Almost half a century later, the FBI and the American justice system have managed to identify and name a woman who was discovered dead, with her hands amputated, on a beach on the East Coast of the United States in 1974, and whose murderer has never been identified. found.
The one who became the mysterious “Lady of the Dunes” has been identified as Ruth Marie Terry, a woman from the state of Tennessee who was 37 years old at the time of her death, US federal police announced during a press conference near Boston. , Mass.
“Ruth was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a wife, a mother,” Boston-area FBI Special Agent Joe Bonavolonta said, asking anyone with “any information” about the case to report it to The authorities.
years of research
Ruth Marie Terry was found dead on July 26, 1974, her naked body lying on the dunes of a beach in Provincetown on Cape Cod, a strip of land on the Atlantic Ocean popular with summer visitors.
According to the investigations of the time, she would have been killed by a blow to the head, probably several weeks earlier. She was missing her hands, “presumably severed by her killer so she could not be identified by fingerprints, and her head was almost severed from her body,” Bonavolonta added. No weapon was found near the victim.
According to the FBI, authorities were unable to identify the victim despite neighborhood surveys, the study of “thousands” of missing person files, “facial reconstruction” techniques and composite portraits, and several exhumations of the body.
Finally, it is thanks to techniques known as genetic genealogy, which combines DNA and genealogical research, that the FBI puts an end to the mystery.
Source: BFM TV
