Episode 631: Case Revisit: The Lady of the Dunes

Hey weirdos, it's Ash. Before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about the spooky perks of Wondery Plus.
It's like having a skeleton key that unlocks ad-free listening and early access to new episodes. So don't wait, try Wondery Plus today.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
Let Audible expand your life by listening.

Explore over 1 million audiobooks and exclusive Audible. Network Podcast.
finance, investing, and more. Maybe you want to kick a bad habit or start a good one.
Speaking

of, I'm actually listening to The Secret on Audible. I love that title so much.
And 10 out of 10 recommend. The soundscaping is pristine.
Get advice and insight from leading professionals and experts on health, relationship, career, finance, investing, and more. There's so much opportunity to learn and more to imagine when you listen.
Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash morbid. So I just used NerdWallet's card finder tool to find a better card for me.
And listeners, this is genius. All you have to do is answer a few questions and in minutes, you'll get matched with recommendations tailored to you.
I'm discovering cards I didn't even know existed, and the matching was on point.

The best part? No research needed.

The nerds already did that for us.

So if you, like me, want to easily find the right card for you,

go to nerdwallet.com to get matched today.

Terms and conditions apply.

Credit products subject to lender approval.

See nerdwallet.com for details.

Hello, brethren. Happy after the holidays.
It's after the holidays now. Not now, technically.
But where you are. In the future.
In the future. It's after the holidays.
And we have a little business before we tell you why we're releasing this specific episode. There is a reason for the season.
Turn, turn, turn. And Ash is really good at business.
Business is my middle name. Also admin.
She stands on it. Nicole is also my real middle name in case you were wondering.
Don't steal it. So anyway, I don't know.
Don't use it for bad. Just don't steal it, okay? Everybody with Nicole's middle name is like, let me maintain my middle name.
Let me. Anyway, back to the business.

Next Listener Tale episode is going to be available on all platforms with video on YouTube on January 2nd.

Whoa!

Whoa!

So I think we're doing two installments of Listener Tales for January because of, you know, the holiday.

You know.

The first one that we're releasing in January on the second with video on YouTube is funny.

The costumes.

It's funny.

All the other ones, dead serious.

But this one, funny.

Funnier than the last one, I might add, maybe.

I don't know.

We haven't even done it yet.

That's a pretty tall order.

Well, whatever.

But anyway, Elena, back to you. Tell them why we're re-releasing this episode, The Lady of the Dunes.
So this was a crazy, like mysterious case. There wasn't an answer for it.
Unsolved, if you will. It was one of those.
You might say it was unsolved, but you can't say that anymore. Don't say that.
Can't say that anymore because there's an update to the case. We know who did it now.
We know who did it. We know who the Lady of the Dunes is and I'm not going to spoil anything for you because we did a whole episode to update you guys on it but if you need a refresher, here it is.
Listen to the Lady of the Dunes. Say, oh my goodness, will we ever know what happened there? And then you can say, you can say yes we do and then go to the next episode and bada boot which will be next monday there you go there's the update so this is pretty fun it's a little gift to you it was a gift from the universe to the whole world to know who this woman was and to know what happened to her so So we're passing it forward.
Enjoy. Please enjoy.

Bye. Hey, weirdos.
I'm Elena. I'm Ash.
And this is Morbid and it's local to massachusetts hello i get excited about these you should i do i like covering ones from massachusetts it's kind of my thing it's kind thing. Well, do we have any business before we stay in Massachusetts? Before we stay in Massachusetts.
So one weird thing happened that kind of goes along with this episode because it happened in Massachusetts. It happened in Provincetown, didn't it? It did.
It's happened in, actually, it happened in Cape Cod. Yeah.
But, uh, like, so right around there. Yeah.
But yeah, this guy, Michael Packard, who is like a veteran lobster diver, which lobster fisherman. Wild.
No joke. We have a cousin that's a lobster fisherman.
We do. He's a lobsterman.
Shout out to Annie. To Annie.
Yeah, it's it's a badass job. It is a very dangerous job.
And this guy, Michael Packard, got swallowed by a humpback whale and then spit out. I mean, we're happy for the latter part of that story.
Very happy for the ending. Imagine having that life experience.
Well, and I guess like his crewmate was on the boat and this guy was going down to check the traps. And he said he just watches like the bubbles to make sure that he's like still alive, essentially.
Yeah yeah and he said all of a sudden he saw this like crazy explosion of bubbles and he's like oh my god he he died and i can't do anything about it yeah like literally he's just sitting there helpless and the guy i guess thought it was a shark that had got him so he was like oh i'm dead like he was like this is it he said i'm done i dead. All I could think about was my boys.
They're 12 and 15 years old, which like kills me. And he was breathing through like a breathing regulator at the time.
Inside of a humpback whale? Well, not a humpback. I made that up.
He said, no, it was a humpback whale. Yeah, it was a humpback whale.
It's the morning. It is.
And apparently he was like struggling because he was breathing through that apparatus right so he was struggling and the whale was like wow i didn't mean to eat you right like you're not what i eat right and so the i think the whale like felt bad that he had eaten him and so he brought him to the surface to spit him out we love a whale we love a whale which i guess he said within like 30 30 seconds he said but he said for a brief moment he thinks he was swallowed well he yeah he must have been like not just hanging out his mouth what the fuck isn't that fucked up can you imagine going home and like your wife is like hey how was your day at work and you're like oh actually i got swallowed by a humpback whale how was your day sweetie i got swallowed by a humpback they initially thought he uh he had broken both of his legs yeah and they were like he at least broke one he apparently didn't break any bones when he went to the hospital yeah he went to the hospital he just had uh soft tissue damage oh yeah what the fuck and i guess an expert said that humpback whales are like gulp feeders.

Like they just slurp and gulp.

They just get as much as they can down.

Yeah.

So this was definitely like an accident.

He just happened to be there.

And I think he was just gulping up food and happened to suck him in.

I think that happens in Finding Nemo, like actually.

Yeah.

And then there's, I guess there's a marine mammal expert, Peter Corcoran, and he's from the New England Aquarium, which our cousin worked at. Hey, I was just there the other day.
Yeah, she's amazing. And he works there and he was saying that the, basically him, the whale bringing him to the surface to spit him out, he said it's perfectly believable that the whale was trying to help him.
Shut up. I love this whale.
because there's evidence that say that humpbacks can be altruistic towards humans shut the fuck up yeah it's like how um elephants think we're cute yes yeah it's the same kind of animals i do too not that i want to get swallowed by a humpback whale but like wow but i think it was just like it was a whoops moment for that whale that was embarrassing and he decided that he was going to try to make good at the end. It was embarrassing.
He was probably really shamed. Imagine having that under your belt for two truths and a lie.
Yeah. I was born here.
I like the color blue. And I was swallowed by a black whale.
And they're like, okay, that's the lie. And you're like, I actually love the color red.
I hate blue. Like, what the fuck? Like, that's an amazing story.
I thought I had a good one. Mine is just that I was born in Hawaii.
Yeah. People are always like, you do.
That's the lie. And you're like, no.
But I was not swallowed by a humpback whale. No, you were not.
Maybe I'll still use it in Two Truths and a Lie, though. I think it's a good one.
And you know what, Michael Packard? I'm really glad that you're okay. Congrats.
Yeah, congrats. And make sure you tell your boys because they're going to love that story.
Also, are you going to go back to Lobster?

I'm sure he will.

He probably will.

Those people are always just badass.

Yeah, they're just, they don't care.

Like that's just, they know the ocean.

They know the dangers of the ocean and they're just like, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm okay.

Like I think at one point he was like, at least it wasn't a shark, which you're like,

yeah, but it was still a whale that swallowed you.

Yeah, like you were in the bell of a whale.

Yeah, that's scary. That's crazy.
Also, it took everything in me and now I just can't get past it. When you said whales are gulp feeders, I was going to say same.
Yeah, I figured. And I couldn't let that joke go.
I figured. You had to bring it right back around.
It hits different after the fact, but it still hits. It does.
You're welcome. I think a lot of people can relate.
Yeah. But but yeah so that brings us nicely into the episode today which is which is the crazy mysterious and gruesome case of the lady of the dunes and unsolved very unsolved uh and now i want to solve it whenever i get into one of these cases really hard i'm like well you, things do happen after we cover cases.
They do. And it freaks me out.
I feel like this is a remind. This reminds me of like the Karina Homer case the way I want to.
I want to solve it. Like, I really want to solve that case.
And I really want to solve this case. And they're both Massachusetts.
I solved the Karina Homer case. Yeah.
I i know who did it i know what you did last summer but i want it like solved yeah like i want it on the books you want a real detective i need to know more information we need to solve this citizen detective style let's do it we're gonna solve this did you hear us and we'll go we should just get like a true crime squad together let's do it sarah tourney like she damn thing sarah turney you're on the squad we have to get bailey sarion because we're newly best friends and she can make us look good too yes so while we're doing this yeah i think that's honestly that's the dream team it really is i'm sure we'll think of more later we'll add to the squad because it's early and i mean the entire morbid network has to come Exactly. Everybody.
Everybody. All right.
So guys, let's pack your bags.

Come. of more later we'll add to the squad because it's early and i mean the entire morbid network has to come exactly everybody everybody all right so guys let's pack your bags come to massachusetts we're doing this see you soon we're gonna solve the lady of the dunes case but let me tell you about it first so that you can you guys can decide afterwards if you want to join the squad yeah so first of all if you happen to have any information about this case because it is a pretty well-known case, especially around here, you can direct any tips, any information, anything that your

grandparents may have slipped out at some point at dinner time, at supper, at the supper table.

If they sat there and they told you that one time they were in P-Town and it was July, it was hot

and I stumbled upon this dead body. Here's where you can tell the Provincetown Police Department, 508-487-508-487-508-487-508- if you have any information about the unidentified body that we are going to talk about, call the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner at 617-267-6767.
Hey. So make sure you call those if you have any information.
So I'm going to start this off with a quick little quote that's going to like sum it up for you what we're going to talk about. All righty.
For the last 47 years, investigators have been struggling to identify the Lady of the Dunes, a handless corpse that was found nearly decapitated on a Massachusetts beach. So that's going to tell you everything you need to know about what we're going to do.
There it is. Whoop, there it is.
Now, it is wild to me. It's always wild to me when we can't find who did something, even if we have the identity of the victim, because it's like people should never be able to get away with this stuff, especially now but we don't even know who she is that's the thing that is nuts to me is that we don't know who this woman is i know no one's been able to identify her it's so scary and when i start telling you who she was where how she was found you're gonna see that it's strange because as they say multiple times she seems well well taken care of.
Right. You know, like she doesn't, she didn't come across as somebody who was like, you know, going from place to place or down on their luck or not, maybe wasn't connected to people.
She seemed like she interacted with people quite often. Okay.
So what happened was a bit after 6 p.m. on Friday, July 26, 1974, a 12-year-old girl named Leslie Metcalf was at Race Point Dunes in P-Town.
She was following a barking dog. It was a beagle.
And she had been with friends at the beach. Leslie's sister, Alyssa, had said in an interview later that she was at the stables that day, but her sister and some friends had gone to the beach to play.
They had been hanging around and at a dune shack that a family friends were renting. And a dune shack is exactly what it sounds like.
But they were originally built like a century ago, or a century, a century, a century earlier than like 1974. Yeah, exactly.
So not now. But they were originally built as cabins for like these crews of people who would keep watch for ships so they wouldn't run aground in bad weather.
And they're just, they're exactly what they sound like. Just little shacks all across the dunes.
Yeah. Now, after a while, they turned them into like beach rentals and places where like local artists or like, you know, creators of any kind could set up and sell their wares out of.
They're all over the place in B-Town. Exactly.
And on the Cape in general. Exactly.
Now, her parents were there as well. And there were two dogs in the shack.
When they were all ready to head home, they were just going to walk across the beach and the dunes and go back home. They started walking and one of the dogs, the beagle, followed them.
Which was fine. He was just walking down the beach with them.
But then he kind of veered off the path and started barking wildly. Like clearly trying to tell them something.
He was very clearly indicating something he had found. That was for sure.
So Leslie was like, hmm, she's 12 and i want to know what that dog's doing i mean i'm 35 and i'd be like hmm i want to find out what that dog is barking up and she followed him as i would and when she ran off the beaten track after the dog she quickly noticed a motionless form laying in the dunes oh my goodness and she it it was surrounded by tall grass. Now she said she thought the body initially was a deer at first.
Not a mannequin this time. Not a mannequin.
She thought it was a deer. And she said, you know, she was upset enough about possibly running into a dead or hurt deer.
Yeah. That's still shitty.
Of course. But then she saw the form completely.
She made out some legs and feet.

And she saw hair tied up into a ponytail and caked with blood.

Oh, my goodness.

And she realized that she was looking at a human body.

This poor little 12-year-old finding that.

She could also smell the scent of decomposition nearby.

Like, you know, she had been there for a while in the summer sun.

So she was baking.

I was going to say.

Now, what had happened, though, was it was really hot hot it's hot summers here and on peatown and it's right next to the it's on the beach right next to the water massachusetts water is not like crystal clear caribbean water love that dirty so that smell of like the the ocean and all that is can be gnarly.

But it's something you just expect here. Yeah.
That you're going to have that beach smell. Just get hit in the face with like red tide.
Exactly. So it's like so this smell of this decomposing woman in the sun for what they think could have been, you know, up to more than a week.
Wow. I didn't know it was that long.
Yeah. they think it was just kind of mixing with the which tell you something about what the ocean

smells like here yeah that up to more than a week wow i didn't know it was that long yeah they think it was just kind of

mixing with the which tell you something about what the ocean smells like here yeah that people were just like man well there's probably like mad bodies in our oceans too so yeah there definitely are um so she yeah so she could definitely smell it the closer she got and their parents said that all they heard was her say,

Mom? Dad?

Like, she didn't scream, she just said

Mom. and their parents said that all they heard was her say mom dad like she didn't scream she just said mom like so her parents went to see what was wrong and they discovered the body yikes so this body was only found about a mile away from the provincetown police station oh wow which is interesting now they immediately ran to the dune shack that they had been at and they contacted the rangers uh leslie's recollection was that the clothing on scene was very neatly folded and placed under this woman's head she could see some clothing and she said she immediately saw that this woman was naked that her hands she didn't see initially that they were missing we'll get into that but she said her hands were buried in the sand.
Gotcha. Luckily, Leslie didn't see that the head was almost decapitated.
She said she seemed like she almost looked like she was asleep and sunbathing in the nude. Did it seem like she was face down? She was face down.
Gotcha. She was all the way face down.
Hey, weirdos. I'm Lindsey Graham from the podcast American History Tellers.
And if you're still reeling from Ash and Elena's episode on the Boston molasses disaster, and you want to dive even deeper, you're in luck. My show doesn't usually venture too far into the spooky or creepy, but we've dedicated two full episodes to uncovering fascinating details about this bizarre molasses catastrophe.
From the company's negligence to the victim's harrowing stories, we explore how this strange event reshaped industrial safety laws and left an indelible mark on Boston's history. And the Boston Molasses Disaster is just one of many fascinating stories waiting for you on American History Tellers.
We take you to the events, the times, and the people that shaped our nation and show you how our history affected them, their families, and affects you today. Follow American History Tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you catch your podcasts.
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to both American History Tellers and Morbid early and ad-free. Start your free trial on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today.
You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Bollin, the host of Mr.
Bollin's Medical Mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors.
So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. B Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show.

Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. um apparently the family friends who had rented the dune shack that summer said they never rented that shack again they never returned to the dunes again because they were so disturbed i mean yeah i would be too and um leslie's sister elissa said their family had been visiting p-town for years at this point.
And it was a very safe area. Yeah.
Especially then. It was like very safe.
I mean, kids could walk around without their parents. They could run around on beaches and in the dunes to play.
No one thought anything of it. It's that whole thing of like quiet, quaint little town.
It is. It's a quiet town it's like every and it's it's it is

this is weird um so alissa the sister also said that no one really interviewed them about their experience the family and likely just went off of the ranger's story for details um usually papers and stories say that leslie was walking her dog and just came across the body but that's not accurate and I did find many stories that started off with a 12 year old girl walking her dog and that's wrong I know it's not like totally pertinent to the infer like that she was chasing a dog that wasn't hers yeah but still you should get the information but it makes it seem like this 12 year old girl was just alone walking her dog and stumbled across it and that's just not what happened well and like to not mention that the parents also saw something exactly because i guess i think the reason that they probably do that is like oh it's a 12 year old so like that's why we didn't really interview her exactly we just let it go and it's like so park ranger james hankins was the first officer arriving on scene and he said she was laying face down naked on a green beach blanket he could see red hair and that she had been severely beaten over the head. She was also seemingly missing her hands, he said.
They were not buried. He and other media outlets said the hands were shoved into the sands with pine needle piles around them, like her arms, like where her hands should be.
And it made it look like she was doing pushups. Weird.
Yeah. And he was quoted as saying it was ghastly.
It was as if she had been laying there alone or on a blanket with someone and someone came up and clubbed her. There was no signs of a struggle.
Even the sand hadn't been disturbed. Wow, that's so weird.
And that's something that a lot of people talk about is there was zero sign of struggle

people say it did not look like she was fought here it didn't look like it looked like she was

there and was caught off guard well and therefore like for there to not be like even like maybe

blood splatter on the sand yeah that's weird it's wild it's really well and i think there was like

definitely like blood spatter yeah and stuff but you could tell she didn't fight back right so she was definitely caught off guard caught off guard which it's like was she asleep that's what the that's honestly what a lot of people think is that she was asleep well and i feel like that's kind of an area too where you would go to sleep because like you don't have to worry about the water like the tide changing anything like that you're in the tall grass exactly she was hidden enough that she could have been sunbathing in the nude exactly it's another hiding in the nude and just kind of fell asleep yeah and it's like but what who what happened were you with someone right so like i said she there was some clothing that were found there was a pair of wrangler jeans that were folded up like a pillow under her head, which to me says she went to sleep with those right. Exactly.
Like a pillow. And there was also a blue bandana under her head.
And she was laying halfway on a light green blanket, like a beach blanket. The Warren Tobias, who was the retired acting police chief in Provincetown said she was definitely posed there.
She was lying out on a beach towel as if she was sunbathing. So he doesn't think that she was asleep.
She was either posed there or that's like where she, what she was doing when it happened. Gotcha.
He, so James, uh, James Hankins, the ranger called Provincetown police chief chief at the time James Jimmy Meads at home because they were friends. And actually, I guess Meads had given Hankins like some extra responsibilities.
Like he could kind of like do more than a normal ranger could because he was like trustworthy. OK.
So he called him at home and he was like, you got to get here now provincetown police chief james jimmy meads felt like it was his duty to solve this case like so he was so trustworthy he well no this was the police chief oh well that's good he's he felt very connected to this case and he took every opportunity to push it forward and like really push down doors to get things done for this case. Like he had a forensics team come together at one point to create composites and clay models of her likeness.
He literally said he wouldn't retire until he found out who she was. And for years, he actually had her skull in his office as a reminder to himself that she was unnamed and can't be forgotten.
Wow. That is dedication.
He also got her dental records and all information published anywhere he could and constantly brought up her case in any interview he did anywhere he could. He was really trying to keep her case in the forefront and make sure she was not forgotten.
It's so interesting that they did get her dental records, but like, or like. And we'll get into it.
Don't worry. Because she has very specific dental records too.
Which makes it even weirder. Weird.
I love this. So he said.
Quote. With most murders you try to figure out who the murderer was.
I've spent years trying to figure out who the victim was. As the years dwindle on.
More dentists will retire or die more dental records will be

lost and the opportunity for identification will diminish maybe someone on death row will decide to cleanse his soul before he dies and confess to the murder it appears that someday soon i'll retire and the case won't be solved but i'm sure whoever follows me in this job if they get a lead they'll call me and I'll be ready oh and each chief after him have all made it a priority to bring this case back up and try and solve it every single case i'm glad every chief after him has been like priority number one is solving this case yeah so when mead showed up after hankins called him he showed up with two other detectives that evening And he saw the scene and he said immediately his head went to Tony Chop Chop Costa. Hey, we know all about Tony Chop Chop.
We do. If you remember, we did an episode about Tony Chop Chop Costa, another killer in Provincetown.
And if you I don't know if anybody caught that Jimmy Meads is kind of a familiar name. I thought it was, but then I didn't know if I like knew somebody like personally with that name.
Yep. See, Meads was in our Costa episode.
I thought so. He had actually known Costa since he was young when he moved to P-Town.
And he, Meads had been the one to recruit Costa as a drug informant before he turned into a serial killer. Because of his help in the drug informant cases, Meads wrote him a letter to get him early parole when he was in jail for non-payment of child support.
And he, because he basically wrote the letter to get him out so he could use him as a police drug informant. But five, so he got him out five months early in november 1968 and two months after he was let out he murdered pat walsh and marianne wysocki right so meads was part of the investigation she he actually spoke to patricia morton who was the rooming house owner who told him that uh marianne wysocki and pat walsh had spent two nights at her rooming house and that a man named Tony Costa had also been staying there at the same time.
She had told him that they had interacted and that she had not seen the girls in a few days. And as we know, Tony had killed them both.
Right. So that's a bummer.
So that's why their head immediately went to Tony. Exactly.
So and it's very much like the dismemberment and stuff is very Tony Costa, Tony Chop Chop Costa, but not like him. Sorry, I'm probably jumping ahead of you.
Oh, no. Well, well, the big main thing was immediately he thought of Tony Chop Chop, but then he realized it couldn't be him because he had killed himself May 12th in 1974.
All right. Well, that's so couldn't be him.
And I was going to say he didn't leave people out in the the open. He would have buried them in the garden thing that he had.
Yeah, he liked to do his little garden, his Tony garden. Yeah.
They searched the surrounding areas around the scene for days, and they found literally nothing. Not a shred of evidence.
That's crazy. They even used bloodhounds.
Nothing hit. Couldn't find anything.
I mean, it must be hard on the beach, too, because wind blows and wind blows and the sand moves. Oh, yeah.
Like, I can't imagine. Absolutely.
And it buries things. Yeah.
It's like, and then there's water involved. It's just all this.
It's like the worst thing ever. So the autopsy was done Saturday, July 27th, 1974.
What it came out was she was about 5'6", 135 pounds, and estimated to be between 25 and 40 years old. Her build was described as an athletic build.
She had long hair that was reddish or described as auburn in a lot of places. It was in a ponytail.
They couldn't actually determine what color her eyes are because of decomposition. Oh, wow.
So what happens is when you die,

you stop blinking. And so you don't produce any kind of moisture in your eyes.
And there's no more blood circulation to help with all that. So there's no oxygen coming into your eyes once you're dead, because the cornea needs to be moist for oxygen to absorb into it.
And lack of oxygen affects the opacity of your cornea and the lens.

So it doesn't change the color of the eye technically but if you're looking at it it will appear bluish or white or like even gray because it's like because it'll be cloudy basically yeah it'll have that cloudy haze over it yeah that's so weird i never knew that before yeah it's like a weird thing so sometimes it can be especially after if they've they've been out for a while that's really gonna they're gonna have cloudy eyes it's just so frustrating too when you're dealing with like an unidentified body yeah exactly so she also had pink toenail polish on oh girl i know that always gets me it does ever since the willie picked an episode because you had said one of the girls was found with red toenail polish i I paint my toes red all the time. And I always think of it now.
Because you always think, because I think that too, doing autopsies. I say it a lot that like little things always make me think like, oh, you had no idea.
Because it's the last time you were going to paint your nails. It's like such a personal thing that like you just do, like you don't paint your nails thinking of dying.
It's like a self self-care thing so it's like they just they either you or someone painted your toenails just and you had no idea that that was the last time you would do that and that it's sad it freaks it always gets me now now we're gonna get into her teeth okay because i'm interested she had lots of teeth missing but they are fairly sure that this was from the murder or not circumstances before the murder. They think that this was on purpose, that her teeth are missing.
She had a lot of gold crowns in her teeth. Huh.
Estimated between $5,000 and $10,000 worth of dental work in her mouth. they actually sent out her dental records to dentists all over Massachusetts and the country

all over Massachusetts and the country. Also the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Wow and they didn't get anything? Nothing. What? That is nuts to me.
Nothing. I'm like what? And they think that the missing teeth were pulled out forcibly.
Right. pulled them out intentionally i remember hearing that and how are there i don't know if you know this are there certain teeth that are better for identification i don't think so i think it's more dental work just i mean unless all i can think about is if she had some kind of like maybe she had one tooth that severely overlapped another one.
Right. That would be, like, very identifiable.
Like, if she had some really, really identifiable specific to her thing that they wanted to remove for that. Yeah.
But, like, just the teeth themselves, I think that it's just really the dental work that you're looking for. Well, and then does that say to you that this is probably somebody who's like killed before because they know that and they're like that like callous to freaking pull a tooth? Yes, because when we get into the hands, those hands were definitely taken off to take away fingerprints.
Right. So this is somebody who knows how to take away identification and did a great job because we can't identify her so clearly has probably done this before i feel like that i feel like that i think so that's a very this is a one-off experienced level of moida and we're gonna get at the end of this episode we'll talk about the theories who who has been brought up over the years and maybe talk about who we think could be it um she was also sexually assaulted with a wooden block but they think it was done post-mortem which is terrible regardless but um her hands were cut off like i said one at the forearm and one at the wrist so no fingerprints to identify her obviously where her hands would have been whoever placed her there had piled on pine needles like intentionally the left side of her head had been crushed in like an eggshell they said the medical examiner said it looked like the blow had happened from someone lying next to her or when she was asleep there wasn't any signs of struggle she was on one side of the blanket so it seemed likely that she may have known her killer or was at least slightly comfortable with them and was asleep and didn't see it coming yeah so it's either she was asleep didn't see it coming and didn't know the person or she was on that blanket with someone and they and she fell asleep or was just lying there and they took her out she was almost decapitated they thought this was due to a combination of multiple strangled strangulation attempts and also um that blow to the head it was done with a tool which um is called a military entrenchment tool uh and that was actually the cause of death was the blow to the head yeah i would think so the military entrenchment tool is a collapsible spade kind of thing used by military and like survivalists it's really sharp and usually made up like steel and shit okay um so i think it was james hankins yeah that said quote the only instrument that could have been used to hack off her hands was an instrument carried by almost all dune buggies.
Interesting. It was common

in all surplus stores. It was a handy tool for a camper.
It was a folding shovel called an

entrenching tool. It was standard issue item for anyone in the infantry.
Soldiers in World War II

and Korea carried them. It was very sturdy, made out of heavy metal, semi-pointed, spade-like.

The blade could be folded down on the handle, or it could be raised to a perpendicular like a hoe, or you could make it into a shovel with a straight handle around 18 inches long. In hand-to-hand combat, you could use it to fight your enemy.
Wow, so this is a versatile tool. It is, and it sounds like every dune buggy had one.
Yeah, which is interesting.

And that it's a good tool for campers, people who camp out on the dunes, people who...

So this is opening up like many doors. A lot of doors.
Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect. For Patty, that friend was Desiree.
Until one day... I texted her and she was not getting the text.
So I went to Instagram. She has no Instagram anymore.
And Facebook, no Facebook anymore. Desiree was gone.
And there was one person who knew the answer. I am a spiritual person, a magical person, a witch.
A gorgeous Brazilian influencer called Cat Torres, but who was hiding a secret. From Wondery, based on my smash hit podcast from Brazil, comes a new series, Don't Cross Cat.
About a search that led me to a mystery in a Texas suburb. I'm calling to check on the two missing Brazilian girls.
Maybe get some undercover crew there. The family are freaking out.
They are lost. I'm Chico Felitti.
You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, weirdos.
I'm Mike Corey. And like you, I'm drawn to true crime, creepy history, and all things spooky.
If you particularly enjoyed Ash and Elena's coverage of the USS Indianapolis, where 900 sailors battled rough seas, sharks, dehydration, and madness in the open ocean, you need to check out my podcast, Against the Odds. We dive deep into this survival story across four full episodes, revealing details you haven't heard yet.
Each week on Against the Odds, we put you in the shoes of real survivors, from the Thai cave rescue to Somali pirate hostages to the Donner Party. These aren't just headlines.
They're incredible stories of

human endurance. Follow Against the Odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to both Against the Odds and Morbid early and ad-free. Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today.

There was also a ton of insect activity on the body that they noticed.

We'll also mention that again after we talk about the theories.

Yay.

Now, the stomach contents indicated that she had recently eaten a meal of burger and fries.

Got it, girl.

Which indicated to a lot of people that she had been in town that day.

Yeah, you would think so. Maybe at one of the burger and fry joints.

Right.

She had estimated to have been dead for at least 10 days, but possibly as long as three

weeks.

Whoa, dude.

They believe she was, they were thinking that she was possibly killed somewhere else

if it's not the theory of her being asleep. Okay.
Just because of the lack of stuff at the crime scene. Right.
There was blood, but like, I think it wasn't as bloody as you would think it would be. Right.
At that scene. And then when you get into the insect activity, does that kind of like skew it even more? It's honestly, it doesn't, but it's like, I think they just can't figure it out.
Yeah. They can't figure this out.
It's like, she looks like she could have been asleep on that towel. Or it could have been all set up to look like she was sleeping on that towel.
Because it almost does seem like too perfect. Like posed.
Right. Yeah.
But it's like, she's on, the other thing is she's on her, she's face down. Right.
So it's like, you would sunbathe like you know what i mean like you would do that but then it's like would somebody place you face down or would they place you face up maybe they would place you face down to make it look like you had been sunbathing exactly right so they probably just don't want to rule out anything because it because they have anything yeah they have no evidence to say exactly what is on here, which is so frustrating. I can't imagine working on this case, even just listening to it is frustrating.
So frustrating. So no missing persons matched that description.
None. They searched all local motels and hotels, asked if someone had seen someone matching that description or if someone had not returned to their room matching that description,

nothing.

It's like,

how is she not connected to anybody?

That's the thing.

And again,

no fingerprints.

So we can't even try that.

I know.

Now,

a detective named detective Flynn said,

quote,

it's certainly unusual that no one misses her.

She must've had a husband,

boyfriend,

parents,

someone.

She had been pretty well taken care of.

We know that.

So she was like in, like in a where she obviously she had almost ten thousand dollars worth of dental work in her house right it's she was not just like floating around homeless right so your mind just goes to all these different things yeah like one of the first things i thought was like was she like a runaway like and had been like had run away like a long time ago and just making her own life and not dating anybody like maybe you know it's i it's there's so many ways you could go with it yeah and it's one especially in the 70s it's like people were like going off on their own doing things on their own all the time oh yeah and provincetown was like a perfect place to go just i mean look at tony chop chop that was like his whole life was just floating around Provincetown. So it's like maybe not like but she's not a drifter because she's well taken care of.
So exactly. It's weird.
And she must have been staying somewhere like her hair's nice. It's in a ponytail.
Yeah. Like it seems.
Yeah. They don't describe it as like unkempt or anything.
Right. So it's it's very strange.
There were two pairs of footprints seen in the sand around the scene they appeared to be heading towards the body but they never came right up to it so that's interesting um there was also a set of tire tracks present about 50 yards from the crime scene but again it could have been weeks so that could have just been like a dune buggy yeah so over 30 different police officers searched the entire cape and they had zero leads zero i could not imagine now a few years later they were getting a little desperate so they sent jimmy meads to new york city to see a psychic named yolana bard who was known as the queen of the psychics okay she. She had worked on a lot of cases, a lot of well-known people.

And at this point, they're like, can it hurt?

Might as well just give it a shot.

Sometimes it can, though.

It can. So apparently he placed case things in front of her,

but they were all in sealed packages.

Okay.

So she wouldn't know what was inside of them.

It was their test.

Sure.

They were like, you proved to me that you can.

That you're the queen. So they were like, he was literally like, tell me something.
If I wanted to like, tell me what's going on in one of these. So she stopped over one of them and said, I sense blood in this one.
And it was an envelope containing a bloody piece of evidence from the crime scene. But also like, there probably would be blood in one of them.
It's true. So, but then she said she saw dripping and she said there was a beach.
Now she didn't know what victim she was talking about. Right.
She said there was a beach where the victim was found and she said their hands were buried. That's what? Yeah, that's huge.
So she gave him directions to where the hands would be found buried. Wow.
And he went back to P-Town to look. He was like, all right, I'm going to gonna go check this out and he put everything she said together and decided that the place she was indicating he thought was a place called the ace of spades which was a bar in town and it had been a while it had been there for a while and what happened was it the water i guess dripped onto the beach from some of the sinks it was like known that they so the dripping water yeah um and it all kind of matched up with the description so he went there and she had told him that they would be buried like in the basement and unfortunately found out that two months earlier they had cemented the basement oh my god and that's that's also a little little strange little strange why are you just cementing your basement out of nowhere? Exactly.
I mean, maybe you have radon, but still. Maybe.
Massachusetts, it's old. We've got lots of radon coming up in these random dirt basements.
I know, so it's really not that crazy to think that someone's cementing a basement. It's really not, but it's still like, come on.
It's curious timing. Well, and he was thinking he was going to be able to at least dig around, and couldn't even do that sucks uh so james hankins the ranger said that he had walked away from the crime scene that night and he noticed something when he walked away and he said he didn't say anything and it's always bothered him he said he saw pictures and words drawn in the sand a little ways away but he said he didn't it didn't look like kids drawings to him because he was like at first i was like oh kids draw in the sand all the time it's the cape like the kids are here all day every day yeah but he was like for some reason it just didn't ring as kids drawings to me and he says it always bothered him because he didn't investigate it or take a photo because he was like whoever drew those things was definitely close to the body recently.
Because they would have been erased by the wind or the waves if it was done earlier. Right.
So he's like, it always bothered me that I didn't take the second to go see what they were. That bothers me as well.
I know. And the body was finally laid to rest at St.
Peter's Cemetery in October 1974. Her tombstone says, unidentified female body found race point dunes.
Oh, that's very sad. Yeah.
And actually Alyssa Metcalf said she and her sister Leslie, who was the one who found the body, would often go to the cemetery and visit her grave. I love that.
And they said they always felt like a weird connection to her. Yeah.
And it always bothered them that they still don't know who she is. Well, and it's like you have respect them like through the afterlife yeah exactly flowers or something yeah and it's like she's unidentified right like somebody knows her and somebody somebody cared about her you know like who are you right who are you that misses her and hasn't said anything but in 1987 10 years after this a canadian woman came forward and said she thought this woman could have been a victim of her father's.
Apparently, when she was young, which hurts my heart, she witnessed her father strangle a woman while she was visiting him in P-Town in the 70s. Oh, shit.
Now, this woman thought that this was the woman. She was like, I think I recognize her recognize her as the woman wow so they get this and they tell meads about it and he was like i'll go up to canada and i'll i'll interview this woman oh yeah like i'm going so then they try to contact her again to get more information she had moved out of her home and they literally couldn't find her again bitch and she never contacted them again i have goosebumps right look at my arm right i mean i feel like that's really shitty like why would you call and like get them excited to fix this exactly obviously that must be like a really traumatic thing for you to have to like even call in the first place but it's like someone lost someone and like clearly you were trying to help so like what made you change your mind follow through You have to to wonder like is her dad still was her dad still alive well that's what i wonder like she got scared and like he found out or something yeah like did someone find out in the family it was like you got to be quiet did he find out there's so much it's like we we don't even know i can't find any information about what this lady's name is or anything imagine if her imagine if her dad found out and he also killed her.
Imagine. That's not a possibility.
I did tons of digging to find who she was. I'm going to keep digging to find who she was because I swear to you, I want to find out this woman.
I'm going to find this woman. Come on.
I'm just going to call Canada. Hi, Canada.
It's me, Elena. Hello, it's me, Elena.
And I'd like to talk to that woman in canada guys we do elena's calling 1-800-canada excuse me that's spooky johnny and tyler accurate very can you help me i meant like contacts to like the police people yeah johnny and tyler they're very important people like they can they can help us out i mean they are vip they are all right so johnny tyler let's get on this together more squad up all right we're making this squad huge all right so we got we got the canada squad up so we're ready i'm good but then there was also a maryland woman who called and said she thought the woman was her sister who had been she had just moved to boston i guess recently and before this like when this was happening the sister the sister and suddenly had disappeared oh and she was spending time in p-town right now very normal fucking no one knew where she went that year she said she just disappeared vanished and she said her sister matched the height weight and hair color did she about dental work at all? Well, that's the important part because Meads actually asked for her sister's dental records. And they were able to ship them out to Meads.
Okay, and? Because he was like, let's do this. They weren't a match.
Fuck you. No gold crowns, nothing like that.
Wow. So, it sounded really good.
And I honestly, I feel bad for the girl, the Maryland woman, because now it's like now she probably i wonder what happened to her sister well and she probably had like some ounce of hope like yeah it all lines up some kind of closure you know um the crime scene now is it and at the time was i guess in the 70s was the biggest tourist attraction was that place on the dunes and even now it's a big pull for people to go look i know it's it's one of those things that it's like you can have a million opinions about it but it's one of those things that like it's never gonna stop no that kind of like and you know it's seeing a place like that it's like going to the lizzie borden house you know it's like it's it's not gonna it's like going to the cemetery in salem exactly it's it's morbid curiosity definitely go to salem it's amazing oh my god i love salem so much it's also like like i said in the other episode about it it's i think it's like a profound experience going to salem absolutely when you go to like the historical places well and there's so many like historical sites yeah we went to like at least like 42 when we were there the other day massachusetts has like a lot of good history i think guys come to massachusetts if you're from here you get it hello i'm from the board of tourists tourism i can't speak i'm from the board of tourism on a board on massachusetts come visit massachusetts come little children yeah that was in massachusetts too see we have tons of shit. I'm done asked.
So do it. All right.
So they did exhume her body in 1980, 2001, and 2013. See, that makes me sad.
I know they have to, but it makes me so sad. I know.
But I'm one of those. I think it's like the science in me.
I'm like, nope, bring them up. We've got to look at them.
Oh, yeah. No, absolutely.
But then you're just like, who are you? Can we just let you rest? Well, that's the thing. She can't rest in peace.
She rest she's being so disturbed yeah you just want her to rest in peace but they keep you know advances keep happening and in science and forensic science yeah so every time something comes up they're like let's bring her up and see if we can use this exhuming her is eventually to get to the goal of her resting in peace exactly and that's always the goal with exhuming a body is to eventually get them to rest forever um but honestly it hasn't nothing's come up every time they brought her up it's nothing is is moving forward this is the strangest case now a woman who people might know named sandra lee she's a crime writer she said when she was nine years old she actually discovered the Lady of the Dunes first with her sister, but was too horrified to tell anyone at nine years old. She was with her dog and stumbled upon her.
And she said, quote, I stumbled down an incline with my dog. The dog was ahead of me.
My dog got excited about something. I heard a very strange noise.
If you can imagine someone holding a string of pearls, I heard that sound. And then there was a horrible smell.
At first, I attribute it to low tide. She was face down.
Her hair was a mess, and I could see a gouge in the right side of her neck. Her arms were tucked down in the sand, so I didn't know anything was missing.
I recognized the green blanket right away. The lower half of her body was covered with something she later found out that that sound like somebody holding a pearl necklace which you can know you can tell what that sound is that was the sound of hundreds of thousands of maggots crawling all over her body um yeah she says she is sure that she's like i am sure either one or a couple other people must have stumbled upon this body in those three weeks and just were too scared to say anything.
That's a little messed up. And she was like, because she was like, if it was kids, there was kids all over the speech.
All over the speech, always playing in these dunes. That's so scary.
Think about it. These two people are two children, a 12 year old and a nine year old yeah i'm sure another kid ran across this and was like i don't know what that is or ran across it and thought it was just a naked sunbather um especially from a distance and now i have a question how do you transport a bot like how do you get the insects off of a body to transport it uh usually they transport with the insects do they yeah so the people that transport do they just like gown up or something yeah they do oh yeah definitely gotcha especially in a case like that where it's like so many and then you must just i mean you'll definitely try to get them out you'll definitely try to like get them out when there's like hundreds of thousands yeah but then you don't want to wipe away evidence there's're just in the bag, basically.
Have you ever opened a bag and had insects be in there? I haven't, luckily. Ah.
Which is a good thing. Sorry, just a little side note.
I was really curious. Because I'm not down for insects.
No. They can exist.
I just don't want to exist around them. Magots are not for me.
Magots are not something I want to deal with. And that is really a great way to describe the sound of thousands of maggots.

It's like a pearl necklace in your hand. That's actually my birthstone.
So please leave.

So please leave. Thank you.

All right.

In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.
We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect.
He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.
I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law and Crime and Twist.
This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.
He's awoken the people to a true issue. Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our healthcare system.
Listen to Law and Crimes Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple podcasts.
Here's some of the theories that have come across or people of interest. Somebody thought she might have been a woman named Rory Jean Kessinger.
Now, this was a 24-year-old woman at the time, and she matched the height and the weight of the lady in the dunes. She was also known to be for assault and intent to murder.
Wow. to jail in plymouth and on may 26th 1974 she escaped from jail because someone smuggled her in a hacksaw and she sawed through the bars like i hate to say this but like bad bitch vibes she was never seen again unless she's the lady on the dude.
She was never seen again. No one knows where she went.
Such a different Rory. Such a different Rory.
Honestly, though. Not a different Rory.
Rory Gilmore. She did go to jail.
She did steal a boat. Huh? And she commits.
She is part of many adulterous affairs. So she's not on the.
I don't know if she's she's robbed any banks. I don't know.
We don't know. We didn't see her.
We didn't see her rob a bank, but we didn't see her not rob a bank. I can't say she did.
I didn't see you not rob a bank. So maybe it just didn't make the final cut.
I don't know. But either way, it wasn't Rory Gilmore.
Okay. And it wasn't this Rory because in 2002, DNA from her mother, they used like familial DNA, compared to the unknown body proved it wasn't her.
You know, I didn't think it was her. I didn't either.
But a lot of people thought it was because the other thing was you see a picture of Rory and you see a picture of this on the composites of this girl. They do have a striking resemblance to each other.
So it is interesting. Now, one of my favorites and one that I think has a little bit of legs here is that James Whitey Bulger bulger did this and do you you think this has a lot of legs i think it has legs okay i don't i'm not sold okay but i think i i'm like it's one of those that i can see that it definitely could be him and i can also be like so it's just like it's one that i just will keep over in a corner.
Well, and if you know anything about Whitey, like in the whole beginning of this thing,

I said like, this is clearly somebody who's killed before.

Exactly. In my opinion, at least.

Well, and you know, we, especially if you're in Massachusetts, like everyone knows Whitey

Bulger.

If you're in Massachusetts, you definitely know Whitey Bulger.

Yeah, you're probably his cousin.

And your grandparents are probably telling you that they should have just let him keep

being on the lam because he's a harmless old person. Yeah sure papa that makes sense yeah sure uh so witnesses said that they saw because people would see whitey bulger all over the place yeah he was existing among everybody everybody was vibing everyone was just letting him do his thing whitey was a vibe and a half he was scary so witnesses said that they did see him with a

woman who matched the lady of the dunes description in p-town at this time interesting he was known at this time to be in p-town um what the fuck was whitey boulder you want to know what he was doing he was frequenting a bar in the area uh called the crone and anchor i mean it makes sense but But like, P-Town is just such a chill vibe and Whitey is such a chaotic vibe.

He is.

I think he's chaotic in boston and i think he chills and he's vacationing but if he did this then he's chaotic everywhere so it'll erase my view of him being chill in p-town um but yeah so this this bar the crone and anchor that he loved frequent down here was very close to where they found her body oh that's weird his thing was to remove his victim's teeth right he did have a thing for that um sandra lee the crime writer thinks she may have that this woman may have been an irish immigrant and that she was groomed by bulger to be forced into sex work oh no because he was also a human trafficker like he was in all that he's a real bad guy he's a real bad guy i feel like some people kind of like he gets his he gets glossed over as just like i feel like a lot of these like mob bosses and like crime families they become a thing because you know you watch the sopranos you see the godfather And you see how terrible it all is but somehow it just everyone just kind of is like but that's a cool crime family you know what i mean like it's just i think it's like a weird human thing that that a lot of people do and i think he's one of those characters that's so infamous that people just are like whitey bulge you know what it is it's like ho it a thing. It is.
It's very... He's become a Hollywood figure.
So I think it glosses over the true atrocities that he did. He murdered his own girlfriend.
He did, and he murdered his own right-hand man's girlfriend, like, made him help him do it. Oh, maybe...
Is that what I'm thinking of? Yeah, I mean, he definitely, like, murdered women. And he did it in pretty...
And he would, like, strangle he would like strangle them too which is again interesting she may have been strangled um she so she thinks this this could be that and maybe that's why we're not identifying her because she's not from here right um the new york times reported quote tales of his exploits were learned from childhood there how he shot men between the eyes stabbed rivals in the heart with ice picks, strangled women who might betray him, and buried victims in secret graveyards after yanking their teeth to thwart identification. That is 100% true.
If you grew up here, you grew up hearing tales of Whitey Bulger. Literally, there was a Whitey Bulger, like a book about like him on my summer reading.
Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Black Mass, probably.

Maybe.

Was it Black Mass?

I don't think it was.

It was.

I don't know.

I'll think of it later.

But yeah, so Sandra Lee actually thinks he's the guy.

She thinks that's who did it.

I mean, I think you're right.

It does have legs.

It's never been proven that she isn't one of his victims.

They haven't been able to prove she isn't.

They also haven't been able to prove she is. People hoped he would confess to it when he was arrested, but he was beaten literally to an unrecognizable pile of meat by inmates in West Virginia, October 30th, 2018, when he was 89 years old.
He literally entered prison, and they literally just beat him to shit. So he didn't exactly get a chance to admit it, which is kind of a bummer.
Kind of a bummer and actually kind of interesting that like inmates beat him to death because there is like, you know that like how there's a hierarchy in prison. You would think a mob boss would be on top.
You would think. But I don't know if that's to do with.
He was so horrific. Like, I don't know.
It's a weird, it's a weird, it's a weird flex there. I don there i don't know it is but i mean he's a really bad guy so like yeah he was i mean he was 89 at the time he had also been on the lamb for so long maybe it was like they were pissed that he got away with it for so long i don't know who knows either way he really got it so but i really would have preferred him to be able to maybe get convinced to like admit a few things i just feel like he would have had many things there's some families that would i think would have liked to hear some closure and stuff so it's like that's a bummer yeah exactly that's why like prison justice sometimes you're like okay but like i would have liked to get some information yeah like you know it works when you're like throwing hot water over daniel morcombe's killer exactly or like tattooing doing katie's revenge on that guy's forehead when he killed the most thing i've ever heard that stuff i'm like all right do that they can still talk feel free but like yeah this is just tough but yeah so that's that's possibly who it could be okay there's another one um in 2000 a serial killer named uh hayden clark confessed to the murder of the ladies of the dunes okay he confessed from prison while he was serving two 30-year sentences for the murders of a six-year-old girl named michelle dor and a 23-year-old woman named laura hotelling oh my goodness he claimed he killed up to 12 women and he said he buried some of the evidence on his grandfather's property, like in his garden on the Cape.
That's a dick move. And Clark explained that he had buried evidence from the Lady of the Dunes crime in his grandfather's garden on the Cape.
So did we go there? And he said he knew the woman's identity, but he was not going to tell authorities because he said they were mean to him. So he's not going to tell them.
It's really not their job to like make you feel super welcome. So, yeah.
So he led police on December 15th, 2002, his grandfather's former property. And they did dig in the garden and did find a big plastic bucket filled with more than 200 pieces of jewelry.
Interesting. Among these things were Laura Hotelling's high school class ring.
Wow. So he was telling the truth that he buried some of his murder victims things in there.
He said they were literally trophies to him. Like he did that for a reason.
Of course. But they couldn't connect anything to the Lady of the Dunes because they don't know who the fuck she is so any of that jewelry could be her jewelry right and we don't know police don't believe him though because one there's no physical evidence that they can connect to him and then also he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and so it's hard for him to tell reality from fantasy right and he has moments where he is telling a story and spinning a yarn and it becomes a fantasy.
Sure. So they think maybe this was just him.
Just it happens all the time that these people in prison who are there for atrocities will confess to other crimes like Henry Lee Lucas, Otis Tool. They they did the same thing.
They just like to do it. Honestly, it's just to fuck with the investigators.
It's just to fuck with people and it's like mental illness. And it's like, so they were like, this just isn't really credible.
So they were like, yeah, we're not going to be able to really do much with that. This whole fucking case is so frustrating.
And then there's my favorite theory. Oh, okay.
In 2015, Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, had had a theory he wrote in a blog post that he believed that the lady of the dunes can be seen alive as an extra in Jaws oh my god how did I forget about this I literally knew that this was a thing yeah but the entire time we were doing this my brain just forgot that piece of life and he said in his blog post what if the young murder victim no one has ever been able to identify has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in a beloved summer classic and they didn't even know they were looking at her and he said what if the ghost of the lady of the dunes freaks me the fuck out. There is a woman who looks just like the sketches and composites and is wearing Wrangler jeans and a blue bandana.
I mean, hello. But there's a lot of women at that time that dressed exactly like that.
Yeah. So he said, quote, this particular woman bears a shocking resemblance and appearance and wardrobe to the murder victim.
Suddenly I tingled all over and came halfway out of my seat. And for the barest of a moment, I thought I had seen her.
Now, Jaws had been filmed two hours away from the crime scene. So not that far away.
They had never recorded the names of their extras. Oh, shit.
And a lot of locals were extras. Like they would just show up and agree to appear in the final cut yeah so police are skeptical but they said they are not gonna say it's not possible that that is her i mean of course a lot of women dress like that at the time but the fact that this woman looks like her looks like her in the blue bandana is huge that's a big one um and did they ever find like a bathing suit top or anything no they didn't find anything like that i know that's what's weird um and and so joe hill said quote part of me thinks that my subconscious mind is so programmed so trained to quickly generate ghost stories that that's all i've done here because he is stephen king's son i was gonna say that is true but jaws screen screenwriter, Carl Gottlieb, checked his production notes and he said this scene, number 130, with the extra that they're talking about, was filmed May 25th, 1974, two months before and only 100 miles away from where she was found.
Interesting. So she would have been alive.
Right. Two months is like a long time before.
But I mean, she could have been living there. But she was there.
Yeah. She could have she could have just been there right i know i'm thinking of her as like a vacationer yeah and she she might have just been living there well and then in 2019 investigators said that they were going to re-examine the case trying to use new techniques um they were going to use dna analysis and genealogical family building sites to try to do it uh this is the same kind of thing they used with the Golden State Killer case.
It's becoming a real, like, valuable thing for these kind of cases. And Cape and the Island DA Michael O'Keefe said, quote, we're going to examine everything we can with respect to the remains.
Now, I'm just going to leave you with one exciting possible thing. American Horror Story Season 10 is being filmed in Massachusetts, and it has hinted at a Lady of the Dune storyline.

Bitch. Possibly as a subplot.
Oh my god. So I did, I like combed Reddit for some theories about this

too, because they are really good at like finding these things. They are filming in P-Town.
They are filming in P you think billy lord is in feet is in p-town yeah i think she was and murphy ryan murphy said quote he like put something on his social media that said quote something's washing up on the shore girl something like that and then teased a photo with two hands on the beach and as we said a big part of this was her missing two hands right and murphy has teased a photo with two hands on the beach. And as we said, a big part of this was her missing two hands.
Right. And Murphy has teased out more teasers that have teeth in them.
Interesting. I mean.
If it's not like the main thing, because either way, this is set in Massachusetts. So I'm excited in P-Town.
I'm excited to see what it is. Like, I wonder if there's like a Tony Chop Chop part or anything.
Maybe. But either way, be like a subplot they always put those little like nods well then you have to wonder like is it going to be in the 70s because oh my god I love to watch shit that is set in that time I bet it is I wonder I need to know so I'm excited to see I love American Horror Story so good I would love to see it and that is the very frustrating tale of the lady in the of the dunes that we don't know who she is someday i think we're gonna update you guys i'm gonna manifest it i i think we're gonna do it i think we're gonna solve it i think we so far we have a good squad uh we got johnny and tyler up in canada sarah tourney yep squad.
Get shit done. I know you can get shit done.
Bailey Sarian. Bailey Sarian, get over here.
Make me look good while we investigate this, please. Yes.
And yeah, I think we're going to do this. Let's get it, friends.
We'll add some more. Don't worry.
For sure. Who else should be on the squad? Everyone is going to volunteer.
Oh, you know what? Jordan from the Nighttime Podcast. He's up in Canada tooada too we got him maybe he could find the woman canada squad all right i'm ready for this

guys if you're in you're in we'll tag you see you soon and uh we hope you keep listening and we hope

you keep it weird but not so weird that you don't sign up to be part of our squad to finally solve

this case thank Thank you. Good night.
I'm I'm I'm I'm you Thank you. survey at Wondery.com slash survey.
Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey. With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr.
Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients. This was not an operation that was performed.
This was attempted murder. And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare.
With Wondery Plus, you get access to exclusive bonus content too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community.
This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure. No, for sure he did it.
Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today.

Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before.

With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.