Original subtitles

The oldest unidentified homicide victim

in Massachusetts...

This is a legendary case.

Over the decades, there have been many theories

about what could've happened to her.

Why would you throw away the evidence to an unsolved murder?

Anything that could lead to the identification

of the Lady of the Dunes was gonna be met

with resistance from the top.

All my life, I've always wondered who my mom was.

She is Ruth Marie Terry.

We find out who the victim is, and then it's like,

okay, now who killed her?

She met this guy.

Shortly after that, they got married.

Nobody knew anything about the guy.

Then she vanishes.

This table here is just all the stuff I've been, you know,

ever since I found out about my mom,

about Ruth, I started gathering all,

any information I would get, you know.

These pictures here and the one here,

she's like 15, 16-years-old.

This shot here, you can really see resemblance there of me

and her, especially when I smile, you know.

That's where I got that beautiful smile from.

This is this is the one

that when her and Guy got married.

After, you know, Ruth and Guy went to Tennessee

and met the family, then they left.

They really never heard from Ruth again.

It was difficult

because her family had no idea about his past.

Guy Muldavin, according to the files that I read,

he was born in New York City.

Guy Muldavin was adopted.

His father had issues with alcohol and mental illness.

Guy moved with his mother to the state of New Mexico.

Years later, his dad purchased land

and properties in Provincetown.

Around that time,

Guy taught at some sort of acting academy,

and that's where he met his first wife, Jo Ellen Loop,

and then she became pregnant

and eventually ended up living in Seattle.

At that point, Guy had created a business

for himself of selling antiques.

He was an antiquity dealer,

and, you know, he had a silver tongue.

He seemed to be a womanizer.

There were stories that, you know,

he liked to entertain women in the antique shop after hours.

He drew women to him, like as if he was this, you know,

Rudolf Valentino kind of character.

But what made part of this difficult for us

also is that Guy Muldavin had so many aliases.

Some are the official ones, some are made-up names.

Guy Muldavin. Guy Rockwell.

And there was Raoul Rockwell.

There was Raoul Guy Rockwell.

- Raoul Muldavin. - Guy Rockwell Muldavin.

And he switched those three around multiple times.

He just had so many aliases.

He taught Ruth how to use fake names.

We will never know completely who Guy was.

He was married for about a decade to Jo Ellen Loop.

That marriage ends, and very,

very quickly, he marries another woman.

Manzanita Mearns was 40-years-old.

Manzanita met Guy Rockwell in the spring of 1955

in his antique store.

She and her 18-year-old daughter, Dolores,

moved to Seattle to live with him.

In 2019, I started working on the case

of Manzanita and Dolores.

At the time, I'd not heard of the Lady of Dunes.

The story of Manzanita Rockwell and Dolores Mearns

unfolded in a strange manner.

In April of 1960, Guy Rockwell approached an attorney and said,

"My wife Manzanita abandoned me.

I need a divorce."

He was granted the divorce within three months

because she never showed up to contest the divorce.

And just days later, he marries Evelyn.

July 29, 1960, Guy Rockwell marries Evelyn Emerson,

whom he had been dating for about four months.

The Emersons were an established family.

Guy Rockwell came to Evelyn's family

and had a plan to make money with his antique dealings.

He said he could travel to Canada

and purchase $8,000 in antiques,

bring them back over the border, and sell them for $16,000,

and he was in the process of raising funds.

In order to avoid paying customs and taxes,

he was going to take the antiques back

to the United States in a speedboat by night,

smuggling merchandise, you know, by the light of the moon.

The Emersons thought this was a fantastic idea,

and Evelyn Emerson's mother wrote Guy Rockwell a check.

August 3, 1960, Guy Rockwell calls Evelyn Emerson, tells her,

"I'm at the airport, I'm on a flight to Vancouver tonight.

Be in touch soon."

That was the last time they hear from him.

So, seven days goes by, and they contact their attorney.

The attorney contacts the police department,

said, "I want to report a missing person

who stole my client's money."

Detectives got Guy Rockwell charge with larceny.

That next day, an arrest warrant was issued for him.

He abandoned Evelyn Emerson and took off with $8,000

and told this crazy story about going to Canada.

Just a constant charade of lies, mis-truths, different stories.

It's never-ending.

It's like he was incapable of telling the same story twice.

Meanwhile, no one had heard from Manzanita or Dolores

in all this time.

About four months, and there was no sign of them.

Detectives, as they were collecting information

regarding his background,

they of course immediately heard about Manzanita and Dolores.

Manzanita had two other children

who lived with her ex-husband in Canada.

So, they contacted Manzanita's ex-husband and Dolores'

father, William Mearns.

And William Mearns told the investigators

that he had not heard from Manzanita

since March 12th of 1960.

That was very strange because she would come see her

other two children every month.

She wouldn't miss.

At first it was just, "They're gone.

Where are they?"

But then Seattle police began finding evidence

of a horrific crime.

Interview, take one, marker.

My name is Christina Mearns.

Manzanita Mearns was my grandmother,

and Dolores Mearns was my aunt.

My grandfather, William, and my grandmother, Manzanita,

they had three children, and she chose to divorce my grandfather

and married Raoul Guy Rockwell.

My grandmother couldn't take the girls

that were younger because they're not of age.

Dolores made that choice to go when she graduated

and then started college in Seattle.

My mother and my aunt

stayed with my grandfather in Vancouver.

My aunt remembers meeting Guy Rockwell a few times.

She doesn't remember him being loving.

Very cold and distant.

I don't think he ever tried to have conversations

with the other kids.

My mom and my aunt both have talked about knowing

of something going wrong with my grandmother, Manzanita.

Because she came from Seattle to Vancouver like clockwork,

and all a sudden, one month she didn't show up.

She'd never not shown up before.

When three weeks or so went by,

William Mearns called Guy Rockwell on the phone

and said, "Let me talk to Manzanita," and Guy Rockwell

told William Mearns, "She and Dolores left,

I don't know where they went."

The second week of August 1960,

detectives talked to William Mearns.

This isn't the type of family circumstance

that you would typically see people just turn their back on.

So, detectives were having to backtrack

to the first weekend of April to try

and figure out what was going on.

Dolores Mearns attended her English 101 class

on Friday, April 1st,

and then she didn't come to school on Monday.

Manzanita worked as a clerk

at the Seattle Trust and Savings Bank downtown.

She worked on Friday, April 1st, and again, like Dolores,

did not show up on Monday.

Several months have gone by.

No one's heard from Manzanita.

No one's heard from Dolores.

The only person who said that Manzanita and Dolores

just ran away was Guy Rockwell.

And Guy Rockwell goes from getting granted a divorce,

to remarrying and then disappearing from his new wife

within the same seven-day period, just months

after Manzanita and Dolores disappeared.

Meanwhile Guy's neighbor started to smell this scent.

Guy had told his neighbor that it was spoiled crab

that he had thrown away and it was just the smell of that.

So, detectives became worried

that something more sinister had happened

to Manzanita and Dolores.

August 26, 1960,

the police went to Guy Rockwell's residence,

who now was still missing.

This was his residence, and this was his antique shop.

They recognized that the septic tank

had been cemented over recently.

And over the next few days,

they picked out pieces of human remains.

Body parts cut up, the bones were sawed.

Some of the hair was burnt.

Slowly the investigators were able to move upstairs

into the attic area.

And then they stumbled

upon what clearly was a gruesome crime scene.

They find teeth, they find blood.

It was clear to the coroner that the body parts

belonged to a young woman around the age of 18-years-old.

The initial analysis identified a blood type of O,

which ended up being consistent with both Manzanita and Dolores.

It became front page news.

My mother and aunt,

all of their friends at school were told,

don't talk to these girls anymore.

Divorce wasn't a common thing at that time.

But then the murders happening,

most families were terrified of being involved with it.

In September 1960, there was tremendous speculation

that Guy Rockwell fled the country.

So, at this point,

detectives received information from eastern Washington.

Something troubled state police detectives in a river.

Two human legs were recovered in the Colombia River

in eastern Washington.

The legs had unique characteristics.

But, in 1960, there is no DNA.

Detectives started the process of trying to pin down details

about Manzanita from a physical standpoint.

To identify remains,

you need someone personally identified by a family member.

They were able to say, "Hey, Mr. Mearns,

tell me about your ex-wife's feet,"

and they got the same description from

both William Mearns and from Manzanita's adult sister.

They thought that these were the body parts

of my grandmother.

Manzanita Rockwell and her daughter, Dolores Mearns,

went missing in April of 1960.

In their efforts to locate Rockwell as a fugitive,

detectives canvassed rental car agencies from downtown Seattle.

Guy Rockwell rented a cargo truck five days after,

and he put 319 miles on it.

The Colombia River is about 137 miles from Seattle,

so do the math.

It's almost a perfect accounting of the mileage

compared to where you would've had to drive to dump those legs.

I just remember thinking,

how can human beings do this to each other?

It was like, I don't understand what was going through

this person's head that he could cut up somebody

he married as well as a young girl.

Guy Rockwell had just disappeared.

This guy's a fugitive from the law. We need to find him now.

He's wanted for questioning in a double-homicide.

This case went from a larceny fugitive to an awful,

gruesome, horrific double-murder.

By the time Seattle police start putting this case together

and they find the remains, Muldavin's already gone.

He fled.

And he's the only one that had the answers,

and he's the only one that had an explanation of

where Dolores ended up

and where Manzanita eventually ended up.

So, the manhunt is far and wide.

10-4

It's not in Washington.

It goes all over the country.

They were reaching out to police in Canada, England, Spain,

just trying to find out where Guy Muldavin was.

This is a photocopy of the original

jurisdictional contact list that Seattle PD reached out to.

They contacted dozens and dozens and dozens

of jurisdictions, just bombarding

them with the information.

I mean, Ohio must have 30 departments that we contacted.

Pennsylvania, 25 plus.

International jurisdictions, two more pages.

Seattle PD got the word out.

Everyone was looking for Guy Rockwell.

December 1, 1960,

the FBI located Guy Rockwell living in Manhattan,

in New York City.

I do not know the exact circumstances,

but I know that at some point

the FBI received credible information

that he was in that jurisdiction,

and that kind of narrowed the focus.

He was living under the alias of Michael Strong.

As to why Guy Rockwell ended up in New York,

he was born there, and New York City is probably

a place someone felt that they could remain somewhat anonymous.

Guy Rockwell was interviewed for about two weeks

about the murders.

Guy Rockwell never admitted to killing Manzanita and Dolores

directly, but he told them he was

"morally responsible" for their deaths.

So not confessing, but communicating,

bouncing around the topic in such a way

that you would walk out of the room saying, "He did it."

But it's impossible to answer the question of

whether there was enough to charge Guy Rockwell for murder

in 1960 without having lived in that era.

He wasn't charged back then.

But he's got a larceny warrant so he was extradited to Seattle.

Guy Rockwell received a prison sentence for grand larceny,

for stealing money from the Emersons.

Guy Rockwell was released from jail sometime in 1962

after serving about 13 months.

He was never charged for the murder of Manzanita

and the murder of Dolores.

It's hard to stomach that he didn't get charged.

If the police in Seattle would have held Guy

after the murder of my grandmother and my aunt,

he should have been life in prison.

That was about 14 or 15 years before he had met my mom.

They're letting these jackasses out of prisons,

you know, that committed violent crimes.

It's like, the hell's wrong with you people?

When you talk about what if...

Yeah, if somebody would have taken the time

to look into his other wife,

he never would have met my Aunt Ruth.

The last time we saw Aunt Ruth in '74,

we never saw her or heard from her again.

It was just a mystery.

I would love nothing more than to find out what happened.

In 2022, detectives contacted our family

and told us about a 50-year-old cold case

and believed that Guy Muldavin had something to do with it.

Basically they needed anything

that could fill in their time-line and certain gaps

that they had of where Guy was.

I sent them all the information they wanted that I had from Guy.

I started putting this together after talking to

the police department about Provincetown.

That's how I remember him, always a pipe in his mouth.

This was in 1974,

so this is the year that he married Ruth.

This is the year before he was married to my aunt.

We don't know what happens to Guy Muldavin

immediately after Ruth,

but we do know that he goes on to get married once again.

Guy Muldavin met my aunt in 1975.

My Aunt Phyllis was a free spirit.

She was an artist,

but she never knew how to act her age,

so it made for a real fun playmate for us,

and she always seemed very happy and smiling.

She met Guy at an EST training seminar.

EST was some sort of a self-development program

that existed in the '60s and '70s.

She was excited about him at that time.

An actor, artist, antique dealer.

After a, as my Aunt Phyllis put it,

whirlwind courtship, I think just a few months.

She divorced her husband.

They got married, and he became part of our life.

In those years when I knew Guy, 1975 to 1980,

Guy was a little loud, used his hands a lot.

It was all about him and all his stories.

Basically Guy wanted to be the center of attention.

He had stories about everything.

I don't know what percentage of those stories were true.

Nobody knew the true, real Guy Muldavin.

And I think that's probably when my aunt realized the dark side.

My aunt would say his eyes got dark and his look changed,

and she would just leave the room.

After my aunt passed away,

my mom and I were cleaning out her house.

Here's a piece from my aunt's journal.

"My second husband had a dark side

that I surfed around to avoid the unknown of that."

"I was totally still in love with Guy.

I could never get answers from about why he behaved the way

he did without ever justifying it or any explanation.

I'm still trying to piece all of this together."

During the years that he was with my aunt,

Guy wrote what he described as a cookbook called

"Cooking with Rump Oil."

It is so bizarre, and so twisted.

And just so troubling.

Couldn't make any sense of it.

"To my wife, Phyllis Smirle.

Phyllis has proved to me that love, beastology,

and rump oil can walk together hand in paw."

That makes more sense than anything else in this book.

My Aunt Phyllis and Guy Muldavin

only lived together for about four-and-a-half to five years,

and at that point, she made him leave.

I've often wondered how my Aunt Phyllis kicked Guy

out without becoming a victim herself.

He became a radio talk show host

and he was on the radio every week.

"Muldavin has introduced programs dealing with

homosexuality, the erosion of culture,

and his belief that killing has become a habit."

After we were able to identify the Lady of the Dunes

as Ruth Marie Terry, it was such a ruckus from the DA.

Basically, kind of had a little temper tantrum.

Detective Lobur, she was the driving force

to get this case solved, and yet,

not only did she not get any accolades for it,

she got persecuted for it by the district attorney's office.

After the case was solved, the newly elected

Cape and Islands District Attorney

launched an investigation into Detective Lobur's actions.

A detective pivotal in helping to solve

the Lady of the Dunes case...

The new DA who had no role in identifying Ruth Marie Terry

claimed that I acted improperly,

that I didn't have the authority to do the exhumation,

that I didn't have the proper certificates.

It sounds crazy, but, you know, there was

retribution for identifying her and using the FBI to do it

and probably being a woman and being an outsider from Boston.

I did an exhumation. I know what the procedures are,

and she didn't do anything wrong.

They didn't persecute me.

I insisted on having what they call a Brady hearing,

laying everything out, why the exhumation was necessary,

how the exhumation was authorized.

The ultimate decision was the DA's,

and I was placed on a Brady list for doing the exhumation

without proper authority.

I had always said there would be retribution.

The DA's office sent this letter to Provincetown Police,

notifying them that Detective Meredith Lobur

had been placed on their Brady list,

which compromises her integrity in investigations.

A Brady violation is saying that an officer is

untrustworthy, they don't follow procedures.

It questions their credibility.

Which basically just kills their career.

Detective Lobur got the FBI involved, and that's what led

to identifying the Lady in the Dunes.

Because of the Brady List,

I couldn't risk questions about my credibility

impacting the case or the outcome of a case,

so I voluntarily retired in 2023.

I was basically forced to retire.

Knowing the ramifications, would I do anything differently?

No.

50 years later,

Massachusetts' longest unidentified homicide case,

the Lady of the Dunes, has officially been closed.

Investigators concluded Ruth Marie Terry was killed

by her husband, identified as Guy Muldavin.

I got a call from the state police officer

from Massachusetts,

and he informed me that they were going to close Ruth's case.

The state police never revealed what evidence

they used to close the case

and say Guy Muldavin was the most likely suspect.

There's so many cases.

You know, domestic violence is so prevalent

in so many homicides.

She was referred to as the Lady of the Dunes.

The DA says Muldavin is also a prime suspect

in the disappearance of another,

earlier wife and stepdaughter in Seattle.

You have a man who's suspected of dismembering his wife

and a step-daughter, and then you have this book...

...where there are these recipes and these creatures,

these images that he drew--

animal, human-like, and some of the recipes are so troubling.

And there's this specific one called Cape Cod Shid,

and when you look at that image that he drew,

and you compare it to Ruth's hair, there are similarities.

Julia Cowley,

who has analyzed some of the most horrific cases

involving serial killers in the country,

sharing her expertise in the murder of Ruth Marie Terry.

"The tender look will become one of despair."

You have to think that perhaps that was the moment

he watched the life go out of her eyes,

when she realized, he's going to kill me.

And it's horrifying.

Is he writing about Ruth?

Is he writing about the moment he murdered her

in the dunes of Provincetown, on Cape Cod?

Kind of ironic that he put that picture in there.

It was nuts.

The craziest part of the whole thing is that somehow,

he marketed himself on radio a few times, on television.

He was interviewed. He was on a cooking show.

As you read it, it just makes you sick.

Her family remembers how Ruth wasn't herself

when Muldavin was by her side.

I really would like to know why.

Why would he-- why would he kill her?

What did that accomplish?

And I just hope since 1974, he's been in agony.

Muldavin was alive until 2002.

Had they had that DNA,

maybe this case would have been solved decades ago.

I wish he was still alive so he could face what he did.

Unfortunately, I don't think Guy Muldavin ever got

what he deserved.

For the family of Ruth and Lady of the Dunes,

nothing brings your family back or gets you over all the trauma,

but I'm sure it's nice to have him listed as the reason for it.

It doesn't haunt me anymore.

I'm happy for the family. I'm happy for her son, Richard.

That was my mom, and to have somebody brutally,

you know, beat her like that, you know, to death.

I just... it's really hit me at my core.

We drove to Provincetown,

and, you know, we're gonna have a small get-together

around her burial site.

I want to touch the ground where my mom is.

I'm still waiting for Richard to come back to real life

and that he'll go back to the way we used to be.

Everybody's got trauma in their life,

but it matters how you deal with it

and go forward to face that trauma.

You know, it's about going to the cemetery tomorrow

and, you know, putting that closure there.

It's gonna be a little bit rough tomorrow,

to be perfectly honest with you.

Yeah. - It's gonna be good.

Probably gonna hurt like hell.

Until recently, I didn't really know, you know,

I'd never really heard of Provincetown before.

Yeah, this town looks so cool.

What I really wonder about is, you know,

where did my mom walk around here?

You know what I mean? Did she know anybody here?

One of the main reasons to come here was to say thank you.

I want to say thank you to the community for, you know,

providing her a place at the cemetery.

For today.

Thank you so much for coming, man.

Richard invited us to come up to Provincetown, Massachusetts,

to have a service.

In the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the holy spirit.

Our sister, Ruth, has gone to her rest in the peace of Christ.

May Ruth's soul and the souls of all the faithful departed,

for the mercy of God, rest in peace.

I want to thank y'all for coming.

I thank God for the DNA test that...

you got me to do.

I thank God for all the Terrys.

You guys are wonderful people.

You made me feel so at home, and you made me feel like family.

You know what I mean?

And I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

You know.

What a day, man. I felt your dad, man.

It was like, I felt him.

I'll show you him, down the street.

He's resting over there.

No worries.

So, there's my father, there's my mother.

Chief Meads was the kingpin in all of this.

He had the thoughtfulness to preserve her,

give her a proper burial at the church.

Man.

I was emotional, like, seeing my father,

what his face would look like if he was at home

and they found out who she was.

God bless him. God bless him.

Man.

Did you talk to Meredith at all?

- Pardon? - The detective, Meredith?

- Over there? - Yeah.

See the girl with the glasses?

- Okay. - Meredith!

She devoted most of her life to solving my mom's case.

Meredith is an outstanding person.

- Hi. How are you? - How do you do?

- I'm good. How are you? - I'm doing well.

You're a gentleman.

- Thank you. - It's nice to meet you.

- You as well. - How are you doing?

Ah, I have no idea.

You know, it was a horrible thing.

But from that horrible thing, it brought me to my family,

you know what I mean?

I didn't know who I was.

I didn't know that I had a real family.

If it wasn't for what you people did, you know,

what the police did, what the community did,

none of this would've been possible.

You know what I mean?

And all my life I wondered what...

who am I?

Like, you know, where I come from?

And I never in a million years

thought I would ever find any of these answers,

and I just want to thank you all.

You know what I mean?

Thank you all for doing what you did.

That's what it was all about-- today.

Thank you.

I feel hopeful

because of the ultimate resolution of this case.

We know her name, and...

she has a family.

Well, you all kept my mom front and center.

- Well, she's at peace now. - Now she is.

Yeah.

There was this reunification

and a family got their loved one back,

and somebody got to go home.

You know, for this huge part of the town's history

for the past five decades to be solved,

a bleary-eyed town sort of was like, "Say what?"

You could feel it. It was like a crackling energy.

I think collectively there was, like, this sort of resolution.

It was, like, a kind of relief in a way

that we now know who she is.

It was a good day. It was a really good day.

I'm just happy that there's a name on that grave,

and hopefully Ruth is resting peacefully, finally.

I believe the reason I'm here is so I can tell my mom's story.

So, it's like, what's why I'm here.

I ended up losing my career because of this.

But of course it was worth it.

I'd do it all over again and twice on Tuesday.