Crime Immemorial

Thirty-two-year-old Dorothy Jane Scott was a quiet, deeply religious woman, a single mother who lived in Stanton, California with her aunt and her four-year-old son Shawn. Her ex-husband had moved to Missouri some time before, and to help support herself and her child, Dorothy had taken a job as a secretary for a pair of psychedelic head shops in Anaheim, one of which had previously been owned by her father. She was in the habit of leaving Shawn in the care of her parents in Anaheim while she worked, sometimes until fairly late into the evening.

For several months prior to her going missing, Dorothy had been receiving a series of frightening phone calls from a man whose voice she thought she recognized, but could not quite place. This individual was evidently obsessed with her, alternating between declaring his undying love for her and threatening her life. He was also clearly stalking her very closely, particularly when she was at work, as he often told her details of what she had been wearing or doing on any particular day.

On one occasion, this unidentified male demanded that Dorothy go outside because he had left something for her. When she followed his instructions, she found a dead rose lying on the windshield of her car. And on an even more terrifying day, the caller explicitly told Dorothy that he was planning to “cut you up into bits so no one will ever find you.” Dorothy, understandably rattled, began taking karate classes, and even looked into purchasing a handgun, though she was reluctant to keep the weapon in the house around her young son.

Despite dealing with this campaign of harassment, Dorothy was trying to live as normal a life as she could manage. On May 28th, 1980, she followed her usual routine, dropping Shawn off at his grandparents’ house, then continuing on to work. There was an employee meeting that night, and Dorothy attended along with several of her coworkers.

However, at around nine p.m., Dorothy couldn’t help but notice that another employee at the meeting, Conrad Bostron, wasn’t looking all that well. He had an inflamed red rash on his arm, and appeared pale and ill. She offered to drive him to the emergency room at nearby UC Irvine Medical Center, and Conrad agreed. Another coworker, Pam Head, told them she would come along to help out.

On the way to the hospital, Dorothy stopped at her parents’ house to check on Shawn and tell them what was going on. While there, she also took off the black scarf she had been wearing and replaced it with a red one. After that, the three of them continued on to the emergency room in Dorothy’s car.

Pam and Dorothy sat in the hospital waiting room chatting for a couple of hours while Conrad was being seen to. It turned out that the rash on Conrad’s arm had come from a black widow spider bite, and he was treated and given a prescription before being discharged at around eleven p.m.

Because Conrad was still feeling under the weather, Dorothy said that she would go out to the parking lot alone and bring the car around to the entrance to pick them up. Pam and Conrad went to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription as Dorothy made a quick trip to the ladies’ room and then stepped out into the night.

Conrad and Pam were finished with their business at the pharmacy after only a few minutes, and went to the entrance to wait for Dorothy to bring the car around. After a brief time passed and the car did not appear, the pair went outside to the sidewalk and looked out into the hospital’s parking lot.

It was then that Pam and Conrad saw Dorothy’s white 1973 station wagon barreling toward them, its headlights whiting out their vision so that they were unable to determine who was driving. They waved frantically to signal the car to stop, but it blew right past them and took a hard right turn out of the parking lot before speeding off into the darkness.

Confused, Pam and Conrad waited at the hospital for a further two hours, surmising that perhaps Dorothy had some kind of emergency with her son and had to get back to her parents’ house to tend to him. Finally, though, they realized that something was drastically wrong, and went back into the building, where Pam phoned Dorothy’s parents to ask if they had seen her. They had not. Pam then called the police to report Dorothy Scott missing.

At around four-thirty a.m., police discovered Dorothy’s vehicle ablaze in an alley about ten miles away from the medical center. No evidence of Dorothy or her alleged kidnapper was found at the scene.

A week passed with no hint of Dorothy’s fate. Then, on Wednesday, June 4th, the phone rang at the Anaheim home of Dorothy’s parents, Jacob and Vera. When Vera answered the phone, the male caller asked if she was related to Dorothy Scott. Vera confirmed this, and then the man said brusquely, “I’ve got her,” and hung up.

Similar phone calls would plague the Scotts’ nearly every Wednesday afternoon for years. Sometimes the caller would state that he had Dorothy, other times he would say that he had killed her. In like fashion, after the Orange County Register newspaper ran a story about the disappearance in their June 12th issue, the man called their offices as well. Not only did this individual have details about the case that were not then known to the public—for example, that Conrad had been treated for a spider bite and that Dorothy had stopped to change out her black scarf for a red one—but he had no qualms about telling the managing editor, “I killed Dorothy Scott. She was my love. I caught her cheating with another man. She denied having someone else. I killed her.”

Though police were certain that the caller had indeed kidnapped and possibly murdered Dorothy, a few of his statements were questionable. He claimed, for instance, that Dorothy had phoned him from the hospital on the night she vanished. Coworker Pam Head insisted that this was impossible, as Dorothy had been at her side all evening, and at no point had she excused herself to use the payphone. The only time Dorothy had been out of her sight, Pam said, was when she went into the restroom prior to walking out to the parking lot.

The caller’s further statement that Dorothy had been “cheating with another man” was also contradicted by Dorothy’s parents and coworkers, who told authorities that Dorothy had not been dating anyone seriously, and in fact rarely dated at all, as she was focused on work and caring for her son.

The mysterious phone calls, as well as the uncertainty surrounding Dorothy Scott’s whereabouts, would continue for the following four years.

Then, on August 6th, 1984, there was a tragic resolution to the mystery. A set of partially burned human bones, lying right next to a dog’s skeleton, was discovered by a construction worker just off of Santa Ana Canyon Road. Investigators surmised that the remains had been in the area for at least two years, as there had been a brush fire in 1982 which could have accounted for the scorching of the bones. A ladies’ watch and a turquoise ring were also unearthed at the site, accessories identified as belonging to Dorothy Jane Scott. Dental records soon confirmed the identification.

Though cause of death could not be determined, Dorothy’s watch had stopped at twelve-thirty a.m. on May 29th, 1980, indicating that the woman had been murdered shortly after her vehicle was seen speeding away from the UC Irvine Medical Center by her coworkers.

The main suspect in the homicide, the man who had allegedly been stalking Dorothy for some time before she vanished, had been phoning his victim’s parents, as well as the local newspaper, for years following the disappearance. He had only stopped in April of 1984, after Dorothy’s father Jacob had answered the phone, rather than her mother Vera.

However, not long after Dorothy’s body was found, the calls began again, though just as before, the suspect never stayed on the line long enough for the calls to be traced. While authorities are all but certain that the caller is most likely Dorothy’s killer, he has never been identified, and no arrests in the case have ever been made.