Cops seek info about Lady of the Dunes’ late husband, a suspect in another wife’s death

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday

Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

The Lady of the Dunes, a 1974 murder victim finally identified this week as a Tennessee woman named Ruth Marie Terry, got married months before her death to a now-deceased man, authorities say. That man was reportedly questioned in the death of another of his many wives.

Guy Rockwell Muldavin, born in 1923, was known by a few names including Raoul Guy Rockwell and Guy Muldavin Rockwell, according to a Wednesday press release from the Massachusetts State Police, Cape & Islands District Attorney’s Office and the Provincetown Police Department.

Ms Terry, who was 37 at the time of her death, may have also gone by other names, according to the release. These include Teri Marie Vizina, Terry M. Vizina and Teri Shannon.

She was found dead on the beach near Provincetown, Cape Cod in July 1976, her body mutilated beyond recognition. In death, she earned the moniker The Lady of the Dunes for nearly 50 years before the FBI on Monday announced they had identified the victim using forensic genealogy.

Her body had been exhumed several times over the years in unsuccessful attempts to figure out who the Lady of the Dunes might really be.

When the FBI announced her name on Monday, they said Ms Terry had known connections to California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Tennessee.

Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said on Wednesday that the victim and Muldavin had a known “association between the two in other states at another time ... Now we are doing our best to try to put the two of the together in Massachusetts and specifically Provincetown,” the Cape Cod Times reported.

This isn’t the first time Muldavin has made national headlines in connection with a gruesome murder.

In 1960, he was arrested for questioning following the discovery of bits of flesh in the septic tank of his former Seattle home. The bits were believed to be the mutilated remains of his missing ex-wife and her 18-year-old daughter.

Called a “once wealthy antique dealer” by UPI at the time, Muldavin was arrested in New York City for questioning while also “wanted by Seattle police on charge of fraudulently obtaining $l0,000 from the stepmother of his present wife, the former Evelyn Emerson, on the pretense of using the money to buy antiques in Canada.”

The victim, Manzanita Mearns, was his second wife. Per media reports from that time, he was not jailed for her murder or that of her daughter, Dolores. Muldavin went on to marry Ms Terry in the months before her summer 1974 killing, investigators say, but the two women were among at least five wives.

Muldavin died in 2002, according to public records. At the time, he was married to a woman named Phyllis, who died last year.

Massachusetts State Police Colonel Chris Mason said on Monday that the Lady of the Dunes case still haunts “generations” of officers involved and extended his condolences to the loved ones of Ms Terry’s who’d been similarly without answers for years.

“We know Ruth had family and friends who loved her,” he said following the announcement of her identity. “And we are aware that this development has not been an easy one for them. So we keep them in our thoughts today during this difficult time. Certainly, during the years that they were in contact with her, they never envisioned the outcome for the child, the teenage girl, the young woman they knew, loved and cared about. We hope today’s announcement helps shed some light on the many questions they have had these many years, and marks another step towards answering more of them.”

Mr Mason said that, “almost half a century since her own voice was silenced in the most horrible of ways, we focus our work entirely on determining what Ruth Marie Terry did in life; on what led her to the easternmost point of our state, to the dunes of Provincetown.”