Her Name Was Ruth Marie Terry

by Guido Olimpio

The body was found on the beach at Cape Cod National Park in 1974 as it had no hands and therefore could not be identified. The solution thanks to the DNA stored for personal research

The “Lady of the Dunes” finally has a name: Her name was Ruth Marie Terry. His body was found on the beach in Cape Cod National Park near Provincetown, Massachusetts in the summer of 1974. Slay. An unsolved case without the police ever being able to identify it.

Now the turning point thanks to genealogical research with DNA. On the morning of July 26, a person walking their dog discovers a body in the dunes of Race Point. Police reports describe her as follows: white, strong build, between 20 and 40 years old, without teeth, tortured with a branch after the murder. The head is almost severed and resting on a pair of jeans. Blue headscarf and ponytail hair. Then the other brutal detail: it has no hands, cleanly cut and made to disappear to prevent fingerprint recognition.

The police are investigating in and around the city, forensics are looking for artefacts, and everyone is hoping for a call. anything. His remains are kept in the mortuary for some time, later they are buried in the grass under a simple tombstone in the small cemetery of St. Peter. Local agents will do their best to find answers amidst a sea of assumptions as to who it might be. A girl on the run, a tourist, a woman doing well after dental treatment. There wasn’t even a theory linking her to the famous film “The Shark”: Maybe she was one of the extras, they speculate after reviewing a scene filmed in an area not too far away.

Over the years, a few young protagonists of a reckless life have been reviewed, from Canada to Maryland, then other reviews, always looking for the right thread. Instead, everything ends up deadlocked. Equally complicated are the clues to the person responsible for the destruction. In the list of suspects, a local “monster” appears, then the assassin of the evil James Whithey Bulger (he removed teeth from victims), finally the serial killer Hadden Clark “confesses” to the attack. Due to a lack of concrete evidence, traces remained exposed or evaporated.

Investigators, some of whom I met during a site visit a few years ago, will have specialists reconstruct the “lady’s” face using sound and computers in an attempt to resuscitate someone and get the attention of someone who can remember can.

The burglary, on the other hand, was carried out using a method that had proved invaluable in solving other “ancient” criminal cases: the investigators presumably searched “archives”, including those in which private individuals deposit their DNA for personal research (family, relatives), they crossed over with samples found at the crime scene and possibly with other data contained in the file. It is work that requires time and patience. They were rewarded with determination, and this is how they managed to solve the first part of the puzzle. With the name in hand, they may be able to reconstruct the victim’s relationship, about which little is currently known. In announcing the development, the FBI’s Boston office stated that Terry was born in Tennessee in 1936, was married and also a mother, and had ties to California, Massachusetts and Michigan. It is currently unclear which one she was in the Cape Cod area for. There is still a lot to tell about the girl from Race Point.

November 1, 2022 (change November 1, 2022 | 21:15)