I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a twenty first century lens.

Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

This is buried Bones.

Hey, Kate, how are you today?

I'm doing great, Paul?

How about you?

I am hanging in there.

What's going on?

Well?

My family and I do a big vacation every year.

I make them go to places where I either am writing a book currently or want to write a book about, and so they have a little choice.

Unfortunately, and I would say a few months ago, we went to Cape Cod.

Have you been to Cape Cod before?

Nope?

Never?

Oh boy, that is a definite road trip.

And the episode that we're getting ready to talk about is in Cape Cod.

So I went to school in Boston University.

Loved it, loved Massachusetts.

I've been to the Berkshire's, I've been you know, all over the place.

And my kiddos had never been to Boston or anywhere before, and so I said, let's go to kipe Cod.

And I have to ask you about an odd experience, probably about five years into me really really writing about true crime and sort of the thinking about it and you know, processing what happens crime scenes, when I would go into deserts or rural areas, I started thinking, this would be a really good place for somebody to hide a body.

You ever thought about that before?

Not that I want to hide them.

I don't want to hide a body everybody, But I'm just saying, you know, like where you look at it and go it's isolated.

It checks a lot of boxes for you know, a serial killer.

Everybody take note, no Kate is planning a crime.

I mean I've experienced that.

You know, there were locations within my jurisdiction that were we found numerous bodies, you know, and they had been deposited, oftentimes many years apart.

But these offenders go to these locations because they know of them and these locations are remote and they're not frequently traveled, so they have comfort to be able to let's say, get a body out of a vehicle, dump it off the side of the road, let's say, down into a creek, or to spend some time trying to dig a grave, which almost always is very shallow.

You know.

So there are known body.

Dump locations in my former jurisdiction, and so yeah, as I drive around, you know, especially when I'm off roading, it's like, well, yeah, that would.

Be very convenient to dump somebody down there.

But in a very innocent, sort of academic way you say.

That, of course, of course.

Well my vacation photo is my favorite are the kids, but like really seriously, just between you and me, my favorite are these two sites that I'm fascinated by that I think show to me the beauty of Cape Cod but also just the creepiness, and oftentimes those two things intertwine with me.

Yeah, so when I think as a buried bones.

First, I sent you a photo packet for our chit chat.

So open that up and I want you to assess what you think about these two scenes.

Because I've said this before, I'm a huge mystery fan.

I'm writing a mystery right now, and you know part of it will be set in Massachusetts.

So open up the one that I think it says Cape Cod, and then look at that first one because there's a little bit of an explanation, and tell me what you think, purely from a maybe this would be a nightmare to figure out if somebody is in this sort of thing or what.

This photo that you sent me, the first one that I'm looking at, I'm assuming that's a lake of some sort.

That is the shoreline appears to be heavily covered in vegetation.

It's very lush, The water is perfectly still, at least at the time this photographs taken, and there almost appears to be like a fog.

You know, it's a very kind of creepy looking area that this is something I would see like in a movie, you know, like a mystery, a movie mystery type of thing.

Now it's Cape Cod.

I mean, I know nuts about Cape Cod.

I'm assuming it's on the ocean, right, yeah.

Yeah, So it's Cape It goes straight down.

There's essentially one road in, one road out, and this is in the town or village of Sandwich, and we were staying in a eighteenth century house.

And this this is what's called a kettle pond.

And I'll annunciate because I'm from Texas.

It's a kettle pond.

And these are ponds that were created by glaciers in the New England area, you know, thousands of years ago, and they kind of create these divots.

So this one, in particular, I've been told is only about eight feet deep, maybe nine feet deep.

So this is a pond.

It's not technically a lake.

So what I thought for a mystery would be interesting is if you've got somebody in this as a fictional story, if you've got somebody in this kettle pond and it's so shallow, wouldn't it surface itself as a body?

Wouldn't this body surface itself much more quickly?

This isn't the end of the you know, this isn't the ocean or a very deep lake.

Well I'm assuming, okay, this is fresh yep.

You know, do you have a lot of different critters that are in thisa like okay?

Or this pond?

First time I've ever seen a mink.

I've never seen a mink, oh, okay, So there's whole kinds of stuff living near algae, everything you could think of.

Okay, Yeah, so for a body, let's say the body is sufficiently weighed down.

You know, I could see where the body could be, you know, at the bottom of this pond for a significant period of time.

But it is, as I've seen in my own cases, people really underestimate the buoyancy of dead bodies, even body parts, you know, they do have a tendency to want to come up.

So when I'm hearing this, if we were grading this body of water for a crime scene, this is what to be a B plus maybe for a fictional serial killer.

The shallowness and possibly the clarity of the water, because it looks like there's pretty good visibility.

You know, through the water.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't put it out of b'm I'm thinking more d I think I would like to have a deeper body of water.

Okay.

You know, I would say that the shoreline you possibly have better have a better chance of getting away with getting rid of the body along this heavily vegetated shoreline and letting the surface animals, you know, take care of the flesh, and then the skeletal aspects just kind of self bury in the muck.

You know with what I've seen with with some of my own casework.

But yeah, you know, I think the from a fictional story that the setting is perfect.

It's creepy.

Yeah, A for creepiness D maybe a C, depending on how close we put it to the shore.

As far as like the practicality of putting a body in there, very good.

Oh, I'm sure there's locations in Cape Cod where you could get away with things, for sure.

Well, we're about to talk about one.

And this is a Cape Cod story that I think in Massachusetts, maybe around the country, but in Massachusetts at least, I think a lot of people know the story.

It's almost approaching legend at this point.

It'll be really interesting to see what you think.

We are not in marshland, and we are not in a kettle pond.

We are on a beach though, in sand dunes.

Okay, So let's set the scene.

In this case, not only do we need to id the murderer but also the victim.

So this takes place in nineteen seventy four.

This is five months before my birth.

So July twenty sixth, nineteen seventy four, we are on the Race Point Dunes on the Cape Cod National seashore and it's warm July.

And even though my kids didn't believe it, when we ended up going around July to Cape Cod, they thought, oh, this is actually pretty warm, and I said, I know, it's warmer than you think.

And just a couple hundred miles to the south of Arthur's Vineyard and that's where they're filming Jaws.

Did you ever watch Jaws?

Of course I did.

I saw it in the movie theater.

Every summer, my family and I do a Jaws Night in our pool where we cut the lights off everywhere, like every light in the house, outside in the pool, okay, and we watch Jaws and the kids think it's hilarious and we go underwater and like grab my parents' legs.

And stuff like that.

I mean, but you know, that movie is such a classic.

It's filming during this story, and it actually does come into play.

There's a nine year old girl who's running along the sand Access road and she has a dog.

This is one mile east of the Race Point Beach Ranger Station, Okay, and she comes across a gruesome site in the scrub pine brush.

I don't know what scrub pine brush is.

I mean, I can imagine it, but I imagine very itchy and you know, pokey.

This girl finds the body of a woman.

When in the nine year old becomes a teenager, she is able to describe what she saw, but again, this is who knows how many years later she described her as naked.

She said, I could see an injury on the right side of her head and a little bit of a slice, which I believe they tried to cut her head off.

And I have a lot, of course, more details, but this is just what a nine year old had remembered.

This was a girl who was scared to death, as anybody would be.

She panicked, and she did not alert authorities.

Luckily, we have another girl in the same area that same day.

She's twelve or thirteen.

Her name is Leslie Metcalf, and she's hiking back from a visit with family friends.

I think they were staying kind of right on the beach.

Her parents and the friends are talking when one of the friends is dogs bolts ahead and Leslie bolts ahead to try to get this dog.

It's a beagle.

It comes to a stop and it starts barking, and that's when Leslie sees the same naked body at first, she doesn't think it's a person, she said.

The skin is more the color of a dead deer.

The woman's hands are cut off and her head is nearly decapitated.

Now I have a couple of choices.

One would be we continue on when we actually have a police officer.

They're a very dedicated police officer who follows this case for years and years.

Then we get our first kind of professional view and description of this body.

But I do have a scene photo that we can look at right now, So it's kind of it's not the greatest photo, but it's the only one we can find.

So you tell me if you want to see the photo first, or if you want to hear from the pro first.

Let me Yeah, let me take a look at the scene.

So I'm taking a look at photo, and it's a photo taken looking into this, I think you call it scrub.

Pine, Yes, a scrub pine rush.

Okay, So you know this appears to be a woody type of bush that substance some of these look almost like potentially I see what appears to be maybe a six inch to eight inch diameter trunk leading up to what appears to be like pine needles off of the branches of the tree.

This is like a coniferous type of thing, and it looks uniform.

I'm not seeing other plants intermixed at least within this photo.

And there's a kind of a lower you know, in the backdrop is where you see these these bushes to tree height vegetation kind of forming almost a wall behind the body, and where the body's at is sort of a flattened area.

It's showing the body basically from the feet up to maybe the shoulder area.

And I can't say for sure because there is some interference with some of this scrub pine in the foreground, but the body does look like it's nude, and based off of the orientation of the feet as well as it appears that her butt is up, it can be seen she looks like she's face down, legs are completely straight and from just the orientation that I can tell, and of course I can't discern any types of injuries from this photo.

This looks in all likelihood that she was put here versus you know, she was there had been like a big fight and then you know she was killed.

The fact that she's nude, you know, of course you have to think that there's potentially this is potentially a sexually motivated crime, but we'll hold off and forming an opinion on that until more details come in.

You know, this is a location where it appears the offender is trying to somewhat hide the body.

It's just from this vantage point where the photographer is standing, the body is pretty much in plain view, just kind of you got all this brush that might if somebody's just walking by, they in glance, they might not necessarily recognize that there's something amiss.

So don't take that photo down because you know, maybe when we hear from the police chief and he can describe, you know, what he's seeing, it might help with the orientation.

I've seen a couple versions of this photo where you would think her vagina is blurred out.

Okay, yeah, because I'm seeing what appear to be both of her feet to the left of the photograph, with her heel sticking up, I can see both of her lower legs caves, and then it goes up to where now it's just the side of her body and this hump, which I'm assuming is her butt, and then it goes down into her back.

So at least in this photo, I don't see how her genital area would be captured in this particular photo unless I am completely misinterpreting how I think this body is oriented.

Let me tell you what the police chief says.

Okay, So of course the family calls the police, and the Provincetown police chief shows up.

Provincetown is right at the very end of Cape Cod and so it's a guy named James Jimmy Meads.

And he just becomes a legend because of this case, because he just is relentless, which is exactly the kind of investigator we want to have on cases like this.

He is one of the first people who shows up.

This is what he says.

The woman is lying on one side of a light green terry cloth beach blanket.

It appears as though she had been sharing it with someone because she must have been on one side of it.

She had an athletic build.

She was approximately five feet six to eight inches tall, about one hundred and forty hundred and fifty pounds under her head are neatly folded wrangler jeans in a blue printed bandana.

Investigators estimate she is between twenty five and thirty five.

She was wearing a barreat in her long auburn hair.

It's pulled back into a ponytail with an elastic band, and her toenails are painted pink.

And I will tell you before you start asking about wranglers and who owns what, she goes unidentified for a very long time, so we don't know.

This is where he's starting with square one here.

Well, this is nineteen seventy four.

Her hands were.

Cut off, so the ability to search for fingerprints, you know, was removed by the offender.

You know, in essence, they would have to resort to, you know, a facial identification, going to missing persons reports, you know, and finding you know, anybody that matched the physical descriptions of this body.

And it sounds like they probably did that and just failed.

And now that's this comes into you know, who is the victim?

How come she hasn't been reported at least in the local area.

What does that tell us about you know, who she might be?

You know, the victimology is, is she somewhat transient?

You know, she could be somebody that's just deciding that, you know, for adventure purposes, just traveling around the country.

You know, maybe she's involved in sex work and she just disappeared from her family, and she's going about her business in various jurisdictions.

Yeah, there's so many different possibilities as to why she hasn't been reported.

You know, she could be a depending he says, she's twenty five.

You know, maybe over the course of her life she has episodes of just disappearing.

You know, so family just just assumes, uh, you know, she's gone.

Yeah, she'll show up again in six months or two years or whatever, and never you know, alerts law enforcement that a loved one is actually gone.

Well, let's continue and see if we can pick up on anything.

I thought the pink toenail detail was interesting, which made me think maybe not a transient, but who knows.

And I know, like when I was using the term trans you know, it was more of is this is the victim somebody that is just is moving around, versus somebody that is you know, like a like a homeless situation and can't take care of themselves, because it sounds like, you know, she's out there with a beach blanket, you know, she's you know, I'm assuming the clothing is in decent shape.

Yeah, you know, because the law enforcement, of course would would probably very quickly go oh, you know, she's one of our homeless that's in the area, based on what they would be seeing with her.

Clothes and her hygiene and everything else.

Yep.

So I'm gonna get through what needs says the scene is like, and what he finds at the scene, and then we will have more detail about the autopsy after that.

Okay, Okay, it's pretty detailed coming up with what's at the scene.

This woman's body is badly mutilated and in a state of decay.

Remember it's really hot outside.

I didn't get the sense that this was direct son, but there could have been son on her also, you know, but the the heat would have been probably pretty bad.

She appears to have been strangled.

Her throat they described as slashed to the spine.

Her head was bludgeoned by an instrument, which they said, this is interesting, I've never heard this before.

The instrument that Meets thinks might have been used is similar to a military entrenching tool, which is a collapsible shovel, and that would have been very common and kepe cod for you know, dune buggies to get out of a pinch in the sand or campers.

So he doesn't say why he thinks that it must have been the shape of it.

But she has been bludgeoned.

She has nearly decapitated.

The left side of her skull is crushed.

You know.

I had said that both hands were severed, and it sounds like missing one of her arms had been severed up to the elbow.

In their places, the killer had arranged piles of pine needles.

I don't know if that's sort of a weird reanimating those limbs, but that's just the way it was described.

There is no sign of a struggle, and there is no murder weapon.

And there are two sets of footprints, which actually I've checked.

I think it is actually footprints, not shoe prints.

I know, those get you know, they become interchanged sometimes.

They said that one print is supposed to be like a size ten shoe made by somebody heavy and running.

I don't know how you can figure that out.

And there's a set of tire tracks on a nearby service road somewhere between fifteen fifty feet away.

And that's where we're done with the.

Scene, okay.

And there's no description of blood present, no.

Just they said, in an advanced state of decay.

But blood would still be there, I suppose, right what.

I would be wanting to know was there evidence of blood spatter, like you know, the violence inflicted to her was done here at this location Nope?

Or if it was elsewhere, and you know, was she transported here and then placed in this situation, this position, which is significant in terms of if the offender is doing that.

You know, her head is on top of folded jeans and a bandana, I believe, almost like it's a pillow.

And then the offender has taken the time to arrange pine needles to kind of simulate where her upper limbs would have been.

You know, it's almost as if he's trying to position the body like she's asleep.

Yeah, like she's going on a picnic or getting ready to go into the ocean and just she's taking a nap.

How screwed up is that.

It's no different than an offender who kills somebody in their bed and then you know, covers them up and puts, you know, the head on a pillow, you know, to make it look like they're just asleep when they're actually dead.

So this is giving the offender, you know, the reason to do it is most likely to give the offender time to escape and time delayed discovery of the body.

People just casually walking by would just say, oh, there's a woman asleep over there and not approaching.

You know, if you think somebody's asleep back there in the bushes, how many people are going to start walking up because it's the fear is as well, what's going to happen if she wakes up or if there's somebody else back there?

Right?

So I think for me, you know, the most important thing is is that did the offender kill her here at this location or did he dump her body here and actually take the time to make her look like she's asleep, you know?

And I think that that's that that there's a significant difference in terms of what's going on.

I think as detailed as this is, if there were, you know, signs of blood, there's no signs of a struggle that it would have been noted if there was blood, you know, if this looked like where it happened, if you are I mean, I hate to be graphic about this, but if you are severing ahead and severing limbs, there would be a lot of blood, right, I mean, would it be everywhere?

Well, it depends if the victim is still alive, well, let's go with no.

I hope.

I mean, the severing of the hands is obvious to prevent identification, and the you know, the era of a fingerprints, and the severing of the head may also be to prevent identification because of the face.

So that's what I'm assuming in this case at the offender initially started to do but then decided not to completely remove her head for one reason or another.

The severing of the one arm, and I think you said it was the right arm from the elbow down.

That suggests to me that she had some sort of identifying feature on her arm, such as a tattoo or a birthmark or something, and so that's why the offender chose to do that versus just cut the hand off at the wrist.

I'm going to give you a really quick note.

I could go down a big rabbit hole with this.

But the reason I mentioned Jaws is because later on there would be a theory floated by Stephen King, the author's son, that maybe she was an extra for Jaws, okay, which was not very far away.

And the style, you know, for the extras, especially were these these bandanas and jeans turns out to not be the case.

It was just interesting to see what people were desperately, including the investigators, trying to pick up on because there's no identification.

There's nothing, I will tell you, Nobody in the vicinity in Cape Cod is able to id this woman.

Nobody is going, oh, yeah, I bet this is someone someone so.

Well and maybe just to clarify, since you have knowledge of Cape Cod, you know, my impression is is Cape Cod has a fairly large transient population based due to tourism, and it's only at the time of this this case that's even greater because of the movie Jaws that's being filmed.

I think Stephen King's I think you said it was his brother or his son son, Yeah, this son, you know, floating out the idea of an extra.

I mean, I think that's a very valid, you know thought.

If this extra was somebody that flowed in in order to pick up an odd job on the movie set, you know, and has no connection to this location whatsoever, you know, it's definitely worth an investigative path to go down in terms of trying to identify who.

This woman is.

And I think you're right, you know, I do think you have a lot of people who are working small jobs.

It's still up and down Cape cod That's one of the things that I find it very charming, all the people that I can meet.

Also, you know, seventies, this is the height of hitchhiking, so we don't know who this person is.

Let me tell you about the autopsy.

That evening, the women's remains are transported to the medical examiner's office.

The next morning, which is a Saturday, they do the autopsy.

And thanks to the July heat like we talked about and dune flies, which are awful dune flies, decomposition is advanced.

It's difficult to gauge the time of her death with much precision.

They said it could have been between four days and up to three weeks before her body was found.

But there is evidence that she was sexually assaulted with block of wood.

And they say post mortem.

So yeah, foreign objects insertion.

Did they say vaginal rectal?

They didn't.

It's just that's sexually assaulted, which I would bet is vaginal.

Otherwise I think they would have clarified.

But there's a reason why they're saying it's a lock of wood.

They must have recovered that object, so you know, and did they recover it from the body or did they recover it from the crime scene, because I've seen both.

You know, sometimes the offenders will leave these foreign objects inside the body, and sometimes they pull them out and just toss them to the side.

My understanding is that I don't think this is something that was found at the scene.

I think this was maybe it was based on like the size of the splinters that they found, But I believe that this assumption was made during the autopsy, not as something that was found at the scene, you know what I mean.

Okay, sure, Okay, So they're forming an opinion based on what the pathologists recovered from the vaginal orifice.

Maybe there was some wood, would be pieces internally, but they don't have the object, so there's going to be a little bit of a subjective aspect in terms of what exactly was used.

Okay, here's the clue that I found really fascinating.

So the most important thing that they found, they think, at this autopsy, is her dentistry that was done on her teeth.

In the seventies, it was rare for people to have extensive dentistry done, but this woman had eight gold crowns and they described the style.

I didn't know there was a style with you know, applying crowns as New York style.

They cost at least five thousand dollars.

It looks like the killer had tried to pry them off, and a guy named doctor Stanley Schwartz, who is the state dental forensic examiner, puts the skull kind of back together because there were it was a lot of broken pieces and a chunk of the skull about the size of a hand is missing.

A jazz I Get eight inch crack runs along the top.

The cause of death is determined to be a blow to the head.

So it sounds like when you know, they removed the outside and found, you know, and looked at the skull that it had been broken apart.

When they put it back together, there's a big chunk missing.

But the New York detail was really important on you know, trying to figure out who she is.

Is that interesting New York style?

Yeah, you know, I've got a nineteen seventy five Jane Doe who had extensive dental work, and there was a thought that she came over from Europe due to the type of dental work that she had done.

So I think that there is some significance to this observation.

Now, you know, my question would be, is this style only done in New York or could it be replicated, you know, by the people in other jurisdictions.

You know, that's in all likelihood, that's that's the case.

But the expense of that dental work suggests that the victim came from at least you know, a a she had some financial means to her, or her family did or or somebody she's associated did you know, you know, you said it costs like what, five thousand dollars for these crowns.

Now that's you know, the cost of actually not only the gold, but all the other you know, costs associated with with producing those crowns.

So, you know, this is where I'm thinking about the robbery aspect, if you want to call it that, in terms of the offender killing the victim, you know, and wanting to take her teeth for financial gain, I guess it's a possibility.

I almost think another.

Possibility is is that the offender knew that teeth are often used to identify victims.

And you know, this is where the offender, you know, he's removing hands.

He it looks like he's trying to sever her head, you know, so he's definitely trying to prevent identification, and maybe he ends up resorting to I'm going to take her teeth.

Yeah, and you know what kind of market is is there for gold crowns?

You know, the black market for gold crowns stuck in a broken jaw.

I don't know.

I think that's interesting, and I'll keep an open mind about it as we proceed.

I think that option number two is what meets with thinking that this is to prevent identification, because he would have I mean eight gold solid gold teeth or gold crowns.

I think he would have thought people would have realized it.

But I have a question about that.

So he's going to all this trouble severing hands and you know, the gold teeth, and he's sort of posing her.

But you already got two kids that have run across her in the same day, So why not do a better job disposing of her body?

If he's not posing her naked as a shock factor.

If he's really going to all of this to try to hide who she is, it didn't seem like he did a great job picking the dumb side.

No, I think you're spot on because you know, at least with this photo that you're showing me, you know, it's the body appears to possibly be in you know, relatively plain view from the location of this photographer.

And as you pointed out, you have you know, kids in the area that are are running across his body, so it's not like it's really tucked off the beaten path out here off of this beach.

There may be an element where the offender wanted her found and he just needed to make sure that she wasn't identified quickly, possibly because once she's identified, it becomes obvious who he is.

Okay, well, let's continue on.

She is buried that October.

She's in Saint Peter's Cemetery, which is in Provincetown.

Still don't know who she is, so her name becomes the Lady of the Dunes, which there is a series on Peacock about that.

Now it's actually pretty good, so you know, it becomes a fairly well known story.

As I said, it then quickly goes cold.

Over the next few weeks, Chief Meads and his thirty person team search the crime scene with bloodhounds, the canvas, local motels, They go through thousands of missing persons case files.

They send five thousand dentists the victim's dental records, and the chief arranges for multiple articles on the murder to appear in True Detective.

He's definitely looking, you know, he's trying to get everybody's attention.

He consult psychics, he sounds pretty desperate.

He's trying to find the hands.

And none of this has any luck.

And so we're leaving this case in nineteen seventy four, and before we move on to the next decade, tell me what you think so.

Far here he's sol without her identification.

It's so critical to try to get these victims identified as fast as possible if you really want to make progress in the investigation.

And when when you end up having a victim that ultimately isn't identified for months and you have other cases coming in, you know, you're going to focus your energies, your department's resources elsewhere.

And then that's how these types of cases literally, I mean, they get forgotten.

I mean she's been buried in a basically a Jane Doe grave, and I know, like jurisdictions that I've worked out of.

I dug up a seventeen year old girl out of Santa Cruz washed up on you know, on the Santa Cruz Beach and she was a Jane Doe and she'd literally was just put in a body bag and put in the ground.

And we dug her up in two thousand and one and we're able to identify her and get her back to her family.

But you know, it's like these these bodies are just almost they're not hate to use the term discarded, because there are some corners offices that do a good job, but fundamentally they're not putting a lot of resources in terms of the burials.

You know, it's a cardboard box, it's a body bag, and this is not good for preservation of the body.

You know, decades later, when technology starts getting to where we can actually do something.

Well, you are touching on what I'm about to talk about.

No, Chief Means is incredibly frustrated.

And six years later he's still in the force and we have the body exhumed.

In nineteen eighty, they take blood samples, this skull is used to create a sculpture of her face.

Means ends up keeping the skull in his office on his desk until he retires in ninety two.

I mean Paul.

This just goes on.

She's exhumed several times.

What immediately strikes some folks is the facial recognition, which I'm just going to kind of show you in a little bit, because they do this many times.

You'll see like a page full of what looks like a pretty consistent looking person.

But I'll show you that in a minute.

It looks like a twenty five year old local woman who was known as a local crime.

Maybe she got crosswise with somebody we don't know.

You know, this is a woman who did armed robbery and was kind of all over the place.

Ultimately it turns out not to be her.

But in the year two thousand, she is exhumed again.

They take a bone marrow tissue sample for DNA testing.

Then they compare it to a saliva sample taken from this young woman, the criminal.

They compare it to her mother, and they had done this a little bit earlier, but it's not a match.

They're back to square one.

But they do continue to collect these samples of things.

So now they've got blood and they've got bone marrow tissue sample and that's in the year two thousand.

So what does all of this mean That would be available in another couple of decades.

Would this be helpful stuff to have preserved well?

In nineteen eighty, collecting the blood after the exhumation, that's about the poorest source of DNA in nineteen eighty they're not thinking DNA, but chances are because she's so decomposed when she's found, there's a good chance that the DNA in her blood is gone.

I've had cases like that.

You know, where even with a what would be considered moderate decomposition and the victim's blood is devoid of his own DNA.

So now you have a body that's been in the ground for six years and they collect a blood sample, I'm not sure what good that would have done.

Then this is where now you have to go after long bone.

You need to go after teeth.

You know, the dentin inside, you know, the teeth oftentimes is the only source of DNA because everything else has decomposed.

You know, the bacteria has chewed the DNA up in these in these bodies.

So in two thousand, during the exhumation, you know, they collect bone, marrow tissue, which it sounds like they were able to at least get some amount of DNA, but the bone marrow is not necessarily the best source of DNA from this body.

Again, you go after the long bone, that not the inside the long bone, but actually take samples of these long bones.

It's just the femur.

You take her teeth, you know.

And in two thousand, this is right on, you know, where law enforcement labs were really fine tuning the modern DNA testing, this str testing that was going on.

So that sample might you know, today possess enough DNAs that we could do advanced DNA technology on it if needed.

I don't know she ultimately is ever identified, but it's very possible that that bone marrow tissue probably is insufficient and they're going to have to dig her up again, you know, outside of you know, this chief keeping her skull on his desk, Well, then it's just a matter of having an anthropologist pulling some teeth and getting it to a DNA testing lab.

But generally you don't want to keep your victims' heads on your desk.

That needs to be repatriated to the rest of the body.

Well, don't worry, Meads as retired right now.

So okay, In two thousand, they suspect a serial killer, a guy named Hayden Clark.

He I've never heard of this guy, Paul.

He is known as the cross dressing cannibal.

He confesses in two thousand and four he had male drawings of a woman he claimed to have murdered on Cape cod to a prison pinpal in a sketch.

The woman's missing her hands.

There's no evidence that connects him to this murder, though, and the confession seems to be elicited by a culmination of the high profile nature of the case and paranoid schizophrenia.

They even take him to the scene and he doesn't know anything, and he, ultimately, I promise, is not the person.

So this is another dead end.

But they're keeping this case alive.

In twenty thirteen, just like they heard you before, they do exuom her body again.

So twenty thirteen they take more DNA samples, including from her jaw.

So that's good, right, Yeah, So that's better, and hopefully you know the again.

You know, I think if you're collecting some of the jawbone, you're grabbing some of the molars, you're grabbing some of the teeth.

Okay, here we go, this will make you excited.

In twenty eighteen, a little something happens with the Golden State killer stuff, and the DA in Provincetown gets excited about this.

He reopens this case.

It's really never been closed, but he becomes more active in the case, and now the FBI is taking over this part.

Later they would hire this guy, this forensic investigator named Paul Holes.

So the FBI hired Authorm, and they developed a full DNA profile of the lady of the Dunes that I've been wondering if you remember I've ever heard of this case because you worked for AUTHORM.

I can't say I have.

You know, you know, I know the authorum's website.

You can go there and see everybody that they've identified, you know, all these dos on their website.

But she's in there.

I'm sure, yeah, I can guarantee she's in there.

I just I don't know.

I have no idea.

So Authorm gets it.

They develop a full DNA profile of her, and this is twenty eighteen.

The profiles in cross checked against numerous online genealogical databases.

They find a close match and a guy named Richard Hanschett.

He was This is an interesting story.

He had been adopted in nineteen fifty eight.

His adoptive parents had worked at a car factory in Michigan.

This is where we're starting, Michigan.

One of their coworkers was twenty one.

She got pregnant and she said, I can't raise this boy.

Can you all help me?

And they did.

After his adoptive parents died, Hanschitt decided to do the DNA testing and hoping to find his biological family.

So he goes through ancestry dot com that connects to a cousin in Tennessee and her name is Marilyn renee Terry Hill.

That year, Hanschett attended a family reunion and that's where he finds out that his mother, thirty seven year old Ruth Marie Terry, has been missing since nineteen seventy four.

And this is the Lady and the Dunes.

What is the story of Ruth?

You know, why does she go missing?

Well, you know you said earlier how important it is to identify the victims, because DNA does not solve this.

It is figuring out who Ruth is.

Ruth Marie Terry was born in Whitwell, which is about twenty four miles northwest of Chattanooga.

She was a teenager when she got married the first time to a guy named Billy Ray Smith.

That separated, she went to Michigan, she got pregnant and gave birth to Richard.

After she gave Richards adoptive parents him, she moved to California.

Throughout the nineteen sixties, Ruth stayed in contact with the adoptive family to make sure everything was going well with him.

In seventy three, she even tried to get in touch with Richard and he said I refused to meet her.

He said, I was a teenager, I was messed up, I was mad, and I didn't have anything to do with her.

And of course he regrets that because she ends up being murdered the next year.

Now we get to what is happening.

In seventy three, Ruth goes back to Tennessee and she has a new boyfriend in tow.

His name is Guy Rockwell Muldovin, and this is the last time that her family ever saw her.

Guy, however, goes back to Michigan.

He's driving Ruth's car.

He has a lot of excuses and ultimately the family had lost touch with Ruth, and he said she was involved in some shady stuff.

The family ends up thinking she went into witness protection for one thing or another, I guess, really involved with shady stuff or in that world.

So they essentially the bottom line is they've accepted that they're never going to hear from her again, and I'm sure he convinces them of that.

So now we're going forward to November of twenty twenty two.

This is now a recent case.

Right, FBI agents hold a press conference.

They announce that the lady of the dunes is Ruth Marie Terry, and they start looking into guy because this is the prime suspect.

He is an antique stealer, he is a womanizer, and of course a possible multiple murderer.

I'm not going to call him a serial killer because I don't think he's going to fit into your definition.

But we'll see Ruth had married him.

That was his fourth wife.

He made national headlines in n eineteen sixty before he had even met her, in relation to the disappearances of his second wife and her eighteen year old daughter, and they were last seen in nineteen sixty.

On April first, the police go to his Guy's addict in Seattle.

Nineteen sixties, police because they are searching for this woman named Manzanita Merns and her daughter Dolores Anne in Chicago.

So they go to his Chicago home.

The septic tank was suspiciously filled with fresh concrete, and when investigators broke the concrete, they found bits of human flesh and bone alongside strands of hair inside the septic tank and the attic.

His attic is stained with blood.

So whether or not this makes a difference to you, I don't know, but I do have the scene of the attic where this apparently happened.

Yeah, I'm looking at this photo and it's a black and white photo which in the backdrop I can see, you know, a wall which is just studs, and then the primary focus of this photograph is this wooden floor, which I'm assuming is up in the attic.

And then there's been a large, almost like a sharpie type outline that has been drawn around what, to my eyes looks like very consistent with what was a pool of blood that you know, has likely been either cleaned up or absorbed into the wood.

But it is an obvious discoloration and a fairly large, you know, fairly large pool of blood.

And then there's some satellite stains that are tough to really make out.

But I'm assuming that those they're similar in color, so those probably are other blood stains that are all encircled with this black sharpie mark.

And there's a number associated with this location of forty seven dash A.

And that's a fairly typical thing that you know, csis law enforcement due is they'll put you know, number stands to de mark different items of evidence.

And instead of using a number stand, they're using a marker, a sharpie in order to indicate what item number they've assigned to this location up in the attic.

And then the following photograph, Oh well, okay, so the following photograph, this appears to be where they have removed some of the flooring, and so now you can see the joists, and underneath where this floor was is what appears to be a fairly large blood pool.

That this is where the blood had not been cleaned up, and so you can see where now the blood has dried.

You have dried blood crusts inside this blood pool, and you have multiple item numbers being ascribed sixteen dash A, fourteen dash A, forty three dash A.

And this is fairly typical where if you have a blood pool on let's say, a hardwood floor, that blood seeps through any cracks it can and goes to the you know, the sub through the subfloor.

And that's what appears to be happening.

Here is up in the attic, they see visible staining on top of the wood floor.

They cut up that wood floor, and then underneath that is now where they there's blood that the offender didn't even realize was there, you know, and this this type of blood pooling, that's pretty indicative that you got somebody with a very serious bleeding injury.

You know, I can't say there's you know, enough blood there to say definitively you know that bleeder is dead.

But that's this is where you look at this and you okay, yeah, we've got the homicide scene right here.

Well, let me give you some more information.

There was no body found there, but a few days later there were legs that were found in the Columbia River, about two hundred miles from Seattle.

They matched the woman's height, weight, and blood type.

Investigators start tracking things down.

Guy had rented up handled van on April sixth.

The odometer seems to show that he had driven three hundred miles, which is the distance to make it from his home to Seattle on back and in the meantime, you know, guy takes off and he goes to Reno, he buys a sports car, he goes to Provincetown, and then he moves to New York and he receives a no shop.

There's not enough evidence.

They track him down because they said, you took off and there is a murder investigation happening.

They charged him with unlawful flight to avoid giving testimony in the murder of his second wife.

But that was it.

There wasn't enough evidence, they say, to charge him with the murder of either the second wife or his stepdaughter.

And that's why he met headlines and then he got away with it.

Yeah, I think somebody dropped the ball there.

Yeah, come on, you know, of course there's there's, you know, lots more that would have to be you know, done in terms of building a case against him.

But in essence, you've got inside his residence.

You've got you know, today we'd be able to prove you know, whose blood that is, you know, but back then it'd be consistent with his wife or the daughter.

You've got part of a body coming up.

I'm sure you know the circumstances of his flight could be argued by the prosecutors.

You got the septic tank, you know, with parts of bodies.

I'm not sure exactly what all they found in the septic tank.

It was bits of flesh, is what they said.

Yeah, it seems like if you really rolled up your sleeves as an investigator and a prosecutor, you could probably find enough to charge him with.

This sounds like a double homicide, you know.

And then of course, now you fast forward and you've got Ruth who's got an association with Guy.

I mean, he's got a pattern, yep.

And they're pretty convinced that this pattern went back to nineteen fifty.

So if we're talking about trying to gather evidence against Guy, the modern day investigators say, wait, we knew of a case from nineteen fifty in Humboldt County in Eureka, California.

Right, So in Eureka, California, in Humboldt County where Guy's first wife owned a restaurant and there were two people who went missing.

So in June of nineteen fifty, going back more decades, twenty eight year old Henry Baird and his seventeen year old girlfriend Barbara Kelly were murdered.

She was a waitress at a sweet shop, which is the restaurant owned by Guy's first wife.

He was a cook there and Baird was a bakery truck driver.

So this is how the circumstances play out.

They were found dead on June eighteenth on Table Bluff Beach.

Henry Baird had been shot in the back of the head.

He had been stripped down to his socks and shoes.

His clothing was folded neatly next to him.

Barbara Kelly's clothes, except for her shoes and stockings, were folded underneath Henry's.

There was no concrete evidence though, and I don't know if they suspected Guy until all these other things start coming together.

Barbara Kelly was never found and it's an unsolved case even now.

Nobody's ever been charged in this.

So this would be two coincidental that this happened to these two young people when Guy had been working at that restaurant.

Well, and then again you go to you know, the latest case with Ruth and her genes and bandana were folded and placed underneath her head.

This is why is the offender doing that.

He does not need to do that in order to commit the crime.

This is significant to Guy, I would say, you know, most certainly this nineteen fifty case of Henry and Barbara.

You know, Guy is involved.

Now if they have evidence, if they have those items of let's say, Barber's never been found, but they have her clothing, is Guy's DNA on that clothing?

You know, would they be able to close the case if they pursue that type of testing.

Maybe they don't feel that they need to, you know, so I don't know what guys.

You know, is he alive today or not?

But you know there's a chance, even as far back as a nineteen fifty case that they could potentially get physical evidence in order to prove it.

Well, let's wrap this up.

So two two.

They are all convinced at this point on Cape Cod that he is responsible for Ruth's depth.

They find out that Ruth and Guy were together for sure during the time when they were traveling and she was murdered, and in August of twenty twenty three, the district attorney declares that Guy is definitively responsible, but he died two decades earlier.

I had a feeling that that was going to be the case you asked me or you made the comment of whether or not I would consider guy a serial killer, and yes I would, and I think he literally is falling into any definition of serial killer typically when I I mean, you have people who commit a series of crimes and oftentimes, let's say it's financial gain and stuff.

And from my perspective, the psychology the motivation for those types of crimes is very different than your fantasy mode evated you're sexually motivated type of offender.

Take a look at what happened to Ruth.

You know, she's nude.

You have for an object insertion, and there's probably more sexual interaction with that body than just the insertion of maybe this would block you know, so there is a sexual component.

Henry and Barbara, these are people that he's I mean, it's not his family members, but he's close to Barbara just because she works in the same restaurant he works in and it's owned by his first wife.

You know, I think he is a serial killer and he's preying on people that are either in a relationship with him or are close enough to him.

He possibly has other cases, you know, than what has been identified here.

I think it's unfortunate in nineteen seventy four, they couldn't identify Ruth with any type of speed, because if they had, they possibly could have uncovered guys, you know, prior crimes, and he could have been arrested and charged for.

All of them.

I agree, And one thing I wanted to point out, because we do have a lot of victims here.

They never found his eighteen year old stepdaughter, and they never found Barbara, who was seventeen.

So maybe that's the sexual component also that you're thinking of.

You know, he had taken them away and hidden them somewhere after doing whatever he did.

I don't know, but they were never found.

And I think that that's like when you take a look at Barbara and Henry.

Henry a shot in the back of the head.

He's executed.

He's been stripped down to just his socks and shoes, I think, is what you said.

Yep, stripped down to his socks and shoes, and his clothing was folded neatly next to him.

Yeah, with him having his socks and shoes on, that does not you know, because I was thinking, well, could Henry and.

Barbara have just been, you know, out there on the.

Beach and maybe involved in some sort of you know, consensual physical encounter, and that's why Henry has been stripped down.

His socks and shoes are on.

That suggests to me that he is now being forced to be moved against his will, and that's why his socks and shoes are on to the location where he is executed.

And then Barbara is now forced to go somewhere else, and you know, who knows where she ends up, whether she ends up in the ocean, she's you know, taken into guy's vehicle and he's dumped her in the woods somewhere, who knows, But he's spending time with the primary target of that couple, and that's the female and the stepdaughter very possibly was somebody that he ended up wanting to sexually interact with at a greater level than his second wife.

Yeah, and you know, I believe they only found the wife's legs.

So the reason I think this case is a good case for us was exactly what we talked about at the beginning, which is the importance of finding out who the victim is.

I mean, just from a compassion standpoint, it's important, of course to catch the killer, but for these families who just have to spend decades not knowing what happened.

And Richard, I'm sure just so upset with himself for not reconnecting with his birth mother and feeling like he had been abandoned when it sounds like was not the case at all with Ruth.

You know, all of that was so important, but it does ultimately end up leading Ruth leads us to her killer and probably the killer of several at least four other people.

So you know, we don't get DNA from him, we don't get justice from him because he died two decades earlier.

But the conclusions, I think and being able to kind of at least with Ruth's family be able to say this is what happened, were so important and that's why this is a good case.

And this is you know, where this modern technology.

You know, you brought up my current employer, AUTHORM.

You know they've identified more Jane and John does than anybody and many of these are not Many of these unidentified remains are not victims of homicide.

You know that they died for other reasons, but you do have these types of cases that once these does are identified and they are homicide victims, then the cases often are rapidly solved just because now you have a starting point and it becomes obvious who the offender is.

And that's like in Roosts case.

You know, and I kind of you know with guy, you know, he died decades before man, I would want to get a hold of a DNA sample from his remains somehow some way and.

Search CODIS and see.

You know, is there other cases that are unsolved because he was never arrested and uploaded into the code of system.

Would that not be a normal procedure?

Well, no, because he wasn't a suspect when he died in early two thousands.

But I mean if he weren't cremated, I guess it was still I mean, there's nothing to do with cremation, right.

Well, there's complexities, you know, you take a look at you know, when he's committing these crimes, and they predate sex offender laws or the various laws that permit law enforcement to collect DNA samples from offenders and search databases.

Now I think there's and now I am aware of some ways that you might be able to do something.

But you know, where is his DNA today that we can get our hands on?

Is he buried.

Can we do an exhimation, which is not necessarily a trivial task, But did he have samples you know, collected during medical procedures, was autopsyed and you have a coroner's office, you know, having tissue samples, et cetera.

You know, it would be interesting to see if some cases could be solved if his DNA is put into at least a one time search or the CODA system, which back in the day when I was still somewhat involved on the lab side, that was a possibility to do Today.

I just don't know if the FBI permits that type of one type search.

Let's see, he died in two thousand and two in Salinas, California.

Oh wow, right, so there you go.

So you might know somebody and it looks like he was cremated.

Does it indicate how he died?

It just said following a lengthy illness.

Yeah, So with that, your best hope is that there were some tissue samples.

Let's say he had a cancer, or he had numerous blood draws or something that you know the hospital has over the decades.

If he had a lengthy illness, there's a chance that his doctor just signed the death certificate and he never went to a corner's office, but I would be checking anyways.

Well, this was not the cleanest because we didn't get the justice that we wanted, but still a really interesting case.

And again so important about victimology, like you say all the time, and criminal profiling is one thing, but that didn't solve this.

This was figuring out who she is, looking for clues, and of course good old genetic genealogy is always helpful.

It's turned out to be revolutionary, you know, but it doesn't stand alone, as we see in this case.

And once Ruth is identified, now there's a domino effect.

You have multiple cases going back decades that guy was involved with.

All right, Paul, next week will be a different case for sure, and hopefully we have a better resolution.

All right, looking forward to it.

As always, this has been an exactly right production for our sources.

Show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried Bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.

Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones pod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now.

And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's cold Cases is also available now.

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