Hi, this is Sarah Morgan, one of the voices you've heard on STILL. We hope this story moves you, but more than anything, we pray someone will come forward to help solve these tragic cases. Spread the word by posting about Patricia Otto and the Finlay Creek Jane Doe on social media. You can find links to their advocacy pages in our show notes. It's not too late to help these women. The truth is out there, and please take a moment to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app, which helps
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This podcast contains intense subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. At the end of the last episode, we learned that Ralph Otto had paid a hitman to kill police Captain Duane Ayler, one of the detectives investigating Ralph for Patty Otto's disappearance. Ralph reportedly believed Ayler was also having an affair with Patty. The man Ralph paid to kill the police captain turned out to be an undercover agent
for the Idaho State Police. Ralph had believed that the proprietor of Lewiston's Long Branch Saloon was connected to the mafia and would know a hitman or two. Ralph approached him about hiring someone to have ailer rubbed out, but the proprietor called Lewiston police to report the incident. Lewiston cops then contacted state police, who set up a sting operation. This is Ralph's friend on Roadie. It was just a bad deal the whole time. You know, the cops harassed
him so bad that they drove him. They kind of frightened him on that contract that he put out on ailor. Ralph was recorded offering to pay the undercover cop. Stephen Watts, who described the encounter in an autobiography he wrote years later, He said Ralph was one of the most foulmouthed individuals he had ever met. He said he dropped f bombs every third word during their initial meeting, all the while declaring that he was being unfairly harassed by police for
his wife's disappearance. Watt's impression was that Ralph had definitely killed Patty, even though he never actually admitted it. During their taped conversation, Ralph was also secretly recorded as he followed the instructions for paying the fake hitman, placing the envelope of cash inside a cup in a truck parked outside the Long Branch saloon. Ralph told Watts that he would take his daughter's Natalie and Dallas to Disneyland
while the hit was carried out to give himself an alibi. On October twenty seventh, the day after making a payment to the undercover cop, Ralph called his friend Bonnie's shopbell and said that he was planning to take his daughters out of town. Lewiston police arrested him that afternoon on a charge of attempted murder. It was Natalie's fifth birthday. She and Dallas now had one parent missing
and the other in jail. From the pages of the reporter's notebook This is Still Season two, I'm Your Host, Gary Anderson, Ralph's sister in law, Dodi, shared with us a manuscript she wrote about the ordeal her family went through during this time. She titled the nearly two hundred page document Victims of Human Cruelty. In it, she wrote, Ralph did tell Ray he knows a guy that knows a guy that would waste a person for about five hundred dollars. The cash Ralph gave the cop posing as a hit man was
a two hundred and fifty dollars down payment. He promised to pay another seven hundred and fifty dollars once ailer was dead, even after he previously admitted that he wanted to kill Randy Benton, the musician who had gone out with Patty while she and Ralph were separated, and with proof in hand that Ralph also tried to have a police captain killed, Doughty swore that Ralph was just a
fall guy. When it came to Patty's disappearance, She and Ray hired a private investigator and placed ads in a money savers circular in a quest to find Patty alive and prove Ralph's innocence. Hang down your head, Tom Duly, Hang down your head. If you recall from the last episode, we told you that the day after Patty disappeared, Ralph had started telling his friends and
family that he no longer wanted Patty to come home. Right to her line, he said he changed the locks on his house and the car she left sitting in the driveway. Stopped her with my knife. His behavior, though, told another story. Here's retired detective Tom Selene talking about a conversation he had with Ralph on September seventh, six days after Patty vanished. In our interrogation of him, he was obviously extremely The thought not like a guy that
would have a wife to run off on him. It was like a guy that had done something with her. And then he made comments like I'm I'm so low, I feel like I'm a snake calling around on the ground, and then h But he just wouldn't He just wouldn't tell us. And that's the problem with the whole business of working faces in the American society. You know, we want to perfect people's rights, not force them to talk or not course them in anyway. And I'm doing that, and once they turney
up, you better have the evidence to support your conclusions. Patty's sister Alice told us that when Patty left Ralph in nineteen seventy five, he seemed to have trouble accepting the end of their marriage. She said he did everything he could to convince Patty to return to him, staying married to rape. She did. She kept thinking she took her marriage very serious, so that's her place to help him. And then I think when she finally got you know,
why is it to leave? I wish it never went back. And she knew when she went back two men was wrong, but that he'd went to that rehab place, and they told her it was her place as his wife to go back and help him. And I think within a week she knew was wrong, that it wasn't going to work out. He's not going to change unless he wants to change, you know, because she actually finally got a place to live, she got a job, and I know he kept coming around, but it wasn't it wasn't long enough. Did so you
said he kept coming around. He so he wanted her back. Do you think, Oh, yes, yes, he wanted her back. That was a thing. He didn't leave her alone. In early October of seventy six, after his wife's disappearance and before he tried to hire a hit man and landed in jail on a charge of attempted murder, Ralph again made a point of telling Ray that he didn't want Patty back and that he had changed the
locks on the house. He stopped Ray as he was leaving Ralph's house one day and gave him what he said was a new key to the house so Ray could get inside if he needed to. On October thirtieth, after Ralph was arrested, Ray's wife, Dody, and the private investigator Jack Primm, used that key to go into Ralph's house and search for evidence to prove that
Patty had planned her disappearance. Dody went into a bedroom closet, reached into the pocket of Ralph's suit jacket, and found Patty's wedding rings tucked inside. Convinced that someone had planted the rings in Ralph's pocket to make him look guilty, Dody gave them to Jack Prim, who then gave them to Ralph's lawyer, Jim Gibbons. The lawyer sealed them in an envelope, which he stashed in his desk drawer. This is Karen asking Tom Selene about Patty's wedding rings.
First of all, I had read and some of the reports that Ralph claimed that Patty threw her rings at him during the fight, and that she took her purse with her when she left. Do you recall when he first said to police. Were told people that about the rings was that after the rings were found, or before the rings were found. After the rings were found, he never mentioned it until after no no, and we never found those rings either. They were in the closets and his foot pocket, as
they recall right, a family member found them and made the inquiry. Dody wrote in her manuscript that on October thirty first, she went back to Ralph's house and saw pieces of ferns on the living room floor that appeared to have been tracked inside by someone who had walked through a wooded area. Then, on November first, when the private investigator's wife drove by Ralph's house, she saw someone inside. She said the lights were on and she saw a figure
move behind the curtains. The back of the Otto's home was illuminated by tall poles at Sunset Park, which was down a steep embankment from the home's back patio. Missus Prim rushed to Ray and Dodie's house to tell them what she saw. In a flurry, Dody, Ray and the Prims all drove back to Ralph's house to look the property over again. When they arrived, they found a key under a doormat. It was an old key, but it still worked to open the front door. That's when they realized that Ralph had
lied about changing the locks. They also found the ignition key to the station wagon under a floor mat inside the car. It still worked, too, despite Ralph's lies. Doughty told us she and raised to believed Ralph was being set up by someone. All of the stuff tights together. You guys have some work to do seriously, so I could say, I just I do believe that Dayne had our arch detective in most of us her sugar daddy and
I graduated with Dwayne, and I know, I know his record. I think I think that we broke up the mafia ring in this city, you know, because they're just wanted to shut us down so bad that everywhere we went through his cuffs on our tail. They told my husband, who worked for the guard, that hed better watched out what he was doing because he made his job. That didn't stop us. Inside Ralph's house in November nineteen seventy six, Dodie said it appeared that some of the furniture was a skew
and a candle had been moved. Dodie also told us an empty cigarette package was on the ground, and a key for a Portland, Oregon hotel room was on the floor of the basement, next to a chess style freezer. She swears the key wasn't there when she and the private investigator searched the house before for the second time that day, Ralph's family called police to the house
to take a report. Dody wrote in her notes quote Ralph had told us Patty had been very interested in a sixty minutes television program titled How to Change One's Identity. Dodie gave us a cigarette package she said was just like the one she found on the floor of Ralph's house. She said the one she gave us was found later by Jack Primm in her front yard. She believes they were left by the same person. She said. A police officer kept
the mysterious hotel key as evidence. Selene didn't mention a hotel key in his report. He noted, however, that the locks to the house and car did not appear to have been changed, as Ralph had claimed. I want to point out here that a lot of the information we have learned about this case came from copies of police reports we've obtained but current Lewiston police officials have not talked to us on the record about Patty's case. I'm dat I want
her pace close. I have my mom, my mom's sister, and my uncle with me, my cousin, and then I have an equal case reporter with me my mom's sister. In the summer of twenty twenty one, we sat in on a meeting with Patty's family and two Lewiston Police officers, but police didn't permit us to record the meeting. I want to charge des action today. Captains. Now, he's one of the media, so this is not a year I have. That's literally the chiefest abnegation and all of our
captains throughout that. We followed up with multiple emails and phone calls, but a police spokesman has yet to respond. There is some interesting background that could explain why the department was hesitant to talk about this case in particular. We'll get to that thread in a later episode. Now back to what was happening
at Ralph's place. In early November nineteen seventy six, Ray and Dodi began hunkering down there and writing down license plate numbers of every unfamiliar car that drove by Their stakeout, which they documented in extreme detail, went on for days. During that time, he said, people were repeatedly calling Ralph's house and either hanging up or asking for someone who didn't live there. Ray and Dodi also started feeling responses to an ad they placed in the local money saver seeking
information about Patty's whereabouts. Then it seemed like police got a break in the case on November second, when they were alerted that a check written to Patty by her sister had been cashed at a Portland, Oregon bank, more than three hundred miles from Lewiston. Police noted that the check was processed after Patty's last known sighting, but there's no record of who actually cashed the check. Their hope of a valuable lead simply evaporated. Around this same time, Dodie
and Ray went to a pawn shop and purchased a pistol for protection. Dodie said they had started receiving threats to stop their search for Patty. She said Jack prem the private investigator, told her that Patty had gotten involved in organized crime. It blows your mind to think the people you trust, you know and look forward to helping you out and they're doing all this stuff. It's just unbelievable. It's like, I don't believe anything's happening. Yeah, I
think some of her are involved with the MOBI are. Yeah, it was. I mean, I think we had attorneys and cops and everything around here. We just kind of broke it up. Nobody's around here anymore. They're
all moved. They're gone except for Thomas Lane, and I think he knows something myself, I really do. By this point, in November nineteen seventy six, Lewiston Police Captain Duane Aylor had stepped back from any involvement in the Patty Otto investigation as law enforcement and prosecutors mounted their case against Ralph for hiring
a hitman to kill Ayler. But evidence against Ralph for Patty's murder was sketchy at best, and Ralph's closest allies were remaining tight lipped if they knew anything that would incriminate him. It's not directly related to this case, but it's worth mentioning that on November seventh, a woman came forward to Lewiston Police to say that Ralph had raped her in nineteen seventy The woman said he was quote all the while laughing like a crazy person. The woman knew Ralph because her
brother was married to Marcy Otto, Ralph's sister. She told police she had previously told Ralph's mother about the rape, and missus Otto reportedly attributed the assault to Ralph's jealousy of his brother in law. A few weeks after that woman told police about the rape, Sleen contact that Ralph's first wife, Joy to learn more about his history of domestic abuse. In previous interviews with police, Ralph had admitted that he had no qualms about hitting a woman and had once
knocked Joy unconscious during a fight. When Celine called her, Joy said she only remembered Ralph hitting her once, and she characterized it in milder terms than Ralph himself used to describe the incident. Patty's family said they had never seen Ralph hit Patty, but they had seen bruces on her face and neck that
Patty said had been inflicted by Ralph. Bonnie Shopbell, the woman Ralph was spending time with in the days surrounding Patty's disappearance, told us that Ralph was uncomfortably pushy and seemed to believe their relationship was more serious than she did. She also told us that when he drank too much, he talked crazy. We think she's specifically referring to a conversation she and Ralph had in December of nineteen seventy six. He called Bonnie late one night and started rambling with alarming
details about the night Patty vanished. On November seventeenth, Ralph was released from jail while awaiting trial for the attempted murder of Duane Ayler. His family had sworn to a judge that they would forfeit their houses if Ralph didn't show up for trial. The property bond totaled one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. While he was out on bond, Ralph bought Bonnie and her five children tickets so they could fly back from California to visit their family and friends for the Christmas
holiday. On December twenty eighth, Ralph went over to have dinner with Bonnie's parents, Helen and Wayne Bartlett. They lived in a soutan Washington, across the river from Lewiston. During dinner, Ralph appeared physically ill and said he needed to go home. As he was leaving, he complained that he was having a problem with his truck. He said some kind of wire was stuck in the wheels. Puzzled, Bonnie's dad looked the truck over and saw no
trace of the wire Ralph was describing. It seemed to Wayne that Ralph was hallucinating. Ralph then climbed into his truck and drove home. Later that evening, while Bonnie was at her cousin's house, Ralph called there to talk with her. Selene called Bonnie later to ask what Ralph had told her that night. This is a portion of his report about what Bonnie told the shop Bell indicated that in a normal or what appeared to be a normal sounding voice from
Ralph, he made the remark that Patty's body had been found. Shopbell inquired as to where, and Ralph indicated that it was found between the shop and the house. Shopbell advised that she considered this hallucinations. Shopbell advised that Ralph made the remark that Patty had come after him with a gun, so he
stabbed her. Shop Bell indicated that Ralph had also spoken with Shirley two Shop and had told her to be sure to get Bonnie out of town, or else they would hang both he and Bonnie I inquired from Bonnie if she had been at Ralph's house, and she advised she had and that she knew perfectly well that Ralph was bothered with something. She advised he talked about Patty's disappearance, but had not said anything concerning her whereabouts until the telephone conversation. On
the evening of December twenty eighth. After her late night conversation with Ralph, Bonnie called his brother Ray to tell him what Ralph had told her. Ray asked her to keep quiet about it. That same night, Ray went and got Ralph and drove him to a mental hospital in Orthino, Idaho, about an hour east of Lewistown. Here's Tom Selene. Well, let's just put it this way. My opinion was that Ralph had killed her, either premeditated, with a foe thought, or in a heat of rage. We don't
know. All we know is that, in my opinion, he had killed her and then had by himself or what assistance, had disposed of her remains. And he never gave us any information. But we do know that he at times at a loose nations than his brother took him out of town. We believed so he wouldn't have access or we would not have access to him. When Selene interviewed Bonnie, he asked her about the nature of her relationship
with Ralph. She indicated that it had been years since they had been intimate, although she did spend the night with Ralph on December seventeenth, the day she arrived in town for the holidays. Bonnie also said that Ralph had been very generous to her over the years. He had given her approximately three thousand dollars in cash. That last Christmas, while he was out on bond, he had lavished her whole family, including her parents, with expensive gifts.
He also started telling Natalie in Dallas that Bonnie was their new mom. Bonnie said she made it clear to him that she was not going to step into that role. She said that after Ralph rambled on the phone that night about killing Pa Pattie, he asked Bonnie to call his lawyer. Here's more from Selene's report. Bonnie shop Bell did make the remark that Ralph said that Patty's
not never coming back. I asked Bonnie if Ralph had made any remarks concerning what had been done with Patty, and Bonnie indicated she could only speculate that Patty would have been taken to the ranch of Ralph's in Weipe. I asked Bonnie how she could speculate this, and she advised it several years ago when she was going with Ralph, that they had been on the ranch in the
Weeipe area where there are numerous stumps pulled from the soil. Ralph made the remark at this time that if he was ever going to get rid of anyone, he would bury them in one of these holes. Weipe is a small town in Clearwater County, Idaho, about seventy miles east of Lewistown. Ralph lived there for a few years as a child before his family moved to Lewistown. As an adult, he reportedly bought or inherited some acreage from relatives.
He was an old time cowboy, don't you understand. Ralph kept a herd of cattle on the land for a while, and he sometimes took women to the property to show it off. It fit well with the cowboy image Ralph tried to cultivate. He often wore western clothes and cowboy boots. I knew I had to ask him about the mysteries of life. He spit between his boots, and he replied, it's fast the horses yonder women order whiskey more money. The property was only a mile or so from where a petite but
feisty woman lived. We'll refer to this woman as Eve, but that's not her real name. Eve was married and had kids at home. This is
her ex husband talking well at that time. At that time, Uh, she was going out on me while I was working in things, and and uh screwed around with other men, and and she got tangled up with mister Ralph and uh and all I know, all I know is uh they had some real uh time together while I was working on one thing another and and uh, of course the last the last child that was born and my home was was her name is Patty and that and it ain't my child, it's
his. So many things went on then that you know. I but uh yeah, but she was having uh awful close get togethers with that guy at that time. And it just happened to be the the same time that uh Ralph Potto's wife come up missing. We don't have any proof that he's youngest child was fathered by Ralph. In fact, we've learned that a recent DNA test indicates that he wasn't her father. Well, they were having get together. I was, I was working night shifts, saying, gee, she
had half the night to mess around with. I'd come home eleven o'clock a night from working and uh, they were still a cigarette smoking the house and everything. And of course he was gone then, you know. But yeah, like I said, I do know that the that they were, uh have an affair. I'm sure of that they was having an affair. Uh, But at that time, like I said, at the same time that that Ralph's wife disappeared, we could rush this off as mere speculation again.
But in October of nineteen seventy eight, a prosecutor from Clearwater County contacted Lewiston Police. Clearwater officials had executed a search warrant on Eve's house and discovered a diary with notes about Eve's relationship with Ralph Otto and a stack of letters exchanged between the lovers. Police were searching the property after Eve and her husband had had a serious disagreement there months earlier. During the argument, Eve went into
the house and fetched a gun and shot her husband between the eyes. We are not naming him or using her real name to protect her ex husband's identity. Do you think she was trying to kill you? Boy? Thank god they do one or two more bullet side of the side of the door casing there. Oh my goodness, she shuck. She's fired more than once. The bullet that struck the man went through the bridge of his nose, pierced his left eye, and lodged in his skull. Eve was charged with assault
with the deadly weapon. He's grandson had heard stories about his grandmother's past, but as he visited her on her property throughout his childhood, he chalked those stories up to tall tales. Over the years growing up, I mean, it was always kind of a like a family thing that my grandma had a dark history, a dark side to her period, that you know, she could do bad things and everything I thought. I thought it was all made
up to scare at grandkids for messing around at grandma's house. So I thought none of it was real. Although years everything that we'd heard or I mean anything just I always thought it was a wee would behave while we were at Grandmas. I got older and kind of dug into stuff and started adding things together. I was like, this is actually a real thing, Like the these situations that my grandma herself used to kind of joke about and play along
with were actually real, live events. And I think it's really I think it's sick now that I've learned that everything was true, that those things I thought was fake were real. It's just really sickening to know that she stood there and joked about it with children. What I need to fill you in on here is that in early summer nineteen seventy seven, Ralph did go to trial for the attempted murder of Lewis and police Captain Dwayne Ayler. He was
convicted by a jury and sentenced to ten years in state prison. As police continued searching for Patty, Ralph's lawyer filed an appeal. Exactly a year to the day after Patty vanished. Ralph was released on bond pending the outcome of the appeal. His first day home, Ralph went on a bender and remained drunk for months. Meanwhile, Doughtie continued documenting Ralph's behavior and her own personal
crises. She wrote that on New Year's Day of nineteen seventy eight, Ralph threatened to kill her if she ever used anything he told her against him. Then she said he attempted to seduce her. On January third, Doughtie wrote, quote, he was trying to get me to submit to him sexually so I would look bad and raise eyes. I let Ralph know that if I found one piece of evidence he killed Patty, the mother of his children, I would turn him in. He is crazy and boy does he need help.
Worried that Ralph's drinking and erratic behavior was going to do something to jeopardize the property bond they put up for him, his family tried to convince him to seek alcohol treatment. On March twenty ninth, Ray took his brother to a detox center in Washington and started discussing arrangements to take into another facility for intensive treatment. While the family was planning their next move, Ralph crawled out the window of the detox facility and hiked home. On April second, Ray
and Ralph flew to Seattle to check Ralph into another treatment center. His stay there lasted less than two weeks. On April thirteenth, he walked out the front door of the facility. He called his family from a cousin's house and said the treatment wasn't working out. A few days later, he had a ride to a Seattle airport, saying he was going home to Lewiston, but he didn't arrive back in Idaho. The Auto family was now in full panic. Later they learned that while Ralph was a wall he met up with Eve
and the two may have taken a trip to Las Vegas. Then, without explanation, Ralph returned home on April twenty second. The next day, he was arrested for d WI. His family didn't bail him out this time, and Ralph was sent back to state prison in Boise. It was about three months after Ralph went back to jail that Eve shot her husband in the face. Another detail you need to know is that Ralph owned a camper which was
fitted onto the back of a heavy duty Ford pickup. Throughout most of the seventies, it was parked outside Ralph and Patty's home on twenty ninth Street. Doughty believes Patty hid inside the camper after she and Ralph fought that night, and then walked away from home after the sun rose was the next morning. Dodie believes that while Patty was walking around town, someone picked her up. Sometime after Patty's disappearance, Ralph parked the camper and an RV storage lot owned
by Ray and Dody. Then before Ralph went back to jail in nineteen seventy eight, Ralph gave the camper and another vehicle to Eve. To this day, the camper still sits on Eve's property in Wei. Her grandson described it to us. Yeah, it's like a nineteen like nineteen fifty eight to nineteen sixty one somewhere in there. It's got four headlights, got two headlights on each side. It's like a reddish orange color, and the camper part of
it is white with like a red or orange devin on the side. The RV part that's on it is actually an old camper put onto a pick up strame, so it's completely home. So yeah, what did Yeah, my grandma's always had a serious attachment to that thing. She won't sell it, she won't give it to nobody. I mean when I started hunting when I was a young teen, I asked my grandma to give it to me. That's how I heard Ralph's name, and she always told me absolutely not,
absolutely not that thing that's mine. You know. Oh, she's just always weirdly weird. When he's grandson first heard her mention Ralph, he didn't know who Ralph Otto was or that his wife had disappeared. I remember bringing up Ralph's name, but I didn't know that they were like partners or boyfriend girlfriend or anything. Because when I was a kid, you know, especially in my teens, I was into vehicles and cars and all kinds of stuff. So I used to ask her about the motor home blah blah blah blah,
and she just mentioned Ralph that that's who she got it from. He told us that his mother, he's second oldest child, remembers playing with that Alas and Natalie when they were babies. My grandma used to because Ralph's property. Ralph had property right down the road from my grandma Wi. My grandma used to watch the two girls, Dallas and Natalie, babysit him and whatnot, and they actually stayed there for an entire summer one with my grandma. Ralph
will come and go. He would help him on the farm. She would go over there and help him, you know, just back and forth. Supposally they were just friends. Well, my mom said that as a as a younger girl, she remembers going down to Lewiston and with Ben and stop him by Ralph's house, and then ralphs and go in the back bedroom for x amount of time while my mom was sitting there on the floor playing with Dallas and Natalie as they were babies, and then she would remember Grandma coming
back out. Ralph was a busy man next time on still and my mom just looked at me and she said, I know where she is, and what are you talking about? Or she told me, she said, you swear you would never say a word to anybody about this until after awargain. 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 Finland 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. 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 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 strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.