Naman Shrestha
When the body of Ruth Marie Terry was found on a Provincetown beach in 1974, the entire community was left shell-shocked. The case made headlines as the investigators moved heaven and earth to determine the victim’s identity and find out who committed the brutal crime. However, this was not the only unsolved case at the time. In 1960, Manzanita and her daughter Dolores Mearns vanished all of a sudden, leaving the detectives with no concrete evidence that could lead them to the killer. Besides Ruth’s case, Oxygen’s ‘Lady of the Dunes: Hunting a Cape Cod Killer’ also mentions the mysterious case of Manzanita and Dolores Mearns.
Possible Remains of Manzanita and Dolores Mearns Were Discovered at Their Place of Residence
On March 28, 1921, in Merritt, British Columbia, Anna Rita Olsen Ryan welcomed a little bundle of joy into the world in the form of Manzanita Aileen “Manzy” Ryan Rockwell. While she was growing up, she was accompanied by her siblings Leo Alexander Ryan and Ruth M. Ryan, with whom she shared a close-knit bond. By the time she turned 20, she had fallen in love with William Lewis Mearns and tied the knot with him in 1941.
The following year of their marriage, Manzy gave birth to Dolores Ann Mearns on March 18, 1942, in British Columbia. Throughout the course of their marriage, the couple became parents two more times. More than a decade later, the marriage started becoming shaky, and Manzy filed for divorce. On September 30, 1958, after the divorce proceedings were completed, she got married to Guy Rockwell Muldavin in Kootenai, Idaho. A couple of years later, when Dolores turned 18, she went to stay with her mother and stepfather while Manzy’s other two children remained in the custody of her first husband, William.
At the time, Manzy and Dolores ran an antique shop in Seattle, Washington. With so many things to look forward to, the two women suddenly went missing on April Fool’s Day of 1980. When William could not get ahold of his former wife and daughter, he reported them missing. About six months later, during the search for 39-year-old Manzy and her 18-year-old daughter Dolores, the authorities came across pieces of human bodies in a newly sealed septic tank of the Seattle residence they stayed in. Since DNA testing was not available at that time, the detectives assumed that they belonged to the two missing women. Thus, a double homicide investigation was launched, and detectives were deployed to get to the bottom of the case.
Murder Cases of Manzanita and Dolores Mearns Are Still Unsolved
From the early stage of the investigation, the authorities suspected Manzanita’s then-husband, Guy Muldavin, to be responsible for the murders. A few months after their disappearance, Guy divorced Manzy on a desertion charge, only to get married to Evelyn Emerson in July 1960. While they found human remains from the septic tank of the house where Manzy, Dolores, and Guy resided, there was no sign of the suspect. Apparently, he flew away from Seattle and started a new life under an alias. According to reports, he swindled his mother-in-law, Mrs. Germaine Winkler, by borrowing $10,000 from her, claiming that he would use the money to purchase antiques and sell them for a profit.
Instead, he fled away with the money, purchased a sports car, and drove down to Provincetown under the alias Michael Strong. From there, he relocated to New York City, where he was finally arrested in December of the same year and charged with unlawful flight to avoid giving testimony before a grand jury in connection with the disappearance and possible murder of his former wife and stepdaughter. At the same time, he was also charged with grand larceny for swindling Mrs. Germaine. However, he was not found guilty of any of the charges and was allowed to walk away. To this day, the murder case of Manzanita and Dolores Mearns remains a mystery.
Read More: Guy Muldavin: What Happened to Ruth Marie Terry’s Killer?
