Is Dorothy Home?

There are few unsolved cases that are more chilling than the disappearance and death of Dorothy Jane Scott. She was only 32-years old when she disappeared on May 28th 1980 in Anaheim, California.

Her remains were not found until 1984.

Scott Receives Terrifying Phone Calls

Before her abduction, Scott and her four-year-old son lived in Stanton, California with her aunt. She worked as a secretary for two stores in Anaheim. Being a devout Christian, she preferred to stay at home and did not drink or do drugs and according to family, was not seeing anyone at the time.

Trouble began brewing for Scott months before her disappearance when she began to receive phone calls from a strange man. When the caller wasn’t telling her how much he loved her, he would threaten to kill her.

During one of the scariest calls, the unidentified caller told Scott that he would find a way to get her alone and cut her up into bits so no one would ever find her.

From the calls, it became obvious to Scott that the caller was stalking her closely when he could detail her every move.

The calls terrified her, and she considered buying a gun and began taking self-defence courses.

Scott Disappears

On the night of her disappearance, on the 28th of May 1980, Scott noticed that a colleague, Conrad Bostron, wasn’t feeling well during a staff meeting.

He had a red mark on his arm and Scott, together with another colleague, Pam Head, took him to the emergency room. On their way to the hospital, Scott made a quick stop at her parents’ house to check on her son whom they were babysitting and changed her black scarf for a red one.

While the doctors treated Bostron, Scott and Head remained in the waiting room. A few hours later, around 11 pm, the emergency doctors discharged Bostron. Since Bostron still felt weak, Scott offered to bring the car round to the exit to save him from walking all the way to the car park.

After waiting for a while at the exit for Scott to come round with the car, Bostron and Head went out to the emergency room’s parking lot. Suddenly, Scott’s car sped towards them, but they could not see who was driving the car. Despite them waving their arms to Scott, the car drove past them and out of the parking lot.

Head and Bostron assumed an emergency with her son had come up, but when they still hadn’t heard from her after a couple of hours, they reported Scott missing.

Scott’s car, a white 1973 Toyota, was found on fire in an alley about 10 miles from the hospital around 4:30 in the morning. There was no one in the car or nearby.

It was going to be another four years before her remains were found.

On August 6th, 1984 dog and human bones were discovered side by side about 30 feet from Santa Ana Canyon Road by a construction worker. With the bones were a turquoise ring and a watch. The police used dental records to identify the remains as Scott’s. However, they could not determine the cause of her death.

The Phone Calls Begin Again

Scott had been missing for a week when her parents got a phone call from an unidentified man who said, “I’ve got her” before hanging up.

Scott’s parents said that the calls usually occurred when her mother, Vera, was home alone. The caller would tell Vera that he had Dorothy or that he had killed her. After Scott’s father answered the phone in April 1984, the calls stopped until the police identified her remains.

The police attempted to trace the calls, but were unsuccessful as the man never stayed on the line long enough.

A Possible Motive

On June 12th 1980 a man called the Orange County Register, a paper that had run a story about the case on the same day. The man had told them he killed Dorothy Scott. He also said that he killed her because he caught her cheating with another man.

The man had also known about the spider bite and that Scott had changed her red scarf for a black one. The police had made neither of these details public knowledge.

The police believe the caller was Scott’s murderer.

One Final Phone Call

When Scott’s remains were found and identified in 1984, Scott’s parents received one final phone call.

“Is Dorothy home?” the anonymous caller asked before hanging up. He never called again.

Nobody has ever been arrested for the murder of Dorothy Jane Scott.