These are some audio files from interviews FBI agents (specifically Bob Keppel and Dave Reichert) did with serial killer Ted Bundy during his time on death row in the 1980’s in Florida State Prison in Raiford.
Virginia Mae Erickson was born on April 26, 1941 to Joseph and Virgie (nee Lee) in Mazama, WA. Mr. Ackley was born on February 1, 1910 in Montesano, and Virgie was born on a houseboat on June 12, 1912 in Empire, OR. The couple were wed on March 18, 1928 in Buxton, Oregon and had eight children together: Virginia, Lawrence, Maxine, Joseph, Charles, Jean, David, and a daughter named Joyce that died in childbirth.
On October 18, 1958 seventeen year old Virginia married twenty-one year old David Erickson in Montesano, WA; Erickson was born on May 31, 1937 in Tigerton, Wisconsin. After relocating to Sweet Home, OR the couple had six children together: two boys and four girls. Ginny was a petite woman, and only stood at 5’1” tall and weighed 125 pounds; she had green eyes and curly chestnut hair she wore at her shoulders. She was a devout fundamentalist Christian and dedicated stay at home mother, and played the piano during church service every Sunday morning while her daughters would sing in the choir; on occasion, David would join her and play the guitar (when he attended). Virginia was also very close to her parents who lived in Washington, and she spoke with them frequently and would usually visit every six weeks or so (give or take). Ginny’s younger sister Maxine said she ‘could not go for more than six weeks without going to see her folks and she always had the kids with her. She would not have gone that long without seeing her kids or seeing her mother.’
Virginia was last seen alive by her children in their home on 48th Avenue in Sweet Home on the morning of October 21, 1973: David woke up their oldest child Rachel and told her they’d be going to church without them that Sunday because he was taking their mother out hunting. This immediately struck her as being incredibly unusual and out of character for her mother, but she got up anyways and helped get her brothers and sisters (who ranged in age from six to thirteen years old) ready for service. Ginny and David’s sixteen year old nephew Jimmy picked the kids up that morning and took them to Sunday School, and their son David (who goes by Michael) said of the memory: ‘I just remember momma staying home, and she was crying when she was cooking something on the stove, and she gave us hugs goodbye, and she just told me she was sick. My cousin Jimmy picked all of us kids up and took us to church, and my mom never showed up at the church to play the piano, and I thought that was kind of weird, and it was my Uncle Jim and Aunt Shirley’s little church.’
Before leaving for church, Virginia pulled Rachel aside and said to her, ‘if I’m not here when you get home, you feed the kids and take care of them.’ The (then) 13 year old said that she remembers her mother was dressed in a bathrobe but the parts of her that were visible were covered in bruises and that it was almost as if she was trying to hide what was underneath; she also said that her breathing appeared to be labored and almost strained. Rachel said that she remembered her mom being afraid of her dad and that lots of other people were as well, but she also said that he was a sweet talker that could be very charming and manipulative.
When they arrived at church Rachel found her Aunt Shirley and told her about what happened at home; Shirley immediately got in her car and drove towards the Erickson residence, which was just down the street, and where she cannot say for 100% certainty Rachel strongly speculates she drove to her family’s house to see what was going on between her parents. According to a comment made by Amber Erickson on the website for the ‘Vanished’ podcast about her grandmother, when Shirley went to the Erickson home that Sunday morning David met her at the door with a gun, and threatened not only her but her children as well. When the service was over Jimmy took them home and the kids came back to an empty house, and when their father came home at around 2/2:30 PM he was by himself without Virginia.
Rachel and one of her sisters immediately asked David where their mother was, and he told them that she had simply ‘ran away.’ She was aware that her father had multiple guns, including hunting rifles and high powered pistols, and knew that day he took his .22 with him when he left the house. Later that same day Rachel was able to go back to the church to confront her aunt, and when she cornered her in the nursery Shirley slapped her across the face and said, ‘your mothers dead, don’t ever speak of her again.’
Assuming David was telling them at the very least some partial truths, the children began looking through their mothers personal belongings to see if anything was missing, but everything was left behind, even her shoes. According to Michael, ‘I remember helping Rachel look for missing stuff because I remember Mom and Dads bedspread was gone, and Rachel was screaming that ‘mom would never leave without her glasses. And why are her rings still here? Why are her clothes all still here? She didn’t even wear her shoes.’’
Almost immediately after Virginia disappeared David gave away all of her personal possessions, including her clothes, books, and jewelry, and Michael even saw her set of green and cream colored encyclopedias at his Aunt Shirley’s house (she denied they belonged to his mother). According to him, ‘a whole bunch of church people came into our house the next day, or really soon after mom left that I came home from school and a lot of church people were there taking everything. They took the washing machine, all of her books were gone, a lot of the cooking stuff was gone. Me and Eric were sleeping on the floor, the front room furniture was gone. The TV was gone. So I always thought that was kind of weird.’
According to Rachel, the day before her mother disappeared her parents were arguing about Denise, one of her twelve year old twin sisters, who the day prior had told Virginia that she was no longer menstruating. She remembers hearing her say to their father, ‘I’m bringing Denise to the doctor on Monday and everyone will know now, for sure, what kind of man you are and what you’ve done.’ In response to this, David (who was a golden glove boxer in Wisconsin) screamed at her that she ‘wouldn’t live until Monday’ if she told anybody, then slammed her against the wall and began ‘hitting and punching’ her. This wasn’t out of the ordinary for her father, and Rachel said that on multiple occasions her mother tried telling people about the abuse he inflicted upon his family, but no one had believed her. According to Michael, the Erickson home wasn’t the only place that the children were exposed to sexual abuse, and at their uncle’s church (called The Pentecostal Church of God) a Sunday School teacher named Dale also preyed on the boys; it was later found out that he was caught and served six years in prison for the sexual abuse of a minor.
Eventually the girls told family members (specifically their dads brother Albert, a Pentecostal preacher) about Denise’s pregnancy and the sexual abuse, and the police were eventually notified. Even though everyone in the Erickson family knew that Virginia was missing nobody did anything about it, and the children were gaslite and told their mom ‘ran away.’ Rachel and her brothers and sisters knew she would never run away on her own, and she certainly wouldn’t cheat on her husband and leave her children behind. According to an article published in The Albany Democrat-Herald on May 9, 1997, the sheriff’s department received an anonymous postcard on April 29, 1974 suggesting that they look into Erickson’s disappearance (Rachel later said that it was her grandfather that sent the correspondence). Former Sheriff Dave Burright said in an April 1996 interview that ‘we highly suspect she’s been killed and the husband has been a strong suspect from the very beginning.
In one of the very few newspaper articles I found about Virginia’s disappearance that was written in May 1996, The Albany Democrat-Herald interviewed Denise, who said the family briefly relocated to California after her mother disappeared. In the same interview she also admitted that she had been pregnant with her fathers baby at the time and that the child was stillborn in February 1974; in the months that followed, the family returned to Oregon.
According to The Albany Democrat-Herald, the sheriff’s department received an anonymous postcard on April 29, 1974 suggesting that they look into Erickson’s disappearance (Rachel later said that it was her grandfather that sent the correspondence). Even though he was aware that his father was a bad man, it was still scary for Michael when police came to his house to arrest him: ‘the only thing I remember is the policeman, they came and took Penny out, and she was sitting in the police car in the backseat and when we were walking past the dining room table they had dad bent over that with handcuffs on him with all three of his guns laid out, and some knives on the table. When we walked by, and they were trying to make it so that we couldn’t look, putting their hands by our faces. And then I remember going into the police car, which I thought was kind of strange because me and Eric went in one and Penny went by herself in another. I could see her crying , but we couldn’t get out to help or do anything. We all ended up at the police station, the three youngest kids were together and they were giving us snacks and talking to us and making sure we had something to do. It was terrifying trying to figure out what I was in trouble for, but they wouldn’t say nothing.’
By this time over seven months had passed since Virginia was last seen alive, and David Erickson was arrested September 1974 on three counts of first degree rape for three of his daughters (specifically ‘two thirteen year olds and a 14 year old,’ even though Rachel was only 13). After their fathers arrest the four Erickson daughters were completely removed from the area so that he couldn’t track them down before he was sentenced, an event that took place on Rachel’s fifteenth birthday: January 6, 1975. On February 8, 1975 he began his ten year sentence at The Oregon State Penitentiary; he was paroled after less than six years on November 28, 1980. According to Virginia’s granddaughter Trinity, before David went away he had a baby with a local woman that had a crush on him, but it didn’t take long before she left him. After David was sent away most of the six children were shuffled off to different foster homes (although they attempted to keep the two brothers together), although Rachel was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Washington.
The abuse in the foster homes was so horrific that Michael ran away to his Aunt Shirley’s house, who he lived with for a period of time before becoming legally emancipated. Unfortunately his aunt was incredibly abusive to her sons, and even though she didn’t do much to him beyond yelling at him on occasion he still had a hard time accepting the kind of person she was inside of church versus inside of her home. Most of the Erickson children (and grandchildren) strongly believe that she knew what happened to Virginia, and they always hoped that some form of the truth would ‘slip out’ when they spent time together.
About his Aunt Shirley, Michael Erickson said ‘I know she was abusive. She was loud. She would scream, and she wouldn’t think twice to start swinging at anybody, or anything. But at the same time it was ‘thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus…’ It’s like I said, that she went to church and that kinda stuff, but Shirley ran us out when we were 16. She ran all of us kids out of her house because she had a lot of, not adopted but but adopted kids going through the house all the time. But I never got her to say anything about mom but she did tell her son Jimmy just a few months ago that God has forgiven her for what she’s done. So, we have no idea what else she’s talking about.’
In October 1973 when his wife disappeared David Erickson worked as a contractor with the federal government cutting logging roads in Linn County, and according to Rachel, ‘he was the guy that made all those back roads up there, up into the mountains by Sweet Home. So he had a full forest that he could have stuck her in.’ She also said she has a good feeling as to where he may have left her mother but due to the vastness of the area she would need a place to start, and was looking for ‘a place that he liked to go to.’
In April 2023 Michael’s daughter Trinity reached out to ‘The Vanishing’ podcasters Marissa Jones and Amanda Coleman and expressed interest in having her grandmother featured on the show. She said that she suspects her grandfather took Virginia to Green Peter Lake and one of two things most likely happened: he either put her body under a tree then filled in the area around it, or he cut her up with his chainsaw and then threw the pieces into the water.
At the time Virginia disappeared, Rachel was thirteen years old, followed by ten year old twins Tammy and Denise then came Michael, Eric, and Penny. She along with Michael remembers their mother as being a warm and loving person and a doting wife that adored her family and loved being a mom. According to Rachel, ‘she loved God, she loved going to church all the time. She played piano at the church, she was a very loving mom. I did have a mom that loved me and that I was so close to. I’d sit with her at the piano all the time, and I wanted her to teach me how to play the piano and right before she disappeared she was teaching me the chorus but I couldn’t really put my hands together yet. I would sit for hours with her at the piano, then after she disappeared (this may sound kind of weird to most people) but the Sunday after she disappeared, that night after I got home from Church I sat there and I cried and I said, ‘Jesus, if you’ve taken my momma away to be with you, then please put her hands in my hands so that I can play the piano.’ And ever since that day, I’ve been able to play with my hands together and play anything by ear.’
Another person that may have witnessed quite possibly Virginia’s last moments on earth was her nephew Jimmy, and although he has never spoken publicly about what happened that morning in October 1973 ‘The Vanishing’ podcasters were able to obtain some correspondence between him and another family member that helps shed some light into what he may have seen. In more recent years Jimmy said that he has gone out in the woods surrounding Sweet Home and looked in the places that he felt that David could have left his aunt, but with no success, and that he ‘has ideas, but no facts.’ He also brought up John Arthur Ackroyd, who was born and raised in Sweet Home, but looking into him he didn’t start killing until 1977 and Virginia doesn’t fit into his MO.
At the end of the email Jimmy said he had ‘given suggestions to investigators as possible locations, but because of the generalizations that I had I’m sure that nothing was ever found. I have went to look in those places too, poking around in places that my intuition sent me. But I’m not a searcher. Not even a little. I haven’t hunted in years. I used to go looking, even drew a circle around how far he could have carried her and made it back in that time frame that he was gone. It’s possibilities are a huge circle. Looked at possible gravesites where he could have put her body under another body to be buried on the following Monday. Still nothing. And there were a few in the circle.’
One theory that has recently been floated around the Erickson family is that David had the help of a neighbor and close friend of disposing of Virginia’s body, and according to Rachel in October 2023: ‘the recent thing that I heard about was this was weeks just before Covid hit, I had heard from my cousin that he heard from a friend that there was a guy, he lived right across the street from us. He was my dads friend and from what I heard from this guy that just recently told my cousin that he helped my dad get rid of my moms body, and wrapped her body around an engine block with a chain and threw it in the Green Peter Dam, in one of the deepest areas. And I’d always known something about Green Peter Dam, and the detective said that it would need to be scheduled to get approved because it was a dam. Then he said he would try to get them to go and look and stuff and then Covid hit and it shut everything completely down. And I haven’t heard anything.’
About the neighbor, Mike said ‘he was crazy, he was drinking all the time and beating his kids all the time. And I was over there one time and he had seen an elk on TV, and he shot the TV. He was in and out of prison all the time, and then dad and him were in prison at the same time. So they were pretty close.’ The Erickson children have been unable to track down the origin of the story and don’t know where it came from.
The Ericksons remember their mom trying to leave their father multiple times over the years, but she always came back. This makes sense, as it was the 1970’s and there weren’t a lot of resources available for a stay at home mom of six with no money and limited education. Mike also believed that his mother didn’t have a strong support system to fall back on, as her own father would tell her to go back to her husband after an argument and ‘figure things out.’ Most of the people in Virginia’s life felt the issues between her and David were ‘husband and wife business,’ and when a fight would occur he would say that she wanted to ‘run off with another man’ and they believed him, so when she disappeared it made it all the more easy to believe that she left willingly.
When his father was released from prison Michael decided he deserved another chance, and reached out to him in an attempt to re-establish a relationship with him, a decision he deeply regrets and that still haunts him to this day. After getting out of prison Erickson wasn’t rehabilitated, and he went on to molest multiple granddaughters and other members of the family: ‘he tried to put things back together, when dad was down at the penitentiary. I thought I could make a go at it with my dad, and then he ended up molesting my daughter Trinity. It made me feel like I failed.’ Michael always said he suspected his father was responsible for his mothers disappearance, and that he ‘asked my dad several times if he’d killed my mom, and he always said no. So I don’t know if he made her shoot herself, like the Russian roulette stuff or if he did kill her… you know, one cop told me it was a nobody homicide, that’s kind of what it went under,’ … ‘ he said they were going hunting, and they got in an argument and he let her out of the Foster store, the little store down the road in between Sweet Home and Foster, which they’re all one, so he let her out then he went hunting is what he told me. But at the same time, my dad was pretty strong but to try to deadlift her… I think he could have done it, I always thought he put her in an old pick up that he had , and drove her into Green Peter Lake up above Foster Lake. I’ve always had that feeling, but I’ve never been able to get anyone to go out there and dive and stuff like that for her. But then all of the sudden he had his brand new Land Cruiser and that pick-up was gone. It’s not like he traded it in or anything like that. But it was just gone.’ … ‘He did tell his brother Albert Erickson, ‘this time she’s not coming back.’
There are two large bodies of water in the Sweet Home area: Green Peter Lake and Foster Lake. Rachel figured out that her father could have traveled roughly forty-five miles on the morning Virginia disappeared before he would have had to turn around and be back by 2/2:30 after church, and both lakes fit into these parameters.
The day he got out of prison, Linn County Detectives questioned Erickson about Virginia’s disappearance on the first of several occasions, and just like he did with his children, he changed his story multiple times, and none of his reasoning fully explained what may have happened to her or where her body could be. On one occasion, he said his wife changed her mind about going hunting because she had a headache and he went without her, and she was gone when he returned. Another time, he claimed they had left the house together but after only making it one block away Virginia asked to go to a store to buy candy, and while inside she used the pay phone to call her boyfriend, then walked back to the house to meet him. A third story involves Ginny leaving him and their family to be with a truck driver from Madras, OR. Erickson also volunteered that he’d seen her a few months after her disappearance and she was ‘fine,’ a sighting that has never been confirmed by investigators.
Someone reported to police that they saw Virginia in Bend, OR and gave them the vehicle’s license plate. Sheriff Burright said that they ‘ran that one down and one of the people looked like her. We’re sure it was a case of mistaken identity.’ According to Burright, three things seemed to be consistent in the case: ‘that Erickson vanished on a Sunday, that she was a devout Christian and would never miss church, and she was very close with her mom and dad.
In the years before his death Denise hounded her father, asking him over and over again what happened to her mother and what he did to her, and on one occasion after telling him that she thought he was responsible for her disappearance he responded, ‘well, I don’t know what to say about that.’ David Erickson died of congestive heart failure and lung cancer at the age of 67 in Lebanon, OR on April 20, 2005, taking all of his secrets to the grave. According to his obituary, he had one more child named Angie and he loved hunting and fishing. The brief write-up also mentioned that he ‘loves his grandchildren,’ and knowing what we do know now about this disgusting creature, it just makes me sick. In 2005 when David died members of the Erickson family were so thankful that they went to his funeral just to make sure he was really gone, an event they were kicked out of. According to Rachel, there’s a few people out there that she feels may know what happened to her mother but refuse to come forward and talk.
Before her grandfathers death Trinity remembers an incident that made her lean towards him being responsible for Virginia’s disappearance: ‘I am 100% sure that he killed her. When I was around 18, I heard him talking, and I thought he was talking to someone. And I heard him.. And he was just sitting there going, ‘I had to kill her, that whore, she would have ruined my life. I had to kill her. I had to put her out. She would have ruined my life.’ And I was like, ‘what?’ and was on the other side of the wall. So I got up and I came out of my room to go to the bathroom and he was in there by himself. He had just been talking to himself.’
Virginia’s daughter Penny declined to do an interview with The Vanishing podcasters, but she did send the girls an email: ‘things I remember: I remember believing they (dad and mom) went hunting. Dad came home without mom. I know we went to church before they left. My dad has told me many different stories on why she didn’t come home. 1) He dropped her off at the end of our street. 2) he dropped her off at Glenns Market. 3) She wanted a candy bar and he dropped her off at the hilltop store. 4) She ran off with a boyfriend. Later cops confirmed she did not. 5) She left us. Those are the ones I remember. I remember one time he was abusing me, sexually, and he said he thought he heard my mom so he made me jump up and get my clothes on and go check to see if she came back. It wasn’t her, and when I came back into his bedroom he noticed in my haste that I had put my clothes on inside out and he told me that I needed to be more careful. I now just realized how cruel that was. I know he knew she was dead. He also told me once that when you bury someone without embalming them the ground does something weird, for the life of me, I can’t remember what he said though. Sorry. My earliest memories are of him manipulating me to play with him. He was mentally and sexually abusive to me. He was all those things and physically abusive to my sisters. My dad on the outside of our house was funny and loving. He would give anyone his last few dollars if they wanted it. He was a habitual liar. Oh, and also I remember one day he said we were going to go find our mom. He started to walk us up a hill near our house then suddenly changed his mind. I don’t know why he ended with that action, but either way it was cruel. I always wondered if he was going to attempt to kill us all or if he was just playing some sort of twisted mind game. I also remember him taking off all he could on the Jeep and washing it. I was the only kid home because all my siblings were in school, I think. I don’t know. Maybe they were in the house, or I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t know if they remember that or not.’
Michael Erickson also shared some horrifying stories about growing up with his father: ‘the worst thing that dad made me do with my momma was, he would tie her to the kitchen chair and then make me play Russian roulette with her. So I’d be crying and everything and he’d hold his hand up underneath my hand and point the gun at her face, and move it down to her chest, then move it down to her belly and stuff like that. But every time I pulled the trigger it would never go off. Sometimes we had to sit there for so long and it wouldn’t go off and I remember one time he put two bullets in it, this was about when I was seven, and I still wouldn’t go off, and it was a .22 revolver, and he was really mad and he grabbed my arm and told me to get outside and my momma, she was just crying for mercy, not wanting to get killed. But thank God the gun wouldn’t fire on her. Then I’d see her with a few bruises and stuff after. But I remember her standing at the sink and crying a lot. When she was at the sink cleaning dishes, I’d give her hugs on her legs.’
Rachel remembers the Russian roulette incidents and other atrocities that her father had inflicted upon her and her brothers and sisters when they were small. She said that one time ‘he wanted to have sex with me one day and I didn’t want to and I was trying to fight him and I went running outside and he kicked me through a barbed wire fence and I have a big ol’ gash on the back of my back from it. He didn’t stop just with us, he molested some of my nieces, and it was like he didnt care what age they were.’
Rachel said that her mothers disappearance split the family generationally, and most of her extended family told her to leave it in the past and to let it go. These are the same people that called David a ‘good Christian man’ that could do no wrong despite the fact that he was convicted of raping his three young daughters. She also said there are two detectives from the Linn County Sheriff’s Department that are currently working on the case, Caleb Riley and Randy Voight.
When the creators of ‘The Vanishing’ podcast asked the Linn County Sheriff’s Department for Virginia Erickson’s case file their request was denied, citing an ‘open investigation,’ and sadly this doesn’t surprise me. The Thurston County Sheriff’s Department in Washington refused to even give me the name of a victim they’re still investigating, and the murder took place in the mid-1970’s.
Despite multiple requests over the years Shirley refused to tell her nieces and nephews what she knew about the disappearance of their mother, and she took what she knew with her to the grave, as she died on December 17, 2023. But one thing is for sure: to this day the extended Erickson clan remains devoted to David, not Virginia, and smears her name every time she is brought up in favor of his. When asked why he still remains so high in the family’s favor, Michael said that he could ‘smooth talk anybody and that he helped a lot of people and things like that. He was always telling jokes, and pulling practical jokes.’
Rachel went on to lead a very successful life: she spent twenty-eight years working as a MWR Program Chief for the US Coast Guard before retiring, and is happily married with two daughters; after living in Kodiak, Alaska for many years she relocated to Woodstock, Georgia. Michael went onto get married and have two beautiful daughters of his own, Trinity and her sister.
Virginia’s father Joseph Ackley died on February 15, 1978 in Bend, and Virgie passed away at the age of 76 on February 9, 1989 in Hoquiam, WA. Her brother Charles died on September 9, 1993 in Montesano, WA, and her other brother Richard died on March 10, 2008 at the age of 80 in Casa Grande, AZ. Her twin daughters Tammy and Denise have both passed away as well after struggling with substance abuse.
As of February 2024 Virginia is considered missing under suspicious circumstances and would be 83 years old. Her children strongly believe that their father murdered her, and detectives investigating the case also suspect he was involved in her disappearance but were never able to gather enough evidence to charge him.
Works Cited:
Amanda Coleman and Marissa Jones, The Vanished Podcast, Episode 411: Virginia Erickson
Taken January 26, 2025 from thevanishedpodcast.com/episodes/2023/10/2/episode-411-virginia-erickson
Chappell, Sky. ‘Virginia Erickson, The Forgotten Sweet Home Woman.’ (October 25, 2023). Taken January 26, 2025 from sweethomenews.com/virginia-erickson-the-forgotten-sweet-home-woman/
The Charley Project: VIrginia Erickson. Taken January 26, 2025 from charleyproject.org/case/virginia-ackley-erickson
Janet Lynn Shanahan was born on August 19, 1946 to Stanley Paul and Jean Lois (nee Wyse) Karin in Spokane, WA. Janet’s father Stanley was born on September 30, 1916 and her mother Jean was born on November 2, 1924 in Illinois. The couple had two daughters together (Janet and her younger sister Jane) but eventually divorced, and it looks like Stanley was involved in some lower-level criminal activity and even served some jail time. Jean got remarried to a man named Jared Thomas, and it looks like he adopted Janet and Jane; the couple had two sons together, Jared and Timothy. Blonde haired, blue eyed Janet was an honor student, and attended Willamette High School in Eugene, Oregon. She was very active during her time there and was involved in multiple after school groups and activities, including drama club, the art guild, and the newspaper. During her senior year she was crowned prom queen and was voted ‘Girl of the Year, and according to those that knew her, Shanahan was incredibly outgoing, well-liked, and she had a lot of friends. After graduating high school in 1964 she got a part time job at a credit card company and attended the University of Oregon with the goal of one day becoming a junior high school teacher; according to her mother: ‘she was a leader, queen of this and that, and in the National Honor Society. She was very likable, very easy to get along with, and an excellent student.’
Janet married fellow OU student Christopher John Shanahan on May 24, 1968. He was born on February 19, 1946 in Washington DC and after his family relocated to Oregon he graduated from South Eugene High School in 1963. On the Shanahans marriage certificate Chris’ occupation is listed as student, and in April 1969 the couple had been married for about eleven months. In between classes and her PT job Janet was also student teaching at Cal Young Junior High School, and at the time of her murder she was in the spring semester of her sophomore year (Chris was in his junior). According to an article published in The Eugene Register Guard on January 5, 1997, Janet’s mother said that she didn’t know her new SIL very well, as they haven’t been married very long, but did say he was ‘kind of a loner’ but that as far as she could tell he seemed to be treating Janet right.’
On the evening of Monday, April 21, 1969 Janet attended a night class then briefly stopped home before leaving around 9:30 PM to attend her younger brother’s fifteenth birthday party at her parents house, about two miles away on Rutledge Street. Christopher Shanahan was reportedly sick at the time and stayed at home in bed. An article published in 1997 says that after the party at around 11:00 Janet went out for around 30-minutes with Jane (who had just recently moved home to their parents house in Eugene) to get some food at the nearby Lynwood Cafe. After the girls ate they went to a local convenience store and picked up a car magazine for her husband, then Janet dropped her sister off at their parents house when they were done. The night she was last seen alive she was wearing a rust and cold colored brocade suit.
The timeline of when Janet was reported missing is a bit unclear: an article published in April 1969 states that she was reported missing later that same evening, but according to The Statesman Journal in 1997, Chris Shanahan woke at 8 AM the following morning, ‘and discovered his wife hadn’t returned home. After she failed to report for work at 1 PM at a credit company, Shanahan reported her as missing.’
I’ve seen some sources list the day Janet was discovered as April 22 and others that say it was April 23, but if she wasn’t reported as missing until one o’clock in the afternoon after she dropped Jane off at her parents house then it’s safe to say she was recovered two days after she was last seen, roughly thirty-four hours later. On the morning of April 23, 1969, Christopher contacted his SIL asking her to accompany him in an attempt to retrace Janet’s steps from the evening she disappeared in hopes of finding her 1951 Plymouth coupe. At roughly 9:40 AM after only ten minutes of looking they noticed the sedan in a ditch in an industrial area near a lumber mill, less than two miles away from her parents house on Cross Street, at the intersection of Roosevelt Boulevard and Maple Street. Employees from the nearby lumber mill report the vehicle being there since somewhere between 1 AM and 6 AM the previous morning. The keys were missing, but Chris was still able to get the trunk open, and that’s when they found Janet’s body; she had been strangled to death.
After finding Janet’s body Chris called police using a nearby pay phone, then dropped Jane off at home, and immediately went to his attorney’s office. A passing motorist saw Chris and Janes reactions and thought there was a car accident and contacted police as well. Where he did initially cooperate with police, after the discovery Shanahan told investigating detectives that he’d been on a ‘desperate search’ for his wife, but in reality he did everyday, mundane tasks like reading for class and getting new tires on his car. The night before she was found, he had been seen out, drinking beer and shooting pool. After April 25, 1969 he never contacted police for news again on his wife’s death, and didn’t stick around for long after either, and shortly after moved across the country to Connecticut, where he still resides as of January 2025.
An employee at nearby Eugene Stud & Veneer, Inc named Earl Albert said he saw the couple walking towards the car, and after the young man ‘glanced’ in the front part of the vehicle he then opened the trunk and repeatedly screamed, ‘oh no, oh no, no’ over and over again. Police reported that the inside of her sedan was ‘neat and orderly,’ and there were no signs of a struggle. Janet’s body was fully clothed except for her shoes, which were found lying next to her, and despite there being no outward signs of sexual assault it was later determined that she was indeed violated. Upon searching the scene for clues investigators didn’t find much useful information, and Sergeant DW Carley said that to kill Shanahan her assailant most likely ‘used something flexible, such as a length of garden hose.’
Over the years detectives have interviewed hundreds of Shanahan’s friends, family members, school mates, and acquaintances, with little to no luck. Because genetic evidence was not properly stored in the 1960’s, there is no DNA sample related to Janets murder, therefore detectives are largely relying on tips from the general public to solve her case. According to cold case detective Drew Tracey, ‘we have already done a pretty thorough investigation, and we have our thoughts, but thoughts do not convict people.’
In a January 1997 article published in The Statesman Journal, Eugene Police Detective Les Rainey said investigators were looking for an unidentified man and woman that may have been with Shanahan at a cafe on the evening she disappeared sometime after she left with her sister, which alludes to Janet possibly returning after she dropped her sister off. Rainey also said that he hopes to get in contact with two friends of the Shanahans, Robbie and Marcia Robertson as well as an acquaintance of Chris’ named Freida Jessey (this is her maiden name, which is all that was released). Detective Rainey made it clear that the three individuals were not suspects and could possibly help shed some new light on what Chris’s frame of mind was like after his wife was killed.
In 1996 while on the east coast for a separate investigation a detective working the investigation tracked Chris Shanahan down in New Milford, Connecticut and tried to talk to him about his wife’s murder, and this time his demeanor had completely changed: he became angry, and combative, and refused to answer any questions, directing the detective to his attorney. About Shanahan, Rainey said ‘we have some concerns and some suspicions, but if there’s information that would clear him, we’re interested in that too.’ In a 1997 (attempted) interview with The Register-Guard, Chris Shanahan said ‘no comment, that’s my comment. Please don’t contact me again. If you do, I’ll be real upset.’ Jean Thomas said of her son in law, ‘I don’t think he could ever do that, and I told the detective that.’ According to Les Rainey, ‘my instincts, based on my experience and training, indicate it was done by someone who was close to her.’
A week after Janet’s murder a waitress that was working at a cafe along Highway 99 in Eugene came forward to LE and told them that the young newlywed had come into the restaurant sometime after 11:30 PM the night that she was killed. She was with two other women and were eventually joined by a young man, and it was never made clear if the other woman she was with was her sister. The waitress was shown a picture of Christopher Shanahan, but was unsure if it was him. A second woman came forward and told LE that she saw a woman that strongly resembled Janet Shanahan on the evening she was last seen alive. Both reports were investigated, but nothing ever came of it.
In the beginning of the investigation authorities tried to link Janet’s murder to the strangulation deaths of two other Eugene women: twenty-two year old Linda Salee on April 23, 1969 and eighteen year old Karen Sprinker on March 27, 1969, who were eventually determined to be the victims of serial killer Jerry Brudos.
Despite there being no serious suspects in relation to Janet’s murder two serial killers that were known to be active in the Oregon area around the time were investigated: Ted Bundy and Jerry Brudos. In April 1969 when the homicide took place it looks like Bundy was attending Temple University in Philadelphia, and was living with his Aunt Julia in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, so that pretty much rules him out as a suspect. Jerry Brudos operated mostly out of Salem, Oregon and is responsible for four deaths that took place between January 1968 and June 3, 1969, about a month and a half after Shanahan was killed. Also known as ‘The Lust Killer’ and the ‘Shoe Fetish Slayer,’ Brudos is also known to have attempted to abduct two other young women.
There are only a few commonalities that might make one think Brudo’s could be responsible for Shanahan’s death, and they’re weak and largely circumstantial: he was active at the time and he had a shoe fetish, and she was found without her footwear on… but that’s really where it ends. The serial killer was known to dismember his victims and was known to have saved certain body parts (usually their breasts or feet ), so the fact that Janet was found in one piece leads me to believe he isn’t the one responsible for her death. Also, YouTuber ‘Steve the Amateur Historian’ pointed out that he mainly operated in the Salem area, and not Eugene. Another reason I think Brudos wasn’t responsible for Shanahan’s death is the fact that all of his murders took place either in his vehicle or in his basement/garage workshop of one of the two homes that he lived in at the time, where he wouldn’t have had enough time to kidnap Janet, drive to his residence, kill her, bask in it, then drive back to Eugene to dispose of her remains in only thirty-fours hours time.
On June 27, 1969, Brudos entered a plea of guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole served at Oregon State Penitentiary. He (unsuccessfully) appealed his conviction on multiple occasions, and died of liver cancer in 2006.
In June 2022 some family and friends of Janet that wished to remain anonymous approached investigators offering a $45,000 reward for the identification, arrest and conviction of her killer. They feel that because of how many years had passed, time is fleeting and this may be the last realistic effort to solve the case. According to Eugene Cold Case Detective Rick Gilliam, ‘the importance is, the fact this is 53 years old, and individuals out there are getting older, and the suspect may not have many more years to live. And the friends and family members would just like to resolve this case once and for all, so that’s why that reward’s out there.’
Janet’s biological father Stanley Karen died shortly after her murder at the age of 52 on June 10, 1969. Her mother Jean died on December 4, 1979 in Cook, IL, and her stepfather Jared Thomas died on May 5, 2009. Christopher Shanahan is now 78 and currently lives in New Milford, Connecticut. He never remarried and was never cleared in his wife’s murder.
Works Cited:
Bull, Brian. ‘$45,000 reward offered in Eugene murder case from 1969.’ Taken January 24, 2025 from klcc.org
Cascadia Crime & Cryptids: Episode 50: The Unsolved Murder of Janet Lynn Shanahan. Taken January 26, 2025 from cascadiacrimepod.libsyn.com/episode-50-the-unsolved-murder-of-janet-lynn-shanahan
‘Reward offered in 1969 Murder of Janet Shanahan.’ June 9, 2022. Taken January 23, 2025 from eugene.or.govo
An interview that took place on February 18, 2019 at roughly 7:45 AM CBI between Chris Watts and Agent Tammy Lee, FBI SA Grahm Coder, and Frederick PD Detective Dave Baumhover at the Dodge Correctional Institute.
Here are the autopsy reports for Shanann, Bella, and CeCe Watts.
A timeline of Gary Ridgway’s life, courtesy of Brenda Lackey, Carlie Jones, and Julie Johnson from Radford University.
Camille Karen Covet was born on September 25, 1950 to Wilfred and Delores (nee Essley) in Portland, OR. Mr. Covert was born on March 12, 1927 in Medford and her mother was born on July 3, 1931 in Portland. The couple had three children together (Camille, William, and Adele) but divorced on July 20, 1972, and Doris got remarried to a man named Herman Crane on May 10, 1974. Camille attended Centennial High School in Gresham, and after graduating in 1968 she went on to briefly attend the University of Oregon and got a job at a nearby Sears. A tall young woman with the looks and figure of a runway model, she stood at 6’1″ and had deep chocolate brown eyes and shoulder length brunette hair.
Camille’s husband, Myron Charles Foss (who went by Chuck) was born on July 24, 1949 in Hazen, North Dakota. At some time in Chuck’s adolescence the Foss family relocated to Portland, and after graduating from Franklin High School in 1967 he went on to join the US Air Force, and was stationed in Okinawa. After Chuck returned home from Japan the couple were married on July 10, 1971 in Portland.
On October 17th, 1975, Ms. Covet-Foss was last seen alive leaving her job at Sears-Roebuck in Washington Square at 5 PM to drop off a check at the bank. The twenty-five-year-old had been employed with the department store for seven years, and had only come to that location from the main branch in Portland about three months prior to her murder (she was the stores head cashier).
Roughly an hour after Camille was last seen at 6:00 PM the bank called Sears to make sure the deposit was on its way, as they were getting ready to close. Later that same day at 9:30 PM a security guard for the Southwest Portland-area shopping center named Claudia Shaw found her body in the front seat of her light olive green 1969 Chevrolet Impala, which was parked between the main Sears store and the Sears Automotive Center, south of the shopping center’s buildings. According to an article published in The Capital Journal on October 18, 1975, despite the incident taking place in the middle of the day on a Friday Multnomah County Sheriff’s said that no shots were reported. According to Sergeant Michael O’Connell with the Washington County Sheriff, law enforcement received numerous leads and tips from the public, but no one reported anything helpful.
Oregon state ME Dr. William Brady said Covert-Foss was shot twice: a bullet grazed one of her thumbs before penetrating her neck, and the other hit her chest. The wounds were inflicted by a large-caliber handgun that was fired at close range (either a .38 or 357-magnum revolver) and Dr. Brady said she had also been beaten in the face. When the investigation was reopened in 2005, Sergeant O’Connell said ‘it’s bizarre that somebody could get away with this in a parking lot. It was busy and not completely dark. There’s a large-caliber gun that makes a lot of noise.’ Detectives said nothing appeared to be missing from the scene, including the bank deposit.
Law enforcement cleared Camille’s husband almost immediately and said that she showed no signs of being sexually assaulted. Two weeks before her murder Adele told investigators that her sister shared with her that while she was escorting an older woman to her car she chased a flasher down the stairs of the Lloyd Center parking garage, yelling and waving her umbrella at him in a successful attempt to scare him away. She told her ‘Camille, you shouldn’t do that. You don’t know what could happen,’ but she was too busy worrying about how scared the woman was to care about much else.
In August 1976 it was reported that Camille’s husband Chuck filed a wrongful death suit against Sears Roebuck and Company for $1.5 million dollars: $500,000 in general damages and one million in punitive damages, plus an additional $1,239 in burial and memorial costs to lay his wife to rest. Foss alleged that the company was negligent and exposed his wife to ‘armed and dangerous persons’ in making her take money to the bank without any form of security. I was unable to find any information about the outcome of the lawsuit.
In an article about reopening the case published by The Oregonian on October 18, 2005, Adele said of her sister: ‘in her honor, I just have to give this one last try. I’m just asking for help because her life was worth so much.’ Fifteen years later, in a November 2020 interview with KATU reporter Katherine Kisiel, Bostwick said ‘I think this person didn’t just kill my sister, it did kill my father and my mother. My father took his own life just as he turned 60, and a few years later my mother died of pancreatic cancer, which is the only cancer proven to be related to depression. I do feel like I should have been there. Nobody was there with her, and I just need to do everything I can to make sure how she died isn’t forgotten.’
Most of the women I write about from Oregon were most likely not victims of Ted Bundy, and that includes Ms. Covet-Foss… but, because this is a blog about him I do feel the need to mention that we know he wasn’t responsible for her death, as he was just beginning his legal troubles in Utah and was tied up at the time.
William Covert died on March 15, 1988 at the age of 61, and Camille’s mother died at the age of sixty on September 13, 1991. Chuck Foss died at the age of sixty on December 14, 2009 in Salem, OR. He worked for Stark Vacuum in Portland and Business Machines in Gresham before going to work for his dad at the Portland Glove Company; he later purchased the business but in 1993 he sold it due to his declining health. Mr. Foss enjoyed playing pool and music, and especially loved The Beatles. According to his obituary, he was in a long term relationship with a woman named Beverly Ball and in an article published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on October 18, 2005, he didn’t stay in touch with Camille’s family in the years after her death.
Alma Jean ‘Jeannie’ was born on October 12, 1943 to Oren and Orphey ‘Pearl’ Reynolds in Peoria, IL. Mr. Reynolds was born in 1920 and her mother Pearl was born on December 30, 1926 in St. Louis, MO. She was divorced from Thomas Barra and the couple had two children together: at the time of her death their daughter was four and their son was nine. Mr. Barra was born on February 12, 1930 in Johnson, IL and was quite a bit younger than his wife. It appears that Alma spent most of her life in Illinois but after splitting with her husband she took her children and relocated to Portland, Oregon. She was a petite woman, and stood at 5’1” tall and at the time of her murder weighed a mere ninety pounds; she dyed her strawberry blonde hair black and wore it at her shoulders.
Alma was seen earlier in the day around her apartment building before eventually leaving her kids with a babysitter, telling her that she would return at 11:30 later that evening, but when she failed to return home her sitter reported her as missing to local law enforcement. The twenty-eight year old was last seen leaving the Copper Penny Tavern in the company of an unknown gentleman driving southbound on 92nd Avenue between 11 and 11:30 PM on March 23, 1972. There’s some discrepancy as to what she was last wearing: according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s website, she was dressed in a white sweater, turtleneck, maroon vest and pants, but according to an article published in The Oregon Daily Journal, she had been wearing a green pantsuit with a vest that was adorned with gold buttons on the side. Barra’s remains were discovered by two sixteen year olds out hiking, Joseph Venini and Lawrence Staub (one report said they were actually out riding their bikes) in an area that contained a heavy amount of brush near Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery, roughly forty feet off of Mount Scott Boulevard.
One-time Multnomah County Medical Examiner Dr. Larry V. Lewman said that Barra died of strangulation and had what appeared to be nylon stockings cinched around her neck; she was nude from the waist down but showed no sign of sexual assault. Lieutenant Vern White with the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department said there were signs of a struggle at the scene, and the victim put up quite a fight before she was finally subdued. There was a fifteen foot diameter around the remains that were ‘torn up,’ and investigators noted that moss, fern, hazel, and blackberry vines were all damaged during the attack. Some of her clothes were removed and were found scattered around the crime scene, and one of her shoes was found nearby on the side of the road; the other was found discarded in some nearby brush; missing from the area entirely was Barra’s black patent leather purse. After a positive identification was made her apartment was searched for clues, but investigators came up with nothing.
Alma Barra is one of over a dozen women that were either murdered or went missing in the state of Oregon in the early to mid 1970’s, and at the risk of being redundant (because I have written about them in all of my other pieces) I’m only going to gloss over all but one. I’ll only really dig into the new young woman that I recently learned about.
Thirty-four year old Barbara Katherine Pushman-Cunningham was discovered strangled to death in her Eugene apartment by her mother on May 25, 1971. On March 22, 1972 Fay Ellen Robinson was found dead in her bed in her downtown apartment in Portland, and later that same year on June 16 the badly decomposed remains of Geneva Joy Martin were found face down in a ‘woody, roadside ditch’ by a local farmer. Also in June 1972 the remains of sixteen year old Beverly May Jenkins were discovered just off the I-5 roughly ten miles outside of Cottage Grove; she had been strangled to death. On July 11th, 1973 Susan Ann Wickersham was abducted out of Bend, Oregon, and her remains were discovered on January 20th, 1976. On August 23, 1973 Gayle Elizabeth LeClair failed to come in for her scheduled shift at the Eugene Municipal Library, and when her supervisor went to her house to check on her she was found to be deceased as a result of multiple stab wounds.
In my opinion, there’s three cases that took place in mid to late 1973 that all fit very neatly into TB’s MO: Rita Lorraine Jolly, Vicki Lynn Hollar, and Suzanne Rae Seay-Justis. I know Ted only confessed to two additional Oregon murders aside from Roberta Kathleen Parks, but we all know he didn’t tell the truth very often… Seventeen year old Rita Lorraine Jolly left her family home in West Linn at around 7:15 PM on June 29, 1973 to go for a routine walk, and was seen for the last time a few hours later between 8:30 and 9:00 PM. Not even two months later on August 20, 1973 twenty-four-year-old seamstress Vicki Lynn Hollar was last seen getting into her black 1965 Volkswagen Beetle after leaving The Bon Marche in Eugene at 5:00 PM; neither her nor her vehicle have ever been recovered. Suzanne Rae Seay-Justis was last heard from on November 5, 1973 after she called her mother from outside the Memorial Coliseum in Portland.
Personally, I feel Bundy is most likely responsible for the murder of Rita Jolly and Sue Justis, and where Hollar looks exactly like most of his other victims I’ve never heard of him disposing of a vehicle before. We know he had a history of car theft, but did he really have the means to dispose of an entire vehicle? I do want to note that most of the major bodies of water surrounding Eugene were dredged in the years following Vicki’s disappearance, and her VW remains unaccounted for to this day.
While writing this piece I learned the identity of another young woman that was killed in the state of Oregon in the mid 1970’s: Camille Karen Covet-Foss. On October 17th, 1975, Ms. Covet-Foss was last seen alive leaving her job at Sears-Roebuck in Washington Square at 5 PM to drop off a check at the bank. The twenty-five year old was married but had no kids yet, and had been employed with Sears for seven years, and had only come to the store from the main branch in Portland about three months prior to her murder (she was the stores head cashier). Later that same day at roughly 9:30 PM a security guard for the Southwest Portland-area shopping center named Claudia Shaw found Camille‘s body inside her light olive 1969 Chevrolet Impala, which was parked outside of the building where she worked.
Oregon state ME Dr. William Brady said Camille was shot twice: a bullet grazed one of her thumbs before penetrating her neck, and the other hit her chest. The wounds were inflicted by a large-caliber handgun that was fired at close range (either a .38 or 357-magnum revolver); Dr. Brady also said she also had been beaten in the face. Detectives said nothing appeared to be missing from the car, including the bank deposit.
As I mentioned earlier, most of the women I write about from Oregon were most likely not victims of Ted Bundy, and that includes Ms. Covet-Foss… but, because this is a blog about him I do feel the need to mention that we know he wasn’t responsible for her death, as he was just beginning his legal troubles in Utah and was tied up at the time.
Alma’s ex-husband Thomas died at the age of 67 on January 11, 1998 in Johnson City, IL; according to his obituary, he was a Korean war veteran and served in the US Army as a Specialist 3rd Class. Alma’s mother Pearl Richardson passed away at the age of 96 in Branson, MO on August 17, 2023. She loved being a mom and a grandmother, and loved to shop, bowl, and fish, but her greatest love was her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Despite my best efforts I was unable to find any information about Ms. Barra’s children, but I quickly realized there is most likely a reason for that and stopped. If I made any mistakes in my research or if anyone from her family that comes across this would like to reach out to me directly, my contact information is on my home page.
Ruth Marie Terry was born to John D. ‘Johnny Red’ and Eva Lois (nee Keener) on September 8, 1936 in a mountainside shack in Whitwell, Tennessee. The couple had three children together: Johnnie Lois (b. 1933), James Ray (b 1934) and Ruth. Eva was born on July 3, 1913 and died on September 20, 1937 at the age of 24 when Ruth was only one; her father eventually remarried a woman named Stel19la and they went on to have three children together.
On October 21, 1956 when she was twenty Ruth got married to Korean War vet Billy Ray Smith in Marion, Tennessee but the pair quickly divorced.* The daughter of a coal miner and housewife, Ruth wanted more than what Whitwell had to offer, so after leaving her husband she left home and got a job at a Fisher Body automotive plant in Livonia, Michigan.
Ruth gave birth to a son named Richard in 1958 (according to records, his father is unknown), but due to financial strain was unable to care for him and he was adopted by the superintendent of her workplace, Richard Hanchett Sr. (in exchange for him paying off her expenses). After the adoption was finalized, Ruth left Livonia and moved to California. She reached out to Richard in 1972, but at the time he was unavailable.
On February 16, 1974, Terry married an antiques dealer in Reno named Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who went by multiple pseudonyms, including Guy Muldavin Rockwell and Raoul Guy Rockwell; at the time of their marriage she was using an alias, and went by the name Teri Marie Vizina. Muldavin’s biological parents are unknown (but are confirmed to be from Russia), and his adoptive father Abram Albert Zadworanski Muldavin was born on July 2, 1894 in Wasilków, Poland, and his adoptive mother Sylvia ‘Lily’ Silverblatt was born on June 22, 1902 in Brooklyn. The couple had one biological son together named Michael and eventually divorced. Scandal seemed to follow the family everywhere, as his brother was disbarred and banned from practicing law in the state of New Mexico after being charged with misconduct for accepting $3,200 and ‘commingling the same with his own funds, contrary to the canons of professional ethics of the State of New Mexico.’
According to his obituary, Muldavin was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 26th 1923, but there are records that show his birth date was later the same year in December, and in New York. During his early years he traveled extensively across the world with his family, and spent a significant amount of time living in various locations in and around Germany, Cuba, and California. He was married five times over the course of his life and was with his fifth wife Phyllis for almost fifty years before his death.
Cape & Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois said that after Terry and Muldavin got married in February 1974 they traveled around the US, and stopped in Whitwell to visit with her family. Ruth’s grand-niece Brittanie Novonglosky later told investigators that she thought Guy was ‘possessive and demanding,’ and that her aunt ‘wasn’t herself’ while in his presence. After leaving Whitwell they couple went to Chattanooga to visit her half-brother, Kenneth and his wife Carole, who later recalled them saying they were going to drive across the United States looking for antiques to buy (then sell), specifically mentioning they were going to stop in Massachusetts.
When Muldavin returned home to California from that trip, he was driving what is believed to be her vehicle and told acquaintances that his new bride had sadly passed away. The Terry family was immediately suspicious of the news, and Ruth’s brother James went to her home to confront his new brother-in-law. Upon arriving he was told that the two had gotten into a fight during their honeymoon and she got out of the car in a huff, and he had not heard from his wife since.
James Terry hired a PI to investigate his sister’s disappearance, who learned that Muldavin sold off all of her personal belongings and had left him ‘of her own will’ after getting involved with a religious cult. Prior to the identification of her remains, Ruth was listed as ‘deceased’ in family obituaries, and she was never officially reported as missing. Her SIL Carole wondered if maybe she was in a witness protection program and because of that couldn’t reach out to anyone.
I’ve come across varying details about how Ruth’s body was discovered, but it is agreed upon that she was found in Provincetown, Massachusetts on July 26, 1974 roughly 800 feet away from the Seascape Dune Shack in a clump of overgrowth by 12-year-old Sandra Metcalfe-Lee, just yards away from a busy road with a lot of insect activity. The first version is that Lee and her sister followed a barking dog (some sources say it was a stray, others say it was their family beagle) to the decomposing remains on July 24, 1974 but later told investigators that it took them two days to file the report because ‘the discovery had traumatized them.’ The second report (that is more commonly told) is that Lee and her parents were hiking back to the Province Lands Visitor Center after a day at the C-Scape Dune Shack when they came across Ruth, and they immediately went to park rangers. Getting to the area where the remains were found would have required a vehicle with four-wheel drive, as there was a great deal of sand to get through, and longtime DA on the Cape Michael O’Keefe felt it would have been incredibly difficult to carry a body out to the dunes. Sandra grew up and became a true crime writer and wrote a book about the case titled ‘The Shanty: Provincetown’s Lady in the Dunes.’
Investigators found two sets of size ten footprints in the sand leading to the body as well as tire tracks roughly fifty yards away, and forensic experts speculate that the remains had been there for about two weeks. The victim was found face-down on half of a green beach blanket, almost ‘as if she’d been sharing it with a companion,’ and investigators wondered if maybe she either knew her killer or had been asleep when she was attacked, as there were no signs of a struggle.
An official police report described the victim as a white female, roughly 140 pounds, and between 5’6” to 5’8,” with the discrepancy in height due to the neck, as it was almost severed. According to former Provincetown Police Chief James J. Meads, her age was estimated to be between ‘25 to 45′ but she was probably not older than 35. At the scene a blue bandanna and a pair of Wrangler jeans were found neatly folded under her head and her long, auburn/red hair was pulled back into a ponytail by a gold-flecked elastic band; her toenails were painted pink.
Both of the victims hands had been removed as well as one of her forearms, and several of her teeth had been pulled out. She had a large amount of expensive ‘New York style’ dental work done, including $3,000 to $5,000** worth of gold crowns, which is usually as conclusive as fingerprints when it comes to making an identification and is (usually) relatively easy to trace. Thousands of dentists were sent information regarding the crowns, but no one ever came forward with any information.
Mead suspected that Terry’s killer was a man she was familiar with and that he drove her to the scene of the murder in a four wheel drive vehicle under the pretense of sunbathing. In the beginning of the investigation, Chief Mead followed standard police procedures: bloodhounds were brought in to comb through the murder area. Missing persons bulletins were studied. Registers of all Provincetown hotels, motels, and rooming houses were checked. Anyone who had a permit to take a vehicle into the National Seashore was checked. In the years following the murder Mead received thousands of leads, phone calls, and tips regarding the Lady of the Dunes, and he investigated every single last one of them; sadly he died before the murder was solved.
The town’s police department had taken over the case immediately after the murder, however it was turned over to Massachusetts State Police Detectives Unit for the Cape and Islands District in 1982. In the early stages of the investigation, law enforcement entertained the possibility that the killer brought the remains to the Dunes from nearby Boston, but they eventually determined that the murder took place at the scene (despite a lack of blood). They also theorized that maybe the killer was a transient, especially when taking into consideration the inability to identify the victim.
According to her autopsy the victim had nearly been decapitated and the left side of her head had been crushed, an injury that had possibly been inflicted by a military-type entrenching tool. Despite being strangled, it was determined that she had died from the blow to the head, and she showed signs of sexual assault that most likely occurred postmortem. Some investigators believe that the missing teeth, hands and forearm pointed towards the killer either attempting to hide the identity of the victim or themselves.
Detectives sent a description of the victim out over teletype (which is a machine that sent and received messages via a typewriter-style keyboard where the reply was printed on paper) to the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Investigators were at a complete loss as to who she could be. Was she a girlfriend of Whitey Bulger? Or a showgirl from New York City? Barnstable County records show that in the late 1940’s to mid-50’s Muldavin’s parents bought land and properties in Provincetown, MA.
In October 1974 the remains of the Lady of the Dunes were finally laid to rest in a state issued metal casket and, the case went cold. In 2014, one of the investigators that worked the murder in 1974 helped raise the money to buy her a new coffin, as the one she was originally buried in was poorly made and had rusted through and deteriorated.
She was laid to rest in Provincetown’s St. Peter’s Cemetery, and her stone marker read ‘Unidentified Female Body.’ In 1979 the first facial reconstruction of the woman was created using clay as a medium, and the following year her remains were exhumed for the first time, but no new clues were found. In 2000 a woman came forward claiming to be the daughter of the Lady of the Dunes and the body was exhumed again that March for DNA testing; nothing ever came of it. The remains were dug up for a third time in May 2003 and it was then that experts performed a CT scan of her skull that resulted in images that were used by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for another facial reconstruction. In 2006 law enforcement released age progression photos using to help with the search and a 3D composite image was created in 2010.
In 1987, a Canadian resident came forward claiming that she saw her dad strangle a woman in Massachusetts around 1974; investigators tried to look into the allegations but were unsuccessful. A second woman told detectives that the reconstruction strongly resembled her sister, who had disappeared in Boston in 1974. Provincetown police also chased a lead that involved Rory Gene Kesinger disappeared in 1973 after breaking out of a Plymouth, MA jail. Investigators saw a strong resemblance between Kesinger and the victim, but DNA from her mother did not match the victim. Two additional missing women were also ruled out: Francis Ewalt and Vicke Lamberton.
In August 2015, rumors started to swirl that the Lady of the Dunes may have been an extra in the 1975 cinematic classic Jaws, which had been shot in the village of Menemsha in Martha’s Vineyard between May and October 1974, which is located 100 miles south of Provincetown. Just weeks prior, Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) spotted a woman in the crowd during the Fourth of July beach scene that was wearing a blue bandanna and jeans that looked nearly identical to the ones found with the Lady of the Dunes. Hill brought this to the attention of police after reading a book called ‘The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America’s Coldest Case’ but nothing ever came of this tip.
Unfortunately, evidence from the crime scene had been thrown away by MA state police (including the victim’s clothing and the blanket she was found with), and as time passed by and the chances that the case would be solved faded science and DNA analysis evolved, and investigators were finally given the break they needed. In 2022 the body was exhumed one final time, and a portion of the victims’ skull was sent to Othram Laboratories along with genetic samples of members of the Terry family. From this, a DNA profile was created that helped identify distant relatives and eventually lead to the identification of the victim and on October 31, 2022 the FBI field office in Boston announced that the ‘Lady of the Dunes’ had officially been identified as Ruth Marie Terry.
According to FBI Special Agent Joseph Bonavolonta, Terry’s identity was discovered using investigative genealogy, which is a blend of traditional DNA analysis and genealogical research that can generate new leads for unsolved homicides, as well as help identify unknown victims: ‘This is, without a doubt, a major break in the investigation that will hopefully bring us all closer to identifying the killer. Now that we have reached this pivotal point, investigators and analysts will turn their attention to conducting logical investigative steps that include learning more about her, as well as working to identify who is responsible for her murder.’
On November 2, 2022, the Massachusetts State Police went to the public asking for information related to Terry’s one-time husband Guy Rockwell Muldavin, and on August 28, 2023 he was officially named as Terry’s killer. In a press release from the FBI, ‘for nearly five decades, investigators have worked tirelessly to identify this victim through various means, including neighborhood canvasses; reviews of thousands of missing-person cases; clay model facial reconstruction, and age-regression drawings.’ Friends of Muldavin were shocked when they learned who he really was, with one saying ‘he was great. I really loved him. I mean, he was terrific. And I was very close to him. I’m speechless, because none of it makes any sense.’
Known around Greenwich Village for his nightly parties with ‘beatniks, art lovers, celebrities and celebrity hunters,’ Muldavin charmed everyone he met with his magnetism and offbeat philosophy. He was disqualified from joining the military during World War II due to a mastoid infection, and in 1942 he was living in Manhattan and was going to school at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On May 11, 1946 while working as a professor in Bellevue, Pennsylvania he married former beauty pageant contestant and model Joellen Mae Loop. The newlyweds moved all over the US, and briefly lived in California where Muldavin got a job as a disk jockey at KIEM radio station Monday through Friday at 5 o’clock. They eventually settled down in Seattle, where he took a job in the furniture department at Bon Marche. The couple had one daughter together named Towers Joy and went on to purchase a large antique shop that ‘rarely opened before 6 PM.’ They were married for ten years before calling it quits, and divorced on July 16th, 1956.
But Muldavin wasn’t single for long, and only two years later married Manzanita Aileen Ryan in Kootenai, Idaho on September 30, 1958. According to an article published in The Evansville Press on January 7, 1962, his first marriage ended shortly after ‘Manzy’ and her then-husband, William Mearns, walked into his antique shop. His new bride had an eighteen-year-old daughter named Dolores Ann Mearns, who was attending college at the time and moved into a second floor bedroom in Muldavin’s antique shop on Seattle’s Lake Union waterfront. Maybe once a month, Manzy and Doloreswould travel to Vancouver to visit with her younger children and ex-husband, but on April 1, 1960 both mother and daughter disappeared without a trace. After Manzanita’s ex-husband reported the two as missing Muldavin immediately became the prime suspect. He had a motive to kill his wife, as he was cheating on her and was struggling with financial difficulties at the time. He was also the last person to see them alive and had access to the attic and septic tank, where bone fragments were later found.
Police quickly zeroed in on Muldavin, and got a warrant to search his combined antique store/ home. In the attic detectives discovered a large amount of blood, and they theorized that he had dragged their dead bodies up the stairs where he dismembered and disposed of them. After combing through the contents of the building’s newly sealed septic tank, investigators found human tissue as well as bone fragments, all of which matched Manzanita and Dolores’ shared blood type. Manzy’s legs eventually turned up in a body of water and were identified as belonging to her by her ex-husband, who recognized her ‘thick ankles.’ At some time in the early days of the investigation Muldavin up and left town, leaving behind his antiques business and no forwarding address.
In the early stages of the investigation, it was theorized that Manzy and Dolores fled to Canada, cutting their ties to Guy completely, and according to him the two had plenty of money as before they left they completely cleaned out his bank account. After his wife vanished he immediately filed for divorce, on the grounds of ‘cruelty and desertion’ in Seattle, and in WA state an uncontested divorce is finalized after three months, and he was officially single again by July 26, 1960.
Guy changed his story multiple times, on one occasion saying ‘she doesn’t love me anymore, and Manzy closed out our joint bank account. She took every penny I’ve saved for the shop and to buy more antiques. She even burned all my business records before she left! I’m having a terrible time trying to figure out my income tax return.’ But, he told others that she had run off with another man and took her daughter with her.
Just three days after his divorce was finalized on July 29, 1960, Muldavin got married for the third time to fellow antiques dealer Evelyn Marie Emerson in King County, WA. Emerson came from a prestigious Seattle family and was the step-daughter of wealthy socialite Caroline Winkler, who was impressed by her new SIL’s ‘cosmopolitan air and business sense.’ He told his new in-laws that he had won a Fulbright Scholarship to Portugal and Africa, and had recently tried to finance a yacht that would allow them to sail to their destination but his funds were ‘tied up’ after his ex-wife stole all of his ‘liquid assets.’ Evenyln sold her antiques business and planned on giving all of the money to her new husband, and just five days after the two said ‘I do’ Muldavin accepted a cashiers check from her stepmother for $10,000 (I’ve seen it listed as little as $6,000 and as much as $16,000); he told his wife’s family that he needed to buy antiques in Canada, but he took the money and ran away to NYC.
While looking into Muldavin, people that knew him told investigators that he was an ‘oddball and a pathological liar’ that left home in his late teens and falsely paraded around as a war hero. In December 1960 he was finally tracked down in an apartment in Greenwich Village by the FBI, however Seattle police determined that they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with murder.
Muldavin did, however face larceny charges for swindling Emerson’s family and was convicted in 1961; despite being sentenced to fifteen years in prison in March 1962 a judge suspended the term provided that he pay his former in-laws back the money. He is also the main suspect in the homicide of 28-year-old bread truck driver Henry Lawrence ‘Red’ Baird and the disappearance of his girlfriend, seventeen-year-old waitress Barbara Joe Kelley. The two had worked together at a restaurant that was owned by the family of Muldavins first wife, Jo Ellen. Kelley was last seen in Humboldt County, California, on June 17, 1950 when she left to go on a date with her beau. Sans his socks and shoes, Baird’s nude remains were found face down on the beach near Table Bluff the following morning; he had been shot in the back of the head and his clothes were found nearby, neatly folded with Barbara’s tucked underneath (only her stockings and shoes were missing). No trace of Kelley was ever found.
Around 1976 Muldavin moved to Chualar, a small community near Salinas, CA, and according to an article published in The Californian on July 5, 1985, he retired from his position as an executive VP of a silver store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. He then got a volunteer position at the KAZU radio station as a host of a 3-hour weekly call-in show on ‘aging, growing and making transitions.’ It was also reported that he did some work with at-risk youths through the Santa Monica Police Department and worked at a tobacco shop in Carmel.
Police questioned the local mob scene and motorcycle gangs, but nothing ever came of it. In 1981, investigators learned that a woman that strongly resembled Terry was seen with mobster Whitey Bulger around the time that she presumably died. An American organized crime boss , Bulger led the Irish mob group ‘the Winter Hill Gang’ in Somerville, MA, and he was known for removing his victims’ teeth. No evidence has ever been found that officially linked Bulger to Terry, and he was killed in prison in 2018.
A serial killer in Truro, MA named Tony Costa was briefly considered a suspect in the early stages of the investigation, but was quickly eliminated as he died before Terry’s murder on May 12, 1974.
Hadden Clark confessed to the murder of the Lady of the Dunes, stating ‘I could have told the police what her name was, but after they beat the shit out of me, I wasn’t going to tell them shit.’ … ‘This murder is still unsolved and what the police are looking for is in my grandfather’s garden.’ Clark was born on July 1, 1952 and is currently serving two 30-year sentences at Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover, MD. His first sentence is related to the 1986 murder of 6-year-old Michele Lee Dorr, and the second is for 23-year-old Laura Houghteling that took place in 1992. Clark was given an additional ten years for robbery after stealing from a former landlord. Authorities claim that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, which is a condition that may lead one to confess to crimes that they never committed.
When the news broke that the ‘Lady of the Dunes’ had been identified in June 2022 , I found a few people that suspected that she was a victim of Ted Bundy. I mean… the general time frame fits, as he was (very) active in mid-1974. But it was pretty easy to rule him out, as the ‘1992 FBI Bundy Multiagency Team Report’ placed him all over the general Seattle area in July. He was also getting ready to leave for his second attempt at law school and was still in a long-term, fairly committed relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer.
After graduating from high school Ruth’s son Richard went on to attend Central Michigan University, and he retired from General Motors as a Service Engineer in 2015. Her first husband Billy Ray died at the age of 75 on February 22, 2007 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1994 he was the recipient of a liver transplant, and he retired from CSX Railroad after 35 years of employment. Ruth’s dad Johnny died at the age of 71 on November 22, 1981, and her half-sister Vera passed away on February 3, 2017. Her brother James Ray died on Halloween in 2005 in Whitwell, and her sister Johnnie died on August 12, 2010.
Muldavin married for the fifth and final time on October 18, 1975, to Phyllis Georgina Smirle, a well-respected art professor at LA City College that he was with until his death on November 17, 2021. According to his obituary, he died at his home following a lengthy illness and was survived by his wife as well as a ‘sister,’ Joan Towers. A family friend shared with The Independent in November 2023 that Towers was not a blood relation to Muldavin, but the pair affectionately called each other siblings after a short lived romantic relationship turned platonic.
Guy Rockwell Muldavin died at the age of 78 on March 14, 2002 in Salinas, CA and was never held accountable for killing any of his five victims. His wife Phyllis Georgina died at the age of 86 on November 17, 2021 in LA, and his first wife Jo Ellen died just two months before he did in January 2002. Guy and Jo Ellen’s daughter Towers Joy died at the age of 71 in 2021.
* I’ve seen it reported that Ruth was only 13 when she got married but this is incorrect.
** Over the course of my research, this dollar amount was as high as $10,000.
Another Bundy Blog. 