When Richard Hanchett finally learned who his birth mother was, it was already too late.
It was October 2022, and police had made a breakthrough in a decades-old Massachusetts mystery: the mutilated body of a 37-year-old woman found in the dunes of Provincetown in July 1974.
The unnamed victim was known for years as ‘The Lady of the Dunes’. Then DNA testing revealed her to be Ruth Marie Terry from Tennessee, and her then-husband Guy Muldavin was later exposed as the killer.
Terry had given her son to the Hanchett family in Michigan shortly after his birth in 1958. He had long struggled with her absence, but when he learned that she was a murder victim, his emotions were shaken again.
‘I still find it hard to believe. It’s like a dream,” Hanchett, 66, told DailyMail.com.
“I find out I’m a hillbilly, raised as a Yankee, and then I find out she was brutally murdered that way.”
The story of Hanchett, Terry and the 50-year quest to identify her is chronicled in Oxygen’s true-crime series Lady of the Dunes: On the Hunt for the Cape Cod Killerwhich starts on November 29.
“For a long time, no one knew what happened to her and everyone thought the worst,” Hanchett said.
Officials used research genealogy to identify the “Lady of the Dunes” murder victim, whose body was found on Cape Cod in 1974, as Ruth Marie Terry of Tennessee.
Richard Hanchett, 66, from Michigan, says the revelations about his mother’s death have been “like a dream.”
‘The documentary gives my mother back dignity and respect.’
Terry’s body was found in the dunes of Provincetown in July 1974. She was naked and her hands had been cut off. So she could not be identified from her fingerprints, officials believe.
She lay on a beach blanket with her nearly severed head and crushed skull on her folded jeans.
There was no sign of a struggle, no murder weapon was left behind and her body was decomposing in the heat, leaving investigators with few clues.
Her long, reddish-brown hair was held back with a hairpin and she had seven gold crowns on her teeth, which at the time were worth about $5,000 to $8,000.
She was apparently sexually assaulted with a wooden object after her death, The Boston Globe reported.
The cause of death was determined to be a blow to the head, and authorities believe she was murdered several weeks before her body was found.
For decades, the identity of the “Provincetown Jane Doe” has eluded investigators.
Authorities attempted to identify her and her killer by exhuming her remains, performing facial reconstruction using clay models, and releasing age regression drawings of her face.
The macabre mystery roiled the idyllic and close-knit community of Provincetown.
Theories about serial killers, a mafia hit and even that the victim was an extra from the movie Jaws, which was filmed nearby, made headlines.
Then, in October 2022, the FBI in Boston revealed that she had been identified as Terry through investigative genealogy – the use of DNA analysis combined with traditional genealogical research and historical data.
Trinkets surround the gravestone of the Lady of the Dunes, Ruth Marie Terry, in St. Peter’s Cemetery, where her remains were buried
Terry’s naked body was found on July 26, 1974, by a 13-year-old girl walking her dog who came across the gruesome scene in the dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Terry is pictured here in the 1960s, years before she was murdered and abandoned in the dunes
Police say Terry’s then-husband, Guy Muldavin, an antiques dealer, was responsible for her death
The macabre mystery captivated the idyllic and close-knit community of Provincetown for years
Authorities identified Terry’s body through research genealogy
The techniques were similar to those used in California to identify a serial killer known as the Golden State Killer.
Previous attempts to trace the DNA had been unsuccessful.
Investigators then delved into the life of Terry, who was never reported missing.
Massachusetts State Police investigators learned she had left Tennessee to work at an auto factory in Michigan.
She gave birth to her son Richard there, but was too poor to support him and he was adopted by the Hanchetts.
She then moved to California and married Muldavin, an antiques dealer, in Reno, Nevada, in 1973 or 1974.
The couple traveled after their wedding, including stopping in Tennessee to see her family.
Friends at the time noticed Muldavin’s possessive and controlling behavior over Terry.
Police also learned that Muldavin returned from the trip in the summer of 1974 in a vehicle believed to be hers.
He told the Terry family that she had left him after an argument.
Her brother James Terry traveled to California and hired a private investigator to track her down.
But his efforts were unsuccessful and there were reports that she had joined a cult.
In August 2023, months after identifying Terry as the Lady of the Dunes, they determined that Muldavin was responsible for the death.
But it was too late for justice. Muldavin had died in 2002.
He was also a prime suspect in the disappearance of a previous wife and his stepdaughter in the Seattle area in the 1960s, prosecutors said.
“That man got away with it. He killed several people,” her son Hanchett said.
“You get to a point where you realize there’s nothing you can do anymore.”
The new docuseries includes interviews with Hanchett and other family members, and details about contaminated DNA samples and lost physical evidence from the crime scene.
Provincetown Detective Meredith Lobur also lifts the lid on a police chief who tried to slow down her investigation.
Hanchett’s book about the saga – Through His Eyes: the Lady of the Dunes, Ruth Marie Terry’s Story – is also published this month.
Provincetown Police Chief James Meads led the investigation for years into the Lady of the Dunes, who had not yet been identified
Muldavin, right, was also suspected of killing a previous wife and his stepdaughter in the Seattle area in the 1960s.
Lady of the Dunes: Hunting the Cape Cod Killer, premiering November 29
He talks about his struggles with abandonment and his regrets about a time in 1974 when Terry contacted his family in hopes of seeing her then-teenage son.
He refused because he was recovering from a drug overdose at the time.
He always wondered what happened to his birth mother and imagined her living a “rock star” life in California, he says.
In 2018, Hancett used an in-home DNA genealogy service that put him in touch with his mother’s family, who told him his mother had gone missing in the 1970s.
Four years later, the FBI contacted Hanchett and his relatives from Tennessee to identify the Lady of the Dunes.
Not only did they learn the shocking truth about what happened to Ruth Terry, but they were also questioned about Muldavin, the prime suspect in her death.
“It hurt my stomach,” he says. “And that will bother me until the day I die.”
Hanchett says the past six years have been eye-opening.
Still, the puzzle of his life is not yet complete, he adds.
“The only piece we can’t verify is the why. Why did he kill her?’ he says.
He wonders if Terry caught Muldavin in some criminal act, or if he had to silence her for some other reason.
“I’ve been hoping for the past two years that someone would come forward and tell me why,” he says.
“That was the only thing I didn’t get an answer to.”