Authorities in Massachusetts on Monday concluded a lady whose mutilated physique was found on Cape Cod practically 50 years in the past was killed by her husband.
The announcement by the Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois Monday brings to an in depth one of many state’s most well-known chilly instances. It was solely in October that officers introduced that they had recognized the girl, often known as the “Lady of the Dunes,” as Ruth Marie Terry of Tennessee. She was 37 when she was killed in 1974 by what authorities concluded was blunt drive trauma to the cranium.
Since then, the main target has turned to Terry’s late husband, Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who had married her a couple of months earlier than she disappeared. He was additionally a primary suspect within the demise of one other one in every of his wives and a stepdaughter in Seattle within the Nineteen Sixties. Muldavin died in 2002.
After they married, state police realized that the couple had traveled to Tennessee to go to her household. “When Mr. Muldavin returned from that trip, he was driving what was believed to be Ms. Terry’s vehicle and indicated to witnesses that Ms. Terry had passed away,” Galibois stated in a press release. “Ms. Terry was never seen by her family again.”
Based on the investigation into Terry’s demise, authorities concluded Muldavin was the killer. They didn’t present any extra info on what was uncovered in the course of the investigation.
The demise of the “Lady of the Dunes” was one of the vital enduring and irritating homicide mysteries in Massachusetts.
A younger woman out for a stroll discovered the physique within the dunes in Provincetown in July 1974. The girl was bare on a seashore blanket together with her fingers severed – so she couldn’t be recognized by her fingerprints, officers stated. Her cranium was crushed and he or she was practically decapitated. The reason behind demise was decided to be a blow to the pinnacle and authorities consider she was killed a number of weeks earlier than her physique was discovered.
Joseph Bonavolonta, particular agent accountable for the FBI’s Boston division, stated at information convention in October that Terry, who was initially from Tennessee, was recognized utilizing investigative family tree, using DNA evaluation together with conventional family tree analysis and historic information.
Terry, whose aliases included Teri Marie Vizina, Terry M. Vizina and Teri Shannon, additionally had ties to Michigan and California, authorities stated.
She was the oldest unidentified murder sufferer in Massachusetts. Authorities for many years tried to determine her and her killer by exhuming her stays, performing clay mannequin facial reconstruction, and releasing age-regression drawings of her face.
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