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Jane Doe, “Lady of the Dunes,” Identified after 48 years
FBI identified Ruth Marie Terry as 1974 murder victim
On July 26, 1974, a twelve-year-old girl was walking her dog in the Cape Cod dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when she came across a naked woman she thought was sunbathing. The woman was lying facedown on a beach blanket. When she got closer, she made a realization that made her blood run cold, and she bolted.
The police were called, and they confirmed the woman was deceased. The woman was missing her hands, and her nearly decapitated head was resting on a pair of folded jeans and a blue bandana. It was determined that she had likely been there for two weeks before the discovery of her body, which already gave law enforcement a challenge in identifying her. She would be called the Lady of the Dunes and become Massachusetts’s longest unidentified homicide victim.
She was described as a redhead of athletic build and medium height. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and her toes were painted with pink nail polish. The thing that had led to the biggest hope of someone recognizing was that the Jane Doe had extensive dental work, with multiple gold crowns, which was estimated to have cost upwards of $5000 at the time. It was estimated that she was in her thirties.
