Girl Scout murders in 1977

Weird, but I had one of those threading thoughts that occur at 3 in the morning.  Last night, I started thinking about the 1/2 summer during college spent in a little bitty town outside Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I was a counselor at a horseback riding camp there....

The place was run by two couples, sisters and their husbands.  They'd just opened it.  It had 3 cabins, one for boys, and two for girls.  The boy's counselor was from some East coast prep school who thought it was hilarious that Tulsa had streets named after schools like Harvard.  He stayed in the cabin a lot and read books before the kids came.  Kate was my co-counselor, and a real sport.  Very gregarious, happy, and athletic.  There was another girl too, Carolyn???, who was younger than either of us, and beautiful, just horse crazy.  

When we first got there, we could choose a horse from the pasture, one who hadn't been ridden for the winter, and get on.  I chose Blue, a dapple gray appaloosa.  He only cantered wildly through the field when I got in the saddle.  He was a good boy.  

So...why did the sisters get so depressed over the first month and a half that one could not even leave the little house where they lived together?  Here's what happened:

First two weeks:  during a hay ride, one sister's puppy was run over by the wagon.  A girl who was afraid to get on a horse the entire time, decided to brave it when her parents came to pick her up from camp.  The horse took off into the woods with her, and one of the men leapt on a horse to chase the runaway down.  They served no fruits or vegetables there, and I got a terrible case of constipation!  They had to put me on a diet of yogurt and offer their house bathroom to me!!!

Second two weeks:  the swimming hole, which was a mucky pond, started to dry up in the heat.  Still, swimming was an activity, and they made kids go in.  One boy came down with a horrible ear infection and had to be sent home.  Can you imagine the microbes lurking in that hole?  Then something happened that they kept very hushed up about....

Three girl scouts were murdered in a camp "not far away".  This was June, 1977.  That's all I knew about it.  We didn't have TV or newspapers or even radio.  From that point on, we couldn't keep the windows open or sleep on the screened porches.  We had to be locked into the cabins with windows shut tight.  This was Oklahoma in the summertime, remember.  The two husbands took turns staying awake all night to patrol the camp with pistols.

Turns out, the police never pinned down the rapist/murderer of the 8,9, and 10 year old girl scouts.  Whoever it was, was "an animal," according to the doctor who did the autopsies.  

All I knew was that it was hot, discouraging, and I got a spider bite on my leg that started streaking red up and down like poison spreading.  My best friend, Tweedledum (I was Tweedledee), drove down from Tulsa to take me to the emergency room.  I packed my bag and never went back.

Odd, those thoughts about a summer so many years ago.  But if you look on the internet, there's a ton of stuff on the girl scout murders.  To us, it was just an event that closed the windows.