PLOT TWIST

Husband of Newly Identified ‘Lady of the Dunes’ Was Fingered in Double Murder

Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who married Ruth Marie Terry a few months before her death, was suspected of killing his previous wife and her daughter in 1960.

The husband of Ruth Marie Terry, the infamous “Lady of the Dunes” whose real identity was only uncovered on Monday, was arrested for killing a previous wife and daughter in 1960, according to a report that year by the United Press International. Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who hopped between at least four wives, was suspected of killing his second wife, Manzanita Rockwell, and her daughter, Dolores Mearns, after the unidentified remains of a young woman were discovered in a basement septic tank beneath where Muldavin lived and worked. For unclear reasons, Muldavin was given a suspended sentence and freed just two years later. In February 1974, after another wife and a grand larceny charge, Muldavin got hitched to Terry in Nevada. A newspaper report at the time noted that Muldavin, under the pseudonym Michael Strong, bought a sports car and “drove across the country to Provincetown, Mass.” Terry’s remains would be found in July of that year, partially decapitated, handless, and lying on a towel nude on sand dunes just outside the town at the tip of Cape Cod.

INCREDIBLE

Handless Body Identified 48 Years After Cape Cod Slaying

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling