Terry Jo Duperrault – Duperrault Family Massacre

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Ketch - similar to ship that Terry Jo Duperault and her family were on

Terry Jo Duperrault and her family would set sail for a week-long excursion in the Bahamas in November 1961. Only two would come back alive.  Listen to the harrowing tale of the Duperrault Family Massacre.

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November 13, 1961

In November 1961, the oil tanker, Golf Lion, was sailing the Northwest Providence Channel in the Bahamas. They came upon a man and a small child floating in a dinghy. The man said he was Julian Harvey, captain of the sailing ketch the Bluebell. The little girl, who was dead, was Terry Jo Duperrault.

Captain Harvey and the child were brought aboard. The Golf Lion immediately set a course for the nearest Coast Guard station. There Captain Harvey told investigators his harrowing tale.

Julian Harvey’s story was that he was hired by Arthur Duperrault to captain the Bluebell out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida for a week-long excursion to the Bahamas. He was also taking his new wife, Mary Dene along with him as the ships hostess/cook. The Duperraults were from Green Bay, Wisconsin and included:

  • Arthur Duperault – an opthamologist
  • Jean
  • Brian – age 14
  • Terry Jo – age 11
  • Rene – age 7

According to Harvey as they were headed back to Florida on the night of Sunday, November 12th they were hit with a violent sea squall. It caused the ship’s mast to plunge straight through the hull of the boat. This in turn caused the engine and gas lines to rupture setting the boat on fire. All the members of the Duperrault family along with Mary Dene were caught aboard the burning vessel or they had jumped into the ocean and drowned since he did not see any survivors.

Harvey claims he tried to put out the fire with the two fire extinguishers on board, Unfortunately, he was unable to and the fire soon spread out of control. He jumped into the sea hoping the others had as well. When he dragged Terry Jo Duperrault on board his lifeboat she was already dead from drowning.

The Duperraults

Arthur Duperrault loved sailing because of his time in the Navy. He would sail around the lakes in the Green Bay area, but dreamed of taking his family on an around-the-world sailing adventure. He planned a trip to the Bahamas as a trial run for the family. Upon arrival in Fort Lauderdale, he chartered the sailing ketch the Bluebell. A Ketch is a two-masted sailboat where one mast, usually 40 feet or higher is bigger than the other mast.

Arthur also hired Julian Harvey to be the captain of the Bluebell. He would also serve as a tour guide for the family on their Bahamas adventure beginning on November 8, 1961. The family would end up spending the week sailing around the Bahamas, snorkeling, and spearfishing before tragedy struck.

Who is Julian Harvey

Julian Harvey was 44 when hired to captain the Bluebell. He was born in Scarsdale, New York and attended Purdue University. Mary Dene was his 6th wife and they had recently gotten married in July 1961 (4 months). Harvey was a decorated WWII and Korean Wars Air Force pilot. He flew 29 combat missions in WWII and 114 fighter missions during the Korean War. He would be awarded the Air Medal for distinguished service and First Oak Leaf Cluster. Harvey rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He also had a reputation for meeting women, marrying said women and then dumping them.

In 1949, Harvey was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. One rainy night he was driving his wife, Joan (23), and her mother, Mrs. William Boylan (59) back from the movies. Harvey hydroplaned on wet roads and ended up going off a bridge, rolling his car into Tom’s Bayou below. A bayou is a marshy outlet of a lake or a river and comes from the Choctaw Indian’s word bayuk. The car sank, but not before Harvey was able to get out. His wife and mother-in-law were not so lucky as both drowned.

Harvey claimed after the accident that he was able to escape the falling car in mid-air before it crashed into the waters below. He was treated for shock and exposure. Bystanders at the scene reported that while they were trying to help Joan and her mother, Harvey did not. He did, however, cash in his wife’s life insurance policy. There were no charges filed against Julian Harvey for the accident.

Duperrault Coast Guard Investigation

US Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw
US Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw

Right away the Coast Guard investigators felt that something didn’t sit right with Julian Harvey’s story. Masts breaking and plunging straight through a boat were unlikely. Investigators would come to find out that the Bluebell’s owner recently had it inspected and there were no issues. In addition, when sea squalls occur they do not cause a mast to plunge straight down. They are more likely to cause it to tilt.

Harvey told the investigators that he had Arthur Duperrault take over steering the Bluebell while he tried to cut down the rigging, but only after he was able to find the cable cutters. He said it was then the fire had broken out and quickly spread through the cockpit area of the sailing boat. The cockpit is the area of the boat where all the controls are located, usually an open well on the deck.

Harvey told the investigators the direction he told Dr. Duperrault to go, which was to sail directly into the wind. This would only fan the flames and didn’t make sense to them. Investigators felt that an experienced sailor would know not to do that, which they felt Dr. Duperrault was due to his Navy experience.

More Holes in His Story?

The other issue with Harvey’s story was that there was a lighthouse located on a nearby island that had failed to see any type of sea squall during the evening in question. Nor had they seen any fires at sea as it was a dark clear night. Also, why wouldn’t Harvey direct the lifeboat to the nearest island especially after pulling Terry Jo Duperrault aboard?

But one of the biggest questions for investigators was why Harvey didn’t use the emergency flares that were in the emergency kit of the dinghy? Just as Julian Harvey was finishing up his interview, one of the Coast Guard captains rushed into the room and announced that a survivor from the Bluebell had been rescued…….

Lone Survivor

After 3 ½ days at sea, Terry Jo Duperrault was found and rescued by the Greek freighter ship, Captain Theo. Terry Jo was close to death, severely dehydrated, and badly burned. She was found on a small cork float that was barely holding together. Rescuers were amazed that she had survived on her own for that long. She had not been eaten by sea predators nor had she fallen off into the water and drowned.

You can find a picture of the very moment Terry Jo came alongside Captain Theo as one of the crew had a camera. This picture would be in the December 1, 1961 edition of Life Magazine.

Terry Jo’s Account

She reported that on the evening of November 13th, Mary Dene had cooked a dinner of chicken cacciatore and salad for the family. Around 9 pm Terry Jo went below deck to the cabin she shared with her sister, Rene to go to bed. She left the rest of her family on deck in the cockpit. At one point later that night Terry Jo was awoken by her brother screaming “Help Daddy, Help!” She heard running and stomping coming from up on deck and then silence.

After about 5 minutes Terry Jo left her cabin only to come upon her mother and brother. They were lying in a pool of blood in the main cabin area that housed the kitchen and dining room. Terry Jo Duperrault climbed the stairs and stuck her head out of the hatch when she saw more blood on the starboard side of the boat. Starboard is the right-handed side of a vessel facing forward. She continued to climb up onto the deck when Captain Harvey suddenly appeared shoving her back down the hatch and yelling at her to “get back down there.” Terry Jo went back to her cabin and climbed into her bunk.

Soon after she heard what sounded like sloshing and then smelled oily water that had begun to seep into her cabin. Harvey then appeared at her door as the water was reaching her mattress. He had a rifle in his hands and said nothing when he suddenly turned and climbed the stairs. Soon after he left, Terry Jo Duperrault again left her cabin as the water was steadily rising.

Is the Ship Sinking?

As she climbs back onto the deck, she is able to see from one of the lights attached to a mast that the boat’s dinghy and rubber raft are floating on the port-side of the boat. Terry Jo called out to Captain Harvey asking “is the ship sinking?” She got a reply of “yes” coming from behind her. Captain Harvey handed Terry Jo the line attached to the dinghy to hold, but she let it slip through her hands and it went into the water. Harvey immediately jumped into the water leaving Terry Jo on board to go after the dinghy and after that, he disappeared into the night.

As the ship continues to sink, Terry Jo remembers a life float that was lashed to the main cabin wall. She gets to the cork float and unties it just as the boat sank beneath her feet. At this point, Terry Jo pushes the float into the open waters of the ocean only for one of the lines of the float to get caught on something on the sinking vessel. Terry Jo pulls on the line trying to free herself as she and the float are being pulled down into the water. She is able to free the line and both she and the float re-emerge to the surface only to be left alone with no food or water and the only protection she has from the elements is a thin white blouse and a pink pair of pants.

The Next Morning

The next morning after freezing through the night the temperatures rise to 85 degrees and the sun begins to scorch her skin. If that wasn’t bad enough, the cork float is starting to break down so much so that her legs and feet were in the water. On Tuesday, Terry Jo saw a red plane circling overhead.  She had taken off her blouse and waved it frantically trying to get its attention. By this time, Terry Jo Duperrault had floated into the Northwest Providence Channel which drifts north with the Gulf Stream then east out into the Atlantic Ocean towards the British Isles.

What made it difficult for anyone to see Terry Jo was she had blonde hair and fair skin and with the cork float being white she blended in with the whitecaps of the ocean. The red plane did not see her.

On Tuesday afternoon, Terry Jo noticed shadowy figures circling her raft and they would turn out to be a group of porpoises. These porpoises would remain with her for hours. After the sunset on Tuesday, this brought some relief to Terry Jo’s burnt skin, but it also leads to freezing temperatures. By Wednesday Terry Jo was experiencing severe pain due to the extreme sun exposure. All of her muscles ache, her eyes were dried out and her lips were swollen and her skin was severely burnt. While experiencing all these physical ailments she had to constantly balance herself on the float’s edge as the rope webbing had given way.

Rescued

The next day around mid-day, Terry Jo was barely conscious.  At one point, she opens her eyes enough to see a ship and people waving at her. Soon after that, she slipped into unconsciousness. Terry Jo was spotted by Nicolaos Spachidakes, the 2nd officer of Captain Theo. At first, he thought she was just one of the numerous whitecaps on the ocean surface, but as he continued to focus he knew what he was seeing was not a whitecap and notified the captain to set course for this anomaly.

The crew would be shocked to discover the small anomaly was actually a blonde haired, blue-eyed, 11-year-old girl. Terry Jo was rescued by Captain Theo and was helicoptered to a Miami hospital where she would spend 11 days. Thankfully, she had experienced no permanent injuries.

Aftermath

Terry Jo was questioned by Coast Guard Investigators a week after arriving at the Miami hospital where she gave her account of what happened to herself and her family. This would become the official account and one she would not repeat for 50 years. The day after Julian Harvey was told of a survivor being rescued from the Bluebell he checked into the Sandman Hotel under an assumed name. When housekeeping entered the room the next day they noticed blood on the bedsheets and could not get the bathroom door open.

Hotel staff and soon the police would discover the body of Julian Harvey dead from an apparent suicide. Harvey had used a double-edged razor blade to slit his thigh, ankles, and throat. Harvey would leave behind a note for his close friend, James Boozer, with instructions for the care of his son, Lance, who was 13 at the time. He also asked to be buried at sea.

James Boozer would come to tell investigators the story Julian told him shortly after his rescue and prior to Terry Jo’s rescue. He claimed that Harvey had panicked and jumped overboard leaving his wife and the entire Duperrault family to go down with the Bluebell during the violent storm. At some point he had pulled the body of who he thought at the time was Terry Jo into the lifeboat with him, but she had drowned prior to his rescue.

Of course, this version was not what Harvey told the investigators nor did it match Terry Jo’s version. Julian Harvey was buried at sea at 3:17 pm on November 20, 1961.

Motive

His motive may have been a large life insurance policy on Mary Dene for $20,000 with a double indemnity clause. Other mysteries besides the death of his wife and mother-in-law were two large insurance settlements for a sunken yacht and a powerboat.

One theory as to what occurred on the Bluebell that lead to the massacre was that Harvey had been in the act of killing his wife for the insurance money, perhaps making it looked like she drowned when Arthur Duperrault came upon him and perhaps tried to stop him.  Harvey killed Arthur then his wife and son, leaving the younger two girls to drown. He never thought Terry Jo would survive.

Terry Jo, who changed her name to Tera at age 12, would be reunited with the captain of Captain Theo on the Oprah Winfrey Show in September 1988. She would go on to co-author the book:  Alone: Orphaned On the Ocean with psychologist and survival expert, Richard Logan in May 2010. Tera Duperrault Fassbender gave an interview to 48 hours mystery in June 2010. She talks about it taking her almost 50 years before she felt ready to tell her story and her purpose in sharing her story was to help other survivors

Tera’s Life After Her Rescue

What is amazing about Tera’s life after her rescue is that she wanted to live and work close to the water. She became a Water Management Specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and went onto marry Ron Fassbender and have three children. She talks about her abandonment at the hands of Julian Harvey and thinking about the ocean swallowing her up. What actually happened was she developed a close bond with the ocean.

Quotes from Tera, “I went on to protect the water that had protected me as a little girl.”

“Water is life and it is soothing for me to be on the beach.  I find I can think clearly, relax and feel closer to my lost family.”

A positive outcome, besides Tera’s rescue, was that the Coast Guard changed boating regulations. That is why we now have bright international orange on all life rafts. This was recommended in 1962 the year after Tera’s rescue.

I’ll end with the afterword of Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean.

“What I want to stress to all who read this book is to never give up, always have hope, and try to look on the bright side of things.  Be positive, be trusting, and try to go with the flow; have compassion, give of yourself to those in need, and be loving and kind. I believe that what you give comes back to you.”

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