Identified! MA - Provincetown, Race Point, 'Lady in the Dunes' WhtFem 27-49, UP11840, Jul'74 - Ruth Marie Terry

[MadMcGoo]

Look a couple pages back on this thread. This summer there was an exchange on DNA Doe Project's page where someone local to Provincetown asked "What would Provincetown PD have to do to get you to take Lady of the Dunes' case?" DDP responded that they made contact with Provincetown PD over a year ago or something, offered to cover all expenses and use a famous scientist and a cutting edge lab for all the work. Provincetown PD was initially very enthusiastic but then just stopped responding. DDP has tried reconnecting multiple times but has gotten no response. No idea if any other genealogy group picked up the case or if anything has changed since this summer but it's a little strange.

I truly hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the rumors of AHS being filmed there and around this case. I found this comment about the show, not sure what to make of it. It’d be nice if authorities were a little more eager to accept such an amazing opportunity. Assuming they are not and there isn’t something we aren’t aware of.

American Horror Story Season 10: Release Date, Plot, Trailer & News to Know

Originally slated to air this year, American Horror Story Season 10 will now release sometime in 2021 as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Murphy has noted that, as a result of the pandemic, Season 10's theme may change, as according to the show's co-creator, "A lot of what I was going to shoot was dependent on a very specific moment, it was a weather-dependent show. [...] I don’t know if I’ll accelerate another season or wait till next year to shoot this one."

 

[Bit of hope]

Look a couple pages back on this thread. This summer there was an exchange on DNA Doe Project's page where someone local to Provincetown asked "What would Provincetown PD have to do to get you to take Lady of the Dunes' case?" DDP responded that they made contact with Provincetown PD over a year ago or something, offered to cover all expenses and use a famous scientist and a cutting edge lab for all the work. Provincetown PD was initially very enthusiastic but then just stopped responding. DDP has tried reconnecting multiple times but has gotten no response. No idea if any other genealogy group picked up the case or if anything has changed since this summer but it's a little strange.

Yes, I saw it...I think your theory about The American Horror Story could be spot on! It means that we have to wait until 2021? to watch some movements in this case, if you are right....if you think about it....yes, the whole thing is very strange. Also strange is that the story was always that her hands were cut of and Namus says all parts recovered....did they find the remains of the hands after all.....or what?

 

[Doeologist]

Tapatalk has posted a People Magazine article about the Lady of the Dunes which mentions an unnamed candidate from Florida that had an initial positive ID test followed by an inconclusive and had an exact dental record match except for one tooth. Post link below (See image in Post #3).

I'm pretty sure this is Brenda Sue Lefler. She has already been mentioned somewhere online as a possible candidate (Naptime Nancy...).

MAF740726 "Lady in the Dunes"

 

[CCJD]

Tapatalk has posted a People Magazine article about the Lady of the Dunes which mentions an unnamed candidate from Florida that had an initial positive ID test followed by an inconclusive and had an exact dental record match except for one tooth. Post link below (See image in Post #3).

I'm pretty sure this is Brenda Sue Lefler. She has already been mentioned somewhere online as a possible candidate (Naptime Nancy...).

MAF740726 "Lady in the Dunes"

The article is from 2006, originally posted on Porchlight International for the Missing and Unidentified. I don't know when Porchlight moved to tapatalk from their old home (Invision Board? Darn, I don't remember) but their founder (who used to be a member here) passed away in Jan 2020.

 

[dotr]

Tapatalk has posted a People Magazine article about the Lady of the Dunes which mentions an unnamed candidate from Florida that had an initial positive ID test followed by an inconclusive and had an exact dental record match except for one tooth. Post link below (See image in Post #3).

I'm pretty sure this is Brenda Sue Lefler. She has already been mentioned somewhere online as a possible candidate (Naptime Nancy...).

MAF740726 "Lady in the Dunes"

Ws thread..
FL - FL - Brenda Sue ''Suzie'' Lefler, 31, Greenacres, 2 May 1974

 

[Doeologist]

Thanks. I posted the article on the Lefler thread after I IDed the LOTD candidate as her. Lefler's father was coincidentally in the coast guard, according to the census records.

 

[Doeologist]

The article is from 2006, originally posted on Porchlight International for the Missing and Unidentified. I don't know when Porchlight moved to tapatalk from their old home (Invision Board? Darn, I don't remember) but their founder (who used to be a member here) passed away in Jan 2020.

Thanks for that. It's interesting that LOTD had lots of missing teeth that were removed, (to prevent identification?) but she had one tooth that Brenda Sue supposedly didn't have. Unless they were comparing an X-Ray, how could you discount the matching dental work worth thousands?

Steve, Founder of Porchlight - Porchlight

 

[CCJD]

Steve, Founder of Porchlight - Porchlight

That's a different Porchlight. Porchlight for the Missing and Unidentified's url was usedtobedoe.com, which still shows up in the tapatalk url

 

[Doeologist]

Lauran Hallack, RIP

LOTD had seven gold crowns and presumably that matched Brenda Sue Lefler according to the People Magazine article on the Porchlight forum.

Here's a link that shows how errors can happen in "antemortem" dental records preventing matches to postmortem analysis ("... mistakes in numbering the teeth... were considered to be the initial reason a positive identification").

Difficulties in personal identification caused by unreliable dental records - ScienceDirect

 

[PatLaurel]

Tapatalk has posted a People Magazine article about the Lady of the Dunes which mentions an unnamed candidate from Florida that had an initial positive ID test followed by an inconclusive and had an exact dental record match except for one tooth. Post link below (See image in Post #3).

I'm pretty sure this is Brenda Sue Lefler. She has already been mentioned somewhere online as a possible candidate (Naptime Nancy...).

MAF740726 "Lady in the Dunes"

BBM

The resemblances are uncanny. Especially the smile/lips and nose.

Did the family know who the boyfriend was?

MOO, JMO

 

[Doeologist]

If the cases are connected, then the ex-husband should be considered, even though the note implicated the "boyfriend", especially if he was still one point of the supposed "love triangle". They only divorced February of that year. It would be easy to rule him out as there's about a month between that abduction and the death of LOTD.

P.S. (Post Speculation) Based on research into killers and occupations, any job in the Comfort and Aesthetics category should be considered in general terms a top occupational field for killers, even if it's a broad category, and the husband in the BSL case had his own body shop....

 

[dotr]

The preferred jobs of serial killers: aircraft machinist, arborist, general labourer and cop - Macleans.ca
By Michael Arntfield May 9, 2018
''Top 3 Skilled Serial-Killer Occupations:

1. Aircraft machinist/assembler
2. Shoemaker/repair person
3. Automobile upholsterer
Top 3 Semi-Skilled Serial Killer Occupations:
1. Forestry worker/arborist
2. Truck driver
3. Warehouse manager
Top 3 Unskilled Serial Killer Occupations:
1. General labourer (mover, landscaper, et. al.)
2. Hotel porter
3. Gas station attendant
Top 3 Professional/Government Serial Killer Occupations:
1. Police/security official
2. Military personnel
3. Religious official
Obviously, not everyone occupying these jobs is a serial killer, nor are they likely to become one.
But there’s something about these jobs that is inherently appealing to offenders, or that otherwise cultivates the impulses of serial killers-in-waiting and causes them to be curiously over-represented among this rare breed of murderer.''

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hojo.12142
2015
''It was determined that there are four particular occupational ‘groups’ that known British serial murderers selected and these are described as: ‘Healthcare’; ‘Business’; ‘Public and personal service’; and ‘Driving and transient dependent work’. It is this latter occupational ‘grouping’ that was the most commonly selected form of employment.''

 

[Warwick1991]

The preferred jobs of serial killers: aircraft machinist, arborist, general labourer and cop - Macleans.ca
By Michael Arntfield May 9, 2018
''Top 3 Skilled Serial-Killer Occupations:

1. Aircraft machinist/assembler
2. Shoemaker/repair person
3. Automobile upholsterer
Top 3 Semi-Skilled Serial Killer Occupations:
1. Forestry worker/arborist
2. Truck driver
3. Warehouse manager
Top 3 Unskilled Serial Killer Occupations:
1. General labourer (mover, landscaper, et. al.)
2. Hotel porter
3. Gas station attendant
Top 3 Professional/Government Serial Killer Occupations:
1. Police/security official
2. Military personnel
3. Religious official
Obviously, not everyone occupying these jobs is a serial killer, nor are they likely to become one.
But there’s something about these jobs that is inherently appealing to offenders, or that otherwise cultivates the impulses of serial killers-in-waiting and causes them to be curiously over-represented among this rare breed of murderer.''

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hojo.12142
2015
''It was determined that there are four particular occupational ‘groups’ that known British serial murderers selected and these are described as: ‘Healthcare’; ‘Business’; ‘Public and personal service’; and ‘Driving and transient dependent work’. It is this latter occupational ‘grouping’ that was the most commonly selected form of employment.''

I understand that these occupations may be derived from statistics, but another category that comes to mind is medicine. There have been a number of “killer nurses” in several countries who have murdered patients, and more than one physician. In the UK, Dr Harold Shipman is thought to have had a huge number of victims.

 

[Doeologist]

That's a good point about medicine. It's no doubt that doctors and nurses and health care workers are highly underrepresented because they can get away with it. Shipman had two women patients die on the same street the same day, but was given more than the benefit of the doubt.

Michael Arntfield did a good job collating all the SK job information. He was a former police officer turned professor so he didn't mind going to the historical record for research material, instead of just trying to devise some sort of research study on violence and murder with test subjects. He started his study around 2012 and published in 2018. Sleuths on the web already had similar occupational findings, with jobs like landscaper, car upholstery, bodywork and painting, and fields of transportation, etc. The only difference is the understanding of what it means, but you don't have to know that to know if a suspect fits occupationally.

 

[Doeologist]

BBM

The resemblances are uncanny. Especially the smile/lips and nose.

MOO, JMO

I agree. Add that to the initial positive DNA test (followed by an inconclusive) and the matching dental work presumably including the 7 gold crowns in all the right places (with one missing tooth perhaps being an error in BSL's dental records)!...

 

[Doeologist]

Lefler's father was coincidentally in the coast guard, according to the census records.

Correction: It was her father-in-law who was a Coast Guard. His name was William Lefler. That was in 1945 (see the '45 Florida Census).
He appears to have been a landscaper in 1930.

 

[Richard]

Unsolved: Lady of the Dunes

LINK:

Unsolved: Lady of the Dunes

 

[CastlesBurning]

BEWARE: These 50 Strangest Unsolved Mysteries of All Time Are Seriously Spooky!

35. The Eerie Lady of the Dunes

On July 26, 1974, 12-year-old Leslie Metcalfe was returning from the beach with her family in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A local dog had followed them and when it took off barking, Leslie broke away from her parents and started to go after it. In the dunes of Racepoint Beach, a mile east of a ranger station, Leslie found the decomposing body of a naked woman.

The woman was 5”6’, weighed about 145 pounds, and was between 20 and 40 years old. She was lying on one side of a beach towel, with her head resting on a pair of jeans and a blue bandana. It was estimated that the body had been lying there from 10 days to 3 weeks before being discovered. The left side of her head was crushed and she had almost been completely decapitated. While no weapons were found, it was believed that a military entrenching tool was used to almost cut off the head. Her hands, though, were removed to conceal the identity through fingerprints.

Due to the horrific state of the body, authorities believed that the woman was murdered. With no sign of struggle at the time, authorities believed that the unidentified victim would have known her murderer. The only signs of evidence were the size-10 footprints that indicated a heavy person running away. Provincetown Police Chief Jimmy Meads said that “the killer likely drove the victim to the dune in a 4-wheel-drive sand vehicle to sunbathe.”

Despite using bloodhounds, missing person bulletins, scourging the registers of local lodgings, and looking into anyone who had a permit to bring their vehicle onto the beach, police turned up nothing. In 2019, Provincetown local Margie Childs reflected on the case saying “the fact that no one could identify the lady of the dunes in the tight-knit community was very strange.” Almost 50 years later, the victim known as the Lady of the Dunes is still unidentified.

 

[Doeologist]

"The woman was 5”6’, weighed about 145 pounds, and was between 20 and 40 years old."

Brenda Sue Lefler was 5'7", weighed about 130 pounds, and was 31 years old.

 

[Moonwalker9]

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)


What about her? Was added today