Criminology - Dorothy Jane Scott

Episode Date: July 27, 2019

Dorothy Jane Scott was a single mother living in Orange County, CA who vanished in 1980. Her partial remains were found years later at a construction site. Dorothy worked in the back office of a psychedelic/head shop even though, being very religious, Dorothy didn't participate in those kinds of activities. She began receiving obscene phone calls before her disappearance and her mother received them afterward. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the life and disappearance of Dorothy Jane Scott. Theories abound in this case. Dorothy was a single mother struggling to raise her son. Who would have wanted to kill her? Was it someone that saw her at the shop? There are some eerie parallels in this case to The Golden State killer who we have covered extensively. It is known that he was in the area around the time of Dorothy's disappearance. Could Dorothy have been a victim of GSK? Or was it one of several other potential suspects that have come up over the years? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 71 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you today? Doing good. We had some bad storms last night and I lost power, but so far so good. How about you? Yeah, no, I'm doing good.

So we're hoping your power holds out for us to record this episode. It has been super hot. And I almost hate to say that, right? It seems like if we're recording in the winter complaining about the fact that it's too cold, now it's too hot, it's almost like I'm not happy. It's like you're never satisfied. It's it's either too hot during the summer, like you said, or you're freezing and want to get back to summer when it's, you're digging snow out of the driveway. Yeah, I hate to say it, but that's kind of how it is. I'd love for it to be about 75.

But, you know, the number of days that we have that are about. 75 where we live, they're very few and far between. They just, we just don't have that many of them. We're not San Diego. Yeah, but then with San Diego, you get mudslides or earthquakes or whatever you get in California. It seems like no place is perfect. No, there's definitely not. You just got to be happy, right? With what you have. My problem is being happy with, with the weather. I don't know what it is about the weather. I'm just never happy. Very, very seldom am I happy? So we do have a bit of news more that we wanted to talk to everyone about. And it's the 2019 People's Choice Podcast Awards.

This is the 14th annual. And I'm surprised that they've been doing it this long. It's put out by podcastawards.com. And it is surprising that it's been 14 years. You think of when the internet started, when podcast started, and to have 14 years worth of these awards is kind of crazy. I guess time sort of flies. Well, time does fly for sure.

It seems like yesterday that you and I were working on Zodiac. It really does. And you can really help us out by going to podcast awards.com and clicking on the blue box that reads nominations now open, click here to nominate. And once you click that box, you'll be prompted to sign up and start nominating all of your favorite podcast in every category. Just remember, we're in the society category. Just look for criminology. And this thing does not last long. You can vote or nominate your favorite podcast until July 31st, 2019.

And for us, for criminology, if enough of our listeners head over and vote, that will put us into the next round. And then that next round voting starts on August 11, 2019. So, you know, as always, we really hope that you enjoy the show and that you'll show us some love and head over and vote. More if we have some Patreon shoutouts to give. We had Holly Norris, Keila Acker, Amy Comer, Deb Grant, Catherine Michelle, Rebecca Miller, and Zelia jumped out at our highest level. So that's awesome, amazing support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I recognize some of those names from the social media that we do in Twitter and Facebook.

And those are some really awesome people. And we thank everybody that helps support the show through. Patreon. And if you'd like to help support the show, you can visit patreon.com slash criminology. All right. Now that we have all that out of the way, it's time to jump into this episode. And we're going back to the year 1980. And that's when Dorothy Jane Scott vanished without a trace from the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange County, California. And it was four years after that, 1984 that a construction worker dug up some animal bone, which my assumption is morph, that's probably not that strange, right? Construction crew comes in, they're breaking ground.

You know, who knows what's underneath that ground that was put there, you know, who knows how many years ago. But it's what was under those animal bones that really got everyone buzzing. because under those were human skeletal remains. And those were later identified as belonging to Dorothy Jane Scott. And it's really the story, right? Leading up to Dorothy's abduction, everything around that. It's a bizarre one. And 39 years later, her case remains unsolved.

So the question in this case is who abducted and murdered Dorothy Jane Scott and why? Dorothy Jane Scott was born April 23, 1948, in McKees Court, Pennsylvania, to Jacob and Veras Scott. Eventually, the family moved to California and settled in the Anaheim area. After high school, Dorothy met a man from Missouri and began a relationship with him, but it didn't last. But out of that relationship came a son named Shanti, who went by Sean. He was born in 1976 in Orange County. While being a single mom was tough for Dorothy, she was determined. to work hard and make the best life that she could for Sean and herself.

Dorothy was an attractive, hardworking, energetic, and religious woman. But one thing is very clear. In all of the reading and the research about Dorothy Scott, her son, Sean, always came first. When Dorothy had to work, her parents, Jacob and Vera, would often watch Sean. Dorothy and Sean lived in Stanton, California, with Dorothy's aunt. And Stanton essentially borders Anaheim. It's in western Orange County, not all that far from Los Angeles.

Dorothy worked as a secretary for a place called Swingers Sykes Shop, which was attached to Custom John's Head Shop. Both businesses occupied a 2,400 square foot building at 517 South Brookhurst Street, in Anaheim. This is just about a mile south of the Santa Ana Freeway. The two businesses were very similar to one another. In California, head shops were originally called psych shops until about the end of the 1960s. The head in head shop referred to anyone who dabbled in drugs. So basically, you know, pot head, acid head. That's where they got it from. And back in that period of time, a large number of head shop customers were hippies.

And I think that makes sense because a lot of people out in California during that time, I think were hippies. Would you agree with that more if it? It seemed to me that a lot of the people that were into that lifestyle gravitated towards everything that California had to offer. Yeah, California, it seemed like no matter if it was up in San Francisco or down south in Orange County, they were very welcoming of. some of those people that like to dabble in that stuff.

And I guess I have to be careful in making the word hippie synonymous with drug users, but obviously a lot of hippies were into drugs. I think that's pretty well known. But when you talk about these psych shops or head shops, they typically sold all the drug paraphernalia that anyone would need, like bongs, pipes, roach clips, etc. a more if I know you're a lot more familiar with all of the inner workings of the drug paraphernalia business than I am.

I definitely remember the big roach clips with feathers hanging from them on people's mirrors back in the 80s. I do too. I do too. But to be honest with you, I was so young that at the time, I did not know what that was. I literally thought that was like some kind of hair accessory or. And I think people did clip them into their hair at some, you know, in some times. But that's how naive I was.

And maybe it's just because I was a little bit younger. It's like a lot of things, right? You look back now as a middle-aged adult at some of the things that happened. And you're like, oh, that's what that was. Now, I remember the first time I ever saw when I had asked my mom what it was and she gave me some kind of crazy excuse. Well, as a parent, you need to be light on your feet. Right? When your kids are asking all of these questions, it's kind of a dance sometimes around what the answer is. It depends on the parents. Some parents are like, that's a roach clip and this is what you use it for. But I think the big thing to make of this psych shop, really it wasn't the type of environment that someone would expect a person like Dorothy Jane Scott to work in. We mentioned it. She was religious. But she was also a single parent who needed a job.

And Dorothy's duties usually kept her working in a back office away from most of the clientele. I think in large part, she was shielded from that customer facing part of the business. You know, she was dealing with paperwork and things like that. She wasn't out behind the counter recommending which bong works best with whatever strain of But weed you had. And I think you've got to give her credit as a single mother going out and working a job and taking care of a child on her own. She took whatever she could and went out and made money for herself and her son. So that's admirable. Well, and that's what single mothers do. Right. And that's why, you know, we praise all mothers. Being a mother is very tough. I look at my wife and think, man, you really got it going on to be able to juggle everything. everything and it's just amazing. I say it a lot. I think being a mom is way harder than being a dad. Not that they're not both challenging, but I think you're right. Morph,

you look at Dorothy Jane Scott and say she was going to do whatever she had to do to take care of her son, Sean. And if that meant that she had to work in a place that sold things that maybe she didn't believe in, that's what she was going to do. So you just talked about it. Mike, by all accounts, Dorothy was a devoted mother. Instead of going out on a date and having some fun with somebody to get away, she preferred staying home with her family. When she wasn't working, she wasn't home. One friend described her as, quote, dull as a phone, and Dorothy was compassionate and kind-hearted and quiet. Dorothy's brother once said, she exemplified the word give. She just give and give and give, no matter what it cost her. And Dorothy's life seemed

pretty normal and perfect, but that all changed in 1980. So I want to go back morph and talk just about this statement from a friend of hers who described her as dull as a phone. My assumption is that was meant in not as a derogatory of a way as it comes out because that's, that sounds pretty bad, right? You're as dull as a phone. But I think maybe it's, we're saying it out of context, hopefully a little bit. My assumption is, it was meant to say that, you know, she's reliable. You can count on Dorothy to do this, this and this. She's not going to go out and do anything that's going to shock you to surprise you.

You know, like a phone. A phone does what it does. And that's all it does. Yeah. I think she pretty much is saying what you're saying that she wasn't a wild card. Yes. Yeah. I just wanted to make that distinction because, you know, it was from a friend.

I don't think it was meant to be that derogatory. In the spring of 1980, Dorothy started receiving harassing telephone calls at work from an unknown male caller. She told her mother Vera that the voice sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. Sometimes the caller was nice and friendly. Other times he was mean and aggressive. He told Dorothy he was following her.

He told her how much he loved her and that he knew everything about her daily routine. team. He once left a single red rose on the windshield of her car. And I think at first, Dorothy dismissed these phone calls as someone joking around. But as the calls continued, I think that thought went away. And she began to get paranoid that the person who was calling her might be dangerous. I think this would be extremely scary. You know, as a woman, a single mother to start getting calls like this. And I think probably pretty easy at first to say, okay, somebody's messing around. I'm not making too much out of it. But as they continue, they would be very scary. I mean, anytime someone says they're following you, that's scary. And then the person made it even more real by,

leaving the roads. Then you're taking it from the phone call, which seems somewhat far away, right? I mean, even though it doesn't have to be, the person could be across the street, but it's over the line. But now it's real because it's physical. Something is physical when it's left on the windshield. I think a lot of our listeners out there that are younger are probably thinking how come they just didn't use caller ID, how come they didn't track these calls using any number of things that are available today to do that. And back in the 80s, especially the early 80s, that kind of stuff just wasn't available. I don't even know if they had Star 69 back then. Yeah, I don't know if they did either, but you're right. I mean, today it's very tough unless you're

using, well, now today they probably have software that masks your cell phone number, it gives you a fake cell phone number. Who knows? There's all kinds of stuff going on. But in the 80s, obviously no cell phones. You're calling on a landline, and it wasn't that easy to figure out who was calling you. And I know in the town where I grew up, at least, prank calls were very common. I used to get them at my house. And as a teenager, hanging out with friends, we used to get a kick out of making them. And they weren't threatening. We never threatened anybody. We would just say things like you've won a contest, blah, blah, blah. And most of the time, I think people could tell that we were messing around that we were teenagers,

but we never went over that line of threatening somebody or telling them we were watching them or stalking them. And I think that's where this case really takes on a new life. Yeah, I did that as well. And I don't know if you remember this more. If there was a very popular group of guys, they were called the Jerky Boys. You remember them? I remember that. I think that was 1995 that the Jerky Boys came out.

Okay. So maybe that was a little bit later. but I do remember that it was all centered around prank phone calls. But I think the key here is no one, or at least we're not talking about, calling women and saying, I'm watching you or something like from the scream movie, right? It wasn't meant to be scary. Now, should we have been doing that? Probably not.

And I think the key difference is if you're a teenager doing it just to mess around to do stupid teenage things. That's one thing. But when you're an adult male doing this to an adult woman, you have to think that she's going to be scared, and that has to be the reason you're doing it, or else you wouldn't do it. And these calls did escalate. They did get scary. During one call, the caller said, okay, now you're going to come my way. And when I get you alone, I will cut you up into bits, so no one will ever find you. The mystery caller also told Dorothy, he was watching her every move and detailing what she was wearing that day. He also provided other information about her daily routines.

This really began to scare Dorothy. She was terrified and concerned for her safety, and she actually began taking karate lessons and considered buying a handgun. On the evening of Wednesday, May 28, 1980, Dorothy dropped Sean off at her parents' house, and then she attended a 9 p.m. staff meeting at the shop. While there, she noticed a nasty red streak on the arm of fellow co-worker Conrad Bostron. Dorothy was worried, and she convinced Conrad to let her take him to UCI Medical Center,

which stands for University of California, Irvine. This medical center was six miles away in Orange, California. Another co-worker, Pam Head, tagged along. When Conrad got to the hospital and was checked out, doctors and them that he had suffered from an infected spider bite. While he was being treated, Pam and Dorothy read magazines and chatted with one another to buy the time. When Conrad was finished with his treatment, the three headed to the hospital pharmacy to get his prescription filled. As they stood in line, Dorothy offered to pull her car around to the front of the hospital, so Conrad didn't

have to walk far. When Pam and Conrad were done, they went outside to wait for Dorothy. A few minutes passed and Dorothy still hadn't shown up. Then Pam and Conrad spotted Dorothy's car, a 1973 white Toyota station wagon, driving towards them at a high rate of speed. The car's headlights blinded them, so they couldn't see who was driving. They frantically waved their hands, but the driver ignored them and sped on. The two ran after Dorothy's car, but the car's headlights suddenly went out, and the car exited the parking lot. Pam and Conrad assumed that something had happened with Sean. So Dorothy had to leave in a rush to go to him. The pair waited for an hour or two, hoping that Dorothy would return. And again, more if we talked about, this was before

cell phones. So it was not easy to get in touch with people back then. It was really hard for them to just reach out and contact Dorothy. When she didn't return to the hospital, Pam called Dorothy's parents who were watching Sean while Dorothy attended the meeting, Pam was shocked to hear that the Scots hadn't heard from Dorothy all evening and that nothing was wrong with Sean that would have caused Dorothy to have to rush away like that. When Pam told the Scots what happened, they called police to report Dorothy missing. The Scots couldn't think of anyone who would want to hurt their daughter. She was friendly and well-liked. But initially, police didn't see cause for concern and advised Jacob and Vera to not say anything to the media.

Meanwhile, the police reached out to Sean's father to check him out, but he had an airtight alibi. He was in Missouri at the time Dorothy went missing. They questioned Dorothy's co-workers at Swingers twice. Because Dorothy worked in the back office away from the public eye, police felt her kidnapper most likely wasn't a customer. A few hours after Dorothy vanished, her car was found burning in a Santa Ana Alley, but Dorothy was nowhere to be found. It was then that police treated the case like an abduction, impossible murder.

They looked over the car, but unfortunately, because of the state that it was in, it didn't yield any significant clues. A few days after her daughter's disappearance, Vera began receiving phone calls every Wednesday from an unknown male caller, and they always came in when Vera was home. alone. The first time the caller asked, are you related to Dorothy Scott? And Vera said yes. Then he said, I've got her and hung up the phone. In subsequent calls, the caller would either ask for Dorothy, say he had Dorothy, or that he had killed her. Now, obviously the Scots got the police involved, told them about the calls that Vera was receiving. Police believed that the caller was

indeed the person who had abducted Dorothy. Within a few weeks, Jacob Scott's patience grew thin, and he contacted the Santa Ana Register. They ran a story on Dorothy's disappearance. On June 12, 1980, an unidentified man called the Santa Ana Register and spoke with Pat Riley, the managing editor. The man claimed he killed Dorothy and that she was his love. He caught her cheating on him, so he murdered her. But as far as anyone knew, Dorothy was. dating anyone at the time she was abducted. Somehow the man also knew about the spider bite on Dorothy's co-worker, and that Dorothy was wearing a red scarf the night she disappeared. These details had not been released by police at that time. The caller also said that Dorothy

telephoned him from UCI Medical Center, but Pam had disputed this, saying Dorothy was with her the whole time, except for when she went to the restroom, and Dorothy never made any phone calls from the hospital. The Scots endured the mysterious phone calls from 1980 to 1984. They stopped when Jacob answered the phone one time instead of Vera. Police tried tracing the calls, but with little success. The man would not stay on the line long enough. One source says police have the recordings of the man's voice and it's described as gruff and plainly disguised. Four years, Morph, that is a long time. Number one, for your daughter to be missing, you're extremely worried. You don't know what's going on. But then, you know, secondly, to have to endure these phone calls. I can't imagine

what that would be like. It's almost like the tension. I'm not sure what the right word for it is, but the anxiety that you're feeling over not knowing what happened to your daughter, it's being compounded by these relentless phone calls taunting. It's just making it so much worse. And I think it takes an especially twisted person to make calls like that to the family of a missing woman because A, it's either the person that did it and he's sort of rubbing salt in their wounds or B, it's somebody making a hoax call just to harass him. And either way, it's really disturbing. Yeah, and you and I have covered this before. We'll probably talk about it a little bit, you know, later in the episode. It takes a certain type of person to be able to take someone's

life. That's horrible, right? But to then place calls to the victim's family. And like you said, morph, kind of rub salt in the wounds. That's just another layer of depravity. And in the situation, where you didn't have anything to do with the disappearance or the murder or whatever it is and you decide to taunt the family, oh my gosh, that's horrible as well. You are not a good person for doing any of that. It was on August 6, 1984, that the construction worker that we mentioned earlier found the skeletal remains at this construction site. This was off Santa Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim. The remains were of an animal, but it was underneath that that they found human remains. They found a pelvis, an arm, two thighs, and a skull. Along with the remains were a turquoise ring and a watch.

And the watch had stopped at 1230 a.m. May 29th, 1980. And this is significant. This is about an hour after Pam and Conrad last saw Dorothy Scott. Vera identified the ring as Dorothy's. And a week later, the remains were positively identified as those of Dorothy Jane Scott. An autopsy was unable to determine cause of death. And then you get to the animal bones. These bones were from a dog. And what's strange about this is Dorothy didn't own a dog.

Obviously, she didn't have a dog with her that night at the hospital or when she left the hospital. So to me, that adds another layer to the mystery. You mentioned that the watch being stopped an hour or so after she was last seen leaving the hospital or her car drove out of the driveway there. And to me, that's important because that seems like the person didn't want to spend time with her. He didn't take her home and tie her up. assuming that he buried her right away and that her watch stopped when she was buried. So that could indicate that she was killed immediately and buried and that the person that did it to her wasn't interested in keeping her around very long. So the watch is interesting.

One of the things that I'm perplexed by is this watch because I don't know what type of watch it is, right? We couldn't figure that out. my assumption is this is probably a watch back in 1980 that you had to whine by hand. Usually once a day, you know, something like that. Because I just don't know what caused the watch to stop. Did it break? Was there, you know, an altercation where the watch got damaged? You know, this is, again, part of the mystery.

But the fact that it's an hour after. Cam and Conrad Lassie Dorothy, to me is very telling. I'm not thinking that it just so happened that this is when the watch needed to be wound and it ran out. I'm not thinking that. I'm thinking it had something to do specifically with Dorothy's abduction and death. And maybe just because it got damaged. But we just don't have the specifics on that.

But that's one of those things, right? It's a tidbit in a can. that you can go down a rabbit hole with and really spend a lot of time talking about what this watch really means. Now, it could be that the watch just hadn't been wound that day and it ran out or it hadn't been wound in however many days. But I just don't see it. I don't see it being that coincidental. I think it was in direct correlation with Dorothy's disappearance and murder. I really do. Yeah, I agree with you. It's hard not to think that in just an hour after she goes missing, that it just happens to stop at that time naturally. Something seems to tie it to her abduction.

But I think your point is well taken. We cover a lot of cases. There are killers who abduct people and they keep them for some length of time, doing whatever heinous acts that they do. They do. If this watch is any indication of the length of time that the killer was with Dorothy, it's a short period of time. And I think a lot of the unknown comes from Dorothy's remains and the state that her remains were in. Right. But that point, it's four years. I mean, we are talking about strictly skeletal remains. There is no way for a medical examiner to say if Dorothy was sexually assaulted. You just, you don't have that ability at that point in time.

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Not long after Dorothy Jane Scott's body was found,

Vera received one final call from the mystery caller. He simply asked, is Dorothy home? The call stopped altogether soon after. Jacob and Vera Scott never found out who murdered their daughter. Jacob passed away in 1994, followed by Vera in 2002. In 2016, a true crime blogger known as crime blogger, 1983 wrote an article about Dorothy's disappearance. In May of 2017, Sean Scott, Dorothy's now adult son, reached out to him. Sean provided never before seen pictures of his mother, as well as information

not found anywhere else online. Sean revealed that the shop, where Dorothy worked, Swinger's psych shop, was at one time owned by her father, Jacob Scott. A man named John Kikola purchased. it, having already owned the adjacent custom John's head shop. Apparently after Jacob sold it to Kicola, Kikola would still use Jacob as a handyman to fix things around the shop. Jacob's home phone number was well known to the employees at Swingers. So you have to ask the question, could the person that abducted and killed Dorothy have been one of the people that worked there? That could explain how they were able to call and taunt her mother. Now, it could also be that their number was listed in the white pages,

but we couldn't figure that out. We did some research on that. We just don't know. But if it wasn't listed, then I think this swinger's angle becomes more important. I think it's also important to mention that in all the calls, both Dorothy and her mother felt that somebody was changing their voice a little bit. So if it was a stranger, would they really need to change your voice? Maybe it was somebody that they knew or was in their inner circle.

No, I think that's a good point. If you are a complete stranger, unknown to the person that you're calling, why do you need to disguise your voice? Maybe you do. Maybe you do as a precaution, but I think more so you would do it if you knew or even thought that the person on the other end of the phone. could possibly identify your voice because they'd heard you speak before, they'd been around you, that makes a lot of sense to me. Through friends of Dorothe's in Missouri, Sean learned of a possible suspect in his mother's murder. The man's name was Mike Butler. He was apparently an unstable individual who lived in the Santiago Mountains and became

involved in cult activity. According to Sean, Mike was obsessed with Dorothy, and it just so happened that Mike's sister Rosemary allegedly worked with Dorothy at Swinger's psych shop. Everyone was treated like family at Swingers, and Jacob never suspected an employee in his daughter's murder. Sean has repeatedly tried speaking with Rosemary, but she avoids talking to him. Authorities were aware of Butler at the time, but didn't have enough evidence to call him a suspect or a person of interest.

Mike Butler passed away from pancreatic cancer in June 2014, and online memorial offered some information on his life and the type of person he was. And it read as follows. Have you ever noticed a person who seems interested in you, not for a particular reason or because they want something from you, but genuinely interested in you and who you are? They want to help you simply because to them, it seems like the right thing to do. Perhaps they might talk to you about a problem you might be struggling with and guide you towards some possible options or resolutions. Or maybe they might seem to sense you are just a little lonely and might want to talk to another person who will listen and be sincerely concerned with what you have to say. He might show up at your doorstep,

wanting to fix your toilet leak, or that annoying noise your watch McCullet is making, often without even charging you anything for his time or the supplies. If you met Mike Butler, you undoubtedly recognize he was just that sort of person. A bear of a man, Mike did not look the type you necessarily wanted as a neighbor, or even as a friend. With a full scraggly beard and a seemingly endless number of hats that he and his friends could laugh about and even where, Mike cut a path that others just felt inclined to follow. because they sensed his good, old-fashioned desire to be wherever you might need him.

He readily shared his zeal for his beliefs. He was a deeply religious man. Mike was born two loving parents, his mother, a New Zealand war bride, his father a dedicated career army captain. He was an army brat as the young family followed the assigned army post. When his father retired, the family settled in Southern California. Mike was well accustomed to being an athlete as well, voted MVP for cross-country track. He graduated from Fullerton Union High School in the early 1960s and went on to attend

California State University Fullerton, majoring in English. He was drafted into the United States Army at the age of 20, finished basic training and advanced individual training in infantry, and then something very unusual happened. Mike's attitude and attention to detail was noted, and he was trained and served as a drill instructor for new recruits. After serving briefly in that capacity, he was assigned overseas to Germany in 1967 and became a news writer reporter and was often published in Stars and Stripes News. He served as the base commander's public information and media officer and photographer as well. When Mike's time in the Army was complete, his civilian life was quite different from the military life he had been used to, he became a music roadie for several rock bands, including the Beach Boys, and Bertha, an all-girl rock band his sister was a member of. He soon settled in Orange County, California, and was employed as a machine shop maintenance employee and later as an electrician at Biola College.

So more if I felt like we had to use this because there just really wasn't a lot of other information out there about this individual Mike Butler. I think to say the least, the guy had an interesting lot. Goes from being an army brat to, you know, being in the army himself, does all kinds of stuff, you know, drill instructor, media officer, but then gets out and is a roadie for some rock bands, then becomes an electrician. You know, it's a guy's life written by his family. As I was listening to what you said, I didn't hear anything strange or unusual or scary in there. It just sounded like a normal guy who had an interesting life.

But then again, if this is his family or friends that put this statement together about his life, I wouldn't expect to see some weird, scary stuff in there, would you? No, I think it would be shocking to see in a memorial, to see or read in a memorial of someone's life, a bunch of red flags. You're just not going to see that. And I think we talk about enough cases where friends or family of some bad people are shocked when they find out that the person is a bad person. They had no idea.

That could be the case here, or maybe this guy was what he seemed, and he wasn't a monster of the person that was doing this to Dorothy. While Butler was never arrested and didn't seem like a murdering type, he makes for a good possible suspect if the information we have about him is accurate. For one, his sister supposedly worked with Dorothy, so he may have met her through Rosemary. It's rumored that he became obsessed with Dorothy, and as we mentioned, the caller disguised his voice, which means that he didn't want any of the person. one to recognize it? Is it possible that Vera might have recognized Butler's voice? If Rosemary did indeed work at the shop, there's a good chance Mike Butler may have stopped in a time or two to see his sister and met the Scott family. And if Rosemary did work there, she may have known about the spider bite that brought Dorothy to the hospital and relayed the

information to Mike. But there's actually some doubt on whether Rosemary actually worked at the shot. During the 1970s and 80s, she was a backup singer for some very famous singers. I mean, we're talking about Linda Ronstadt, Carol King, Billy Joel, Whitney Houston, Kenny Loggins, and others. But those are very famous musical act. The singing gigs would most likely have earned her enough money that she wouldn't have needed to work in the shop. In her biography on her Facebook page, there's no mention of her doing anything other than singing as a career. As far as we can tell, no suspects have ever officially been named by police, and no one's ever been arrested in connection with the abduction and murder of Dorothy Jane Scott.

But we need to consider something, and that is that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was no shortage of dangerous men roaming Southern California and Orange County. In fact, there were a lot of serial killers that moved through there. People like Rodney Alcala, the dating game killer, or Gerald Parker, aka the bedroom basher. They were prowling in the 70s and 80s, and the night stalker Richard Ramirez was down in that area.

There were plenty of predators prowling that area when Dorothy Jane Scott was abducted and killed. If Dorothy wasn't killed by someone close to her, then maybe she was the victim of one of these violent predators. And Morph, I think this is something that's talked about a lot. You almost have to talk about it. Anytime you're doing a case in the Southern California area, because there were so many violent predators.

And really some that gained a lot of notoriety. I mean, you mentioned it. Rodney Alcala, Richard Ramirez, these are people that are very well known. They're infamous in the world of true crime. And you just named a couple. I mean, there were many, many more, right? operating in around that time frame, it's plausible that a person such as Dorothy Jane Scott could have been targeted on a night by someone like this. I think statistics would point to the fact

that most likely it was somebody that Dorothy knew, but it didn't have to be. Now, there's one violent predator whose MO closely matches what Dorothy Jane Scott experienced. And, And that is the Golden State killer. And he was in the Orange County area around the time of Dorothy's murder. Of course, at that point, there locally, he was known as the Nightstalker, but later became known as the original Nightstalker since he was active before Richard Ramirez was given that moniker. And obviously, more, if this is something that we've talked about a lot, we did an entire season,

a very long season, in fact, on. the Golden State Killer. And we know that the original Nightstocker slash Golden State Killer was identified in April 2018 and taken into custody. The man that police believe committed all these crimes is Joseph James DeAngela. And speaking of that season two that we did on the Golden State Killer, it's still available on Stitcher Premium and they have a free 30-day trial. So, you know, if you found criminology within the last six, seven months and you have not listened to season two, it is well worth it to take advantage of that free 30 day trial so that you can binge that entire season.

But in our coverage of the East Area rapist, original nightstock or Golden State killer, the one thing that we constantly saw was that the predator was not just interested in getting. in and out. This person enjoyed tormenting his victims, both before an attack and after he physically and sexually attacked them. And the timeframes of, you know, when this person would torment friends and family, it's astounding. I mean, we're talking weeks or months before an attack. And then after an attack, weeks, months, sometimes even years, he would make phone calls and torment victims' families or the victims themselves if they survive. And I think more if it's really easy to make the connection here because you remember back to the specifics of, and there were so many, right? So many victims in that East Area Rapist Golden State Killer case. some of them are so eerily similar to what we've just talked about happening with Dorothy Jane Scott

and the subsequent phone calls to her mother Vera. This taunting came a lot of the time in the form of phone calls to his victims. Sometimes he would whisper or say things that were seen or threatening. Other times he wouldn't say anything. So this history of calling and taunting victims by DeAngelo closely matches what we see in the Dorothy Jean Scott case. But it's not just the calls to Dorothy that seem to make DeAngelo a possible person of interest in this case. One thing we know, going back to some of the earliest East Area rapist activity, was that in many instances, dogs were bludgeoned or stabbed during his prowling.

This was a trend that continued right up until the East Area rapist migrated to the Galleta area of Santa Barbara, where he became known there locally as the Creole. killer. In multiple instances there, dogs were injured or killed, and in one attack, there was evidence that DeAngelo brought a dog with him to the scene of the crime. So when we think about all of that and the fact that Dorothy Scott was found in a grave with the dog, it's hard to ignore that there are some parallels here. I think we have to look at the locations of DeAngelo's attacks in Orange County. What's also interesting is that family members of DeAngelo's lived in Irvine, directly in the one to two square miles section in between his victims, Manuel Wittoon, and Janelle Cruz. Well, it turns out that DeAngelo's

brother John lived very close to Dorothy Jane Scott's parents, her aunt who she was staying with at the time of her murder, and her place of employment at the head shop. John DeAngelo lived on Tina Way. Dorothy's parents lived on Stony Brook Drive. Dorothy's aunt lived on the 8,000 block of Winston Road, and the head shop was on South Brookhurst. These four locations are in close proximity to a one to two mile stretch of a road called South Gilbert Street. And how's this for close? The distance between John DeAngelo's home on Tina Way and Dorothy's aunt's home on Winston

is only seven-tenths of a mile. And more if I think, you know, people could say, well, you're just always trying to work in the Golden State Killer. All right, maybe so, maybe so. that is a case that is fascinating. And we know from our audience that people are fascinated by that case. We're not making this up, though, to include it in the episode. I think that's what's important when you look at the three locations. Okay. The fact that they are fairly close to each other, that doesn't mean anything. When you talk about the fact that DeAngelo's brother John lived on Tina Way,

In the middle of these other, you know, around these other three locations, that gets very interesting to me because that's a connection. That's a possible connection. DeAngelo would have most likely visited his brother, John. Is it out of the realm of possibility that he might have visited, you know, the psych shop or the head shop or, you know, a place that was very close? I don't think it is. We don't have any concrete evidence to back that up, but you often don't in these unsolved murders. But you can't tell me it's not interesting. And to your point, I don't think we're inserting DeAngelo into this equation randomly. His ammo fits what we saw in Dorothy's case.

So it's only natural to discuss him here. So is it possible that DeAngelo chose his known victims in Orange, County because he somehow saw them while visiting family members, I think it's entirely possible. If he was Dorothy Scott's killer, could he have targeted her after seeing her in the area? Unfortunately, we don't know much yet about what drove DeAngelo. Hopefully we will, I don't know. We don't know whether he chose his victims randomly or if he even interacted with his family in Orange County.

we just don't know. Police are still trying to dig into him and to protect the integrity of their investigation and the case against him. Obviously, they're not talking a lot about the particulars. And of course, neither is Joseph J. DeAngelo. He's not giving any interviews talking about how he did what he did because right now he doesn't want to say that he did that stuff. I think one last thing we need to talk about connected to DeAngelo is where Dorothy Scott was abducted from, the University of Irvine Medical Center. That was the same place that one of DeAngelo's victims worked at. Victim Keith Harrington was in his fourth year of medical school at the University of California at Irvine when he was murdered in August of 1980. So you have Dorothy abducted from the medical center in May of 1980.

This is after she experienced some harassment similar to that of what DeAngelo used to inflate. And then just a few months later, Keith Harrington, who worked at that medical center, was allegedly murdered by DeAngelo. And one thing we know about Joseph DeAngelo, assuming that he was the Easter rapist, Golden State Killer, if I say, Ransacker, was that he took victims out of locations where they were in and tried to move them to other spots. But he never really did that at a crowded public location like a hospital. And I do think, more, if that's the one thing that jumped out at,

me. You know, we spent so much time researching and talking about the East Area Rapist, the original Nightstocker, the Viceria Ransacker, the Golden State Killer. It got to a point where there were so many names I couldn't keep track of the Creek Killer. I didn't even mention that one. You know, at different points in time, he was called so many different things. But the thing that stood out to me was that most of the time, it seemed as though he was breaking into a house, assaulting, murdering his victim. I really don't remember us talking about there being thoughts of him snatching people from crowded places. And it sounds like that's what happened to Dorothy Jane Scott. So, you know, as much as we've talked about the M.O. of Joseph J.

DiAngelo, again, if he was in fact this person they believe he was, being similar to the person that abducted and murdered Dorothy Jane Scott, this one thing kind of gnaws at me a little bit, this one difference. All of this is interesting to me and hopefully to everyone listening. I think it's pretty compelling. But at the end of the day, it's just a theory, right? It's a possibility that Joseph DiAngelo could have been involved in the abduction and murder of Dorothy Jane Scott. There's really not enough for us to say with any degree of certainty.

And unless there's some sort of physical evidence that could possibly tie him to Dorothy's murder, there may not be any way to connect him, but there might. And I think the possibility of that is intriguing. right you know more there is going to be and we've said it we said it in our update episode there is going to be a lot hopefully that comes out in the in the next few months and years however long it takes and i say hopefully because they've got to get him to talk and he may not do that or maybe he will after he's convicted if he's convicted maybe he'll sit down and do an interview we don't know yeah i for one can't wait to see what reveals there are about him. If there's a trial, what comes out and

what things we learn, questions that have been answered yet, maybe we'll finally get some of those answers. And I hope there is a trial, right? Because there will be a lot of things that I'm thinking have not been made public up to this point that will come out during that trial. I, for one, I'm in the camp that I hope there's a trial. Yeah, whether it's a plea deal or a trial. Or a trial, I'm hoping that somehow DeAngelo spills the beans about the information he has because that'll help a lot of people and answer a lot of questions, hopefully. Well, you would think with a plea, part of that would be that he has to come clean. Why would they do the plea without some part of it being that he has to take ownership for

his crimes and he has to give details and all of that. Yeah, usually that's one of the conditions of, of a plea deal. The other thing I think, Morph, is that, you know, we're talking about Dorothy Scott. And it's tragic. It's tragic what happened to her single mother. But how many other cases like this around the California area? And maybe we'll find out maybe even in some other states could ultimately be connected to this man. It's mind boggling if you think about it. It's mind boggling what is known right now about the crimes that he committed. What I keep thinking about is it could be equally mind-boggling what we don't know about.

And that could include Dorothy Jane Scott. It could include, I don't know, I don't want to make up a number, but 30, 40, 50 other victims that we just don't know about yet. And even if Dorothy Jane Scott wasn't abducted and murdered by DeAngelo, it could be somebody like him. As we mentioned, there are a lot of bad guys running around down in that area. Or maybe it was just somebody that made her coffee at the local store she went into that became fixated on her and didn't even have a close connection to her. We hear stories about that, cases where people just casually know somebody or had barely any interactions with them.

And they wind up stalking them and doing these kinds of. things to them. But I want to go back to that point you just made. It could be another serial killer and it could be one that we don't know about, right? We talked about Ramirez or Alcal. I mean, yeah, it could be that. It could be a serial killer that operated that was never caught. And maybe ultimately, they'll put that together. I mean, there's just so many facets that go with these unsolved murders, especially in the 1980s in Southern California, because unfortunately, it was a prolific time for serial killers there. We should point out that we reached out to Orange County investigators that are in charge of Dorothy Jane Scott's case to participate in this episode, but they declined.

Dorothy Scott's son, Sean Scott, who's now in his 40s, currently resides in Missouri. We talked a little bit about Sean. He was young. What was he more? Four years old when his mother died. Yeah. I mean, how horrible to lose your mother in the way that it happened, right? Abducted, murdered. You're four years old. And now he's 40-some years old and still doesn't know exactly what happened to his mother. That would eat at me night. and day. And I'm sure it does to him too. I just can't imagine how traumatic that experience would be and what you'd have to work through, right, growing up to lead a good, healthy, productive life. You've got to work through those issues. And I'm sure he did. It's just something that you wish no young child ever had to go through. And I think this is a sad case all the way around because he had to grow up the bulk of his life without his mother. And I'm sure at that age, he probably didn't have much in the way of memories of her. And my own wife, one thing she's told me in the past

is that if God forbid anything happened to her, she'd be so afraid that our kids wouldn't remember her if they were too young if something happened. So I just really feel for her because I know as a mother, that was probably her greatest fear, and that's what happened to her. But that's it. That's the case of Dorothy Jane Scott. This is one, I think, unlike some of the other ones we do that are unsolved, that there is just a ton of possibilities here to me of possibly finding something out in the future, right? Whether it's, you know, Joseph J.D. Angelo or maybe they identify another serial killer using some of the same techniques. And they find out. out that this person was responsible for the abduction and murder of Dorothy Jane Scott. It's an interesting time that we're living in as it relates to unsolved cases. You and I've talked about that before. If you're a murderer and you're sitting at home and have been for the last 30 plus years

thinking, I did this horrible thing or a bunch of horrible things and I got it. away with it. That may not be the case. And I think from a law enforcement perspective, that has to be extremely motivating, knowing that you have some of these new tools and we're seeing a lot of breakthroughs. I think a lot of these cold cases have been attacked with renewed vigor. I'll say that. We'd like to thank Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, go out, give us a five-star review. If you haven't done so. If you love the show, that goes a long way. Keep telling your friends. You know, we hear from people all the time that say, you know, my best friend, so-and-so turned me on to the show. I'm glad I found it.

That means the world to us. That just means new people finding the show, getting a chance to listen. We love it. And if you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. If you'd like to join the discussion group on Facebook, just search for Criminology Podcast, discussion, and fans. So Morp and I will be back with you next Saturday night with an all-new episode of Criminology. So until then, this is Mike Ferguson. And Morph. And we'll talk to you then. Take care, everyone.