Do you know who murdered Mary?
In the late summer of 1991, a retired nurse named Mary Ruth Alexander-Motte, a 48-year-old female, was brutally murdered in her Tulsa, Oklahoma home where she had lived for a quarter of a century. On September 4th, she was discovered on the floor of her residence at 5119 N. Frankfort. The scene told a grim story of a violent struggle.
Investigators found that she had been beaten about the head and had sustained five stab wounds. A bloody pillowcase had been placed over her head. Despite the vicious physical assault, the ultimate cause of her death was determined to be smoke inhalation. A fire had been intentionally set in the home after the attack. There were no signs of forced entry, as the back door was found unlocked.
The investigation into her death revealed signs of a struggle in three separate rooms of her house. Curiously, robbery was ruled out as a motive, as nothing appeared to have been stolen from her home. Those who knew her in the neighborhood expressed shock and disbelief, stating that they couldn't think of anyone who would want to harm her. Mary was a graduate of Dunbar High School in 1961 and later graduated from Oklahoma State University Tech in Okmulgee in 1986. She was a mother to two children.
To this day, the murder of Mary Ruth Alexander-Motte remains unsolved. No arrests have ever been made, and there have been no publicly named suspects in her case. The circumstances surrounding her death, particularly the lack of a clear motive and the personal nature of the crime, have left her family and the community with unanswered questions for decades. The Tulsa Police Department continues to seek any information that might lead to a breakthrough in this cold case.
