The morning sun rose over Cape Cod on July 26, 1974, casting a golden haze over the dunes near Race Point. The air smelled of salt and sunscreen, the beach alive with the hum of vacationers staking umbrellas into the soft sand. It was a great day to take a dip in the ocean, sunbathe in the sun, and relax with the blue sky. It was the kind of summer day that promised nothing but calm until a small group of beachgoers strayed into the dunes and found horror where tranquility should have been.

Lying face-down on a towel, the nude body of a woman lay motionless, her long auburn hair blending into the sand. For decades, this woman—known as the “Lady of the Dunes” remained unidentified despite repeated attempts: neighborhood canvases, thousands of missing-person matches, forensic reconstructions, and age-regression drawings. The body was found about a mile east of the Race Point Ranger Station inside the Cape Cod National Seashore. Investigators estimated she had died several weeks before being found. Her hands were missing, believed to be a deliberate act by the killer to block identification (Boston Globe, July 1974).

For nearly fifty years, she was known only as the “Lady of the Dunes.” Despite exhaustive searches, neighborhood canvases, and thousands of missing-person reports. Several attempts to identify her followed, including exhumations in 1980, 2000, and 2013, and numerous facial reconstructions (Cape Cod Times, 2013). None provided the answers authorities sought until modern DNA technology changed everything. On October 31, 2022, the FBI, working with Massachusetts State Police and the District Attorney’s Office, announced that the victim had finally been identified as Ruth Marie Terry, a 37-year-old woman originally from Tennessee (FBI Press Release, Oct. 31, 2022). The breakthrough came through investigative genealogical DNA analysis, a method that uses public genealogy databases to match DNA profiles across family trees.

In August 2023, prosecutors revealed that Terry’s husband, Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who had married her mere months before her disappearance, was identified as the principal suspect in her murder. Muldavin died in 2002 (NBC Boston, Aug. 2023). District Attorney Robert Galibois described the development as “a milestone” in a decades-long investigation, though he acknowledged that, without a living suspect, “full courtroom resolution may never come.”

For nearly half a century the “Lady of the Dunes” haunted Cape Cod — a grim reminder of how a single brutal act can echo across generations. The identification of Ruth Marie Terry shows how modern science, particularly forensic genealogy, can bring long-awaited closure to even the coldest of cases. It also highlights the deeper tragedy: a woman lost, a family left waiting, and the enduring shadow of unanswered questions.