In light of the articles below that describe Rory's life, one is struck by the irony of a 1969 letter to the editor of the Daily Illinois State Journal that her father wrote:
Mystery of `lady of the dunes':
Ebbert, Stephanie Boston Globe [Boston, Mass] 23 Aug 1998
[excerpt from an article asking if Rory could be the unidentified woman found on Cape Cod in 1974. However, 2002 DNA testing ruled this out]
...At 15, she [Rory Kesinger] ran away from home -- police won't say where that home was -- and already had a record in several states when she landed in Massachusetts. She was allegedly a drug user involved in running guns and drugs, tied in with bank-robbing accomplices, police said."She was wanted all across the country at that time," said Tobias.
She was only 24, an attractive young woman, when Pembroke Police Lieutenant Willard Boulter came upon her in January 1973. Boulter was assisting Stoughton Police in delivering notice of a traffic violation to a home in Pembroke, when Kesinger and several others scurried out the back door into the woods.
He caught Kesinger when she tripped and fell. The woman, wearing only lingerie, claimed she had just been raped, but when Boulter took her back to the house, she tried to steal his gun.
He pushed her away and led her in the house, and as he called for help, Kesinger turned off the lights and slipped into another room. Boulter flicked on the lights to find Kesinger with a gun in hand.
"I'm sorry, but I have to kill you," she said.
He dove for her, pushed the gun to the side, threw her on the floor, and handcuffed her. "You would just not think that a nice- looking girl like that would kill you in a heartbeat," he said.
Police took Kesinger to the hospital, where she ended up stealing another officer's weapon. "Die, you {expletive} pig," she hollered, aiming at the officer. Again, she was thwarted: He flung up his hand and was able to keep the gun from firing.
She was charged with two counts of assault with intent to murder and sent to Plymouth County jail, said Sheriff Peter Forman.
She didn't wait for trial. Sometime between the night of May 26, 1973, and the following morning, she escaped, using a hacksaw blade that someone had smuggled into the jail for her. She went to the window of the laundry room, tied together sheet after sheet, and hacked the bar of the window until she could squeeze herself through. Then she lowered herself to freedom.
Someone must have been waiting for her nearby in a car, Forman said. She was never seen again, but her mark was indelible.
"In the old prison, which is still up, you can still see the cut marks on the bars where she cut out," Forman said...
'Murder in the Dunes:'
[Excerpt]...Kesinger ran with a tough crowd. She had pulled a weapon on a police officer during a bank robbery. She also had been arrested for pulling a gun on a case worker and police officer after being brought to a hospital because she was high on drugs, White said.
Her accomplices in the bank robberies include a man later killed by an FBI agent in a shootout during a bank robbery, White said. Another is serving a prison sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn., for bank robbery.
Kesinger's mother, who is almost 80, has not seen her daughter since the girl ran away from home at age 15...
***
Per NamUs Rory used the aliases: Kessinger, Jennifer Marie Lynn, Linda Lynn Koch, Penny Susan Johnson
If not the woman in Allenstown, could Rory be this NH woman?
Date is probably too early to be the mother of Terry Rasmussen's unidentified daughter but hopefully DNA has been checked to be sure.
Or could the Marlborough woman be Carol Louise Rodriguez who disappeared from Spencer, MA in August of 1973?
My aunt
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry. I hope you know that she is not forgotten outside your family. There is a detective in Massachusetts who has spent years trying to find her and what happened to her.
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