Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 25 - Dressed to Kill - Full Episode | Forensic Files

he's still working on me to make me what i ought to be an unemployed gardener with a history of
mental illness was a vital witness in the case of a missing six-year-old girl [Music]
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
[Music] memorial day weekend 1986 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 she was playing in the backyard pool for
a while and showing me how she could blow bubbles in the water and that sort of thing
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 dede wanted full custody of her daughter 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 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 [Music] 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 he said no she's not here and i looked
at elizabeth and she's not with you and i couldn't believe what jeff was saying i just
didn't register at first you know that she couldn't be with elizabeth and at that point i realized
uh you know she's never gone any further than in the clark house that this is there's something's
wrong carl door immediately contacted police she was not a little girl who would 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 50 feet away so i never never had to worry about her crossing
the street or going wandering off i if i wanted to find her i knew where to find her
when police contacted michelle's mother dee dee she told them she knew what had happened
to michelle she point blank told him that i did it i did something with michelle
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 that she's a mother who is in this
very um nasty divorce separation custody battle and also somebody who her daughter has just disappeared so
you have to take it in that context carl door 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 the 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 that didn't happen carl doerr was now the prime suspect
and soon he would tell police of the role he'd played in his daughter's disappearance
[Music] 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 killed her carl door had failed the polygraph test and the detective on the case was
pressuring him to confess 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 you know in my face screaming yelling um you know you need to confess
just a few days later carl door confessed on three different occasions he told the
police he had killed his daughter and told the police where they could go and find her body
and one of them was underneath the the i guess the crawl space of his house another was in his father's own grave in
a cemetery in dc 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 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 the shame and that he felt
about his daughter's disappearance he cracked there's no doubt about that he cracked
i 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 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 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 has to take a second polygraph examination
this time he passed investigators now began to wonder was it possible that someone else had taken michelle
door 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 um forget about looking at any other options months went by and then years with no
sign of michelle the investigation came to a dead end in the minds of police carl door remained a suspect but they
had no evidence to charge him then six years later there was a new development ten days after 24 year-old laura hodling
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 hoteling was reported missing
she lived a few miles away from michelle and carl door laura hoteling had been stabbed to death
in her bedroom while asleep her killer left behind few clues he had done an unusually thorough job of
cleaning up the crime scene normally he 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 but he made one mistake in laura hotelling's hairbrush was one
foreign hair it wasn't human it was from a wig the hoteling's gardener thirty-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 the wig hair in laura hoteling's
hairbrush matched the wig found in haddon clark's possession investigators believe that after killing
laura hoteling haddon clark dressed in women's clothing put on the wig and left the scene of the crime in broad daylight
without creating any suspicion adam clarke was convicted of laura hotelling's murder
then police made a startling discovery the police say to themselves hey wait we've we've heard this name before this
was a guy that we were looking at who lived in the house where michelle door was last supposed to have been seen
or have gone and so at that point they started really um pressing hadden on the michelle door case and looking at him as
a very serious suspect hadden clark lived just two houses away from michelle door at the time of her
disappearance his niece elizabeth was michelle's playmate when michelle first disappeared
haddon clark was questioned about his whereabouts that day and something unusual happened during
his interrogation that should have aroused police suspicions [Music] haddon clark confessed to the murder of
23 year old laura hoteling 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 1986 was
that hadden was very angry his brother his brother's wife and his children had left the home in order to
give haddon an opportunity to get his things and get out and they had given him a deadline to get out
that same day police questioned haddon 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 although police knew his behavior was unusual it was discounted once carl dore
allegedly confessed there was no evidence to suggest that that hadn't clark had killed michelle
door 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 haddon clark and focused on carl door for months and
years after michelle's disappearance how can you not suspect this guy in 1986 if you even you know spend an
afternoon with you him you don't have to go to kmart to figure out he's crazy once in prison for laura hotelling's
murder clark refused to answer questions about michelle door 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 answer some of
your questions whatever you want to answer but some questions i'm not going to answer that's just the way it in
this is jim beckett at one time he was incarcerated with haddon clark in the same prison cell block
he had more luck getting him to talk about his crimes than the police i just wanted to find out the truth of
it so i i got in real close to him and i sort of thought it was a wind of opportunity
to find out the the truth through him rather than intimidating him i became a good friend
and i talked to him on many many occasions one day while beckett and clark were in the
prison cafeteria beckett asked hadden about michelle door 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
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
do it you know he didn't repeat it but he he says i didn't mean to do it and it was
like he knew what was being said and he knew he just confessed to me that he had killed her
beckett then told police that clark confessed to killing michelle door 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 hotelling's murder the police put two and two together and
realized that he had been able to clean and meticulously clean a crime scene where there was a lot of bloodshed he
was able to remove evidence from a crime scene to the point where family members
had no idea that a murder had taken place there it had been 10 years since michelle's
disappearance and hadn't 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 killing michelle door in a bedroom in his brother's home
but ten years had passed and the home had been owned by a number of families since
the bedroom was only seven by ten 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 paneling
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 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 baloo 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 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 so scientists decided to try a
mitochondrial dna test mitochondria exists outside of the cell's nucleus and are 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 midos 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 mido dna that you might be able to get results with 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 since michelle had been inside the home and not her mother
the blood was believed to be michelle's prosecutors believe that after carl door 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 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 [Music] police believe hadn't killed 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
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 is one and completely worthless as a human being
i have nothing to say to him i don't need his uh apologies i don't need anything from him
fortunately the sanding polyurethane and 10 years worth of detergents hadn't destroyed the
mitochondrial dna evidence carl doerr has since remarried and moved on with his life
but he has kept michelle's letters and this crayon self-portrait she drew just days before she was murdered
she had just lost one of her front teeth before she disappeared she had a little bit of a gaff in her
teeth but just really sweet innocent little girl kevin clark was convicted of michelle
dorr's murder and was sentenced to a second life term in prison shortly after his conviction
hadn't clark directed police to the shallow grave where he had buried michelle's body
it was just 12 miles from her home i believe when hadden asked the police or told the police that he would show
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
clothes and a wig adam clark now claims his female persona whom he refers to as kristen bluefin
is the real killer 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 psychologists say that clark here
apparently unaware of being videotaped before his police interrogation is a paranoid schizophrenic who cannot
control his compulsion to kill how loving and patient he must be he's still working on me
everyone who knows him is convinced he would kill again if given the chance he's intelligent i think he's he was
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
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 haddon clark [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]
you

A childs father is suspected when she is killed, but years later police learn a convicted murderer lived nearby. Tiny drops of blood help police to solve the crime.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The episode details the disappearance of Michelle Dorr and the eventual conviction of Haddon Clark for her murder.

Key points

The Disappearance of Michelle Dorr. A father’s weekend with his daughter turns tragic when she goes missing.
Confession Under Pressure. Carl Doerr, the prime suspect, confesses to killing his daughter but later recants.
The Shocking Discovery. Years later, evidence links Hadden Clark to Michelle's murder after a new case emerges.
Hadden Clark's Dark Secrets. The investigation shifts to Hadden Clark, a neighbor with a troubling past.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He's still working on me.

0:05WatchDec 10, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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