Naman Shrestha
The main focus of Investigation Discovery’s ‘Born Evil: The Serial Killer and The Savior’ is Hadden Clark, a suspected serial killer who was convicted and sentenced for murdering 6-year-old Michele Dorr and 24-year-old Laura Houghteling. However, a small portion of the true-crime docuseries is also dedicated to providing the viewers with a few details about the decades-long case of Ruth Marie Terry, who was called “the Lady of the Dunes” until she was identified, giving rise to many questions about her murder and its aftermath.
Ruth Marie Terry Was a Married Woman Living in California Before She Disappeared
Welcomed into the world by Johnny and Eva Terry on September 8, 1936, in Whitwell, Tennessee, Ruth Marie Terry was accompanied by her parents and brother named James, with whom she shared a close-knit bond. Unfortunately, her mother passed away untimely at the age of 23. When she was about 21 years old, Ruth moved to Livonia, Michigan, and began working at the Fisher Body automotive plant after the end of a short-lived marriage. The following year, in 1958, she became a mother to a son and named him Richard.
Since she had been going through a tough time financially, she agreed to let her superintendent at work adopt her son, and in return, he would pay off her expenses. Not long after the adoption process was complete, she moved to California to start afresh. Several years later, in 1972, Ruth contacted her son, but unfortunately, he was in a coma for more than a couple of weeks. A couple of years later, on February 16, 1974, she tied the knot with an antique dealer named Guy Rockwell Muldavin. That same spring, the newlywed couple reportedly traveled to Whitwell to visit her family. After that, they paid a visit to Ruth’s half-brother, Kenneth, in Chattanooga.
Ruth Marie Terry’s Remains Were Identified in 2022
A few months later, in the late summer of 1974, Ruth went missing from her California house, and Guy traveled to Tennessee to break the news of Ruth’s disappearance to her family. While every clue led the investigators to a dead end, the case gradually went cold. However, on July 26, 1974, a 12-year-old girl came across the remains of an unidentified woman in the Race Point Dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts. When the authorities arrived at the scene, they inspected the body and looked for any kind of evidence around it. Upon examination of the body, it was learned that she had died of blunt force trauma to the skull. It was likely that the victim had also been sexually assaulted.
After the police could not get to the bottom of the case, the woman was buried in October 1974. For the purpose of further examination and identification, the woman’s body was exhumed multiple times in 1980, 2000, and 2013. Finally, after nearly five decades, on October 31, 2022, thanks to investigative genealogy, the identification was made, and it was officially announced that the body belonged to none other than the missing woman, Ruth Marie Terry.
Ruth Marie Terry’s Killer Was Someone Close to Her
When the investigators questioned Ruth Marie Terry’s family and friends about her life in hopes of finding leads after her disappearance, her grand-niece claimed that Ruth didn’t seem like herself after her marriage with Guy Rockwell Muldavin, mainly because of his possessive behavior. Going all out to locate his sister, James even hired a private detective in California, who came up with the bizarre conclusion that she had joined a religious cult and left her old life behind. Naturally, the police suspected the victim’s husband, Guy, who was also under suspicion for the murder of his former wife, Manzanita Mearns, and stepdaughter, Dolores Ann, in the 1960s.
During the investigation of that case, the detectives inspected the Seattle residence of the then-couple and came across a septic tank that consisted of dismembered portions of human flesh inside. Due to a lack of technological advancements at the time, the investigators could not prove that they belonged to either of the vanished women. Even after they were able to locate Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who was living with three wives in a beatnik hangout in Greenwich Village, the evidence against him was not sufficient enough to take him into custody. Arresting him was all the more complicated because the police still had not found any of the two bodies.
The Perpetrator Had Already Died When the Police Got to the Bottom of the Case
An unexpected twist came in the investigation of the murder of Ruth Marie Terry, also known as the Lady of the Dunes, when Hadden Clark, a convicted killer of Michele Dorr in 1986 and Laura Houghteling in 1992, confessed that he murdered Ruth in 1974. To support his claims, he told the authorities that he made the most of his grandfather’s garden and buried all the pieces of evidence connecting him to the crime there. At the time of his confession, the identity of the Lady of the Dunes was still a mystery, and he claimed to have known her identity.
However, since he was allegedly mistreated by the police, he refused to spill any more beans. Since Hadden was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, his confession was not treated as 100% credible by the authorities. While the Lady of the Dunes was identified as Ruth Marie Terry in 2022, her husband, Guy Rockwell Muldavin, was officially announced as her murderer on August 23, 2023, without revealing any details of the investigation. However, since he had already passed away in 2002, no further actions were taken.
Read More: Hadden Clark: Where is the Suspected Serial Killer Now?
