CA CA - Dorothy Rusnak Caylor, 41, Concord, 12 June 1985

Richard

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Dorothy May Rusnak Caylor
Missing since June 12, 1985 from Concord, Contra Costa County, California
Classification: Endangered Missing

Vital Statistics
Date Of Birth: January 9, 1944
Age at Time of Disappearance: 41 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'9; 190 lbs.
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Brown hair; blue eyes. Dorothy wore plastic-framed eyeglasses at the time of her 1985 disappearance. Her nickname is "Dottie."
Other: Dottie suffered from agoraphobia, a fear of public places.
Dentals: Available. Tooth 3, 14, 15 have gold onlays, 19 has crown.

Circumstances of Disappearance

The last reported sighting of Caylor was from her husband who told police he dropped Dottie off at the Pleasant Hill BART station on the morning of June 12, 1985. He said she was planning to visit a friend, but he didn't know who.
She carried with her an overnight bag and her turquoise leather purse, which contained everything she considered important, from her Kaiser medical card to a bee-sting kit.
Her husband found her 1963 light-blue Volkswagen parked next to his car at the Concord BART station. Her purse was inside. In a statement to police, the husband said he unlocked the car and rummaged through the bag. Her bee-sting kit was missing, but everything else, including about $30 in cash, was as he remembered it. Her driver's license, a Diablo Valley College "Spring 1985" student ID and her library card were still inside her monogrammed, off-white leather billfold.

The husband put the purse in a bag, he told police, and pushed it under the seat. He then wrote a note asking Dottie to call him. Before he left, he locked the car. The next day, he says, he moved Dottie's car to a different parking spot to keep her from getting a ticket. He also drove to his parents' Central Valley home in Lindsay to leave the couple's dog with them. The husband later said he never drove her to the Pleasant Hill station and that she must have driven herself there.

She left behind her clothes and all of her belongings.

Dorothy's sister stated that there were numerous problems in the Caylors' marriage, an allegation that the husband denies. He said that the only difficulties in the relationship revolved around his wife's mental health issues.

Dorothy joined a support group for battered women in early 1985. She was attempting to regain her self-confidence and reportedly planned to divorce her husband. Dorothy opened her own bank account and rented a post office box. She also asked a friend to keep a locked file cabinet with her important documents. She had inherited $5,000 and had put aside a small amount of money in her own account.

The husband reported Dorothy as a missing person to authorities on June 17, five days after her disappearance.

Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: Concord Police Department 925-671-3240

Agency Case Number: 85-12575
NCIC Number: M-160864339
Please refer to this number when contacting any agency with information regarding this case.

Source Information:
California Department of Justice
The Contra Costa Times
The Doe Network: Case File 833DFCA

Link:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/833dfca.html
 
The husband certainly appears a likely suspect in Dorothy's murder.

Here are a few questions I have:

1. Dorothy suffered from agoraphobia. Wouldn't that make it unlikely that she would leave her "comfort zone" and go to a friend's house for an overnight stay?

2. Did LE ever find out who this friend was? Was it the same person Dorothy gave some personal papers to for safekeeping?

3. Did anyone recall seeing Dorothy at the BART station?

4. Why did the husband change his story about driving her to the BART station?

5. Had Dorothy ever filed any domestic abuse charges against her husband?

6. Were the police ever called to their home because of a domestic disturbance?

7. Did Dorothy ever tell anyone at the women's shelter that she was afraid of her husband?

I don't know about you, but if my spouse was going to visit a friend overnight, I'd certainly want to know who that friend was.
 
Ok, first of all the hubby is guilty of something. There are too many discrepancies, the first being the idea that an agoraphobic would get on a form of public transportation by herself and go to a friend's house. That just boggles my mind!
 
bugaboo said:
Ok, first of all the hubby is guilty of something. There are too many discrepancies, the first being the idea that an agoraphobic would get on a form of public transportation by herself and go to a friend's house. That just boggles my mind!
I don't know much about agoraphobia, but I agree with you that it seems unlikely that an agoraphobic would ride the bus to a friend's house for an overnight stay. Maybe there are different types of agoraphobia, and Dorothy's type wasn't as severe.

What boggles my mind it that her husband didn't even know the name of the friend Dorothy was supposedly going to see. To me, that means either he didn't give a hoot about what his wife did, or there was no planned "visit to a friend" in the first place.

I think he killed her at home and staged the rest of it. I'd like to know what was in the overnight case - the contents might show if she packed it or if he did. My husband surprised me with a trip one year and packed a bag for me. Bless his heart, we were gone three nights, and he put in six pairs of socks but just one pair of undies.:)
 
According to mentalhealth.com, the is one of the criteria of agoraphobia:

Anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing) or in which help may not be available in the event of having an unexpected or situationally predisposed Panic Attack or panic-like symptoms. Agoraphobic fears typically involve characteristic clusters of situations that include being outside the home alone; being in a crowd or standing in a line; being on a bridge; and traveling in a bus, train, or automobile.

The situations are avoided (e.g., travel is restricted) or else are endured with marked distress or with anxiety about having a Panic Attack or panic-like symptoms, or require the presence of a companion.

There are some other criteria, including the elimination of other mental health issues, but the top two are above.
 
reportertype said:
According to mentalhealth.com, the is one of the criteria of agoraphobia:

Anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing) or in which help may not be available in the event of having an unexpected or situationally predisposed Panic Attack or panic-like symptoms. Agoraphobic fears typically involve characteristic clusters of situations that include being outside the home alone; being in a crowd or standing in a line; being on a bridge; and traveling in a bus, train, or automobile.

The situations are avoided (e.g., travel is restricted) or else are endured with marked distress or with anxiety about having a Panic Attack or panic-like symptoms, or require the presence of a companion.

There are some other criteria, including the elimination of other mental health issues, but the top two are above.
Thanks, I was hoping someone would know something about agoraphobia.

It doesn't sound like Dorothy would be planning to travel by bus to visit a friend if she was agoraphobic.
 
{quote} Her husband found her 1963 light-blue Volkswagen parked next to his car at the Concord BART station. Her purse was inside. In a statement to police, the husband said he unlocked the car and rummaged through the bag. Her bee-sting kit was missing, but everything else, including about $30 in cash, was as he remembered it. Her driver's license, a Diablo Valley College "Spring 1985" student ID and her library card were still inside her monogrammed, off-white leather billfold.

The husband put the purse in a bag, he told police, and pushed it under the seat. He then wrote a note asking Dottie to call him. Before he left, he locked the car. The next day, he says, he moved Dottie's car to a different parking spot to keep her from getting a ticket. {quote}


- And then didn't think it was important enough to mention her disappearance to Police for five days.

I wonder if he continued to move her car each of those days to keep her from getting a ticket? Or could his little story only have been to account for the fact that the ticket was dated a day after she supposedly drove to the BART station lot.

Interesting thing also about his handling of her billfold and purse. This would, of course, explain why his fingerprints, and not hers would be on it as the last person to handle it.
 
Richard said:
{quote} Her husband found her 1963 light-blue Volkswagen parked next to his car at the Concord BART station. Her purse was inside. In a statement to police, the husband said he unlocked the car and rummaged through the bag. Her bee-sting kit was missing, but everything else, including about $30 in cash, was as he remembered it. Her driver's license, a Diablo Valley College "Spring 1985" student ID and her library card were still inside her monogrammed, off-white leather billfold.

The husband put the purse in a bag, he told police, and pushed it under the seat. He then wrote a note asking Dottie to call him. Before he left, he locked the car. The next day, he says, he moved Dottie's car to a different parking spot to keep her from getting a ticket. {quote}


- And then didn't think it was important enough to mention her disappearance to Police for five days.

I wonder if he continued to move her car each of those days to keep her from getting a ticket? Or could his little story only have been to account for the fact that the ticket was dated a day after she supposedly drove to the BART station lot.

Interesting thing also about his handling of her billfold and purse. This would, of course, explain why his fingerprints, and not hers would be on it as the last person to handle it.
As usual, you make some good points. From the information we know about this case, it's amazing that the husband was never charged. Either he was able to convince LE that he was not involved, or they just weren't able to get enough evidence to charge him.
 
Richard said:
Dorothy May Rusnak Caylor
Missing since June 12, 1985 from Concord, Contra Costa County, California
Classification: Endangered Missing

Vital Statistics
Date Of Birth: January 9, 1944
Age at Time of Disappearance: 41 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'9; 190 lbs.
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Brown hair; blue eyes. Dorothy wore plastic-framed eyeglasses at the time of her 1985 disappearance. Her nickname is "Dottie."

Her husband found her 1963 light-blue Volkswagen parked next to his car at the Concord BART station.
I'm not getting that part, could someone help me out?
 
shadowangel said:
I'm not getting that part, could someone help me out?
I'm not sure, but I assumed that he pulled into a parking spot and noticed that her car was parked next to him.
 
Marilynilpa said:
I'm not sure, but I assumed that he pulled into a parking spot and noticed that her car was parked next to him.
There's got to be something missing there, time-line wise. He drops her off at the station with her bags containing these certain items, then finds her car next to his with bags containing some of these items...She got on the train, jumped off, ran home, got her car, drove back to the station, and left part of what she had been carrying in the car???????:waitasec: :waitasec: :waitasec:
 
shadowangel said:
There's got to be something missing there, time-line wise. He drops her off at the station with her bags containing these certain items, then finds her car next to his with bags containing some of these items...She got on the train, jumped off, ran home, got her car, drove back to the station, and left part of what she had been carrying in the car???????:waitasec: :waitasec: :waitasec:
In the original post on this thread, towards the end it states that the husband later claimed he didn't drive her to the station, that she must have driven herself. So his comment about her car being parked next to his must have been made after he changed his story.
 
Marilynilpa said:
In the original post on this thread, towards the end it states that the husband later claimed he didn't drive her to the station, that she must have driven herself. So his comment about her car being parked next to his must have been made after he changed his story.
Nothing suspicious here at all...He thought he drove her but was mistaken, goes looking for her at the train station, pulls into a spot and lo and behold, there is her car right next to him! Wow! I guess he didn't notice for all the other light-blue 1963 VWs in the lot...
 
shadowangel said:
Nothing suspicious here at all...He thought he drove her but was mistaken, goes looking for her at the train station, pulls into a spot and lo and behold, there is her car right next to him! Wow! I guess he didn't notice for all the other light-blue 1963 VWs in the lot...
Yes, wasn't that quite a coincidence?!? It's not hard to understand why he changed his story and claimed he didn't drive her to the station!
 
Orignially published: March 14, 2004

The newspaper headlines that Wednesday, June 12, 1985, were destined for history.

Karen Ann Quinlan, who a decade earlier had lapsed into a coma and ignited a right-to-die firestorm, had died at age 31.

Police investigators were crawling over a remote cabin and grounds in Calaveras County, searching for victims of serial murders Leonard Lake and Charles Ng.

In Merced, 20-year-old Steven Stayner, who had been kidnapped at age 7 and found again at 14, was getting married.

Forty-one-year-old Dottie Caylor was making history, too, but hers wasn't the kind that made headlines.

After 10 years of marriage, Dottie was about to become a free woman.

Dottie's marriage to Jule Caylor was anything but happy. She met Jule in 1970, when Jule was still married to his first wife. Dottie had badgered and begged Jule into getting a divorce and then marrying her.

But Jule's job with the U.S. Forest Service took him across the country for extended periods, and Dottie became a recluse. She suffered from agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces. Her anxieties were at times magnified, making her a virtual prisoner in her own home.

more: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/cctimes/11856588.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

It looks like there should be more to this article. I'll see if I can find another link with the complete article.

Of particular note to me is the fact that the house was "freshly repainted" on the inside. Since Jule was leaving, and Dorothy was keeping the house, why would he have repainted it?? Maybe to cover up blood evidence???
 
This guy just doesn't seem that bright, I cannot understand why LE couldn't pull his entire life apart and come up with something........

He worked for the Forestry Service, huh? Think he knew a few ways to dispose of a body?
 
Here's another story about Dorothy:

[font=Arial,geneva,helvetica][size=+1]DOTTIE'S STORY: INVESTIGATION UPDATE[/size][/font]
[font=Arial,geneva,helvetica]SISTER'S HOPE WANES, EVEN AS DETECTIVES PLUG ON

CONCORD WOMAN DISAPPEARED IN 1985 AFTER TAKING STEPS TO FIX HER UNHAPPY LIFE[/font]
[font=Arial,geneva,helvetica]JOAN MORRIS, TIMES STAFF WRITER[/font]

[font=Arial,geneva,helvetica]Twenty years after Dottie Rusnak Caylor disappeared from her Concord home, the search for her continues. But it appears her family and authorities are no closer to finding her than they were that warm spring day in 1985.


After the Times published a five-part series on Dottie's disappearance in March 2004, the cold case took on new life. Concord police reopened their investigation, and Dottie's sister, Diane Rusnak, filed a civil suit against her brother-in-law, Jule Caylor, seeking to preserve Dottie's share of the marital estate.
[/font]
[font=Arial,geneva,helvetica]But while police continue to work the case, trying to follow a trail of evidence now two decades old, the civil case has stalled pending the outcome of the police investigation. And Dottie, who would have turned 61 years old in January, is still missing, the truth about her disappearance seemingly no closer to the surface than it was when she slipped into oblivion.

The last reported sighting of Dottie was June 12, 1985, when her husband, Jule Caylor, says he dropped her off at the Pleasant Hill BART station.

Dottie and Jule had had a troubled relationship and marriage, which began as an affair. Jule was married and had a child when he first met Dottie, although Dottie didn't know any of that for several months.

Their marriage was plagued by Jule's infidelity and Dottie's growing insecurities and phobias. While Jule was often gone for weeks at a time, Dottie suffered from agoraphobia -- the fear of open spaces -- that all but imprisoned her in her house.

The betrayals, coupled with one documented case of domestic battering, drove Dottie to transform herself. She began to venture beyond her home. She made friends and joined support groups for women planning life-changing moves. She started talking about her marriage, the emotional abuse she believed she'd suffered, and her plans to divorce Jule.

June 1985 was to be the month that Dottie took her first real step away from Jule. His U.S. Forest Service job in San Francisco had ended and he'd found another position with the agency, based in Utah. He was moving. Dottie was staying.

But on June 12, 1985, Dottie became a missing person.

The investigation into Dottie's disappearance began five days after Jule said he took her to the BART station. The next day, he said, he had discovered her car parked next to his in the BART parking lot. Her purse was inside.

By the time Jule, at the urging of a neighbor, reported Dottie missing, he had packed all of their belongings, repainted the inside of the house and put the three-bedroom home up for rent. When Diane Rusnak learned her sister was missing, nearly everything Dottie owned was being loaded onto a moving van bound for Utah.

Police questioned Dottie's friends and men she had met through a Christian singles' organization. Even though Dottie had left behind everything she owned, including a $5,000 cashier's check, police found no evidence of foul play in her disappearance.

Jule moved to Utah, where he planned to start a new life with a woman he'd proposed to six months before Dottie disappeared. The relationship dissolved when the woman learned about Dottie.

In the years that followed, no one heard a word from Dottie. Her case was relegated to the cold case files in the Concord Police Department.

Then last year, partly spurred by the Times series, Concord police announced they would take another, closer look at Dottie's disappearance, starting the investigation anew. Detective Kurt Messick, lead investigator in the case, says police have interviewed all the original witnesses -- the ones they could locate and those still alive after all these years -- and have expanded the investigation to other witnesses.

The case remains very much open and active, Messick says.

In some ways, the past year has been harder on Diane Rusnak than all the others that have stretched between today and the day she learned her only sister was missing.

When Dottie first disappeared, Diane, an artist who lives in West Contra Costa County, held out hope that Dottie had run from an unhappy marriage and would soon resurface.

She kept thinking that Dottie would call. If not today, then tomorrow. And as all the tomorrows merged into 20 years of yesterdays, Diane had held onto the diminished hope that Dottie was safe. That she was happy.

But last year, Diane finally came to accept what those less close to the case had long believed: Dottie was dead.

The realization brought with it a fresh wave of grief and anger. It also led her to push a civil action against Jule to recover and preserve Dottie's estate. She filed a civil lawsuit, asking that Dottie be declared legally dead and that Diane be named executor of the estate. At stake is Dottie's personal property and her share of the Concord home, which Jule has held on to all these years.

Although a judge found evidence that Dottie was dead, the court awaits a finding from the police on the time and manner of her death. Until then, the case sits in limbo.

Diane says she was hopeful, with the renewed attention, that police would finally solve the mystery of Dottie's disappearance. More than a year later, her hopes have waned.

"I assume a lot is going on that I don't know about," Diane says. "I haven't agitated much against the Concord police because I'm trusting them to do everything they can. But as the months go by, I get a strange feeling. When is something going to happen?"

Jule Caylor, who retired from the U.S. Forest Service last year, continues to live in Utah with the woman he describes as his life partner. They've been together nearly 20 years.

Jule, a Libertarian, attempted a run for the Utah state legislature, but withdrew his candidacy after party members learned police were investigating Dottie's disappearance.

At the time of his retirement, he filed for divorce from Dottie, saying she had deserted their marriage. A judge granted the divorce and awarded all the marital property to Jule, but Diane filed suit and the divorce was set aside. The Utah judge ruled that Dottie was dead at the time Jule sought the divorce, so there was no marriage to dissolve.

Jule declined to be interviewed for this story. Via e-mail, he said he had nothing more to say about Dottie's disappearance that he hadn't already said. He repeated his belief that Dottie is alive and in hiding.

"Assuming she has successfully concealed herself thus far, I think it unlikely she will choose to voluntarily disclose her whereabouts any time soon," Jule wrote. "She said she could disappear, and she did it. There is nothing more I can add that is not well documented."

Police have called Jule a "person of interest" in the case.

The neighborhood where Jule and Dottie lived doesn't look that different from when the couple called it home. Most front yards blaze with the glory of spring flowers. The trees that were small when Dottie last saw them now tower above the houses, their leaves providing a shady canopy.

Many of the people who lived there 20 years ago have moved on, replaced by new homeowners. Only two of the houses on the street are rentals. More children seem to be living there, longtime residents say.

But while Dottie is gone from the neighborhood, she is not forgotten. Those who knew her say they remember. And they wonder. Will they ever learn what happened?
[/font]
The link to this article is http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives. It costs $2.95 to view the entire article.
 
Marilynilpa said:
Of particular note to me is the fact that the house was "freshly repainted" on the inside. Since Jule was leaving, and Dorothy was keeping the house, why would he have repainted it?? Maybe to cover up blood evidence???
That is a good possibility. Although it may have covered up blood, I would think that it may also have preserved it. Police should seek a warrant to search the house specifically for blood evidence.

It was such evidence which was found and used to convict Hadan Clarke many years after the disappearance/murder of Michele Dorr.
 
I agree with Richard on the blood. I believe the article said Dorothy's husband still owns the house? I wonder if they would be allowed to search the house; he certainly wouldn't give permission.

I just can't see Dorothy heading anywhere by train alone. I think she would have turned to her family for help.

I wonder where all exactly her husband worked. Her body is likely in one of those places.
 
reportertype said:
I agree with Richard on the blood. I believe the article said Dorothy's husband still owns the house? I wonder if they would be allowed to search the house; he certainly wouldn't give permission.

I just can't see Dorothy heading anywhere by train alone. I think she would have turned to her family for help.

I wonder where all exactly her husband worked. Her body is likely in one of those places.
He worked out the San Francisco office of the Forestry Service, but the article doesn't say whether he was an office worker, or if he actually worked outdoors. In any event, I'm sure he would have known where to bury a body without it being easily found.

I find it interesting that the woman he moved to Utah with ended her relationship with him after learning about Dottie. She must not have believed in his innocence!
 

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