Ruth Marie Terry

Ruth Marie Terry (September 8, 1936 – c. July 1974), also known as Lady of the Dunes, was a formerly unidentified murder victim found on July 26, 1974, in the Race Point Dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, United States.

Ruth Marie Terry was born on September 8, 1936, in a mountainside shack in Whitwell, Tennessee, to Johnny and Eva Terry, the latter of whom died at the age of 23.

In 1957, following a short-lived marriage, Terry left Whitwell to work at the Fisher Body automotive plant in Livonia, Michigan.

In 1958 she gave birth to her son, Richard, but was unable to care for him due to financial difficulties.

She allowed the superintendent of her workplace, Richard Hanchett Sr., to adopt her son in return for him paying off her expenses.

After the adoption process was finalized, Terry left Livonia and moved to California.

Terry reached out to her son in 1972, but he was not ready to meet her due to a drug overdose which left him in a coma for eighteen days.

On February 16, 1974, she married Guy Rockwell Muldavin, an antiques dealer in Reno, Nevada.

Four months before her death, the couple visited her family in Whitwell.

Ruth's grand-niece, Brittanie Novonglosky, later recalled that that Terry "wasn't herself" whenever she was with Muldavin, who exhibited possessive behavior.

The couple then went to Chattanooga to visit Terry's half-brother, Kenneth, and his wife Carole; they later recalled Terry and Muldavin saying they were going to travel the U.S. to look for antiques.

Kenneth also noted that they spoke about visiting Massachusetts as they were leaving.

In the late summer of 1974, Muldavin returned to Tennessee to tell Terry's family that she had gone missing from the couple's California home.

According to her sister-in-law, Jan Terry, he stayed for a short time and simply told them that he didn't know where Terry was.

Terry's brother, James, traveled to California and hired a private investigator to find her.

The investigator told Terry's family that all of her belongings had been sold and that she had left the state of her own will after becoming involved with a religious cult.

In the two decades prior to her identification, Terry was listed as deceased in family obituaries.

Carole theorized that she was in a witness protection program and could not contact her family.

On July 26, 1974, a 12-year-old girl followed a barking dog to the decomposing body of an unidentified woman in the Race Point Dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The remains were just yards away from a road and had a significant amount of insect activity.

Two sets of footprints led to the body, and tire tracks were found 50 yd from the scene.

The woman may have died two weeks beforehand.

The victim was lying face-down on half of a beach blanket.

There was no sign of a struggle; police theorized she either knew her killer or had been asleep when she died.

A blue bandanna and pair of Wrangler jeans were under her head.

She had long auburn or red hair pulled back into a ponytail by a gold-flecked elastic band.

Her toenails were painted pink.

Police determined the woman was approximately 5 ft tall (initially believed to have been 5 ft), weighed 145 lb, and had an athletic build.

She also had expensive dental work – including crowns – worth between $5,000 and $10,000, and several of her teeth had been removed.

Both hands and one forearm were missing.

Most sources say she was between 25 and 40 years old.

However, she could have been as young as 20 or as old as 49.

The woman was nearly decapitated, possibly from strangulation; one side of her head had been crushed possibly with a military-type entrenching tool.

This head injury was the cause of death.

There were also signs of sexual assault, likely postmortem.

Some investigators believe that the missing teeth, hands and forearm indicate the killer wanted to hide either the victim's identity or their own.

The woman was buried in October 1974 after the case went cold.

Her body was exhumed in 1980, 2000 and 2013 in efforts to identify her.

On October 31, 2022, the FBI field office in Boston announced that Terry had been officially identified.

Her husband, Guy Muldavin, was officially named as her killer on August 28, 2023.