THE MAN AT THE CENTER OF THE INVESTIGATION: GENE LEROY HART

LOCUST GROVE — Gene Leroy Hart was, and still is, the only person ever arrested and tried for the murders of Denise Milner, Michele Guse, and Lori Lee Farmer. In the end, though, a jury found him not guilty.

So, who was Gene Leroy Hart, and why did investigators believe he was the man responsible?

To answer that, we have to go back and look at his past. As investigators worked through hundreds of leads, they started putting together Hart's criminal history, his alleged connection to the Camp Scott area, and the evidence they believed pointed to him.

And y'all, we will go much deeper into the trial, the evidence, and the testimony at another time in this series. Right now, we just want to introduce Hart so you have a better understanding of who he was as we continue working through the pretrial transcripts since he will be mentioned a lot.

And while you're following along, keep one question in the back of your mind. Did investigators identify the right man, or is there more to this story than what appears on the surface? As always, we're not here to tell you what to think. Our job is to present the facts as they're documented in the available records and let you decide what you believe. So, let's get into it...

Gene Leroy Hart was a member of the Cherokee Nation who grew up around the Locust Grove area. Newspaper archives describe him as a standout football player in high school, and it's believed he graduated sometime around 1962 or 1963. After that, there isn't much publicly documented about his life until 1966, when records show he was working for Flint Steel in Tulsa.

In June of 1966, Hart failed to report for work at Flint Steel. According to court records and newspaper archives, that same day he abducted two pregnant women from the parking lot of a Tulsa nightclub and drove them to a wooded area in Mayes County, where they were s*xually assaulted. Hart later pleaded guilty to abducting, r*ping, and forcibly sodomizing both women. He was convicted and sentenced to prison.

Several years later, in early 1973, Hart was transferred to the Mayes County Jail for court proceedings. On May 20th, he escaped from custody but was quickly captured and returned to jail. Then, just a few months later, on September 16th, he escaped again, this time with another inmate. The other inmate was eventually recaptured, but Hart stayed on the run for almost five years.

According to several newspaper accounts, Hart was linked to a string of home burglaries while he was on the run. Investigators reported that the homes were entered while the residents were asleep. It's also been reported that the final burglary in that series was the home of a Tulsa police officer. Not long afterward, Hart's time on the run came to an end when authorities captured him on April 6th, 1978.

Now let's fast forward to the Camp Scott investigation.

As investigators continued chasing leads, their attention eventually turned to Hart. During the search, a local man who was out squirrel hunting stumbled across a cave not far from Camp Scott.

Investigators searched the cave and recovered several items they believed could be connected to the murders, including a newspaper, a roll of masking tape, broken sunglasses, a glasses case, and two photographs investigators believed belonged to Hart.

Investigators identified the newspaper as the front and back pages of Section C from the April 17th, 1977, edition of the Tulsa World. According to investigators, it matched the same edition of newspaper found inside the flashlight recovered near the crime scene. They also concluded that the masking tape recovered from the cave was consistent with the tape used on that flashlight.

So, on April 6th of 1978, the OSBI located Hart at a residence in Adair County and took him into custody. He remained in custody through the preliminary hearings before eventually standing trial.

And nearly 50 years later, people still disagree about what happened. Some believe Hart acted alone. Others believe more than one person was involved, pointing to witness statements and theories that have circulated over the years. There have also been claims that investigators became heavily focused on Hart because he was an escaped convicted r*pist. Whether that influenced the investigation remains a matter of opinion.

What isn't a matter of opinion is this: Gene Leroy Hart was the only person ever arrested and tried for these murders, and after hearing the evidence, a jury found him not guilty.

Which leaves us with the same question people have been asking for nearly five decades.

If Gene Leroy Hart wasn't the person who murdered Denise Milner, Michele Guse, and Lori Lee Farmer...

Who was?

More to come in our next installment. Stay tuned.

Sources: Official court records and preliminary hearing transcripts; Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation records; contemporary newspaper archives including the Tulsa World, The Daily Oklahoman, and The Claremore Progress; trial testimony and court exhibits; FBI records; and historical reporting related to the Camp Scott Girl Scout Murders investigation.