Who Was Calling Dorothy Jane Scott?
Dr. Chris Kunkle, a forensic and clinical psychologist and co-founder of the Criminal Investigation Resource Center at Russell Sage College, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “Stalking usually starts with either some sort of prior relationship that they can't get over, or some perceived relationship.”
Scott worked as a secretary at a psychedelic paraphernalia shop in Anaheim, Calif. “He may have interacted with her and she didn't know it,” Kunkle says, “if he was a patron at a store or just a passerby.”
As the director of Cold Case Consultants of America, Alex Baber uses an AI program to track people’s digital footprints. He tells A&E Crime + Investigation he believes Scott began getting anonymous phone calls in October 1979. This could offer some clues about the stalker’s identity. “What happened in October that didn't happen in September and November?” Baber wonders. “New employees hired? Was there any change in her life?”
Whoever he was, the caller’s threats were escalating. Her mother described Scott being told, “When I get you alone, I will cut you up into bits so no one will ever find you,” according to The Orlando Sentinel.
“Her own instincts were telling her to protect herself,” Kunkle says.
Jealousy May Have Been a Factor
“Striking in the parking lot when she was going out to get the vehicle shows that this may have been something that was very visceral in response,” Dr. Christina Lane, a criminologist who co-founded the Criminal Investigation Resource Center, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
Kunkle believes the perpetrator “took advantage of the instance where she was alone in a seemingly desolate place to be able to act” and “probably wouldn't have approached her if she wasn't alone.”
“Maybe he believed that the guy that she brought to the hospital, she was in a relationship with him. That made him boil over,” Kunkle says.
The police took the anonymous caller seriously because he knew what Scott had been wearing even though she’d changed scarves on her way to the hospital. (Some reports state Scott switched from a black scarf to a red one, but the Orange County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to A&E Crime + Investigation that she changed from a black to a white scarf.)
Kunkle says the caller may have reached out to the paper to link himself to Scott: “If he kills her and is never known, then he's still not recognized by her.”
Dorothy Jane Scott's Parents Received Calls for Years
A week after Scott disappeared, a man called her parents and said, “I’ve got her.”
For the next four years, the stalker regularly phoned her parents. He almost always called on Wednesdays and spoke to Scott’s mother. They weren’t able to trace the calls. The sheriff’s department tells A&E Crime + Investigation that there are “no recordings of evidentiary value” from the anonymous caller.
Kunkle says the calls were the stalker’s way of “continuing control.”
On August 6, 1984, construction workers found a body in a brushy area about 30 feet from Santa Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim. The bones had been burnt, possibly in a 1982 brush fire, and bleached by the sun.
Lane notes that the jewelry's presence “makes it a little clearer that the motivation was not monetary, the motivation of this act was truly to abduct her and take her.”
The calls restarted after Scott’s body was found.
Is Dorothy Jane Scott's Cold Case Solvable?
DNA testing was not used in 1980, but fingerprinting was and blood samples were taken at the time.
Baber says the location of Scott’s body could offer clues. Her kidnapper “had to be familiar with that area to some degree. He just didn't randomly pick that area to drop her body.”
Lane says that, despite the fire, Scott’s car could still be a valuable source of evidence because of his presence in it.
“My understanding is he ignited the passenger side, which tells me something happened to her in that seat,” Baber notes.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department says the Santa Ana Police Department was last in possession of Scott’s vehicle. The Santa Ana Police Department did not respond to A&E Crime + Investigation's request for comment.
Answers may lie in Scott’s inner circle. “There are lots of cases where people just didn't recognize the signs of who was probably the stalker,” Kunkle says. “[In Scott’s case], I think he was seemingly close enough that people knew him but didn't know what he was doing.”
