In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 154: The Lady of the Dunes at 50: A Look At Cape Cod's Most Infamous Murder Case(7-24-2024)

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50 years ago in July 1974, Ruth Marie Terry, the woman who would be known as The Lady of the Dunes for most of that time, was murdered and left in the remote dunes of the Province Lands in Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.
Longtime listeners of the podcast know of my connection to this case. I wrote a book, Searching for the Lady of the Dunes, which I released in February 2023. I was deeply connected with the Lady of the Dunes documentary produced by Frank Durant.
Before that, I grew up with the story of the Lady of the Dunes living on Cape Cod. I could never have imagined being even a peripheral part of the eventual solution to this infamous case.
As the 50th anniversary of this event has arrived, I wanted to try to give a crash course in all things Lady of the Dunes. For the last year-plus, I have been giving talks about the case, the documentary, and of course my book. This here is a sort of abridged version of what those who come to my speaking engagements hear.
For those who are unfamiliar with this case and my involvement. If you end up wanting more I have several videos I made during my time working on the book, as well as Frank’s documentary, all available on my YouTube channel.
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Speaker 00:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 154. 50 years ago in July 1974, Ruth Marie Terry, the woman who would be known as the Lady of the Dunes for most of that time, was murdered and left in the remote dunes of the Province Lands in Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. Long-time listeners of the podcast know my connection to this case. I wrote a book entitled Searching for the Lady of the Dunes, which I released in February 2023. I was deeply connected with the Lady of the Dunes documentary produced by Frank Durant, and before that I grew up with the story of the Lady of the Dunes living on Cape Cod. I could never have imagined even being a peripheral part of the eventual solution to this infamous case. What I wanted to do as the 50th anniversary of this event has arrived is to try to give a crash course in all things Lady of the Dunes. For the last year plus, I'd say, I've been giving talks about the case, the documentary, and of course my book. That's why people come out for it. This here is going to be a sort of abridged version of what those who come to my speaking engagements hear. For those who are unfamiliar with this case and my involvement, if you end up wanting more, I have several videos I made during my time working on the book and as well as Frank's documentary. They're all available on my YouTube channel, which is linked in the podcast. And all other pertinent links for the book, for Frank's documentary, they're all linked in the podcast, across my social media. But right now, let's get into the actual story. When I say at the start of each podcast that Cape Cod is a vacation destination, that's not hyperbole. Besides the fact that it rhymes, it's also a fact. For a century and a half, people have been flocking to the Cape. It rose to prominence as a getaway, along with extending the railroad into Provincetown. This made it so much easier for people to get down to Cape Cod in the days of horses and buggies. People have been going to Cape Cod to enjoy the beaches, the food, the sights, the shopping, and just the vibe that Cape Cod has. Those that live here, those that have visited frequently, those who used to live here, you know what I mean, that vibe. People wanted to bottle it and take it home, or move here and live among it. However, for all of the beauty captured in photos or postcards of the past, even a vacation destination has a dark side. No case haunted Cape Cod like that of the Lady of the Dunes. It was a combination of the sheer brutality, the lack of an identification of the victim, the lack of any real suspects for so long, and the totality of those three things that shook Cape Cod to its core. The location of this horrific crime was Provincetown. If you're looking at Cape Cod that looks like an arm, Provincetown is the fist at the end of the arm that is Cape Cod. Provincetown in the 1960s and into the 70s was, for all intents and purposes, the last gasp of the Wild West. It was actually an interesting dichotomy. In public, there were throngs of visitors taking dune tours, browsing the shops on Commercial Street. There were hippies on the corners. There were fishermen at the docks. It was close to that Norman Rockwell's Americana back then. It was a place where people went when they wanted to try things that they normally wouldn't have a chance to. And by that extent, it made Provincetown very transient in nature. People came in for the summer, they worked or played, then they left in the line of traffic heading over one of the two bridges to get off of Cape Cod. but I said there was a dichotomy. And just off the beaten path, or sometimes right out in the open, was that Wild West. Sex, drugs, organized crime, it was all there. And I'm not saying Provincetown was a dirty, seedy place at the time. I'm just saying that if you went there looking for that type of action, you could easily find it. During that same time period, The shady side of Provincetown was amplified by the actions of notorious serial killer Tony Costa, who was on his killing spree on the Outer Cape in the late 1960s. There is even a famous article in Life magazine written by author Kurt Vonnegut from July 25th, 1969 about the Costa murders and that case. It had the horrifying title caption of, There's a maniac on the loose out there. You can find that article all over the internet. I'll link to it in the description of the podcast. Tony Costa was known to have murdered at least four people. Those known victims were Patricia Walsh, Mary Ann Wasaki, Susan Perry, and Sidney Monzon. Sidney became a big part of the Lady of the Dunes documentary as Frank dedicated his documentary to her. He felt that she perfectly encapsulated the times. She was a young girl with everything ahead of her in life and getting swept up in the drug culture that ultimately cost her her life. Five years, almost to the day of that Life Magazine article, on July 26, 1974, a shocking scene unfolded. In an area not too far from a few of the iconic Provincelands dune shacks, young Leslie Metcalf was chasing after a dog. The dog went off the beaten path and began barking at something, what Leslie saw she couldn't believe. In the bright July sun, she saw what she thought was a rotting deer carcass among a small shielded area of scrub pines. Upon further inspection, Leslie found it to be the body of a young woman. She ran and found her family, and law enforcement was alerted. Park Ranger James Hankins was first on the scene. What he saw was ghastly. The woman was missing her hands, The side of her skull was nearly caved in, her head was almost severed, and some of her teeth were reportedly missing. The reason Leslie Metcalf thought it was a deer carcass at first was that the skin of the victim was said to resemble a rotting banana peel. This was because police determined she had been out in the hot, humid July sun on Cape Cod for anywhere from 10 days to 3 weeks. Finding the identity of the woman fell to Provincetown Police Chief James Meads. He has routinely been cited as one of the best police chiefs not in Provincetown, but in Cape Cod history. The identification was slow going at first. All Chief Meads had was her basics. She was 5'6 1⁄2", about 140-ish pounds, anywhere from 20 to 40 years old, with reddish auburn hair. The brutality of the murder shocked the close-knit community of Provincetown. Being tightly knit, the identity of the victim was quickly determined to not be someone local. Word would have gotten out if one of their own had been the one found in the dunes. So then the question arose, who was she? Was she a college student visiting? Was she a summer resident working? Or was she a runaway? The answers were not readily available. Over the ensuing years, rumors would swirl that she was young criminal Rory Jean Kessinger, who had escaped from a Plymouth, Massachusetts jail in 1973. In fact, the unidentified female victim found in the dunes was exhumed three times to try to find out who she was. It turns out she was not Rory Jean Kessinger, who to this day remains unaccounted for. So then on the other side of the coin was the question of who had perpetrated such a heinous crime. The shock and the brutality, coupled with the unknown identity of the assailant or assailants, cast a pall over the Provincetown summer. Who could have done such a thing? A jealous lover? A rogue fisherman? Was it a drug deal gone bad? Could it have been organized crime related? Or possibly a then unknown serial killer? None of the answers could make the crime more palatable. They were all terrifying. Time went by and Chief Meade's work tirelessly for years. The basics of the Jane Doe's identity were sent all across the country throughout the summer into the fall of 1974. composites were made of how she might have looked when alive, and these changed and evolved over the years. But despite these attempts, nobody came forward to claim the woman as family or friend. In another example of the type of community that Provincetown was and is, the community rallied around this unknown victim and gave her a home. In October 1974, the woman was laid to rest in St. Peter's Cemetery, and with no identity, she was given a simple marker which read, Unidentified Female Body Found Race Point Dunes, July 26, 1974. She was also given the haunting nickname of the Lady of the Dunes. Over the decades, there were numerous suspects when it came to the Lady of the Dunes murder. Most of them were quickly looked at and eliminated. However, two got more than just a few looks. They were James Whitey Bulger and Haddon Clark. For those unfamiliar, Whitey Bulger was a notorious organized crime boss leading the infamous Winter Hill Gang in the Somerville area of Boston. In the years after his capture in 2011, Bulger was asked about his potential involvement in the Lady of the Dunes case. He scoffed and said that law enforcement was trying to pin every unsolved crime on him. Despite brushing off the potential connection, Bulger was a regular visitor to Provincetown during those Wild West days. This was confirmed in sworn testimony by then Crown and Anchor owner Staniford Sorrentino during his tax evasion trial in 1983. This was doubly confirmed during the production of the Lady of the Dunes documentary, as Frank Durant spoke with countless Provincetown locals who were there at the time of the murder. One in particular who did not wish to be named had worked at the Crown and Anchor, and had a startling story of an interaction with Whitey Bulger. In this story, the person said that Bulger would visit the Crown and Anchor every week, each time with a different woman on his arm. However, one of these weeks, the infamous mobster entered, being accompanied by the same woman as the last time. This employee of the Crown and Anchor walked up to the couple, and made it a point to say to the woman that it was, quote, so nice to see you again, end quote. Bulger and his date went to their table. Moments later, he returned and cornered the employee. Wearing a bright smile, masking his malevolence, Bulger told the employee that if they ever said anything like that again, he'd, quote, fucking kill them, unquote. That sort of interaction, though, it didn't make Bulger any more of a suspect. During his work on the documentary, Frank had the chance to correspond with Whitey's attorneys. They advised Frank that while he could make vague statements about Bulger being a suspect, that if he attempted to do any real connecting of evidence to the famed mobster, the attorneys would, quote, see him in court, unquote. Whitey Bulger died in prison in 2018, so he was unavailable to be interviewed for Frank's documentary. The other major suspect in the Lady of the Dunes case, Haddon Clark, though, was alive and well and more than willing to talk. Haddon Clark was and still is in prison in Maryland for two known murders. His body count ranges from 2 up to 10 or more depending on who you ask, including Clark. Through a series of connections, Frank ended up in touch with a handler of Haddon, for lack of a better term. The man said if Frank had questions for Clark, he could write him a letter. So that's what he did. As a brief aside, Frank ended up writing to Haddon Clark, but rather than using a P.O. box, he used his real home address, and his wife was none too happy when a letter from the Eastern Correctional Facility showed up at their home. Frank had to dodge a flying plate when confronted about that first letter. In total, Frank received eight letters from Haddon Clark. It was a fascinating and frightening look into the mind of a serial killer and diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. These letters often covered a lot of the same ground. Clark rambled about his cellmate who he thought was Jesus, complained about a book written about him that he didn't like, and how he was being unfairly treated by the guards in prison. Clark didn't write out of kindness, though. He asked for payments in the form of postcards and celebrity autographs. He wanted Tom Brady's autograph, but with the price being so steep, Frank compromised with Cam Newton, who was the New England Patriots quarterback at the time. That being said, Clark did have a lot to say about the Lady of the Dunes. His story changed routinely. Yes, he killed her. No, he didn't kill her, but he knew who did. No, he didn't kill her, but he was out there when it happened and he saw it. No, he didn't kill her, but he knew who she was. In all, Clark's words were not much of use except for people interested in the mind of a killer and for an author like me who transcribed them word for word into the book. So how did Frank Durant come upon this project? Frank summered on Cape Cod in the town of Dennis as a child. He grew up to become a filmmaker. Frank was working on a documentary about famed author Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau wrote the seminal book Cape Cod in 1865. Frank walked the entirety of Cape Cod's Great Beach, today the Cape Cod National Seashore, much like Thoreau had done as a part of the film. He met numerous locals along his walk. Several of them suggested that his next project should be about the Lady of the Dunes. For his part, Frank had no idea about the case. He would often remark, what's a Lady of the Dunes? But that clean slate, if you will, would end up serving him well. His research began in several of the common locations. Google, Reddit, YouTube, Tumblr, Wikipedia. Of course, if you have Wikipedia as your only source, you don't have any sources. Frank's biggest question from day one asked why this case had remained unsolved for well over four decades. Coming at it from an area of no knowledge about the case, Frank jotted down every name he found through old newspaper articles that were even peripherally connected to the case. It was obvious from the start to Frank that Chief James Meads was a major player in the case. However, with the Chief long since passed, Frank switched it up and began looking for any other Meads name. He hoped someone related to the Chief would be willing to speak to him. The Meads family hadn't been involved in any project concerning the Lady of the Dunes case. This meant if Frank could get them on board, it would give his documentary credibility that all others before had lacked. Frank's motives were simple. Give the Lady of the Dunes her name back. The Meads family saw this and agreed to help. This was a massive deal. Not only had the Meads family never been involved in any previous Lady of the Dunes project, but they also had numerous contacts that ended up paying off in big ways. In addition to the contacts the Meads family shared with Frank, he was told about four books that helped to better paint a picture of what Provincetown was like in the 1960s and 70s. There was The Babysitter by Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan, in which a woman, Liza, finds out as an adult that her babysitter when she was a child was actually future serial killer Tony Costa. There was In His Garden by Leo Damore, which is an in-depth look at the infamous Tony Costa murders on Cape Cod. Third was There Was Always a Place to Crash by Al Kaplan, which is a black-and-white photography book showing numerous scenes of everyday life in Provincetown during the mid-1960s. And fourth was P-Town, Art, Sex, and Money on the Outer Cape, by Peter Manzo, which was a look at Provincetown during the same time but going deeper below the surface to that seedy underbelly. Interestingly, Peter Manzo became an early help to Frank's project. He was looking to do his own Lady of the Dunes project, but underneath a layer of gruffness, he did share some important information. Sadly, Peter Manzo passed away in April 2021 at the age of 80, and his project never materialized. Frank also learned about the places that were integral to the Lady of the Dunes case. Places like the Crown and Anchor. This club and bar on Commercial Street in Provincetown was and still is a hugely popular hangout. Many people who were major players in Provincetown and beyond spent plenty of time then inside the Crown. There was St. Peter's Cemetery, which is a large cemetery just off of the Route 6 highway in Provincetown. Buried there are the Lady of the Dunes herself, Chief Meads, Leslie Metcalfe, Tony Costa in an unmarked grave, as well as one of his victims, Susan Perry, no more than a few hundred feet from her murderer. Frank was told by a few people that all of the answers he was looking for resided in St. Peter's. Then there was the province lands, dunes, and shacks. The sprawling sand is like a world within itself. As isolated today as it was centuries ago, most of the 19 rustic shacks that make up the historic Peaked Hill Bars Historic District have been passed down for generations and families. The layout of the shacks was important in terms of where the Lady of the Dunes' body was found. She was hidden enough to not be immediately found, but near enough to the shack access road that she would eventually be discovered as she was by Leslie Metcalf. And finally, there was the Combat Zone in Boston. This roughly two-block neighborhood in downtown Boston for decades was the site of numerous strip clubs, peep shows, prostitution, drugs, etc. It was highly unpredictable. You could go in, have a good time, and make it home in one piece. Or you could just as easily go in and get robbed or stabbed. Could the Lady of the Dunes have been someone mixed up in sex work in the combat zone? Thanks to the Meads family, their contacts led to other contacts, like links on a chain. This allowed Frank to begin receiving information from unexpected sources. There were private investigators... as Frank was a simple local filmmaker, not law enforcement. He thought it was wise to hire a pair of private investigators to do some digging into the Lady of the Dunes case and the culture of Provincetown, Boston, and the like. There was U.S. Marshals. Frank chatted with a former U.S. Marshal who was from the area and had interesting knowledge. This included spoiling the fantasy that the Lady of the Dunes was an extra in the movie Jaws. According to this U.S. Marshal, she was not dead and was still alive and well on Martha's Vineyard living a quiet, private life. There were several psychic mediums, as Frank had read that Chief Meads at one point had hired a psychic to help with the Lady of the Dunes case. Frank decided that if it was good enough for the chief, it was good enough for him. Several mediums helped Frank with the documentary. Three of them had nearly identical feelings and visions, which lent credence to them. One other had a wildly different vision and turned out to be someone that Frank needed to block from his life due to their erratic behavior. And there were numerous colorful characters from Provincetown. Many people put into contact with Frank were locals with intimate knowledge of Provincetown at the time. This included former employees of the Crown and Anchor who named names when it came to potential suspects or at least accomplices. And those who spoke to Frank fell into one of two categories. There were those who said it was about time someone came along to try to help solve this mystery. Then there were those who told Frank to let it go and to not disturb the town. And then there were secret agents. The biggest surprise came from three current and former high-ranking law enforcement members. They provided a lot of useful information under the condition that they not be named due to possibly getting in trouble for helping. They ended up being referred to simply as Agent X, Agent Y, and Agent Z. And on the day that the Lady of the Dunes was officially identified... Agent Z called Frank and congratulated him. Agent Z said Frank's hard work had lit a fire under law enforcement, even if they'd never admit it. This was a major validation of what Frank had done. Next up was getting boots on the ground in Provincetown. Frank spent three days there with a small crew. In total, he'd shoot more than 50 hours of video that needed to be cut down to a 90-minute documentary. He found a mixed bag in town. One person Frank interviewed got his antenna up by stating rather ominously that quote, everyone knew why he was there, unquote. Some in town were already on edge since the television show American Horror Story had been there filming only a month earlier. Some refused to speak to Frank. Those who did speak, including former local bartenders, Asian hippies, mysterious former law enforcement officials in dive bars, they were helpful. Frank said that he never felt threatened while in Provincetown. However, there were a few moments that dialed his paranoia up. This included an evening where he was getting pizza from the local spiritist restaurant for his crew. He parked down the street and walked the narrow commercial street towards Spiritus. At this time, a mysterious car crept up and tailed him for a bit. Now that's not too unusual, as commercial street is narrow and often the traffic moves slowly. That being said, Frank thought it odd that this person was creeping alongside of him. As Frank left Spiritus and walked back to his car, he noticed that same car from earlier coming back down the one-way street slowly. Again, it slowed down as if the driver was looking at him. In the evening sun, Frank couldn't be sure if this person was watching him or not, but after being told everyone in town knew why he was there, it was enough to get him on edge. A slightly less ominous event occurred when a mysterious envelope was left at the Provincetown Theater where Frank had set up shop for recording interviews for the documentary. Frank was asked by an employee of the theater if he had received the package that was left on the piano inside the theater. He checked it out and luckily it wasn't ticking, he didn't find any mysterious powder in it, but he was shocked by exactly what it was. Inside a worn manila envelope was the original Lady of the Dunes case file. Before doing anything else, Frank called his lawyer to ask what to do. The lawyer said he was in the clear since it was left for Frank and he didn't simply take it. The case file included many more graphic crime scene photos, which both horrified Frank and also made him more resolute in his intentions with the documentary. He wanted to give the Lady of the Dunes her name back. Side note, although never specifically told that they left the case file for him, Frank sent the Lady of the Dunes case file back to Agent Y. And Agent Y never questioned it, never said, why did you send me this? So in Frank's mind, that's who left the case file for him. It was during the filming of the documentary that several people close to Frank noticed that he had way more material than could be used in the film. These people suggested that Frank should look for an author to help write a book based on the documentary. And this is where I come in. Frank reached out to me through Facebook. He asked me if I'd like to speak about the Lady of the Dunes. Initially, I recommended he find someone considered more of a historian. However, Frank said he had found me through Google searches, and his enthusiasm and praise sold me. We set up a meeting at a local Dunkin' Donuts to fully cement our collaboration. Now, this was at the height of COVID-19, so people weren't allowed inside Dunkin' Donuts to sit at tables. On this day, Frank was on his way back down the Cape from the National Seashore. And here I am, I called him to switch the location of where we'd meet to a bike trail parking lot nearby the Dunkin' Donuts. It was fully legit, but after Frank had dealt with some blowback while filming in Provincetown, he immediately felt uneasy, like this was some kind of setup. It didn't help when he pulled into the misty, foggy parking lot and saw only one car, mine. Standing next to it was a guy all in black with a black hoodie. It was pretty suspicious. But within three minutes of us talking, we knew we'd be working together. Frank just needed to know I was fully in so that a year later I wouldn't end up quitting and leaving him in a lurch. But I was in, And from that moment on, my life was like a movie. I experienced things I never thought I would, such as searching for Haddon Clark's diary. So Haddon Clark's story surrounding the Lady of the Dunes changed throughout his letters. He killed her, he didn't kill her, he didn't kill her but knew who did, he was there, he wasn't there, all of that. And these changes culminated with him claiming that he had a diary buried somewhere behind his grandparents' property in Wellfleet. Clark's handler told Frank that it was likely a lie, but there was only one way to find out. Frank and I, Cameraman Rich, and two metal detector enthusiasts, Brian and Jason, we went out there. Frank and I pulled up to the owners of the house, the grandparents' house, which didn't seem too suspicious, I'm sure, in the middle of rural Wellfleet. but we alerted them as to what we were doing. We'd be on the property, but hundreds of yards away. They were fine with it since we were far away, but I also had to promise not to mention them in my book, so they're not in there. And of course, despite walking around back there for hours, there was no diary, but we did meet the Whaleman. He was the man who was purported to have been swallowed by a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod in 2021. He just happened to live nearby, and it seemed so perfectly fitting for how life felt at the time. In case you were wondering, the man, Michael Packard, he actually stars now in his own documentary called In the Whale about that experience, so you can find his story online. Then there was the Judy movie. Frank was sent an email from one of the secret agents to watch a movie. This turned out to be a softcore adult film from 1970 called Judy. The reason why this was sent to Frank and was deemed to be important was that one particular actress, who went by the name Leigh Sherry in the credits, she bore a striking resemblance to a few of the Lady of the Dunes composites. The film was also recorded in the Chestnut Hill section of Boston, so not far from the combat zone. Leigh Sherry looks like she doesn't belong in the film, if you know what I mean. I guess you'd say she looks too classy to be in a softcore film from the early 70s. I found her resemblance so much like a few of those composites that Leigh Sherry was my betting favorite for who the Lady of the Dunes was. Because no info about her could be found. She was a mystery. That entire Judy movie, the vast majority of the people are dead ends where you don't know what happened to them. Frank and I even found another actress from the film alive in Florida, because she used her real name in the movie, and her husband, who used his real name, was the director. She had no clue what had happened to Leigh Sherry, but said that she and her husband left production of that movie early because some shady people with money came aboard. We didn't press her on what she meant, and it wasn't really time to dig more into the Judy movie story, but you make your own conclusions. Finally, there was the case of Bonnie Bickwit and Mitchell Weiser. In the last of Haddon Clark's letters to Frank, in the last paragraph of that letter, after his normal rantings, he casually dropped a name, Bonnie Bickwit. Hadden said he knew her, worked with her at Camp Wellmet in upstate New York. But he finished by saying he thought he was one of the last people to see her alive before she and her boyfriend Mitchell Weiser disappeared in July 1973 on their way to the Summer Jam concert. I ended up having to contact the Sullivan County Sheriff Department as well as a website run by a friend of Mitchell Weiser. The sheriff's department never got back to me, but the website, the man who ran it, got back to me immediately. And ironically, the case ended up being reopened in its 50th year, so last year, 2023, thanks to the effort by a Rolling Stone reporter who was slightly connected to Mitchell Weiser. And I ended up speaking with him as well. If you want a deeper dive into the case of Bonnie Bickwood and Mitchell Weiser, check out episode 114 of the podcast. I do a full segment on it. So we move forward. In April 2022, the documentary premiered and was well received. But Frank Durant, he was moving on to his next project. He symbolically passed the torch to me by announcing my book to the crowd and then exiting the theater before the film even began. His part of the journey was over. Mine was not. After hundreds of hours of research, chatting with Frank, and trying to tell the Lady of the Dunes story as accurately as I could, the book was closing in on 92,000 words. And if you're wondering how long it would take me to recite the Searching for the Lady of the Dunes story, if it was podcast form... This podcast will roughly be about 5,500 words in my notes. So multiply the length of this podcast by about 17 or 18 times and there's your answer. So it was lucky for me that it takes a while to write that much. Because on Halloween day, 2022, I was headed to get two new tires for my car in Orleans, Massachusetts. Frank began calling a lot, which was unusual. Then he texted and said they're going to announce her identity, which I didn't have to say who. I knew exactly what he meant. I had no idea about the details of the press conference, so Frank initially thought it was going to be in Provincetown since that's where the murder took place. So I called out to work and so I could go up to the press conference since I was maybe 30 minutes away from Provincetown, but it turns out it was in Boston, so I had to call back into work. What I did do, though, was go to a beach close to my job, and I sat at a picnic table near the dunes. I watched on my phone, and I gasped as the photo and name came onto my screen. Ruth Marie Terry. It wasn't Lee Sherry. It wasn't Rory Jean Kessinger. It wasn't Ann Dolce. It wasn't any of the other people Frank and I had thought. But it was the Lady of the Dunes. It was a highly emotional climax for me. I'll never forget, I said out loud, it's nice to finally see you, like she could hear me. That moment of catharsis... It was more meaningful than the documentary premiere, and it even rivaled the completion of my book in February 2023. This was a murder mystery I had grown up with on Cape Cod. She was a legend, a myth, a cautionary tale. And now here she was, a real person with a real name and a real life. The Lady of the Dunes, as Ruth Marie Terry, was from Whitwell, Tennessee. She had connections to various other states, California, Nevada, Michigan, and obviously Massachusetts. She fit the physical description and in some ways also fit some of the possible traits that people Frank interviewed for the documentary thought. She was a nomad as some thought, transient if you will. There's even a gap of many years in her life that's still unaccounted for. And what this means is that some of the other details in the documentary could still be true. But in other ways, she was totally different. Ruth Marie Terry was married likely three times, and she had a son. And she also did have family that had been looking for her, although missing person searches were far more rudimentary in the 70s and 80s. It was bittersweet. The Lady of the Dunes had her name back. That name had been Frank's goal of his film, it had been my goal of the book, and it was solved. But the other side of the coin was who killed her and why, and that became clearer once Ruth's husband at the time of her death was revealed. Guy Moldovan was suspected in the death of his second wife, Manzanita Rockwell, and her daughter, Dolores Ann Mearns, in 1959. He was never charged, even though they found human remains in his septic tank. And how he got off becomes a little more plausible when it comes to his father. So Guy Moldovan's father, Albert, owned a lot of Provincetown property, mostly along Bradford Street, for those who know the area. And this was in the 1940s and 1950s. So even though Guy Moldovan wasn't really connected to Provincetown, who's to say that his father Albert, with all his real estate, which meant lots of money and lots of connections, didn't have ways to help him get away with the murder of his second wife and then have connections who could help Guy Moldovan get rid of Ruth Marie Terry? And in a bit right out of The Sopranos, Guy Moldovan was purported to be a quote-unquote antiques dealer. If that doesn't sound like a front, I don't know what does. Guy and Ruth were seen in Provincetown in July 1974 driving an over-sand vehicle, either a Jeepster or a Volkswagen Thing. A perfect vehicle for driving over the sand and perfect vehicle for putting a body in the back. And then after her disappearance, Guy Moldovan told Ruth's family that she had run off and joined the Jonestown cult and died in that mass suicide. It gets deeper and more complicated, though, when you tie in the location where Ruth was found and how she got there. A woman named Mildred Champlin, who Frank interviewed for the documentary, she and her husband built a dune shack out there called Mission Bell. They still have. Mildred is now in her mid-90s. And Mildred said that to navigate those over-sand roads, you needed to have intimate knowledge of them. She even once remarked that her own daughter had gotten stuck driving on them, and she was very familiar with those roads. So this comes back to Guy Moldovan. Did he know those roads? Unlikely. Did he have accomplices in Provincetown who did? Probably. This goes all the way back to earlier in this episode where I mentioned that one of the former Crown and Anchor employees had named names of potential killers or accomplices. I firmly believe Guy Muldovan likely had at least one, maybe two accomplices to help him get rid of Ruth. In the end, Muldovan was identified as Ruth's killer and the case was considered closed. In my opinion, and it's only my opinion, here's what I think happened. Guy Moldovan was on Cape Cod with Ruth to set up or carry out some sort of shady dealings. And Ruth heard or saw something that she shouldn't have, thus she needed to be eliminated or else put Moldovan's plans at risk. I don't believe he was alone in her murder. He might not even have laid a hand on her and left it to others, not getting his hands dirty. It's also highly likely that Ruth was murdered elsewhere and transported to the site where Leslie Metcalf found her body. The transport vehicle, whatever it was, was likely driven by someone local and familiar with the layout of the Oversand Roads. Ruth was then placed where she was found. You couldn't risk getting your vehicle stuck out there with a body in it. Things came full circle when Frank and I visited the site where Ruth was found. It was nearly a 45-minute walk from the Province Lands Visitor Center in Provincetown. The site itself is known by very few, as when the body was discovered, law enforcement intentionally misled the public as to where it was and so as to not make the area some sort of a pilgrimage spot. As we arrived at the site, I felt the enormity of where I was standing. I felt the emotion of being where the formerly mythical Lady of the Dunes, now Ruth Marie Terry, had been left like a sack of garbage. She wasn't garbage. She was a real human with a real family who deserved to live a full life. I took a few photos of the area, and then pulled out my MIDI recorder to chat with Frank for a few moments in that location. In an eerie twist, as we began recording, a pair of scrub pines nearby began rubbing against each other, creating this low squeaking noise that seemed like a perfect companion to the subject matter we were speaking of. We walked back to where we had parked, and I promised Frank that I would never show anyone how to get out to that drop site. There is a video of us going out there, but I will be straight up with you. It is spliced in such a way that the scenes are out of order. I made a promise to Frank and I've kept it. But that isn't to say that we didn't make some sort of a compromise. Frank brought a blue bandana, one similar to what Ruth was found with at the drop site, and he tied this bandana to a tree in that area where her body was left. So if anyone is heading out into the dunes looking for where the Lady of the Dunes was found, we did leave a clue for you. That is, unless someone found it and took it. I hadn't thought of that part. Frank Durant achieved his goal. He wanted to give the Lady of the Dunes her name back. And whether law enforcement wants to admit it, the small filmmaker from southeastern Massachusetts pushed them to take action. Three different times, including in 2021, the non-profit DNA Doe Project offered to test the Lady of the Dunes' DNA for free. All they needed was a sample of bone no bigger than a grain of sand. And law enforcement refused. But yet, her DNA was used to identify her, so I can't help but put the question out there. What happened after 2021 that got law enforcement working on the case? It was Frank's documentary. Now today in St. Peter's Cemetery, where there once was a vague and nondescript rectangular stone, stands a plaque, a sign if you will, with Ruth Marie Terry's name, details, and a photo. Ruth is no longer the Lady of the Dunes, but she's no less a part of Provincetown and Cape Cod. Ruth is no longer a Jane Doe. She's a woman who somehow got mixed up with a rotten man and met an untimely end. And to her family, Ruth is no longer missing. It might be bittersweet, but she at least has been found. For me, as a 12th generation Cape Codder, and as a writer, This has been my proudest work. To even be a small part of the periphery of the resolution of one of my home's greatest mysteries and most horrifying crimes is something both unbelievable and awe-inspiring. I could never have imagined when I first learned of the Lady of the Dunes story as a child of the 1980s that I someday would be associated with its resolution, even in a small way. 50 years ago, in July 1974, Ruth Marie Terry left this earth, and for most of the time since, was known as the Lady of the Dunes. Through the hard work of Chief James Meads, which led to the connection between Frank Durant and the Meads family, a resolution was attained after years of the case going cold. For a while, it looked like it would never happen. But on Halloween 2022, the Lady of the Dunes took her leave and Ruth Marie Terry was found again. Thank you all so much for tuning into this episode of the podcast. A little bit different from the normal layout, but this is a different time. I knew I needed to do something to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this case due to how deeply connected to it I was and am. And like I said, this is basically the presentation that I give when I'm talking about my book at local libraries and bookstores and such. But it's really only scratching the surface. Like I said, the book is 93,000 words. So there's so many details that I couldn't fit in this. This podcast would be six or seven hours long. I can't have that. So if you're interested, visit theladyofthedoons.com, the website that I built for the case, for my book, and you can watch Frank Durant's amazing documentary for free. As for me, I'll be back next week with episode 155, which will be a return to form for the podcast. And if you can't get enough of me, find me all over social media. Visit my homepage, ChristopherSatterlund.com. It's got links to all nine of my books, including Searching for the Lady of the Dunes. And if you're in Provincetown over the summer, take a drive out to St. Peter's Cemetery and pay your respects to Ruth Marie Terry. You can't miss her grave. It's right on one of the driving roads in there. You can't miss it. She's the one that now has the sign with her picture on it, and her grave is adorned with loads of trinkets that people leave for her. Even though she wasn't born and raised on Cape Cod, she is a part of Provincetown like everyone else in that cemetery. Thank you all once again for tuning into the podcast, sharing it. Thank you to my Patreon subscribers. I appreciate all of you that take the time to listen to this show, to watch the video version on YouTube. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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