The Girl Scout Murders

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma book https://amzn.to/3Cp6apB concerns the infamous murders at the Camp Scott Girl Scout camp near Locust Grove in 1977. On Monday morning, June 13, three little girls, ages 8 to 10, were discovered dead near or inside their tent. They had been bludgeoned, and at least two of them had been sexually molested. 

The remaining girls at the camp were sent home, as an investigation into the murders was launched. No suspects were identified in the immediate aftermath of the crime, although authorities were working from the theory that one person, a man, committed the heinous deed. An official who was not directly involved in the investigation further revealed that lawmen had their eye on a man with a history of child molestation, but he would not name the person.

Investigators theorized that the killer had entered the campground on foot and that he was familiar with the area and the layout of the camp. However, no solid leads were developed during the first week or so after the killings. Lawmen then released for publication two tattered pictures, containing the images of three women, which had been found near the site of the murders, and they asked for the public’s help in identifying the women in the hope that the pictures might have been left by the killer.

One day after the photos were published, three women from southwestern Oklahoma were identified as the women in the pictures. The photos had been taken at a wedding in the Mangum-Granite area in 1968. How did such photos turn up 300 miles away nine years later near the site of a brutal crime? 

The answer came when it was learned on June 23 that Locust Grove native Gene Leroy Hart had developed the photos while incarcerated at the Granite Reformatory almost ten years earlier. Hart, a convicted rapist who’d been at large ever since his escape from the Mayes County Jail in 1973, was promptly named as the prime suspect in the murder of the three Girl Scouts. Authorities speculated that he might have been hiding out in the rugged hills surrounding the Girl Scout camp ever since his escape because he knew the countryside well, was considered a “real backwoodsman, and had friends in the area who might have sheltered him. A thirty-three-year-old “huskily built Cherokee Indian,” Hart was described as a “seven-time loser” whose run-ins with the law dated to his youth.

Hart continued to elude lawmen until he was finally captured on April 6, 1978, near Bunch, Oklahoma. At his trial in March of 1979, the prosecution called an Oklahoma state chemist who testified that hair taken from the body of one of the dead girls microscopically matched hair samples taken from Hart after his arrest. Another expert witness said that sperm samples taken from Hart’s underwear after his arrest were very similar to swabs taken from the bodies of the murder victim. Also, items taken from the tent of a counselor at the Girl Scout campground about the time of the murders were later found in the cabin where Hart was arrested. The defense countered that law officers made up their minds early on that Hart was guilty, that they never adequately investigated other possibilities, and that they might even have planted evidence against the defendant.

The jury returned a quick verdict of not guilty, and the courtroom erupted into pandemonium as Hart’s many family members and other supporters jumped up shouting and applauding. Officers involved in the investigation, on the other hand, were shocked and dismayed by the verdict. The county sheriff, for instance, said he did not intend to re-open the investigation because “we had the right man.”

Although he’d been acquitted of the Girl Scout murders, Hart was transported to the state prison at McAlester to resume serving sentences totaling 145 to 305 years for rape, kidnapping, and burglary that he faced at the time of his escape from the Mayes County Jail.

On June 4, 1979, barely over two months after his acquittal, Hart collapsed and died from a massive heart attack after exercising in the prison yard.

Despite Hart’s acquittal, most, if not all, law enforcement officials associated with the case remained convinced that Hart was guilty, and years later, DNA forensics strongly suggested that authorities did, indeed, have “the right man.”

This is a greatly condensed version of the chapter in my book.