On May 27, 1980, thirty-two-year-old secretary Dorothy Jane Scott dropped her young son Shanti off at her parents' house in Anaheim, California and went to a company meeting.
While there, a coworker named Conrad Bostron complained of pain so severe that Dorothy offered to take him to the hospital with another coworker named Pam Head. The doctors found that he had been bitten by a black widow spider. At around 11pm that same night, the man started to recover and was discharged. Pam stayed with him while he filled out paperwork for insurance, while Dorothy went to fetch the car and bring it close to the entrance so her distraught coworker wouldn't have to exert effort and walk far. After a few minutes, Pam looked out the window and noticed Dorothy's car exit the hospital parking lot. Pam and Conrad waited two hours for Dorothy to return, but when she did not they notified hospital security and Dorothy's parents. Authorities searched for Dorothy but turned up empty-handed in the subsequent days and weeks following her disappearance.
The first major lead police received was when it was reported that Dorothy had received numerous phone calls at work in the weeks before she vanished. She told a coworker that the unidentified caller watched her every move. She mentioned that the anonymous caller described specific details of her life to her which led her to believe the calls were real and not prank calls. The horror of Dorothy's disappearance didn't end the day she vanished. Almost every Wednesday for four years, the phone rang at the Scotts’ home with the voice of the same unidentified man who'd harrassed Dorothy. The calls usually came when Dorothy’s mother was home alone. The caller would either ask for Dorothy or state he'd killed her and she'd been held captive.
In August 1984 Dorothy's skeletal remains were found along Santa Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim Hills, and her car was found burned in an alley in the city of Santa Ana. Her disappearance and death, as well as the identity of the mysterious caller, remains a mystery.
Authorities believe that the mysterious unidentified caller was responsible for Dorothy's disappearance and death. He has never been identified. It has been speculated that this case could also be connected to the disappearance of Patricia Jean Schneider whose car was also found burning.