A couple of weeks ago,
on August 16th near Lagrande,
Oregon State Police dug up the grave
site of an unidentified woman whose
body was first found decades earlier.
Investigative reporter Alex Duggan
learned this Jane Doe could be the
link to a missing woman from Idaho who
disappeared exactly 46 years ago today.
And you think it would be
an easy connection to make?
But this cold case is missing a major clue.
On August 31st, 1976,
a Lewiston ID woman named
Patty Lee Otto went missing.
She was last seen wearing
red pants and a white shirt.
Two years later, deep inside a
forest outside Lagrande, Oregon,
hunters found a woman's remains
in a shallow grave near Finley Creek.
The Jane Doe was blonde,
wearing red pants and a white shirt.
The medical examiner estimated she
was killed two to five years earlier,
was likely in her 20s and
several months pregnant.
Patty's daughter, Suzanne Timms,
believes that Jane Doe is her mother.
Here's my mother at 16 years old.
You can see this is 1968, she says.
Patty's Christmas time. How did
Patty die? Suzanne believes she was
strangled at the hands of her father,
who's now dead, and she says at three
years old that she witnessed it.
He came out her and wrapped his
hands around her throat and
pushed her up against the wall,
and I immediately knew this was not good.
I didn't know what was happening,
but I was frightened and as he was
pushing her and dragging her away,
I ran back downstairs.
I was crying and told my sister
I was scared because I didn't
know what was happening,
but I knew it was bad.
Patti's parents reported her
missing two days later. She was 24.
This body is wearing red pants,
red knit pants, you know,
not red satin pants,
red knit pants, and a white blouse,
which is what my mother was
last seen in the resemblance
in the composite made-up of Jane
Doe by Red Gray. Forensics is
too similar to ignore.
It's a near perfect match
to Patty and her daughter Suzanne.
The body that was found here that
had been exposed by the elements in
1978 was estimated to be between
5 foot two and five foot four
and my mother's 5 foot three.
Dirty blonde hair.
I'm estimated to be like 100 and
22140 pounds, same as my mother.
A state medical examiner used dental
records in 1978 to determine that Patty
Otto was not the Finley Creek Jane Doe.
But Suzanne found the documents,
and she says the expert mistakenly
compared Patty's records to a
different Jane Doe found in Portland.
The Jane Doe found in La Grande was
missing a wisdom tooth on her right side.
Patty's Dental X-rays show she
was most likely scheduled to
have that same tooth removed.
Suzanne also believed
her mother was pregnant,
just like the Jane Doe and La Grande,
based on medical records.
Another odd coincidence.
Suzanne married the son of
one of the hunters who first
discovered the body of Jane Doe.
She discovered the connection only last year.
This is the spot that my
father-in-law identified as what he
remembers where the body was found
when they were hunting in 1978.
Fast forward to 1990,
Oregon State Police and the Union
County District Attorney decided
to cremate Jane Doe's remains
and have the evidence destroyed
because the case was too old,
even though DNA testing was in its infancy.
That means today there is
no DNA to compare Patty to,
but a group of volunteers called
the Finley Creek Jane Doe Task Force
brought Cadaver Dog to the site this
year to try and sniff out any remains
that may have been undiscovered.
They hit on multiple spots that got
the attention of Oregon State Police.
We've got Redgrave research forensic
services, who did the forensic art
for her that Suzanne recognized
and thought it was herself.
Melinda Judenburg formed the
task force after researching.
And identified women in Oregon.
Melinda has a background in
criminal justice and research.
She assists the task force in the
investigation and wants to find out
the identity of Jane Doe because
she too believes that it's Patty.
We've got other researchers and
people who just have connections
and know how to find things.
And so it's been really great.
So we're all invested in this 100%.
The last time I was here, the,
you know, we brought the dogs up
here and both of them alerted there
was water running through here.
So they both came into the water.
Stuck their faces in and let
their handlers know that there
was something here to be found,
so the dog handlers flagged it
and we did have a state trooper
here at the time with us and so
he observed it just a few weeks
ago. Oregon State Police went out
to the site where the Finley Creek
Jane Doe was found in August of 1978.
Because cadaver dogs hit on the gravesite,
they did not find any human remains,
but they are continuing to
investigate despite the lack
of evidence found at the site.
So the once closed cold case
is active once again only there is no more
evidence at the moment for DNA comparison.
It's honestly extremely
overwhelming and today it just feels
worse because I really wanted to
find something and here we are with
all this exposed area and I can't
identify her without one shred of DNA.
But Suzanne isn't giving up on
figuring out what happened to her mom.
The next step is to convince
forensic experts to match reports
of the dental records together.
They do not have the original X-rays,
only a written description,
so they are being cautious
with their evaluations.
I just feel like she's calling me to
bring her home and that she's like,
I've been trying to help you this whole time.
And. I'm listening.
Alexandra Duggan,
Idaho's News Channel 7.
At the time of this report,
OP had no further comment about the
investigation or the dental records
that were just mentioned, but we will
keep you updated as we learn more.