It is dark, dark, dark in those woods at night."
Oct 6, 2020 0:47:40 GMT
wanton87 and forca84 like this
Post by hi224 on Oct 6, 2020 0:47:40 GMT
Every kid who's ever been to camp has heard scary stories around the campfire about ghosts, monsters, and bogeymen who lurk just beyond the fire circle. Even then, most people don't believe those stories, and the ones who do are picked on and teased. After all, who's ever heard of kids at scout camp really being killed by someone hiding in the forest? Perhaps, if they knew the story of what happened at Camp Scott in Mayes County, Oklahoma, they wouldn't be so sure.
The Buildup
Camp Scott was one of Oklahoma's finest Girl Scout camps. In 1977, it was gearing up to celebrate its 50th year of being open. Around 50 miles outside of Tulsa, the camp was situated on 410 acres of land; with a creek on-site and clusters of platform tents spread out among the trees.
For those who were never scouts as kids, a platform tent is a large canvas tent pitched semi-permanently on a raised wooden platform, sometimes with a tin roof or tarp on top. It can usually sleep 4-6 people, and has zippers on both sides of the tent to close the inner flap, with ties to close the outer and side flaps. There is no way to 100% close the tent in a secure way, but it is generally a sturdier option than tent camping on the ground, and platform tents are somewhere between a cabin and a tent in terms of comfort. Like many Girl Scout camps, the tents at Camp Scott were arranged in small campsites scattered throughout the camp, each with fire pits and related amenities. The campsites at Camp Scott had the names of various American Indian tribes to differentiate them.
Some time before the crime itself, a training session was held at the camp for the counselors and the CITs (counselors-in-training.) One of the counselors had brought a box of doughnuts, which she left with her personal belongings. When she returned from her activities, she found that the doughnuts were gone, and in their place was a disturbing note. The note said that three campers were going to be murdered. The counselor showed the note to the camp directors, who thought it was a typical sick prank, and the note was discarded.
The Murder
The 1977 camp season had just started, and Girl Scouts from across the state (many from nearby Tulsa) were bused in to attend the first weeklong camp session. School had just let out, and the girls were in good spirits. June 12th was a Sunday, with misty and rainy weather. As the buses arrived, the girls all piled out and were split into groups to head to each campsite. (Though I've never determined the details, I imagine based on my own experiences as a Girl Scout, they were probably grouped based on age or grade level.) The rest of the evening was filled with normal camp activities; archery, swimming, making s'mores around the campfire. But as the night fell, the misty weather turned into an all-out downpour, and the activities had to be abandoned as the girls ran to the safety of their platform tents. "Safety," however, is a relative term.
The three victims were Lori Lee Farmer, age 8, Michelle Heather Guse, age 9, and Doris Denise Miller, age 10. They were staying in the Kiowa unit. Like most of the campgrounds, Kiowa was arranged in a bit of a horseshoe pattern, with a campfire and a common area in the center. On one end was the counselor's tent. But the difference with the Kiowa unit was that there was another tent, #8, which was further from the others and back in the woods a little way, obscured from the view of the counselor's tent by the shower building for that area. This was the tent that the victims were staying in.
Around 6 AM on the 13th, one of the counselors took her things to go and get a shower before most of the girls would be up. She cut through and went down the hillside to the trail which lead to the bathhouse. As she neared, she saw three sleeping bags lying on the trail, piled up on one another. Confused, she unzipped the bag on top, and discovered the bodies. They had been sexually assaulted, hit with a flashlight found at the scene, and strangled to death.
The camp was immediately evacuated. Dogs were brought in to sniff for clues. A single, unknown fingerprint was taken from the flashlight's lens, and a footprint (size men's 9.5) was found in the copious blood left in the tent. A local landowner reported hearing "quite a bit" of traffic on the small road running between the camp and his property between 2:30 and 3 AM on the 13th. A massive manhunt was launched for the killer.
The Suspect
Investigators began to narrow in on a local criminal named Gene Leroy Hart. Hart was, undoubtedly, a very shady person. He had already been convicted for two counts of rape and four counts of burglary when he escaped from the Mayes County Jail four years previously, and was a wanted fugitive. His childhood home was around a mile away from Camp Scott. Hart was a Cherokee, and was ultimately found hiding out in the home of a Cherokee medicine man later the same year. When brought to trial for the girl's murders, the sheriff himself claimed that he was "one thousand percent" sure that Hart was guilty. Despite this confidence, there were inconsistencies that should not be ignored. One notable piece of evidence in favor of Hart's innocence was the fact that his shoe size was not a 9.5. You can change plenty of things to obscure your identity while committing a crime, but foot size isn't one of them. When everything was taken into consideration, the jury declared him not guilty. This didn't mean that Hart was a free man, however. He was sent back to jail to finish his 308-year prison sentence, and he died there of a heart attack in the prison exercise yard in 1979. DNA testing has since been done on items retrieved from the scene, placing Hart's chances of being the killer at about 1 in 7,700. Other samples were too deteriorated to be useful, though money has been raised for re-testing using modern technology.
The Aftermath
Two of the victim's families sued the Magic Empire Girl Scout Council for negligence related to the treatment of the threatening note and the and the distance between tent #8 and the other tents. In 1985, the jury decided in favor of Magic Empire. Several of the parents have founded support and advocacy groups. As for Camp Scott, it has never been reopened to the public after that terrible night in 1977. The camp buildings are slowly rotting, and the swimming pool is becoming filled in with mud and leaf litter. Everything is still in place, creating an eerie environment of decay and evacuation in the beautiful landscape of northeastern Oklahoma. The Girl Scouts still own the land, and lease it to hunters for their use. The canvas and wood tents of the Kiowa unit have fully decayed, and left no trace that anything terrible had ever happened there. The site is now only more forest. Perhaps using modern technology and genetic genealogy, we will one day know who really committed the Oklahoma Girl Scout murders- whether it really was Gene Leroy Hart or some different, previously unknown killer or killers. But for right now, we'll only have to wait and see, and remember three girls who only wanted to go to summer camp and to have a good time.
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Girl_Scout_murders
tulsaworld.com/news/specialreports-databases/the-1977-camp-scott-girl-scout-murders/article_a7d3d9c1-fe96-5c7b-8b3e-bcbc9b5c7df9.html
www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/j5rl8k/it_is_dark_dark_dark_in_those_woods_at_night_the/
The Buildup
Camp Scott was one of Oklahoma's finest Girl Scout camps. In 1977, it was gearing up to celebrate its 50th year of being open. Around 50 miles outside of Tulsa, the camp was situated on 410 acres of land; with a creek on-site and clusters of platform tents spread out among the trees.
For those who were never scouts as kids, a platform tent is a large canvas tent pitched semi-permanently on a raised wooden platform, sometimes with a tin roof or tarp on top. It can usually sleep 4-6 people, and has zippers on both sides of the tent to close the inner flap, with ties to close the outer and side flaps. There is no way to 100% close the tent in a secure way, but it is generally a sturdier option than tent camping on the ground, and platform tents are somewhere between a cabin and a tent in terms of comfort. Like many Girl Scout camps, the tents at Camp Scott were arranged in small campsites scattered throughout the camp, each with fire pits and related amenities. The campsites at Camp Scott had the names of various American Indian tribes to differentiate them.
Some time before the crime itself, a training session was held at the camp for the counselors and the CITs (counselors-in-training.) One of the counselors had brought a box of doughnuts, which she left with her personal belongings. When she returned from her activities, she found that the doughnuts were gone, and in their place was a disturbing note. The note said that three campers were going to be murdered. The counselor showed the note to the camp directors, who thought it was a typical sick prank, and the note was discarded.
The Murder
The 1977 camp season had just started, and Girl Scouts from across the state (many from nearby Tulsa) were bused in to attend the first weeklong camp session. School had just let out, and the girls were in good spirits. June 12th was a Sunday, with misty and rainy weather. As the buses arrived, the girls all piled out and were split into groups to head to each campsite. (Though I've never determined the details, I imagine based on my own experiences as a Girl Scout, they were probably grouped based on age or grade level.) The rest of the evening was filled with normal camp activities; archery, swimming, making s'mores around the campfire. But as the night fell, the misty weather turned into an all-out downpour, and the activities had to be abandoned as the girls ran to the safety of their platform tents. "Safety," however, is a relative term.
The three victims were Lori Lee Farmer, age 8, Michelle Heather Guse, age 9, and Doris Denise Miller, age 10. They were staying in the Kiowa unit. Like most of the campgrounds, Kiowa was arranged in a bit of a horseshoe pattern, with a campfire and a common area in the center. On one end was the counselor's tent. But the difference with the Kiowa unit was that there was another tent, #8, which was further from the others and back in the woods a little way, obscured from the view of the counselor's tent by the shower building for that area. This was the tent that the victims were staying in.
Around 6 AM on the 13th, one of the counselors took her things to go and get a shower before most of the girls would be up. She cut through and went down the hillside to the trail which lead to the bathhouse. As she neared, she saw three sleeping bags lying on the trail, piled up on one another. Confused, she unzipped the bag on top, and discovered the bodies. They had been sexually assaulted, hit with a flashlight found at the scene, and strangled to death.
The camp was immediately evacuated. Dogs were brought in to sniff for clues. A single, unknown fingerprint was taken from the flashlight's lens, and a footprint (size men's 9.5) was found in the copious blood left in the tent. A local landowner reported hearing "quite a bit" of traffic on the small road running between the camp and his property between 2:30 and 3 AM on the 13th. A massive manhunt was launched for the killer.
The Suspect
Investigators began to narrow in on a local criminal named Gene Leroy Hart. Hart was, undoubtedly, a very shady person. He had already been convicted for two counts of rape and four counts of burglary when he escaped from the Mayes County Jail four years previously, and was a wanted fugitive. His childhood home was around a mile away from Camp Scott. Hart was a Cherokee, and was ultimately found hiding out in the home of a Cherokee medicine man later the same year. When brought to trial for the girl's murders, the sheriff himself claimed that he was "one thousand percent" sure that Hart was guilty. Despite this confidence, there were inconsistencies that should not be ignored. One notable piece of evidence in favor of Hart's innocence was the fact that his shoe size was not a 9.5. You can change plenty of things to obscure your identity while committing a crime, but foot size isn't one of them. When everything was taken into consideration, the jury declared him not guilty. This didn't mean that Hart was a free man, however. He was sent back to jail to finish his 308-year prison sentence, and he died there of a heart attack in the prison exercise yard in 1979. DNA testing has since been done on items retrieved from the scene, placing Hart's chances of being the killer at about 1 in 7,700. Other samples were too deteriorated to be useful, though money has been raised for re-testing using modern technology.
The Aftermath
Two of the victim's families sued the Magic Empire Girl Scout Council for negligence related to the treatment of the threatening note and the and the distance between tent #8 and the other tents. In 1985, the jury decided in favor of Magic Empire. Several of the parents have founded support and advocacy groups. As for Camp Scott, it has never been reopened to the public after that terrible night in 1977. The camp buildings are slowly rotting, and the swimming pool is becoming filled in with mud and leaf litter. Everything is still in place, creating an eerie environment of decay and evacuation in the beautiful landscape of northeastern Oklahoma. The Girl Scouts still own the land, and lease it to hunters for their use. The canvas and wood tents of the Kiowa unit have fully decayed, and left no trace that anything terrible had ever happened there. The site is now only more forest. Perhaps using modern technology and genetic genealogy, we will one day know who really committed the Oklahoma Girl Scout murders- whether it really was Gene Leroy Hart or some different, previously unknown killer or killers. But for right now, we'll only have to wait and see, and remember three girls who only wanted to go to summer camp and to have a good time.
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Girl_Scout_murders
tulsaworld.com/news/specialreports-databases/the-1977-camp-scott-girl-scout-murders/article_a7d3d9c1-fe96-5c7b-8b3e-bcbc9b5c7df9.html
www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/j5rl8k/it_is_dark_dark_dark_in_those_woods_at_night_the/