Nearly half a century later, the FBI and the American justice system have managed to identify and give a name to a woman who was discovered killed, with her hands severed, on a beach on the east coast of the United States in 1974 , and whose killer has never been found.
The one who became the mysterious “Lady of the Dunes” has been identified as Ruth Marie Terry, a woman from the state of Tennessee who was 37 at the time of her death, US federal police announced at a conference of press near Boston, Massachusetts.
A 'horrendous murder'
"Ruth was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a wife, a mother
," Boston-area FBI Special Agent Joe Bonavolonta said, asking anyone who had
"any information"
about the case. report it to the authorities.
The FBI released a wanted poster with four vintage photos of the victim in black and white or sepia tone.
“We are also aware that if we have identified Ruth as the victim of this horrific murder, it does not relieve the pain of her family”
, which was warned a little earlier, he added.
For nearly 50 years, investigators have followed the trail of several suspects, without putting a name on the killer.
Ruth Marie Terry was found dead on July 26, 1974, her naked body lying in the dunes on a beach in Provincetown on Cape Cod, a strip of land in the Atlantic Ocean popular with summer visitors.
According to investigations at the time, she had been killed with a blow to the head, probably several weeks earlier.
Her hands were missing,
"presumably severed by her killer so that she could not be identified by her fingerprints, and her head was almost severed from the body"
, added Joe Bonavolonta.
No weapon was found near the victim.
According to the FBI, the authorities had failed to identify the victim despite neighborhood surveys, the study of
"thousands"
of missing person files, techniques of
"facial reconstruction"
and composite portraits, and several exhumations of the body.
Finally, it is thanks to the techniques known as genetic genealogy, which combines DNA and genealogical research, that the FBI put an end to the mystery.