Keeper of the Ashes Reveals 13 Surprising Girl Scout Murders Details

Keeper of the Ashes: The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders started streaming on Hulu on May 24. It examines the murders of Lori Lee Farmer (8), Michele Guse (9), and Doris Denise Miller (10), whose bodies were discovered early in the morning on June 13, 1977, at Camp Scott in Locust Grove, Oklahoma.

There was a prime suspect at the time, Gene Leroy Hart. He was finally captured (which is a whole story in itself) and stood trial in 1979. But he was acquitted of all three murders, which relegated them to unsolved cold case status.

Hosted by Kristin Chenoweth, the four-episode docu-series provides an in-depth look at the case and reveals some surprising details, like these 13.

1. At the last minute, one of the girls didn’t want to go.

Denise Milner’s dad, Walter, died in 1996. Her mom, Bettye, is still alive though. She was one of the parents who candidly shared recollections of their children, the murders, the manhunt, the trial, and life afterward. (Well, all of the living parents except the Guses sat down for interviews in Keeper of the Ashes, that is. Michele’s father, Richard Guse, died in 2018. Her mom, GeorgeAnne, was referenced during the documentary but didn’t participate in it.)

One of the most surprising details that perhaps had been shared elsewhere but I just overlooked it for whatever reason was that Denise hadn’t wanted to go to Camp Scott.

“Up until the day to go to camp, she was excited about it,” Bettye Milner said. “But then she decided she didn’t want to go. So I told her if she would just go and see what’s it like, if she didn’t like it, then we would come and get her.”

In the first episode of Keeper of the Ashes, Milner also shares a letter Doris Denise wrote during her short time at camp. All of the campers wrote letters home that first night. Denise’s started out, “Dear Mom, I don’t like camp it’s awful…” She ends by writing, “I don’t want to stay in camp for two weeks. I want to come home to see Kathy and everybody.”

But in the second paragraph, she also wrote about new friends she made. She specifically named Lori and Michelle among them. Would she have ended up loving camp? And perhaps even forging a lifelong friendship like camp counselor Carla Wilhite suggested might’ve happened? I’d like to think she would’ve on both counts.

2. Where the victims were found.

I knew from my research for the first episode of the Haunting True Crimes season on the podcast (“The Camp Scott Murders: A Real Life Summer Camp True Crime”) that one of the girls was found naked on a path and that the other two were found in sleeping bags.

But I didn’t know which girl was found without her clothes. I also didn’t understand that they were all found near one another. I thought two had been left in the tent. No. One was found in a path but right near a tree where the other two bodies had been “shoved down” into a sleeping bag.

3. How the killer likely managed to kill all three girls.

A detail that was widely known and reported was that Lori Lee, Michelle, and Doris Denise shared the same tent, number seven. But less discussed was how one person may have been able to subdue all three at once and not be heard. It’s why some believed more than one person must’ve been involved.

However, Mayes County Sheriff Mike Reed, who re-opened the investigation, had extensively analyzed all the evidence in the case. Based on bloodstains in the tent, he formed a theory, which he demonstrated in Keeper of the Ashes.

He surmised the killer entered the tent and immediately immobilized the first victim with two blows to the head with a hammer. “Death blows,” he called them. They were the only wounds that victim sustained.

He then turned and bludgeoned the second victim on the cot on the other side of the tent, incapacitating her. Then he approached his intended target on the third cot further in. He bound her hands and tied a rope around her neck in a certain way that would’ve rendered it impossible for her to scream for help.

Ever since I learned of the murders, it’s been a question I wondered. However, learning this made it that much worse.

4. The killer had a target.

In Keeper of the Ashes, Sheriff Reed revealed that he believed the killer had targeted one of the girls. But in order to get to her, he had to contend with the other two. He drew this conclusion because the girl was the only one whose clothes had been removed: Doris Denise Milner’s.

This was not only a surprising detail but a gut-wrenching one after learning she’d wanted to bow out of going to camp at the last minute.

5. How many people supported the suspect, Gene Leroy Hart.

At the time of the murders, Gene Leroy Hart was an escaped convict. He’d been serving time for the rape and attempted murder of two other women. He’d been on the run and had evaded authorities for years with the help of the community.

Then the Camp Scott murders happened and the hunt was on in earnest. Except, many believed they were just trying to pin the murders on him because he was a Cherokee Indian. At that time, Native Americans were tired of unfair and unjust treatment, so many in his community rallied around him and continued helping him evade the law.

But even when he was finally captured, there was a lot of public support that no way could he have done it. Not just from the Cherokees, but from many in Locust Grove. He was a former high school football star, after all. He was a good boy. A local hero. Not the monster who murdered those three little girls.

In fact, his lawyers even staged a press conference for him. Reporters weren’t allowed to ask him anything about the murders, but proving his innocence wasn’t the goal. They wanted to let him show just how charismatic he was and gain more support that someone like him could never have harmed three little girls.

6. Hart was regarded as a mystical, shapeshifting folk hero.

This kind of goes along with people supporting him, but some believed he must be a shapeshifter because he was so successful at evading capture. When police would get close, it seemed like he was able to change into a bird and fly away undetected or something. The longer he remained uncaught, the larger his legend grew.

7. There were other suspects.

Even though some believed police were unfairly focused on Gene Leroy Hart as the top suspect, police did also look at other possible ones. They didn’t pan out though. Especially because the evidence kept pointing to Hart.

8. All the conspiracy theories.

I was aware that some felt Hart didn’t do it, but until Keeper of the Ashes, I didn’t appreciate all the conspiracy theories surrounding the case.

For instance, during the manhunt for Hart following the girl scout murders, super dogs were brought in to track Hart. When two mysteriously died, some accused Hart of using Native American magic to harm them.

And when Hart died of a heart attack in prison almost two years to the day of the murders, on June 4, 1979, many believed it was a lie. They thought he’d been poisoned because he was only 35 at the time.

But the documentary pointed out that it looks like heart problems ran in his family. He had a brother who also died of heart problems at only 36. And an autopsy revealed Hart did die of a heart attack.

9. How close Hart’s mom lived to Camp Scott.

I knew he was from Locust Grove, and I’d read his mom lived near the camp. However, in Keeper of the Ashes, there’s a scene where Sheriff Reed shows where Hart’s mom’s house was. He points to where just over the hills beyond lies the tree where the girls’ bodies were discovered.

No, it doesn’t prove he did it. But the proximity shows Hart was familiar with the area.

10. The same tape and bondage were used in the Girl Scout murders as in Hart’s other crime.

This was a chilling detail. Hart had bound and tied up the two women he’d raped and left for dead, which also involved a tree. The same ties he’d used in that crime were the same ones used on the girls.

Coincidence? Could be, but that’d sure be a heck of a one.

11. A schoolmate of Lori Lee Farmer helped get the ball rolling again.

Sheryl Stokes was a friend, neighbor, and classmate of Lori Lee Farmer. In Keeper of the Ashes, she explains how Lori’s death affected her to the point it influenced her career choice.

She now works at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and one day called Lori’s mom, Sheri, and said the center had money they could apply to the case. Meaning, they could use it to retest some of the DNA, since advancements in testing had been made over the years.

Stokes was among those who never gave up or lost hope in finding answers, and who never wanted the girls’ memories forgotten. But she wasn’t alone.

12. Sheriff Reed not only reopened the investigation but fundraised for it.

Until Keeper of the Ashes, I didn’t appreciate the nuances of DNA testing. I just figured you sent samples off to a city or state lab and that was that. And I think in many cases you do, but when you need more specialized testing, such as in cold cases like this, you have to employ a private lab. And that means money.

To many people, that would be a deal-breaker, but Sheriff Reed isn’t an Average Joe. Undeterred, he raised $30,000 to run advanced testing on the hair, semen, and bloodstain samples they still had in evidence.

13. Re-tested DNA evidence rules out all other suspects except Gene Leroy Hart.

If Hart had never been at the camp, it stands to reason his DNA shouldn’t be found at the murder scene, right?

Well, almost 45 years to the date of the murders, news broke in early May of this year that there were new developments in the case thanks to advancements in DNA technology. It was just a couple of weeks before Keeper of the Ashes premiered, but the news was already out. Sheriff Reed explained that the samples in the Girl Scout murder case had been re-tested and they proved Gene Leroy Hart did it. Or, as Sheriff Reed put it, it ruled out every other suspect except one: Hart.

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