This story is 7 years old now, and the crime was committed over 28 years ago. Although the main suspect was acquitted of the murders, it would be interesting to see what DNA says about it today. It is possible he might, in fact, have committed the crimes, but if not, then perhaps the real killer or killers might be found still.
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From: New York Daily News OnLine; News and Views | Crime File |
Monday, November 30, 1998
[font=impact, helvetica bold, sans serif][size=+3]Unsolved Mystery [/size][/font]
[size=-1]By JOSEPH McNAMARA[/size]
Terry Tennant awoke in her tent. Although deep in sleep, she thought she had heard a scream. The 12-year-old awakened a friend, a pal girl scout on the first night of their planned two-week camping adventure. Both listened intently. They heard nothing like a scream. Both went back to sleep.
Elsewhere in the camp of 120 girls, another scout thought she heard screams. It had been a night of great excitement, as the girls chatted and giggled away the evening in the warm embrace of canvas. This scout now listened with hushed breath, but heard nothing. She also went back to sleep. It was 3 a.m. June 13, 1977.
But screams there might well have been, for at 6 a.m. a counselor going to wash found that three young girls had been torn from their tent and slain.
Michele Guse, 9, and Lori Lee Farmer, 8, had been beaten to death. Doris Milner, 10, had been beaten and strangled. All three had been raped. Two bodies lay in zipped sleeping bags. The third was on the open ground.
Fear raced through Camp Scott, about a mile outside sleepy Locust Grove in the northeast corner of Oklahoma. Mayes County Sheriff Glen Weaver was among the first of many investigators to reach the scene. He decided that the slayer had picked that particular tent because it was 50 feet from the others and near thick brush, which would have given the killer cover.
Also and probers wondered if the killer might have known it the fatal tent was among very few that did not have an adult counselor sleeping in it.
With the murder of the three girls, all from the Tulsa area 30 miles west, investigators descended on Locust Grove, a town of 1,019 people.
"I just don't think we have that many nuts in the area," the sheriff said. "It makes me pretty mad."
Hot on a Trail
Two days later, two tracking dogs were brought in from Pennsylvania to find the killer's path. Within a week, one died of heat prostration and the other was hit by a car. Others were brought in and led searchers to a small cave a mile from the murder scene.
Empty food cans indicated someone had lived there, if briefly. Also found: two tattered photographs of three women. The pictures, when spread across area newspapers, brought results in a day. The women were guests at the 1969 wedding of a prison worker's daughter.
Among those attending that wedding was a prison trusty named Gene Leroy Hart, who worked as a darkroom assistant at the prison.
"He's got to be our man," Weaver said.
At the time of the wedding Hart, 33, a Cherokee Indian, was serving a 10-year sentence for kidnapping two young women in Tulsa in 1966 and raping one of them.
He was paroled later in 1969 but was arrested within months on four counts of burglary. Convicted of the robberies, Hart was given 305 years the second-largest term ever meted out in Tulsa. In 1973, during a transfer, Hart broke out of Weaver's jail in Pryor, Okla., and was still loose at the time of the three slayings.....
Links:
Wayback Machine
http://www.nydailynews.com/1998-11-30/News_and_Views/Crime_File/a-12295.asp
Thread #1
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From: New York Daily News OnLine; News and Views | Crime File |
Monday, November 30, 1998
[font=impact, helvetica bold, sans serif][size=+3]Unsolved Mystery [/size][/font]
[size=-1]By JOSEPH McNAMARA[/size]
Terry Tennant awoke in her tent. Although deep in sleep, she thought she had heard a scream. The 12-year-old awakened a friend, a pal girl scout on the first night of their planned two-week camping adventure. Both listened intently. They heard nothing like a scream. Both went back to sleep.
Elsewhere in the camp of 120 girls, another scout thought she heard screams. It had been a night of great excitement, as the girls chatted and giggled away the evening in the warm embrace of canvas. This scout now listened with hushed breath, but heard nothing. She also went back to sleep. It was 3 a.m. June 13, 1977.
But screams there might well have been, for at 6 a.m. a counselor going to wash found that three young girls had been torn from their tent and slain.
Michele Guse, 9, and Lori Lee Farmer, 8, had been beaten to death. Doris Milner, 10, had been beaten and strangled. All three had been raped. Two bodies lay in zipped sleeping bags. The third was on the open ground.
Fear raced through Camp Scott, about a mile outside sleepy Locust Grove in the northeast corner of Oklahoma. Mayes County Sheriff Glen Weaver was among the first of many investigators to reach the scene. He decided that the slayer had picked that particular tent because it was 50 feet from the others and near thick brush, which would have given the killer cover.
Also and probers wondered if the killer might have known it the fatal tent was among very few that did not have an adult counselor sleeping in it.
With the murder of the three girls, all from the Tulsa area 30 miles west, investigators descended on Locust Grove, a town of 1,019 people.
"I just don't think we have that many nuts in the area," the sheriff said. "It makes me pretty mad."
Hot on a Trail
Two days later, two tracking dogs were brought in from Pennsylvania to find the killer's path. Within a week, one died of heat prostration and the other was hit by a car. Others were brought in and led searchers to a small cave a mile from the murder scene.
Empty food cans indicated someone had lived there, if briefly. Also found: two tattered photographs of three women. The pictures, when spread across area newspapers, brought results in a day. The women were guests at the 1969 wedding of a prison worker's daughter.
Among those attending that wedding was a prison trusty named Gene Leroy Hart, who worked as a darkroom assistant at the prison.
"He's got to be our man," Weaver said.
At the time of the wedding Hart, 33, a Cherokee Indian, was serving a 10-year sentence for kidnapping two young women in Tulsa in 1966 and raping one of them.
He was paroled later in 1969 but was arrested within months on four counts of burglary. Convicted of the robberies, Hart was given 305 years the second-largest term ever meted out in Tulsa. In 1973, during a transfer, Hart broke out of Weaver's jail in Pryor, Okla., and was still loose at the time of the three slayings.....
Links:
Wayback Machine
http://www.nydailynews.com/1998-11-30/News_and_Views/Crime_File/a-12295.asp
Thread #1
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