‘Lady of the Dunes’, 1974 brutal murder victim identified by FBI

After almost half a century, the FBI has identified the victim of a gruesome murder that shocked the American public. The woman’s body was found in 1974 on a beach in Massachusetts, on the east coast of the USA. The victim’s hands had been amputated. The killer was never found.

The mysterious one “Lady of the Dunes” – as she was called by reports at the time – was Ruth Marie Terry, a Tennessee woman who was 37 years old when she was killed, the FBI announced today at a news conference in Massachusetts.

“Ruth was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a wife, a mother,” said Joe Bonavolonda, an FBI official in Boston, releasing four images of the victim and urging anyone with information about the case to contact authorities.

“We know that the recognition of Ruth (…) will not ease the pain of her family”, which had been duly informed – as he clarified – before the press conference. For nearly 50 years, authorities have been on the trail of numerous suspects, but never released a name.

Ruth Marie Terry was found dead on July 26, 1974 on a dune beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She was lying naked on a beach towel. Her hands had been mutilated, “apparently by her killer so that (the victim) could not be identified by fingerprints,” according to Bonavolonda. No weapon was found on the spot, he added.

“The left side of her skull had suffered a crushing fracture,” he said, confirming reports at the time that she had been killed by a blow to the head, likely several weeks before the body was discovered.

It took 50 years for the FBI to solve the mystery of the identity of the “Lady of the Dunes,” after studying thousands of missing person files, exhuming the body, DNA testing combined with genealogical research, and computer-aided reconstruction of facial features. computer.

RES-EMP

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