In July 1974, a young girl was walking her dog through the Race Point Dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was a beautiful summer day. Then she saw it. What she initially thought was a dead animal turned out to be the mutilated body of a woman. This started the longest-running unidentified person case in the history of the state. For decades, she was known only as the Lady of the Dunes.
Her hands were gone. Her head was nearly severed. Several teeth had been pulled out. It was a scene designed to ensure she would never be named. And for nearly fifty years, the killer won. The case became a magnet for urban legends, true crime fanatics, and even some wild theories involving Hollywood blockbusters. But the truth, when it finally arrived in late 2022, was far more domestic and tragic than the ghost stories suggested.
Who Was Ruth Marie Terry?
The Lady of the Dunes was finally identified as Ruth Marie Terry. She was 37 at the time of her death. She wasn't a local. She was a daughter, a sister, and a mother from Tennessee. Honestly, the identification felt like a gut punch to those who had followed the case for decades, mostly because her name had been sitting in records all along while her body lay in a nameless grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery.
Ruth grew up in a small town called Whitwell. People who knew her described her as vivacious. She had personality. In the late 1950s, she had a son, but due to the difficult circumstances of her life at the time, he was adopted by another family. She spent much of her life traveling—moving between Tennessee, Michigan, and California.
Then she met Guy Muldavin.
If you look into Muldavin’s history, it's a rabbit hole of red flags. He was an antiques dealer. He was charismatic. He was also a prime suspect in the 1960 disappearance and mutilation of his previous wife and stepdaughter in Seattle. Somehow, he managed to avoid conviction for those deaths. By the time he met Ruth in the early 70s, he was using aliases. They married in February 1974. A few months later, Ruth Marie Terry disappeared.
The Brutal Reality of the 1974 Discovery
When the body was first found, the Provincetown Police Department was stumped. The sheer level of violence was shocking. The killer hadn't just murdered her; they had tried to erase her identity. By removing the hands, the killer ensured no fingerprints could be taken. By removing teeth, they blocked dental record comparisons—which was the gold standard for identification in the 70s.
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The victim was lying on a beach blanket. Her head rested on a folded pair of Wrangler jeans. There was no sign of a struggle. Police believe she was killed elsewhere and moved to the dunes, or she was asleep when the attack happened.
Investigators struggled. They looked at missing persons reports across New England. Nothing fit. They reconstructed her face using clay models. They exhaled her body multiple times—once in 1980, again in 2000, and again in 2013—hoping that new technology would catch up to the crime.
The Spielberg Connection: A Wild Theory
You can't talk about the Lady of the Dunes without mentioning Joe Hill. Yes, the horror novelist and son of Stephen King. In 2015, Hill was watching the 40th-anniversary screening of Jaws. He noticed an extra in a crowd scene filmed in Martha’s Vineyard in 1974. The woman was wearing a blue bandana and jeans, similar to the clothing found with the body.
Hill's theory went viral. It was the kind of detail that "Discover" feeds love. People wanted it to be true. It added a layer of cinematic eerie-ness to the tragedy. If she was an extra in Jaws, surely someone from the production would remember her?
But the FBI didn't find the link. While the woman in the movie looked remarkably like the sketches of the victim, there was never any concrete proof. Ultimately, the identification of Ruth Marie Terry through Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) proved that while the Jaws theory was fascinating, it was a distraction from the grim reality of domestic violence.
How Forensic Science Broke the Case
The FBI’s Boston Field Office didn't give up. They used the same technology that caught the Golden State Killer. Basically, they took degraded DNA from the victim’s remains and uploaded it to public databases like GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA.
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They weren't looking for a direct match. They were looking for cousins.
When you share enough DNA with someone, genealogists can build a family tree backward to find a common ancestor and then forward to find missing branches. In October 2022, the FBI announced they had a positive match. The Lady of the Dunes had her name back.
The process of IGG is complex. It requires:
- Extraction of SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) data.
- Comparison against millions of profiles.
- Traditional "boots on the ground" detective work to verify the lineage.
The lead investigator on the case, Joseph Bonavolonta, noted that this was a monumental shift in how cold cases are handled in Massachusetts. It took 48 years, but the science finally outran the killer's attempts to hide the truth.
The Primary Suspect: Guy Rockwell Muldavin
Once Ruth was identified, the focus immediately shifted to her husband. Guy Muldavin died in 2002, so he will never stand trial. It’s frustrating. It’s a common theme in these long-term cold cases—the perpetrator often outlives the mystery only to die before the handcuffs can click.
Muldavin was a "con man" according to those who knew him. He had a history of marrying women and then disappearing when their money did. When Ruth's family asked where she was after 1974, he told them different stories. He told some they had a falling out. He told others she had joined a cult. Because Ruth was an adult and had a history of moving around, her family didn't immediately report her missing to the police in a way that connected her to the body in Provincetown. This is how people fall through the cracks.
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Why This Case Still Matters
The Lady of the Dunes isn't just a "true crime" story. It’s a lesson in the failures of the past and the possibilities of the future.
For years, people speculated she was a victim of the Irish Mob or Whitey Bulger. People thought she was a runaway. The reality was much more common: she was a woman killed by a man who claimed to love her. By focusing on the "mystery" and the "spectacle" of the dunes, the human element was lost for half a century.
What's really interesting is how Provincetown treated her. The town adopted her. They kept her grave decorated. They never forgot. Even though she wasn't from there, she became a part of the town’s history.
Moving Forward: Actionable Insights for Cold Case Advocacy
If you're interested in cold cases or want to help prevent others from becoming "unidentified" for 50 years, there are actual steps you can take.
- Upload Your DNA: If you have done a test through Ancestry or 23andMe, you can download your raw data and upload it to GEDmatch. Make sure to "opt-in" to law enforcement searches. This is the only way victims like Ruth Marie Terry are identified. Without a large enough database of relatives, the science doesn't work.
- Check NamUs: The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) is a public clearinghouse. If you have a relative who went missing decades ago, ensure their profile is updated with photos, dental records, and DNA if available.
- Support Local Cold Case Units: Many police departments lack the funding for the expensive lab work required for genetic genealogy. Advocacy groups like the DNA Doe Project rely on donations to fund these tests for smaller jurisdictions.
Ruth Marie Terry is no longer a ghost in the sand. She’s a reminder that no matter how hard someone tries to erase a life, the truth has a way of surfacing. The hands were gone, the teeth were gone, and the killer was long dead, but the DNA remained. It's a small bit of justice, but for her family in Tennessee, it's the only peace they've had since 1974.
To stay informed on similar cases, you should monitor the FBI’s ViCAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) alerts. They frequently update profiles of unidentified remains as new genetic leads emerge. Awareness is often the first step toward a match.