A 12-year-old chasing her barking dog discovered the mutilated body of a woman in the Race Point Dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, on July 26, 1974. Police were unable to identify the victim, who became known as the “Lady of Dunes.” ” Nearly 50 years later, on October 31, the FBI announced that it had finally identified the woman as Ruth Marie Terry, a Tennessee resident who was 37 at the time of her death.
The identification was done through genetic genealogy methods: a combination of DNA testing and profiling with traditional genealogy analysis to trace family trees — the same approach used to identify the Golden State Killer (former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo) in 2018. According to the FBI, Terry was born in 1936; had “connections” with the states of California, Massachusetts and Michigan; and was a “daughter, sister, aunt, wife and mother.” Further details have not been released out of respect for her family – and also because the murder investigation is still ongoing.
“While we’ve identified Ruth as the victim of this horrific murder, it doesn’t ease the pain for her family — nothing can,” Joseph Bonavolonta, a special agent with the Boston branch of the FBI, said at a press conference declaring the identification. announced. “But hopefully they will answer some questions as we continue to search for her killer. This is without a doubt a major break in the investigation that will hopefully bring us all closer to identifying the killer.”
The Lady of the Dunes was found naked and face down under the tall grass on that fateful summer day. The girl who found her initially thought it was a dead deer. The body was in poor condition, with insect activity indicating she had been dead for about two weeks. She was nearly decapitated by a brutal strangulation, but the cause of death turned out to be blunt trauma to the side of the head.
There was no sign of a struggle, but there was evidence of sexual assault that probably took place after death. In fact, it appears that her attacker had been lying next to her, based on the angle of the blow to the head. Both her hands and a forearm were missing and several teeth had been removed. Her last meal was a burger and fries. Her body was interred in St. Peter’s Cemetery near the center of town, with an inscription on a small headstone: “Unidentified female body found Race Point dunes July 26, 1974.”
Other than two sets of footprints leading to the body and a set of tire tracks, there wasn’t much to do in the way of leads. Police checked the license plates of everyone who had visited the park around the time of the woman’s murder. There was no record of her arrival in the area, so she may have been killed elsewhere and dumped at the site. Possible suspects over the years have included Irish mob boss Whitey Bulger (known for removing his victim’s teeth), serial killer Tony Costa (excluded because he died in May 1974, two months before the murder), and serial killer Hadden Clark. (Clark confessed to the crime, but suffered from severe schizophrenia, so it was thought to be a false confession.)
