On July 26th, 1974, 12-year-old Leslie Metcalf was walking a dog on the dunes of Race Point in Provincetown, MA when the dog led her to a naked body in the scrub-pine. Leslie went to her parents who contacted the local police who then found the body of a woman located about 1 mile from the ranger’s station. The woman was believed to have been dead anywhere between 10 days to 3 weeks, so there’s a chance that maybe someone else might’ve come across her first. The Fresh Hell podcast goes over that possibility and I talk about it as well. They guessed the woman was between 20-40 years old (though most likely between 25-35), 5’6, 145lbs, and had reddish brown hair. She was laying on a green towel with a pair of Wrangler jeans and a blue bandana tucked under her head…which was nearly decapitated. Her skull was crushed on one side, some of her teeth had been removed, and her hands had been cut off, possibly in an attempt to make it difficult for her to be identified. Investigators believe that the wounds were caused by a military entrenching tool (which might not have been uncommon for a person driving on the dunes to have) and other than these injuries, it’s believed she was sexually abused after death with a wooden object. Other than some footprints and tire tracks in the sand that might not even have come from her killer, the police had little to go off of. And after inquiring around local hotels if they had seen someone matching her description, they continued to come up empty. Thus the mystery of the Lady of the Dunes began and she has still never been identified.
Composite images of the Lady of the Dunes over the years (Wikipedia)
There are a few possible leads as to what happened, but some are pretty far fetched. Investigators do believe that whoever killed her probably knew her since it was a fairly personal murder and there were no signs of struggle, but whoever did it might have also attacked the woman while she was sleeping. One of the intriguing suspects is actually notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. Bulger apparently frequented Provincetown (which was already known to be a safe-haven for the gay community) and there’s even rumors of him being bisexual. People even claimed he’d been seen with a woman who looked like the Lady of the Dunes. Despite the fact that Bulger had been known to pull out the teeth of his victims to make them hard to identify, he’s never been named as an official suspect due to lack of evidence. Crime writer Sandra Lee believed her stepfather might’ve helped Bulger kill the Lady of the Dunes, and she even claims to have found the body two days before Leslie did but at 9-years-old was too afraid to say anything. She has a pretty wild theory about what happened to the women, though it’s also never been proven, and you can read that article here.
There’s also serial killer Hadden Clark who actually confessed to killing the Lady of the Dunes while serving two 30 year jail sentences. But he had confessed to other murders before and was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed his cell mate was Jesus Christ. He claimed to have killed up to 12 women (a number of them on Cape Cod) but they could never confirm this. They did however go to his grandfather’s home in Wellfleet to try and find the remains of the Lady of the Dunes hands but all they found was a buried bucket of women’s jewelry which might’ve belonged to his victims. The Mortuary does an informative podcast about his life, which includes dressing in women’s clothing and cannibalism.
As for who she is, that’s just as puzzling. And strange that no one ever came forward to claim her. She apparently had thousands of dollars of expensive dentistry done and her records were sent all over the country and even to Interpol to try and find a match but no one ever IDed the pictures. And there is a good chance she was a foreigner who was visiting the Cape that summer. A particularly interesting theory was that she might’ve been escaped convict Rory Gene Kesinger, who had recently escaped from the nearby Plymouth Correctional Facility. And though the renderings of the Lady of the Dunes did actually resemble Kesinger, in 2000 when the exhumed the body they tested the DNA with the DNA of Kesinger’s mother and it wasn’t a match. But Rory Gene Kesinger was also never seen again.
Another possible lead as to who the Lady of the Dunes might be comes from horror novelist Joe Hill, who’s also the son of Stephen King. Hill had learned about the case not long before watching the movie Jaws, and 54 minutes in he noticed an extra who looked pretty similar to the Lady of the Dunes. She was wearing jeans and a blue bandana as well. But even though Jaws was being filmed on Martha’s Vineyard at that time, there were so many random extras who were cast in the movie that it’s almost impossible to pin down all of them. People have tried to see if they could find the woman in this part of the film, but the efforts went nowhere. Here is a clip that shows the moment in the film where Hill spotted the woman. Could this be a possible lead, or just a very interesting theory?
There were a few other possibilities as to who the Lady of the Dunes is over the years, but nothing ever too solid. One being from the friend of a Canadian woman who claimed that when she was 5-years-old she watched her father strangle a woman in Provincetown, but she was never actually found by police to be questioned. The Buzzfeed Unsolved episode about this case even mentioned that psychics had a lead on the identity but it turned out the woman in question, Carolyn O’Leary, was alive and well. Someone in the comments of the video even mentioned Ted Kennedy was involved (as he was also involved in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick) but I couldn’t find any info on that theory.
So who killed the Lady of the Dunes? Who was she? Hopefully if they are able to do some genetic testing on her, we might one day have some answers. You can check on her page on the Doe Network for any contact info for the Provincetown PD. Also Ranker offers a good summary of the theories, Capecod.com did an informative piece, and Medium also was one of my main sources.
You can listen to the episode directly on Whooshkaa if you don’t have Spotify or Apple Podcast.
The theme song for the podcast was made by Kevin Mcleod.
Wicked Crime 