Remembering the Three Girls Murdered at Camp Scott

        I had just completed my junior year in high school when one of Oklahoma’s still unsolved murders of three Girl Scouts at Camp Scott near Locust Grove, Oklahoma took place. Someone raped and murdered three Tulsa area Girl Scouts on their first night at camp on Sunday, June 12, 1977. 
         The bodies of Lori Lee Farmer, age 8; Michele Heather Guse, age 9, and Doris Denise Milner, age 10, were found by a camp counselor on a trail leading to the campsite’s showers about 150 yards from their tent. They were all stuffed in sleeping bags. They had been sharing Tent #7 in the camp’s “Kiowa” Unit, which was located the farthest from the camp counselor’s tent.  
         At around 6 a.m. on June 13th, a camp counselor on her way to the shower saw a girl’s body in her sleeping bag in a wooded area just outside of the tent area. It was then discovered that all three girls from Tent #7 were missing. As counselors began searching, they discovered that all three girls had been murdered. Two bodies were inside a sleeping bag, crumpled toward the bottom of the bag. And one body was visible on the outside.
         Subsequent testing showed that they had been bludgeoned and strangled. All three girls had been raped.
          A large red flashlight was found on top of the girls’ bodies. A smudged fingerprint was found on the lens, but it has never been identified as it was too smudged for a positive identification. A footprint from a 9.5 size shoe was also found in the blood in the tent.
           The case was classified as solved when Gene Leroy Hart, a local jail escape with a history of violence and rape, was arrested. It took 10 months to find Hart after the murders when he was discovered living with a medicine man.
            Hart had been at large since 1973 after escaping from the Mayes County Jail. He had been convicted of kidnapping and raping two pregnant women as well as four counts of 1st degree burglary. Hart was raised about a mile from Camp Scout. Hart was a member of the Cherokee Nation.
         Hart was tried in 1979. Although the local sheriff pronounced himself “1000 percent” certain that Hart was guilty, a local jury acquitted him. 
         As a convicted rapist and jail escapee, Hart still had 305 years of his 308-year sentence left to serve in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.  
          On June 4, 1979, two years after the murders, Hart collapsed and died of a heart attack at the age of 35, after about an hour of lifting weights and jogging in the prison yard. 
          Following the murders, Camp Scout, which opened in 1928, was closed and is no longer used today. 
In recent years, there has been efforts to do DNA testing on evidence found at the crime scene, but no new evidence has been found.
          After Hart was acquitted, no one else has ever been convicted of the crimes. 
         I attended Camp Garland, a Boy Scout camp about five miles north of Camp Scott, from 1972 to 1976.   So, when the murders took place, it really hit home.
          In addition, my dad had family members who lived near both camps. 
        In the years since, there has been a number of books written about the murders including Shattered Justice: The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders by J.D. Morrison; The Camp Scout Murders: The 1977 Murders by C.S. Kelly; The Usual Suspect by Gary Pitchlynn; Tent Number Eight: An Investigation of the Girl Scout Murders and the Trial of Gene Leroy Hart by Cloyd McCoy; Someone Cry for the Children: The Unsolved Girl Scout Murders of Oklahoma by Michael Wilkerson and The Girl Scout Murders: A True Story of Violent Death and Indian Justice by Charles W. Sasser.
         In addition to the books, there have been several documentary television shows made and aired. The latest, Keeper of the Ashes, aired on ABC/Hulu in 2022.
          In 2011, an ex-con named John Russell Penn was working on an indie film, Candles, and stated that he would reveal the perpetrator of the Girl Scout murders in the film. Penn, who was previously convicted of check fraud, claimed that the true killer admitted to the murders in a drunken stupor one night in 1978 while both men were detained in an Ottawa County jail cell. I don’t believe that film was ever finished.
          There is much more information about the case and investigation if you are interested in learning more. There is a website, Abandoned OK, that features photos and the history of Camp Scott. Another website to check out is girlscoutmurders.com. 
         There are many people, especially those in the Locust Grove area, who knew Hart and still believe to this day that he was not guilty. There are others who are convinced he is guilty. And after 49 years, the case still remains unsolved and there is still no justice for these three girls who lost their lives way too soon.