Post by hi224 on Aug 27, 2019 0:20:47 GMT
If you prefer to listen instead of reading: youtu.be/e1zf1ODl2lk
Trevor Silverwood
Trevor Silverwood was a British politician who served as a local councilor in his hometown of Bridlington in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Beginning in 1967, he was subject to a campaign of harassment that lasted for over a decade. Someone - or a group of someone's - began sending him hundreds of postcards. While the postcards were never overtly threatening, the knowledge of Silverwood's life displayed by the writer was unnerving, as the postcards made reference to meals he had eaten, programs he had watched on tv, and articles of clothing he had worn. All of the postcards were written in shorthand, a somewhat antiquated method of speed writing which replaces common words with symbols, and all were signed with the matchstick figure of the saint. Simon Templar, aka the saint, is a fictional character in a series of novels by British-Chinese writer Leslie Charteris. The saint is an anti hero, robin hood like character, who battles with arms dealers, warmongers, drug dealers, and corrupt politicians. While some of the postcards bore postmarks from nearby cities like Rotherham, Silverwoods stalker also sent cards that had been postmarked in such far away locations as India, America, and Canada.
In the late 1970s, Silverwood decided to confront his stalker by placing a personal ad in a local newspaper begging the writer to identify himself. Days later, he received a card postmarked in the canary islands off the west coast of Africa, which read "Don't be naughty. What a nice photograph of you the newspaper published!" Some time after this, Silverwood was questioned by police over a minor driving matter, and later received a card containing a detailed description of his interview.
Due to the intimate knowledge displayed of Silverwood's life, some suspect that Silverwood himself was responsible for sending the postcards, but this theory fails to explain how Silverwood could send himself postcards from faraway locations. Due to the signature of the saint, a character who battled with corrupt politicians, some believe that Silverwood was targeted by an individual or group who were angry with him over decisions he made during his political career.
According to Silverwoods son, the postcards finally stopped coming in the 1980s. The indentity of the writer, or writers, why they targeted Silverwood, and how they were able to know intimate details about his life, all remain unknown.
The Watcher
Westfield is an affluent town in New Jersey, home to just over 30,000 people. In 2014, Maria and Derek Broaddus bought a house in Westfield, paying 1.4 million for a Dutch colonial style home. The couple decided to renovate the home before moving in, and while they were working on the home, they received a disturbing letter:
A portion of the letter read: Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard,
Allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood. "657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming.
"My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out."
Apparently making reference to the family's three young children, the letter continued:
"Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them too [sic] me."
"Who am I?" There are hundreds and hundreds of cars that drive by 657 Boulevard each day. Maybe I am in one. Look at all the windows you can see from 657 Boulevard. Maybe I am in one. Look out any of the many windows in 657 Boulevard at all the people who stroll by each day. Maybe I am one." The letter ended with an implication that this message would not be the last. "Welcome my friends, welcome. Let the party begin" The letter, which had no return address, was signed The Watcher.
Derek immediately called the Westfield Police, who dispatched an officer to the home. The officer read the letter, and asked Derek if he had any enemies. Other than advising the family to be careful, nothing much could be done at that time.
That night, Derek and Maria wrote an email to the former owners, John and Andrea Woods, to ask them if they knew anything about the watcher. Andrea replied that they had received a letter from the watcher a few days before moving out. She described the letter as odd, and said that it made reference to the watchers family watching the house over the years, but she was adamant that this was the first letter they had received during the 23 years they had lived there, and that they had thrown the letter away without much thought. The day after, Derek, Maria, and Adrea all went to the Westfield police station, where a detective advised them not to say anything to anyone about the letter.
Over the coming weeks the Broaddus' continued to live at their previous home elsewhere in Westfield while continuing renovations on their new home. Two weeks after the first letter had arrived, the Broaduses received another letter from the watcher.
This time the watcher addressed Derek and Maria by name, and also referred to their three children by name. A portion of this letter reads:
657 Boulevard is anxious for you to move in. It has been years and years since the young blood ruled the hallways of the house. Have you found all of the secrets it holds yet? Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone. I would [be] very afraid if I were them. It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs you would never hear them scream.
Will they sleep in the attic? Or will you all sleep on the second floor? Who has the bedrooms facing the street? I'll know as soon as you move in. It will help me to know who is in which bedroom. Then I can plan better.
All of the windows and doors in 657 Boulevard allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who am I? I am the Watcher and have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two decades now. The Woods family turned it over to you. It was their time to move on and kindly sold it when I asked them to.
I pass by many times a day. 657 Boulevard is my job, my life, my obsession. And now you are too Broaddus family. Welcome to the product of your greed! Greed is what brought the past three families to 657 Boulevard and now it has brought you to me.
Have a happy moving in day. You know I will be watching.
After receiving this letter, Derek and Maria stopped brining their children to the home, and they began to seriously question if they wanted to move into 657 Boulevard at all. A few weeks passed and yet another letter arrived. At around this time, A chance conversation with a neighbor caused Derek and Maria to suspect their next door neighbors, the Langfords, of being responsible for the letters. Within the community, the Langfords were considered an unusual but harmless family. The family matriarch, Peggy Langford, was in her 90s, and several of her children, all in their 60s, lived with her. Her son, Michael Langford, was considered particularly odd, and the Broduses thought he was a good candidate for the letter writer. From the Langfords home, one could see the Broduses porch where their daughter had set up her easel to paint, a detail referenced in the second letter. As well, the Landfords had lived in the home since the 1960s, when the letter writer indicated his father had began watching the house.
When they reported their suspicions to the police, a detective told them that he had already interviewed Michael Langford a week after the first letter had been sent, and that Langford had denied writing the letter. The detective suspected that if Langford had written the letter, the interview would have scared him enough to stop, but the letters kept coming. None of the letters contained any fingerprints, and They had no evidence against Michael - or anyone else for that matter.
Unsatisfied with the police response. Derek and Maria began their own investigation. They installed webcams all around the property hoping to catch someone approaching the house. They also hired a former FBI agent, Robert Lenehan, to conduct a threat assessment. Analyzing the letters, Lenehan believed that due to use of several old fashioned phrases that the writer was an older person who was likely well read. Lenehan also thought that the lack of profanity in the letters was unusual given the level of anger expressed, and that the writer was angry with wealthy people in general, not just the Broaddus'. Lenehan felt that the writer was unlikely to act of any of his threats, but added that he believed the individual was erratic.
While Derek and Maria were becoming increasingly paranoid and suspecting anyone in the neighborhood whom they felt acted oddly, the official police investigation continued to focus on Michael Langford. With cooperation from the police, the Broaddus' sent a letter to the Langfords falsely announcing plans to tear down 657 Boulevard. Since no one other than the Broaddus' and the police knew of the fake plan, they hoped that the watcher would make reference to this in a letter, but he never did. The police interviewed Michael for a second time, and he continued to deny any involvement. By late 2014, the investigation had stalled.
Six months after they had received the first letter, the broaduses decided to sell the home, no longer feeling comfortable moving in. They initially listed it for more than they had paid to reflect the renovations they had done, but found that the only bids they were receiving were far below their asking price due to news of the watcher.
Over the next several years, the Broaddus' continued to try and sell the home, and unsuccessfully tried to sue the Woods family for failing to reveal the letter from the watcher that they had received prior to moving out. In 2018, they sold the rights to their story to Netflix for a seven figure sum. In August of 2019, they finally sold 657 boulevard at a loss of around $400,000. The new owners have declined to speak with the media, and it is unknown if they received a welcome letter from the watcher.
Dorothy Jane Scott
In 1980, Dorothy Jane Scott was a 32 year old single mother who lived with her four year old son in Anaheim, California. Friends and coworkers described her as a quiet, reserved person who didn't drink or use drugs and rarely socialized. She worked as a secretary for a head shop located across the street from Disneyland. Her father, Jacob, was the previous owner of the business, having sold it in the late 70s.
Beginning in early 1980, Dorothy began receiving harassing anonymous phone calls at work. The caller would tell her details about her daily routine, indicating he was watching her closely. Sometimes he would be cheerful and friendly, other times he would be angry and violent, once telling her "when I get you alone I will cut you up into bits so no one will ever find you." As the months went by and the calls kept coming, Dorothy took self defense classes and considered buying a gun, ultimately deciding against it due to fears that her son might find it. While the caller never gave his name, Dorothy once told a co-worker that the voice sounded vaguely familiar to her.
On the evening of May 28th, Dorothy dropped her son off at her parent's house and went to work for an employee meeting. During the meeting, her co-worker Conrad Bostron appeared ill and had a spreading rash on his arm. Dorothy insisted on taking him to the hospital, and another co-worker, Pam Head, came with them. On the way to the hospital, Dorothy briefly stopped at her parents house to check on her son. She told her parents that she was taking a co-worker to the hospital, and for unknown reasons, changed a black scarf she was wearing to a red one. She then left and continued on to the hospital. The three went to the emergency room, and Dorothy and Pam waited together while Bostron received treatment. It was determined that he had been bitten by a black widow spider, and he was released with a prescription, which he filled at the hospitals pharmacy. Pam stayed with Bostron while he got his prescription, which took about 5 minutes, while Dorothy went to bring her car to the entrance. As her co-workers waited outside of the hospital, they saw her car drive by them at a high rate of speed. The cars high beams were on, and that, coupled with the speed the car was driving, prevented them from seeing who was in the car. Dorothy's car sped past them and out of the hospitals parking lot. They assumed that Dorothy had left due to some kind of emergency with her son. After waiting a few hours with no sign of Dorothy returning, her co-workers called her parents, Vera and Jacob Scott, who said that they hadn't seen Dorothy since she dropped her son off before going to work. The Scotts immediately called the police and reported their daughter missing. Several hours later, police in Santa Ana, about 10 miles from where Scott was last seen, discovered her burning car in an alley. The car had not been involved in an accident, and there was no sign of Dorothy at the scene.
One week after Dorothy disappeared, her mother received a phone call. A male voice asked her if she was related to Dorothy Scott. When she said she was, he simply replied "I've got her" and hung up. Hoping to give publicity to his daughter's case, her father contacted a local newspaper, The Santa Ana Register, which ran a story on Scott's disappearance the following week. The day after the story ran, editor Pat Riley received a phone call at his office. "I killed her. I killed Dorothy Scott. She was my love. I caught her cheating with another man. She denied having someone else. I killed her." The caller provided detailed information that had not yet been made public, such as why she was at the hospital that night. He claimed that Dorothy had phoned him from the hospital, but her co-worker Pam Head said that the only time she and Dorothy were apart was when Dorothy briefly went to the bathroom.
Every Wednesday afternoon for the next four years, the caller would phone Vera Scott at her home. He would either ask for Dorothy, claim he had killed her, or simply state, "I've got her". The calls came at the tail end of the days of manual telephone switching systems, which were replaced by electronic switches beginning in the mid 1980s, meaning that it could still haven taken 10 to 20 minutes to trace a call, and the caller never stayed on the line long enough to complete a trace. In April of 1984, the caller made a rare night time call, and this time Jacob answered the phone. He stopped his weekly calls at this time, which some theorize could be due to him assuming that Vera had moved away, as he'd never spoken to Jacob before. Others have speculated that he knew Jacob, and was afraid that he would recognize his voice.
In August of 1984, a construction worker in North Anaheim unearthed bones, and the police were called. The bones turned out to be animal bones, but nearby, buried underneath a dog skeleton, human remains were found. Days later, they were positively identified as the remains of Dorothy Jane Scott. Her watch, found with the body, had stopped at 12:30 am on May 29th, the night she disappeared. The discovery of the remains provoked two more phone calls to Vera Scott - both times, the caller asked "is Dorothy home?" before hanging up.
The investigation into Dorothy's abduction and murder produced few leads and no solid suspects. The owner of the head shop where she worked was charged with financial crimes and investigated for drug dealing in 1982, but he was never a suspect in her murder, and Dorothy would have recognized his voice had he been the caller. Her estranged ex-husband and father of her son Shawn was briefly a suspect, but investigation revealed he had an airtight alibi for the night of her disappearance.
Years later, in 2018, her now adult son Shawn contacted a true crime blogger to provide more information on his mother's case, specifically a suspect that he had been made aware of. According to the blog, this individuals name is Mike Butler, and he died in 2014. He was described as being an unstable individual with an unhealthy obsession with Dorothy, and he was rumored to be involved in cult activity in the early 1980s. The dog bones and other animal bones found with Dorothy's remains have lead some to suspect cult involvement, however, the practice of burying human remains underneath animal remains is also done to throw off search teams. If a cadaver dog indicates the presence of buried remains, and a dig reveals animal bones, it is thought that police may write it off as a false positive and cease digging in the area. Mike Butlers sister, singer Rosemary Butler, who has done backing vocals for artists such as Linda Rohnstadt, James Taylor, and Neil Young, worked with Dorothy at the head shop, and has reportedly refused to speak with Shawn Scott about the case. Police were aware of Mike Butler at the time of Dorothy's disappearance, but never had any evidence against him, and he was never officially considered a suspect or a person of interest in her case.
As a final footnote to this case, some believe that Dorothy's murder may be connected to the case of Patricia Jean Schneider, who disappeared from Pedley, California which is about a 40 minute drive from Anaheim. Scheider was a 25 year old cocktail waitress who completed her shift during the early morning hours of July 31st, 1982. At 3:45 am she made a call from a Circle K convenience store to say that her car had broken down. Sometime between 5 and 6 am, a sheriffs deputy found her car burning in a nearby field, with no sign of Patricia at the scene. The store clerk who had been the last person to see her noticed two sandy haired Caucasian men in the stores parking lot at around the time Patricia disappeared, but it is unknown if they were in any way connected to her disappearance. Dorothy and Patricia were close in age, lived near each other, disappeared roughly 2 years apart, and both women's cars were found abandoned and burning. However, Patricia was not stalked prior to her disappearance. She has never been found and remains listed as a missing person.
Trevor Silverwood
Trevor Silverwood was a British politician who served as a local councilor in his hometown of Bridlington in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Beginning in 1967, he was subject to a campaign of harassment that lasted for over a decade. Someone - or a group of someone's - began sending him hundreds of postcards. While the postcards were never overtly threatening, the knowledge of Silverwood's life displayed by the writer was unnerving, as the postcards made reference to meals he had eaten, programs he had watched on tv, and articles of clothing he had worn. All of the postcards were written in shorthand, a somewhat antiquated method of speed writing which replaces common words with symbols, and all were signed with the matchstick figure of the saint. Simon Templar, aka the saint, is a fictional character in a series of novels by British-Chinese writer Leslie Charteris. The saint is an anti hero, robin hood like character, who battles with arms dealers, warmongers, drug dealers, and corrupt politicians. While some of the postcards bore postmarks from nearby cities like Rotherham, Silverwoods stalker also sent cards that had been postmarked in such far away locations as India, America, and Canada.
In the late 1970s, Silverwood decided to confront his stalker by placing a personal ad in a local newspaper begging the writer to identify himself. Days later, he received a card postmarked in the canary islands off the west coast of Africa, which read "Don't be naughty. What a nice photograph of you the newspaper published!" Some time after this, Silverwood was questioned by police over a minor driving matter, and later received a card containing a detailed description of his interview.
Due to the intimate knowledge displayed of Silverwood's life, some suspect that Silverwood himself was responsible for sending the postcards, but this theory fails to explain how Silverwood could send himself postcards from faraway locations. Due to the signature of the saint, a character who battled with corrupt politicians, some believe that Silverwood was targeted by an individual or group who were angry with him over decisions he made during his political career.
According to Silverwoods son, the postcards finally stopped coming in the 1980s. The indentity of the writer, or writers, why they targeted Silverwood, and how they were able to know intimate details about his life, all remain unknown.
The Watcher
Westfield is an affluent town in New Jersey, home to just over 30,000 people. In 2014, Maria and Derek Broaddus bought a house in Westfield, paying 1.4 million for a Dutch colonial style home. The couple decided to renovate the home before moving in, and while they were working on the home, they received a disturbing letter:
A portion of the letter read: Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard,
Allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood. "657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming.
"My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out."
Apparently making reference to the family's three young children, the letter continued:
"Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children? Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them too [sic] me."
"Who am I?" There are hundreds and hundreds of cars that drive by 657 Boulevard each day. Maybe I am in one. Look at all the windows you can see from 657 Boulevard. Maybe I am in one. Look out any of the many windows in 657 Boulevard at all the people who stroll by each day. Maybe I am one." The letter ended with an implication that this message would not be the last. "Welcome my friends, welcome. Let the party begin" The letter, which had no return address, was signed The Watcher.
Derek immediately called the Westfield Police, who dispatched an officer to the home. The officer read the letter, and asked Derek if he had any enemies. Other than advising the family to be careful, nothing much could be done at that time.
That night, Derek and Maria wrote an email to the former owners, John and Andrea Woods, to ask them if they knew anything about the watcher. Andrea replied that they had received a letter from the watcher a few days before moving out. She described the letter as odd, and said that it made reference to the watchers family watching the house over the years, but she was adamant that this was the first letter they had received during the 23 years they had lived there, and that they had thrown the letter away without much thought. The day after, Derek, Maria, and Adrea all went to the Westfield police station, where a detective advised them not to say anything to anyone about the letter.
Over the coming weeks the Broaddus' continued to live at their previous home elsewhere in Westfield while continuing renovations on their new home. Two weeks after the first letter had arrived, the Broaduses received another letter from the watcher.
This time the watcher addressed Derek and Maria by name, and also referred to their three children by name. A portion of this letter reads:
657 Boulevard is anxious for you to move in. It has been years and years since the young blood ruled the hallways of the house. Have you found all of the secrets it holds yet? Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone. I would [be] very afraid if I were them. It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs you would never hear them scream.
Will they sleep in the attic? Or will you all sleep on the second floor? Who has the bedrooms facing the street? I'll know as soon as you move in. It will help me to know who is in which bedroom. Then I can plan better.
All of the windows and doors in 657 Boulevard allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who am I? I am the Watcher and have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two decades now. The Woods family turned it over to you. It was their time to move on and kindly sold it when I asked them to.
I pass by many times a day. 657 Boulevard is my job, my life, my obsession. And now you are too Broaddus family. Welcome to the product of your greed! Greed is what brought the past three families to 657 Boulevard and now it has brought you to me.
Have a happy moving in day. You know I will be watching.
After receiving this letter, Derek and Maria stopped brining their children to the home, and they began to seriously question if they wanted to move into 657 Boulevard at all. A few weeks passed and yet another letter arrived. At around this time, A chance conversation with a neighbor caused Derek and Maria to suspect their next door neighbors, the Langfords, of being responsible for the letters. Within the community, the Langfords were considered an unusual but harmless family. The family matriarch, Peggy Langford, was in her 90s, and several of her children, all in their 60s, lived with her. Her son, Michael Langford, was considered particularly odd, and the Broduses thought he was a good candidate for the letter writer. From the Langfords home, one could see the Broduses porch where their daughter had set up her easel to paint, a detail referenced in the second letter. As well, the Landfords had lived in the home since the 1960s, when the letter writer indicated his father had began watching the house.
When they reported their suspicions to the police, a detective told them that he had already interviewed Michael Langford a week after the first letter had been sent, and that Langford had denied writing the letter. The detective suspected that if Langford had written the letter, the interview would have scared him enough to stop, but the letters kept coming. None of the letters contained any fingerprints, and They had no evidence against Michael - or anyone else for that matter.
Unsatisfied with the police response. Derek and Maria began their own investigation. They installed webcams all around the property hoping to catch someone approaching the house. They also hired a former FBI agent, Robert Lenehan, to conduct a threat assessment. Analyzing the letters, Lenehan believed that due to use of several old fashioned phrases that the writer was an older person who was likely well read. Lenehan also thought that the lack of profanity in the letters was unusual given the level of anger expressed, and that the writer was angry with wealthy people in general, not just the Broaddus'. Lenehan felt that the writer was unlikely to act of any of his threats, but added that he believed the individual was erratic.
While Derek and Maria were becoming increasingly paranoid and suspecting anyone in the neighborhood whom they felt acted oddly, the official police investigation continued to focus on Michael Langford. With cooperation from the police, the Broaddus' sent a letter to the Langfords falsely announcing plans to tear down 657 Boulevard. Since no one other than the Broaddus' and the police knew of the fake plan, they hoped that the watcher would make reference to this in a letter, but he never did. The police interviewed Michael for a second time, and he continued to deny any involvement. By late 2014, the investigation had stalled.
Six months after they had received the first letter, the broaduses decided to sell the home, no longer feeling comfortable moving in. They initially listed it for more than they had paid to reflect the renovations they had done, but found that the only bids they were receiving were far below their asking price due to news of the watcher.
Over the next several years, the Broaddus' continued to try and sell the home, and unsuccessfully tried to sue the Woods family for failing to reveal the letter from the watcher that they had received prior to moving out. In 2018, they sold the rights to their story to Netflix for a seven figure sum. In August of 2019, they finally sold 657 boulevard at a loss of around $400,000. The new owners have declined to speak with the media, and it is unknown if they received a welcome letter from the watcher.
Dorothy Jane Scott
In 1980, Dorothy Jane Scott was a 32 year old single mother who lived with her four year old son in Anaheim, California. Friends and coworkers described her as a quiet, reserved person who didn't drink or use drugs and rarely socialized. She worked as a secretary for a head shop located across the street from Disneyland. Her father, Jacob, was the previous owner of the business, having sold it in the late 70s.
Beginning in early 1980, Dorothy began receiving harassing anonymous phone calls at work. The caller would tell her details about her daily routine, indicating he was watching her closely. Sometimes he would be cheerful and friendly, other times he would be angry and violent, once telling her "when I get you alone I will cut you up into bits so no one will ever find you." As the months went by and the calls kept coming, Dorothy took self defense classes and considered buying a gun, ultimately deciding against it due to fears that her son might find it. While the caller never gave his name, Dorothy once told a co-worker that the voice sounded vaguely familiar to her.
On the evening of May 28th, Dorothy dropped her son off at her parent's house and went to work for an employee meeting. During the meeting, her co-worker Conrad Bostron appeared ill and had a spreading rash on his arm. Dorothy insisted on taking him to the hospital, and another co-worker, Pam Head, came with them. On the way to the hospital, Dorothy briefly stopped at her parents house to check on her son. She told her parents that she was taking a co-worker to the hospital, and for unknown reasons, changed a black scarf she was wearing to a red one. She then left and continued on to the hospital. The three went to the emergency room, and Dorothy and Pam waited together while Bostron received treatment. It was determined that he had been bitten by a black widow spider, and he was released with a prescription, which he filled at the hospitals pharmacy. Pam stayed with Bostron while he got his prescription, which took about 5 minutes, while Dorothy went to bring her car to the entrance. As her co-workers waited outside of the hospital, they saw her car drive by them at a high rate of speed. The cars high beams were on, and that, coupled with the speed the car was driving, prevented them from seeing who was in the car. Dorothy's car sped past them and out of the hospitals parking lot. They assumed that Dorothy had left due to some kind of emergency with her son. After waiting a few hours with no sign of Dorothy returning, her co-workers called her parents, Vera and Jacob Scott, who said that they hadn't seen Dorothy since she dropped her son off before going to work. The Scotts immediately called the police and reported their daughter missing. Several hours later, police in Santa Ana, about 10 miles from where Scott was last seen, discovered her burning car in an alley. The car had not been involved in an accident, and there was no sign of Dorothy at the scene.
One week after Dorothy disappeared, her mother received a phone call. A male voice asked her if she was related to Dorothy Scott. When she said she was, he simply replied "I've got her" and hung up. Hoping to give publicity to his daughter's case, her father contacted a local newspaper, The Santa Ana Register, which ran a story on Scott's disappearance the following week. The day after the story ran, editor Pat Riley received a phone call at his office. "I killed her. I killed Dorothy Scott. She was my love. I caught her cheating with another man. She denied having someone else. I killed her." The caller provided detailed information that had not yet been made public, such as why she was at the hospital that night. He claimed that Dorothy had phoned him from the hospital, but her co-worker Pam Head said that the only time she and Dorothy were apart was when Dorothy briefly went to the bathroom.
Every Wednesday afternoon for the next four years, the caller would phone Vera Scott at her home. He would either ask for Dorothy, claim he had killed her, or simply state, "I've got her". The calls came at the tail end of the days of manual telephone switching systems, which were replaced by electronic switches beginning in the mid 1980s, meaning that it could still haven taken 10 to 20 minutes to trace a call, and the caller never stayed on the line long enough to complete a trace. In April of 1984, the caller made a rare night time call, and this time Jacob answered the phone. He stopped his weekly calls at this time, which some theorize could be due to him assuming that Vera had moved away, as he'd never spoken to Jacob before. Others have speculated that he knew Jacob, and was afraid that he would recognize his voice.
In August of 1984, a construction worker in North Anaheim unearthed bones, and the police were called. The bones turned out to be animal bones, but nearby, buried underneath a dog skeleton, human remains were found. Days later, they were positively identified as the remains of Dorothy Jane Scott. Her watch, found with the body, had stopped at 12:30 am on May 29th, the night she disappeared. The discovery of the remains provoked two more phone calls to Vera Scott - both times, the caller asked "is Dorothy home?" before hanging up.
The investigation into Dorothy's abduction and murder produced few leads and no solid suspects. The owner of the head shop where she worked was charged with financial crimes and investigated for drug dealing in 1982, but he was never a suspect in her murder, and Dorothy would have recognized his voice had he been the caller. Her estranged ex-husband and father of her son Shawn was briefly a suspect, but investigation revealed he had an airtight alibi for the night of her disappearance.
Years later, in 2018, her now adult son Shawn contacted a true crime blogger to provide more information on his mother's case, specifically a suspect that he had been made aware of. According to the blog, this individuals name is Mike Butler, and he died in 2014. He was described as being an unstable individual with an unhealthy obsession with Dorothy, and he was rumored to be involved in cult activity in the early 1980s. The dog bones and other animal bones found with Dorothy's remains have lead some to suspect cult involvement, however, the practice of burying human remains underneath animal remains is also done to throw off search teams. If a cadaver dog indicates the presence of buried remains, and a dig reveals animal bones, it is thought that police may write it off as a false positive and cease digging in the area. Mike Butlers sister, singer Rosemary Butler, who has done backing vocals for artists such as Linda Rohnstadt, James Taylor, and Neil Young, worked with Dorothy at the head shop, and has reportedly refused to speak with Shawn Scott about the case. Police were aware of Mike Butler at the time of Dorothy's disappearance, but never had any evidence against him, and he was never officially considered a suspect or a person of interest in her case.
As a final footnote to this case, some believe that Dorothy's murder may be connected to the case of Patricia Jean Schneider, who disappeared from Pedley, California which is about a 40 minute drive from Anaheim. Scheider was a 25 year old cocktail waitress who completed her shift during the early morning hours of July 31st, 1982. At 3:45 am she made a call from a Circle K convenience store to say that her car had broken down. Sometime between 5 and 6 am, a sheriffs deputy found her car burning in a nearby field, with no sign of Patricia at the scene. The store clerk who had been the last person to see her noticed two sandy haired Caucasian men in the stores parking lot at around the time Patricia disappeared, but it is unknown if they were in any way connected to her disappearance. Dorothy and Patricia were close in age, lived near each other, disappeared roughly 2 years apart, and both women's cars were found abandoned and burning. However, Patricia was not stalked prior to her disappearance. She has never been found and remains listed as a missing person.