Recent DNA tests failed to identify the killer or killers who raped and murdered three Oklahoma girls June 13, 1977, at Camp Scott in Locust Grove. However, the tests revealed a partial female DNA profile, Mayes County District Attorney Gene Haynes announced Tuesday in a news release.
Testing from a semen-stained pillowcase found at the crime scene failed to exclude all three of the victims or the possibility of a female attacker, adding to the stockpile of questions that already surround this enduring mystery.
No answers for families
The biggest question remains, 31 years later: Who killed Lori Lee Farmer, 8, of Tulsa; Michelle Guse, 9, of Broken Arrow; and Doris Denise Milner, 10, of Tulsa?
“I’ve always felt in my gut that there was a girl present,” Sheri Farmer, Lori’s mother, told The Oklahoman. “So when I saw the DNA results, that was a concern with me. ... Lori was eventually excluded from the DNA match and so was one of the other girls, I was told, but they couldn’t exclude all three girls.
“Given the DNA results, you have to wonder if there wasn’t also a female who took part in the murders.”
Haynes’ statement didn’t expound on the results.
“It is unfortunate the testing did not produce a DNA profile,” Haynes said. “We had hoped the testing would bring an end to the debate over who committed these terrible crimes. The families of the victims certainly deserve an ending to the case.”
To date, the late Gene Leroy Hart is the only person to ever be charged with the murder of the three Girl Scouts. Hart, then 34 and a fugitive, had been spotted living in the Cookson Hills near Camp Scott at the time of the murders.
Hart, however, was acquitted by a Mayes County jury in March 1979. Two months after his acquittal, Hart collapsed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester from a heart attack while serving 308 years for unrelated rape, burglary, and kidnapping convictions.
“I feel badly for the families of those little girls who were murdered,” said Garvin Isaacs, Hart’s defense attorney. “But Gene Leroy Hart was an innocent man who was falsely accused.”
Haynes had hoped new DNA testing would solve the mystery once and for all.
Assembling the pieces
A venture into the latest DNA technology became possible last year when the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation received a federal grant that permitted private laboratories to examine DNA evidence in cold cases. In April, the agency received permission from Haynes to conduct specific DNA tests on semen stains from pillowcases and a swab taken from one of the victims.
Haynes signed off on the tests even though they would exhaust the evidence from the swab.
The DNA test conducted is capable of separating female and male DNA. But results from tests conducted by Houston-based Identigene returned inconclusive.
Two months later,
