Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders
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The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders is a still-unsolved crime that not only rocked rural Mayes County, Oklahoma, but parents all over America. On a rainy, late-spring night in 1977, three girls-- ages 8, 9, and 10-- were raped and murdered and their bodies left in the woods near their tent at summer camp. Although a local jail escapee with a history of violence stood trial for the crime, he was acquitted. Thirty years later, in an effort to close the case, authorities conducted new DNA testing, but the results of these tests have yet to be released to the public.
[edit] History
In 1977, Camp Scott was in its 49th year as a keystone of the Tulsa-based Magic Empire Girl Scout Council. Situated along the confluence of Snake Creek and Spring Creek near Route 82, the 410-acre compound was located between Locust Grove and Tahlequah.
Unbeknownst to parents or the Girl Scouts who began their week-long camp session on June 12, 1977, the nearby hills, caves, and even the locals may have been harboring a convicted rapist, Gene Leroy Hart, who, having been convicted of raping two pregnant women, had been at large since escaping four years earlier from the Mayes County Jail. Hart was born about a mile from Camp Scott.
Less than two months before the murders, during an on-site training session, a camp counselor found her belongings ransacked, her doughnuts stolen, and inside the empty doughnut box was a disturbing hand-written note. The author vowed to murder three campers. Because summer camps are rife with ghost stories, the note was treated as a prank and discarded.
June 12, 1977 was the first day of camp. Around 6pm a thunderstorm hit, and the girls huddled in their tents. Among them were Tulsans Lori Lee Farmer, 8, and Doris Denise Milner, 10, along with Michele Guse, 9, of the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow. The trio were sharing tent #8 in the camp's Kiowa unit, named for a Native American tribe.
[edit] The Killings
The following morning, a counselor made the gruesome discovery of a girl's body in the forest. Soon, it was discovered that all three girls in tent #8 had been killed. Subsequent testing showed that they'd been raped, bludgeoned, and strangled.
By the following evening, Americans watched in disbelief as newscasters revealed the unthinkable. Footage showed convoys of buses heading back to Tulsa, as the camp, open since 1928, was evacuated. It would never reopen.
Gene Leroy Hart, a Cherokee Indian, was arrested within a year at the home of a Cherokee medicine man and tried in March, 1979. Although the local sheriff pronounced himself "1000 percent" certain the man on trial committed the crimes, a local jury acquitted Hart. Two of the families later sued the Magic Empire Council and its insurer in a $5 million alleged negligence action. The civil trial included discussion of the threatening note as well as the fact that tent #8 lay 86 yard from the counselors' tent. The defense suggested that the future of summer camping in general hung in the balance. In 1985, by a 9-3 vote, jurors sided with the camp.
By this time, Hart was already dead. As a convicted rapist and jail escapee, he still had 305 of his 308 years left to serve in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. In June 1979, during a jog inside the jail, he collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack.
Richard Guse, the father of one of the victims, went on to help the state legislature pass the Oklahoma Victim's Bill of Rights. Guse also helped found and then chaired the Oklahoma Crime Victims' Compensation Board, which would later gain prominence for its "Murrah Fund" in the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Another parent, Sheri Farmer, went on to found the Oklahoma chapter of support group Parents of Murdered Children.
