This podcast contains intense subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. I'm just worried
that there's a lot of things that I don't remember well. The case number
of nine one six five four. At or about four o'clock PM, September
seventh, nineteen seventy six, Sergeant Rigney and myself went to the Ralph Otto
residence thirteen oh eight twenty ninth Street to question him concerning the disappearance of his
wife, Patricia Otto. Ralph wasn't home when we arrived. While we were
at the residence, we observed and examined a large tarp to the west side
of the residence spread out in the lawn. We looked at the tarp to
determine whether they or not there were any signs of blood, hair, or
other physical evidence where a body could have been transported in the tarp. Lewis
and Idaho police detectives were looking into the disappearance of twenty four year old Patricia
Lee Otto, a married mother of two young girls. The first voice you
heard belongs to retired police detective Tom Selene. Then you heard a portion of
his actual nineteen seventy six police report read by one of our colleagues. Patty,
as most people called her, was reportedly last seen alive by her husband,
Ralph, late in the evening of August thirty first, nineteen seventy six.
He told people the two had a heated argument and went to bed in
different rooms to cool off. Neighbors didn't hear this particular fight, but they'd
heard plenty of fights before. Patty and Ralph's young daughters woke the next morning
and began looking everywhere for their mom. She was nowhere to be found.
Ralph didn't report Patty missing, though, he told everyone that Patty had threatened
to leave the kids with him before, just so he would know what it
was like to raise them on his own. He said Patty had simply walked
into the night without packing a bag, leaving a note, or even taking
her car, which was parked right outside. The youngest daughter remembers seeing part
of a scuffle between her parents that night. Her sister told her it was
just a bad dream. This is the story about the decades long search for
the girl's mother. It's a story about outlaws and in laws, police detectives,
suspects and potential accomplices, blatant lies, conspira theories, reams and reams
of circumstantial evidence, and a mind boggling lack of concrete proof. Ralph found
out that she was working as a prostitute. I think they put it into
humage, having real received information that there was a secret room in the basement
that was all paneled off. I think that we broke up the mafia rain
in this city. But it was common knowledge that they were running a call
girl Rady, you know East Tember where you want the big deal here at
very dangerous people. What happened to Patricia Lee Otto? This is also the
story of a woman whose body was found almost exactly two years after Patty disappeared.
Her remains are still waiting to be identified. It's the mystery of who
that woman was, what happened to her, and whether or not she could
be Patty Otto. In the age of DNA, how can we not be
sure? And if it's not Patty, then who and who killed her?
And why? A cadre of volunteer researchers and people who loved Patty are all
asking those same questions. More than forty five years later. They're still waiting
for answers, still waiting for justice, still waiting for peace from the pages
of the reporter's notebook. This is still season two. I'm your host,
Arie Anderson. I don't believe she left at all. I believe that he
somehow killed her, and then somehow by himself or with others, and something
with her body. Everything else after and in between is him trying to protect
his lebrities. That's retired Detective Tom Selene again. He was the primary investigator
looking into Patty's disappearance. He's convinced that Patty's husband, Ralph Otto, killed
her that night. Throughout this season, you'll hear from Selene. You'll also
hear the text from many of his and other investigators reports, and you'll listen
in as my colleagues and I, Christine Hughes and Karen Shaw Anderson read through
transcripts from taped police interviews and portions of handwritten notes from some of the people
surrounding this investigation. Most importantly, you'll hear the actual voices of Patty's family,
people connected to Ralph, and the volunteer sleuths who have devoted years of
their lives to solving these cases. We couldn't have put this season together without
the tireless work and relentless determination of so many people. We will carefully comb
through the documented facts and let you mentally sift out half truths, rumors,
concealed circumstances, and seemingly far fetched theories. Most of the facts lead us
straight back to Ralph as the cause of Patty's disappearance the night of August thirty
first, nineteen seventy six. But some of the details of this case also
appear to contradict our assumptions. It's certain that some of the information we've been
given was designed to send us scurrying after shadows. How much of it should
we actually believe? After you hear this tangled story, will be curious to
know what you think. You may come to a different conclusion than we did
we first learned about this case. Actually these two cases. In the summer
of twenty twenty one, Patty Auto's youngest daughter, the one who remembers seeing
her parents fighting that night in nineteen seventy six, was scrolling through social media
late one evening. She froze after seeing an image that looked an awful lot
like herself. I sat straight up in my bed and I'm like, that's
my mother. This guy drew my mother. Who is this guy? Can
I start messaging like crazy? Who are these people? How did they get
my mother's picture? Who is this missing person? The image was posted by
volunteer investigators trying to identify a Jane Doe found in nineteen seventy eight in a
remote area of Oregon. The image was a forensic anthropologist's rendering of what that
woman may have looked like based on her skeletonized remains. Law enforcement working on
the case back then estimated she had been dead for at least two years when
she was found. It appeared that she had been strangled. Elk hunters hiking
through a wooded trail had stumbled across her shallow grave. Animals had helped unearth
her skull. In the grave, pieces of clothing were found, scraps of
cloth seemed to be from a pair of red pants and a white top.
Law enforcement spent months comparing her clothing, hair color, body size, and
teeth to records of missing women from across the Northwest, but they still had
no idea who she was. Records indicate that they did compare her to Pattiotto
and ruled her out as a match, but there are questions about how those
comparisons were made, which will discuss in detail later. If it was indeed
Pattiotto, the mystery remains how she got there. The location where she was
found is a treacherous three hour drive from her home in lewis And, Idaho.
In the taped interview Ralph gave to police investigators on September seventh, he
said that Patty disappeared sometime between eleven pm August thirty first and mid morning September
first, nineteen seventy six. Her parents know that she was alive shortly before
eleven pm. That's when she left their house, so that time is confirmed.
We also know Ralph started telling people the next afternoon that Patty had left
him. Ralph told police that Patty came home with the children. He and
Patty fought, and she left. He said he heard her leave after he
went to bed, and he didn't go up to check on her, but
he did say he looked in on his daughters, who were sleeping in a
basement bedroom. At about one thirty the next afternoon, Ralph called Patty's younger
sister, Alice Mills, and told her he couldn't find Patty. He asked
Alice if Patty was there with her, and then he asked Alice to watch
his daughters while he searched for his wife. The girls were much too young
to be left home alone. Natalie, the oldest, hadn't even turned five
yet, Dlice, the younger daughter, was still just two years old.
At about two that afternoon, Ralph dropped the girls off at Alice's house and
said he was going to drive to the town of Winchester, Idaho, about
forty minutes southeast of Lewistown, to look for Patty. When he arrived at
Alice's house, it was apparent to Alice that Ralph had been drinking, and
he was complaining that he couldn't find one of his handguns. In the recorded
interview with police, Ralph later described going to Winchester that day and looking for
Patty at a bar called the wood Shed because he believed Patty hung out there
often. He said he didn't find her there, but did he really even
look. Each time Ralph talked to police about what happened in the minutes before
Patty's disappearance, the specifics changed a little, usually with new details. In
the earliest versions of his story, Ralph said they had simply argued. He
said he suggested that they go to bed in different rooms to cool down.
Later, he said Patty slapped him, but he denied hitting her. Sometimes
he mentioned hearing a horn honk outside and a door slam as Patty left the
house. Other times he said he didn't hear anything at all, or that
he wasn't sure how far away the car was that honked. It could have
been in a nearby park, and he wasn't certain what he heard was even
that night. In his first statement to police, Ralph said she took her
purse with her. In a later account, he said he saw five one
hundred dollar bills in her purse shortly before she disappeared. Ralph's family said she
packed a suitcase, but there's no reference in official reports about belonging she may
have taken other than her purse or the clothes she was wearing red pants and
a white sleeveless blouse. Ralph Otto was requested to come to the Lewiston Police
Department to be questioned concerning the disappearance of his wife, and that was done
at five o'clock PM. A statement was taken from Otto. The statement ended
approximately five thirty or shortly thereafter. President in the office is one Ralph s
Otto and myself Sergeant Selene. This conversation is being recorded by dictaphone. During
that interview, Ralph didn't explain to police his rationale for believing his wife would
hang out at a bar forty minutes from their home, but we do know
that his story about going to Winchester was a lie. He also told police
about going to a different bar in Lewiston called Van's Club that day. Police
were able to verify that he did indeed go to Van's Club, but his
visit there was actually on August thirty first, a few hours before Patty vanished,
not September first, as he had told detectives. The bartender had called
police after Ralph showed up there with a handgun tucked into his waistband and demanded
to see a man named Randy. Ralph believed that the man he was looking
for worked at the bar. We'll talk more about that storyline soon. I
will tell you, though, that, aside from making a number of phone
calls in the weeks that followed, we are certain that Ralph never physic he
searched for Patty beyond his own yard. I'll also tell you now that the
tarp police saw in Ralph's yard didn't reveal any clues. That first day of
September, instead of actually driving southeast to the bar in Winchester, Idaho,
Ralph headed west, taking a bridge across the Snake River. He then drove
a few miles south to the small town of a Sotan, Washington, to
visit a woman named Bonnie's shop. Beell, we heard from Bonnie, and
you'll hear what she told us as the story unfolds, Ralph had been spending
quite a bit of time with Bonnie in recent days, including on the day
of his wife's disappearance. We learned that Ralph had spent most of the day
on August thirty first with Bonnie before he went to Van's Club in Lewiston with
a gun, and he took his daughters back to Bonnie's house the morning of
September first, before calling Alice that Patty had left him. We have to
wonder if a man who had just murdered his wife would expend so little effort
concealing his lies. Did he really think investigators wouldn't check his story. Ralph
had spent the better part of a week helping Bonnie finish packing up her house
she was moving away to California. After spending the morning with her and then
dropping his daughters off with Alice, sometime in the afternoon of September first,
Ralph went back and picked up Bonnie to take her shopping to buy a new
outfit. He also had dinner with her and her parents that evening, and
returned to Bonnie's parents house for breakfast the next morning. On September second,
he stayed and visited with the family before Bonnie followed him back to his house.
On the way out of town. At Ralph's house, he checked her
car's fluid levels, and then she drove away for California. Late in the
evening on September second, Patty's sister, Alice Mills, and her parents Tom
and artist O'Malley, who everyone called Toots, contacted police to report Patty missing.
Ralph still hadn't returned to Alice's house to pick up his daughters. If
Ralph had indeed killed Patty sometime overnight between August thirty first and September first,
he didn't have much time to hide the body. We do know, though,
that he called at least two friends that night saying he was in trouble
and needed help. Both friends said no, but didn't ask what sort of
trouble Ralph was in. Did he call someone else who did agree to help.
We'd really like to know that answer. Toasty out here. It's getting
warm, isn't it. My colleagues and I met Patty's sister, Alice at
her home in Idaho to talk about Patty's disappearance on what would have been Patty's
sixty ninth birthday, August fourth, twenty twenty one. This is my uncle
Van Nier Rank you, Garry, Christine and Alice. Hi. Hi,
I'm Karen. Alice still lives in Lewiston and hasn't changed her phone number in
case Patty is somehow still alive and wants to reach out. This is Alice
talking in a recorded phone call weeks after that first meeting. We were asking
about Alice's relationship with her sister and Patty's life before she disappeared. She said
they talked every day and usually saw each other too. Alice said that Patty
never left the girls in Ralph's care because he would often drink until he passed
out. Oh no, I had the kids a lot. It's not messing
Babyson. I would just she'd come up with the kids. There weather a
lot of when she went to school. When with Babyscorse, she never believed
the kids of rap by himself. He never he never watched the kids.
So she had an appointment or something. First moment Mom was and so I'd
watched him. But it was always usually family, Yeah, watching him mom,
dad or me. According to documentation we've obtained, Ralph was also taking
more than twice the standard maximum dose of valum. The valume was prescribed by
a Lewiston doctor who was trying to help Ralph with nervousness and trouble sleeping while
attempting to quit drinking, but Ralph often swallowed the valume with whiskey. Alice
told us that Patty was fed up with Ralph's drinking, which had led to
him more than one separation for Patty and Ralph. Ralph had gone into treatment
for alcoholism several times, but he hadn't successfully sobered up. There was also
the issue of Ralph's involvement with other women. Patty knew he was seeing that
Bonnie. We've seen him together. She had seen him together, and then
when Matt Bonnie had that baby, but he thought it could be his,
and he was always wanting to buy things and go visit Stephanet really bothered Patty.
Do you think that's part of what the fight was about the night she
disappeared, was Bonnie? No, I don't think so. It could be
just everything coming up. I think the night that the last night I got
into I think for the last drive, Ralph knew that Patty had went out
was Randy, and there's no way anybody's going to have anything that belongs to
Ralph. Patty and Ralph met while she was still in high school. She
was eighteen when they married in nineteen seventy. He was a divorced thirty five
year old who had worked as a mechanic and owned heavy road equipment, which
he sometimes leased out. Ralph's income was good when he earned contracts from the
state or Forest Service to clear roads covered by mudslides, but he had also
lost money on other business ventures, including a plan to crush rock into gravel
on a Clearwater River island he and a business partner had purchased. Ralph and
Patty's marriage was having ups and downs too. They went through their longest split
in late nineteen seventy five, while they were separated, Patty hooked up with
a man named Randy Benton. Randy is a musician whose bands sometimes played at
Vans Club. You'll hear from Randy in an upcoming episode. Ian Patty knew
each other from school, and they saw each other again when he was playing
one night at Vans. Truth Be Told. It sounds like Patty seduced Randy
that night to get back at Ralph for his relationships with other women. Patty
told Ralph about her one night's stand with Randy when she and Ralph decided to
give their marriage another try in the spring of nineteen seventy six, Ralph said
he forgave Patty, but he couldn't forget about that tryst. Ralph later admitted
to police that he intended to kill Randy when he went to Van's Club with
a gun the night Patty disappeared. He told police that he was the only
man Patty had ever been with before she hooked up with Randy. Ralph said
Patty's affair with the musician was more about her desire for new sexual experiences than
revenge for his unfaithfulness. Patty and Ralph had often argued about Randy. They
also argued about Ralph's history with other women and his drinking. Occasionally, the
squabbles turned violent, and not just on Ralph's part. He had hit and
choked Patty. She had fired a gun into the ceiling. It was the
same gun Ralph had threatened to kill Randy with. This is Ralph's sister Marcy
Smith talking about Patty and Ralph's relationship. Marcy ended up raising Patty's daughters after
she disappeared. She was a sweet, loving person. She could have a
temper, and Ralph tried it more than once. You know, Marcy said,
Patty would get upset about the other women in Ralph's life, past and
present. Patty knew about all of them. He was always up friend and
they had a good marriage. As the longer it went, there were ups
and downs, and some of them. I wasn't proud of my brother.
He was married and had children, but he just thought that was a privilege
and he never felt guilty for it. Marcy said Ralph had a temper.
She remembers two specific childhood incidents that could have ended tragically. The first time
was when Ralph threw an axe and hit Marcy in the head with it.
She was severely injured. Another time, Ralph and his older brother Jerry went
after their younger brother Ray. He liked to pick on Ray, and I
was spending most of my life defending Ray and protecting him from I stopped him
INtime one time, and they were My two older brothers were going they were
playing cowboys and Indians, and they were going to hang Ray. And I
was terrified because I knew that it might happen. I went in and got
Daddy so fast, and I thought, boyd now the boys are going to
beat up on me. But I didn't care. And I think if it
would have been left up to Ralph, I don't know. So this was
Ralph and Jerry. Yeah, Ralph and Jerry. Yeah, I don't know.
I think Jerry might have stopped him. But to this day I knew
that Ray's life was in danger. In the hours before Patty and Ralph fought,
the evening of August thirty first, Patty had gone to a night class
at the Valley Business School, a little more than three miles from her in
Ralph's house. Patty had been taking classes at the school for more than a
year and a half and She had registered for a new daytime class that would
start on September seventh. She was training to become a secretary. Was she
taking steps to start a new life. Ralph's family thinks so and earnestly believes
she's still alive. They have many theories about why she hasn't been found.
On the other hand, Patty's family is certain that Ralph killed her. Before
going to school that night, Patty had dropped off her daughters at her parents
house after class. She made a quick stop at Alice's house before going to
her parents' place to pick up the girls. Patty stayed at her parents' house
to talk and sit beer for an hour or two before heading home. We
know Patty made it home with the girls after leaving her parents' house at about
eleven pm. The girls were safe in their basement bedroom when the sun rose
on September first. This is Patty's sister Alice again. She came to our
house after she got done with school. She came by to tell me she
was going to make my birthday cake. And she didn't stay long because mom
and dad had the kids, so she was going to go get the kids
and go home. And that is the last. I mean, she probably
wasn't there more than ten minutes, but she wanted to make sure that.
She told me she was going to make my birthday September second, So she
was going to make my birthday cake, and she was going to go kids
at for mom and dad and go home. And that's that was a last
right there that I saw. And then he called me the next morning and
asked me where Patty was. Did I know where Patty was? And I
said no, And I just started this. I can still remember this feeling,
that just feeling inside myself, and I'll never forget that feeling. I
knew something was wrong. And as soon as I got off the phone,
I called my dad and I said, I know something's wrong. I said,
Rolph's going to bring me the girls. Would you come over you watch
the kids so I can go down and look at the house. With nerves
on edge, Alice quickly walked through the house, looking for any signs of
what may have happened after Patty arrived home the night before. So there was
nothing in the house that made the hair on your name, nothing I could
see. But then I get said, I was very nervous. I'm not
so I was looking for, but I did not see any blood. I
did not see any furniture overturned like they were got in a big sight like
that. She doesn't recall many of the details today, but in nineteen seventy
six, Alice told police that the cushion from the living room couch was missing
when she walked through the house. Patty had only recently reopholstered the living room
furniture. That was another thing about Patty that when they did, she had
never done very much silly and or anything. And they had got to fill
pouch and she decided she was going to reopholster it, and he said,
go for it, and it turned off really nice. She wasn't afraid to
try something new like that. She did it all herself, yes, all
herself. He bought her an extra duty some machine thing, and she did
the whole couch and cushions and everything all by herself. And it really turned
out nice, the kind of it. But when she says to her mind,
the trythons and knew like that she could do it. She'd loved to.
She'd paint things red, the furniture, repaint furnishures. Why would the
cushion from a couch that had recently been recovered be missing from the living room.
Lewiston police detective Tom Selene wondered the same thing, and he asked Ralph
about it during their interview a few days later. Ralph told detective Selene that
the cushion was at an upholstery shop for repairs. If the cushion had been
soiled or damaged by the kids or a rowdy house guest, couldn't Patty have
repaired it herself. Ralph's story doesn't really add up. It's not clear if
detectives were aware that the living room furniture had only recently been reupholstered, but
we don't have a record about them probing further about the missing cushion. The
upholstery shop Ralph mentioned is still in business. It specializes in custom car,
aircraft and boat interiors, although employees also recover household furniture. The man who
runs the shop now is the son of the original owner. He said.
All the business receipts from nineteen seventy six are long gone. I want to
give you an overview of the town where Ralph and Patty lived and the terrain
that surrounded them. It's important to keep in mind what Patty would have encountered
if she had decided to wander out on her own in the middle of the
night. If Patty really wanted to disappear, Idaho was a great place to
do so. Even today, you can travel miles without encountering a single human.
The majority of the state isn't populated. It's truly wild, untouched by
roads and inaccessible by most passenger vehicles. More than four and a half million
acres of wilderness stretch out across the state. Much of it is densely forested,
but larger swaths are scrubby deserts interrupted by canyons, streams, and rivers.
Virtually every mile of the state is hilly, and thousands of acres are
ridged by mountains. The six US states that touch the Potato capital are also
mostly unpeopled in the areas that bump up against Idaho, And of course there's
Canada to the north. Well you get the picture. Keep in mind also
that this was the mid nineteen seventies, a time when the United States seemed
to be teeming with serial killers. Gary Ridgeway, often known as the Green
River Killer, Ted Bundy, and Robert Yates Junior, all proud for victims,
not far from the spot where Patty was last seen alive. But Bundy
was in police custody when she vanished, and it doesn't seem as though Ridgeway's
killing career had begun yet. Yates was working as a correctional officer in Walla
Walla, Washington, and his known victims were all sex workers in the Spokane
area. Walla Walla and Spokane are both about a two hour drive from Lewiston.
It's certainly possible that another predator could have grabbed Patty if she left her
house in the dark that night. In a later episode, we'll discuss a
couple of potential suspects who are known to have actually been in Lewiston, Idaho,
around this time. Lewiston itself sits on the western edge of the Idaho
Panhandle, about one hundred and eighty miles south of the Canadian border. Back
in nineteen seventy six, about twenty seven thousand people called Lewiston home. The
city's population and land mass had more than doubled seven years earlier, when an
area called the Orchards on the south end of town was annexed by the city
Patty's sister and parents lived in the orchards. Patty and Ralph's house, which
originally belonged to Ralph's parents, sat about halfway up a steep hill on twenty
ninth Street. The family lived less than a mile south of the Clearwater River,
which forms the city's northern boundary. The Snake River flows northward along the
city's western edge. The west flowing Clearwater joins the Snake River at Lewiston's northwest
corner. From there, the Snake veers sharply to flow westward into Washington State.
Ralph's rand Bonnie, recalled to us that Spokane, Washington, was where
Ralph took her shopping for a pair of hot hants and white Go Go boots
on September first, nineteen seventy six. However, police records and check registers
indicate that on that day Ralph actually purchased a woman's pantsuit, a necklace,
and other items from the Vogue shop in Lewiston. The boots came from another
nearby store. A store clerk initially identified Ralph's shopping companion as Patty, based
on photos of Patty and the clerk's recollection. Ralph's family touted that as proof
that Patty was alive and well. The clerk was considered a reliable witness because
she was married to a former Lewiston police officer. Patty was petite and blonde,
so was Bonnie. It's easy to see how a store clerk looking at
a photo of Patty could confuse the two, according to police reports. Bonnie
herself later confirmed that she was the woman shopping with Ralph and Lewiston on September
first, more than four decades later. Bonnie's memory is understandably a bit fuzzy.
Perhaps Ralph took her shopping for new clothes more than once. Another potential
clue that Patty might have covertly slipped out of town came from a check register
found in the auto home. It showed that a check for sixty one dollars
had been written to Greyhound Bus Lines. Could Patty have been planning to vanish
that night or soon afterward, and actually purchased a bus ticket for herself in
advance. After learning that a check had been written at a bus depot,
Ralph's brother Ray went down to the bus station to ask questions. He learned
that Greyhound did not accept checks for bus tickets. However, the bus line
did accept checks to pay for freight shipped on the bus. Ray later conceded
that Ralph had been the one to write the check and it was for freight.
It's not clear if Ralph was receiving a shipment or instead was paying to
send a bulky or heavy package to someone else next time. On Still,
he came out to the shop one day and it was just scared me.
I'd never seen him like that before, and it was just hitting mad.
Anyone with information pertaining to the disappearance of Patricia Otto should contact the Leoston Police
Department's tipline at two zero eight to nine eight three nine three nine. Anyone
with information pertaining to the identity of the Finland Creek Jane Doe, or other
information related to that case should contact the Union County Strict 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 and script editing provided
by Christine Hughes. Original music by Smith Yuosso. Additional narration provided by b.
J. Blackburn. 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 Findlay Creek Jain Dooe
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 weak