cycle path in my mind.
35:04
Speaker 3: Well, I'm talking about his personality.
35:05
Speaker 7: He like a psychopathic personality, right, Like, so you know,
35:08
Speaker 7: normally someone a psychopath would be born and they're kind
35:11
Speaker 7: of like a Ted Bundy, like their grandiose and they're callous,
35:14
Speaker 7: and you know, I'm the most.
35:15
Speaker 3: Important person in the world. His seems to have come
35:17
Speaker 3: from this, you know.
35:18
Speaker 7: Whatever his birth injuries are that kind of caused him
35:21
Speaker 7: this early brain damage, but it left him with the
35:25
Speaker 7: almost he was. He was callous almost to like an
35:29
Speaker 7: unimaginable degree, and that that he he only experienced his
35:34
Speaker 7: own identity and it couldn't and couldn't even really understand
35:37
Speaker 7: anyone else's identity.
35:40
Speaker 3: In another letter from Clark, he mentions Charles Manson when
35:45
Speaker 3: corresponding with men like this, I've learned it can be
35:48
Speaker 3: useful to name drop Manson from time to time. Clark
35:51
Speaker 3: writes me back quote, Charles Manson wanted to know how
35:55
Speaker 3: he will be remembered. Charles Manson will always be remembered.
36:00
Speaker 5: From now on.
36:01
Speaker 3: When you say Charles Manson, people still remember who he was.
36:06
Speaker 3: When speaking with lu Luciano, I showed him the letters,
36:09
Speaker 3: hoping his years on the Clark case show him something
36:12
Speaker 3: that I've missed.
36:14
Speaker 7: To me, that's such a tell because if you are
36:18
Speaker 7: excited about being infamous for what you did, there's no remorse,
36:23
Speaker 7: you know, and it kind of negates some of those
36:25
Speaker 7: claims of mental illness, not completely, but you know, so
36:29
Speaker 7: it kind of speaks to what you were saying and
36:30
Speaker 7: have you So my question is, first of all, have
36:32
Speaker 7: you seen this kind of behavior and other serial killers
36:34
Speaker 7: that they want to be associated with other serial killers?
36:37
Speaker 5: And did you see that in Haden.
36:40
Speaker 2: Hadden would probably desire that because of his need for
36:48
Speaker 2: a canty.
36:49
Speaker 1: He wants to be that focus. They're coming to see me.
36:53
Speaker 1: He's got a lot of people writing to him. He
36:56
Speaker 1: gets a lot of phone phone privileges. He I know
37:02
Speaker 1: a corrections officer who's retired, who said that, you know,
37:06
Speaker 1: he's he's like the most wanted guy in there, just
37:11
Speaker 1: because he's enthralling, and that has given him.
37:15
Speaker 2: It's like a fertile field for him to grow his
37:18
Speaker 2: crop of bullshit.
37:19
Speaker 4: Quite honestly, with Haddon Clark, what remains is not a
37:24
Speaker 4: mystery or confusion, but a pattern, a man shaped by
37:29
Speaker 4: neurological vulnerability, conditioned by unrelenting abuse, and driven by a
37:34
Speaker 4: fantasy that trades identity for control.
37:39
Speaker 3: As I said goodbye to former special agent lu Luciano,
37:42
Speaker 3: he adds a final insight I've missed, but this one
37:46
Speaker 3: hits very close to home.
37:48
Speaker 2: James Buddy Day. Now that's a serial killer name right there.
37:54
Speaker 5: I thank you.
37:56
Speaker 3: I'm not really sure how to say it to answer that.
38:00
Speaker 5: Thank thanks again, Lou. It was just grat meeting.
38:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pleasure, pleasure.
38:05
Speaker 3: The handwritten letters I received from Hayden Clark, signed mister
38:08
Speaker 3: Bunny Rabbit, will be posted in full inside Unmarked Case Files,
38:13
Speaker 3: our research portal if you want to explore the Charles
38:17
Speaker 3: Manson case through primary research and interviews with members of
38:21
Speaker 3: the Manson family, including Charles Manson himself. My book Charles Manson.
38:27
Speaker 3: The Last Words is now available on Amazon. Every episode
38:31
Speaker 3: of Unmarked is built from weeks of research, documents and interviews.
38:36
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38:53
Speaker 3: This episode of Unmarked was produced by John Ado and
38:57
Speaker 3: edited by Dave Alderson. Our edition producer is Jesse Demiray.
39:02
Speaker 3: Until next week, this is Unmarked