This podcast contains intense subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. Right after the
day after my mom disappeared, first dad took us out to his girlfriend's house
in a sotan and we had lunch out there in a sotan and we were
hanging out with her, and then he took us to my mom's sister,
that would be my aunt Alice, and we stayed there for quite a while.
So she disappeared all the thirty first and it's December when they're putting us
to bed, and my sister's asking again, when's mommy coming home? You
know, she's not coming back. I watched, I said, in my
own words, which is in the police report, Daddy hit mommy, and
then mommy had daddy, and then daddy carried her out. But my sister
was so dead set on that's not what happened that she's saying, that's not
what happened, not what happened. Daddy wouldn't hear her, Daddy wouldn't hit
her, It's not what happened. But she wanted to believe that. Why
would any child want to believe that your father would do that to your mother,
you know? And so the memory just kind of goes away of like
it didn't happen. That's not what happened. That can't be what happened.
She just is coming back, So I had to just been another one of
those bad dreams that I had. But what three year old dreams about their
mother being carried out by their neck? You don't. He specifically said did
he carry her out? But I didn't know what that meant. It's that
I didn't. I couldn't say he was choking her because I didn't even know
a word for that. But in my mind, what I saw was I
thought he helped carry her is what I would have described it as being.
I thought he was helping carry her. As an adult, you realize you
couldn't carry someone that way, And didn't you at one point say something about
it? Daddy helped him? Mommy high? Yeah, he helped her,
helped her hide, he helped hear hit her, and I said, hid
by not hit, but he hit her, And I wondered, did he
see me through the bars? You know? Did I? When I realized
what I saw, did I just go right back downstairs because my head peeked
up just over the ledge to peek out to see what was happening, and
then I remember being with Natalie saying I'm scared, and her just comforting me
of you know, they'll they'll stop, and you just go to sleep,
and she'd rub my back and say, they'll they'll stop, they'll stop.
From the pages of the reporter's notebook, this is still season two. I'm
your host, Gary Anderson. We received information that there was a secret room
that was in the basement of ralph ottos and I had requested from him to
show me this room in the southwest corner of the basement, behind the bunk
beds of the two children. It was September seventh, less than a week
after Patty had vanished. During that first week, Lewiston Police detective Tom Selene
learned that Ralph had concealed the entry to a small room in his home,
which was accessible only through the basement. When Ralph led Selene to the southwest
corner of the basement that day, Selene saw that Dallas and Natalie's bunk beds
were nestled against the wall. That's where the girls had been trying to sleep
while Ralph and Patty fought upstairs. In order to show Selene the secret room.
Ralph had to push the bunk beds out of the way, remove four
screws, and pull the paneling away from the wall to reveal an opening into
the cramped space. Inside the room, There was no sign that Patty's body
had ever been stashed there, but detective Selene did see two marine jetpumps,
which seemed oddly out of place. Nothing else was in the room but a
water heater. The floor was made of dirt. Selene later asked around and
learned that the jet pumps had been stolen from a local boat dealer. He
obtained a search warrant to retrieve and return the pumps to the dealership. The
county prosecutor, however, declined to pursue a warrant to search the rest of
Ralph's property for Patty's body. In a letter to Selene, the prosecutor said
two doctors had told him that Ralph's apparent confessions could be mere hallucinations and were
inadequate to justify a warrant. The prosecutor was worried that if the case went
to trial, anything found during a search might be ruled it admits Ralph had
already let detectives walk around his property and had even shown Selene the hidden room.
On the same day, the cops saw a green canvas tarp stretched out
on the lawn. The tarp was wet when the cops examined it, and
Ralph told them that rufers working on the house next door had folded it up
and left it on his porch. He said that tarp had gotten wet when
it rained, so he opened it up and washed it off with a hose.
Selene and the other detective looked the tarp over but didn't see anything on
it except for a few splotches of red paint, which matched the color of
a fence in the yard. It's worth noting here that Patty's sister Alice went
to Ralph's house on September second to get close for Natalie and Dallas. While
Alice was at the house, she saw the tarp laying in the backyard.
She also saw a shovel leaning against the house by the front door. Police
thought that the combination of a tarp and a shovel at the house of a
missing woman certainly seemed suspicious. In a later interview at the police station,
Ralph explained that anyone who does contract work for the forest service carries an axe,
a bucket, and a shovel in his truck, but he said he
didn't remember why the shovel had been taken out of his truck. Ralph's mentioned
of carrying a bucket in his truck made us think of another story we heard
from one of Ralph's friends. This is Ron Roady, who babysat the Auto
Girls not long before Patty disappeared. I didn't really know she was missing.
I mean I was still hanging around because I never saw Paddy. I'd come
to the house and Ralph would be outwork, and I mean once, very
rarely Patty came out of the house, so I never saw her. So
I think she was missing for a little while before I even knew it.
But right about the time she disappeared, they had a Sharebroley station wagon and
Ralph I don't even know why he told me or how he told me that
he had been out that night in the middle of the night. They were
building the new Lewiston Hill at the time. The Lewiston Hill is an escarpment
just north of town. The steep portion of US Highway ninety five that climbs
the hill was under construction when Patty vanished. The southbound lanes descending into Lewiston
from the crest of the hill have three runaway truck ramps over the span of
just a few miles, and he had gotten that station wagon stuck at the
top of one of the runaway truck ramps in the gravel, and he brought
a bucket of that gravel home with him. So I always kind of suspected
that that's where he putter boy. It's up in the deep gravel and mornaway
truck round, which would be a spot nobody would ever dig up. That
was always my suspicions. About two weeks after Patty vanished, a local pilot
gave Selene a ride over Ralph's home so he could get an aerial view.
He didn't spot anything out of the ordinary. With the help of city employees,
Selene also inspected a large municipal water tank adjacent to the twenty ninth Street
house. Again nothing. Ralph refused to let police conduct an intensive search of
his house and surrounding property. He said they had already had their chance when
they walk around his place on September seventh. If you recall from the last
episode, Bonnie shop Bell told Selene that Ralph had called her in late December,
and, while apparently hallucinating, he said Patty's body had been found on
his property. He said that he killed Patty when she came at him with
a gun and he stabbed her. You need to know that. In that
same interview with Selene, Bonnie said that if Ralph had killed Patty, she
thought it must have been the day after. Everyone believed because his behavior on
September two was distinctly different than September first, the day he took Bonnie shopping.
She advised that Ralph did not seem to be himself and indicated to her
that he had been up all night. He said that Patty was gone and
she will not be back shop. Bell indicated that Ralph had red eyes and
was about to cry, and she tried to console him, advising that they
had had fights before. Ralph insisted she would not be back this time,
she advised. She gave Ralph a ride to her parents residence, and the
mother indicated to her that Ralph appeared to be sick. This was the morning
of September second, when Ralph went to their house for breakfast, she advised
he started to eat but could not. She advised that her mother observed the
red eyes and tears and Ralph's eyes and heard Ralph say that Patty is gone
and she will not be back. After breakfast, Bonnie followed Ralph back to
his house before she drove away to California. At his house, Ralph tried
to get Bonnie to come inside. She declined, and then he wrote her
out a check for one thousand dollars, and then she left shop. Bell
did make the remark that if anything happened to Patty, it had to have
been the night after they had gone to dinner. Between that time and the
next morning, she advised, Ralph was really upset. She also said Ralph
made the remark that he was surprised that the girls haven't given him away.
I guess I went back upstairs to go find out what was going on,
or I wanted my mom. And as you walk up, the stairs goes
up and then turns to the left. That's what green. I'm thinking it's
green carpet. It's like green low carpet. And I walk up the stairs
and I peek through the railing, which it's that wrought iron white railing,
and I peeko the railing and they were fighting, and I saw them hit
each other like my dad hit her, and then she slapped him in the
face. And I thought he was helping her, because what I remembered was
him helping her out. I didn't none understand what it would mean to carry
somebody by their neck, but I thought he was helping her carry her out.
In court for Ralph's murder for higher trial, Ray described his brother's behavior
on the evening of September fifth, nineteen seventy six. That was the first
day Ray knew about Patty's disappearance. He had driven over to Ralph's house to
check on him. Here's Christine reading exactly what Ray told the jury in court.
When I arrived at the house that evening, it was about eight o'clock.
I think it was starting to get dark. And when I got to
the house, I rang the doorbell and there was no answer. I turned
around and started to leave, and Ralph approached around the corner. He was
wearing insulated coveralls, barefooted, drunk, disarranged, and I asked him what
was going on, what he was doing, and he said he hurt his
ankle. He stepped backwards and fell off of the retaining wall. His ankle
was sprained and swollen. Ray went to the pharmacy and got a bandage to
rap Ralph's ankle. After that day, Ray and Dodi spent much of their
time caring for Ralph. During Ray's trial testimony, he said that he went
to Ralph's house in mid October to vacuum, tidy up, and empty the
trash. He said that Ralph was so continually and severely intoxicated he was incapable
of caring for himself and was immersed in squalor. While cleaning up the place
on October fifteenth, Ray hauled away bags of trash, including a number of
empty whiskey bottles. Ray then returned to Ralph's place just twelve days later and
found sixteen freshly emptied fifths of whiskey and at least another half dozen empty bottles
of vodka, gin and wine. Ralph seemed to be attempting to drink himself
to death. Was it grief or guilt? We talked to Russ Mason in
the summer of twenty twenty one. He told us he had received a late
night call from Ralph around the first of September nineteen seventy six, Ralph said
he was in trouble and needed help. Russ told him he'd come by the
next day to help, but Ralph wasn't home when he went by the house.
Russ said he thinks the phone call may have been the very night Patty
disappeared. However, when police talked to Russ back then, he specifically recalled
that the phone call had happened at about one thirty am on a Sunday,
not in the middle of the week. He said he recalled that it was
a Sunday because he and his wife had been out Saturday night and had recently
gotten home and had gone to bed when the phone rang. September first,
nineteen seventy six, was a Wednesday, so unless Russ was confusing the dates,
the call didn't happen on the same night. Russ didn't want to be
recorded for the podcast, but he did tell us he believes that Ralph killed
Patty. He said he believes another friend who has since passed away, could
have helped Ralph that night. Out of fairness, we're not going to name
that man. Russ also said he believes that Ralph could have hidden Patty on
his property in wee Ipe. Another friend of Ralph's, Marlon Callahan, also
told us he believes Ralph killed Patty. In fact, friend after friend told
us the same thing. They had theories about where Ralph could have concealed Patty's
remains. We'll get to more of those possibilities in a bit. First,
you should know that a few months before Ray passed away in nineteen ninety,
he wrote down some of his thoughts on the matter. In the note Ray
said, the night he drove Ralph to the mental institution in Rotheno, after
Ralph's infamous confession to Bonnie, he told Ray, quote, I just stuck
her with a knife in the stomach. She didn't say a word. In
that same note, Ray wrote quote not one but two of Ralph's friends got
calls on the night in question. He wrote, nothing was concrete with one
call, but two different people same request. Is something else. If Ralph
couldn't get help, he had to do it himself. This might be why
there was a wet tarp on the lawn early September seventy six. The second
friend Ray referred to in his note wasn't one of the friends we've already mentioned.
It was yet another man. Ralph may have called for help. Still,
Ray wrote that only a small part of him believed Ralph could have been
capable of killing Patty. He said he was ninety percent convinced of his innocence,
and he attributed the trace of doubt to Ralph's dependence on alcohol and its
effect on his behavior. After Ralph went to prison for trying to have the
police captain killed, Patty's sister Alice and Ralph's sister Marcy fought in court for
custody of Natalie and Dallas. Marcy one, but Patty's family also won visitation
rights. A few years after getting custody, Marcy and her husband officially adopted
Natalie and Dallas. Before the adoption, Marcy told Dallas she would be getting
a new last name. Dallas asked for a new first name too, so
if you want to change your name, now's the time to do it.
So she just let me pick my name, and I wanted to be Susanne
Ray. So nobody ever thought I was a little boy for one again,
and number two associated with all the craps that my father and my mother.
I mean, you should see these piles and titles of newspaper clippings always on
the front page of the newspaper, always some big, drawn out thing.
Why can't my dad just I can't he just tell us what happened and get
this over with. Dallas is now known to those who love her as Suzanne
Timms. She's married, has kids and a nursing degree, and lives about
two hours from Lewiston. Despite her painful memories of that awful night, she
still wants to know more. She wants answers. Marcy, the woman Susanne
now calls mom, believes that Patty chose to leave her daughters and Ralph.
What do you think happen to Pattie? I think that as hard as what
it seems totally impossible, but that she thought that Ralph, and she's used
this phrase before, that it's your turn to take care of the girls now.
And I think once she got away and didn't see any way back,
and as her parents got older and passed away, I think she would have
wanted to come back, because she did love her parents. On November seventeenth,
nineteen seventy six, the same day that Ralph was released on bond while
awaiting trial, a woman called the Lewiston newspaper and identified herself as Patty.
She said she wanted to get a message to her parents, Tom and Toots
O'Malley. The woman said she loves her parents and her daughters. She's safe
and she's staying with friends. Newspaper staff called police. Selene was naturally suspicious
of the call and asked the newspaper employee who heard the caller's voice to listen
in as he called Ralph's family members to ask if they had placed that phone
call. Selene first called Ray and Dodie. The employee said Dodie did not
sound like the female voice she heard. Selene then called Marcy. After listening
for just a brief time, the employee said Marcy's voice sounded a lot like
the woman who had claimed to be Patty. She also said the background noise
in the call to Marcy sounded like the long distance connection with the mysterious caller.
Marcy denied making that phone call, and she believes it really could have
been Patty. She said that as time went on, the evidence that Patty
willingly left her family only increased, 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 seeing 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. One woman
told police she saw a woman wearing red pants and a white shirt, which
matched the description of what Patty wore on August thirty first, walking more than
a mile away from the auto home. The woman couldn't be sure of the
exact day she saw her, though. Another couple came forward to say they're
certain they saw Patty leaving her house with her hair in a mess on August
thirty first. The problem was the couple said they saw her that morning.
Patty didn't disappear until late that night. We asked Marcy if she ever wonders
if maybe Ralph did do what just about everyone suspects to this day. As
soon as I say that I doubt that he could do it. I believe
anyone can do anything when they are in a fit of rage. Here's tom
Selene. But I could tell you when I drove up there, I believe
a missing person was a missing person, then she would probably be found.
That's what was going through my mind. And then it didn't take me long
to come to the opinion that that wasn't the case and that's something had been
done with her. We followed up on thousands of leads, put posters out,
talk to people all over that would tell us they had sightings or this
or that. An Absolutely nothing ever came together to support there's any credibility and
those suggestions made to us on how to solve the case. Do you recall
what first made you have an inkling that this wasn't just a missing persons case.
I think it was a combination of things. Patty never came home,
there was no contact with Patty. Tom O'Malley. Patty's father knew Ralph,
knew a lot more about him at that time than any of the rest of
us did, and he was of the strong opinion that Ralph had done something
with his daughter. The other family members on the O'Malley side were of that
opinion as well. On Ralph's side, it was the total opposite that,
in my opinion, they wanted to protect him and never were forthcoming with any
anything other than she run off or took off and was gone. So,
but that's typical of what we've seen in many cases we dealt with a lot
of these type of people over a period of time and watched the family members
act and react in different ways, obviously and many times depending on that particular
relationship with the defendant. Throughout Dodie's manuscript, she described Ralph as a mean
drunk who mistreated everyone who loved him, especially her husband Ray. So we
were kind of surprised by her response when we asked her what she thought of
Ralph. I liked Ralph. He was fun to be around. With that,
you wouldn't trust him, you know, you never knew or knew what
he was going to do. He's going to a start with a pair of
boots, find some new ones, put the new ones on, put the
old ones back up on the shelf, and walk out the door. I
mean, just stuff like that. They're doing crazy. What'd he brag about
it? About what he would do? What would he brag about what he
would do? Oh no, not necessarily. Okay, that was just him
one the coat. He just go put on a coat and put the old
one there and walk out the door. That's why we have all these old
things about our things when we shot down day. Yeah, So another thing
that struck us was that Doughty included very specific details in her manuscript, details
that didn't seem relevant to us, like what Ralph ordered to eat at a
restaurant on a certain day and what song he played on the jukebox, But
there were gaping holes in other places. For instance, after Ralph went to
prison for the murder for Higher Plot, Tom Selene went down to the state
penitentiary in Boise to interview Ralph. It was nineteen seventy eight. At that
point, Patty had been missing for two years. Selene was reaching for any
thread he could pull, trying to see if Ralph would confess, or maybe
let's slip a clue about where Patty could be buried. The interview lasted for
nearly two hours. Dodie got a copy of the interview transcript and retyped the
entire forty seven page document word for word for her manuscript, except for two
pages. She summarized those two pages with a single sentence. Selene asked Ralph
about his marriage to Joy. She omitted that in those two pages worth of
conversation, Ralph described having an on again, off again affair with Dodie.
We want to be fair, Ralph could have been lying about the affair in
We're convinced he lied about a lot of things throughout the interview. He certainly
wasn't a straight shooter. We asked Dodie about the omitted pages, and she
said that leaving out the two pages of the transcript that pertained to her was
more dignified than denying falsehoods. She said Ralph was jealous of her husband and
wanted him to suffer. That's why he said those things. But it does
beg the question if Ralph would boldly fabricate such a betrayal against his own brother,
why would Dodie refuse to believe that Ralph may have murdered his wife?
But, like I say, it's so involved and you just have to take
it piece by piece and go from there because it's just it's overwhelming all that.
Why do you think Ray was so willing to defend Ralph because he knew
innocent, he knew would not do that. I want to let you in
on a few key things Ralph said when Selene interviewed him in prison. First,
he said, in knowing certain terms, that he doesn't believe Patty was
a prostitute. This is an actor dramatizing the exact words in the transcript.
I know she did. I know, I don't. I don't think she's
a bad mother. That's one thing you would have pissed me off about that,
Damn Dolores, is the fact that she thinks Patty is somewhere but beings
a prostitute. You see, that's all she's got in her head is attamp
prostitute somewhere at Patty ain't no prostitute. Ralph also said he did not kill
Patty, but he went on to say, but I think it would have
been a bit of anger, you know, something that would piss me off
bad and I had to be half whisk you up to do it. But
I gad him me to kill somebody. Selene asked Ralph to tell him what
really happened to night Patty vanished, Rap said, go my hands. Many
times it seemed like a dream to me, like it was something that didn't
even really happen, that I saw a pictures show or something. But I
did. I don't think I could have killed her. Let's assume, for
the sake of argument, that Ralph did kill Patty, whether it was a
carefully executed plan or a tragic misstep in a fit of rage. How would
someone who was perpetually drunk conceal the evidence so well? Surely he had to
have gotten help, right and if so, from whom and where did he
hide her? On different occasions, Ralph had taunted people with ideas about where
he could have buried Patty if he had killed her. He mentioned throwing her
body in the river, burying her in a landfill, hiding her in a
concrete dam that was under construction, or sinking her weighted down corpse in a
deep pond with a silty floor. This is Ron Roady again. My parents
then you were Alph and Patty real well. But they had lived out of
town and they moved back into town and bought a house on Park Avenue,
and they lived there for a few years, and my mom did smoke gates
that just carried. Right before my mom died. A couple of years ago,
the subject of Patty came up and I said, you know, I've
always thought I knew where she was. And my mom just looked at me
and she said, I know where she is, And what are you talking
about? What she told me? She said, you swear you would never
say a word to anybody about this. Until after we were dead, after
rob a dead, and she proceeded to tell me that at that house on
Park Avenue she was having my day, had dig some holes to plant some
trees, and when he was digging, he dug up some bones, big
bones that was like somebody buried. And they saw that and just immediately filled
the holes back in and didn't say a word. But apparently this house was
owned by a good friend or Ralph's, one of his drinking buddies, who
had later committed suicide. So my mom had no doubt in her mind that
that's who helped Ralph get rid of Patty, and that was where she was
buried. That was her they had dug up. So let's recap where people
who knew Ralph had theorized that Patty could be buried. We've now heard about
that property on Park Avenue and the deep gravel of the runaway truck ramp on
the Lewiston Hill, and a few people have mentioned Ralph's property in Wi.
There's also Eve's property in Weip and the camper she was sieves from Ralph,
although it seems that if the camper was used, it was only temporarily.
Eve's grandson went inside the camper when he was growing up, and he didn't
see anything strange inside. Police ruled out the water tank next to the auto
home in Lewiston, and the secret room in the basement held only some stolen
marine jet pumps. In two thousand and nine, a cadaver dog sniffed all
around Ralph's Lewiston property but didn't give an alert that human remains might be buried
there. We've also heard people mentioned she could have been taken to a nearby
rock quarry with a limepool, or the island Ralph once owned on the Clearwater
River. And of course we know that Ralph owned heavy equipment, including a
dump truck, and he was familiar with remote mountain roads because he had done
work for the Forest Service clearing roads of mudslides. Which brings us to the
Jane Doe who was found in nineteen seventy eight in a remote area of Oregon.
Next time on still this is my mother, but nobody's gonna believe me
because it sounds too crazy. Anyone with information pertaining to the disappearance of Patricia
Otto should contact the Lewiston Police Department's tipline at two zero eight two nine eight
three nine 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 and script editing provided by Christine Hughes. Original music by Smith Uosso,
Additional narration provided by b. J. Blackburn and Lloyd Turning. 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 Jan 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 week.