Exploring The Lady of The Dunes

Today’s mystery takes place in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A peaceful town on the Cape Cod, with a small but stable population. Young Leslie Metcalf and her family had been visiting some friends staying at one of the dune shacks. When the family had been ready to leave, they walked up to the visitor’s center. It is said that Leslie’s attention had been called to the woods by her friend’s dog. When the dog ran off into the woods and started barking its head off, Leslie followed. Upon first glancing into the grove of trees, Leslie thought that she had been staring at a dead animal. Soon enough the young girl realized that she had come face to face with a dead human.

When the local authorities arrived, they were faced with a truly brutal scene. And yet all they knew was that the victim was a woman. The body was set up to seem like it had been sunbathing; nude, face down, and on a beach blanket. A pair of jeans and a blue bandana served as a makeshift pillow. I can only assume that this was to prevent some passersby from disturbing the corpse. The brutal injuries present on the corpse gave way to the fact that this death was more than someone who had passed away while sunbathing.

The injuries were postmortem, but very extensive. The cause of death had been trauma to the head. After The Lady had died, her killer went to great lengths to hide her identity. The Lady’s hands had been removed, and it’s assumed that the killer took the severed hands with them. The killer removed some of her teeth and attempted to decapitate her. The lady’s face was severely beaten, and it’s unclear whether this was done before or after she died. It is unclear if the area The Lady had been found in was the crime scene or the dumpsite. There had been no signs of struggle, but blood had been present. Some sources say that she had been sexually assaulted after her death.

No locals had been reported missing, and it was assumed that the victim was a tourist. No one had come forward with any information, and investigations lead nowhere. It seemed like the victim had been dead for about ten days to three weeks. Given the nature of how the body was found, I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that it most probably wasn’t a random act of violence. The possibility that the killer was known to The Lady seems very likely. Why would a stranger care if police could identify a body? Just because the body could be identified doesn’t mean that a stranger who committed the killing would have been caught.

Authorities searched through missing person reports in hopes of finding a match. They had tried to find dentists who may have worked on the woman’s teeth, and they investigated vehicles that had driven through the area in the time leading up to the discovery of the body. The Lady had been buried in October of 1974. In 1980, she was exhumed for evidence collection. Her skull had been used to make a reconstruction of what she might’ve looked like. This reconstruction leads to a solid lead on identity. In the late 1980s, someone had noticed a resemblance between the sketches and reconstructions of The Lady and a woman named Rory Gene Kesinger. Rory had escaped from Plymouth County Correctional Facility in 1973. DNA from Rory’s mother did not match the unidentified woman. The killer has never been established.

There has been a lot of speculation surrounding this case. The most interesting theory I stumbled across is the one that had been brought to light by author Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son. Joe had been watching Jaws when he noticed something about 54 minutes into the movie. An extra, wearing a blue bandana and jeans seemed to resemble the unidentified woman. Jaws had been filmed shortly before the murder took place, a few hours away from Provincetown.