Dorothy Jane Scott

Dorothy’s story

Dorothy Jane Scott was 32, a single mother living with her aunt and her young son in Stanton. For months before she disappeared, a man had been calling her, swinging between declarations of love and threats. On the night of May 28, 1980, she helped take a sick coworker to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. She walked out to get her car and was never seen again. [1][3]

Within hours her station wagon was found burning in a Santa Ana alley. Two weeks later, a man called the Register claiming he had killed her. For years afterward, a caller phoned her parents. Her remains were found in Anaheim Hills in August 1984. The man behind the calls has never been identified. [1][4][5]

Who Dorothy was

Dorothy worked as a secretary for two jointly owned stores in Anaheim, Swinger’s Psych Shop and Custom John’s. Friends described her as quiet and devoted to her son, and she had stopped on the way to the hospital that night just to see him. [2][3]

The calls frightened her. She thought about buying a gun but decided against it in case her child found it, and she began karate lessons instead. Her mother later said the caller alternated between saying he loved her and threatening her. A dead red rose was once reportedly left on her car. [3][5][7]

What happened

On May 28, after a 9 p.m. employee meeting, Dorothy and a coworker drove a colleague whose arm had developed a worsening red streak to UC Irvine Medical Center. He was treated, reportedly for a black widow spider bite. While he waited for a prescription late that night, Dorothy went to bring her car around. [2][3]

Her coworkers then saw her white 1973 Toyota station wagon speed out of the parking lot. One account says the headlights stopped them seeing who was driving. Another says Dorothy was not at the wheel. Thinking there might be a family emergency, they didn’t report her missing for some time. [2][3]

At about 4:30 to 5 a.m., her car was found on fire in an alley in the 800 block of South Townsend Street, Santa Ana, about 10 miles away. [1][5]

Her parents at first kept the disappearance quiet, hoping an abductor would make contact. After two weeks they went to the Register. The day its story ran, a man called the paper and said he had killed Dorothy: “She was my love … I caught her cheating.” The reporter wrote that the caller knew details the story had left out, including that she had changed her scarf and that her coworker had a problem with his arm. [1][3]

In July her parents offered a $2,500 reward for information about her whereabouts. [6]

Then the calls to her parents began. A man phoned again and again, often on Wednesdays, saying he had Dorothy or had killed her. A line was tapped at times, but he never stayed on long enough to trace. The calls stopped in April 1984. [5][7]

On Aug. 6, 1984, a construction crew found a human skull about 30 feet from Santa Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim Hills, half a mile east of Eucalyptus Drive. More bones were scattered across about 25 feet, alongside a dog’s bones. The remains were partly charred, apparently by a brush fire in fall 1982. Dental records identified Dorothy on Aug. 14. Her mother identified the turquoise ring and a watch found with her. The watch had reportedly stopped at 12:30 a.m., about an hour after she was last seen. After the identification was in the news, the caller reportedly phoned her parents again. [4][5][7]

Where it happened

• UC Irvine Medical Center, Orange. Dorothy disappeared from its parking area.
• 800 block of South Townsend Street, Santa Ana. The alley where her car burned.
• Santa Ana Canyon Road, Anaheim Hills. In 1984 a construction site on the edge of development. Her remains were found here.

What investigators have said

Investigators believe the man who made the threatening calls is the most likely person responsible for her death. The coroner said in 1984 that a cause of death was unlikely to be determined from the remains. The Sheriff’s Department’s homicide team continues to seek new leads. [1][5]

Where accounts differ

• The scarf. Today’s official summary says Dorothy wore a white scarf. Coworkers in 1980 recalled a black scarf at the meeting, and police told the Register in 1984 that she changed from black to red, and that the caller named red. [1][3][5]
• The driver. One 1980 account says Dorothy was not driving the car as it left; another says headlights blocked the coworkers’ view. [2][3]
• The car fire. About 5 a.m. (official) or 4:30 a.m. (1984 report). [1][5]
• The finders. “Two construction workers” (official) or a construction foreman who spotted the skull (1984 report). Both may be true. [1][4]
• One caller or more? It has never been shown that the man who called the newspaper and the man who called her parents were the same person.

Open questions

• Who was the caller, and how did he know which scarf she was wearing that night?
• Who drove Dorothy’s car out of the hospital lot?
• Did the caller phone her at work, at home, or both, and did anyone else ever hear his voice?

What you can do

• If you knew Dorothy, or worked at the Anaheim stores or UCI Medical Center in 1980, and remember a man who was fixated on her, contact the cold case team.
• Research: read the original June 13, 1980 Register front page and its continuation to settle the scarf color, and the June 14, 1980 LA Times account of what the coworkers saw. Both are available through library newspaper databases. [2][3]
• The AP story of Aug. 20, 1984 ran nationally and includes her mother’s account of the calls. [7] A published bibliography of 1980 and 1984 coverage is a good starting point. [8]