13: Hadden Clark: Disturbing Letters from a Serial Killer

Summary

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UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast

Episode 13: Hadden Clark: Disturbing Letters from a Serial Killer
Host: James Buddy Day
Date: March 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

This intense episode of UNMARKED centers on Hadden Clark, a convicted serial killer, and his disturbing correspondence with host James Buddy Day. With direct insight from retired FBI Special Agent Lou Luciano and exclusive access to Clark’s own handwritten letters (signed “Mr. Bunny Rabbit”), the narrative probes not only the details of Clark’s crimes, but the tortured family history and twisted psychological landscape from which two killers emerged. Rarely does a true crime episode deliver such chilling depth—peeling back layers of trauma, dissociation, and ultimately, the quest for control through violence.

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. Confronting "Evil": More Than a Label

[00:59 - 01:23]

• Lou Luciano describes his impression of Hadden Clark:

  “This guy just takes the cake because there is no rhyme or reason for what he did… He’s 100% evil.”
  “If you were in the same room as this guy—he’s soulless.”

• Buddy Day questions whether “evil” explains anything, seeking deeper psychological motives:

  “What if evil isn’t an explanation but a way to stop asking questions?” (01:14)

2. A Family Of Violence: Two Killers From One Home

[01:57 - 05:10]

• Clark’s family produced not one, but two violent offenders—Hadden and his brother Bradfield.

• The Clark siblings’ upbringing was marked by severe trauma:

  • Father (Hadden Clark Sr.): Bipolar, violent, often unemployed
  • Mother: Alcoholic, emotionally unstable
  • All four siblings subjected to violence and daily emotional abuse

• Lou Luciano:

  "The debate always is nature, nurture, and I think for Hadden... it's a combination of both. Quite honestly, when you're around this guy, it's like being in a room with Satan." (02:29)

3. The Early Signs: Abuse, Neurological Vulnerability, and Fantasy

[05:54 - 14:25]

• Hadden was born with possible brain injury, developmental delays, and a chaotic home life.
• Summers with his grandfather on Cape Cod brought further violence and sexual abuse.
• Animals were tortured and killed by the siblings—classic markers seen in “the serial killer triad” (bedwetting, fire-setting, animal cruelty).
• Dissociation:
  • Clark developed alternate identities (Kristen, Mr. Bunny Rabbit).
  • Buddy Day’s correspondence revealed Clark’s insistence on being called “Mr. Bunny Rabbit” in letters, reflecting his fractured sense of self.
• Lou Luciano:

  “He had multiple personalities. And there were days… if we couldn’t figure out who we were talking to, sometimes it was a wasted trip.” (12:39)

4. The Path To Violence: Culmination of Abuse and Psychopathy

[14:25 - 18:18]

• Clark’s drift through jobs and training at the Culinary Institute of America highlighted even more disturbing behaviors (eating and drinking raw meat and blood).

  "He would drink the beef blood...and the raw food there, which is counter to everything you're learning. And he ended up getting thrown out of there." (15:04)

• The FBI meticulously mapped Clark’s movements, seeking links to numerous unsolved murders.

5. The “Lady of the Dunes” Mystery

[16:44 - 19:57]

• Clark claimed to have murdered “the Lady of the Dunes” (1974); his description matched crime scene details, suggesting possible involvement.
• Buddy Day’s psychological analysis: Clark’s murders merge humiliation, control, identity, and violence into a singular fantasy—he “erases” women, then replaces them by assuming their identity.

  "He doesn't want to be a woman, and this has nothing to do with gender dysphoria. What Clark wants is erasure...to live briefly inside the person he's killed." (17:53)

• Officially, authorities later attribute this murder to the victim’s husband, though doubts remain.

6. Bradfield Clark: The Other Killer

[22:50 - 25:44]

• Hadden's brother, Bradfield, a social psychology grad student, was convicted of strangling and dismembering a co-worker in California in 1984.
• The two brothers exhibited disturbingly similar behaviors, especially the clinical, emotionless dismemberment of victims.

  “If you shoot a deer …there is a very step by step process to field dress that deer…he was very methodical about it. And just like you said, to him, it was just, just an animal.” (25:16)

7. Hadden Clark’s Confirmed Victims and MOs

[25:44 - 36:40]

• Sarah Pryor (1985): 9-year-old last seen walking home—Clark never charged, but later described the murder in detail; skull fragment found corroborated his account.

  "You had to be the guy that did it or you had to be one of her parents. And he had the information..." (26:45)

• Michelle Dorr (1986): 6-year-old lured, murdered, and buried in Cape Cod, then relocated. Forensics confirmed DNA.
• Laura Hodeling (1992): Murdered after Clark obsessively inserted himself into family, then infiltrated home dressed as her and assumed her identity.

  "This murder is the full expression of Clark’s recurrent fantasy. He eliminates Laura and then becomes her in his mind..." (34:08)

8. Disturbing Trophies: The Bucket

[36:03 - 36:40]

• Investigators find a sealed bucket of trophies buried by Clark, including jewelry belonging to victims; some items appear random or purchased, showing the blurred lines between truth and Clark’s fantasy.

  “He claimed everything in the bucket was from a victim....some of it had little price tags on it like you would see at a flea market.” (36:23)

9. Analysis: Psychopathy and Infamy

[36:59 - 39:21]

• Clark’s letters reference other notorious killers, notably Charles Manson. His excitement over infamy suggests not only a lack of remorse, but a narcissistic pleasure in being known for evil.

  “He wants to be that focus. They’re coming to see me. He’s got a lot of people writing to him…it's like a fertile field for him to grow his crop of bullshit.” (38:45)

• Buddy Day and Luciano underscore that Hadden Clark is a unique brand of psychopath, shaped by early abuse, neurological deficits, and a need to erase and become others—a chilling recipe for serial murder.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Lou Luciano on Hadden Clark’s eyes:

  “He’s got these pale ice blue eyes—there is nothing, zero, nothing behind him except for evil and manipulation.” (05:38)

• Interviewer on the family abuse:

  “So that you have these very, very abused children...left to their own devices...what they get up to is torturing and killing animals because that gives them a semblance of control.” (11:08)

• On Clark’s Dissociation:

  “If we called him Haddon, he would say, ‘Haddon's not here right now. Kristen, yeah, what do you want?’ It was mind numbing and exhausting to be with this guy.” (12:39)

• On Trophy Keeping:

  “He claimed everything in the bucket was from a victim…some of it had little price tags on it like you would see at a flea market.” (36:23)

• On Clark’s Narcissism:

  “Charles Manson wanted to know how he will be remembered... Clark writes me back, ‘Charles Manson will always be remembered. From now on, when you say Charles Manson, people still remember who he was.’ ” (37:42)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:59 — Lou Luciano describes first impressions of Hadden Clark’s “evil”
• 02:29 — Nature vs. nurture in serial killers’ development
• 05:54 — Buddy Day begins to share details from Clark’s unsettling prison letters
• 10:01 — Family abuse / Cape Cod summers with abusive grandfather
• 11:08 — Serial killer "triad" behaviors emerge in Clark’s childhood
• 12:39 — Discussion on Clark’s dissociation and multiple personalities
• 15:04 — Bizarre culinary behaviors (eating/drinking raw meat, blood)
• 16:44 — “Lady of the Dunes” confession and MO pattern
• 22:50 — Bradfield Clark’s (brother) own murder conviction, and methodical mutilation
• 26:45 — Sarah Pryor’s murder and partial forensic confirmation
• 29:45 - 31:12 — Michelle Dorr’s murder, burial, and relocation by Clark
• 33:12 — The murder of Laura Hodeling and Clark’s ultimate fantasy fulfillment
• 36:03 — Discovery of trophy bucket; blurred reality vs. invention
• 37:42 — Clark’s letters reference to Charles Manson; seeking infamy
• 38:45 — Insight into Clark’s psychology: attention-seeking and “fertile field for his crop of bullshit”
• 39:50 — Concluding exchange; Luciano jokingly says Buddy Day has “a serial killer name right there” (39:50)

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Episode Tone & Final Reflection

True to the UNMARKED ethos, this episode balances a matter-of-fact, investigative tone with genuine horror at the unfolding facts. Buddy Day’s measured narration, Luciano’s seasoned candor, and the unvarnished revelations of Clark’s own letters provide an unflinching look at one of North America’s most chilling true crime stories.

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Resources

• Full scans of Hadden Clark’s “Mr. Bunny Rabbit” prison letters available in the Unmarked Case Files research portal.
• Further reading: Buddy Day’s book "Charles: The Last Words" for additional interviews and insights into criminal psychology.

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This summary reflects all core discussions and omits commercial breaks, intros/outros, and non-content segments.

Transcript

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[Lou Luciano]

I've been in the room with a lot of bad, bad, bad people. But this guy just takes the cake because there is no rhyme or reason for what he did and where he did it and why he did it. He's just 100% evil.

[James Buddy Day]

What if evil isn't an explanation but a way to stop asking questions?

[Lou Luciano]

If you were in the same room as this guy. He's soulless.

[James Buddy Day]

Evil tells us what someone is. But I want to understand why they became that way. And that's why I've been corresponding with Haddon Clark, convicted of two murders suspected in others. These are crimes separated by time and place and at first glance without a clear motive tying them together. Authorities are still attempting to piece together Clark's movements in the wake of these recent discoveries. A man who came from a home so broken it didn't produce just one killer, it produced two.

[Lou Luciano]

I'm sure you know about his brother, Bradfield.

[James Buddy Day]

Most families leave behind trauma. This one left behind bodies.

[Interviewer]

How much time do you think you spent with Haddon?

[Lou Luciano]

Days and days and days and days and days.

[James Buddy Day]

That's Lou Luciano, a retired FBI special agent and veteran with 26 years of federal law enforcement experience. Today I'm speaking with him to understand Haddon Clark, his brother, and how one home can manufacture two killers.

[Lou Luciano]

The debate always is that nature, nurture, and I think for Haddon, I think it's a combination of both. Quite honestly, when you're around this guy, it's like being in a room with Satan.

[James Buddy Day]

I'm James. Buddy Day. This is unmarked.

[Interviewer]

How did you catch the Clark case?

[Lou Luciano]

I was pretty new in the FBI at the time. I was assigned to the Baltimore field office and I got sent down to what back way back then in the late 80s, early 90s, was known as the Hyattsville office.

[James Buddy Day]

In the late 1990s, Lou Luciano was working violent crimes in Baltimore, Maryland. New to the bureau, he was assigned to a veteran agent named Ed Roach and absorbed into a team investigating the disappearance of a 23 year old woman named Laura Hodeling in Bethesda.

[Lou Luciano]

Ed Roach was knee deep in the, in the Hodeling case. And when we merged the squads together, you know, he said, he said, someday all this will be yours. Sure enough, I get a lot of his cases.

[James Buddy Day]

Montgomery police have identified a groundskeeper named Hayden Clark as a person of interest in the disappearance. The Hodeling case would remain open for years. It was finally closed in January of 2000 when her killer, Haddon Clark, led Lou Luciano and others to her remains. Buried deep in a wooded area near Interstate 270 north of Washington.

[Lou Luciano]

It's a good sized, heavily wooded area. That's where he had his campsite and he was able to get his truck up in there and he had his little treasures and his dead animals hanging in there and everything.

[James Buddy Day]

Haddon Clark was arrested one month after the murder of Laura Hodeling after police recovered his fingerprints from her discarded pillowcase. How many people Clark has killed remains unknown. In some cases, he confessed and led investigators to bodies. In others, he confessed to murders he could not have possibly committed, forcing law enforcement to separate truth from performance.

[Lou Luciano]

I remember Jo not joking, but one time getting very frustrated with him. I said, you know, you claim to have killed John Kennedy. And he said, and he said, well, I'm pretty good with it.

[James Buddy Day]

I'm pretty good with a rifle, you

[Lou Luciano]

know, And I'm like, no, you're not, you know, So I think people, people need to be cautious of being pulled down the rabbit hole with him.

[James Buddy Day]

There have been documentaries, there have been books, and the accuracy of some of that work has come into question. What's clear is this. Hadden Clark is a deeply disturbed, violent offender with a degree of psychopathy that is rarely seen. For my part, I want insight, not just mythology. And that's why I'm not just speaking with Lou. Although he has spent more time with Clark than anyone else.

[Lou Luciano]

If you saw the eyes on this guy, I don't know if he sent you a picture of himself or, sure, you've seen some images of him online, but he's got these pale ice blue eyes there Is nothing, zero, nothing behind him except for evil and manipulation.

[James Buddy Day]

I've also been corresponding with Haddon Clark himself. In a series of unsettling letters, he writes about his love of women. He draws them in skirts and dresses and hangs the pictures inside his cell. He talks about his job in prison, cleaning the showers. And then he asks me something very, very specific. When we correspond, he insists I call him Mr. Bunny Rabbit. We'll get to that. But first you need to understand where this man came from. The best place to begin, in the case of Haddon Clark, there's no shortcut. You have to go all the way back. July 31, 1952. Hadden Clark is born in Troy, New York, the second of four children, three boys, one girl. His birth is marked by complications that may have resulted in a brain injury, though records are anecdotal at best. His parents are Hadden Clark Sr. A Korean War veteran and a brilliant engineer, and his wife, Flavia, a homemaker. By early childhood, Hadden is already showing signs of developmental delay. He walks late. He has a speech impediment. He struggles with anger. Doctors evaluate him for cerebral palsy, but no definitive diagnosis is ever made. At the same time, his home life is becoming increasingly unstable. His father, Hadden Clark Sr. Suffers from bipolar disorder, periods of mania followed by deep depression. He changes jobs frequently. The family moves often, sometimes as much as once a year. His mother, Flavia, copes through substance abuse. She battles decades of alcoholism. By the time Hadden can walk, he and his three siblings are subjected to violence, daily emotional abuse from an increasingly erratic father.

[Lou Luciano]

His sister. If you sat her down and asked her her age, she's going to be about 20 to 21 years off. She doesn't count the first 20, 21 years of her life as part of her life. She blocked that off. And her starting point is a point 21 years into her life.

[James Buddy Day]

Years later, Hadden will tell a cellmate that he learned everything from his father, even claiming he watched him murder a woman inside the family home.

[Lou Luciano]

I think Haddon talking about his father killing somebody in one of the bedrooms, I don't think I ever bought into that one. And a lot of times with Haddon like his, you never knew what you were going to get. You know, a lot of times he would. He would throw things out there like that for the attention.

[James Buddy Day]

Now, there's no evidence this event ever occurred, but the claim itself is revealing. It shows how Hadden perceived his father. Callous, violent, and capable of unspeakable cruelty.

[Lou Luciano]

There was abuse going on in that house, I'm sure you know about. His brother, Bradfield.

[James Buddy Day]

Hadden's eldest brother, Bradfield Clark, would later evolve into a violent psychopath himself. But in the late 1950s and early 1960s, all four Clark children are sent to Cape Cod to spend summers with their grandparents.

[Lou Luciano]

Best we could find and figure was that it was abuse when the kids were left with the grandparents up on Cape Cod and up at a house up in block Island, Rhode Island.

[James Buddy Day]

Their grandfather is Silas Skidmore Clark, a World War I veteran and former mayor of White Plains, New York. He lives on a sprawling, isolated property in Wellfleet, a place meant to be peaceful, a place that would eventually become something else entirely. The FBI later conducts a deep dive into the family's history, and investigators uncover chilling accounts of abuse. According to Luciano Haddon, Clark's grandfather would take the children deep into the woods behind his property and abuse them in a makeshift shelter he had constructed there.

[Lou Luciano]

The house up there in Wellfleet, it had a couple of outbuildings. He claimed there was a lot of abuse there. Said, yep, as little kids, we would be in there with our grandfather quite a bit and kind of left it at that.

[James Buddy Day]

Ironically, those same woods become a refuge, a place for the Clark children to retreat in order to escape. Something Lou and I discussed directly.

[Interviewer]

So that you have these very, very abused children who are experiencing psychological abuse, physical abuse from their grandparent and their father at the same time. And they're left to their own devices, often in this huge, massive wooden area.

[Lou Luciano]

It's all protected land back there. It's the national. It's Cape Cod National Seashore area.

[Interviewer]

So what they get up to is torturing and killing animals because that gives them a semblance of control.

[Lou Luciano]

Wet the beds, set fires.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Lou Luciano]

Don't kill and torture the animals. Mix it together. There's a serial killer.

[James Buddy Day]

There's no single cause of serial murder. What the evidence suggests is a perfect storm where neurological vulnerability, early trauma, and psychopathic traits collide. If you remove any one of those elements, the outcome changes. In Haddon Clark, the pattern isn't subtle. Neurological vulnerability comes first, then years of unrelenting abuse. And what emerges from that collision are reoccurring fantasies rehearsed long before they're acted out. According to some reports, as a child, Hadden's mother dresses him in girl's clothing and calls him Kristen when she's intoxicated. Other accounts suggest Hadden is beaten for this behavior by his father and even sent to school in a dress as a form of humiliating humiliation and punishment. What's clear is that it established a lifelong pattern.

[Lou Luciano]

I mean, he was, he. He had multiple personalities. And there were days that we would sit and talk to him, and if we couldn't figure out who we were talking to, sometimes it was a wasted trip. And he would, he would tell us that he was Kristen. That was a big one for him. And if we called him Haddon, he would say, ad's not here right now, Kristen. Yeah, what do you want? It was mind numbing and exhausting to be with this guy.

[James Buddy Day]

When I correspond with Clark, I see this behavior firsthand. He asks that I refer to him by an alternate identity, one he calls Mr. Bunny Rabbit. In fact, he even signs his letters this way. The handwritten letters themselves, they're a rare window into this kind of dissociative thinking. And we'll be posting the complete letters inside unmarked case files. Our research portal. It's where you can examine the original documents for yourself. In speaking with Lou, I want to know what it is I'm really looking

[Interviewer]

at with, with Mr. Bunny Rabbit, with Kristen, with these personalities. How much of this, from your perspective, because you spend time with them, is performance and how much of this is, is actual dissociative identities? 50.

[James Buddy Day]

50.

[Lou Luciano]

And the problem with that, buddy, was it would, it would stream together. And so in one respect, you've got the disassociative person, personality, the identity in his head at the moment, and then he's back being himself and then he's just gone.

[James Buddy Day]

Clark's records list his high school graduation in 1972. And if you do the math, he's nearly 20 years old. He drifts through odd jobs, short order cook, kitchen work. Before pursuing formal training in the field,

[Lou Luciano]

he was in the culinary field. And from there he went to the CIA in New York, Culinary Institute of America, and he went to school there for culinary arts.

[Interviewer]

And there was reports of him eating raw chicken and things like.

[James Buddy Day]

Of that nature. Yep.

[Interviewer]

You know, so I think you see those again. It's the continuing stories of him just really being comfortable with raw meat.

[Lou Luciano]

And he would eat, he would drink the blood. That's documented. He would drink the beef blood, you know, and the food, raw food there, which is counter to everything you're learning. And he got, he ended up getting thrown out of there.

[James Buddy Day]

And this is where the record starts to blur. Clark is only ever convicted of two murders. The first is Michelle Doar, who Clark unquestionably kills in 1986. But investigators on this case are almost without exception, believe Haddon Clark is a Serial killer. So when does he begin? When does fantasy cross into violence? We don't know when. Speaking with Lou, he tells me the FBI spent years constructing a timeline, attempting to track Hadden Clark's movements throughout his life.

[Interviewer]

Did you guys go pretty deep in looking into those crimes? Because I can't imagine. Or in those years, I can't imagine that you. You feel that. Michel Doerr was his first victim.

[Lou Luciano]

We built a timeline on him pretty much almost every day of his life. And one of the most consistent things that would happen to him is after he killed somebody, he would end up in a hospital, violently ill. We did find him checking into a hospital, and I'm a little fuzzy on this one. Back in 1974, up in Massachusetts, he claims to have killed a woman that was in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and she was known as the lady in the Dune.

[James Buddy Day]

Clark later claims he committed murders in several states during this time period. Some of those confessions are easily disproven. But one claim stands apart. Clark says he murders a woman long known as the lady of the Dunes, a formerly unidentified victim discovered on July 26, 1974, in the race Point Dunes near Provincetown, Massachusetts. We are standing here today to announce that after nearly a half century of investigative efforts, we have identified the oldest unidentified homicide victim in Massachusetts known as the lady of the Dunes.

[Lou Luciano]

She is Ruth Marie Terry. I mean, Haddon knew that the woman's hands had been cut off. He knew that part of her forearm got cut off. Also, he described how he killed her. Blunt force trauma with a surf casting rod, described exactly what he. How he folded a pair of jeans under her head for a pillow once he left her, and how he took her clothes and assumed her female identity.

[James Buddy Day]

There are two things here. First, Clark's description mirrors his M.O. the way he later kills other victims. The details match known evidence, including the blue jeans found beneath her head. And second, psychologically, it fits where Clark is at at this point in his life. His recurrent fantasy has evolved as a child. There are moments, brief ones, when his mother, though drunk, lavishes attention on him by dressing him as a girl. For Hadden, it's a temporary refuge, a pause in the violence, a moment where attention replaces fear. But when that behavior is discovered, it's met with brutality from his father. What forms is not identity. It's association. Attention, safety and relief become fused with humility, humiliation, violence and punishment. That fusion hardens into a fantasy Haddon chases for the rest of his life. He doesn't want to be a woman, and this has nothing to do with gender dysphoria. What Clark wants is erasure. He wants to destroy himself and replace that self with someone else, specifically with his victims. To eliminate a woman and then assume her identity to live briefly inside the person he's killed. It's this insight I want to discuss with Special Agent Lou Luciano.

[Interviewer]

He is trying to eliminate these women. He's out of, like you say, anger and frustration. He's trying to erase them and then become them.

[Lou Luciano]

Absolutely. Yeah, you assume they are dex In

[James Buddy Day]

2023, Massachusetts authorities dismiss Hayden Clark's confession and announce that the lady of the Dunes, Ruth Marie Terry, was killed by her husband. These findings remain in question and to date the details of the investigation have not been made public.

[Lou Luciano]

Massachusetts State Police said her husband did it due to his DNA being commingled with her DNA. My DNA is all over this apartment and my DNA is at my ex wife's house too. So if she turned up missing, that doesn't mean I killed her.

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[James Buddy Day]

In 1982, Clark enlists in the U.S. navy. He receives an honorable discharge in June of 1985. Clark later makes many claims about his service and there are stretches of time during his overseas deployment that cannot be fully accounted for. What he actually does during those years, like other serial offenders, has been buried under time and lies.

[Lou Luciano]

He claimed to have killed a whole bunch of people when he was in the Navy when he had a port of call in Australia. We checked with the Australian authorities. There was no homicides during the time that he was, that they were docked there.

[James Buddy Day]

In 1985, a Navy psychiatrist diagnoses Clark with paranoid schizophrenia manifested by persecutory and grandiose delusions. He's formally discharged, but the details of this evaluation have never been revealed. After that, Clark becomes transient, often homeless, Living out of a rusted 1983 Datsun pickup truck. He often parks at a makeshift campsite in the woods. And this is where his reoccurring fantasy escalates.

[Lou Luciano]

He was, you know, a suspect for a lot of burglaries and I think he probably just went inside these houses to see if he could get in there. And this is speculation, you know, if he could steal women's clothing, dress up like them, just be in the house of somebody that, you know, it's an empowering thing for him.

[James Buddy Day]

At the time, Clark's older brother Bradfield is living near San Francisco in Los Gatos. Now we could spend an entire episode on Bradfield Clark, but for now, here's what matters. He's 33 years old, a product of the same household. It's unclear whether the brothers are in contact at this point. Bradfield is a graduate student in social psychology. He's just one dissertation away from earning his doctorate. And in the summer of 1984, Bradfield is arrested for strangling and dismembering a female co worker.

[Commercial Narrator]

Los Gatos police have discovered the body of 29 year old Patricia Mack, reported missing on Friday.

[James Buddy Day]

On the night of July 20, 1984, Bradfield Clark invites a married co worker, Patricia Mack, known to friends as Trish, to his apartment for dinner. At some point that evening, Mac is killed. Three days later, Bradfield calls 911 to report his own suicide attempt. It's widely believed to be staged. When police arrive, he directs them to Mac's dismembered remains in the trunk of the, of his Datsun 200. It's parked right outside his apartment.

[Lou Luciano]

The, the Montgomery county homicide detectives spoke with Los Gatos in California. They have missing people all over the place. So if, if you sat me down and said, do you think Bradfield only killed that one woman that he brought the detectives in to see? Absolutely not. I think he was probably doing it probably for years.

[James Buddy Day]

After his arrest, Bradfield Clark gives a detailed confession. At one point, he describes the dismemberment of his victim in specific methodical terms. Details that to me stand out because there's a pattern here. As children, both Bradfield and Haddon Clark used The killing of animals to cope with their shared abuse. And that coping mechanism hardens into a worldview, one where people are dehumanized. A theme I discussed with Lou Luciano.

[Interviewer]

They shared that insight that people are just animals.

[Lou Luciano]

Are you a hunter, buddy, by any means? No.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Lou Luciano]

If you shoot a deer, hit the deer with an arrow. There is a very step by step process to field dress that deer. And my recollection of Brad Field's. And again, I wasn't there. I never spoke to him. But I remember what I either read or what was presented to me was he was very methodical about it. And just like you said to him, it was just, just an animal.

[James Buddy Day]

In 1985, Bradfield Clark is convicted and sentenced to 18 years to life for second degree murder and mutilation of human remains in the homicide of Patricia Mack. He's currently incarcerated in Santa Clara. Though eligible for parole, he's repeatedly waived his hearings. The same month Bradfield is convicted, the very same month Haddon Clark commits a murder.

[Lou Luciano]

That was October 9th of 1985. I was two days in the Marines at that point. I remember getting a letter at boot camp from my mother and she had said an awful thing happened. This beautiful young girl has gone missing and there's massive searches for her.

[James Buddy Day]

Hadden will later tell authorities that he abducts nine year old Sarah Pryor on October 9, 1985 near Wayland, Massachusetts. According to news reports, police and Pryor's family believe she's taken while walking alone that evening. The search continues for Sarah Pryor today,

[Lou Luciano]

last seen walking near Concord Road. Police are asking for anyone with information to come forward. He had killer only information about this girl. You had to be the guy that did it or you had to be one of her parents. And he had the information he talked about when he grabbed her from the street and he took her through these fields and over these stone walls.

[James Buddy Day]

Sarah Pryor's body is never recovered. But Clark later claims her head can be found near a spec stone wall along the route he describes. The area is dense with old stone walls, markers left behind by early American settlers.

[Lou Luciano]

He talked about slitting her throat as he was stepping over one of the stone walls carrying her. Her head actually did come off and he kept walking and when he went back, he couldn't find it.

[James Buddy Day]

In 1995, a portion of Pryor's skull is discovered, partially corroborating Clark's account.

[Lou Luciano]

The crown of the skull was found by a man out there walking his dog. The dog picked the bone up. Lo and behold, The DNA tests show that that was Sarah Pryor's bones there.

[James Buddy Day]

Despite this, Clark is never charged. Lou Luciano explained to me that Massachusetts State Police ultimately focused on another suspect, John Worty, a convicted murderer known to be in Wayland.

[Lou Luciano]

On that day, the Massachusetts State Police closed that case on a guy that was second degree murder parolee from Texas. In my heart of hearts and the Montgomery county investigators heart of hearts, Hadden, he's 100% the guy that killed Sarah Pryor.

[James Buddy Day]

The Pryor case remains officially unsolved. Clark has never been held accountable. But the timeline matters. Something I spoke to Lou about, I

[Interviewer]

think, you know, it does feel like that there's at least two murders in his past prior to Michelle Doerr. Do you think there's more?

[Lou Luciano]

Yep. But getting through his fog is hard.

[James Buddy Day]

On May 31, 1986, there's no doubt about what happens. Haddon Clark commits a murder in the upstairs bedroom of his younger brother's house. Jeffrey. Like Bradfield and Hadden, their brother Jeffrey also survives the family's horrific abuse, but with lifelong mental health consequences of his own. In the wake of Bradfield's murder conviction, Jeffrey offers Haddon room and board. But by Memorial Day weekend, the situation has deteriorated beyond repair.

[Lou Luciano]

The weekend of May 31, 1986. That's a long weekend here. Jeffrey had just given Haddon the eviction notice that morning. So he was extremely angry, extremely upset.

[James Buddy Day]

Six year old Michelle Dorr is last seen in a backyard pool while her father is inside the house.

[Lou Luciano]

She went over to Jeffrey's house where Hadden was staying to look for Hadden's niece, Hadden.

[James Buddy Day]

Jeffrey's daughter Michelle's DNA is later recovered from underneath the floorboards of Hadden Clark's room.

[Lou Luciano]

Michelle ledor wrong place, wrong time. But she became the object of his anger and extreme frustration.

[James Buddy Day]

After the murder, Clark drives eight to nine hours north to a cemetery in Wellfleet.

[Lou Luciano]

There were people up there that saw his truck there. Eyewitnesses described his truck. You know, it was a small white pickup truck and it had a cab on it and he lived in it a lot. But they described seeing that truck driving up there. They also described him out and around in the exact site there.

[James Buddy Day]

Forensics will later determine that Clark buries the remains near a plot where his grandparents are also buried, an area he's deeply familiar with.

[Lou Luciano]

He took us right to his grandparents grave. The cadaver dogs were hitting exactly where he was saying he had drawn a map. He had told us where it was, where he had buried Michelle Doerr's. Body for a while. Turns out he buried her and then he moved her.

[James Buddy Day]

Clark later tells Luciano and the FBI that that he exhumes the body five years later on Halloween night 1992. He moves it into the wooded area behind his grandparents former property. But investigators are unable to recover it. What matters here is the pattern. Hadden brings the body to the graves of his abuser, then moves it to the woods where that abuse took place. Trauma like Haddon Clark experienced doesn't disappear. It fixes itself into place and resurfaces when control is finally in his hands.

[Lou Luciano]

He knew the area in Massachusetts so he could go back and forth and visit that. So I think it was all about him having his body treasure in a location where he could go Visit it.

[James Buddy Day]

In 1991, Clark finds work as a handyman and gardener for a woman named Penny Hodeling.

[Lou Luciano]

Haddon had been working for Penny Hodeling during the year prior. He was an odd job guy, he was a maintenance guy, he was a gardener. Fix it man. And he was really enamored with Penny Hodeman, really liked her a lot. And she I guess, gave him a lot of attention.

[James Buddy Day]

For Haddon, something else is happening. He sees himself filling the role of Penny's daughter Laura, who's away at Harvard at the time. It's the same recurrent fantasy, but it's now manifesting in a novel way. Instead of replacing a victim, he's replacing an absent person. The fantasy appeases Haddon's violent tendencies until October of 1992 when Laura graduates and returns home.

[Lou Luciano]

In comes Laura back into the picture. Laura moves back into the house. And now Laura is the focus of Penny's, the apple of Penny's eye, if you will.

[James Buddy Day]

According to police records, on October 2, Clark dresses as Laura Hodeling. He enters the house through a back door using a hidden key, one he knows about. This is premeditated. Four days earlier, he purchased duct tape, braided rope and a nylon cord. On the check next to the memo line, he writes one word, Laura. On October 2nd, Clark finds Laura in bed. He restrains her, threatens her with a knife and demands she acknowledge him using her own name. According to the autopsy, Houdling dies in the residence as a result of multiple stab wounds and asphyxiation.

[Lou Luciano]

He stabs her and then assumes Laura's identity. Walks out with a wig and her clothes on and neighbors even thought it was Laura leaving the house.

[James Buddy Day]

This murder is the full expression of Clark's recurrent fantasy. He eliminates Laura and then becomes her in his mind, the abused, neurologically damaged child no longer exists. Only Laura does.

[Lou Luciano]

I think by killing Laura, dressing up as her in her clothes, that not so much the gender, but the identity would be, hey, now Penny will love me like she did Laura, because I'm Laura now.

[James Buddy Day]

Laura's body is later discovered in a wooded area near where Clark had been living. A pillowcase recovered at the scene bears Haddon Clark's fingerprint, the evidence that ultimately identifies him as the killer.

[Lou Luciano]

He actually took Laura's body and buried it near a campsite where he was living when that campground was taken down. I remember the detective saying, you know, yep, you could see right to where Laura's body was.

[James Buddy Day]

At this point, Clark's transformation is complete. He begins living under his new identity and is arrested without incident. What follows is a long destabilizing cycle. Interrogations, denials, confessions, recantations. It all stretches across multiple police departments, dozens of investigators and the FBI. In 1993, Lou Luciano is with Clark at his grandparents cemetery searching for the remains of Michel Doerr. Based on a hand drawn map Clark provides.

[Lou Luciano]

The dogs that hit, they were right in the spots that he had mapped out, talked about, eventually pointed at. And then that was when we found the bucket.

[James Buddy Day]

The bucket is sealed. A white 4 gallon pail buried in the ground by Haddon Clark himself. Inside are pieces of jewelry Clark claims he is taken from victims. Items he says he buried after killing Laura Hodeling. During a period when Maryland police stop actively following him.

[Lou Luciano]

He claimed everything in the bucket was from a victim. Everything was a trophy from a victim. Well, when we laid everything out and started looking at everything and you know, when we were photographing and cataloging everything, some of it had little price tags on it like you would see at a flea market. So it's like, all right dude, come off it now.

[James Buddy Day]

The bucket does contain Laura Hodeling's class rings. But beyond that, it leads nowhere. And when the physical evidence runs out, Clark's mind becomes the only place left to look. In the letters Clark writes me, a pattern emerges. One I discussed with former special agent Lou Luciano.

[Interviewer]

He's a very unique psychopath in my mind. Well, I'm talking about his personality. Like a psychopathic personality, right? Like so, you know, normally some, a psychopath would be born and they're kind of like a Ted Bundy, like they're grandiose and they're callous and you know, I'm the most important person in the world. His seems to have come from, from this, you know, whatever his birth Injuries are that kind of caused him this early brain damage, but it left him with the almost. He was. He was callous almost to like an.

[James Buddy Day]

An unimaginable degree in that.

[Interviewer]

That he. He only experienced his own identity and couldn't. And couldn't even really understand anyone else's identity.

[James Buddy Day]

In another letter from Clark, he mentions Charles Manson. When corresponding with men like this, I've learned it can be useful to name Dr. Manson from time to time. Clark writes me back, quote, charles Manson wanted to know how he will be remembered. Charles Manson will always be remembered. From now on, when you say Charles Manson, people still remember who he was. When speaking with Lou Luciano, I showed him the letters, hoping his years on the Clark case show him something that I've missed. To me, the.

[Interviewer]

That's such a tell. Because if you are excited about being infamous for what you did, you. There's no remorse, you know, and it kind of negates some of those claims of mental illness. Not completely, but, you know, so. So it kind of speaks to what you were saying. And have you. So my question is, have, first of all, have you seen this kind of behavior in other serial killers that they want to be associated with other serial killers? And did you see that? In.

[James Buddy Day]

Hadn't had.

[Lou Luciano]

Would probably desire that because of his need for attention. He wants to be that focus. They're coming to see me. He's got a lot of people writing to him. He gets a lot of phone privileges. I know a corrections officer who's retired who said that, you know, he's. He's like the most. Most wanted guy in there just because he's enthralling. And that has given him. It's like a fertile field for him to grow his crop of bullshit.

[James Buddy Day]

Quite honestly, with Haddon Clark, what remains is not a mystery or confusion, but a pattern. A man shaped by neurological vulnerability, conditioned by unrelenting abuse, and driven by a fantasy that trades identity for control. As I said goodbye to former Special agent Lou Luciano, he adds a final insight I've missed. But this one hits very close to home.

[Lou Luciano]

James Buddy Day. Now that's a serial killer name right there.

[Interviewer]

I thank you. I'm not really sure how to say it to answer that. Thank. Thanks again, Lou. It was just great meeting you.

[Lou Luciano]

Yeah, it was a pleasure. Pleasure.

[James Buddy Day]

The handwritten letters I received from Hayden Clark, signed Mr. Bunny Rabbit, will be posted in full inside unmarked case files, our research portal. If you want to explore the Charles Manson case through primary research and interviews with members of the Manson family, including Charles Manson himself. My book, Charles the Last Words, is now available on Amazon. Every episode of Unmarked is built from weeks of research, documents and interviews. As the series grows, we're working with advertisers to help support that work. If you prefer to listen without ads and get early access to all the episodes, you can join us inside Unmarked Case files. Your support helps keep the research going. This episode of Unmarked was produced by John Nadeau and edited by Dave Alderson. Our additional producer is Jesse Demaray. Until next week, this is Unmarked.

[Interviewer]

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[James Buddy Day]

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