"Dorothy Jane Scott: Stalked, Abducted, and Lost to Time"

In this haunting episode of PIC True Crime Podcast, hosts Mike, Bree, and Heather dive into the chilling disappearance and murder of Dorothy Jane Scott—a case filled with ominous stalker calls, mysterious roses, and an obsessive killer who tormented her family for years. Dorothy, a devoted mother from Anaheim, California, began receiving terrifying phone calls in 1980 from a man who alternated between declarations of love and threats of violence. Despite these warnings, her life continued until one fateful night when she vanished without a trace.

For four agonizing years, Dorothy’s parents received eerie weekly phone calls from a man claiming to have killed their daughter. It wasn’t until 1984 that Dorothy’s remains were discovered—her case still unsolved to this day. Join us as we unravel the details of this tragic and frustrating cold case, explore the theories, and try to make sense of the terrifying events that led to her mysterious death. Could it have been someone close to Dorothy? Or a twisted stalker hiding in plain sight?

Tune in to discover how obsession and horror can linger, even decades after a life is tragically cut short.

Transcript

Dorothy Jane Scott (00:00)
The disappearance of Dorothy Jane Scott's done its rounds on Reddit, podcasts, YouTube, and just about every other crime discussion board out there. It's one of those mysteries that's been etched into the internet stratosphere.

Seemingly doomed to stay just that, a mystery, forever. So, let's agonize over the details of a missing mother, whose last month in the public eye was filled with blaring warning signs like creepy calls and dead roses. If only someone took the warnings more seriously, maybe Dorothy would've been able to raise her son, to see her grandchildren, to grow old and live a natural life as she should have.

But no, Dorothy's stalker would act on his obsessions eventually. And unfortunately, possessing Dorothy wasn't enough to satisfy him. For four more years, he continued to call and stalk and watch and wait.

Welcome to or back to the PIC True Crime Podcast. I'm Mike. I'm Bree And I'm Heather.

What you got for us today, Bree? I know you've been working very hard on it all week.

Honestly, one of the more perplexing mysteries. I've been digging to find, well, anything to give us an idea of what on earth happened to Dorothy Scott.

Dorothy Jane Scott (01:31)
It's like Angela Hammond's disappearance all over again, but at least there we could all agree that it was probably a crime of opportunity. Dorothy, on the other hand, this one was planned and the perpetrator was almost certainly known to everyone who knew her. But I'll let you decide what you think was most likely. This one's a brain -scratcher.

Let's get into it then.

We don't know much about Dorothy's early years, but by all accounts she lived a very unproblematic life. In 1980, Dorothy was 32 years old and lived in Anaheim, California with her aunt. She had a 4 year old son, Shawn Her son's father, Dennis Terry, lived all the way in Missouri. It's unclear how long they were together or why they split.

But we do know that they were never married and that the separation was amicable at least.

Dennis lived so far away that Dorothy was essentially raising her son alone.

Besides her aunt that she lived with, her parents Vera and Jacob Scott babysat Shawn often, and they were in constant contact with their daughter. It was rare for them to go a few days without speaking to each other.

Dorothy Jane Scott (03:08)
And according to her parents and brother, Dorothy was sweet and gentle.

She was not prone to partying and rarely went on dates, not that she had a lack of suitors. Dorothy was very pretty and naturally attracted attention, but she just wasn't interested in anything serious.

On the rare occasion that acquaintances managed to talk her into going on a blind date, it never went much further than dinner. Before Jacob Scott's retirement, he owned a series of head shops across California.

Dorothy still worked there as a secretary for the new owners even after her father stepped out of the business and she was probably the oldest employee there. Everyone knew her.

Now, I need to take a minute here to explain what on earth head shops were. I'm gonna be honest, I had to google it myself. Head shops were places where you could buy bongs, pipes, cigarette tins, unusual lighters, anything related to smoking. And not just for legal tobacco products.

It's not like they sold weed from the counter back then, it was still very much illegal, but all of the products and paraphernalia that went alongside it was sold there, including the usual legal raw tobacco and cigarettes,

Kind of like a cross between a vape shop and a hippie fever dream.

You still get those head shops here and there. I mean, it's mostly a novelty thing now. You can get most of that stuff online. The few that managed to stay in business at weird things like Ouija boards and crystals and stuff to mix up to keep it interesting. But they still have that trippy vibe going on. If you get what I mean.

It's a weird place to find a girl like Dorothy though. Everyone described her as a devout Christian who attended church regularly. But it looks like she wasn't the judgmental kind at all. All of her colleagues and few friends that she had talked about a woman who went out of her way to help where she could. She was never too busy to hop in her car and drive across the city to help someone move or to check in on friend who was down with the flu.

Just a sweet lady who preferred a quiet life with her son.

But Dorothy's mundane life started getting really unusual in early 1980. It started with strange phone calls to the office.

The man on the other side would compliment her and profess his love for Dorothy, telling her how beautiful she was and the next day he was telling her that he was going to kill her, cut her up into little pieces and that nobody would ever find her after he was done with her. And then he'd go back to saying how amazing she was.

It wasn't long before the calls moved from her office to her home. Dorothy was understandably terrified, but not just because of the threat and the back and forth between nice and nasty. She was sure that she recognized the man's voice from somewhere, but the identity just eluded her, no matter how hard she tried to place it. And it became very apparent that this wasn't just a nasty joke.

The person was definitely watching her.

Whoever was on the other line knew what Dorothy was wearing, he knew who she spoke to on any given day. When she went to the store, and it was usually on the days that she interacted with men, even during her line of work, that the phone calls got threatening. One evening, Dorothy got another phone call. Her stalker told her to go check on her car, and sure enough, on the windscreen, he'd placed a single dead rose.

After that, she signed up for self -defense classes.

I doubt it.

Besides the now almost daily phone calls and the dead rose there was no physical interaction, not even trespassing. And her car was in the driveway out in the open. The person didn't break into the house or the car, so there really wasn't any legal reason for the police to be involved. The first laws against stalking weren't created until the year 1990. This was in the 1980s. If there weren't any reports of a

break in or physical violence, there really wasn't anything that could be legally done.

That's right. It's not clear if she did seek help or not though. But there weren't any reports filed. So there was no official help from authorities. Dorothy even considered getting a gun to protect herself. She hated guns, and if it weren't for her young son, she probably would've gotten one. She was still going back and forth about getting a firearm on May the 28th.

How long were these phone calls going on for?

Depends on who's reporting on the case. Some sources say a few weeks, some say a month, but I'm leaning toward two months from the first phone call to Dorothy's disappearance. That seems to be the most agreed about timeframe.

Still, this escalated quickly. I was going to ask why she didn't move in with her parents, get her friends to accompany her to and from work, you know, that sort of thing. But if it escalates in just two months, I guess no one really had much time to decide how serious this all was, including Dorothy.

That's the general consensus. It doesn't look like anyone knew quite what to do about this situation. Dorothy was worried and so was everyone around her, but no one got the chance to really do anything about it before it got out of hand. And now back to the 28th of May, 1980.

Dorothy dropped her son off at her parents so that she could attend a staff meeting at the office with her boss and colleagues between 7 and 9 in the evening. Wow, that's kind of late for work, isn't it? It wasn't that unusual. The head shop stayed open until early evening and the meeting was held after the doors closed for the day. It looks like the meeting might have still been in progress at 9, but Dorothy left early with

two other employees. Conrad Bostron

and Pam Head.

Conrad wasn't feeling well and Dorothy and Pam insisted on taking him to the ER. He had a red mark on his arm and the women thought it looked like a spider bite. On their way to the hospital, Dorothy stopped at her parents' house to let them know she'd be picking up her son a little later than planned because, you know, it's the 80s. And they didn't have cell phones.

Yup. But for some reason, Dorothy changed out of her black scarf and into a red one. Not sure why exactly, but it's significant occurrence that needs to be mentioned for later. Now, when they arrived at the hospital, it turned out that Dorothy and Pam weren't worried about nothing after all. That red mark was indeed a spider bite, and from a black widow no less.

So, while Pam and Conrad waited for his prescription, Dorothy headed out to the parking lot so that she could drive the car closer to the entrance to save Conrad from walking a long distance. By this point, it was around 11 o 'clock at night already, but when Conrad and Pam walked out to see what Dorothy was supposed to be waiting for them, Dorothy wasn't there, nor did she seem to be anywhere in the dark in the empty street in front of the entrance.

Then out of the darkness, a car raced straight at Pam and Conrad. It came from the parking lot where Dorothy had parked her 1973 Toyota station wagon, with its beams turned up high.

It went so fast and with its headlights shining so bright that they couldn't make out who was driving, but they did recognize the car as Dorothy's. The car turned to the right, barely missing the pair, and sped away from them like it was chasing lightning. Right as it left their sights, the driver turned off the headlights and disappeared into the night. Conrad and Pam didn't quite know what to make of this strange scene.

At first, they didn't even put together that Dorothy's stalker could've had anything to do with her car speeding away so suddenly.

They just thought that she'd forgotten something and that she'd be back for them in a few minutes. The time it took for Dorothy to leave the lobby and for Pam and Conrad to see her car driving away took about five minutes. So whatever happened in the parking lot happened very quickly. mean, that is a very bizarre way for Dorothy to take off like that. I mean, I find it hard to believe that they wasn't alarmed at all. Well, it was late.

Conrad wasn't feeling all that hot, so I doubt he was thinking straight, and Pam said that Dorothy was cheerful and acting perfectly normal before.

It was getting close to midnight, everyone was tired, and even with a trip to the emergency room behind them, it wasn't like anything else unusual had occurred that day or during the evening to put them on high alert. They were just annoyed that Dorothy would leave so suddenly without giving them a heads up. When midnight came and went and Dorothy still hadn't shown up, Pam called Dorothy's parents from the reception to find out if Dorothy went to their house.

She'd have to stop there to pick up her son before returning home to her aunt's house after all. No cigar?

No cigar. Dorothy wasn't there, and that's when the annoyance turned into worry. It's one thing to leave your colleagues without a word, but Dorothy would never do that to her son.

Especially considering that she went to all the extra effort to stop at her parents just to let them know she'd be late picking him up because they were going to the ER. That's what they thought. So, while Pam called someone else to pick them up, Dorothy's parents called the police. And you probably know what response they got from the cops.

Dorothy Jane Scott (13:47)
Let me guess, I'm getting pretty good at this. Dorothy was an adult who had every right to disappear, and since there was no signs of blood or a struggle, she wasn't even considered missing.

They even went so far as to suggest that the devout Christian who never drank or went out was drinking with a guy that she'd probably return with in the morning.

The Scotts were forced to wait out the night, planning on going to the police station first thing in the morning, but that wouldn't be necessary. Police got a call four and a half hours later about a car engulfed in flames.

It was Dorothy's Toyota parked in an alleyway in Santa Monica just 10 miles away from the hospital. Dorothy was not in or around the car, but her personal belongings were inside. The vehicle had clearly been intentionally set on fire. This definitely got police's attention, and they had search parties out in the general area the moment it got light out.

Unfortunately, no one saw any other vehicles, suspicious people, or heard anything alarming at the time that the car was dumped in the alley. I mean, that's kind of not surprising. It was like, what, five in the morning? Everybody was probably fast asleep.

There were a few articles that mentioned another car at the hospital when the Toyota was driving out of there, but it's only mentioned a handful of times and the police never confirmed or followed up on this, like they did back in the 80s. The details are so vague that I'm inclined to believe it's one of those details that somehow found its way into the paper because the reporter wanted enough words to fill a page.

It's unlikely that authorities would keep information about a car quiet.

It's an identifying feature, like a description of a person. There's no way they'd have kept a possible lead that could potentially identify a kidnapper out of the press.

this information would have been spread far and wide.

Absolutely. They might not have been worried about Dorothy initially, but before the night was out they were putting in everything they had into finding her.

And honestly, it's not like her disappearance stood still for a few days or anything. They were on this in less than five hours. Dorothy Scott's disappearance was taken very seriously, much more so than a lot of the cases we've covered from the time anyway.

For the next week the searches went on. There were no CCTV cameras at the hospital. Again, this is the year 1980. Even places with large numbers of public traffic were rarely fitted with cameras back then. The Scotts waited for anything to come up, but besides the burning car, nothing was turning up. They were warned not to engage with the press. Dorothy's disappearance was like newspaper gold. A stalker,

phone calls and dead roses, then kidnapped from a public place.

Police wanted to avoid a media storm. They already had virtually no evidence and adding a bunch of tips and pranks into the mix would just muddy the waters even more. In the meantime, detectives questioned and subsequently ruled out everyone at the head shop. And since Dorothy didn't work at the front but in the back office, it was unlikely that any customers ever even saw her.

how and why the other employees were ruled out was never disclosed by police, but no one was ever officially a suspect. Dorothy's ex was ruled out immediately too since he was a few thousand miles away in Missouri, and had an alibi.

No suspects, no body no real crime scene besides a burning car, and no witnesses. For two weeks the Scotts waited. Then Vera Scott got a call to the house phone. On the other side was a man's voice and he asked her if she was related to Dorothy Scott. Vera identified herself as Dorothy's mother and the man said, well, I've got her, and put the phone down.

Police didn't think it was all that significant. Pranksters and sickos never failed to pop up in murder or kidnapping cases.

The details of the stalkers might not have been in the papers yet, but the fact that Dorothy was missing was reported. It wouldn't have been hard for somebody to get the Scotts phone number from the phone book. There was no identifying information from the caller, just an, I've got her. That's hardly enough to get excited about. But the Scotts were done waiting patiently. Despite the police's warnings, they went to the papers.

after waiting two weeks for nothing. The creepy phone call was the last straw. The article came out with all the scary details about Dorothy's disappearance and it had a $2 ,500 reward for information attached to the article.

But this just opened a whole can of worms. The stalker began calling Scotts more frequently. Are we sure that it was the same guy and not just a prank? yes. Even the police agreed that it was almost definitely the kidnapper. The calls were never more than a minute long.

Once Vero or Jacob answered the phone, he'd keep it to one or two sentences before putting the phone down.

Through these short calls, he mentioned a few details that only the abductor would know. He described the red scarf Dorothy was wearing, as well as the rest of her clothes, and spoke about the parking lot where he'd taken Dorothy from in detail.

He said that she was with another man, that she cheated on him, and because of that he had to kill her.

Mr. Stalker didn't just reserve the torture for Dorothy's parents though. He went on to phone the editor of one of the papers that printed the interview with the Scotts. Here a couple of interesting details came out. With the Scotts he always kept the calls short for fear of the police tracing the call, but with the editor he could talk for as long as he wanted without the call being traced.

He told the editor that Dorothy changed from a black scarf into a red one during the course of the evening. He knew about Conrad being sick, and that Pam went along too. And he also claimed that she called him from the emergency room a few hours before she went missing.

That's interesting. It means he was definitely following her more intensely than anyone realized. But who did she call from the hospital then?

Pam said no one.

According to Pam, the only time that she and Dorothy were ever separated was when one of them went to the bathroom, and that last time when Dorothy went out to get the car According to Pam, Dorothy never called anyone from the front desk, or the payphone as far as she was aware anyway. I mean, she could have placed the call when Pam went to the bathroom though, right? I mean, what did the phone records say?

No idea. The police took Pam's word that Dorothy made no calls and never checked any of the landlines from the hospital's records. But everyone, her parents, her colleagues, and her friends were all sure that she wasn't dating anyone. Or that she even had an eye on a guy.

So it's highly unlikely that Dorothy called a boyfriend that nobody knew about to let him know that she'd be late. There's just no way of knowing for sure if she made a call or if the guy was just delusional. I mean, we gotta know that this guy was not right in the ahead. That part is no mystery to this.

Well, murderous and delusional are not the same thing. But by the way he spoke to Dorothy and later her parents over the phone, there were definitely delusions at play. One moment he loves her and the next he threatens to kill her. With the Scotts, he'd tell them how Dorothy was cheating on him with another man and that's why he had to kill her, and then he'd talk about how they were always meant to be together. The caller chose a time when he knew Vera would be most likely home alone.

And for the first few months, she was always the one to pick up the phone. Every Wednesday afternoon, like clockwork, the man would call the Scotts landline to tell Vera that he had killed her daughter again. For four years, he never missed a Wednesday.

Sometimes he'd talk about Dorothy being dead and other times he'd just say that he had her at some undisclosed location or he'd ask if Dorothy was home, keeping the glimmer of hope that she was alive out there somewhere.

Wow, I mean that is sick and dedicated. Imagine spending four years just looking forward to torturing these poor people once a week.

This also tells me that there is some obsessive -compulsive tendencies here, not just for getting obsessed with a person, but also a need for routine and schedules.

From what I can tell from the notes, Dorothy's parents did believe that she was most likely dead, but the guy on the other end never really gave them any opportunity to get a word in to ask.

And since he dropped hints that he was holding her somewhere, they kept the phone line operational all those years, even if it meant hearing the man who probably killed their daughter taunt them every single week. The taunts quickly escalated to the stalker talking to them about their own routines and interactions they had with people, very similar to what he'd been doing to Dorothy. Only here he wasn't announcing his love for the Scotts, but he was definitely watching them too.

How extensively they were being watched is anyone's guess. There was only one occasion that a Wednesday call was interrupted during the four years. Way back when the stalker just started calling the Scotts house and they weren't sure if it was a prank or not, Jacob made sure that he was home during the time that the calls usually came in. But when he answered the phone and the caller realized it wasn't Vera, he hung up and didn't call again for nearly a month.

But after that, he went back to calling every Wednesday and didn't seem to care anymore if it was Jacob or Vera who answered. Vera, Jacob, and the newspaper editor all said that the guy was definitely masking his voice, making it intentionally deeper than it was. Like he was afraid that they'd recognize him by sound.

They tried tracing the calls on and off for those four years and recorded every call, hoping that one day the stalker would feel chatty enough to stay on the line just long enough to get a location on him. But just like his tight calling schedule, the call itself was always timed to the second.

For the next four years, the Scotts called psychics, hoping to find Dorothy, or at least to find her remains. Even the police were desperate enough to call in a psychic themselves. After all this time, they still only had a burning car and nothing else to go on. They were desperate, and every Wednesday, the phone would ring at the Scotts' house without fail.

Dad, will you walk us through the discovery in 84?

Sure. On the 6th of August, 1984, a construction worker found something alongside Santa Ana Canyon Road, some 12 miles away from the hospital where Dorothy was abducted. While digging a trench to lay down some pipes, he found several bones while clearing out a patch of bush next to the road.

The smaller bones looked like it belonged to a dog or a similar animal, but there was no mistake in the human skull, complete with fillings in the teeth.

Reporting on this differs

On one hand, it's been reported that the foreman was digging a trench and just happened to dig where Dorothy was buried alongside a dog. That the two were buried together in the same grave. The other side of the reports suggest that the bones were scattered around a spot in the woods where that the workmen were clearing out. I lean more toward the bones being scattered around a clearing.

The odds of a man just happening to dig a trench over the grave is astronomical. And not all of Dorothy's skeleton was found. That would make sense if she were left out in the open where scavenging would have spread her remains far and wide.

But it does seem that the canine remains and Dorothy's bones date around to the same time at least.

Altogether they found an arm, two femurs, the skull and pelvis. Also among the remains police found a turquoise ring and a watch that stopped at 1230 a on the 29th of May 1980.

That's exactly an hour and a half after she was abducted from the hospital parking lot. The ring and watch were both identified by Vera Scott and dental records were later used to confirm that the remains belonged to Dorothy Scott.

It was pure dumb luck that the gravesite would later coincide with a pipeline route.

If it weren't for a bit of fortune, Dorothy might not have ever been found. And as for a cause of death, after four years in the ground and only partial remains to work with, that could not be determined.

But the bones did show signs of being set on fire at one point. Where the rest of the body is, nobody knows.

And we don't know if the canine shows similar scorching.

It's possible that the scorching came from a forest fire that swept through the area two years prior. Either way, the police have handled the canine remains as if it's related to Dorothy's murder from the start, but they've never come out to say why. It's the friggin woods. There are plenty of animal bones all over the place. So why were these so special? If the police know anything, they aren't talking.

I don't blame them. Her cause of death is probably the only piece of evidence they have. If someone's going to confess to anything, this might be the only way to prove it.

When the body was found, Vera and Jacob got one last phone call. The killer simply asked, is Dorothy there? And hung up the phone. He never called them again after that day. When Jacob Scott died on what would have been Dorothy's 43rd birthday, Vera continued to stand vigil at the phone. She kept her home number the same until her dying day, hoping that the killer would call to make a confession.

or if he wanted to start up again, the technology to trace him had gotten better. But he never did call back. Vera and Jacob died without ever knowing what happened to their daughter.

And now we get into the theories. Shawn Scott, Dorothy's son, had his own theories. Shawn, now a grown man, did an interview a few years back and there he talked about the only two suspects that the police ever officially looked into. First was Mike Butler, who was a mechanic that worked right across the street from the head shop.

You just had to take one look at the guy's picture to know that he was the kind of guy who'd frequent a head shop. Real hippie type. Butler apparently had some involvement with a cult. California back in the 70s and 80s was crawling with cults running around the woods. Honestly, Butler wasn't that unusual for the time. But it's interesting to note that Butler's sister happened to work at the same head shop where Dorothy was a secretary. The problem with this theory is that

Despite being a little odd and probably running around with some tree church, Butler really had no red flags or previous record that would indicate that he was violent or unstable. He had a military background, went to college, and held a study job. He just happened to prefer the alternative lifestyle later in life. But he probably knew Dorothy at least from a distance.

And this might explain why she thought that she recognized the voice from somewhere. Butler's involvement with a cult of some kind might also tie the canine bones to the case. There were theories in the murder that had some ritual aspect to it and that the dog was intentionally placed there for this reason. Mike Butler died in 2014 and outside of these circumstantial reasons, there was never anything concrete to suggest that he was the killer.

Butler is a reach in my opinion. He was a weirdo that happened to be in the vicinity. I feel like someone who was this close for this long would have slipped up somewhere.

His behavior? Was he seen snooping around when he should have been? I don't know. I need more reasons than just being a hippie before I jump to conclusions. I agree, Butler is a weak suspect, but if there was anything concrete, I don't think we would have known about it. Police never really had much and if they did manage to get the smallest detail, I think they would have kept it quiet for as long as they possibly could.

The second lead that police had was related to the disappearance of Patricia Jean Schneider in 1982 in the Riverside County, California. Two years after Dorothy's disappearance, Patricia finished her shift as a cocktail waitress and she was driving home when her car broke down.

She called a relative from a nearby circle K market to come and help her, but she and her caller disappeared shortly after she placed that call. The car was later found on fire in a field, but Patricia was not there. Except for the burning vehicles, there are no other similarities between the cases. Patricia did not report that anyone was calling or following her.

And by all accounts, the disappearance of Patricia seems to be an opportunistic crime, whereas Dorothy's was very obviously planned. What do you think? Nah, I mean, this one doesn't feel right either. The only similarity they have is the burning car. Then there's third on the list, is when the internet sleuths unearthed the Golden State Killer living in California during his time. But he's another unlikely suspect.

The Golden State Killer did case out his victims, but his motives for doing so had nothing to do with obsession.

His stalkings were purely to get the lay of the land, to find out how many people were in the house, and to get information to commit his crimes with as much preparation as possible.

He wasn't obsessed with his victims on a level that was personal. Only once did he call a victim after assaulting them.

He called a woman years after the attack only to tell her that he was still out there and that he never called again. His MO doesn't match quite as well. The Golden State Killer did not stalk for obsession, never proclaimed his love, and he certainly did not hone in on a victim and their family for four years on end.

Dorothy's case doesn't scream serial killer at all. Serial killers take a victim out and move on to the next. Sometimes they get a power trip out of taunting the families like BTK did. But not to this extent. Four years of consistent calls after a crime isn't some afterthought. This is obsession. It's on a whole different level.

Stalkers and serial killers are not the same. They don't have the same motives. Dorothy was stalked and the obsession with her didn't stop when she died.

Then there's the last three options. First, the stalker and the killer were two separate people. Dorothy was being followed, but the night of her disappearance, she was attacked by an opportunistic killer, and after her death, the stalker began calling the parents because he couldn't let the obsession go. Purely coincidental that she'd be the victim of a stalker and a killer.

No way, if those kinds of coincidences ever happened there'd be more lottery winners in the world. Besides, only the killer would have known about the scarf change that caller and killer had to be the same person.

I think that theory is completely out.

I thought it was silly too. Second is that Dorothy had a boyfriend or an ex -boyfriend that no one knew about and that she did call him up at the hospital while Pam was in the bathroom.

But why keep quiet about a boyfriend? Dorothy was willing to talk about the stalker and the fact that she was thinking about getting a gun. I don't get the idea that she was secretive.

A homebody maybe, but no one mentioned that she was prone to hiding details of her life. And when would she have had the time to be alone with a guy? Church, work, and her house where her aunt lived with her? All of the places she frequented always had someone else with her. Someone would have noticed if she was seeing someone. It's not like she'd have a face judgment for dating anyone either.

This was the 80s, not the 1800s. She was 32 years old. Her father owned a head shop for Pete's sake and she had a child out of wedlock. I doubt anyone around her would have had a problem if Dorothy wanted to date anyone else seriously.

The only conservative one in Dorothy's life was, well, Dorothy.

Or the last theory. It was someone at work. And this is where I'm leaning towards.

But the police cleared them all almost immediately. Well, it's not like the cops do a great job every time. If they did, we wouldn't have a podcast where most of the cases are unsolved, now would we?

The head shops were part of a chain called Swinger's Psych Shop. Some reports say it was two shops in California, others say more. Either way, that brings up the employee count to a significant amount. Probably doesn't at the least. If it were more than two, we begin to look at 20 or more people? None of the articles, podcasts, police notes, nothing mentions how many people were at that meeting.

I'm starting to see how you're thinking.

That meeting won't have gone on past midnight. What if Dorothy did place a call after all? A quick dial in while Pam's in the bathroom to let everyone know that Conrad's all right and that she and Pam would make sure that he got home okay.

The people at the office probably would have wanted to know. That's what I would have done.

So the stalker's the one that took the call, or he's close enough to hear what hospital they're at.

And when the meeting wraps up, he goes to the parking lot and waits. He probably wanted to do this for a while, but Dorothy's never unattended, not at home or at work. It bothered me that this was so random. It was out of her routine.

I'd put it on the stalker if she were out for her usual evening jog or a Sunday service with her son, but this was out of her schedule. Random. He was probably waiting for random, and if he were an employee, he'd be one of the few to be aware of the spider bite, location, and scarf change.

And another thing, the intentional voice change.

Jacob Scott was no longer an owner of Swinger's Psyche shop but he still had some sort of involvement with the place. It's not clear how much, but he kept in touch with people there, and by extension his wife probably too.

I think the killer was afraid that they'd recognize his voice because they knew him. Even Dorothy said that something about the sound was familiar, she just couldn't put her finger on it.

But how did the guy get there? He had to have taken a car, but there's no mention of one on the lot. Was there more than one person?

There are some people who believe that it had to have been teen, but I don't buy that theory. Stalkers don't normally share their obsessions with a buddy and the caller seems to have stayed the same person for four whole years. Remember, no one actually went looking for anything until 5 that morning when her burning car was found. 5 hours to drive just 12 miles, kill her in the woods, drive back

and get his call, that's plenty of time to make it all happen.

So he overpowers her in a lot. mean, Dorothy was a petite woman. It wouldn't have been that hard. He was probably the one to drive out of there like a bat out of hell, even under duress. I don't think Dorothy would have nearly hit Pam and Conrad or think to switch off the headlights.

So we can only assume that she was tied up in the trunk or in some way incapacitated.

A coworker would explain everything. Otherwise, this person would have had to follow her day and night so that he could eventually catch her unattended. And that's just not feasible.

It explains everything but the dog. What about the dog? Police were sure that the canine bones and Dorothy's remains were connected somehow. They must have had a reason to think so. I mean, the guy did have four years to revisit the scene.

If he were obsessed with Dorothy as it appears to have been, I wouldn't be surprised if he did. Maybe he lost a pet and dumped it there when it died. The grave was really close to the road though. It's more likely that someone just stopped next to the road and dumped their deceased family pet in the woods without even knowing that there was a body strewn across the forest floor. Unless there's some kind of detail that the police know that we don't.

I'm not going to put too much thought onto the dog.

What about the scorching on the bones?

In the four years of her laying there, a small fire coming by is a huge possibility. California is known for its wildfires. Most of them are small and burn out before anyone even realizes. There was a fire reported in the general vicinity two years before her body was discovered. Maybe he did burn her like he did the car Whatever was left would still have been scavenged by animals.

The manner of death and disposal of the body is a mystery and will probably always be. The culprit is the real question mark. I think the police missed something with the employees of the head shop or the surrounding area.

I mean, what a shame though. They had four years. This guy was just dangling his identity in front of them for all of that time. Can you imagine the frustration, the anger and the helplessness waiting for that call to come in every damn Wednesday? Like a ghost from the past, always there to haunt and taunt you.

It's been more than 40 years and no one's any closer to figuring out who killed Dorothy Scott. And sadly, the cold case title is likely to stay that way forever. We only have our own suspicions to mull over because whatever the police were thinking, we've never been let in on it.

Or maybe they had just as little information as we did and were all as much in the dark as the police, the Scotts, and Dorothy's son. And those are the biggest victims here. The parents who were forced to listen to their daughter's killer taunting them once a week for years. A boy who grew up without a mother. And a family who probably never have any answers to give them a sense of closure. All

everyone has are a few shards of charred bones and the distant sound of a telephone ringing. A stalker whose dark obsessions are the reason that a boy had to grow up without a mother. I'm afraid that Dorothy's murder leaves us with only the sour realization that anyone can be a killer, and everyone is a potential victim. We'll see you again next week with another case that's bound to keep you up at night.

Thanks for joining me in my PICs, remember to subscribe and follow so you never miss an episode, and we will see you next time with more True Crime.