Bethesda and Malice Domestic

From April 26-28, I will be at the mystery fan conference Malice Domestic, previewing the first volume of my true crime travel guide, Vacations Can Be Murder.

Here's a taste of what's happened in Bethesda and nearby that might be of interest to true crime fanatics:
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• In 2023, SmartAsset.com rated Bethesda the third safest suburb in the U.S. But that’s not to say Bethesda and its surrounding areas haven’t seen their share of crime…

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• On March 1st, 1976, State Department Foreign Service Officer and Yale graduate William Bradford Bishop Jr. was upset when he was passed over for a promotion. So upset in fact, he allegedly murdered his wife Annette (37), mother Lobelia (68) and sons Brad III (14), Brent (10), and Geoffrey (5) in their Lily Stone Drive home. He then drove their bludgeoned bodies to a wooded swamp south of Columbia, NC, threw them in a hole, doused them with gasoline, and set them on fire. Bishop was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List from 2014-2018 and remains at large.

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• On March 11th, 2011, Brittany Norwood murdered her co-worker Jayna Troxel Murray at the Lululemon Athletica store at 4856 Bethesda Avenue (now closed). Murray had apparently discovered stolen merchandise in Norwood’s possession. Norwood originally claimed masked thugs had broken in and raped, stabbed, and beaten both women, but her story quickly unraveled. In January 2012, a jury sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

• Hadden Clark served in the US Navy until doctors diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. While he’d been arrested numerous times for theft, it wasn’t until May of 1986 that he committed murder. After stabbing six-year-old Michele Dorr to death inside her home on Sudbury Road in Silver Spring, he drank her blood, hid her body in a duffle bag and buried her in a shallow grave at North Paint Branch Stream Valley Park. Then on October 18, 1992, he killed Laura Houghteling (23) in her bedroom on Julliard Drive in Bethesda, stabbing and then suffocating her, then burying her in a three-foot deep grave off Interstate 270 and Old Georgetown Road. When authorities linked him to the second murder, he confessed to both. He is currently serving two consecutive 30- year sentences at Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover.

And while you’re in Maryland, don’t miss these crime-related sites:

• In Lorton in nearby Fairfax County, Liberty Village has transformed the former prison into a shopping/dining/destination.

• The grave of author Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is at the Westminster Burial Ground, 519 West Fayette Street, Baltimore. The Poe House and Museum are located nearby at 203 N. Amity Street. 

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• The grave of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) is at Green Mount Cemetery, 1501 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore (Likely buried in the empty area behind the obelisk.)

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• The Dock Street Bar and Grill in Annapolis at 136 Dock Street used to be the city jail. • The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death features eighteen intricately crafted models depicting vignettes from actual crime scenes. Located on the third floor of the State of Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office at 900 West Baltimore St in Baltimore, it can only be seen by appointment