The following true story has been woven together from a personal interview with the parents of the victim in 1980 by the author at their home in Anaheim, California. At this writing, Vera Scott is seriously ill in the hospital and Jacob Scott has passed away. Additional interviews with detectives who worked -- and are still working the case -- were also recorded by the author for this article.

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On the evening of May 27, 1980, 32-year-old Dorothy Jane Scott, a lovely dark-eyed secretary at the Swinger’s Psych & Head Shop Boutique in Anaheim, California, dropped her 4-year-old son, Shanti, off at her parent’s house on West Stonybrook. She was anxious to be on time for the employee’s meeting of the two jointly-owned shops where she worked as a secretary.

As a secretary, she was word-perfect.

Little did this dark-eyed beauty know that she had been singled out to be one of nature’s chosen victims that fate is so often unmerciful to.

During the course of the company meeting, Dorothy noticed that a fellow employee, Conrad Bostron, had trouble staying in his chair. He weaved, and grimaced in pain. He tried to steady himself. Dorothy got up in the middle of her boss’s speech, eased over to his chair, and whispered, "You all right?"

At this point she noticed his arm was inflamed and he was squirming in his chair like a boa constrictor. Only silence met her question.

Without hesitation, Dorothy interrupted the proceedings. "I’ve got to get him to a hospital -- he needs medical attention," she told her coworkers.

Out the door she went, her wobbly-legged coworker draped over her shoulder, perspiration dripping from his face. Another employee named Pam Head , hustled out the door to lend Dorothy a hand.

"Dorothy was like that," her father, Jacob Scott, said. "She was very compassionate. If anybody had a problem, Dorothy would sit down and talk to them -- try to help them. Maybe this time she was compassionate with somebody who took the whole thing wrong. Maybe they have a twisted mind and perhaps they felt she loved them. Those things have been known to happen."

Sprawled on the back seat, the suffering man continued to writhe and wriggle as Dorothy maneuvered her car down Brookhurst Street, zigzagging in and out of traffic, well exceeding the 35 mph speed limit. Minutes later, the vehicle careened wildly onto Chapman Avenue, screeching to a halt in front of the emergency entrance of the UCI Medical Center in the adjacent town of Orange.

Quickly, the two women helped the stricken man into the emergency room of the hospital. A duty-nurse took one look at the glassy-eyed man and summoned a diagnostician. His diagnosis struck horror into Dorothy and Pam. Their coworker, he said, had been bitten by a deadly black widow spider.

While the interns were attending the victim, Dorothy and Pam waited patiently in the anteroom of the hospital, thumbing through magazines and watching television. Several hours later Bostron came out. The initial danger seemed to be over, but he was still trembling from the traumatic experience. Pam stayed with the young man while he filled out the necessary papers for insurance rigmarole. Dorothy went to fetch the car so that he wouldn’t have to walk too far.

In the end, she paid a crucifying price for her compassion. For there was a jinx on Dorothy. And that jinx was ready to cast its shadow.

It was after 11 p.m. when Dorothy walked out into the dimly-lit parking lot to get her car. The parking lot was still and the only clue of life were the sounds of passing cars a block away on Chapman Avenue. The stars were in full command of the sky. The luminous overhead yellowish parking lot lights cast scarecrow shadows across the path of the attractive brunette as she hurried to her car. High cirrus clouds indicated that the wind was preparing for another Santa Ana blow.

Dorothy’s two coworkers waited patiently for their driver to return. After several minutes went by, with still no sign of her, Pam got up and looked out the window. A sigh of relief swept her face as she saw Dorothy’s car approaching. Suddenly, the headlights went out. She watched in disbelief as the vehicle passed by the door and melted into a flawless camouflage of darkness.

Suddenly, the car disappeared as if an interplanetary vacuum cleaner had sucked it up.

"We waved our hands," Pam told this reporter. "There was no way she could have missed us. The car made a right. We started running after it and it sped up."

Head and Bostron waited two hours in the parking lot for Dorothy to return, but she never came back. Security at the medical center were notified. Pam called Dorothy’s parents to see if she was home.

"Dorothy would never leave anybody like that at the hospital," Jacob Scott told police officers. "If she took them there, she would not leave them. She would take them back even if she had something to do, she would take them back...or take them with her. She wouldn’t just up and leave them, That wasn’t her way. She was the most caring person I’ve ever known."

In 1980, Anaheim was a medium-sized town in Southern California with a population of 225,000 (it has since zoomed to over 1 million). Even then, it was a place hampered with so much crime that an officer of the Department of Criminal Investigation had little time to worry about another missing woman. After listening sympathetically to the Scotts about their missing daughter, the officer said as soon as he turned up any information of value he would let them know.

"It was a great pity," a detective working on the case said. "But it is not unusual. Many young women often become involved with men and abandoned their families. It’s always the ones you least suspect. The goodie-two-shoes."

That appraisal was completely out of character for Dorothy Jane Scott. She would never leave her 4-year-old son, Shanti overnight, in the care of her own parents, let alone abandoned him altogether.

The news media quickly learned that the missing woman was highly respected and viewed as very responsible by a relatives, friends, and coworkers. Down to the last person, they said she would have never left her family of her own fee will.

The Scotts said it was the pressure of the news media that compelled the Anaheim detectives to put out an all-points bulletin for Dorothy’s car. A helicopter from Huntington Beach was borrowed to assist in a search of the area around Orange County, even then a huge cosmopolitan metropolis encompassing Disneyland. These veteran officers were joined in their search for the missing woman by reserve officers and deputies from the Orange County’s Sheriff’s Office.

The tidings of Dorothy Jane Scott’s disappearance and the deep awe-striking news that she was a possible kidnap victim, flew like wildfire, exhilarating wherever it was received, the most dread apprehension in the minds of those closest to her. The Scotts were prevented from forgetting, even in their sleep, the fact that their daughter might already be dead.

In going over a list of possible suspects, detectives initially suspected Dorothy’s ex-husband. They discovered that at the time of her disappearance, he had been visiting California from his home in Fairgrove, Missouri. The Scotts said that as soon as they learned Dorothy was missing they called him. Had he been involved, he couldn’t have possibly have returned to Missouri on the night of the abduction. He was cleared of any wrong-doing.

News of the popular Anaheim resident’s disappearance touched off an avalanche of calls to police from friends unwilling to admit even to themselves, that she was already dead. The authorities welcomed all calls as possible leads into the background of the victim. They asked that anyone with any information concerning the case to call their local police immediately.

An attempt to trace the whereabouts of Dorothy through her activities the week prior to her disappearance proved that she had led a very normal, unexceptional life. She was mostly a stay-at-home recluse who divided her time between work and playing with her son. She seldom went out of the house, which lead one of her girlfriends to remark that her life was as dull as a phone book. But, according to her mother, Vera, "Dorothy preferred to live like that."

Dorothy’s "dull as a phone book" life was confirmed by her coworkers who told police that she seldom dated and had no steady liaisons. Her supervisor said he doubted that her abductor was a customer because Dorothy worked in the back room, away from the customers of the shop that sold psychedelic gifts, clothing, and assorted paraphernalia.

After days of questioning everyone who even slightly knew Dorothy, police had no suspects who would want to harm her. In the eyes of the outside world Dorothy Jane Scott didn’t have a single enemy.

Dorothy’s closest girlfriend told investigators that she knew no one who could have possibly wanted to harm her best friend. She described Dorothy as a simple, hardworking person who had no contact with drug pushers, did not use drugs or drink alcohol, and "would not have known what cocaine looked like."

So that’s where police were at. They had no explanation whatsoever for Dorothy’s disappearance. Either a madman was on the loose or it was a case of mistaken identify. The strange disappearance of the cherished Anaheim resident became the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s first priority.

One angle of the probe to which the Anaheim police had devoted a great deal of time, but without much publicity, was a survey of known sex offenders, particularly those with a penchant for dark-haired, pretty young women. Police were fairly certain now that Dorothy had fallen prey to a maniacal sex fiend, probably a recent parolee with a lengthy record.

Under California law, sex offenders are required to register in the berg where they intended to live. There were, at the time, 7,500 registered sex offenders in Southern California and that list has long since been surpassed. 2,000 persons were arrested that same year for sex offenses. Of 602 convictions only 40 resulted in the rapist or child molester spending more than one year in a prison or in a rehabilitation center.

If Dorothy Jane Scott had fallen prey to a brutal degenerate, then Anaheim police had a formidable task ahead of them.

Days melted into weeks and weeks into months. A good deal had been learned -- although not yet in the airtight form police need to wrap up a case. For example, a week before Dorothy vanished she started taking karate lessons because she had been receiving threatening phone calls from an unknown source who usually called her at her office in the psych shop.

When police learned this, they requisitioned everyone at the psych shop.

Well, people said, they were afraid to say anything before. And most people still refused to talk about it. One employee who spoke on the promise of anonymity, corroborated statements given to probers by a mysterious informant over the phone. The informant whispered that Dorothy’s caller told her he was following her wherever she went. He described in detail her every move.

"Now that she is gone," the witness said, "the calls have stopped."

"She could recognize the voice but she couldn’t put a face to it," Vera Scott said. By now his psyche had not only remained unaltered but flourished to megalomania. "One time he told her he was going to cut her up into tint bits and pieces. She came to our house that night -- she was all shook up and crying. But after thinking about it, we all shrugged it off as a prankster."

Dorothy’s sister also received a call. Vera Scott related the story:

"Arlene’s daughter answered the phone. The caller asked for Arlene and she informed him her mother wasn’t at home. When she asked who was calling, he said, ‘It’s none of your damn business, little girl!’ and hung up. He called back later and asked for Arlene again. When she told him her mother wasn’t at home, he became very angry. "Well, you tell Arlene I’m still around,’ Soon after that, her husband moved her out of town because he was certain it was Dorothy’s kidnapper. "

A sizeable contingent of sheriff’s deputies had been assigned to search for Dorothy’s missing automobile. Exasperated Anaheim police ordered the sweep on the chance that Dorothy’s kidnapper might have parked his car in the area and not returned to pick it up.

Sometimes, God harkens to prayers. An alert patrolman on the graveyard shift happened upon Dorothy’s car. It was parked in a secluded area of Santa Ana, some ten miles from where she had been abducted. It had been torched beyond recognition and any physical evidence that may have helped solve the case had been destroyed. There was no charred corpse in the car. Police theorized the fire had been started on the passenger side, perhaps to destroy evidence of blood.

An answer to the puzzle appeared about a week after the discovery of the burnt-out car. A telephone call to Dorothy’s parents’ home was taken by her mother. In a wild burst of frustration, a gruff voice asked, "Are you related to Dorothy Scott?"

"I’m her mother," Vera nefariously replied.

"I’ve got her," the voice said, and hung up.

The call pretty much confirmed what had been feared. Dorothy had been abducted by a psycho, and was probably already dead. If she was, the family could never have peace of mind until she was given a decent burial.

The FBI were notified that a kidnapping, and possible murder had taken place. A special team trained to handle extortion and kidnapping cases, installed recording equipment in the kitchen of the home on West Stonybrook. They were hoping they would be able to trace any future calls from the kidnapper.

It was sophisticated equipment proficient enough to obtain a voice print that could be matched with that of a suspect, even through the caller endeavored to disguise his voice by talking in clip, brusque levels.

The FBI notified the telephone company in an endeavor to trace all calls placed to the Scott residence. There were several more calls, each one taunting the Scotts: "I’ve got her." The caller described the clothes she was wearing the morning she disappeared, right down to her underwear and a neckerchief she was wearing.

"Before she left the house she had on a black scarf," Vera said. "It was a short one and it kept slipping -- she said something to me about it slipping off and I said, ‘Dorothy, it doesn’t go good with what your wearing anyway, because your hair is dark and your blouse is dark, so you need a light-colored scarf.’ She asked me, ‘Do you have one I can borrow?’ I said, Yes, I have a pink one, a yellow one, and a white one -- which do you want?’ She took the white one, neatly wrapped it around her neck and left."

It was as through she had a premonition. Before she walked out the door, Dorothy paused, looked at her parents with adoration, and said, "Always remember, I love you both." These were the last words the Scotts would ever hear from their precious daughter.

The Scotts played the police-planted recording over and over a thousand times, trying to place the voice, but they never could. With no where else to turn, the distraught parents contacted two clairvoyants. Strangely enough, the two clairvoyants, miles apart, both said Dorothy was alive and well and being held prisoner in Bell Gardens, some 30 miles from her home.

"They both described the house down to a tee," Vera Scott said. "They said it was an old house with columns on the porch and three steps and only a few blocks from the Bell Gardens police station." The chill the Scotts felt had nothing to do with the weather.

In the coming hours of chaos, Bell Gardens police hired their own clairvoyant. This clairvoyant said that Dorothy had been viciously murdered and buried in a certain area in the San Bernardino Hills.

The Bell Gardens police provided UCI police Chief Michael Mitchell, who had never stopped being involved in the case, with area maps for any follow-up surveillance of the neighborhoods adjacent to the area. The maps included the deserted wastelands of San Bernardino. By morning, fifty deputies and volunteers fanned out across the mountainous area with dogs, searching for the remains of Dorothy Jane Scott. They explored a barren ribbon separating verdant pasture lands from BLM desert property. They found an assortment of bottles, tin cans, castaway living room and bedroom furniture, rusty refrigerators, and abandoned automobiles that had been stolen and stripped for parts.

Taunted frequently by a caller who said, "I’ve got her," over the next three years the Scotts experienced a cruel mental struggle.

Four years went by. Then on Monday, August 6, 1984, the first pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that make up most felony cases were found. It was up to the police not to slight them.

The skeletal remains of an adult human being and a dog were discovered side by side by a construction crew in a brush-covered area some 30 feet from Santa Ana Canyon Road. According to authorities, the bones, which included a human skull, had been there about two years. Orange County Coroner Richard Rodriguez listed the cause of death as "questionable."

Anaheim police, aided by sheriff’s deputies, state police and local officers from adjoining communities organized massive posses, mostly augmented by volunteers from nearby firehouses. Hordes of men doggedly searched along Santa Ana Canyon Road, scrambling up and down the weed-infested hills under the direction of Anaheim police Sgt. Bill Wright.

Wright said the bones had been scattered over a 25-foot area about a half-mile east of Eucalyptus Drive in northeast Anaheim. The area was completely surrounded by housing tracts and overlooked the Riverside (91) Freeway.

Chief Deputy Coroner James Biesner told reporters that it would take at least three days to determine the identity of the body, using a missing-person’s file that uses dental records for identification. Dental records, he said, are considered more accurate than fingerprints.

The bones were never linked to Dorothy Jane Scott, and police were never able to determine the identity of the skeletonized body. Furthermore. Dorothy didn’t have a dog.

Incredibly, in 1988, the Scotts were contacted by a 80-year-old woman who claimed she had psychic powers.

"She asked my wife for a piece of Dorothy’s jewelry and, when she got it, she said the same thing the first two clairvoyants said, Jacob Scott told this writer. "She said Dorothy was alive and being held captive in Bell Gardens. She described the same unpainted house with the two columns and steps that was located near the Bell Gardens police station. She said Dorothy was ill and badly in need of medical attention."

One morning the managing editor of the Orange County Register, answered his phone. A man told him he had kidnapped Dorothy Jane Scott and that there was no use to keep looking for her because she was already dead and scattered where no one would ever find her.

"She was my love..I caught her cheating with another man. She denied having an affair with someone else. I killed her because she lied to me," the caller said.

The caller told the managing editor that he approached Dorothy in the parking lot of the hospital and asked about another man. He said she denied being involved with any other men, but he didn’t believe her. He told the reporter that he had pictures to prove she had another lover.

"She was my love," he repeated in a cool modulated voice. "I killed her."

Was the mysterious caller a deranged prankster stirred by media attention, as many believe the Son of Sam, was. Or did he really kill the Anaheim woman?

"We knew of no boyfriend," said Jacob Scott. But if a daughter has a lover, the parents would be the last to know."

The call was reported to the Anaheim police. Fast-moving detectives fanned out and interviewed everyone remotely connected with the missing secretary. They wanted to know if she was romantically involved with anyone. The answer was always the same. Even her closest girlfriends said Dorothy was too wrapped up in her job and her son for anything else to matter.The police were as stymied as ever.

The Scott family, to this day, feel the calls were genuine. They have a standing reward of $2,000 for information leading to recovery of her body -- or its whereabouts. If only they knew for sure she was dead. It’s the not knowing that hurts. The glimmer of hope that drags out the pain of any family who has a missing loved one.

The unremitting strain of the passing years proved too much for Dorothy’s beloved grandfather, who lived with the family in Anaheim. He broke down physically and mentally, was confined to his bed, and died, doctors said, of a broken heart.

As the years dwindled, with no clues to Dorothy’s whereabouts, Chief Michel Mitchell of the UCI police said that he held out little hope Dorothy would ever be found, dead or alive.

"In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope," he said, "but it isn’t very bright at this moment, 20 years later."

Before he died, Jacob Scott faced reality. "She’s dead," he told family members. "My little girl is dead."

With the coming of the year 2000, police have made about as much progress as a centipede with bunions. All their efforts, schemes and stratagems to find Dorothy, her remains, or her killer have been fruitless. Remaining members of the Scott family insist that police agencies in legal circles have not done enough.

In contrast, homicide investigators told this writer that they tried everything humanly possible to solve the case.

"The old theory that there is no such thing as a perfect crime is a farce," one detective explained. "There are plenty of perfect crimes. Just bring up "missing persons" on your computer. Look at the Black Dahlia case - the case of Dorothy Jane Scott is every bit as puzzling - moreso, because we have no body."

Police say that over the past twenty years they have interrogated 150 people. Pleas for the kidnapper to contact the family have stopped, and so has the phone calls from the phantom abductor. "There has not been one response to the reward offer," a detective who worked long hours on the unsolvable case, said.

At this writing, the disappearance of Dorothy Jane Scott has been pushed back into the files at Anaheim police station where it is gaining cobwebs. Public interest in the case has lapsed. Curious neighbors who came by to visit and offer a word of sympathy to the Scotts, have died, moved away, or simply lost interest.

The strange cars that used to cruise by and point out the white-framed house on West Stonybrook where Dorothy once lived, come no more. 4-year-old Shanti, raised by Jacob and Vera Scott, is approaching 24.

Asked if he had a last message for his daughter’s killer, or to someone who may have viewed the case on Unsolved Mysteries, Jacob Scott said before his death, "If he really ever had any compassion for her, it just seems the decent thing to do would be to let us know where her remains are so we can give her a Christian burial."

With the passage of twenty years, unless someone, somewhere, comes forth, this heinous and revolting crime is destined to remain an enigma.

Anyone with any information concerning this case is urged to contact this writer at my e-mail address, or contact the Anaheim police in Southern California