WEBVTT
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Dorothy Scott had been missing for four years when police
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finally identified her remains. While her parents were arranging the funeral,
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the telephone rang at home. Her brother answered. A man
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asked one question. Is Dorothy home? Her father believed the
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voice had been calling since before she vanished, and nobody
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knew his name.
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What you are about to hear is believed to be real.
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Based on witness accounts, testimonies, and public record, this is
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Terrifying and True.
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The car is coming toward them. Ham Head and Conrad
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Bostron have been waiting outside the hospital for Dorothy Scott.
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She went to get her station wagon so Conrad, who
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has just been treated in the emergency room, won't have
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to walk to it. It should be the last small
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errand of a long evening. Bring the car around, pick
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up her co-workers, go home. Now they can see The headlights.
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According to the account Pam gave afterward, the lights were
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so bright that she can't make out the person behind
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the wheel. She and Conrad wave. The station wagon keeps coming,
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passes them, and turns out of the parking lot. It
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doesn't stop. They've seen Dorothy's car, but they've not established anything.
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Who is driving it? And the woman who went outside
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to collect it has not come back. This is the
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UCI Medical Center in Orange, California, near midnight on the
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night of May 28th into May 29th, 1980. Dorothy is 32.
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Her young son is with his grandparents. She came here
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to help someone else. Somewhere between the hospital and the
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departing car, an ordinary favor has become a missing person case.
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There is another part of Dorothy's life that makes this
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moment more disturbing. Before tonight, an unidentified man has been
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calling her. According to her mother, he's made threats against
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her life. What happened when Dorothy walked out? to get
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her car, and how much did the man on the
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telephone really know? We're telling that story tonight. Dorothy Jane
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Scott lived in Stanton, in Orange County, with her aunt
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and her four-year-old son. Her parents, Jacob and Vera, lived
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in nearby Anaheim and helped care for him while she worked.
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Those places can blur together in accounts of her disappearance,
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but they belong to different parts of her life. Stanton
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was home. Anaheim was where she worked and where her
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parents could look after her son. The hospital in Orange
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would enter the story because a coworker, who needed medical attention.
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Dorothy worked as a secretary for two jointly-owned shops in Anaheim.
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One sold the sort of psychedelic merchandise associated with the era. Beads, lamps, gifts.
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The other was a head shop. Her job placed her
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in the working life behind those storefronts, handling the office
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side of the business's People who knew Dorothy described a
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woman who preferred being at home. Her Christian faith was
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part of her life. So was her closeness to her family,
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whose recollections would eventually provide much of what the public
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would learn about her. The more revealing picture comes from
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the arrangements that kept her days moving. A job, a child,
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an aunt sharing a home. Grandparents who could help when
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work kept her out. She was part of other people's routines,
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and other people were part of hers. Then someone began
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inserting himself into that life without giving her a name.
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In the months before her disappearance, Dorothy received disturbing telephone
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calls at work. The man on the line alternated between
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declarations of affection, and threats. Vera later said her daughter
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didn't know who he was. He could address Dorothy personally
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while keeping his own identity out of reach. His anonymity
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left her without a person to connect to the words.
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The telephone gave him access to a place where she worked,
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but it gave her no view. of the person using it.
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A call could end without an explanation, and another could
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begin on his terms. The accounts preserve what she reported hearing,
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but not the face of the speaker. The caller reportedly
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referred to things Dorothy had done, presenting himself as someone
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who could observe her movements. Whether every claim was accurate
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is harder to reconstruct. What he was asking her to
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believe was clear. He could reach her on the telephone
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because he already knew where she was. One incident moved
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the threat beyond the receiver. Vera later recounted that the
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man told Dorothy to go outside because he had something
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for her. On the windshield of Dorothy's car, she found
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a single, Dead rose. A telephone call could arrive from
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somewhere unseen, but the rose occupied a place where she
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had to return to. Someone had apparently approached the vehicle,
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left something on it, and gone away. In her mother's account,
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the call and the object were connected. The windshield made
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the gesture difficult to overlook. The caller had directed Dorothy
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towards something waiting in her physical world, on an object
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that had belonged to her. She did not have to
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accept his account of watching her all day to find
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that disturbing. There was something on the car that her
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mother said had been announced by the voice. His language
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also became violent. Vera described a threat that Dorothy would
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be taken when she was alone and made impossible to find.
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A person she could not name was speaking about an
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encounter she could not know how to avoid. These were
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not invitations she was obligated to answer. Whatever affection the
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man claimed, he was describing harm. Dorothy considered buying a handgun.
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An early newspaper account says she decided against it because
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she was worried about her young son, who might accidentally
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hurt himself with the weapon. She had to think about
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the danger outside her home and the safety of the
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child inside it. She also began taking karate lessons shortly
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before she disappeared. Her family described someone taking precautions while
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continuing to work and care for her child. The calls
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had become a problem she was trying to act on,
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even though identifying the caller remained out of reach. The
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year matters too. In California, they would not enact the
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country's first specific anti-stalking law until 1990, a decade later.
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after Dorothy's disappearance. The legal response to a continuing pattern
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of pursuit was still developing. The behavior itself was older
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than the specific law. Following someone, making unwanted calls and
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threatening them could form a continuing pattern, even when each
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incident arrived separately. In Dorothy's account, the same channel carried
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both supposed affection and the threat of violence the declarations
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did not cancel one another out they made the next
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contact upsettingly unpredictable what we can follow is the behavior
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described by her family unwanted contact claims of observation a
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threatening object and language about getting her alone the pattern
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gave the telephone calls a significance beyond any single conversation
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on the evening of may 28th dorothy attended a meeting
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at work her son was being looked after by her parents.
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Among the other employees were the aforementioned Pam Head and
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Conrad Bostron. During the meeting, Conrad became unwell. Accounts describe
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a red mark or streak on his arm. Dorothy and
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Pam decided to take him to the emergency room at
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UCI Medical Center. The decision brought Dorothy into the story
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through something she did for another person. Someone needed help
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She had a car and could take him. Pam would
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come along. Before going to the hospital, Dorothy stopped at
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her parents' house to check on her son and let
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them know what was going on. She also changed the
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scarf she was wearing. That small alteration, easily passed over
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in an ordinary account of an evening, would later attract
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investigators' attention drastically. For now, There were three co-workers traveling
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to a hospital because one of them was ill. The
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destination had been added to Dorothy's evening by an unexpected problem.
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The man who had been calling her had spoken about
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finding her alone. At this point in the night, she
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was still with friends. At the hospital, Conrad was treated
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for what reports identified as a black widow spider bite.
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Dorothy and Pam waited while medical staff looked after him.
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Contemporary reporting describes the two women watching television and reading magazines.
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Nothing about the scene suggested that this ordinary wait would
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become the final stretch of time in which a friend
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could account for Dorothy's movements. The scarf Dorothy had changed
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at her parents' house was white. The sheriff's account also
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described her wearing jeans, a long-sleeved maroon blouse, and a
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round turquoise ring. Those details would soon shift from ordinary
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clothing to the description of a missing woman. Pam said
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she remained with Dorothy in the waiting area, aside from
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a brief trip Dorothy made. As Conrad was being released,
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Dorothy offered to bring her car closer, making it easier
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for him to load in. Pam and Conrad dealt with
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his prescription while Dorothy went outside. The car was a
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white 1973 Toyota station wagon. When Pam and Conrad were
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ready to leave, Dorothy was not waiting for them. Then
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they saw the Toyota approaching. Its headlights were so bright
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that Pam could not make out the person behind the wheel.
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She and Conrad waved, the station wagon passed them, and
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turned out of the parking lot without stopping. There was
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no useful identification of the driver. At first, Pam and
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Conrad considered an ordinary explanation. Perhaps Dorothy had learned of
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an emergency involving her son and had to rush away.
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But the plan had been for her to pick them up,
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and she did not return. A later Los Angeles Times
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account says they waited two hours while the night of
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May 28th gave way to the morning of May 29th.
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Before dawn, police in Santa Ana found Dorothy's station wagon
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burning in an alley in the 800 block of South Townsend.
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Dorothy was not with it. Whatever explanation might have existed
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for the car leaving the hospital, a burned vehicle in
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another city changed the nature of the search. Police had
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the Toyota, but they still did not know who had
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driven it away and what had happened to Dorothy in
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the parking lot or where she had gone afterward. The
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unexpected hospital trip also sharpened the question created by the
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earlier threats. If the caller was involved, how had he
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found Dorothy during an outing that had not been planned
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in advance? The record does not establish that he followed
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her continuously, and the hospital trip alone cannot prove that
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he was there. But the possibility could not be ignored
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because Dorothy had already described a man who wanted her
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to believe he knew all her movements. In the first days,
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Dorothy's father kept the disappearance out of the newspaper. Early
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reporting says police asked the family to maintain a low
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profile in case a ransom demand were to arrive. Her
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young son was initially told that his mother was away,
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caring for a friend. As the days passed, that explanation
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became harder to sustain. About a week after Dorothy disappeared,
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The telephone rang at her parents' home. Vera answered. The
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caller said, I've got her. Then he hung up. More
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calls followed. Some claimed Dorothy was being held. Others claimed
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she had been killed. The statements contradicted one another, and
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the man never gave the family what they needed most,
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a location that could be checked. In June, the Santa
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Ana Register published a story about the disappearance. On June 12th,
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according to the paper's follow-up reporting, a man called editor
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Pat Riley and claimed he had killed Dorothy. He described
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her as someone with whom he had a romantic relationship
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and said he had killed her after catching her with
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another man. That was his claim, but it was not
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an established relationship or motive. What made the call difficult
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to dismiss, though, was the information he appeared to possess.
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Contemporary reporting says the caller knew that Conrad had been
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treated for a spider bite, and that Dorothy had changed
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scarves before reaching the hospital. Those details reportedly had not
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appeared in the register's first story. Their omission from the
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article made his knowledge significant. but it did not prove
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that only the killer could have known them. Other people
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had been present during parts of Dorothy's evening, and investigators
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could not reconstruct every route through which information might have traveled.
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The caller also said Dorothy had telephoned him from the hospital.
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Pam disputed that account. She said that she had been
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with Dorothy and had not seen her make such a call.
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That contradiction was very important. The man seemed to know
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something about the night, while at least one part of
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his story was challenged by a witness who had been there. Meanwhile,
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the calls to Dorothy's family continued. Vera described a pattern
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of brief contacts, often on Wednesday afternoons, when she was alone.
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Efforts were made to record or trace the calls, but
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she later said some arrived when monitoring was not active
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and others ended too quickly to locate. No caller was
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identified through those efforts. By July, Jacob and Vera were
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offering $ 2, 500 for information leading to Dorothy or to her body.
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They were still allowing for the possibility that she might
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be alive. while also asking for the chance to bring
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her home if she wasn't. The anonymous caller kept speaking,
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but he never supplied the answer their reward was meant
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to obtain. The calls continued beyond that summer and beyond
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that year. Police suspected a connection between the threatening calls
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and Dorothy's fate, and Vera believed the voice contacting the
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family belonged to the same man but belief and suspicion
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never became a public identification. Then, in the spring of 1984,
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Jacob answered one of the calls. According to later reporting,
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he told the man he had the wrong number. After that,
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the calls stopped for several months. Four years after the hospital,
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the silence still had no answers to the central questions.
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In August, a construction crew working near Santa Ana Canyon
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Road in Anaheim Hills came across skeletal remains. The discovery
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was made on August 6, 1984, near a bend in
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Santa Ana Canyon Road. Reporting described a subcontractor preparing for
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telephone cable work when human bones were found alongside the
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bones of a dog. The area had changed during the
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years Dorothy was missing. Soil and vegetation surrounded the remains,
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and later reporting quoted police as saying they had not
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been buried. Erosion had partly covered them. Some of the
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bones were charred. A brush fire had swept through the
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area in 1982. offering a possible explanation for the burning