Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more!
Did Stephen King's Son Find A Clue To A Cold Case Murder By Re-Watching 'Jaws'?
Author Joe Hill thinks it's possible that the "Lady of the Dunes" murder victim was an extra in "Jaws."
Could a "Jaws’" extra be the “Lady of the Dunes,” an unidentified murder victim who was killed in Provincetown in 1973 - the same summer that the iconic shark film was shot in nearby Martha’s Vineyard?
On July 26, 1974, a 13-year-old girl walking her dog on some sand dunes in Provincetown came across the mutilated body of the woman come to be known as the “Lady of the Dunes.” The victim was found face-down on a beach blanket, her hands cut off and her head so badly beaten she was nearly decapitated. Police believe her body had been there for weeks. A blue bandana and a pair of Wrangler jeans were tucked under her head. The victim was about 5’6” and had an athletic build and long auburn hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail. Police estimated that she was between 27 and 49 years old, according to The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
The victim was exhumed in 2000 and in May of 2010, a new composite of her face was created.
Author Joe Hill, whose real name is Joe Hillstrom King and is the son of Stephen King, thinks he may have spotted a woman that resembled the unidentified murder victim. In 2015, he was watching the 40th-anniversary screening of Jaws and 54 minutes into the film he said he was shaken when he noticed the appearance of one of the film’s extras, Esquire.com reported: a woman wearing a blue bandana over her auburn hair.
"The movie and the murder overlap geographically and chronologically," Hill told Esquire.com. "Allowing for the possibility that the Lady of the Dunes was in the right place at the right time—or, rather, the wrong place at the wrong time."
Hill wrote about his theory that she could be the “Lady of the Dunes” on his Tumblr.
“What if the young murder victim no one has ever been able to identify has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in a beloved summer classic and they didn’t even know they were looking at her? What if the ghost of the Lady of the Dunes haunts ‘Jaws’?”
Hill’s theory has been picking up steam. It was published on VICE in 2015 and more recently featured on podcast Wondery’s Inside Jaws, this summer.
[Photos: The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Getty Images]
