In May 1980, Santa Ana Register City Editor, Pat O. Riley received a phone call from an anonymous caller. “Dorothy Jane Scott…she was my love. I caught her cheating with another man…she denied having another man…I killed her,” said the unknown male caller.
A 32-year-old female by the name of Dorothy Jane Scott went missing shortly after midnight on May 29, 1980.
Dorothy was last seen at The UCI Medical Center in Orange. Her friends saw a suspicious figure driving her 1973 white Toyota station wagon exiting the hospital parking lot. The friends reported that she had been missing for nearly an hour. Santa Ana PD found her car on fire at 5 a.m. in an alleyway in the 800 block of South Townsend.
The day before she went missing, she was wearing blue jeans, a long-sleeved maroon blouse, a white scarf, and a round turquoise ring on her left index finger.
In 1994, two construction workers at a work site in Anaheim Hills found a human skull along with various skeletal remains and the turquoise ring. Through dental records, it was determined that the skull was Dorothy’s.
The potential murder suspect was a man who continually made calls to Dorothy and her family. However, the mysterious man was never identified or found.
Investigators with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Task Force are searching for new leads on Dorothy’s case. The search to bring justice to Dorothy and her family is ongoing.
