Someone cry for the children

We had just went into the bookstore to kill time. I am not one for reading, not like she is. But still, I never have trouble finding a book that I can kill time with. I found this one, "Weird Oklahoma" and little did I know what kind of a impact it would have on me. Amidst the strange and "weird" places and stories it had to see (that I found very interesting) it had a "Abandoned Oklahoma" section. I began to read... Ghost towns, I guess, is what they really are. Places that once had something to offer, now gone, empty buildings, empty places. As I began to read, I came across a place, a girl scout camp. Camp Scott near Locust Grove in Mayes County. I  was looking at pictures of empty buildings, and things that once was the home to girls for summer fun. Now empty, over-grown with grass.

A little background From Wikipedia...

In 1977, Camp Scott was in its 49th year as a keystone of the Tulsa-based Magic Empire Girl Scout Council. Situated along the confluence of Snake Creek and Spring Creek near State Highway 82, the 410-acre (1.7 km²) compound was located between Locust Grove and Tahlequah.
Gene Leroy Hart had been at large since escaping four years earlier from the Mayes County Jail. He had been convicted of raping and kidnapping two pregnant women as well as four counts of first degree burglary.
Hart was raised about a mile from Camp Scott.
Less than two months before the murders, during an on-site training session, a camp counselor found her belongings ransacked, her doughnuts stolen, and inside the empty doughnut box was a disturbing hand-written note. The author vowed to murder three campers. The director of that camp session treated the note as a prank and it was discarded. ^[2]
June 12, 1977 was the first day of camp. Around 6pm a thunderstorm hit, and the girls huddled in their tents. Among them were Tulsans Lori Lee Farmer, 8, and Doris Denise Milner, 10, along with Michele Guse, 9, of Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa. The trio were sharing tent #8 in the camp's "Kiowa" unit, named for a Native American tribe.The following morning, a counselor made the discovery of a girl's body in the forest. Soon, it was discovered that all three girls in tent #8 had been killed. Subsequent testing showed that they had been raped, bludgeoned, and strangled.
Camp Scott was evacuated and would never reopen.
(end cite...?)


As I left the bookstore, I left with wanting to know something..."why". Who could do this and why could someone do this. So I began to research this a little bit. This entailed alot...this had one of the biggest man-hunts in Oklahoma's history as well as one of the biggest trials to ever hit the state. It was (obviously) before my time, and prior to reading about this, I had never heard about it. 

The weird thing is, after telling my mom about this, she says, "I think I heard a lady on the news the other day who was supposed to be there in their tent but stayed home cause she was sick". A little research later, and I found I found this was found. This was put on the news weeks before I had found out about this case. Also mom was telling me she had heard that a guy was supposed to make a film about this as well.Click for the article Turns out, this guy claims knows who killed them, and will reveal it in the film. I found it odd, that the time I find out about this case, is the time all this is coming out, when it has been relevantly silent since the late 70's.

There have been several theories as to who did this but mainly focusing around one man...Gene Leroy Hart. Hart went on trial, but was acquitted by a jury. I have found two books written about this, one which was adapted into a documentary that was narrated by the late Johnny Cash. It is in a 6 part series on Youtube. Here is the link to the first video. Video 1. One of the books lean towards Hart was guilty, the other states he was innocent. I am interested in digging in to both books.

The more I research, the more I am left with a heavy heart. I don't understand Humanity sometimes, why can someone do this. This is Aprils age, and I can't fathom something like this. I pray for the girls of tent number 8. I pray for their families, and that justice will be served.

To this day, the case remains open and unsolved.


-Fig