Imagine you're a 12-year-old and out for a summer stroll on the beach with your family and friends.

You're throwing a stick for your friend's dog when suddenly the dog gets super agitated and whiny and takes off into the dunes.

You follow the dog and stumble upon the source of its agitation.

The naked body of a woman. Her head nearly severed, both hands missing and very obviously dead.

Such was the experience for Leslie Metcalf at Race Point Dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the afternoon of July 26, 1974.

Leslie's awful discovery would kick off a true murder mystery that prevails to this day.

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan.

I'm a writer and an actor who's never found

a dead body on the beach, but can assure you that if I did, I'd run for the dunes. Or rather,

run for the boardwalk behind the dunes, because that's where this mysterious lady was laying,

the lady of the dunes they'd come to call her.

And warning, strangers, I'm about to dive into some graphic, disturbing description here.

Music The Auburn-haired woman laid face down on a beach towel.

Her head rested on a pair of Wrangler jeans and a blue bandana,

as though she had just been sunbathing, when, in fact, she had been bludgeoned.

Her skull had been so badly damaged that her facial features were impossible to make out.

And, of course, because her hands were missing, there was no chance of identifying her through her fingerprints.

The only thing police could discern was that she was somewhere between 25 and 35 years old. She was around 5'6, 150 pounds, and she had had really expensive dental work done.

New York-style dental work, police called it. I like to imagine they said it with a lot of side-eye.

The way they might say,

Manhattan clam chowda.

An article in the Boston Globe, written five months after the murder,

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