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Richard Hanchett had spent years searching for his birth mother when he suddenly received a call from the FBI. “The first thing they said to me was ‘Have you ever heard about the Lady of the Dunes?'” he recalled to Fox News Digital. “I had never heard anything about it… Ever since then, it’s been an unbelievable journey.”
In 1974, a 37-year-old woman was killed by what authorities concluded was blunt force trauma to the skull. Her mutilated body was discovered on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a vacation hot spot. The unidentified woman became known as the “Lady of the Dunes.”
The case, which went cold for nearly 50 years, is the subject of a new true-crime docuseries on Oxygen, “The Lady of the Dunes: Hunting the Cape Cod Killer.” Hanchett also wrote a memoir, “Through His Eyes,” which is being published in December.
In October 2022, police made a breakthrough in the decades-old investigation – the woman who was found in the dunes of Provincetown was Ruth Marie Terry of Tennessee. She was Hanchett’s biological mother. Hanchett said that for about three weeks before he got a call from the FBI, he was having recurring nightmares about his mother.
The case is a complex one, involving a husband, Guy Muldavin, who was also a prime suspect in the death of another one of his wives and a stepdaughter in Seattle in the 1960s. According to newspaper reports at the time, human remains were found in the septic tank of his home.
Terry was identified using investigative genealogy, the use of DNA analysis in combination with traditional genealogy research and historical records. Investigators also learned that Terry had ties to Michigan and California, where Muldavin resided.
In 2023, authorities in Massachusetts concluded that Terry was killed by her husband, and the case was closed. But for Hanchett, the case is far from over. He is still seeking answers, and wants to clear up misconceptions about his late mother.
“My mom was not a hooker,” he stressed. “She was a mother, a sister, and an aunt. She was a beautiful person. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. She was poor and worked hard her whole life to try to get ahead.”
As for justice, Hanchett replied, “It will be… I mean by that is it could have been solved a long time ago – it should have been solved a long time ago. That’s what bothers me. My life would’ve been completely different. It wouldn’t have changed what happened to her, but for years I didn’t know if she was still alive. My dad, uncles, aunts, grandfather – they all wondered what happened to her.”
The conclusion of “The Lady of the Dunes: Hunting the Cape Cod Killer” can be seen on November 30 at 9 p.m. on Oxygen.
