shipmates 33.ship.772 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The degree from a top-flight chef's school enabled Hadden Clark to pick and choose employers — at first. But he was never able to keep a job for more than a few months. His strange behavior, like openly chugging beef blood in a restaurant's kitchen, did not endear him to fellow employees or employers. His first jobs were in Provincetown on Cape Cod, where years later he would confess to killing several women in the sand dunes nearby. On one such occasion, he claimed to have murdered a young woman burying her nude under a sand dune after first removing her hands at the wrists. Hadden told police he used her fingers as experimental bait for surf fishing, a hobby he had become proficient in while living on the Cape.

After becoming shunned by restaurant owners in the beach towns of Massachusetts, Hadden Clark did a one-year stint on the cruise ship S/S Norway. After that, there were jobs in Long Island banquet halls, and a three-week assignment at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. In all, Hadden Clark would hold 14 different jobs between 1974 and 1982.

During that time his family disintegrated further. His grandfather died and his grandmother, in poor health, entered a nursing home. His parents divorced, with his father dying soon after from cancer. Hadden, an unsuspected murderer many times over, entered the U.S. Navy as a below deck cook. It was his last chance at a career. But his shipmates didn't understand a sailor who often wore frilly ladies' panties under his uniform. There were beatings. Once, he was locked in a meat freezer for three hours. The Navy tried moving him to new ships but there were incidents. After a final beating where he suffered a concussion from his head being banged against an aircraft carrier's deck, Hadden was given a medical discharge, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He soon showed up on his brother Geoff's doorstep, which resulted in the brutal killing of little six-year old Michele Dorr, with the police believing that her father and not Hadden Clark was their prime suspect.