Journey Into The Paranormal

Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders

Three young girls were brutally murdered nearly 38 years ago in a wooded area that was once full of frolic and fun. Before that horrific day in 1977, it was a magic place for girls of the "Magic Empire" created for Girls Scouts to camp in and enjoy the wonders of the outdoors.

Camp Scott, located in Locust Grove, had been a retreat for Girl Scouts and Brownies since 1928. Its 410 wooded acres could accommodate 140 campers and 30 staff. The Cookie Trail road led to ten camping units scattered throughout the green beauty.

Two months before the murders, during a training session, a counselors' tent was ransacked and a note was left behind in a doughnut box. In the hand-written note, the writer declared that three campers would be murdered. The note was dismissed as a prank and trashed.

On the night of June 13, 1977, three girls were pulled from their Kiowa tent, bludgeoned, strangled, and sexually assaulted and left on a trail--two buried in their sleeping bags and another left, partially clothed nearby.

Lori Lee Farmer, 8, of Tulsa, Michele Guse, 9, of Broken Arrow, and Doris Denise Miller, 10, of Tulsa were discovered by camp counselor, Carla Willhite, while she was on her way to the showers at 6:00 a.m.

On the day before the murders, the girls loaded a bus at the headquarters in Tulsa.

Campers traveled 40 miles east of Tulsa to Camp Scott to begin a two-week stay.

Activities would include hiking, crafting, swimming in Snake Creek, singing around a campfire, gathering at the Red Barn for play, and many other enterprises.

Campers were allowed to choose their tent buddies. The 14 foot by 12 foot tent bases were constructed of wood and covered in canvas and contained four mattress-laden bunks. Milner, Farmer, and Guse didn't have an extra buddy, so they stored their belongings on the extra bunk.

Kiowa tent number 7 (sometimes called 8 when counted with the counselors' tent) was the most remote tent in the unit and in the camp. It couldn't be seen from the counselors' tent.

"Before and during 1977, Camp Scott had no lights in the wooden platform tents. Aside from the campers' flashlights, the only light source provided at the camp units were the kerosene lanterns which were lit at night. These lanterns hung at the unit latrines," as is described in The Camp Scott Murders written by C. S. Kelly and published in 2014.

Eerie sounds heard the night of the murders

Just past midnight, Willhite was awakened by a noise.

"It was a cross between a frog and bullhorn or something. It was low and kind of guttural. It wasn't language. It didn't seem like language. It didn't seem human. It didn't sound like any animal I've heard," said Willhite in the documentary, Someone Cry for the Children: The Girl Scout Murders, produced and directed by Mike Wilkerson, who co-authored a book with his brother Dick Wilkerson Someone Cry for the Children, that was published in 1981. Both were members of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

Willhite awoke another counselor in her tent, Dee Elder, and asked if she had heard the strange sound. She hadn't. Willhite went outside with her flashlight to survey the woods. Each time she flashed her light, the sound stopped. She walked the tents. Everything was quiet. She went back to bed.

Many saw a strange light and heard guttural sounds throughout the night. Tent 6 was flooded by light and then it disappeared. A girl was heard crying for her momma.

"Two counselors had been frightened by two men at the camp, the night before the murders. Some campers said they saw a man in army boots behind a tent;" whereas another man was seen by a latrine the night of the murders," as is reported in Kelly's book.