The Lady of the Dunes

On today’s episode, Kate and Paul travel to 1974 Cape Cod, Massachusetts where a body is discovered but unidentified. The case becomes well known and documented as more suspects and victims become connected. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Hey, Kate, how are you today?

Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm doing great, Paul? How about you?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
I am hanging in there. What's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Nope? Never?

Speaker 1 (01:26):
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

(01:47):
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

(02:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
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

(02:41):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
You know. So there are known body.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Be very convenient to dump somebody down there.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
But in a very innocent, sort of academic way you say.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
That, of course, of course.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
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

(03:42):
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

(04:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
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

(04:41):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
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

(05:21):
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

(05:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
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?

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Or this pond?

Speaker 1 (06:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
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,

(06:36):
they do have a tendency to want to come up.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
The shallowness and possibly the clarity of the water, because
it looks like there's pretty good visibility.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
You know, through the water.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
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

(07:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Oh, I'm sure there's locations in Cape Cod where you
could get away with things, for sure.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
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

(08:15):
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

(08:39):
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

(09:00):
Arthur's Vineyard and that's where they're filming Jaws. Did you
ever watch Jaws?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Of course I did. I saw it in the movie theater.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
And stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
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

(09:48):
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,

(10:11):
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,

(10:33):
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

(10:56):
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

(11:17):
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

(11:38):
if you want to hear from the pro first.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
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.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Pine, Yes, a scrub pine rush.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
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

(12:17):
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

(12:37):
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

(12:58):
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

(13:20):
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

(13:41):
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

(14:01):
just walking by, they in glance, they might not necessarily
recognize that there's something amiss.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
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,

(14:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
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

(15:20):
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.

(15:41):
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

(16:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well, this is nineteen seventy four. Her hands were.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
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

(16:46):
it sounds like they probably did that and just failed.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
And now that's this comes into you know, who is
the victim?

Speaker 2 (16:56):
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

(17:17):
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

(17:39):
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.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
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,

(18:23):
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.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Clothes and her hygiene and everything else. Yep.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
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

(18:57):
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,

(19:22):
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

(19:43):
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

(20:04):
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

(20:25):
between fifteen fifty feet away. And that's where we're done
with the.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Scene, okay. And there's no description of blood present, no.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Just they said, in an advanced state of decay. But
blood would still be there, I suppose, right what.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
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,

(21:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
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.

(21:49):
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?

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Right?

Speaker 2 (22:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
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?

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Well, it depends if the victim is still alive, well,
let's go with no.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
I hope.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
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

(23:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
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

(24:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
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.

(24:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
I mean, I think that's a very valid, you know thought.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
This woman is.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
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

(25:30):
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

(25:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
So yeah, foreign objects insertion. Did they say vaginal rectal?

Speaker 1 (26:07):
They didn't. It's just that's sexually assaulted, which I would
bet is vaginal. Otherwise I think they would have clarified.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
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.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
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

(27:30):
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

(27:52):
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

(28:12):
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?

Speaker 2 (28:24):
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

(28:44):
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

(29:06):
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

(29:26):
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.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
I almost think another.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
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,

(30:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
I think that's interesting, and I'll keep an open mind
about it as we proceed.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
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

(30:47):
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.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
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

(31:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
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,

(32:06):
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

(32:28):
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

(32:50):
me what you think so.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
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,

(33:12):
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

(33:33):
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

(33:54):
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.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
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

(34:30):
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

(34:50):
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.

(35:12):
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

(35:32):
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?

Speaker 2 (35:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
I've had cases like that.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
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,

(36:37):
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

(36:58):
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

(37:22):
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

(37:42):
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

(38:03):
your desk. That needs to be repatriated to the rest
of the body.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
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

(38:29):
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.

(38:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
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.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
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

(39:50):
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.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
But she's in there.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
I'm sure, yeah, I can guarantee she's in there. I
just I don't know. I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
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

(40:45):
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

(41:07):
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

(41:28):
been missing since nineteen seventy four. And this is the
Lady and the Dunes.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
What is the story of Ruth? You know, why does
she go missing?

Speaker 1 (41:36):
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

(41:57):
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

(42:19):
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,

(42:40):
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

(43:04):
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

(43:26):
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,

(43:46):
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

(44:09):
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

(44:30):
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

(44:52):
makes a difference to you, I don't know, but I
do have the scene of the attic where this apparently happened.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
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

(45:24):
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.

(45:46):
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.

(46:08):
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,

(46:33):
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

(46:55):
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,

(47:17):
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

(47:38):
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,

(48:00):
we've got the homicide scene right here.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
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

(48:24):
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

(48:45):
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

(49:06):
the murder of either the second wife or his stepdaughter.
And that's why he met headlines and then he got
away with it.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Yeah, I think somebody dropped the ball there.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
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

(49:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
It was bits of flesh, is what they said.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
This sounds like a double homicide, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
And then of course, now you fast forward and you've
got Ruth who's got an association with Guy.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
I mean, he's got a pattern, yep.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
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

(50:43):
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,

(51:06):
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.

(51:29):
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

(51:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
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

(52:22):
nineteen fifty case of Henry and Barbara.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
You know, Guy is involved.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
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

(52:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
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

(53:21):
is definitively responsible, but he died two decades earlier.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
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

(53:47):
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

(54:07):
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

(54:28):
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

(54:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
All of them.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
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.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yep, stripped down to his socks and shoes, and his
clothing was folded neatly next to him.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Yeah, with him having his socks and shoes on, that
does not you know, because I was thinking, well, could
Henry and.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Barbara have just been, you know, out there on the.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
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

(56:17):
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

(56:40):
somebody that he ended up wanting to sexually interact with
at a greater level than his second wife.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
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,

(57:10):
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,

(57:30):
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

(57:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
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

(58:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
And that's like in Roosts case.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Search CODIS and see.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
You know, is there other cases that are unsolved because
he was never arrested and uploaded into the code of system.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
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.

(59:42):
But you know, where is his DNA today that we
can get our hands on?

Speaker 3 (59:48):
Is he buried.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
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

(01:00:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Does it indicate how he died?

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
It just said following a lengthy illness.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
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

(01:01:05):
signed the death certificate and he never went to a
corner's office, but I would be checking anyways.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
All right, Paul, next week will be a different case
for sure, and hopefully we have a better resolution.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
All right, looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
As always, this has been an exactly right production for
our sources.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried Bones sources.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Research by Alison Trumble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones pod.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's
cold Cases is also available now.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Listen to Baried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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