Remembering Ruth Masters, a 33-year-old schoolteacher, was murdered in Myles Standish State Forest in Plymouth, Massachusetts

In 1977, Ruth Masters, a 33-year-old schoolteacher, was murdered in Myles Standish State Forest in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Her body was found the day after she went missing while on a bike ride with her husband and daughter. The investigation into her death led to the arrest of Eric H. Anderson Jr. in 1998. Anderson was convicted of Masters’ murder and died in prison in 2016, according to The Patriot Ledger. 

In addition to the murder of Ruth Masters, another notable crime occurred in Myles Standish State Forest in 1986. Tracy Gilpin was found dead in the forest, and Michael Hand was arrested in connection to her murder in 2018. 

Here’s a more detailed look :

• Ruth Masters (1977):Ruth Masters, a schoolteacher from Hanson, went missing while on a bike ride with her husband and daughter in Myles Standish State Forest on May 14, 1977. Her body was discovered the following day near a bike path. After a 20-year investigation, Eric Anderson Jr., a sex offender with a history of violence against women, was charged and convicted of her murder in 1998 and 2003, respectively. Anderson died in prison in 2016. 

A former Stoughton man convicted in the brutal 1977 murder of a Hanson school teacher has died behind bars, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said Monday.

The district attorney said Eric H. Anderson, Jr., 89, died over the weekend from an illness. Anderson had been serving a life sentence for the 1977 murder of Ruth Masters in a Plymouth state park and had been working to get more DNA testing.

Anderson, a Stoughton native with a long history of violent attacks on women, was charged with Masters’ murder in 1998, more than two decades after Masters’ stabbed and mutilated body was near a path in Myles Standish State Forest where she had been riding a bicycle alone after leaving her husband and 9-year-old daughter, who were waiting for her at the end of the trail. Her husband and brother found her body the following day.

Investigators initially had little evidence to work with and the murder remained a mystery until the cold case was assigned to a State Police lieutenant who retested the evidence and linked Anderson to the murder. His conviction was based in part on the testimony of fellow inmates who said Anderson showed them a picture that he had cut in a way that was similar to the distinctive cuts on Masters’ body.

Five months after Masters’ murder, Anderson was arrested for kidnapping a 20-year-old woman hitchhiking in Kingston. Prosecutors said Anderson, who had already served a sentence for attempted rape, tied the woman up in the car and threatened her with a knife before she escaped by jumping from the moving vehicle.

Anderson was released after serving about 11 years in prison for the kidnapping, but he was arrested again in 1990 for attacking a woman in Maine and cutting off a piece of her nose. He was 71 years old and serving a 25-year sentence in a Maine state prison when he was indicted for Masters’ murder in 1998.

In all, Anderson spent more than 50 years of his life behind bars, Cruz said Monday. Masters was 33 when she was killed.