Ruth Marie Terry.Photo: AP/Shutterstock

For nearly 50, years she was known only as the “Lady of the Dunes.”

The unidentified murder victim earned the memorable moniker after her mutilated remains were found on a desolate stretch of a Provincetown, Mass., beach on July 26, 1974, according to theFBI’s Most Wantedpage.

She was naked and lying on a beach blanket in the dunes at Race Point Beach with her head resting on folded jeans, according to the FBI. Chillingly, her hands were missing and the left side of her skull was crushed. Her head was nearly severed from her body.

But then, in Oct. 2022, authorities announced that they had finally found the identity of Massachusetts’ longest unidentified murder victim: Ruth Marie Terry of Tennessee, who was 37 when she was killed.

On Monday, Cape & Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois announced that law enforcement identified Terry’s killer as her husband, Guy Muldavin.

Newly married in 1974, Terry and Muldavin went on their honeymoon that summer, the Cape & Islands District Attorney’s Officesaid in a press release. He returned home alone, telling her family they had a fight – and that he never heard from her again,WCVBreports.

The two had wed in Reno, Nev., in 1974,NBC Bostonreports. She had been married several times and used a different name in the months before she was killed, the outlet reports.

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Massachusetts authorities later learned that Muldavin was wanted in connection with the disappearance of one of his several wives, Manzanita Mearns, and her 18-year-old daughter, Dolores Mearns, in 1960 in the Seattle area, the Cape & Islands District Attorney’s Officesaid in the release.

Their mutilated bodies were believed to have been found in a septic tank at their home shortly after he remarried, according to aDec. 1960 UPI article.He was arrested in New York City and charged with “unlawful flight,” CBS News reports.

He was never charged in their deaths. According to the UPI, he divorced Mearns on July 26, four days after he wed Emerson.

source: people.com