Camp Scott

 

First opening on August 11, 1928 as Camp Ma-Del-Co and running for just a two-week period. Costs ran at either $5.00 for the first five days or $9.00 for the entire ten-day stay. The camp and the 240-acres it sits on were owned by the Tulsa Scout Council, there were a total of twenty buildings on the property at the time of opening complete with plumbing and running water. Camp activities included swimming, CPR training, archery, pathfinding, bridge building, bird study, insect life, and leadership skills. Just a few short years later it got the name Camp Scott, it would keep this until and well after its closing.

Over the next almost five decades the camp held numerous events including the Rancho Festival, Water Carnival, and Oklahoma Academy of Science’s annual meeting and even at one point holding the State Conference of 1947. Continuing to teach kids vital skills and the greatness of the outdoors, attendance was all but low with attendance reaching 4,606 girls attending the camp in 1957 alone. In 1977, Camp Scott was celebrating its 49th year as a keystone of the Tulsa-based Magic Empire Girl Scout Council when tragedy struck.

In April of 1977 during an on-site cadet weekend, camp aide Michelle Hoffman found her and her campmates’ tent ransacked and some donuts that she had brought from home, emptied. In the empty box with the crumbs, she found a few pieces of tiny steno notebook paper with strange and threatening words written on them. On two or three pages was the word “kill” repeatedly written over and over again. Written on a fourth page was something even more threatening, “We’re on a mission to kill three girls.” Hoffman, concerned about the strange occurrence took the note to the camp director, who said she would check into it. She later learned that a group of girls at camp that weekend had supposedly confessed to doing the incident. Because summer camps are rife with ghost stories and such, the note was assumed to be a prank and discarded.

June 12, 1977, was the opening day of Camp Scott, hundreds of girls were dropped off by their parents for what they thought would be days of fun and the outdoors. Around 6 pm a thunderstorm hit the Mayes County area, and everyone throughout the camp huddled into their tents. In Tent #7 located within the Kiowa Camp area were three campers, Lori Lee Farmer (8 yo), Doris Denise Milner (10 yo), both native Tulsans, and Michele Guse (9 yo) of Broken Arrow.

“Dear Mom and Dad and Misti and Jo and Chad and Kathy. We’re just getting ready to go to bed. It’s 7:45. We’re at the beginning of a storm and having a lot of fun. I’ve met two new friends, Michele Guse and Denise Milner. I’m sharing a tent with them. It’s started raining on the way back from dinner. We’re sleeping on cots. I couldn’t wait to write. We’re all riding letters now ’cause there’s hardly anything else to do. With love, Lori” — Final letter from Lori Farmer

Gene Leroy Hart had been convicted in Mayes County of kidnapping and sexually assaulting two pregnant women. He was taken into prison on 10-15-1966 and given two ten-year sentences to be served concurrently. In 1973 he had escaped with two other inmates from Mayes County Jail, remnants of his childhood home being only a few miles from the Camp Scott site speculation of him being the murderer spread like wildfire. And by the end of the month, Gene Leroy Hart was charged with first-degree murder. On July 30, 1977 using the American Indian Movement as a spokesperson, Hart denied having any role in the girls’ deaths but said he would continue running out of fear that if he were to surrender he would “have the hell shot out of him.”

Hart was arrested finally found and arrested ten months later on April 6, 1978 at the home of a Cherokee medicine man after a local tip came in about his whereabouts. He was deemed fit to stand trial which was slated to start on March 19, 1979. Although the local sheriff thought Hart to be “one thousand percent” guilty a local jury acquitted him of the charges and he was found innocent on March 31, 1979. Hart would return to prison at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary serving 145 to 305 years for his previous crimes of rape, kidnapping and burglary, charges unrelated to the Girl Scout slayings. The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders is still to this day an unsolved crime in rural Mayes County, Oklahoma. On June 4, 1979 after only being back in prison for a little over a month Gene Leroy Hart collapsed from a heart attack and was pronounced dead at the McAlester Regional Hospital.

June 13th, 1977 was the last day that Camp Scott was open after nearly 50 years of hosting Girl Scouts, it closed its doors and never reopened. Two of the families later sued the Magic Empire Council and its insurer in a $5 million alleged negligence action when the girl scouts were murdered at the camp. The civil trial included a discussion of the notes from April 1977 that would be brought up among evidence cited in trying to prove the Girl Scouts should have been alert in advance to possible danger. The fact that tent #7 lay 86-yards from the counselors’ tent. The defense suggested that the future of summer camping, in general, hung in the balance. In 1985, by a 9–3 vote, jurors sided with the camp. Magic Empire Council decided to sell the entire property and remnants of the camp buildings in 1988

Richard Guse, the father of Michele Guse, went on to help the state legislature pass the Oklahoma Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights and the Oklahoma Victims’ Compensation Board. Sheri Farmer, the mother of Lori Farmer, went on to found the Oklahoma Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children a support group to help those grieving.

After years and years of multiple DNA tests with no definitive answers and the main suspect deceased, it seemed as though most citizens had just accepted that the case would never be officially closed. But as of May 2022 investigators say recent DNA testing has ruled out every single possible suspect, except one. Mayes County Sheriff Mike Reed has spent the last nine years digging into this case after Lori Farmer’s parents asked him to give the case a fresh look. Reed said there’s no doubt in his mind, that the evidence shows, Gene Leroy Hart is the killer.

“I pray that there’s something that we’ve done that gives the family a second of something that even resembles closure or acceptance or something I pray that. But as far as peace, there is absolutely nothing about this case that has given me one second of peace. Period. From watching the pain on the family to having to go through the crime scene before during and after, from watching the legal system to watching the parole board, to watching how this whole thing played out, to watching how people would use this to springboard their own personal agendas, there ain’t nothing about this whole thing that is peaceful. It is evil.”

Lori’s mother, Sheri Farmer, said “It’s a journey I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It’s shocking. It’s different than a death. It’s different than a loss because our daughter was murdered. It was intentional and she died with two other little girls that we don’t want to forget either.”

The conspiracy theories surrounding this case can now be put to rest. The case can now be closed after a long 45-year journey.

Article by AOK Photojournalist Emily Cowan.

We want to give a huge thanks to Kevin Weaver over at GirlScoutMurders.com for giving us a personal tour and his help researching.

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Gallery Below of Camp Scott

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