(sirens wailing)
- This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved
we sift through the case
of the lady of the dunes,
a murder mystery from
Cape Cod with theories
that stretch from the
Boston Mafia to Hollywood.
Jesus Christ.
- What?
- It's just the turtleneck, the jacket,
you just went in for a
slow sip of your coffee.
It was in sufferable.
- I'm intrigued.
I've never been to Cape Cod,
I don't know much about it
other than what is there like some
Gatsby bullshit going on over there.
- It's like a party town,
people go there to bang it out.
You could probably catch cod there.
And hell I might bring a cape.
- But here's the thing, you put a bunch of
rich people together, oh
there's gonna be some murder.
All rich people are murderers.
- That's fancy coming from you
in your silk turtleneck here.
- $11 on Amazon.com.
Anyway, yeah, safe to say all
rich people are murderers.
- I don't think that's
what this case is about,
nor do I think that's a factual statement.
- Agree to disagree.
- Okay, yep, drink your coffee.
Drink it, go ahead.
You son of a...
All right, you know what,
let's just get into this.
On July 26th 1974, 12
year old Leslie Metcalfe
was returning from the beach
in Provincetown, Massachusetts,
with her family in the late afternoon.
A local dog had followed them,
and when it took off, barking,
Leslie decided to run ahead
of her parents and follow.
First off, got any guesses
what that dog was barking at?
- I don't know, I don't like dogs.
I was running for exercise
and a rotten Dalmatian
jumped right up against a fence
and started growling for no reason
just because I was passing.
I'm a nice man.
- Well they do hate squirrels,
do you think he thought
there was a little bushy
squirrel tail on your face?
- No, it was dark out.
I worry about this, if I ever have kids,
them running away.
Then you see parents with
their kids on leashes
and you're like well that's wrong,
but the more I think
about it I'm like heh,
maybe put your kids on a leash.
- That whole time, didn't
even answer the question.
- What was the dog barking at?
- That was incredible.
(laughing)
- Anything, dogs bark at anything.
- That would have been an acceptable--
- Dogs bark at mailmen, dogs
bark at a bird in a tree.
- Anything would have
been an acceptable answer.
You would be a horrible
contestant on Family Feud.
In the dunes at Racepoint Beach,
amongst the scrub pines a
mile east of a ranger station,
Leslie discovered the decomposing
body of a naked woman,
approximately five feet,
six and half inches tall,
145 pounds, between 20 and 40 years old,
lying on one side of a beach towel
with her head on top of
a folded pair of jeans
and a blue bandana.
It's estimated the body
had been lying there
anywhere from 10 days to three weeks
before being discovered.
Her head had been crushed on the left side
and she had been almost
entirely decapitated.
While no weapons were found,
it's believed that something
akin to a military entrenching tool
was used to nearly sever the head.
Also noticeably absent from the corpse
were the victim's hands,
presumably removed to avoid
identification via fingerprints.
- [Shane] Well, that's a lot.
- [Ryan] I will say that
when you look at the details
of the crime scene, it would
seem that this was done
by somebody who wasn't,
I guess, like an amateur.
Also insane that it had been there
for 10 days to three weeks.
- That's a long time.
The body goes through some stuff.
- But even from beyond
that, like beyond the state
of the body when you find it,
10 days to three weeks is a long time
for it not to be discovered.
- But out there on the dunes, man.
- It's wide, it's expansive.
Though it is only a mile away
from the ranger's station.
It would suggest that maybe the killer
is a little more ballsy than would let on.
- Or they just know that the ranger
is a dufus who's not good at their job.
- The violent state in
which the body was left
obviously suggested murder.
And with no apparent sign
of a struggle at the time,
authorities believe that
the unidentified victim
would have known her murderer.
Some of the only evidence of
another person being around
were size 10 footprints that indicated
a heavy person who was running,
and Provincetown Police Chief Jimmy Meads
said the killer likely
drove the victim to the dune
in a four wheel drive
sand vehicle to sunbathe.
It's interesting to me that the
footprints lasted that long.
- Could it also have been someone who just
stumbled upon the body and
was like you know what...
- We run into this a lot though.
If you saw a body would you call it in?
- Yes, I would.
I would.
- You have to, right?
I would, but I can
understand where if let's say
you got a warrant out, maybe
you didn't pay your taxes,
you stumble upon a body, you
don't wanna invite any of that.
It's probably safer to
walk away sometimes.
- You do usually paint
yourself as suspect number one
when you call in something.
Which isn't that fair.
- So you stumble upon this body,
what's your tone when you tell them?
- Hey how's it going?
I just...
(laughing)
- No, buddy.
- Well you can't sell too
much panic in the voice.
- How's it going?
- I found a body out on the beach,
you should come out here and pick it up.
- Send out the paddy wagon.
- Send out your boys.
My kids play on this beach.
- Oh I didn't know you
had kids in this scenario.
Were you lying about that to them?
- Oh shit would I be...
- You're lying now.
- Oh and now they have that on tape.
- My kids play on this beach.
- And now those cuffs
are gonna be on my wrists
in probably a day's time.
- Yeah.
- Shit.
I just got arrested.
This is why people don't call it in,
I just got arrested.
Despite using blood hounds,
studying missing persons bulletins,
scouring the registers of local lodgings
and looking into anyone who had a permit
to bring their vehicle into the area,
police turned up nothing.
Margie Childs, a Provincetown local,
noted in 2019 that the fact that no one
could identify the lady of the dunes
in the tight-knit
community was very strange.
In their attempt to ID the victim
police turned to the victim's
extensive dental work,
worth thousands of dollars at the time,
and noted to be of New York style.
Details of the dental work were sent
to every dentist in Massachusetts,
published in two dental journals
and distributed to organizations
like the FBI and Interpol.
No one came forward recognizing the work.
So they can't identify the victim,
they looked at the dental work
which is, I guess, of New York syle.
- [Shane] Some Big Apple chompers.
- [Ryan] As a Chicago guy, you
more into deep dish dental?
(chuckling)
- [Shane] Did you have that like
in your notes app last night?
- I did.
Nailed it.
- Weird, so no one even in
the community is missing.
Yeah we know, you did it.
Yep.
Yeah.
So no one in the
community is even missing.
- No.
Now the dental work is interesting to me
because that is a fair
amount of work being done,
so obviously this person is not somebody
that just wandered in off the street.
- When they say New York
dentistry, does that--
- I have no idea what the hell that means.
- That just means fancy, like
this was clearly done by,
you know, not your
country bumpkin dentist.
- I have no idea.
My dad's a dentist himself,
never heard him refer
to California dentistry.
The body was exhumed in
1980 so blood samples
could be taken and an
approximation of the victim's face
could be molded from the skull.
Photos of the resulting bust
were sent around the country
in the hopes that someone
would recognize it.
No identification resulted.
20 years later, in 2000,
the body was exhumed again
when a bone fragment was taken
to test a potential lead.
That again turned up nothing.
In 2013 the body was
exhumed for a third time
to obtain even more DNA.
Still, nothing has produced
a positive identity
for the lady of the dunes.
- This has been hanging over
the community for decades now.
- Yeah they did three exhumations.
Exhumations, that's a word, right?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
They did three of 'em.
And still, after all that...
For that to produce no
kind of DNA evidence
of like who this person
is is kind of insane to me
because 1974 is not that long ago.
You would think that DNA
would be fresh enough
that you could figure out
this person's identity.
- Just also weird that nobody's like hey
I don't know where my friend is.
- Which makes you think this person
could be off the grid in sorts.
- Yeah there is a lot
of shady shit out there.
- [Ryan] With an unidentified murderer
and an unidentified corpse,
it's time to launch into theories.
Our first theory is about
the victim's identity
and comes from the Tumblr of Joe Hill,
the son of Stephen King.
- [Shane] Is this the first
time Tumblr has played into--
- [Ryan] This is the first time Tumblr
has made an appearance.
- The Tumblr crowd is such a
vocal fan base of our show.
- They're very supportive of Unsolved,
they always have been.
That being said, I'm pretty
sure this Tumblr user is not.
But I could be wrong, he's
the son of Stephen King,
so maybe.
- Well I'll tell you,
if anyone knows horror
it's gonna be the son of Stephen King.
- [Ryan] Hill's interest
in the lady of the dunes
was sparked after reading
Deborah Helber's book
The Skeleton Crew: How
Amateur Sleuths Are Solving
America's Coldest Cases.
About an hour into a 40th
anniversary screening
of Steven Spielberg's classic film Jaws,
Hill spotted an extra with a face
that looked eerily familiar.
The face reminded him of
the composite drawings
of the lady of the dunes.
The extra appears in
jeans and a blue bandana,
the same clothing found
with the lady of the dunes.
While this may at first sound like
a simple coincidence of wardrobe,
Jaws was filmed on the cape
during the summer of 1974,
meaning the scene in
question may have been filmed
weeks or days before her death.
An Entertainment Weekly
reporter contacted Universal
about the identity of the extra,
but they cannot locate a record
and the casting director had already died.
Hill admits his theory
could be bogus, but says,
"If nothing else, it's a pretty
good little ghost story."
- That's some good lore.
It does look similar to the composite.
It would potentially explain
her being an outsider.
- Stevie Spielberg shows up in town,
it's gonna attract people from out of town
that wanna be a part of the magic.
He wasn't a big director at that point
so the security around that
probably wasn't as stringent.
Also, kinda crazy that that
set was so loosey goosey
that they don't even
have notes of the names
of all the extras.
- I wonder if that's because it was just
such a long, drawn out debacle,
that they just sort of...
A lot of that got lost in the shuffle.
- Or, she did truly sneak onto the set,
and when they were shooting
just walked into the shot.
Also it fits the timeline,
fits the location,
she kinda looks like the person.
Frankly Joe Hill I think you've done it.
Let's just end the episode there.
- Well we can't.
- Okay, let's move on then.
For our next theory we
move from movie monster
to real life mobster, Whitey Bulger.
Whitey Bulger, you may recall,
was the infamous Boston mob leader
who was beaten to death in prison
while serving two life sentences
for 11 convicted murders.
And it's widely thought he
was responsible for many more.
In 2015 a woman named Sandra Lee,
who suggested her family
was close with Bulger
at the time of the murder,
and even called him Uncle Jimmy,
told a reporter that the lady of the dunes
bore a striking resemblance to one of
Whitey's alleged murders.
In particular Lee believes
the method of disposal
and attempts to avoid
identification of the body
are strikingly similar to
the murder of Debbie Davis.
In Davis' case the victim's
teeth were removed,
presumably in an attempt
to avoid identification.
Davis was strangled to
death and lady of the dunes
showed signs of strangulation.
Davis' hands however were not removed
and the lady of the dunes'
teeth were left in place.
Bulger has never been
officially associated
with the case as a subject.
Lee also claims to remember
seeing Whitey in Provincetown
at the time of the lady
of the dunes' murder.
What's more, for some
reason Lee has also claimed
that when she was nine years old
she discovered the unidentified body
on the morning of July 26th 1974,
before Leslie Metcalfe, but
did not alert authorities.
I was starting to see
what she was selling there
for a second but then she mentions that
she saw the body and didn't identify it,
which makes her kinda just seem like a kid
making up a tall tale.
- [Shane] Is she the one
who also saw Whitey in town?
- Yes, that's what she says.
This is a word of mouth theory here.
However, Debbie Davis also
was found near a shoreline,
so there's similarity
there but like I said,
the hands were cut off.
- Teeth, teeth removed.
So still care taken to mask
the identity in some way.
- Whitey Bulger does fit the description
of the professional that
I was suggesting earlier,
that this didn't seem
like an amateur killing
or perhaps even a crime of passion.
- Yeah.
I don't know enough about him
to really peg him for this.
But I guess all we really need to know
is that he was a vicious murderer.
- True, so that's why
like we're theorizing
that he may have murdered somebody else.
I don't really feel too bad about it.
Our third theory is that
serial killer Hadden Clark,
who is currently serving
70 years in prison
for theft and the murder of two women,
was responsible for the murder.
This theory was first
presented by Hadden Clark,
speaking with journalist
and former police officer
Alec Wilkinson.
Clark claimed that while
staying with his grandfather
on Cape Cod in 1974 he lured
a woman into the dunes,
where he struck her in the head
with a surf casting fishing rod.
He claimed he then retrieved
a saw from his truck
and removed her hands,
using some of her fingers
as fishing bait and burying
the hands elsewhere.
Casting doubt on Clark's
claims is the fact
that the details he
provided about the murder
were featured in newspaper articles.
Clark also has a history
of claiming involvement
in other murders that never checked out.
- Bullshit!
What a liar.
- Yeah.
Don't even give him the satisfaction.
We should just move to the next theory,
let's just swipe away.
- Go to hell, dude.
- [Ryan] Our final theory holds
that the lady of the dunes
was herself a criminal.
The fact that her hands
were removed could suggest
that the murderer knew
the victim's fingerprints
would be on file somewhere.
This led authorities to suspect the lady
could be Rory Gene Kesinger.
Kesinger had a criminal
history of bank robberies
and attempting to shoot police,
including once in a hospital
with the officer's own gun.
When the lady of the dunes was discovered,
Kesinger had recently escaped
from Plymouth County Jail,
just across Cape Cod
bay from Provincetown.
While awaiting trial someone was able
to get Kesinger a hacksaw blade,
which she used to free herself.
In classic escapee fashion
she used tethered bed sheets
to repel out of a window
and was met by a car
that drove her away.
- [Shane] I'm a guard at the prison.
- [Ryan] Yeah.
- I'm supposed to be making
sure nobody gets out.
I'm up there on the little tower.
I swing the spotlight
'cause I hear a commotion.
I see a woman crawling down
the side of the building.
I go to sound the alarm and then suddenly
I put it down.
I'm so impressed with this lady.
Is she a monster?
Is she bad?
- I mean she did attempt
to shoot a police officer
with his own gun.
- What are you gonna do?
- Not that.
That's what you're gonna do.
- But I'm so charmed by her savviness.
- She just tied bed sheets together.
That's like some fairytale shit.
That's not even creative.
- And it worked.
Most people would probably
scoff at that and say
well that's only in
cartoons, nobody does this.
- Yeah but I think if
you're sitting around
in a locked cell long enough
you'll think of anything.
- Yeah, and you ought to.
I mean assuming you're
a cool lady like this,
what did she do, she
just robbed some banks.
- And attempted to shoot--
- Baller.
Well the cop was probably
being mean to her.
- It's said the sculptural post made of
the lady of the dunes
after the 1980 exhumation
had a striking resemblance to Kesinger.
In the late 90s authorities
tracked down Kesinger's mother,
who agreed to give a saliva
sample to see if her DNA
meant she was the mother of the victim.
The theory was so strong
that it's what lead to
the body being exhumed again in 2000.
Both tests failed in determining
whether it was a match,
which led to another test in 2002
that proved conclusively
that there was no match
between Kesinger and
the lady of the dunes.
- What but did she just disappear then?
- Yeah, and I think...
- So she may be...
- I mean that's mission accomplished
for someone who escapes prison, you know.
- She actually may be watching this video
and hearing me lavish praise upon her.
- This is the first theory that we've had
that has, I guess, a
somewhat happy ending.
Because if you escape prison
the goal is to not be caught.
And if we found out that
lady of the dunes was her,
she got got.
- Yeah if you're watching this episode
don't be tweeting like that lady's so cool
'cause then the law's gonna remember
like oh yeah she escaped.
They're gonna be going
after her so just ssh,
keep quiet about it.
- [Ryan] This case has
been closely followed
in the more than 45 years
since Leslie Metcalfe
discovered the lady of the dunes,
resulting in numerous other theories
with varying degrees of plausibility.
In the 1980s a psychic told
Provincetown Police Chief
Jimmy Meads that the
victim was a Canadian nurse
named either Carolyn or Marilyn O'Leary.
While the word of a psychic may not
seem like enough to
merit further scrutiny,
another person had also
reported the victim
to be an American nurse
named Carolyn O'Leary,
who had gone missing.
Upon investigation
authorities found O'Leary
to be very much alive.
- [Shane] Good job, psychics.
What a shock.
- [Ryan] What do you think about that
investigative technique?
- I mean I think all
psychics are bullshit,
so I don't care.
- But I will say that there has to be
at least one case that a
psychic actually solved,
otherwise why would we keep using them?
- No one's using them.
I think they're just
like you must believe me
and then some dipshit
at the station is like
I think you should hear this lady out.
- [Ryan] Despite over
four decades of dead ends,
investigations continue.
According to journalist Mary Ann Brag,
after three exhumations
authorities currently have
the skull, ribs, the left scapula,
the right scapula, a
tissue sample of a leg,
and hair samples in their possession.
Cape officials are
looking into a new method
for identifying the body using
DNA evidence and genealogy.
DAs from California who worked on
the golden state killer case
which was finally solved
using genealogy records
have been brought over
to look into the case.
There's even a Twitter
account dedicated to
discovering the identity
of the lady of the dunes.
Still, an answer is
anything but guaranteed.
Prior to his death in 2011,
Police Chief Meads stated that
the only way to solve the case
would be if someone on their deathbed
wanted to clear their
conscience before passing.
Without that it appeared the identity
of the lady of the dunes
as well as her murderer
will remain unsolved.
- Nutso.
- Yeah it's a crazy case.
I gotta say, after all those theories,
and this is not just because
I love the film Jaws,
I do think it's actually
a very interesting theory.
- It is interesting, but at the same time
I don't know if there's enough there.
- Maybe.
- Frankly I'd like to enjoy the film Jaws
without every time watching it being like
it's the lady of the dunes.
- The thing about the theory though
is it doesn't solve the case,
it just solves the identity of her.
It doesn't have any kind of bearing
towards who the criminal or the killer is.
- Yes but once you figure
out the identity then...
- You could start opening up a network.
- Quite a prominent one, I would say.
- That is true.
Well, we've once again failed.
- Thoroughly upsetting
story with no conclusion.
- You know what, the
turtleneck grew on me.
- Thank you.
How about that mustache?
- No.
(eerie music)
