| Date | June 13, 1977 |
|---|---|
| Location | Camp Scott, Mayes County, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 36°09′43″N 95°09′59″W / 36.162006°N 95.166355°W |
| Cause | Homicide by strangulation |
| Participants | 1 |
| Outcome | Unsolved |
| Casualties | |
| |
| |
| |
| Deaths | 3 |
| Suspects | Gene Leroy Hart |
| Verdict | Not guilty |
| Convictions | None |
The Oklahoma Girl Scout murders took place on the morning of June 13, 1977, at Camp Scott in Mayes County, Oklahoma, United States. The victims were three Girl Scouts, between the ages of 8 and 10, who were raped and murdered. Their bodies were then left on a trail leading to the campsite's showers, about 150 yards (140 meters) from their tent. The case was classified as solved when Gene Leroy Hart, a local jail escapee with a history of violence and rape, was arrested. However, Hart was acquitted in March 1979 after a jury unanimously returned a verdict of not guilty.[1]
Less than two months before the murders, during an on-site training session, a counselor at Camp Scott discovered that her belongings had been ransacked and her doughnuts had been stolen. Inside the empty doughnut box was a hand-written note, stating in capital letters, "We are on a mission to kill three girls in tent one." The director of that camp session treated the note as a prank, and it was discarded.[2][3]
DNA testing performed in 1989 was officially inconclusive, as it did reconfirm Hart – a member of the Cherokee Nation – as a suspect, but did not narrow the pool of possible suspects enough, showing that it applied to 1 in 7,700 Native Americans. DNA testing performed in 2017, taking advantage of a further 28 years of advances in testing, strongly suggests Hart’s involvement in the crime, though the case remains officially unsolved.