This podcast contains intense subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on Still
So nobody in my family. They're all saying, Susan, I see kind
of a resemblance, But there's no way that's your mom. We would have
known she's prime that there's no way she could have said that, And something
that people who came forward and said, you know, when they saw her
and everything, which was either she went and stayed with somebody else because she
was seen by people that lived down the street from him, and they all
knew her well, and she went for walks daily. She was always battling
her weight. But it was called knowledge that they were running a call girl
ring out of the top floor of the tab of Era Hotel. From the
pages of the reporter's notebook. This is still season two. I'm your host,
Gary Anderson. I want to rewind a little and discuss in more detail
what investigators found and what they didn't find in the grave of the Jane Doe
discovered near Finlay Creek in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. To refresh your
memory, in late August of nineteen seventy eight, Rob Parr was eight years
old and had gone hunting with his dad. Another boy in their hunting party
found the graveside on a game trail, part way up a steep hill.
The boy made his way back to camp to tell the others what he saw.
This is how Rob described it in a previous episode, when we came
back up and found it, you know, because it was initially found and
then you know, the kid didn't know where it was, and so everybody
came up looking. And I remember my dad and I we were done.
We were we couldn't find it. Everybody's calling it quits, and we were
headed back and we were coming from this direction down the trail, and bam,
there it was. But I vividly remember the skull, the boots in
between the skull and ribcage. I can see it playing his day. First,
let's talk about the clothing. Remember Patty Otto was last seen wearing a
white sleeveless blouse and red pants. Her outfit didn't fully match what investigators said
they found in the grave what I recall reading. And we were able to
get the records from the state police. It took a while, but we
did get them. This as Finlay Creek, Jindo Task Force investigator and researcher
Melinda Jetterberg, and the investigators described some white cloth and some white cloth with
red hearts on it. They also described a white either halter top or bra
style top. A personal think it was just straight up a bra. It
seems that investigators assumed that the halter was the only top the Jindo was wearing.
Melinda believes it was simply a bass layer and the woman was wearing a
shirt over the bra or halter top. The outer layer of clothing could have
been torn away during a struggle or even carried away by animals. The their
piece of cloth found which had red hearts may have been part of that shirt.
Some of the researchers have wondered if the hearts may have actually been red
flowers or cherries that crime scene investigators misremembered or documented incorrectly. But I keep
thinking, you know, it was a bunch of men who dug this grade
out, so you know, they observed what they see and write it down.
And then they had this pair of red pants that they described them as
Catalina pants, a junior size. I believe it was fifteen sixteen. They
were red, and they showed evidence of length alteration. And immediately what my
mind went to was when I was growing up late seventies, early eighties,
as my mom had these polyester pants and she had a red pair, and
they had an elastic waistband, And so that's what has always been in my
mind about what those pants looked like, simply because we don't have pictures of
them. All we have is a description. They weren't even They didn't really
even describe whether there was an elastic waste fan, whether there was a zipper
on the pants. They do describe some zippers in the grave, but not
really saying what they were from, So potentially they could have been from the
pants, maybe some of the other fabric made up a jacket, I don't
know. They just describe it as a zipper being in there. At least
one other woman who was found murdered in this area a few years after the
discovery of the Finlay Creek, Jane Doe, was also wearing red bottoms.
Here's a retired Union County District Attorney, Dale Mammon. The early one was
during my term, which was Sylvia Heistemann, and a local person that was
jogging in one of the rural roads right adjoining the city and was brutally murdered,
left in a creek bed, and her murder, my knowledge, has
never been solved. But the body was located, but the perpetrator iss unknown.
Then I'm still unknown. Sylvia was forty three years old and was wearing
a white top in red shorts when she vanished. We also found reports of
a few other women in the Pacific Northwest who went missing while wearing red or
rust colored pants. But we don't want you to jump to conclusions about a
serial killer with a fetish for red pants hunting down victims. That's certainly possible,
but it's definitely not a foregone conclusion. Red was a fairly popular color
for pants in the mid seventies and early eighties. ABC News goes to the
Great American Birthday Body for those of you too young to remember, nineteen seventy
six was a year of fanfare and pageantry as the nation celebrated its two hundredth
birthday. Red, white, and blue were everywhere in fashion. Even Fara
Faucets swimsuit in that iconic poster was a blazing shade of red. Susann Thimmes
has a photo of her mother, Patti Otto, from the mid seventies wearing
stretchy red trousers, possibly the same pants she was described as wearing when she
vanished. We researched the Catalina brand, which was the label on the red
pants the Jane Doe was wearing. The Catalina company, which is based in
California, now specializes in swimwear, but back in the nineteen seventies, the
fashion line had expanded to what was considered better sportswear, including shirts, pants,
shorts, and skirts. This wasn't a brand you'd find in discount clothing
stores. The clothes were the casual sheikhs style favored by tennis players and ladies
of leisure. An internet searge for similar vintage pants turned up a pair of
orange red Cantelina brand pants for sale. They were the exact size of the
pants in the grave. The waist measurements for the pants listed for sale is
thirty to thirty four inches in modern clothing, that's the equivalent of a lady's
medium or large, and could be anything from a lady's size eight to a
fourteen. If anyone listening has pants like this in your closet or remembers owning
a pair, we'd love to hear from you. Now back to what was
inside the shallow grave. Other than the bra style top, there were no
undergarments found there, but investigators believed that may have been because of animals scavenging.
That also supports our idea that a shirt of some sort may have once
been in the grave. And then there was the Jando's footwear. The ankle
high boots she was wearing weren't necessarily a fashionable choice, but she may have
chosen them for practicality, especially if she was planning to do a lot of
walking. Here's mel Jetterburg again. As a matter of fact, the suggestions
that have been given to the Filly Creek Jando page are very distinctly men's shoes.
It's images of men's shoes that have been suggested. They have thicker soles
on them with a distinct heel, so instead of being like a flat all
one piece soule, there's definitely like a footbed and then a heel on them.
And one of the shoes is also worn towards the ball of the foot
a lot more than the other one is, so it appears, and this
is an observation that was made by some of the Facebook page followers as well
that the one shoe, it's like, did they have a limp? Was
there something wrong with her foot because it looks like one of those shoes is
worn down a lot more on kind of the inside of the foot than the
other shoes. A lot of theories came up because of the boots, like
maybe she's a hitchhiker and that's why they were worn on one side, or
maybe they were just out for a day, and though she borrowed those shoes,
that they weren't actually hers. There have been a couple of different suggestions
like that, but we none of us feel like those are women's shoes.
We feel very strongly those were men's shoes and probably not hers. We're going
to talk more about the boots and some of our own theories we've developed in
the next episode. For now, let's talk about what else was in and
around the grave. If you recall from the last episode, Amity Larson's search
dog Brenn, had given a trained final response indicating she had located the odor
of human remains near a tree close to the grave site. We are hopeful
that new evidence might be found to help us get closer to answers this is
Amity talking about seeing her dog give the alert. So um, I mean
it was exciting, but he thought, well, that's interesting. So we
pulled her out and I sent her back in and worked, and she had
many of the same behaviors why it had had with Plimnut the tree, but
she was more interested in the ground area. So we actually spent some time
really looking and kind of trying to disturb things without being you know, you're
looking for something really, really small, and so we kind of worked around
there to see if we could uncover something that wasn't very very deep, and
then we would send her back in and she would give a trained final response.
We visually didn't see anything, but we also didn't want to disturb the
area a whole lot where we weren't prepared to collect anything. That we did
mark it correctly that time and took lots and lots of photograph After driving back
from searching that day, Ammony got in touch with other canine search experts to
get their opinions about what happened with the dogs that day. The first person
she talked with, Paul Martin, recommended organizing an archaeological dig of the grave
site. She also talked with Johnny Joyce, an internationally certified canine handler and
trainer. She feels like though when she looked at the map of the location
of where the grave is and the distance to the trees, when we mapped
it out with the GPS and everything, she feels like the time and Daby
were there, that the sun and when we talked about wind direction all of
that, she believed that odor from the grave site was being pulled up the
hill of short ways in that direction and caught in those trees, and that
that's what the dog for picking up on, especially where Wyatt had odd at
the grade site and been so interested in it. Melinda and Suzanne are working
to organize a more thorough grid search of the area, along with some digging
for bones later in twenty twenty two after the snow melts. Oregon State Police
will be there when the team returns to the site. Back in nineteen seventy
eight, investigators also found two pieces of coaxle cable that had been knotted together.
The cable was in the dirt near what would have been the Jane Doe's
neck. They noted that the cable could have come from a CBE radio and
they speculated that it may have been used to strangle the woman. Again,
we don't want to jump to conclusions about the CBE radio. A CBE radio
may make you immediately think of truckers, but a lot of people who didn't
drive for a living had CBE radios in the nineteen seventies. This was long
before cell phones, so cb were a convenient way to communicate while on the
road in rural America. They were practically standard issue when you bought a vehicle
because CB radios and their accessories were so common. The cable doesn't provide a
terribly useful clue, but if the cable still existed, it might be possible
to find DNA belonging to the killer on it. Keep in mind, too,
that investigators theorized that it came from a CB, but there were plenty
of other uses for coax cable back in the seventies. We don't have detailed
photos of the cable found in the grave, so we can't be certain what
the ends looked like, if they had a specific type of connector, or
if the ends had been cut. Even the exact length of the cable isn't
clear well. The police report says approximately two feet long and tied in a
notch, and that was how Doc Baker notated it. Doc Baker was the
Oregon State Police trooper who originally responded to the scene, and I think that
three feet probably came from Dale Mammon from the press release that he did.
I think his was more of an approximate estimation based on conversation rather than actually
and I'm not sure that anyone actually ever took a tape measure and measured the
thing out. These are all just approximate, And when you have a big,
not tight in the middle of it, you know, radio cable's not
going to be the most flexible, so that could take up a good four
to six inches in the middle that they kind of have to guestimate for.
So right, so between between two and three feet. We don't have a
copy of a supplemental report that would have given more details about the cable measurements
and other items in the grave. The investigator in the Oregon State Crime Lab
indicated in his initial documentation of the evidence that he would create another narrative with
more specifics about everything found at the scene, but it's unclear if that report
was ever generated. Neither Melinda nor her cohort Jason Futch, received a copy
of it when they were given the remaining records. The investigator who authored the
preliminary report has since passed away. We also reached out to the state trooper
who signed the final report before the Finlay Creek case was officially closed. His
wife told us that he was required to turn in the notes related to all
his cases when he retired, and he didn't have information that might help us.
At the grave site, some charred pieces of wood were also found on
the trail near the woman's remains, along with a partially burned wooden match and
no baby clothes, right correct. That's one thing that I noted early on
because one of the things that Dale Mammon had speculated early on was that this
could be a brand newborn. But there's nothing to indicate that it was an
infant who was dressed or had any things with it either. Everything they found
in the grave indicated that those were clothing items that belonged to the mom,
so likely that's why they were able to draw the conclusion that she was pregnant
rather than actually had an infant with her, right and even in the summer
most of the time if you're leaving the house with a really young baby,
you've got a blanket with you. Oh yeah, you've got all kinds of
accessories with you. They've got a baby with you on the woods. And
none of that was there. Just literally, the clothing on this woman's back
is all that was there, notably absent from the crime I seen or a
purse, backpack, or other belongings to indicate she may have been a hiker
or a traveler who had hitched a ride. Where are her things? Where
is her stuff? She is a late teen to early twenties, estimated she
looked to be a relatively fashionable young lady. She was pregnant. She's out
in the woods. If she's out there of her own free will, maybe
having a little stroll, where's her stuff? Where's her you know? Where's
her chapstick? Where's any jewelry? There was no jewelry, no earrings,
necklace, no belt, no rings on the fingers, nothing like that.
So where is all that? The woman's right arm had become separated from the
rest of her body, possibly because of animal activity. There were no scars
from violence on her skeleton, but investigators feel certain that she was murdered.
The pieces of cable in the grave and the fact that she had been buried
did indicate an attempt by some one to conceal a crime. If the woman
didn't walk up to that spot where she was found under her own power,
someone must have carried or dragged her up that fairly steep and rocky hill.
It's certainly not Denali, but it's also not a particularly easy hike. Several
people in our group lost their footing on different occasions while climbing the hill to
see the grave site. Based on rough calculations we made the trail where she
was buried is up a thirty foot rise with about a twenty percent grade.
If you tumbled down the hill, you'd land in a dry creek bed filled
with large river rocks. There are no artificial lights in the area to help
someone making that trek in the dark. That's one reason Rob Parr and his
dad were about to give up searching for the remains. The other boy in
the hunting party told them about the sun was set, it was going to
be too dark to find anything and difficult to get back to their campsite even
if they did find her. It's worth noting that The amount of moonlight Rob
and his dad had that night would have been similar to what was in the
sky in late August or early September nineteen seventy six when Patti Otto vanished.
But in nineteen seventy six, the ground would have been dry. Just a
few days before Rob and his dad went hunting in these hills. In nineteen
seventy eight, a thirty minute cloudburst thoroughly soaked the ground in Umatilla County,
a few miles west of Findlay Creek. A newspaper account described a wall of
mud more than six feet high that had accumulated in one spot. We had
to wonder if some of the rain that saturated Umatilla County also spilled over into
Union County, helping to uncover the Jane Doe's remains that were waiting to be
covered. Regardless of how it happened, pieces of her skeleton were plainly visible
when the hunters arrived at that spot in late August nineteen seventy eight. Now
I need to let you in on a truly astonishing coincidence regarding that hunting party.
The crazy part of this is that's in nineteen seventy eight, when I
told you I was dating that guy in two thousand and six. That's Patty's
daughter Suzanne talking. It's the grandson of the hunter, and I would not
know that until now, As you heard Suzanne start to explain. Before the
break, she started dating a man named Gary Times. In two thousand and
six, they got married and the woman who had once been dallas Otto became
Suzanne Times. Gary Times's stepfather is Rob Parr, who you've heard talking about
finding the Finlay Creek Jane Doe. Rob's dad, Lee Parr, was named
in a nineteen seventy eight newspaper article about the discovery of the skeleton. Rob,
who was only eight at the time, wasn't mentioned in the article and
he had never talked with his stepsig about that experience. Suzanne looked up the
article after she saw the forensic artists rendering of the Finlay Creek Jane Doe on
Facebook in the summer of twenty twenty one. She was shocked to see the
name Lee Parr in the article. Le par is my husband's grandpa, and
I'm like, Gary, did your grandpa ever mentioned you guys that he found
a body. Long before she met Susanne, Melinda had tried tracking down the
two hunters. Rob's grandfather, Lee Parr, passed away in two thousand and
nine, and letters Melinda mailed to the other hunter when unanswered, here's Susanne
again? And how does that not come up in a conversation? I guess
it just doesn't. So I tell my husband, I'm calling your dad.
He's a correctional officer at the state penitentiary. You know they now all phones
in there, They can their phones. I don't care. I'm calling him.
Maybe he'll be off work. I don't care. I'm calling him.
I don't care if he's at work. I'm calling him. This is important
right now. I'm like, Rob, did your dad ever mentioned finding a
body in nineteen seventy eight when he was out hunting? And He's like,
Susanne, how do you know about that? I never told you about that?
What do you know about that? Rob? He was like, I
was a little kid. I will never forget that. And I'm like,
Rob, I think you found my mom. He's like what He's like,
how did this not ever come up in a conversation? We must have some
wild Thanksgiving dinners? Right, I'm like, how does this not come up?
Rob? I'm missing a mother. You find a body when you're a
child, and that never comes up in a conversation that I've never found a
body. Nobody else I've ever noticed found a body. But I'm missing a
parents and you found a body. What are the chances that you found my
mother in nineteen seventy eight. He's like, no way, there is no
way. If you're finding all this just too incredible to believe. We were
right there with you. We asked Melinda Jetterburgh how she felt when she first
learned of that connection. I wish that you could have been in my house
when Suzanne, I am to me. Now we had only been I Ami
for a day or two, she said, And I'm sure there was an
expletive in this I am. She said, I think my father in law
is the one who found her body. And at first I was speechless,
and then it was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh
my you know, I could not believe it. So I said, tell
me more. And I said, does Rob mind me calling him? And
she said no, it does not. And I had a conversation with him
about it, because you know, I thought, no, there is no
way, there is no way. That's too big of a coincidence, But
the way he described the area and what he saw it was as if he
was reading this report and telling me what he saw. It was described the
exact same within the report, as far as the skull and the teeth and
the fillings. He could see it all and he remembered, and the fact
that he within the week, I think, said I'm going to go back
out and visit that area just to make sure, and he did, and
he was like, m I remember it like it was yesterday. It was
amazing to me to the point that I had to gather the group together because
I knew and we got on a zoom call so I could tell them because
I knew that they were going to have the same reaction as me that it's
just too it's too much. But it absolutely is and there's no way you
could make it up. The wildest imagination could not make up the twist and
turn Earns and some of these stories. So I just I'm like, well,
I just gotta go with it, because you know, you just cannot
make up all these connections that are happening between these two cases. Since helping
to form the Finlay Creek Jindo Task Force in twenty nineteen, Melinda had been
posting information about the case online, hoping someone would come forward. She had
been asking people who had lived in the area for years if they remembered any
details that might help point to who the Jaindo could be. I had maybe
one or two locals reach out saying, well, when I was in school
around that time, I remember so and so stepdaughter went missing, and I
would ask questions, Okay, what was her name? What was a family's
name. So they would say these things, but then could not give me
a single shred of information to go on to try to find out who that
person was. And I have gone through countless newspaper archives around potential missing women
from this area. I've asked my own parents, because they were in their
twenties at the time. I've asked you know, other people who are in
my life who were alive at the time, who remember hearing about the case,
but don't remember anybody going missing at the time. And the Oregon State
Police did their due diligence at the time, and we're not aware of anybody
in the immediate area who had gone missing either, And so then they branched
out to you know, the Metro area Portland, Idaho. Think one of
the furthest ruleouts that they got was from Kentucky. So they were looking for
missing women, and you know, there was an attempt made to rule out
Patty as well, but it was just not done correctly, we don't think.
We noted in a previous episode that after the remains were discovered, Patty
Otto's parents flew to the crime lab at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton,
Oregon to look at the clothes found at the scene. When presented with the
braw and other pieces of garments, they didn't think what they saw was what
Patty was wearing when she vanished. But again, the woman in the grave
may have been wearing more than what was found at the scene, and the
shoes may not have belonged to her. Tom and Toots O'Malley both died more
than twenty years ago. Patty's sister, Alice said that not knowing what really
happened to her sister haunted them. But it did a lot to see my
parents go through. But they went through, and we know we felt how
bad we felt because Patty was my best friend at the time. It wasn't
just my sister that we did everything together, But it has the hearts for
a parents losing a daughter not knowing yeah where she's at. And I know
that I still say to the stress, is my mom and dad died jong
Daddy was only sixty years old when he passed away and mom was only seventy,
And I just think all that stress had a lot to do with it.
If the Finlay Creek Jando is their daughter, it means they lost a
grandchild along with Patty. But if the Jane Doo truly isn't their daughter,
so many questions remain. Who is she and who killed her? Other than
the hippie women scene walking up Ruckle Road, we don't have any leads about
who the woman could be. Investigators worked with other law enforcement agencies to try
to identify her, but nothing panned out. You've heard the Green River Killer
mentioned a couple of times in previous episodes, but his victims were all found
about two hundred and fifty miles away in Seattle, Washington's King County. At
the time, there were a couple of men living closer to this area who
might have been capable of committing such a crime. One of those men is
a person of interest in a number of other unsolved murders in the area,
including three people who disappeared from Lewis and Idaho six years after Patty vanished.
Although we know who this potential suspect is, he's never been charged with murder,
so we won't be naming him. We'll just tell you that police are
aware of who he is. The other person is Harry Hantman, who had
raped and murdered an eleven year old girl in Washington, d c. In
nineteen sixty nine. Then in nineteen seventy three, he escaped from the mental
institution where he had been confined. While free, for the next twenty years,
he lived in this part of the Pacific Northwest under the assumed identity of
a dead man, Thomas Dorian, going by the name Dorian Hantman, dated
women, got married, and enrolled in classes at several Oregon colleges, including
Eastern Oregon State University in La Grand just south of Finlay Creek. He was
even arrested for attempted kidnapping while using his alias, and authorities still didn't realize
who he was. In nineteen ninety three, federal marshals finally caught up with
Handman after tracking the movements of his wife. Bill Bonk is the US marshal
who led the operation to arrest the fugitive. Bonk had tracked Handman to an
off the grid cabin he owned in the mountain town of Joseph, Oregon,
about forty miles east of Finlay Creek. The cabin was protected from outsiders like
a fortress and appeared to have been outfitted to hold a captive. This is
Bill Bonk talking about tracking Hamman's wife. We were in Joseph, Oregon,
and he determined that she had made an ATM withdaw in Walla Walla, Washington,
you know, north of pretty much north at where we were at,
right, So we drove up there and we kind of um hooked up with
the police. We were looking at hotels looking for a Pacific car and they
knew what Hammond's wife was driving, and we're able to trace her movements to
Lewiston, Idaho. Somebody had spotted the car, the Tapadera motor in and
so I called the Tapadera just to be like, try to be discreet,
just because that's a long drive, right, And we're like, because she
still registered death And the manager said, yeah, she just paid for another
night. So we end up you know, we drive there. I mean
it took us like two hours or um. And that's some hilly remember there,
there's some pretty hilly turvy road. Looking over the guards walf to U
imminent death. When we got into town, I saw a blue cavalier kind
of drive up the road and I called nine one one said, hey,
you know, can you just put on APB at tatting noise? And Lewiston,
well, a detective saw the car and he calls in and says,
there's a woman and a dude with a beard and you know, with facial
hair or something like his Holy shit, Hantman had been exceedingly careful to conceal
his whereabouts. So Bonk was shocked to learn that he was with his wife
in Lewiston. Because everywhere we went, like when I went into that hotel
room at the Tapadera motor Um before the detective called, you know, there
was one soda canon the trash, one piece of dental floss. You know,
it's hard to you know, the manager said that they only saw one
person. Basically at that point, we had like eight deputy marshals. We
had two Idahost State troopers. I think ten Lewiston cops and just kind of
came in and the troopers blocked the road and we just took him down the
Gunpoint and up in Hell's Canyon, you know, up along a for a
service road. He has this six or seven acre parcel where he built his
cabin and then he puts up a chainling fence around the whole property, well
not the whole property, it was kind of U shaped, but from the
road and then you know, down on both sides of his property. So
and then he had this footbridge that was lined with like animal skulls and stuff.
So after we arrested him and his um, his wife, I mean
she called the cabin aushwoods in the wilderness. Aushwoods in the wilderness. You
know. When I went out there in twenty eighteen, I flew into Lewiston
and drove to Joseph, right, so you know, that's like about a
one hundred miles ninety five mile drive. I think it's down one twenty nine
and then into three in Oregon, one hundred miles. Four cars. I
saw four cars that whole trip, you know, and if you drove that
route, I mean we did. That's some of the most desolate, crazy
terrain, like I'm like, oh my god, Like how many bodies could
be over any one of these switch backs or something like, it's just so
isolated, it's just crazy. Next time on Still, I believe that she
did it herself or she definitely got rid of the body, you know what
I mean. I mean she she had something to do with this or did
it herself. There is no other ifanderbutt or any other way. Anyone with
information pertaining to the disappearance of Patricia Otto should contact the Looston Police Department's tipline
at two zero eight to nine eight three nine. Anyone with information pertaining to
the identity of the Finlay Creek Jane Doe, or other information related to that
case should contact the Union County District Attorney at DA at Union hyphen County dot
org. If you, or anyone you know is a victim of domestic abuse,
please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at eight hundred seven nine nine.
Safe Still is a production of The Reporter's Notebook and Grayson Shaw Media. You
can connect with us online at the Reporter's Notebook dot com or via email at
info at the Reporter's Notebook dot com. Still was researched, written and produced
by Karen Shaw Anderson. Additional research in script editing provided by Christine Hughes.
Original music by Smith Uosso. I'm your host and associate producer Gary Anderson.
Special thanks to everyone who graciously provided interviews and help with our research. We
would specifically like to thank the advocates for Patricia Otto and the Finlay Creek Jindoe
Task Force. Like follow and subscribe to Still on your favorite podcast platform,
and follow us on Facebook or Twitter to join the conversation. Ezekiel thirty four
sixteen. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the stray,
and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the week.