Ruth Marie Terry (Lady of the Dunes)

Case background and investigation

On July 26, 1974, a girl walking in the dunes about a mile east of the Race Point Ranger Station, inside the Cape Cod National Seashore in Provincetown, Massachusetts, discovered the decomposing body of a woman lying face-down on a beach blanket, with folded jeans placed beneath her head. Investigators estimated she had been dead for roughly ten days to three weeks. The cause of death was a crushing blow to the left side of the head, delivered with an instrument authorities compared to a military entrenching tool, and her head had been nearly severed. Both hands and a forearm were missing, which investigators believed was an attempt to prevent identification through fingerprints. The victim was described as an athletically built white woman, roughly 5'6" to 5'8" tall, with long auburn or reddish hair tied in a ponytail.

With no identification possible, the victim became known as the 'Lady of the Dunes' and, over time, the oldest unidentified homicide victim in Massachusetts. Investigators pursued the case for decades: a clay facial reconstruction was produced in 1979, and the body was exhumed in 1980, again in 2000 for DNA testing, and a third time in 2013. In 2010, forensic specialists working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children produced updated composite images. Over the years various theories and suspects were floated, including gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger, serial killer Tony Costa, and Hadden Clark, who confessed but whose statements were deemed unreliable; according to investigators, none of these leads was ever substantiated, and DNA excluded another candidate, Rory Gene Kesinger.

The breakthrough came through investigative genetic genealogy. Othram, a forensic laboratory in Texas, built a comprehensive DNA profile from the skeletal remains, and FBI investigators used it in genealogical searches that led to a close relative. On October 31, 2022, the FBI's Boston field office announced that the victim was Ruth Marie Terry, born September 8, 1936, in Whitwell, Tennessee. Terry was 37 at the time of her death and had lived at various times in Tennessee, Michigan, and California; according to published accounts she had a son in 1958 whom she placed for adoption. In February 1974, months before her death, she had married antiques dealer Guy Rockwell Muldavin in Reno, Nevada.

Attention quickly turned to Muldavin, who had died in 2002 in California at age 78. According to news reports, he had been investigated in Seattle in 1960 after the disappearance of his then-wife and stepdaughter, whose dismembered remains were reportedly found in a septic tank at their home, but he was never charged in that case. On August 28, 2023, Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois announced that the investigation had determined Muldavin 'was responsible' for Terry's death, officially closing the case. Because Muldavin died two decades before being named, he was never charged or convicted, and the finding rests on the prosecutor's review of the investigation rather than a court judgment. After 49 years, one of New England's most enduring mysteries ended with a name for the victim and an official answer, but no prosecution.