August 28
PROVINCETOWN, Mass. —
A notorious murder mystery that's gripped Cape Cod for decades is now a closed case.
A woman's dismembered body, which had her hands cut off in an effort to hide her fingerprints, was discovered in the dunes of Race Point in Provincetown on July 26, 1974.
Police believed the woman was killed several weeks before her body was found.
For years, she was unidentified, known only as the "lady of the dunes." Investigators worked for decades to identify her through various means, including neighborhood canvasses, reviews of thousands of missing-person cases, clay model facial reconstruction and age-regression drawings, officials said.
Just last year, investigators were finally able to identify her as Ruth Marie Terry, 37, of Tennessee, using a process known as forensic genetic genealogy, which can reach deeper into a victim or suspect's family tree.
The official cause of death was listed as blunt-force trauma to the head with signs of strangulation and sexual assault. In addition to both hands being amputated, it appeared the killer also tried to remove her teeth, officials said.'
On Monday, the District Attorney's office officially concluded that Terry's husband, Guy Muldavin, was responsible for her death.
Terry married Muldavin and the newlyweds traveled in the summer of 1974. But he returned alone driving her vehicle, telling her relatives they had a fight during their honeymoon and he had not heard from her again.
"My father, well, he left in '74, he went to California looking for her. And her husband at the time said she sold everything she had and joined a cult," said nephew John Randall Terry.
Muldavin was also the prime suspect in the disappearance of his prior wife and stepdaughter in the 1960s.
Muldavin died in 2002.
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