Kristin Chenoweth says fate saved her from being killed in grisly mass murder
(Screen capture via YouTube, ABC News)
Kristin Chenoweth has revealed her connection to the 1977 Oklahoma Girl Scout murders.
In 1977, three young Girl Scouts, aged between eight and 10, were found raped and murdered on their first night away at camp.
The case remains unsolved, and has haunted the US for 45 years.
Now, actor Kristin Chenoweth has opened up about how she was almost one of the victims.
“I should have been on that trip, but I had gotten sick. My mom said, ‘You can’t go,’” she explains in the trailer for the four part docu-series, Keeper of the Ashes: The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders.
“It has stuck with me my whole life. I could have been one of them.”
The case was previously closed when Gene Leroy Hart, a jail escapee with a documented history of violence, was arrested. However, Hart was acquitted two years later after a jury unanimously found him not guilty – though DNA evidence later “strongly suggested” his involvement.
The series will follow Kristin Chenoweth as she returns to Oklahoma to “to find answers once and for all”.
“This is a story I wish I never had to tell,” Chenoweth says. “It haunts me every day, but this story needs to be told.”
Investigators are currently returning to the case, using modern technology which was unavailable at the time of the murders to examine evidence in an attempt to answer questions which continue to swirl around the tragedy.
The series also features interviews with a camp counsellor, a sheriff who reopened the case, and the acquitted suspect’s legal counsel. It is set to premiere on 24 May on Hulu.
Chenoweth, now 53, has drawn on her experiences of growing up in Oklahoma previously in her work, including in her role in Apple TV’s musical comedy series Schmigadoon!
The series is set in the 1940s, and her character leads a group, “Mothers Against the Future”, using her social capital in her small town to push back against social change, from LGBTQ+ rights to premarital sex.
“I’ve lived it,” Chenoweth previously told PinkNews of the storyline.
“I am a Christian, I also am an LGBTQIA [ally]. To me, my message – not just in musical theatre or film or whatever – is that God made us all how he made us, and he loves us.”
“I don’t want to be judged for not accepting people for where they are, who they are, in their life.”
