Massachusetts’ Most Mysterious Cold Case Solved After 50 Years

Massachusetts’ Most Mysterious Cold Case Solved After 50 Years On July 26, 1974, a 12-year-old girl ran after her barking dog up the sand dunes at Race Point in Provincetown, Massachusetts — the tip of Cape Cod, the easternmost point of the United States, where summer was at its peak with thousands of tourists flocking to the beach. The dog stopped. The girl looked down. And ran away. The woman lay on the beach towel, with red hair, naked except for a pair of white socks, her head nearly severed from her neck — and no hands. Both hands had been cut off and taken away, leaving no trace. The police arrived. Investigators examined the scene. The press reported it across New England. But no one knew who she was. No identification. No fingerprints. Nothing. She would be called the "Lady of the Dunes" for 48 years — not someone's name, but the name of a mystery that the entire state of Massachusetts could not solve. This is the case where the killer cut off both of the victim's hands to erase her identity — and nearly succeeded for 49 years, until a woman accidentally submitted her DNA to a genealogy website and changed everything.