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 State Highway 82, the 410-acre compound was located just south of Locust Grove, Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders is a still-unsolved crime in rural Mayes County, Oklahoma. This is in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Eastern Oklahoma. 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.
Gene Leroy Hart had been at large since escaping four years earlier from the Mayes County Jail. He had been convicted of raping two pregnant women. Hart was born about a mile from Camp Scott.
Camp opened on June 12, 1977. 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 Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa. The trio were sharing tent #8 in the camp's "Kiowa" unit, named for a Native American tribe.
The following morning, a counselor made the 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 had been raped, bludgeoned, and strangled.
The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders is a still-unsolved crime in rural Mayes County, Oklahoma This is in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Eastern Oklaahoma. 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.
Camp Scott was evacuated that morning and after nearly 50 years of being a Girl Scout camp, it would never reopen.
Gene Leroy Hart, a Cherokee, was arrested within a year at the home of a Cherokee, medicine man and tried in March, 1979. Although the local sheriff pronounced himself "one thousand percent" certain the man on trial committed the crimes, a local jury acquitted Hart.
Although Gene Leroy Hart, a local jail escapee with a history of violence stood trial for the crime, he was acquitted.
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 (79 m) 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.
Thirty years later authorities conducted new DNA testing, but the results of these proved inconclusive, as the samples were too old.
The murders are still a great source of controversy among Oklahomans and even among law enforcement. The investigators involved in the case were convinced that they had the right man. Many residents in the area around the former camp grounds feel that Gene Hart, although he was an escaped convict at the time, was railroaded by the "white man's" courts.
The case remains open, cold and almost completely inactive.
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