April 23, 2024 • 25 mins
This episode is not for the faint of heart, as we dissect the long-unsolved Lady of the Dunes mystery, bringing to light evidence that may finally close this cold case. With every word, we stitch together the sinister and the procedural, taking you through the twists and turns of a narrative that's just as much about the resilience of human spirit as it is about the darkness that lies within. Follow us on Instagram @whatweloseintheshadows to see the photos that bind these stories together and share your own insights. Reserve your Tuesdays with us when we'll continue to cast light on the stories that time forgot, but justice remembers.
Details about husband sought in 50-year 'Lady of the Dunes' cold case - ABC News (go.com)
The 'Lady of the Dunes' has been identified after nearly 50 years. Now, police want info about her husband. (nbcnews.com)
Contact us at: whatweloseintheshadows@gmail.com
Background music by Michael Shuller Music
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Good morning and welcome to what we Lose in the
Shadows a father-daughter truecrime podcast.
My name is Jameson Keys.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm Caroline.
Hello and good morning all youlovely listeners and good
morning to you.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Well, thank you, caroline.
Good morning, I thought youwere going to leave me out of
that.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Almost.
Then I saw you.
Then I saw you, I looked up andI saw you, how are?
You doing A familiar face that.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I've seen for my entire life.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
One that, when I look back in pictures at myself as a
child, looks like you Sorryabout that, hey, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
At myself as a child looks like you Sorry about that.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hey, you know it's never done me wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You actually look like your grandma, which is she
was a beautiful woman.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I know, but sometimes I look back at pictures of me
as a child and like your face isvery prominent in my, my face
as a child.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And if you want to see both of our faces, go to our
Instagram page at what we losein the shadows, or go to
jamesonkeyscom.
You can see pictures of us alllove.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
You said you hada lovely drink this morning oh my
god, this is where he's gonnamake fun of me.
It was a lavender oat milklatte wow, lavender oak milk
milk lavender oat milk lattelet's try that again oat.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's made of oats, not oak oh shit, oh no, so a
lavender oat milk latte yeslovely that's exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
It tastes, exactly how it sounds tastes kind of
pretentious, I bet it was veryelegant elegant it gave my
morning a little bit of elegance.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
It was a coffee.
Right, it was a coffee okay.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Okay, two shots of coffee.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Wow With lavender powder.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It was literally an ethereal experience.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Ethereal, was it, mm-hmm.
I recommend going to try onethis was still a drink, right, I
mean ethereal.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
It tasted amazing.
I've never tasted anything likeit, so I'm happy to try it.
Yeah, you should go try it.
We'll try one together and thenyou can come back and tell them
how you liked it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'll I'd give it a nine out of ten, so so uh, it's
funny because I used to be, Ididn't used to drink coffee at
all and then you had a child.
Well, no, and when we moved toum, when we moved to japan, we
moved to japan when you werethree months old and I took a
teaching position over there fora year and I didn't drink
coffee at that point, but youwere.
(02:51):
When you went to differentthings, people's houses,
different things for the schoolor whatever they always offered
drinks, and they were always itwas either coffee or green tea.
And I know, before I say this,I know the benefits you know
extolled upon green tea and it'swonderful and so on, but it
tastes like grass to me so Idon't like it.
(03:11):
It does not.
It does, uh, but at the sametime.
So that's when I starteddrinking coffee and I started
with you ever since well, itreally has.
I mean, and I drink, I used todrink over there the worst
coffee ever.
It was those instant crystalsthat you just pour hot water
over and it's just terriblecoffee I like it because it's
strong, though I do like theinstant coffee.
(03:33):
Well, keep in mind at that pointin time, and this is 1997, 1998
.
Damn, that's old, wow, but youwere a baby already.
Ugh, so and anyways.
So, yeah, yeah, I mean I'd haveto jump on my bicycle and, you
know, pedal for half an hour toone of the schools that I was
teaching at.
So I need to be awake so youdon't run in front of a bus or
(03:55):
something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
that's terrifying yeah, didn't the wind wake you
up a little?
Speaker 1 (03:59):
so, boy are we getting off topic here?
So yes, absolutely.
But in the middle of wintertimeand I assume Japan, I don't
know I thought maybe we had somekind of a, you know, a tropical
kind of a thing, and in thesummertime it certainly was
Right, but I didn't realize theyhad quite the change of seasons
(04:21):
that they do.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
You didn't research before you moved there?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, yeah, but mean, I mean, I, I don't know it's.
It's really strange because, um, when we went home for
christmas all of us for a month,um, while I was teaching over
there, and when I came back, Icame back a couple days earlier
than you guys because I had to,you know, start school again and
there were six inches of snowon the ground and I'm like, oh
my god, I'm on a bicycle.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Oh my.
God so you couldn't take thebus.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, you could.
I mean, you could take a cab orthe bus, but my bike was at the
, at the train station, so I soI rode my bike back in the midst
of this six inches of snow,which was dicey.
No, not ethereal at all,terrifying.
So the opposite of a lavenderoat milk latte.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Polar opposite, yes, literally polar, literally polar
well, I would like to say thatapparently, green tea is
nature's ozempic, nature'sozempic yeah, it's like it slims
you down, green tea.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
A lot of things are nature's ozempic.
Apparently I'm starting to takesomething called berberine and
they call it nature's ozempic.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I can't believe.
Two things are marketingthemselves as that.
Okay, let's get into it.
Trigger warnings today aresexual assault and murder.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Caroline, we are going to be talking about a case
Good that is.
It's from a while back, I'm notgoing to lie and I knew nothing
about this case and I was aliveduring this period of time.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
It's from a while back, but you were alive.
It's period of time.
It's from a while back that youwere alive.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's from years ago.
It's from the 70s right.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
How old were you?
20?
.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Funny, Funny.
When this happened.
This happened in 1974, I was 11.
11.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So basically, 20.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, it's basically 20.
In your rationale it is becauseyou know you were trying to
drive a car from the time youwere 11.
Dad, I'm almost 16.
No, you're 11.
You're not even close to 16.
Well, I'm a preteen, you're nota preteen.
Anyways, we've had thisargument, caroline and I, for a
very long time.
So, anyways, but no.
So on July 26, 1974, a girl wasout on the beach with her family
(06:45):
, and this was in Provincetown,massachusetts, you know, also in
Cape Cod, and they were runningaround in the dunes out there
and she heard this dog barking,right, and it just got her
attention.
So she started walking andfollowing the barking dog.
When she found the dog, whatshe found was kind of awful.
(07:07):
She found a decomposing body.
What the fuck?
Uh.
And it was sitting there on thebeach, uh, it was off, it was
closer to, like, the road, butnot that far from the beach,
right, and this reminds me kindof the gilgo beach, the whole
gilgo beach, right.
So she screamed, of course, andher parents came running and
(07:29):
they called the police and so on.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Was the dog barking at the body?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
At the body Right, right.
So that's what.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Was it her dog.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
You know, I've seen both things in the source
material.
One thing said it was their dog, One thing.
One other piece of sourcematerial said it was just a
random dog.
Okay, but the one thing thatwas common, regardless was the
fact that they found this body.
Now, around the body, thevictim was laying on a beach
blanket and she was laying therewith her head propped up on a
(08:03):
folded pair of Wrangler jeansand a blue bandana.
She was naked.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
My God.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, and you know a little things about the victim.
She had long auburn hair.
She had pink painted toenails.
She was approximately five footsix inches tall, 145 pounds,
kind of an athletic build.
But she also was completelynaked, so obviously there was
probably sexual assault donethere.
She didn't have a lot ofbruising or anything like that.
(08:33):
Um.
So it kind of people werethinking that maybe she knew who
her attacker was.
But some odd things too.
Whoever had attacked her hither in the head with what they
think was an army entrenchingtool, which is like a little
sturdy shovel that the army usesto dig trenches and so on wow
um the one side of her head wascaved in and she was nearly
(08:57):
decapitated wow, that's horribleit is, and even worse, um both
of her hands and part of her.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
One of her arms was missing to try and like decrease
them being able to find out whoshe was.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Probably they think, they think so, they think so.
And one last thing is some ofher teeth were pulled out as
well.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, so that kind of tracks with that.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Right, but she also had, you know, she also had
extensive, you know, dental work.
So they looked around and youknow Providence Town is kind of
a small place.
It's on, you know, it's on theCape there and they're not used
to this sort of thing happening,right.
(09:43):
So the police were called andthey went around and it's kind
of a you know kind of a coollittle town, you know beach town
and that sort of thing, wherethis doesn't really happen often
.
Yeah, and they're close knitand no one knew this woman.
They gave a description of herand so on.
No, no one was missing.
Oh, the police checked all theum.
Uh, you know missing persons,bolos and things like that
nothing how far is p-town?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
is it p-town right?
That's what they call it umwell, I guess I'm cooler than
you.
How far is providence town fromboston?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
it's.
It's not very far from boston,I mean it's okay so it could
just be from that it could be,but I mean, you need to take a
plane there or a boat there.
It's not.
So yeah, it's, it's on the Capethere and so you know it's.
It's, you know, not exactlyreal close to Boston or anything
like that.
But um, so yeah, they, theystarted this long um
(10:33):
investigation and they lookedfor all missing people.
Nothing, you know.
It's obvious that the personwas trying to hide this person's
identity and you know, takingthe hands and teeth and things
like that.
Um, so yeah, it was.
It was a very, very oddsituation, but it went on for
quite some time because therewas just no development on it.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
They couldn't figure out who it was.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
They couldn't figure out who it was, so they dubbed
this person the Lady of the Dune, and it went on and on for a
long, long time.
So some of the odder parts ofthe story.
There have been many, manydifferent thoughts about what
happened during this period oftime so the theories, and
probably period of time.
So the theories, and probablyone of the oddest theories.
(11:14):
In august of 2015, speculationarose that the lady in the dunes
may have been an extra on the1975 film jaws.
Now, how this came about was umso she's never been right right
they've never identified her tothis day.
So so we'll get into that later.
(11:35):
But, um, yeah, so so you know,the funny thing was they had um
exhumed her body several timesto take blood samples, hair
samples.
They did, uh, they did apartial um reconstruction giving
her skull and they did thisseveral times.
Her body was exhumed threetimes as technology and so on,
(11:56):
you know, came back up and so onjust to try to get an idea, but
never any kind of a.
Every time that they had like alead or something like that, it
would go dead and then itwasn't her right, wow.
So yeah, this young man, thisJoe Hill.
Joe Hill is actually the son ofhorror writer, stephen king wow
and he was watching, I think,the 45th anniversary of jaws,
(12:20):
because one of the things thatcame out of these exhumations
was kind of a composite sketch,given you know the fact that
they did official reconstructionand computer enhancements and
things like that and one of themost popular ones showed this
woman with auburn hair, thewoman in this real quick little
scene within Jaws.
The lady did have auburn hairand she had on Wrangler jeans
(12:45):
and she had on a blue bandanavery similar to the one that
they found at the murder site.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Was it recorded in Boston?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So it was recorded on Cape Cod, not too far from
there.
It was recorded in 1974, duringthat period of time.
So naturally, you know, in 2015, people were like, oh my God,
you know, we just have to figureout who this?
You know who?
Some of the extras were on thaton Jaws, and maybe we can find
out who this woman is after allthese years.
(13:14):
And that was Stephen King's son.
Stephen King's son came up withthis because he's watching it,
he's familiar with the case, heloves true crime, so maybe he'll
listen to us, who knows?
But basically, yeah, he came upwith this and he thought, my
God, that's her.
Wow.
He gave the information to thepolice and they kind of ran with
this.
But unfortunately it could havebeen because they went back and
(13:36):
they went to the first personwho was in charge of personnel
on that movie in 1974 had passedaway.
So they went back and theytried to find whatever they
could.
But the thing was they weretrying to use some extras but
some of the people were justthere oh fuck, boarding the, you
know, boarding a boat, and soon and so on, and they could not
(13:57):
identify who this woman was soit really could have been her it
could very well have been her.
Um, because, like, like, there'sa lot of different theories,
like there was one crazy theorythat there was a name of James
Whitey Bulger.
He was part of the Irish mob inBoston and he was known to kill
(14:20):
people.
He was also known to cut theirhands off and things like that
Couldn't identify him and tiehim to him.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
But why would she be connected to him?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Because he used to like to go to that part of the
Cape, okay, okay, and a womanhad said that basically she had
seen Whitey Bulger, uh, in theCape during that period of time.
Oh now there couldn't be anysubstantial, any substantiation
of that because, um, by the timethey came up with this theory
(14:51):
and so on, uh, whitey had beenarrested and he was killed in
jail Wow OK, by another inmate.
But another problem with thattheory was the fact that the
woman that said yes, it was, youknow, I knew Whitey and I saw
Whitey at a bar not too far fromthere during that period of
time.
Then she kind of doubled downand said I even saw that body
out on the beach, but I didn'treport it to anyone.
(15:12):
So some people were going ah,did you?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Did you really, because that would be a crime.
Absolutely, absolutely and whywould you admit to that?
I don't know.
That's strange.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Anyways, it was strange, but it's a very strange
case, right, yeah.
In addition, there is a serialkiller by the name of Hayden
Clark and he confessed to murder, that he could have murdered
that woman.
He said in a letter to a friendthat he had, during that period
of time, found a woman walkingalong the beach alone and that
he had murdered her and he hadcut off her hands and pulled out
(15:49):
her teeth.
Okay, so it was probably herthen.
He also said that he had usedher fingers for bait and fishing
, oh, and that he buried thehands somewhere on the beach.
What a piece of shit.
What the fuck.
Now, the problem with him isthat all those little bits of
information had been made public.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, but it's still Okay.
So you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So it could have been , and he's also confessed to
like he killed three or fourpeople.
That's why he's in jail.
He's a serial killer, but healso confessed to several other
things that he led police on awild goose chase and it turned
out to be nothing.
Okay, and so this case wentalong over the years over the
decades actually, actually buton October 31st 2022, the FBI
(16:36):
field office in Boston announcedthat the victim had been
identified as Ruth Marie Terry.
No details of any potentialsuspects were known at that time
.
Terry was in Massachusetts atthe time of her murder.
The FBI stated that Terry'sidentity was determined using
the investigative genealogy andthe DNA, the same method they
(16:57):
used to identify homicides inover 150 cases across the
country, including the GoldenState Killer.
It's insane.
And so they knew who it was fora few years, but then they
started looking deeper and theyrealized that on November 2nd
2022, they kind of startedthinking that Terry's deceased
(17:22):
husband, guy Rockwell Moldaven,could have very well been the
person they were looking for allthis time.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
So actually, like statistically, that would make
sense it would and why thatdidn't dawn on them earlier.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
like instantaneously would she marry?
Well, they couldn't figure outwho it was right, well, yeah
right, but it took them just afew months to figure it.
You know, connect this.
The rest of this oh, okay so,um, this guy rockwell, uh dude
had been married um and in.
He was married to manzanita,eileen ryan, and he was married
(18:00):
to her, and she had a daughterby a previous husband and her
name was Dolores and means andshe was 18.
Both women, while he wasmarried to Rockwell, disappeared
in Seattle on April Fool's Day1960, with Mulvane becoming the
primary suspect in theinvestigation.
(18:21):
Of course he fled Seattle what?
But was arrested by the FBIlater and, and you know, and
charged with unlawful flighttrying to avoid testimony in the
deaths.
Now, they never found thebodies, oh my god.
But they found dna, you knowremnants of them in the septic
system of the house.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
So this guy's a monster so was he like flushing
them down the drain?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
probably maybe he.
He broke him down some way and,just yeah, flushed him into the
.
You know the.
That's unhinged.
Oh, it's unhinged, to be surewhat the hell.
So there's a true crime authorby the name of ann rule, and she
devoted a section of her 2007book Smoke Mirrors and Murders
to Mulvane in connection withthe Ryan Means disappearances.
(19:07):
With extensive discussion onpolice efforts to connect
Mulvane to the crime, theinvestigation found some parts
of dismembered human body in theseptic tank, but were unable to
prove from that that themissing women were actually, you
know, were actually the peoplethey were looking for.
(19:27):
Why they just did.
They didn't have the capabilityof tying the dna to it.
At that point they couldn'tdifferentiate but they knew it
was them they're pretty sure itwas him right, no but they knew
like that matter now they knownow.
They knew they were able to goback and say, yes, this is you
know.
But Mulvane was also the primesuspect in the murder of Henry
Lawrence Red Baird, a20-year-old truck driver, and
(19:50):
the disappearance of Barbara JoKelly, a 17-year-old waitress,
in June of 1950.
Oh my God, you know.
Barbara was last seen inHumboldt County, California, on
June 17, 1950, when she embarkedon a date with Baird, who was
her boyfriend.
Baird's body was discoveredface down on a beach.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
That's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Near a table in a bluff.
The following morning he hadreceived a gunshot wound to the
back of his head, and the ladywas of course dead as well.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
What the heck.
So they just went on a date andhe murdered them without cause.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
He found them on a beach and just randomly murdered
them.
That's horrifying, right.
So after that, uh mulvane movedto california, a small
community near salinas, andaround 1976 according to you
know a feature that was writtenabout him he had retired from
his job, he had been a you knowa person that finds antiquities
(20:44):
and things like that.
He had a shop on RodeoBoulevard.
In his profile he also had donesome you know work on the radio
at KAZU in Pacific Grove and hevolunteered to do a three-hour
call-in show, you know, on agingand growing old.
It was that event.
(21:07):
He married ruth marie terry.
So, ruth, he met ruth and uh,they had gone over the all over
the country basically buying andlooking at antiques.
They had visited tennessee tomeet her family and so on, and
after they left there they saidthey were driving to b Boston to
look for antiques, and so on.
Okay, so it was him.
Oh, most certainly was him.
Oh, okay, yeah, but uh, andthen, shortly thereafter that,
(21:29):
he called her parents back andsaid that she had disappeared.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
What the hell?
And wait, but they didn'tconnect to that with the, the
body that they found up there.
Eventually they did yeah, butlike for 45 years right right
well like her parents were likeoh okay, I guess it's just like
the technology was like really,severely lacking.
It was the 60s and 70s newswasn't a thing right, and there
(21:54):
was no internet.
There was no true crime shows.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
There was nothing like that, you know, and there
was no dna to tie these thingstogether.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
This guy had been killing people for years.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
That's insane.
And the interesting part, likehe would be dating someone right
, and then he would meet someoneelse that had money or
something like that, and then hewould kill off that wife and
then move on to someone else.
He was a psychopath and, if youwant to see something
disturbing, he wrote a bookcalled Cooking with Rump Oil.
(22:26):
What is that?
It's a cookbook.
What is oil Rump?
oil I don't know, I didn't lookinto it very much, but it just
it sounds so.
And one of the he like wrotepoems about these different
things and this one he reallyliked apparently he really liked
watching the light go out ofsomeone's eyes, right.
(22:48):
He wrote this in his book, hewrote this.
He wrote kind of a poem aboutthis in this cookbook, right,
which was bizarre, and he evenhad an illustration of a woman
with long hair kind of lookingback at him and you know know
kind of her eyes kind ofdoll-like and so on and so, and
they published this I yessomeone published it but yeah,
(23:11):
so this was a very, verydisturbed individual red flag
Speaker 2 (23:15):
red flag wow, okay, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So but but this guy, this guy got off scot-free from
all of these murders for so long.
He did die in 2002 in prison.
They finally put him in prisonfor something else.
Actually, the funny thing washe was actually one of his wives
.
He had extorted money from theparents.
He had basically said, oh,we're going to invest in this,
(23:39):
and they just took off the money.
He had basically said, oh,we're going to invest in this,
and they just took off with themoney.
And that's actually how theycaught him and put him in jail,
because he because that waspretty, that was a little less
he didn't think he was in perilas much with this one.
So they caught him forextorting these people and, you
know, kind of stealing theirmoney.
Wow, but yeah, this, this wasone one sick individual.
(24:01):
That's horrible.
So, but the nice thing is theydid find the killer after all
those years.
And this guy was in jail forcertain things, but he never
paid for some of the terrible,terrible things he did and we'll
never know exactly because he'sdead.
They really can't try the manafter he's dead.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, no, they can't, they won't.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So yeah, so that was a very, very strange case, man,
and we still don't know.
We still don't know becausethey asked, they asked the
family does this look a littlebit like this woman in the jaws
film?
And they were like kind of it,kind of does so she could have
been in the movie jaws was he, Iwonder like?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
was he in the background as?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
well they didn't see him.
There was no nothing in thesource material to say that they
actually have a picture of himwalking around, but they think
it could very well that shecould have been in that, and it
was literally hours before herdeath wow, that's so crazy,
because she was in the sameoutfit she's in the same outfit.
They found basically the sameoutfit, um you know, folded
(25:03):
neatly on top of a beach blanketthat's crazy, with her head
resting on it so that at leastthe story of the lady of the
dunes has been solved wow,follow the show on whatever
streaming site you're listeningon and remember.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
All of the source material will be available in
the show notes and follow us oninstagram at what we lose in the
and let us know if you want tohear a specific case.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Or if you just want to give us some feedback.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, join us in the shadows next Tuesday.
Bye.
Good morning and welcome to what we Lose in the
Shadows a father-daughter truecrime podcast.
My name is Jameson Keys.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm Caroline.
Hello and good morning all youlovely listeners and good
morning to you.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Well, thank you, caroline.
Good morning, I thought youwere going to leave me out of
that.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Almost.
Then I saw you.
Then I saw you, I looked up andI saw you, how are?
You doing A familiar face that.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I've seen for my entire life.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
One that, when I look back in pictures at myself as a
child, looks like you Sorryabout that, hey, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
At myself as a child looks like you Sorry about that.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hey, you know it's never done me wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You actually look like your grandma, which is she
was a beautiful woman.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I know, but sometimes I look back at pictures of me
as a child and like your face isvery prominent in my, my face
as a child.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And if you want to see both of our faces, go to our
Instagram page at what we losein the shadows, or go to
jamesonkeyscom.
You can see pictures of us alllove.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
You said you hada lovely drink this morning oh my
god, this is where he's gonnamake fun of me.
It was a lavender oat milklatte wow, lavender oak milk
milk lavender oat milk lattelet's try that again oat.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's made of oats, not oak oh shit, oh no, so a
lavender oat milk latte yeslovely that's exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
It tastes, exactly how it sounds tastes kind of
pretentious, I bet it was veryelegant elegant it gave my
morning a little bit of elegance.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
It was a coffee.
Right, it was a coffee okay.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Okay, two shots of coffee.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Wow With lavender powder.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
It was literally an ethereal experience.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Ethereal, was it, mm-hmm.
I recommend going to try onethis was still a drink, right, I
mean ethereal.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
It tasted amazing.
I've never tasted anything likeit, so I'm happy to try it.
Yeah, you should go try it.
We'll try one together and thenyou can come back and tell them
how you liked it.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'll I'd give it a nine out of ten, so so uh, it's
funny because I used to be, Ididn't used to drink coffee at
all and then you had a child.
Well, no, and when we moved toum, when we moved to japan, we
moved to japan when you werethree months old and I took a
teaching position over there fora year and I didn't drink
coffee at that point, but youwere.
(02:51):
When you went to differentthings, people's houses,
different things for the schoolor whatever they always offered
drinks, and they were always itwas either coffee or green tea.
And I know, before I say this,I know the benefits you know
extolled upon green tea and it'swonderful and so on, but it
tastes like grass to me so Idon't like it.
(03:11):
It does not.
It does, uh, but at the sametime.
So that's when I starteddrinking coffee and I started
with you ever since well, itreally has.
I mean, and I drink, I used todrink over there the worst
coffee ever.
It was those instant crystalsthat you just pour hot water
over and it's just terriblecoffee I like it because it's
strong, though I do like theinstant coffee.
(03:33):
Well, keep in mind at that pointin time, and this is 1997, 1998
.
Damn, that's old, wow, but youwere a baby already.
Ugh, so and anyways.
So, yeah, yeah, I mean I'd haveto jump on my bicycle and, you
know, pedal for half an hour toone of the schools that I was
teaching at.
So I need to be awake so youdon't run in front of a bus or
(03:55):
something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
that's terrifying yeah, didn't the wind wake you
up a little?
Speaker 1 (03:59):
so, boy are we getting off topic here?
So yes, absolutely.
But in the middle of wintertimeand I assume Japan, I don't
know I thought maybe we had somekind of a, you know, a tropical
kind of a thing, and in thesummertime it certainly was
Right, but I didn't realize theyhad quite the change of seasons
(04:21):
that they do.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
You didn't research before you moved there?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, yeah, but mean, I mean, I, I don't know it's.
It's really strange because, um, when we went home for
christmas all of us for a month,um, while I was teaching over
there, and when I came back, Icame back a couple days earlier
than you guys because I had to,you know, start school again and
there were six inches of snowon the ground and I'm like, oh
my god, I'm on a bicycle.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Oh my.
God so you couldn't take thebus.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, you could.
I mean, you could take a cab orthe bus, but my bike was at the
, at the train station, so I soI rode my bike back in the midst
of this six inches of snow,which was dicey.
No, not ethereal at all,terrifying.
So the opposite of a lavenderoat milk latte.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Polar opposite, yes, literally polar, literally polar
well, I would like to say thatapparently, green tea is
nature's ozempic, nature'sozempic yeah, it's like it slims
you down, green tea.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
A lot of things are nature's ozempic.
Apparently I'm starting to takesomething called berberine and
they call it nature's ozempic.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I can't believe.
Two things are marketingthemselves as that.
Okay, let's get into it.
Trigger warnings today aresexual assault and murder.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Caroline, we are going to be talking about a case
Good that is.
It's from a while back, I'm notgoing to lie and I knew nothing
about this case and I was aliveduring this period of time.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
It's from a while back, but you were alive.
It's period of time.
It's from a while back that youwere alive.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It's from years ago.
It's from the 70s right.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
How old were you?
20?
.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Funny, Funny.
When this happened.
This happened in 1974, I was 11.
11.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So basically, 20.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, it's basically 20.
In your rationale it is becauseyou know you were trying to
drive a car from the time youwere 11.
Dad, I'm almost 16.
No, you're 11.
You're not even close to 16.
Well, I'm a preteen, you're nota preteen.
Anyways, we've had thisargument, caroline and I, for a
very long time.
So, anyways, but no.
So on July 26, 1974, a girl wasout on the beach with her family
(06:45):
, and this was in Provincetown,massachusetts, you know, also in
Cape Cod, and they were runningaround in the dunes out there
and she heard this dog barking,right, and it just got her
attention.
So she started walking andfollowing the barking dog.
When she found the dog, whatshe found was kind of awful.
(07:07):
She found a decomposing body.
What the fuck?
Uh.
And it was sitting there on thebeach, uh, it was off, it was
closer to, like, the road, butnot that far from the beach,
right, and this reminds me kindof the gilgo beach, the whole
gilgo beach, right.
So she screamed, of course, andher parents came running and
(07:29):
they called the police and so on.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Was the dog barking at the body?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
At the body Right, right.
So that's what.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Was it her dog.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
You know, I've seen both things in the source
material.
One thing said it was their dog, One thing.
One other piece of sourcematerial said it was just a
random dog.
Okay, but the one thing thatwas common, regardless was the
fact that they found this body.
Now, around the body, thevictim was laying on a beach
blanket and she was laying therewith her head propped up on a
(08:03):
folded pair of Wrangler jeansand a blue bandana.
She was naked.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
My God.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, and you know a little things about the victim.
She had long auburn hair.
She had pink painted toenails.
She was approximately five footsix inches tall, 145 pounds,
kind of an athletic build.
But she also was completelynaked, so obviously there was
probably sexual assault donethere.
She didn't have a lot ofbruising or anything like that.
(08:33):
Um.
So it kind of people werethinking that maybe she knew who
her attacker was.
But some odd things too.
Whoever had attacked her hither in the head with what they
think was an army entrenchingtool, which is like a little
sturdy shovel that the army usesto dig trenches and so on wow
um the one side of her head wascaved in and she was nearly
(08:57):
decapitated wow, that's horribleit is, and even worse, um both
of her hands and part of her.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
One of her arms was missing to try and like decrease
them being able to find out whoshe was.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Probably they think, they think so, they think so.
And one last thing is some ofher teeth were pulled out as
well.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, so that kind of tracks with that.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Right, but she also had, you know, she also had
extensive, you know, dental work.
So they looked around and youknow Providence Town is kind of
a small place.
It's on, you know, it's on theCape there and they're not used
to this sort of thing happening,right.
(09:43):
So the police were called andthey went around and it's kind
of a you know kind of a coollittle town, you know beach town
and that sort of thing, wherethis doesn't really happen often
.
Yeah, and they're close knitand no one knew this woman.
They gave a description of herand so on.
No, no one was missing.
Oh, the police checked all theum.
Uh, you know missing persons,bolos and things like that
nothing how far is p-town?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
is it p-town right?
That's what they call it umwell, I guess I'm cooler than
you.
How far is providence town fromboston?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
it's.
It's not very far from boston,I mean it's okay so it could
just be from that it could be,but I mean, you need to take a
plane there or a boat there.
It's not.
So yeah, it's, it's on the Capethere and so you know it's.
It's, you know, not exactlyreal close to Boston or anything
like that.
But um, so yeah, they, theystarted this long um
(10:33):
investigation and they lookedfor all missing people.
Nothing, you know.
It's obvious that the personwas trying to hide this person's
identity and you know, takingthe hands and teeth and things
like that.
Um, so yeah, it was.
It was a very, very oddsituation, but it went on for
quite some time because therewas just no development on it.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
They couldn't figure out who it was.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
They couldn't figure out who it was, so they dubbed
this person the Lady of the Dune, and it went on and on for a
long, long time.
So some of the odder parts ofthe story.
There have been many, manydifferent thoughts about what
happened during this period oftime so the theories, and
probably period of time.
So the theories, and probablyone of the oddest theories.
(11:14):
In august of 2015, speculationarose that the lady in the dunes
may have been an extra on the1975 film jaws.
Now, how this came about was umso she's never been right right
they've never identified her tothis day.
So so we'll get into that later.
(11:35):
But, um, yeah, so so you know,the funny thing was they had um
exhumed her body several timesto take blood samples, hair
samples.
They did, uh, they did apartial um reconstruction giving
her skull and they did thisseveral times.
Her body was exhumed threetimes as technology and so on,
(11:56):
you know, came back up and so onjust to try to get an idea, but
never any kind of a.
Every time that they had like alead or something like that, it
would go dead and then itwasn't her right, wow.
So yeah, this young man, thisJoe Hill.
Joe Hill is actually the son ofhorror writer, stephen king wow
and he was watching, I think,the 45th anniversary of jaws,
(12:20):
because one of the things thatcame out of these exhumations
was kind of a composite sketch,given you know the fact that
they did official reconstructionand computer enhancements and
things like that and one of themost popular ones showed this
woman with auburn hair, thewoman in this real quick little
scene within Jaws.
The lady did have auburn hairand she had on Wrangler jeans
(12:45):
and she had on a blue bandanavery similar to the one that
they found at the murder site.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Was it recorded in Boston?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
So it was recorded on Cape Cod, not too far from
there.
It was recorded in 1974, duringthat period of time.
So naturally, you know, in 2015, people were like, oh my God,
you know, we just have to figureout who this?
You know who?
Some of the extras were on thaton Jaws, and maybe we can find
out who this woman is after allthese years.
(13:14):
And that was Stephen King's son.
Stephen King's son came up withthis because he's watching it,
he's familiar with the case, heloves true crime, so maybe he'll
listen to us, who knows?
But basically, yeah, he came upwith this and he thought, my
God, that's her.
Wow.
He gave the information to thepolice and they kind of ran with
this.
But unfortunately it could havebeen because they went back and
(13:36):
they went to the first personwho was in charge of personnel
on that movie in 1974 had passedaway.
So they went back and theytried to find whatever they
could.
But the thing was they weretrying to use some extras but
some of the people were justthere oh fuck, boarding the, you
know, boarding a boat, and soon and so on, and they could not
(13:57):
identify who this woman was soit really could have been her it
could very well have been her.
Um, because, like, like, there'sa lot of different theories,
like there was one crazy theorythat there was a name of James
Whitey Bulger.
He was part of the Irish mob inBoston and he was known to kill
(14:20):
people.
He was also known to cut theirhands off and things like that
Couldn't identify him and tiehim to him.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
But why would she be connected to him?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Because he used to like to go to that part of the
Cape, okay, okay, and a womanhad said that basically she had
seen Whitey Bulger, uh, in theCape during that period of time.
Oh now there couldn't be anysubstantial, any substantiation
of that because, um, by the timethey came up with this theory
(14:51):
and so on, uh, whitey had beenarrested and he was killed in
jail Wow OK, by another inmate.
But another problem with thattheory was the fact that the
woman that said yes, it was, youknow, I knew Whitey and I saw
Whitey at a bar not too far fromthere during that period of
time.
Then she kind of doubled downand said I even saw that body
out on the beach, but I didn'treport it to anyone.
(15:12):
So some people were going ah,did you?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Did you really, because that would be a crime.
Absolutely, absolutely and whywould you admit to that?
I don't know.
That's strange.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Anyways, it was strange, but it's a very strange
case, right, yeah.
In addition, there is a serialkiller by the name of Hayden
Clark and he confessed to murder, that he could have murdered
that woman.
He said in a letter to a friendthat he had, during that period
of time, found a woman walkingalong the beach alone and that
he had murdered her and he hadcut off her hands and pulled out
(15:49):
her teeth.
Okay, so it was probably herthen.
He also said that he had usedher fingers for bait and fishing
, oh, and that he buried thehands somewhere on the beach.
What a piece of shit.
What the fuck.
Now, the problem with him isthat all those little bits of
information had been made public.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, but it's still Okay.
So you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So it could have been , and he's also confessed to
like he killed three or fourpeople.
That's why he's in jail.
He's a serial killer, but healso confessed to several other
things that he led police on awild goose chase and it turned
out to be nothing.
Okay, and so this case wentalong over the years over the
decades actually, actually buton October 31st 2022, the FBI
(16:36):
field office in Boston announcedthat the victim had been
identified as Ruth Marie Terry.
No details of any potentialsuspects were known at that time
.
Terry was in Massachusetts atthe time of her murder.
The FBI stated that Terry'sidentity was determined using
the investigative genealogy andthe DNA, the same method they
(16:57):
used to identify homicides inover 150 cases across the
country, including the GoldenState Killer.
It's insane.
And so they knew who it was fora few years, but then they
started looking deeper and theyrealized that on November 2nd
2022, they kind of startedthinking that Terry's deceased
(17:22):
husband, guy Rockwell Moldaven,could have very well been the
person they were looking for allthis time.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
So actually, like statistically, that would make
sense it would and why thatdidn't dawn on them earlier.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
like instantaneously would she marry?
Well, they couldn't figure outwho it was right, well, yeah
right, but it took them just afew months to figure it.
You know, connect this.
The rest of this oh, okay so,um, this guy rockwell, uh dude
had been married um and in.
He was married to manzanita,eileen ryan, and he was married
(18:00):
to her, and she had a daughterby a previous husband and her
name was Dolores and means andshe was 18.
Both women, while he wasmarried to Rockwell, disappeared
in Seattle on April Fool's Day1960, with Mulvane becoming the
primary suspect in theinvestigation.
(18:21):
Of course he fled Seattle what?
But was arrested by the FBIlater and, and you know, and
charged with unlawful flighttrying to avoid testimony in the
deaths.
Now, they never found thebodies, oh my god.
But they found dna, you knowremnants of them in the septic
system of the house.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
So this guy's a monster so was he like flushing
them down the drain?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
probably maybe he.
He broke him down some way and,just yeah, flushed him into the
.
You know the.
That's unhinged.
Oh, it's unhinged, to be surewhat the hell.
So there's a true crime authorby the name of ann rule, and she
devoted a section of her 2007book Smoke Mirrors and Murders
to Mulvane in connection withthe Ryan Means disappearances.
(19:07):
With extensive discussion onpolice efforts to connect
Mulvane to the crime, theinvestigation found some parts
of dismembered human body in theseptic tank, but were unable to
prove from that that themissing women were actually, you
know, were actually the peoplethey were looking for.
(19:27):
Why they just did.
They didn't have the capabilityof tying the dna to it.
At that point they couldn'tdifferentiate but they knew it
was them they're pretty sure itwas him right, no but they knew
like that matter now they knownow.
They knew they were able to goback and say, yes, this is you
know.
But Mulvane was also the primesuspect in the murder of Henry
Lawrence Red Baird, a20-year-old truck driver, and
(19:50):
the disappearance of Barbara JoKelly, a 17-year-old waitress,
in June of 1950.
Oh my God, you know.
Barbara was last seen inHumboldt County, California, on
June 17, 1950, when she embarkedon a date with Baird, who was
her boyfriend.
Baird's body was discoveredface down on a beach.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
That's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Near a table in a bluff.
The following morning he hadreceived a gunshot wound to the
back of his head, and the ladywas of course dead as well.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
What the heck.
So they just went on a date andhe murdered them without cause.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
He found them on a beach and just randomly murdered
them.
That's horrifying, right.
So after that, uh mulvane movedto california, a small
community near salinas, andaround 1976 according to you
know a feature that was writtenabout him he had retired from
his job, he had been a you knowa person that finds antiquities
(20:44):
and things like that.
He had a shop on RodeoBoulevard.
In his profile he also had donesome you know work on the radio
at KAZU in Pacific Grove and hevolunteered to do a three-hour
call-in show, you know, on agingand growing old.
It was that event.
(21:07):
He married ruth marie terry.
So, ruth, he met ruth and uh,they had gone over the all over
the country basically buying andlooking at antiques.
They had visited tennessee tomeet her family and so on, and
after they left there they saidthey were driving to b Boston to
look for antiques, and so on.
Okay, so it was him.
Oh, most certainly was him.
Oh, okay, yeah, but uh, andthen, shortly thereafter that,
(21:29):
he called her parents back andsaid that she had disappeared.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
What the hell?
And wait, but they didn'tconnect to that with the, the
body that they found up there.
Eventually they did yeah, butlike for 45 years right right
well like her parents were likeoh okay, I guess it's just like
the technology was like really,severely lacking.
It was the 60s and 70s newswasn't a thing right, and there
(21:54):
was no internet.
There was no true crime shows.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
There was nothing like that, you know, and there
was no dna to tie these thingstogether.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
This guy had been killing people for years.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
That's insane.
And the interesting part, likehe would be dating someone right
, and then he would meet someoneelse that had money or
something like that, and then hewould kill off that wife and
then move on to someone else.
He was a psychopath and, if youwant to see something
disturbing, he wrote a bookcalled Cooking with Rump Oil.
(22:26):
What is that?
It's a cookbook.
What is oil Rump?
oil I don't know, I didn't lookinto it very much, but it just
it sounds so.
And one of the he like wrotepoems about these different
things and this one he reallyliked apparently he really liked
watching the light go out ofsomeone's eyes, right.
(22:48):
He wrote this in his book, hewrote this.
He wrote kind of a poem aboutthis in this cookbook, right,
which was bizarre, and he evenhad an illustration of a woman
with long hair kind of lookingback at him and you know know
kind of her eyes kind ofdoll-like and so on and so, and
they published this I yessomeone published it but yeah,
(23:11):
so this was a very, verydisturbed individual red flag
Speaker 2 (23:15):
red flag wow, okay, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So but but this guy, this guy got off scot-free from
all of these murders for so long.
He did die in 2002 in prison.
They finally put him in prisonfor something else.
Actually, the funny thing washe was actually one of his wives
.
He had extorted money from theparents.
He had basically said, oh,we're going to invest in this,
(23:39):
and they just took off the money.
He had basically said, oh,we're going to invest in this,
and they just took off with themoney.
And that's actually how theycaught him and put him in jail,
because he because that waspretty, that was a little less
he didn't think he was in perilas much with this one.
So they caught him forextorting these people and, you
know, kind of stealing theirmoney.
Wow, but yeah, this, this wasone one sick individual.
(24:01):
That's horrible.
So, but the nice thing is theydid find the killer after all
those years.
And this guy was in jail forcertain things, but he never
paid for some of the terrible,terrible things he did and we'll
never know exactly because he'sdead.
They really can't try the manafter he's dead.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, no, they can't, they won't.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
So yeah, so that was a very, very strange case, man,
and we still don't know.
We still don't know becausethey asked, they asked the
family does this look a littlebit like this woman in the jaws
film?
And they were like kind of it,kind of does so she could have
been in the movie jaws was he, Iwonder like?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
was he in the background as?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
well they didn't see him.
There was no nothing in thesource material to say that they
actually have a picture of himwalking around, but they think
it could very well that shecould have been in that, and it
was literally hours before herdeath wow, that's so crazy,
because she was in the sameoutfit she's in the same outfit.
They found basically the sameoutfit, um you know, folded
(25:03):
neatly on top of a beach blanketthat's crazy, with her head
resting on it so that at leastthe story of the lady of the
dunes has been solved wow,follow the show on whatever
streaming site you're listeningon and remember.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
All of the source material will be available in
the show notes and follow us oninstagram at what we lose in the
and let us know if you want tohear a specific case.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Or if you just want to give us some feedback.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, join us in the shadows next Tuesday.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.