On May 27th, 1980, 32-year-old Dorothy Jane Scott dropped off her son at her parent’s house in Anaheim, California, and went off to work.

That evening at 9 p.m., there was a staff meeting, and whilst there, a co-worker named Conrad Bostron started to feel unwell. Dorothy and another colleague, Pam Head, left the meeting early to take Conrad to the hospital.

On the way to the hospital, Dorothy stopped off at her parent’s house to let them know what she was doing and to let them know that she would be late picking up her son.

At the hospital, it was discovered that Conrad had been bitten by a black widow spider. He was discharged from the hospital at 11 p.m. After being discharged, Dorothy went to get her car to collect Conrad and Pam from the front of the hospital. That was the last time she was seen alive. 

When Pam and Conrad went to find Dorothy, they saw her car driving quickly towards them, then turning sharply to exit the car park. It disappeared out of sight. They assumed it was Dorothy behind the wheel, but because the headlights were so bright, they couldn’t see the driver.

At first, Pam and Conrad assumed that there had been some kind of emergency with Dorpothy’s son, but after not hearing from her for hours, they reported her missing.

The next morning, Dorothy Scott’s car was found abandoned and burnt out in an alleyway approximately 10 miles from the hospital. Police thought she may have been kidnapped.

Two weeks after Dorothy disappeared, her mother, Vera, received a phone call.

“Are you related to Dorothy Scott?… Well, I’ve got her.”

After that, every Wednesday when Vera was alone in the house, she would get a phone call from the same man. He knew a lot about Dorothy, including the colour of her scarf the night she went missing.

It turned out that before Dorothy’s disappearance, she had been getting chilling phone calls.

“When I get you alone, I will cut you up into bits so no one will ever find you.”

Dorothy received calls like this nearly every day, with police installing a voice recorder at her home. The man claimed he was always watching, and even left a single dead rose on the bonnet of her car.

Dorothy had no idea who was calling her, but was it the same person who started to call her mother?

Against the advice of the police, Dorothy’s father, Jacob, contacted the local paper, the Orange County Register, to tell them about the case. The article was published on June 12, 1980. That same day, the paper got a call from someone claiming they had murdered Dorothy because she was unfaithful to him. He also knew details about the disappearance that hadn’t been made public.

Dorothy’s mother continued to get calls for the next four years. In April 1984, Dorothy’s father Jacob answered the phone instead of Vera, and the man immediately hung up. They didn’t get another call for four months. It’s possible he thought they had moved house, or some people theorise that the caller thought Jacob might recognise his voice. 

On August 6, 1984, Dorothy’s remains were found on a remote construction site. Her bones had been partially burnt. Two years earlier, in October 1982, there had been a fire at that location, giving police a timeline for the minimum length Dorothy’s remains had been there. With Dorothy’s body, they also found the remains of a dog, a turquoise ring confirmed to be Dorothy’s by her mother, and a watch.

After Dorothy’s remains were found the Scott family continued to receive phone calls. Police were never able to find out who it was that had been making the phone calls, or even if it was the same person that had phoned both Dorothy and her mother. 

Dorothy Scott’s killer has never been found. 

Unfortunately, Dorothy’s parents have now passed away without getting any answers, and Dorothy’s son had to grow up without really knowing his mother. With no leads in the case, it may never be solved.

Sources:

https://www.talkmurderwithme.com/blog/2020/2/22/dorothy-jane-scott

https://the-line-up.com/dorothy-jane-scott

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Dorothy_Jane_Scott

https://www.ranker.com/list/unsolved-dorothy-jane-scott/laura-allan

https://filmdaily.co/obsessions/true-crime/dorothy-jane-scott/

https://www.thetruecrimedatabase.com/case_file/dorothy-scott/

https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/stalked-dorothy-jane-scott-cynthia-jane-anderson/

https://www.crimetraveller.org/2020/10/the-tragic-death-of-dorothy-jane-scott/