Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - 3 Girl Scouts Raped, Murdered at Camp: Case Reignited

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Three little girls are raped and murdered at Camp Scott, a Girl Scout camp outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their bodies are left on a trail leading to the campsite's showers. Gene Leroy Hart is arrested for the murders but is acquitted at trial. Did Hart commit the crimes? Did he have help, or was someone else responsible?  Joining Nancy Grace for part one of our five-part series: Carla Wilhite - Former Camp Scott Counselor Kent Frates - Attorney (Oklahoma City, OK) Former Minority Leader Oklahoma House of Representatives, Author: “Oklahoma’s Most Notorious Cases” Shawn Roberson, Ph.D. - Licensed Psychologist (Edmond, Oklahoma), Adjunct Professor, Forensic Science Institute & Psychology Department, University of Central Oklahoma, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, drshawnroberson.com Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan" Derek Ellington - Certified Forensic Examiner, Licensed Private Investigator, Ellington Digital Forensics www.ellington.net Faith Phillips - Cherokee Screenwriter, Author: “Now I Lay Me Down”, ReadBooksBy.Faith, Twitter: @phillips_faith, Facebook: “Faith Phillips” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Sunday, June 12. The outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, three little girls at scout camp, ages 8, 9, and 10, huddled in their tent when lightning cracks through the air. That night, the three Girl Scouts, Lori Lee Farmer, Doris Denise Milner, and Michelle Heather Gousset dragged from their tent and murdered. But why? I'm Nancy Grace.

This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here on Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. Today and all this week, we follow the exclusive new Fox Nation series, The Girl Scout Murders. Take a listen to this. These woods in northeastern Oklahoma are the site of one of the worst crimes imaginable. Two busloads of Girl Scouts left Tulsa headed for Camp Scott, a Girl Scout retreat located on the Cherokee Reservation some 50 miles away.

Among the girls were 10-year-old Denise Milner, 9-year-old Michelle Gouzet, and 8-year-old Lori Farmer. What happened next is unthinkable. Three young girls beaten, sexually assaulted, murdered. There are children's names you always remember.

Lori and Denise and Michelle, they're there. And they're never going to go away. Never going to go away. Those names forever ingrained in our memories. But what happened? What happened that night? Again, I'm Nancy Grace and this is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us, with me,

and all star panel to make sense of what we know right now. But first, I want to go out to a special guest, Carla Wilhite, former camp counselor there at the campgrounds at the time of this triple homicide. Carla, thank you for being with us. Thank you, Nancy. Carla, tell me, first of all, I drop my twins at Scout Camp every year for Scout Summer Camp to earn their merit badges, to work toward Eagle. As a matter of fact, this particular case had me so scared, I forced my husband to join me to train as a volunteer and go to Scout Camp and stay there sleeping on the ground in a tent the entire first year of Scout Camp.

Of course, they had nothing but a wonderful time. But I want to go back to the time that these girls were at Girl Scout Camp. Tell me about the camp itself. Well, it's a beautiful property in northeastern Oklahoma, in what we call the green country. And I had spent every summer there from 1971 through till 1977 and started out as a camper and became a counselor in training and was really excited to start my first year as a counselor. The camp is just beautiful. It's in the rolling hills, forested, just beautiful greens, tall trees.

There's just nothing like it. Crystal clear streams running through the property. It was just every year was just like going home. And, you know, back in 1977, security was a lot different for scouting. And, you know, now it's much as you depicted it. You need a lot of volunteers to be there to watch out and make sure the kids are safe.

It's interesting that you just said that, Carla Wilhite. Carla is with me, former camp counselor. At this camp, during this time period, when I take the twins to camp, and when I camp there myself with them as a volunteer, there were just as many parents as there were scouts. And we were all around, positioned in tents around the children. My husband went to my son's campsite and I went to my daughter's. I also was a camp counselor. And when you said it feels like coming home, that's exactly what it feels like. We were in a beautiful national forest

and there was, there's nothing like it. I I still think about it how has this incident changed your memories well um you know for a long time it changed my memories for the worst you know I just remembered the the murders and and the aftermath and but over the years as you know I've recovered from the trauma. And I imagine that it did take years. What is Camp Scott like? Take a listen to this. It was just like it is today. I mean exactly like it was. The sounds, the smells, it's just a beautiful place to be. About 410 acres in total, so it was vast. There was one road in and one paved road out. One road in and one road out.

Let's backtrack to our cut one. What happened? Two busloads of Girl Scouts left Tulsa headed for Camp Scott, a Girl Scout retreat located on the Cherokee Reservation some 50 miles away. Among the girls were 10-year-old Denise Milner, 9-year-old Michelle Gouzet, and 8-year-old Lori Farmer. What happened next is unthinkable. Three young girls.

Beaten. Sexually assaulted. Murdered. There are children's names you always remember. Lori and Denise and Michelle. They're there. And they're never going to go away. With me is Faith Phillips, Cherokee screenwriter and author of Now I Lay Me Down.

Faith, thank you for being with us. Weigh in on the area and the camp and that night the three girls were dragged from their tents and murdered. Well, that night, it was a really stormy night. It started out a beautiful day, as Carla Wilhite described so well, a beautiful day in the Cherokee Nation. And then eventually, the storm, Oklahoma's famous for thunderstorms and our tornadoes. But that night, a huge thunderstorm rolled in. And so it changed the plans of all of the campers. But that night, a huge thunderstorm rolled in.

And so it changed the plans of all of the campers. So they all huddled in the Great Hall, which is where they went to eat in the evening around 7 p.m. And they went out on the porch and they just kept waiting for the storm to pass. And girls were out singing and singing. They called it singing porch. And the rain just kept falling and the thunder kept rolling and then eventually it did pass but it had been such a great thunderstorm that the leaves were still dripping with rain and so rather than continue with their regular activities that they would have normally done, the girls just all went back into their tents. Yeah, I could see that.

You know, I was just thinking about what Carla Wilhite and Faith Phillips were saying about this idyllic setting. I want to go to Dr. Sean Roberson, a licensed psychologist joining us out of Edmond, Oklahoma, professor of Forensic Science Institute and Psychology Department, University of Central Oklahoma at drshawnrobertson.com. Doctor, thank you for being with us. The dichotomy of such a beautiful camp where parents feel safe in leaving their children at these ages, eight, nine, and 10, this is probably the first time some of these girls have ever slept away from home before. Well, the setting of where crimes can happen is really anywhere, as you know.

You can't necessarily feel safe just because the setting is pristine. Absolutely. To Joe Scott Morgan, joining me, Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, Joe Scott, the dichotomy of when you think you're leaving your child somewhere safe in this bucolic setting, only to get that call in the night that something horrible has happened. I mean, it's not like you have a child living, going to school in inner city of New York City or inner city Chicago. There, you know, there's a very high crime rate. Not that you want it to happen, but it's likely to happen.

But in a place like this, on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, at a Girl Scout camp, Joe Scott? Yeah, you mentioned the word becolic. There's something I like to mention many times when I'm speaking to folks and teaching, and that is as investigators, we often have to view and assess the abnormal in the context of the normal. And it's a real shock to your system many times because, you know, there's a lot of us out here, myself included, that went to camp when we were kids. Can you imagine being an investigator and having to figure this out? And plus it's isolated. Aha. Very important, Joe Scott.

As to the mind of the killer and the way a scene is processed, the isolation of this camp adds in a whole nother factor. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Back to you, Carla Wilhite, Scout Camp Counselor there at Camp Scott. What do you recall about that evening? All the girls go to their tents after an unexpected rain. Then what happens? When we got back to our unit, Kiowa, we spent quite a bit of time just trying to dry off.

As Faith mentioned, the trees were just dripping rain. We put the tent flaps down just in case it, you know, continued to rain and helped the girls kind of get settled in. And, you know, from there, it was just kind of a lively evening. You've got girls giggling, shrieking, flashlights, you know, shining every which direction. Counselors getting tired and sleepy. And, you know, it's time to go to bed. And we finally got everybody settled down. And everything got, you know it's time to go to bed and we finally got everybody settled down

and everything got you know really quiet. Were they having at the time cracker barrels that's what they call now anyway after the scouts finish all their classes and what they're doing during the day they go back to their tent site which you're talking about Carla and they go back to their tent site, which you're talking about, Carla, and they have the giggling and the flashlights and snacks and drinks and kind of a little scout party, and then they go to bed. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, imagine everybody being in high spirits, and then after they go to their tents, you still see a lot of flashlights in there and giggling and laughter

and a couple of screams, and then somehow, mysteriously, everything suddenly gets quiet. And I imagine that's what happened that night. Absolutely. That paints a perfect picture of it. Who are these three little girls? Just think about it. Ages 8, 9, and 10. Take a listen to this. Among the campers is a precocious eight-year-old named Lori Farmer,

a natural leader protective of her four younger siblings. There's also Michelle Gouzet, a third-year scout. She has a passion for competitive sports, particularly soccer. She sat in her mother's lap the night before camp started and said that she would miss her while she was gone. And there is Denise Milner, one of only a few African-American girls attending Camp Scott this summer. Like her tent mates, Lori and Michelle, she is multi-talented, participating in gymnastics, tap dancing, and the church choir. Wow. I'm just imagining these three little girls in their tents right now.

But some of them, as always at camp, knew they were going to be homesick. Listen. As I began to board the bus, I saw Denise and her mother. Denise was visibly crying and upset. So I walked over and introduced myself, said, hey, I'm Michelle, what's your name? Come on, we're going to go have a great time. You can ride with me. And we climbed on the bus and she was sitting by the window

and I was telling her all the great things that we're going to do at camp. And her mother came on the bus, Betty, and she was like, I could tell she was worried about her, right? And she was so, she can call me if she gets homesick. I was like, I'll make sure she's taken care of. I'm just imagining that Carla Wilhite with me, a former Camp Scott counselor, an interesting thing happened last summer when I was a volunteer at scout camp, much like this camp. A little boy came down the road. There's no streets. They're all dirt. And he was just crying his heart out. And I noticed none of the counselors or none of the adults were going to him. And I went to him

and I hugged him. I'm like, what's wrong? And he goes, I want to go home. I miss my mom. And all of a sudden, like three adult volunteers came and said, let go. I went, what's wrong? And I let go because of all the rules. Now you can't touch a scout, even if they're crying and snotting and they're homesick. But guess what? The very next day, I went back to where the little boy had been, and he was having a great time. He didn't want to go home, and I will also add that they get very homesick. Horrible cell phone coverage, of course, but my entire battery is used up every night with girls wanting to call home to their moms. Now, some people have viewed this when you went over and comforted Denise as some type of a premonition.

I think she was just afraid to be alone. I would agree with that. I mean, I think all of us are homesick the first night away at Girl Scout camp. I know I was. But by the end of the two weeks, I didn't want to go home. Yeah, that's the way it always seems to be, Carla. So as we're trying to,

as Joe Scott Morgan was talking about, this isolated area, figure out what happened that night. What is the layout? Listen. When the bus stops, you end up at the staff house. You're going to find out what unit you're in. Quapaw,

Kiowa, here was Comanche, and the youngest girls were in Cherokee. The tents are arranged typically in a somewhat circle or U-shape. The counselors tent by the trail that came into the camp. Tent 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Lori, Denise, and Michelle were assigned to tent number 7. Thinking about that layout and the fact that this camp, of course, like all Scout camps, is very isolated in the woods. Join me right now. Another special guest, Kent Freitas, an attorney out of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, former minority leader in the Oklahoma House and author of Oklahoma's Most Notorious Crimes.

Now, here is a guy that knows what he's talking about. He's the author of Oklahoma's Most Notorious Crimes and of Oklahoma Hiking Trails. So that's the perfect marriage to discuss this incident. A triple homicide of three little girls, ages eight, nine, and 10. Kent Freitas, thank you for being with us. I'm sure you're familiar with this case.

Tell me about the layout of the campsite and the isolation of this remote location and how that played into trying to catch the killer. Let me first say that this is clearly one of the most notorious cases in the history of the state. And it was at the time, it was both a notorious case in Oklahoma and nationally. And as the facts develop, you'll see that all of the factors involved in not only just the hideousness of the crime are important, but as far as the layout of the camp, I think it was very important because it was 400 acres of wooded land. It was completely rural. There was nothing nearby except a few isolated farmhouses. To that night and the hideous nature of these crimes. You know, I'm just thinking of kids sitting around a campfire and everybody's telling ghost stories.

They started right here. They started right here with Camp Scott and this story, except this is not a story. These are real little girls, ages eight, nine, and 10 that lost their lives that night. their families destroyed. And the lore around this, as Kent Freitas says, hideous crime has affected scouting and hiking in general, camping from this moment on. Take a listen to this. And I did go out later that night because I heard a noise. Didn't really sound like an animal. Didn't really sound like a person. It just kept going on and it was kind of over across the fence and I went out with my flashlight and I started walking over that direction kind of trying to shine my light and see what it is

when I would shine my light the noise would stop so So I'm like, okay. Turn around, start walking away, the noise starts again. So I do this a few times and I can just feel this apprehension growing in me because I don't want to tangle with whatever that is. I can't see what it is. I don't know what it is. I guarantee you if she knew what that noise was, if it was associated with what was happening, she would have given her life in a second. You're hearing the voice of Carla Wilhite, camp counselor at the time of this triple murder

of three young Girl Scouts. Carla, could you describe the sound? Yeah, it was, as I said, it didn't sound like any animal I had ever heard, or like a human. It was just a low, kind of raspy sound, almost like a moan, and it would kind, I mean, I did become frightened and didn't want to go any further than I had. So you're saying it didn't sound like a person and it didn't sound like an animal? Right. Uh, really hard to describe. In retrospect, when you look back, what do you think it was? Well, because of its proximity to where I found the girls in the morning, I am guessing it was someone, that it was possibly a human being.

At that time, did you have any reason to suspect that the girls were in danger? Absolutely not. I really believed it was, you know, an animal, even though I couldn't identify it. And what time was this, Carla? I would say it was probably about two in the morning. Why were you up at two? I heard the noise. It woke you up? Yes. Did you ever hear screams? No. Never? No. Okay guys take a listen to this. And I looked over to my right and I saw some sleeping bags in the road and the first thing that I thought was oh my gosh you know some sleeping bags must have fallen off the truck when they delivered all the girls' luggage. I better get it. But then as I started walking closer, I could see a body. And then closer, I could see it was a young girl.

And recognized as I approached that this young girl, she was motionless. She wasn't breathing. It was just an overwhelming recognition that this child is dead. Carla, I cannot even imagine what you went through finding this describe for us why you were there in that spot what happened for the most simple of reasons i had set my alarm for six o'clock so that i could get to the staff house and take a shower with warm water because all we had were cold water showers and so I you know put on my glasses got a dry towel and went out down the steps of my tent and started walking up the road and there's a you know a little intersection of one road with another,

and that's where I found the children. I can't even imagine what went through your mind when you realized this was actually a little girl's body. At first I thought some terrible accident had happened. I mean, I literally was trying to make sense of it, that somehow someone got scared during the night and, I mean, as a, ran into a tree and, you know, died as a result. I mean, you're just trying to make sense of the unsensible. To Dr. Sean Robertson, I hear that from so many crime victims and tangential victims of crime like Carla Wilhite.

They're struggling to make sense of what they see. It's like the eye is tricking the mind, like her thought was, was there an accident? Did this girl hit a tree? And that explains what I'm seeing. What is that? Some sort of a mental self-defense? Most people just aren't exposed to the violence and evil that happens in this world. And so when they run across such a brutal crime, they're looking for an explanation for how it could have happened. And especially out there in a remote area like that, you would never suspect that a sexual psychopath may have been in the campground.

Listen to this. One of the girls was out of the sleeping bag, and the other two were zipped up in the bag. The one that was out of the bag had a blow to her head. The other two sleeping bags were zipped up, but when they were unzipped, they discovered the other two girls had also been beaten and all three of them were dead. They had been restrained with duct tape in one way or another. And one of them had a piece of cord around her neck that had something on it that they later determined was a gag. You were hearing the voice of one of our special guests, Kent Freitas, former minority leader in the Oklahoma House and author of Oklahoma's Most Notorious Crimes.

That's why no one heard any screams, Kent. They were duct taped across the mouth. Well, that's correct. And also, at least one of them was killed very quickly with a massive blow to the head. The other thing was that not only were they duct taped, but in one case, one of the girls was tied with a cord, and that will become increasingly important. The bodies, you said one girl was killed very, very quickly.

Had she been raped? That's correct. All three of them had been sexually assaulted. When you say assaulted, do you mean raped? Yes. Take a listen to this.

The first responders observed that both Lori Farmer and Michelle Gouzet had very likely been knocked out by blows to the head with blunt instruments, while Denise Milner appeared to have survived longer than the other two girls because her body was still warm when the authorities arrived. All three girls were sexually assaulted and found about 150 yards away from 10-7. The body's still warm. Okay, Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator and host of a new hit series, Body Bags, with Joe Scott Morgan on iHeart.

What does that tell you, Joe Scott? Well, obviously, you know, you begin to think about the environmental temperature that night. You remember beforehand we had talked about how it had rained and that's going to cool the environment, the ambient environmental temperature will. So that really focuses in on on this one body that is still warm because, you know, after death, one of the things that we look for is the post-mortem interval and if the ambient environmental temperature is at a point where it is so cool and the body is still warm you know you know that she had survived for some time particularly comparison to her two companions Crime Stories with Nancy Grace Joining me is Faith Phillips, a Cherokee screenwriter and author of Now I Lay Me Down. You can find her on Facebook at Faith Phillips.

Faith Phillips, weigh in. Well, I think this is one of the most disturbing parts of the crime, and there are so many disturbing elements to it. But the fact that one of the girls was kept alive for some time, I think indicates something even more sinister. Murder is bad enough, but here we have something that indicates torture of some sort, and that takes it to an entirely different level of crime. What do you mean by that? Well, we have someone who is

intentionally inflicting torture on a child, and so that would indicate, and I'm not a psychiatrist of any sort, but when I consider that just as a human being of the kind of mental state it would take for an adult to take an innocent child from a tent and to intentionally keep them alive, to inflict pain on them, this is beyond most people's imagination. And certainly when I learned about the details, I had known about the case for some time. In fact, people had asked me to write a book about the case. And I'd always said no, because I felt like it had already been covered. And when I really started looking into the case, and I learned more and more details about what actually happened,

the horror of what happened that night, it just keeps getting worse and worse the more you learn about the crime. It really does. The three girls in their tents, all raped, all murdered, in the middle of the night, and no one heard a thing. The forensic experts start their mission. Listen. At the crime scene, police begin collecting evidence, looking for possible clues.

They find a red flashlight left by the bodies, its lens covered by plastic with a hole in it to make it harder to be seen at night, and multiple prints, a bloody boot print on the tent floor, along with the print of a tennis shoe. Wow, you know, Joe Scott, Morgan forensic expert, I'm all for getting shoe prints, but that's really not a lot to go on. No, it's not.

But what it does indicate to me, Nancy, thinking about the flashlight and thinking about the nature or the mode in which these little angels died, I think it's significant in the fact that this individual showed up prepared, Nancy. You know, when you think about, you know, there was some cutting that was involved relative to the canvas on the tent to get access to the tent. The individual obviously had a sharp instrument with them to get access to the backside of the tent. But then, you know, what has been alluded to are these bludgeoning tools. This is the tool that this individual chooses to end their lives with, and it escalates it up to a certain level of violence.

So you would have blood evidence there, and there's quite a bit of violence. So you would have blood evidence there and there's quite a bit of it. And another thing, Joe Scott, clearly the perpetrator, the killer of three girls, eight, nine and 10 years old, sleeping in their tents at Girl Scout camp came prepared. This was not spur of the moment. This was planned. Take a listen to this. Law enforcement announces that two squirrel hunters have come across a remote cave. In the coming days, authorities say two more caves with clues to the investigation are discovered. And inside them, law enforcement says, are photographs. A photographer at the prison had taken the photographs. And one of Hart's prison jobs had been to assist that photographer. If he had been in that cave and left these there, it would have tied him to the murder scene.

And then in the third cave, somebody had scratched a note on the wall that said, the killer was here. And it had a date. Ten days after the girls were found in their sleeping bags, and based on the evidence the police said was found in the caves, the authorities charged Jean Leroy Hart with first-degree murder in the deaths of Lori Farmer, Michelle Gouzet, and Denise Milner. To Carla Wilhite joining us, she was camp counselor at Camp Scott at the time of the three murders and rapes of three little girls.

There's really no way you could possibly know that out far away from the camp, a guy is living in a cave. It just is astounding to think that someone that's actually known to be escaped from jail is living near a Girl Scout camp. It still just feels... Unreal. Mm-hmm. How far away from the camp was this cave this is faith phillips that cave is just

about a mile south of the girl scout camp and and it's very remote you have to walk through some woods to get to it so most people probably didn't even know even locals probably didn't even know that that cave was there um and it had it we call it a cave, but it was actually a root cellar. So there had been an old homestead there and the house was gone. And it was like a root cellar in the side of a creek bank. And so they call it a cave, but it's actually a cellar. Wow. And to imagine, I mean, how can you possibly protect children against something you don't know about? I mean, what about it, Faith?

Who would imagine to go a mile away and look for, as it's being called, a cave? And it's a good point. It's something to consider. I think that most people are pretty naive, myself included. And so living in the Cherokee Nation, I have always, I grew up there, I always felt safe. And so I share that same sense with Carla that you would never imagine that something like this could happen. But on the other hand, having spoken to locals, I've found out that it was known that people would gather around that camp.

Teenagers and hooligans is the word that they often use, but that was a source of entertainment. They knew that locals, some of the locals knew that people would gather around the camp for entertainment. And in fact, Harold Berry, who was a highway patrolman, would go and scatter the people that were the teenage boys. I suppose you would probably the best way to describe the people that would gather around there just to try and scare the girls. And so it was known that that there were people that should that weren't authorized to be around the camp, not by Carla or by the camp director, but by locals. They knew that people sometimes gathered around there that shouldn't have been there. I don't know that I would call them authorized, but I agree it was known.

But imagine some guy living in a cave or an old root cellar. Guys, we are following the very latest developments in the exclusive new Fox Nation series, The Girl Scout Murders. We're following it here on Crime Stories all week long. Tomorrow, clues emerge as the manhunt for this guy living in a cave, Jane Hart, heats up. Plus, are more alleged killers on the run? Nancy Grace, signing

off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.