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. 