American Monsters: Guy Rockwell Muldavin

0:00 Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now. Hello everyone, and welcome to Kind of Murdery, a true crime podcast that's mostly about murder and always about the strange and compelling stories that arise when the path less traveled twists to darkness and those who walk its shadows surrender to violence and corruption. I'm your host, Zevan Odelberg. We have a perilous journey ahead, so thank you for lending me your courage and good company.

0:42 The murdered woman in today's story was found in the sand dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, in July of nineteen seventy four. Her hands were severed so that fingerprints could not identify her, and her skull was pulverized almost to the point of decapitation. Catastrophe. Head injury was determined to be the cause of death, and authorities believed that the unidentified woman had been killed approximately three weeks before she was found. The famous and infamous story that I'm about to tell, the tragic tale of an unsolved Massachusetts murder, somewhat remarkably like many stories I've told before, does in fact tie into my hometown of Humboldt County, California.

1:24 Who would have thought. I suppose the long, dark tendrils of unforgivable violence have a way of linking murdery places together. Today's story is ripped from the headlines a one hundred percent current mystery, and I should mention that the sources for this story are included in the show notes, and that four articles in particular were especially helpful in putting this episode together. They are two sf Gate articles by Katie Dowd published on October thirty first, twenty twenty two, and November two, twenty twenty two, respectively, and a masslive dot com article by Ryan Mancini published on November fourth, as well as an article from People Magazine by Christine Pelisek published in August of twenty eighteen.

2:10 In the interest of story flow, I may not always give real time attribution for everything cited, but those are my key sources, and again the links are in the show notes, so feel free to check out the articles yourself. My hat's off to misdoubt mister Mancini and miss Pelisek for their excellent work. All right, I'm ready to go, and if you are too, then I suggest that you put your personal items underneath the seat in front of you, stow your carry on in the overhead compartment. Let go of the cares of the day, but make sure your seat belt is fastened.

2:42 There's turbulence expected a head. The Lady of the Dunes starts now. For almost half a century, Ruth Marie D. Terry was a nationally famous Jane Doe who lost her life as the result of a wretched crime committed by a relentlessly evil chameleon of a murderer. Ruth, known for nearly five decades as the Lady of the Doones, the anonymous victim of an unsolved Cape cod Massachusetts murder, was finally identified by the FBI barely one week ago in October of twenty twenty two. Before we dive beneath the deep dark waters of this story, a brief but firm reminder, although the Lady of the Doone's story cannot be told without also telling the story of her murderer, this is Ruth Marie Terry's story.

3:41 She is the voiceless to whom we give voice. She is the human who deserves to be remembered. It's her family, friends and loved ones who deserve our prayers, our support, and our empathy. This is Ruth Marie Terry's story. It is not, and should never be, her killers story. I'm sure we can all agree on that, So let's get started. As I mentioned at the top, the Lady of the Doones was found in the sand dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, in July of nineteen seventy four. Her hands were severed so that fingerprints could not identify her.

4:17 Her skull was pulverized, and catastrophic head injury was the cause of death. They believed she had been killed three weeks earlier. Her body was never identified until now. That is this is that story. In twenty ten, local Cape Cod authorities exhumed the Lady of the Doones and used computer imaging to create a composite sketch of her face. The discovery of the real person who belonged to that composite begins in an unexpected place, inside the sharp mind of horror writer Joe Hill, the son of the legendary Stephen King and a successful author in his own right, Hill became fascinated by the story of the Lady of the Dunes in twenty fifteen, after reading about her in a book entitled The Skeleton Crew, How amateur sleuths are solving America's coldest cases.

5:11 As Hill detailed in his now famous blog post, he pulled up the composite sketch of the Lady of the Dunes and suddenly suspected he had seen her before. Specifically, he'd seen her in the legendary seventies summer horror blockbuster movie Jaws, about a murderous man eating shark. I think we're all familiar. You see, there was an extra in the Martha's Vineyard beach scene that Hill thought bore a striking resemblance to the Lady of the Dunes. He wrote about his theory, which he openly admits is quote out there on his blog in twenty fifteen, and it recently wound up on Wondery's Inside Jaws, a podcast about the making of the film.

5:53 And sure, super blown up images of an extra don't make a theory, but there are some key details of about the production schedule of Jaws, and a few facts that we do know about the Lady of the Dunes that, when put together with the striking resemblance, and as Hill points out, the lady was alive in June during the filming, and her body was found in Provincetown, not too far from Martha's vineyard. And suddenly we have a far out theory that maybe holds a little weight. What if? Hill wrote in twenty fifteen, the Ghost of the Lady of the Dunes Haunts Jaws.

6:27 Hill's suspicions were brought to the attention of the FBI, and national interest in the Lady's case was reignited. Even though Hill himself had described the theory as out there, was he in fact on to something. Was it possible that the Lady's mysterious identity had been in front of millions of movie watching eyes for all these years, just waiting to be discovered. The story of the Lady of the Dunes begins nearly fifty years ago, in the summer of nineteen seventy four, when, on July twenty sixth, a girl walking her dog along the Race Point Dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, stumbled onto what she initially thought was a dead animal.

7:10 But it was not an animal. It was a woman who had been dead for perhaps several weeks. When police arrived, they found a nightmarish scene. The woman was nearly decapitated, with her hands and some teeth missing, likely an intentional move by her murderer to stymy identification of the body, a move that, as we now know, was successful for almost half a century. Investigators guessed that she was between twenty five and forty years old, but they had little else besides her physical description to go off of.

7:48 She had long, auburn hair pulled into a ponytail, blue wrangler jeans, a blue bandana, and was about five foot six. She had been left face down on a beach blanket, and there was no sign of a struggle, so she must have been attacked while napping or by someone she knew. Her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Although the grizzly murder scene was huge news in Cape cod no one came forward with the woman's identity. She was dubbed the Lady of the Doones, and as years turned to decades, she became massachusetts longest tenured unidentified murder victim.

8:27 That all changed last week when the Lady of the Dunes was identified by newly available DNA evidence. As the body of Ruth Marie Terry and knowledge of the Lady's identity unlocked for investigators, journalists, and true crime audiences not only Ruth's story, but the mystery behind the Lady of the Dune's murder and probably the identity of her alleged brutish cameleon killer, which will arrive at later. For now, this is the Lady's story. This is Ruth Marie Terry's story, and that is how it should be.

9:05 Her story began in nineteen thirty six in rural Marion County, Tennessee, when she was born to Johnny Terry and Eva Lois Keener. Following Ruth's first birthday, her mother, Eva died of epilepsy. When Ruth was twenty, she married Korean War veteran Billy Ray Smith, and it seems that she then left Tennessee for good sometime after the wedding. The FBI has said Terry has ties to Michigan, California, and Massachusetts, although specific cities were not named. It isn't clear if Terry and Smith had any children, but FBI's special agent Joe Bonavalanta referred to Terry as a wife and mother in Monday's press conference.

9:50 It's unclear exactly how long Ruth Terry's marriage to Billy Ray Smith lasted, but we know that Terry and Smith were divorced at some point because because just a few months before her murder, Ruth Terry married Guy Rockwell Moldovin. Mouldovin seems to have been a persistent jack of all trades, impresario, cultish personality, and all around sleeves bag. He was an actor and a DJ in California, an antiques dealer in Seattle, and a quote bunco artist and quote again great lover everywhere he went.

10:27 The New York Daily News reported that he had three wives and many sweethearts. By nineteen sixty, he was known around Greenwich Village, New York for his nightly soares with beat nicks, art lovers, celebrities, and celebrity hunters, all bound together by Muldevin's magnetism and offbeat philosophy, and as is often the final scathing injustice in murder cases, when the victim's life is tragically cut short, their story is stolen from them and appropriated by their killers or alleged killers, whom we often know more about simply because they lived longer.

11:07 Sadly, the lady of the Doones story, even though we now know she is Ruth Marie Terry, is no different than most in this regard. And this is the point, the blood boiling point in the tale, when, no matter how much it might enrage us, Ruth's story is appropriated by the man who was her husband for just three short months before her murder. That man, as previously stated, was Guy Rockwell Moldovin born on October twenty sixth, nineteen twenty three, in Santa Fe. Moldovin married several times between the nineteen forties and the nineteen sixties prior to his marriage to Terry in nineteen seventy four, three months before her body was discovered near Race Point Ranger Station in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

11:59 Maldevin's name first appeared in the news in nineteen sixty when, while living in Seattle with his then wife and stepdaughter, Manzanita Merns and Dolores Anne, running an antique shop, both women suddenly disappeared. According to s F. Gait, Muldovin fled, and the police searched his home, finding pieces of human flesh in a septic tank without any DNA testing. It was assumed, but never confirmed, that those were the remains of the missing women. A bulletin issued by detectives when Muldovin was wanted for grand larceny said the investigation definitely indicates subject is responsible for a double murder.

12:39 The Boston Globe reported that after dyeing his hair red and receiving a nose straightening operation under the name Michael Strong, police arrested Mouldovin for unlawful flight to avoid testifying to the mutilation of human remains back in Seattle, but Mouldovin denied killing his former wife and stepdaughter without evidence. Seattle prosecutors dropped the unlawful flight charge. After the nineteen sixty manhunt made Moldevin an infamous figure across the nation. Investigators in Humboldt County That's where I'm from, probed him as a suspect in the nineteen fifty murder of truck driver Henry Baird and his teenage girlfriend, Barbara Kelly at the Table Bluff Overlook.

13:23 A deputy in the sheriff's office told the Eureka Humboldt Standard that Mouldovin had been a resident of Fortuna, but was believed to have left the area several weeks before the Table Bluff mystery occurred. At some point, after becoming nationally famous as the alleged murderer of his wife and daughter in Seattle and following the unsuccessful manhunt and the dropping of charges, Muldevin moved to Reno, Nevada, where he married Terry Marie Vezina, which, according to The Californian, was another name for Ruth Marie Terry.

14:00 After Terry's death, Muldovin appeared again in California. The Californian would write a profile on him when he gained a cult following as a result of his popular radio program Take to Me on Kazu in Pacific Grove in the Monterey Bay area region, calling himself a quote Devil's advocate for former Governor Jerry Brown's nineteen eighty presidential campaign, Muldovin told The Californian in nineteen eighty five that he had retired from working as the executive vice president in a luxury shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

14:38 In the story, Mouldovin claimed to have worked with youth through the Santa Monica Police Department and had once been told that the only job unemployment agency could find for him was as a Santa Claus at Macy's. But judging by his callers, he's attracted an audience both young and old. The profile said about his radio show. Branching out from Topics, which focused on old people, Moldovin has introduced programs dealing with homosexuality, the erosion of culture, and his belief that killing has become a habit.

15:12 When Mouldovin described killing as a habit, he was perhaps being far more introspective and simultaneously forthcoming, as well as probably or at least allegedly self incriminating, than his audience could possibly have imagined. After all, authorities already believed that he had killed his wife in Seattle as well as his stepdaughter, and it now appears more than likely that he is the murderer of the Lady of the Dunes. So indeed, that supposed larger cultural observation could in fact have been a form of confession, because for Moldovin, killing was definitely allegedly a habit.

15:58 Moldavin died in Selinas, California, on March fourteen, two thousand and two, with his obituary appearing in The Californian. It said he was survived by his wife, Phyllis and sister Joan Towers. Massachusetts State Police said on Wednesday that they are actively seeking information from the public about Moldovin as part of their investigation into Terry's murder. So in discovering the identity of the Lady of the Doones, it seems that investigators have probably uncovered the identity of her alleged killer, Guy Rockwell Moldovin, who, in a final twist of the knife of fate, appears to have also been, as I've already mentioned, the alleged multiple murderer of his previous wife and daughter in Seattle, as well as of the Lady of the Doones.

16:50 And despite a life crammed to the brim with iniquity, crime, abuse, and alleged at least triple murder, Mouldavin was left for to marry again and die of natural causes at the age of seventy nine in two thousand and two. And look, I know I'm using a lot of qualifiers here, but this case is deeply, deeply infuriating because, of course, in nineteen seventy four they didn't have the instant communication, the instant access to information, the networking of systems, modern DNA, modern forensics. They didn't have any of that.

17:29 But here's the thing, right, when a woman disappears or dies, wants the conventional wisdom the husband did it, right, It's always the husband. Of course, it's not always the husband, but that's where your mind goes right away. And sure enough, just three months after marrying Moldoven, Ruth Marie Terry was murdered Moldovin, who in nineteen sixty was nationally famous as a murder suspect whom the police presumed did it but couldn't prove without modern DNA. So a woman marries a nationally famous murder suspect, then disappears, and somehow he's never convicted or even indicted for the crime.

18:10 And look, I know there's some circular logic here, right, because they weren't able to bring Muldovin into the picture until Ruth Marie Terry's body was identified by modern DNA practices just a week ago. So sure, it's easy to say it all looks obvious now, But here's the thing that really upsets me. Had there been any suspicion surrounding Ruth Marie. Just a cursory look into her brand new husband's background would have revealed to the police that he'd already been a murder suspect and probably would have led to them doggedly investigating him until something cracked.

18:48 But the FBI has stated has stated last week that there's no evidence or record that Ruth Marie was ever reported missing. So sure her body wasn't identified, so she couldn't be connected to Moldovin, but she quite clearly disappeared three months after marrying a new guy, but was never reported missing. That someone could be so alone in life that no one even notices they're gone, that is a tragedy all its own. Please do join me this coming Thursday, November tenth for another kind of murdery story.

19:24 Thank you so much for being here and helping me to find a pathway through the darkness. I'ms Evan Oldleberg and this has been The Lady of the Dunes. Thank you for listening to kind of Murdery. I hope if you haven't enjoyed The Lady of the Dunes, you've at least been absorbed by it by the drama and the tragedy of it. I appreciate you being here. I'ms Evan Oldleberg and this has been kind of murdery. See you. On Thursday, a Dutch peas repeated the lat