Dorothy Jane Scott was 32 when she vanished after a late-night hospital trip in Orange County, California. Her station wagon was later found burning, and her family received taunting calls for years. Her remains were identified in 1984, and the case remains unsolved.
She was a single mother living in Stanton with her aunt and her four-year-old son. She worked as a secretary for two jointly owned stores in Anaheim, and her parents, who lived nearby, helped watch her child while she worked.
Friends and coworkers described her as someone who preferred staying home and did not drink or use drugs. Her father later said she may have dated sometimes, but the family did not know of any steady boyfriend at the time she disappeared.
The calls before May 1980
Months before she went missing, Scott received repeated phone calls at work from an unidentified man. According to accounts cited in reporting and later summaries, the caller alternated between declaring love and making threats to kill her.
Her mother later described one incident in which the caller told Scott to go outside because he had left something for her. When she checked her car, a single dead red rose was on the windshield, reinforcing that the caller knew her routines.
Her mother also recalled a call in which the man said he would get Scott alone and cut her up so no one would ever find her. As the calls continued, Scott looked into buying a handgun and began taking karate lessons about a week before she disappeared.
The night at the medical center
On the evening of May 28, 1980, Scott attended a work meeting around 9 p.m. She noticed a coworker, Conrad Bostron, seemed unwell and had a red mark on his arm. She and another coworker, Pam Head, decided to take him to the emergency room.
They drove to UC Irvine Medical Center, and on the way they stopped at Scott’s parents’ home to check on her son. During that stop, she changed scarves, switching from black to red before they arrived at the hospital.
At the hospital, staff determined Bostron had suffered a black widow spider bite and treated him. Head later said the two women stayed together in the waiting room and that Scott did not leave her side during the wait.
Bostron was discharged around 11 p.m. with a prescription. Scott offered to bring her car to the exit so he would not have to walk far while still feeling sick. Head said Scott used the restroom briefly and then went to the parking lot.
Head and Bostron filled the prescription and waited by the exit for Scott to pull up. When several minutes passed with no sign of her, they went out toward the parking area to look. What they saw next became the last reported sighting connected to Scott alive.
Her white 1973 Toyota station wagon came speeding toward them. The headlights were bright enough that they could not see the driver clearly. They waved their arms to get the driver’s attention, but the car sped past them and turned sharply out of the lot.
At first, both coworkers thought Scott might have rushed away because of an emergency involving her child. Hours passed without any call or return, and they reported her missing. Law enforcement later treated the hospital departure as suspicious because Scott’s behavior did not match what her friends expected.
The burned station wagon
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department later summarized the disappearance as occurring shortly after midnight on May 29, 1980, with Scott last seen at the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. The department says her friends saw a suspicious figure driving her station wagon as it exited the hospital parking lot.
That same Sheriff’s Department summary says her friends reported she had been missing for nearly an hour, and Santa Ana Police later found her vehicle on fire around 5 a.m. The car was located in an alley in the 800 block of South Townsend.
Other published summaries place the discovery slightly earlier, around 4:30 a.m., and describe the burning vehicle as about 10 miles from the hospital. Across accounts, the key points remain consistent: her car was found burning in the early morning hours, and she was not with it.
The Sheriff’s Department also recorded what she was reportedly wearing the day before she went missing: blue jeans, a long-sleeved maroon blouse, a white scarf, and a round turquoise ring on her left index finger. Those details later mattered when remains were found.
Calls to a newspaper editor
In June 1980, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department says Santa Ana Register City Editor Pat O. Riley received a call from an anonymous man. The caller claimed Scott “was my love,” said he caught her cheating with another man, and said, “I killed her.”
A separate account, summarized in later reporting, says an unidentified man also called the Orange County Register after the paper covered Scott’s disappearance. In that version, a managing editor told police the caller claimed responsibility and gave a similar motive, describing jealousy and rage.
Investigators found the call significant because the caller reportedly knew details that had not been published. The editor said the caller knew Bostron had a spider bite that night and knew Scott changed from a black scarf to a red one before reaching the hospital.
The caller also claimed Scott phoned him from the hospital that night. Head disputed that, saying she was with Scott the entire time in the waiting room and did not see her place a call. Investigators later said they believed the anonymous caller was responsible for Scott’s death.
Calls to the Scott family
About a week after the disappearance, Scott’s parents received a phone call from an unidentified man who asked if they were related to Dorothy Scott. When her mother answered yes, the caller said, “I’ve got her,” and then hung up, according to later reporting summaries.
The calls continued for years. The same man reportedly called “almost every Wednesday afternoon” and said either that he had Scott or that he had killed her. Police said the calls could not be traced because the caller did not stay on the line long enough.
In April 1984, the caller phoned in the evening and Scott’s father answered instead of her mother. After that, the calls stopped for a period. When her remains were identified later in 1984, the family began receiving calls again, prompting police to install a recorder.
Even with a recorder in place, investigators still faced the same limitation: short calls offered few technical leads. Over time, the family’s description of the caller’s pattern became part of the case file, but it did not produce an arrest or a confirmed identity for the person speaking.
The remains found in 1984
In 1984, construction workers at a work site in Anaheim Hills found a human skull and additional skeletal remains. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department says the turquoise ring was also found, and dental records were used to determine the remains were Dorothy Jane Scott’s.
Other accounts place the discovery date at August 6, 1984, describing a construction worker finding human bones alongside dog bones about 30 feet from Santa Ana Canyon Road. The bones were described as partly charred, with authorities believing they had been there for years.
Along with the bones, investigators also recovered personal items including a turquoise ring and a watch. Scott’s mother reportedly said the watch had stopped at 12:30 a.m. on May 29, about an hour after Head and Bostron last saw the station wagon drive away.
On August 14, the remains were identified through dental records, and an autopsy could not determine the cause of death. A memorial service was held later that month. Despite the identification, the case did not move into court, and no suspect was charged.
What is known, and what remains unresolved
The case contains several points investigators have treated as significant: the stalking calls before May 1980, the abrupt departure from the medical center parking lot, the burning vehicle found hours later, and the caller who knew details not publicized in the press.
It also contains major unknowns. No public account identifies who drove the station wagon out of the lot, how Scott was controlled in that moment, or where she was taken. The cause of death could not be determined, limiting what forensic evidence could establish.
The Sheriff’s Department summary describes a “potential murder suspect” as the man who repeatedly called Dorothy and her family, yet notes he was never identified or found. That description reflects the core investigative problem: a central figure in the case exists mainly through phone contact.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department continues to list the case as an active cold-case investigation and asks for new leads. The department encourages people with information to contact its cold case investigators or submit tips through Crime Stoppers.
Readers interested in cases shaped by unanswered questions and investigative dead ends may also want to read Danny Casolaro, the investigative reporter found dead in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991 while pursuing what he believed was a vast criminal network. Notes, files, and leads he was said to be carrying were never recovered, leaving behind a parallel story of disappearance that unfolded after death rather than before.
Sources and Reporting Notes
This article is based on official case summaries, contemporaneous newspaper reporting, and later archival documentation.
Primary details regarding the disappearance, vehicle recovery, and identification of remains were drawn from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department cold case file.
Additional context and consolidated timelines were cross-referenced with publicly available archival material summarized in Wikipedia’s entry on the case, which cites original law enforcement statements and contemporary press coverage.
Contemporary reporting and editorial accounts, including documentation of anonymous phone calls made to a newspaper editor, were drawn from archival articles published by the Orange County Register.
