S2 Episode 2: A Marriage on the Rocks

As rumors begin swirling about Patty’s whereabouts and why she may have vanished, Ralph’s psyche seems to be unraveling. Is he spiraling out of control or carefully spinning a trap? We’ll tell you about the things in Ralph’s and Patty’s lives that helped shape their personalities and may have foreshadowed the events that followed.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
This podcast contains intense subject matter.Listener discretion is advised. On Thursday,
September ninth, nineteen seventy six,at approximately three pm, Detective Spears and
myself went to the Ralph Auto residenceto request that he Ralph Otto take a

(00:25):
polygraph examination administered by Al John's stateinvestigator. Otto indicated that he would not
take a polygraph examination under any circumstancesand that it would be fruitless. In
an attempt to get him to doso, Otto asked, are you accusing
me of murdering my wife? Iadvised him on the contrary, I just

(00:47):
wanted to know if he knew ofanything of her disappearance. Otto indicated and
put his finger on my chest andsaid, if you think it, you're
going to have to prove it againstme. I again asked Otto if he
had anything to do with the disappearanceof his wife, and he advised that
he did not. I suggested thathe'd take the polygraph examination to show the

(01:11):
truthfulness of his statements, and heagain advised he would not. From the

(01:32):
pages of the reporter's notebook, thisis still season two. I'm your host,
Gary Anderson. In the last episode, we talked about Patricia Otto's disappearance

(02:24):
late in the evening of August thirtyfirst or early in the morning of September
first, nineteen seventy six. OnSeptember second, the day after Ralph told
everyone that his wife had left him, Ralph started telling people that he didn't
want Patty to come back. Hesaid he had changed the locks on the
house and on the white Chevy stationwagon Patty normally drove in case she ever

(02:49):
tried to return. We're going tospend quite a bit of time in this
episode delving into Ralph and Patty Otto'spersonalities, their marriage, and their friendships.
All of these things strongly influenced thechain of events leading up to and
following Patty's disappearance. So let's startwith Ralph. Ralph Otto was born in

(03:21):
nineteen thirty four in the little townof Craigmont, Idaho. An old cowboy
went riding out one dark and windyday. Like most newborns, Ralph curled
his tiny fingers at the shock ofhis new, unfamiliar surroundings, but there
was something different about the way heformed his fists. Ralph was already swinging

(03:43):
for a fight. The second oldestof four kids. Ralph was raised in
a thrifty household by parents who hadeloped during the Great Depression and spent most
of their years barely scraping by.But Ralph had no intention of settling for
a mere portion from life. Froma young age, Ralph learned to be
crafty. He would charm, cheatand steal to get what he wanted,

(04:09):
and would bare knuckle his way outof the situation if he got caught.
This is Ralph's youngest daughter describing him. But he was small. He was
a small man, and I've heardfrom his friends that they think that had
something to do with why he wasso aggressive with everyone. He wanted to
pick fights. You want to fightwith me, You want to fight with

(04:29):
me, And I'm like, I'venever been in a physical fight in my
life. I can't imagine fighting withmy friends that you love and ador why
is he picking fights with them?They would just say he'd drink his whiskey
and he'd want to fight everybody.Sometimes Ralph wanted something simply because they belonged
to someone else. He didn't alwayswant to keep it, he just didn't

(04:50):
want anyone else to have it.Provoking fury was a sport for Ralph.
In early August of twenty twenty one, Christine Hughes, Karen Shaw Anderson and
I sat down with Ralph's sister inlaw, Dolores, who goes by Dodie,
Thank you man. She was marriedto Ralph's younger brother Ray. My

(05:24):
aunt white Gary Anderson, he's thesound man. We chatted with Dodie at
our kitchen table. So Ralph wasyour brother in law, right right?
Tell us about the relationship between youand Ray and Ralph and Patty. What

(05:44):
kind there was none? Ralph absolutelyhated my husband. He was extremely jealous
of me. Dodie told us astory that illustrated the brother's relationship. In
high school, Ray had saved enoughmoney working at a grocery store to buy
himself a blue letterman's jacket. Andhe came home for work one time,

(06:04):
and here's Ralph in his garage andyou're at the car. All this screece
was place cold on and Ray askhim, what are you doing? Were
in my coat? And he thoughtit and just beat the holy heck out
of him, and rain ever lifteda hand to him. Never Ralph and
Ray's father, Arthur Otto folks calledhim Art worked for the Highway Department before

(06:27):
landing a job at the Potlatch lumbermill. Arthur died of a heart attack when
he was thirty nine, two monthsbefore Ralph's seventeenth birthday. At the time,
Ralph's older brother Jerry, had recentlymoved out, so Ralph's mother,
Marjorie had three children at home tocare for on her own. This is
Ralph's sister Marcy talking. My fatherdied young, and some of the kids

(06:53):
wanted to blame one of the otherkids. So Ralph and I were at
odds speak because I was a teenagerat that certain point, and I'd ran
away from home only a month beforemy dad died, and that was bad,

(07:13):
you know. It was all puton me, and those were the
bad times at that point in mylife. Just a few months after Ralph's
high school graduation in nineteen fifty two, he got married. He was eighteen,
and his bride lied about her ageon their marriage license. Joy would

(07:34):
still be fourteen for another month anda half. She had claimed to be
sixteen. Ralph and Joy were marriedonly a year when Ralph's brother Jerry,
who was also married and now thefather of a baby girl, drowned at
a family outing while saving his wifeand mother who were swimming in the Clearwater

(07:55):
River. Jerry was only twenty yearsold. By all accounts, the tragedy
hardened Ralph even more. This isMarcy again. Ralph had a tendency to
leave a bad past behind him,and he could be mouthy and you just

(08:20):
want it, you know, gethim out of the way. But from
the time we were just young children, my younger brother and I were real
close, but nobody could be realclose to Ralph. Marcy talked to us
about a time Ralph threw an axeadder. Well, he threw axe across

(08:45):
the crick and hit me in thehead, and the parents thought that they
were going to lose me. ButI never ever blamed Ralph because it's you
know, he made a mistake.As a family all stuck together. My

(09:05):
dad wouldn't let anyone blame Ralph.Those who weren't related to Ralph by blood
had a harder time for giving histemper. Joy divorced him in nineteen sixty
five, but just a few monthsafter their divorce was finalized, they remarried
each other. Then a few monthsafter that they divorced again. Idaho hadn't

(09:30):
yet passed a no fault divorce law, so blame had to be assigned to
one or both of the spouses inorder for a judge to grant a divorce.
In both cases, Joy sued Ralphfor the divorce, citing extreme cruelty
as the cause. We were goingto interview Joy for this podcast, but

(09:50):
she changed her mind at the lastminute. We do know that she and
Ralph went their separate ways after thesecond divorce. They had no children together.
By then, Ralph had established himselfin Lewiston as a skilled but shifty
auto mechanic. This is Ralph's sisterin law Dooty again. And he was

(10:11):
a correct and guarantee you he hadhis good sides that most of them are
bad. He'd worked on somebody's car. He'd jack up the prizes so bad
on their repaired job that they couldn'tafford to pay for it. Udi,
and I'm owning the car. Andthat's just He always says, what is
mine is mine, is what isyours is mine? That was that was

(10:33):
his opinion. He lied, He'dtell lies about his brother. Ralph was
always working on schemes to make moremoney. He and a friend bought a
small island not far from Lewiston onthe Clearwater River. Their plan was to
turn rock on the island into gravel. Another friend, who owned a rock

(10:54):
crushing company, brought in equipment forthe job, but river flooding halted the
process after only a day and ahalf. Work didn't resume for months,
and then only restarted briefly. Ralphordered an end to the rock crushing and
only repaid his friend, the equipmentoperator, a portion of what was due.

(11:16):
Ralph was sued for breach of contract. It was the end of the
friendship, but not the last wordfor Ralph. Nor was the sale of
gravel Ralph's only hope of income.He also rented out and sold miscellaneous heavy
equipment, allowing him to earn highwaycontracts to help clear trees and debris from

(11:37):
mountain roads covered by landslides. Hewas doing more than getting by for at
least two years. He brought inthe equivalent of a six figure salary in
today's dollars. He used those earningsto buy his parents house from his mother,
who had since remarried, and heturned what was a modest farmhouse into

(12:01):
a bachelor pad complete with red shagcarpet, a console's stereo, a player
piano near the entryway, and anoversized painting of a nude woman on another
wall. Some of the upgrades Ralphpaid for, but his family told us
that a lot of the materials forthe renovations were stolen from construction sites around

(12:22):
town. Rumors also abounded that Ralphgot revenge on the man who sued him
by seducing that man's sister. Inthe years after his divorce from Joy,

(12:43):
Ralph went on the prowl, pumpingcoins into jukeboxes at the local bars,
lavishing women with gifts, and throwinggossip worthy soarets at his two thousand square
foot home. I'd get it onepiece of the time and it wouldn't coust
me a time. You lodge mewhen I come through your pown. I'm

(13:03):
gonna ride around and style. I'mgonna drive everybody while I have the only
one. Ralph was on the lookoutfor a very specific type of woman.
He had a weakness for petite blondewith a slim build. Joey had fit
that mold perfectly. So did BonnieShopbell, who you heard about in the

(13:26):
last episode. Bonnie was a blueeyed, platinum haired beauty who had recently
left a bad relationship when she gotinvolved with Ralph. This is Ralph's daughter
talking again. He had to havebeen very charming, and he was definitely
very good looking when he was younger. He was a good looking man,
and I just don't think he sawthat man in the mirror. I think

(13:48):
he continued to see that strapping youknow, high school stud five eight stud
and his brother Jerry is like sixfoot two and Ray taller and he I
think he feels inferior to them,So he's got to be stronger and tougher
physically than them because he's smaller thanthem. That would be my analysis.

(14:11):
Bonnie and her kids stayed with Ralphfor a brief time in the late nineteen
sixties while she got back on herfeet. From what she's told us,
it's clear that Ralph wanted to domore than help her. He paid a
teenage girl who lived up the streetto watch her kids while he took Bonnie
out on the town. Bonnie toldus that Ralph constantly referred to her as

(14:35):
his Bonnie, which made her uncomfortable, but Ralph was also generous with her.
He worked hard to impress her duringtheir courtship, but Bonnie still wasn't
that interested. The teenage babysitter Ralphhired to watch Bonnie's kids, was interested,
though she was Patricia Lee O'Malley soonto be Patty Otto. Jonathan remember

(15:20):
how younger mom was. She didn'tget to. That's Patty's sister, Alice
Mills talking. As you listen into this interview, you'll also hear Patty's
youngest daughter, and they'll refer toMarcy, Ralph's sister. I know when
she first would go down there,she baby set for Bonnie. Bonnie is
the one that was living with him, and that's where it started. She

(15:41):
put baby set, and then whenshe moved off, she just kept going
down and she's cleaning us house andruns errands and can That's what Marcia was
sam. She was cleaning in thehouse and she said, and that's it.
Yet it work, so apparently that'swhen because I remember when I found
out that they were having them,I didn't believe it. Vicky knew Patty

(16:03):
had told Vicky. I guess herself. Vicky is Patty's other sister. She
asked Alice to speak on her behalffor this podcast, and I said,
no, no, I did notbelieve it until she admitted it to These
are things. Back then, I'mthinking that my sister, No, she's
not that stupid. But now Ifind how many believed in what your dad

(16:26):
needs to say. And he woulddo this for her and say things.
And she's inexperienced. Yeah, yeah, and we were raised strict so and
it's a neighbor, you know,he's just a few houses down the street.
Yeah, And I'm Patricia Lee Alleywas born August fourth, nineteen fifty

(17:03):
two, in Lewiston, eleven daysafter Ralph had married his first wife Joy.
Patty's dad, Tom, was aLewiston fire captain. Her mom,
Toots, worked at a bank andthen got a job out at the lumber
mill. Patty had two sisters anda brother, Tom Junior. The three

(17:25):
girls were especially close. The threeof us were born within three years.
Patty is only thirteen months older thanme. Goodness, so we were cloths
growing up. I mean we alwaysshared a bedroom and so one of us
gotten but we all got in trouble. There was that closeness a sister.
I mean, he grew up.We played dogs who played barbies and which

(17:52):
even though her and I were onlythirteen months apart, she let me know
that she was my own sister.I had to obey. When we were
little kids. Growing up, wehad a neighborhood but quite a few kids
in it, and we've been allof us, you know, back then
big as We had to stay onour block, but we could go around

(18:15):
in our block, and we hadwagons and our bikes and we'd tie them
together and have wagon frames and mBut we had We had a lot of
friends that we played with, andwe did a lot with our other family
and all get togethers. And that'sprobably why she said was always so we

(18:36):
raised family was really important. Pattywas eighteen in nineteen seventy when she walked
down the aisle of Lewiston's Trinity LutheranChurch and pledged to be faithful to Ralph
forever. Ralph was thirty five atthe time. They honeymooned in California and
Mexico. A year later. Ralphand Patty's first child, Natalie, was

(18:59):
born. Only two years after that, in November of nineteen seventy three,
Patty delivered the couple's youngest daughter,Dallas. In the next three years,
Ralph and Patty fought, separated,reconnected, and fought some more. As
you heard in the last episode,the longest separation between Ralph and Patty began

(19:21):
in the fall of nineteen seventy five. That's when she got a job to
help support her daughters and herself.No, I don't think she wanted to
work. I think she wanted tostay home, raise her kids, their
wife. I think the only timeI said going to work is when they
separated. And then I think shewent to business Scope because she knew sooner
or later she was going to haveto support him, because I don't think

(19:45):
she kind of staying without. Andthen one night, while still separated from
Ralph, Patty went to Van's Club. At the bar, she saw Randy
Benton playing guitar on stage with hisband Moving Country. Well, I seed

(20:11):
her in there, so I wentand talk to her. We've known each
other for a very long time.Patty took Randy back to the place where
she and her daughters were living.She told him that if Ralph showed up,
he'd have to leave. Randy latertold police that when she said that,
he decided to leave right then andthere. It wasn't the sort of
situation he wanted to get mixed upin. Less than a year later,

(20:33):
he learned that Patty had gone backto Ralph and now she was missing.
Police also told Randy that Ralph wasthreatening to kill him. They advised him
to leave town if he could.Yeah, the police, the people that
told me, Yeah, they wereserious about it. Okay, did you
leave town after that? No?Not right away. I started carrying a

(21:00):
pistol. They told me to,And so I started carrying a pistol for
a while until I could get Andthen shortly after that, well, in
that fall, I moved to Alaska. My brother came down. Somebody,
somebody told him that my family wastrying to protect me, I think,

(21:23):
so I had to go to Alaska. So I have to ask, because
there have been so many rumors aboutwhat could have happened to Patty, and
some people believed that she went toAlaska or she went to Canada. Did
you ever see her again after shedisappeared? No? No, no,

(21:47):
no, I did not. Youmay be wondering now, who told us
that Patty had gone to Alaska andCanada. It was Ralph's sister in law,
Dody, the woman Mary to hisbrother Ray. This is where the
rumors in theories start going in strangedirections. Not long after Patty disappeared,

(22:11):
Dodie and her husband hired a privateinvestigator to try to find Patty to prove
that Ralph couldn't have killed her.They said they believed she was still alive.
We haven't seen any of the notesthat private investigator Jack Prim gave to
the couple after he completed his workfor them, but Dodie shared with us
pages and pages of notes she andRay compiled during that time. Some of

(22:36):
the notes indicate what Prim told themin his report, and other notes were
related to Dodie's own amateur investigation.In her notes, Dodie said someone she
knew told her he overheard a truckdriver say that he gave Patty a ride
to Alaska and he knew who shewas with. Dodie also told us that
the PI gave them some shocking news. So we fally hired a private investigator,

(23:02):
and he'd worked on it for abouttwo three days. This is Doatie
Talking's house and who told me thathe found out that Patty was a high
classic call girl, that she hada sugar daddy and I said, what's
the sugar daddy? Had no ideawhat a sugar daddy was. She's into
drags, high proscyle girl and shehad a sugar daddy, and I wouldn't

(23:27):
believe it. I said that that'snot true, that's not patty. But
anyway, and along, to makea long story short, there's just evidence
to prove that that's exactly where shewas. And we have a statement from
um this gentleman herey just passed away, Steve Ken, his wife Debbie Lowby,

(23:48):
and it's all in here is theone. We got the handwritten note
from the Statium that they had foundher in Canada. A doctor had say
the information and he recognized her froma poster and she was Andrew drugs and
choosing to prostitution. And that's thelast I know. It's so choosing Dawson

(24:11):
Creek, Canada, Dawson and Itruly believe that she got wrapped up with
the Rong people and they took herout here and put her into human trafficking.
And where they put her from DawsonCreek, Canada, I have no
idea. We were dubious, tosay the least. Dodi's claims that Patty
was a prostitute. Sounded pretty farfetched, but we didn't want to overlook

(24:34):
anything, so we asked a fewmore people, including Ron Rody. Ron
babysat Natalie and Dallas not long beforetheir mother disappeared. He was a teenager
then, and his dad had beena friend of Rolph. This is Ron.
He initially talked to my dad.They said they wanted to boy babysitter

(24:55):
because they didn't trust girls, andso he initially out ahold of my dad
got me lined up to babysitting forhim, and so yeah, he would
get a hold of me. Ijust lived to see balks down the street,
okay. And I never really feltWe never really felt with Patty at
all. Okay. Do you rememberabout what year it was that you started

(25:19):
babysitting for them? God, Icouldn't even tell you. Okay. Do
you remember how old the girls were? Dallas was just a little wing diaper.
She was probably too maybe at themost, Okay, Natalie was probably

(25:41):
five. I'm not sure what theage of difference was between them. Okay.
And so what were your impressions ofthe family of Ralph and Patty?
Did they get along well? Heand I it was when I first started
babysitting for him. When I firstmet him, everything was great, it

(26:03):
seemed like, I mean, theywere happy, perfect couple, and then
it spiraled downward pretty fast after maybesix months, and they got pretty pretty
bad at the end. I didn'tsee Daddy a lot. She was always
in the house. I was alwaysdealing with Ralph. But you know,

(26:23):
just he became a her end usalcoholic. It was miserable. Yeah,
things things kind of spiraled out ofcontrol pretty fast. Now you you said
that things got pretty horrendous pretty fastwith his drinking and stuff. Can you
describe any of that to me?Well, I mean the whole story.

(26:49):
Daddy was a wild child. It'sit's as simple as that. You know.
Ralph was probably twice her age,and the rumors got around that she
was having a pretty wild life outsideof their marriage, and I'm sure it
was true. And then Ralph foundout that she was working as a prostitute.

(27:15):
There was a couple of police detectivesin Lewiston, but it was common
knowledge that they were running a callgirl ring out of the top floor of
the tap of Era hotel, andPaddy and Dwayne Eyler were kind of seeing
each other, and then Ralph foundout that she was working for them as

(27:37):
a prostitute. Dwayne Tyler was apolice captain and was working with Tom Selene
on the investigation into Patty's disappearance.Okay, so how often would she be
working as a prostitute? Did youget an impression about that? All right?
I have no idea. And Iwas always around during the day on

(28:00):
the cars I heard. Okay.I just remember Ralph one day coming out
to the shop. I mean,when when all that started happened, she
started running around and he knew aboutit. That's when he started drinking.
I think trying at Trader smooth itover, and his drinking just got out

(28:22):
of control that he was. Imean, he was drunk the first thing
in the morning all day and Idon't know if that's that was his way
of dealing with it or what.But he came out to the shop one
day and it was just it scaredme. I'd never seen him like that
before, and he was just hittingmad. He was telling me that he

(28:45):
found out. He said, howwould you like to find out your wife's
a freaking prostitute? And he said, I just found that out and he
said, I'm gonna kill her.I'm gonna kill her, and it was
like a few days later she wasgone. We wanted to dig more into
this prostitution rumor, since we hadheard it from more than one person.

(29:08):
We did some online research, googlingLewiston, Idaho prostitution. As strange as
it was, the two seemed tobe indelibly tied together, so we reached
out to an expert on Lewiston's historyto learn more. It turns out that
Lewiston was actually once a hot spotfor prostitution, but that was decades before

(29:32):
the time frame we're discussing. Here'shistorian Stephen Branton talking about it. Well,
I think I can speak to thatpretty quickly. It wasn't an issue
that prostitution had pretty well been stampedout in Lewison by the mid nineteen fifties.
It was an old problem that datedfrom the territorial days when the city

(29:52):
was found into May eighteen sixty oneand had gone through su pretty raucous days.
They were up to eighteen brothels hereat one time, more brothels in
churches, I should say, Butby the by the late nineteen fifties,

(30:12):
and I had moved here and wasbeing educated here. At the time,
there was you know, there werea lot of jokes about prostitution. We
never had street walkers here. Theywere always houses of prostitution, but no
street walking. Police wouldn't allow it. The police were really kind of on
the take in many ways for decadesand decades until that was probably stamped out

(30:37):
and it moved. Some of theprostitution problems moved into Clarkston, Washington,
across the state line which the twocities are other than a river would be
abutting each other. So even ifthe rumors about Patty being a prostitute or
false, there was enough real historyof prostitution in Lewiston to understand why some
people, especially those who were oldand have to remember it, might believe

(31:00):
it to be true that Patty hadgotten involved in it. Here's a retired
police detective, Tom Selene's take onthe prostitution theory. At that time period
in Orpina, Idaho, they hada house of ill repute called the Wreck
and it was the only one thatI know of an area, and further

(31:22):
up the river earlier they had oneat Maggie's Been, So prostitution was allowed
in Clearwater County, but not inthe Lewiston area. But as a house
of ill repute in Lewiston. Youknow, there may have been a case

(31:44):
there or there, but there wasnothing with anything of that would bring anybody's
attention to it. No, Pattywas, in my opinion, Patty was
out a prostitute. She's a twentyfour twenty six year old, this young
girl, and she has two kids, and she's close with her family.

(32:07):
She's close with a parents. Shewants to get her a further her life
and get an education, and she'sworking on that. And she's, to
all our knowledge, was a wholesomeyoung woman. Now she may she may
have had it some time with someoneelse, and that was fairly popular in

(32:32):
the seventies, and with her beinga run around whore, I would say
zero zero chance. Then there's theangle of Patty having an affair with a
police captain. It appears that Dodieand a man named A Meal Fliger may

(32:54):
have been the people who originally toldRalph that Patty had been hanging out at
the wood Shed Bar in Winchester withDuane Ayler. Flagger had helped with construction
work on the Woodshed Bar and knewa lot of people in Lewistowon. Dodie
insists that Fliger told her he sawPatty and Duane Ayler together at the bar.

(33:15):
Patty's sister, Alice, doesn't believeit, but she never knew about
the fling between Patty and Randy,so it's possible she'd be unaware if Patty
had other extramarital relationships. The rumorabout Patty and the police captain became so
widely circulated that at one point Stayedinvestigators who began assisting with the search for

(33:37):
Patty Otto asked Lewiston police about it. Duane Ayler submitted a written statement swearing
that he had never met Patty andhad never been involved with her. A
new Lewiston investigator who had been assignedto Patty's case in nineteen eighty seven,
interviewed Fliger because Dody was still insistingthat police follow up on that angle.

(34:00):
Here's producer Christine Hughes reading a portionof the report written by that police officer.
My purpose in contacting Fliger was toverify the accuracy of several statements concerning
the Patricia Otto missing person case asrelated to you by missus Dolores Dodie Otto.

(34:22):
Upon initial contact with Fliger, Idid verify that he was in fact
a former employee of a mister JackRoadie, a contractor who was responsible for
some of the construction on the WoodshedTavern in Winchester, Idaho. Fliger also
indicated he was in fact familiar withPatty Otto and her family the O'Malley's.

(34:49):
Fliger further confirmed that he does knowDuane Ayler. Fliger indicated he does recognize
Ailer by sight, however, hisnot seen him for approximately ten to twelve
years. I asked Fliger if therewas any validity to Dolores Otto's statement that
he had observed Patty Otto and DwaneAyler together at the Woodshed Tavern in Winchester,

(35:15):
Idaho, a short time before Patty'sdisappearance. Fliger indicated he could positively
not say in any way that Otto'sstatement had any validity. The report said
Emil Fliger had worked for Jack Roadie, who was the father of Ron Rody,

(35:36):
the Otto's babysitter. The rumors aboutPatty seemed to be growing like a
real life game of telephone. Whywould Dodie be so convinced that Patty was
still alive and that Ralph hadn't harmedher, especially if she thought Ralph was
a crook and knew he had abad temper. We'll get to that.
If Patty had in fact simply leftRalph and the girls, we could see

(36:00):
why Ralph would no longer want Pattyback, especially if he truly believed she
was a prostitute or had been havingan affair with a member of the police
force. One of the cops whowas investigating him. This is Ron Roady
again. After she disappeared, thepolice started hounding him. I mean they
were they were after him, soyou know they were. They were hounding

(36:24):
him relentlessly. That he was alwayshe was just constantly drunk. Nothing really
changed. He didn't talk about herto me, and they just are asked
him, and they are asked mebecause I was involved with him. It

(36:45):
was it was pretty bad. Thecops was pretty corrupt back he super corrupt,
like say, two of the headdetectives were running a prostitution ring.
But I'm sure Dwayne Aylor was havingan affair with Patty because they had been
steaming together. By people out andabout him. There was pretty much no

(37:07):
doubt that happened, and I thinkthat's why Blaine took her disappearance so seriously
and started harassing Ralph so bad.Oh yeah, it was quite a big
deal. We think it's important thatyou know the details of the seemingly convoluted
theories about Patty because it helps givecontext to the afternoon of October twenty sixth,

(37:30):
nineteen seventy six, not quite twomonths after Patti Otto vanished without a
trace. On that day, Ralphwent to the Long Branch Saloon in Lewistown,
where he had several drinks with afriend and his brother Ray. At
one point in the evening, awaiter came to the table and told Ralph

(37:51):
that he had a phone call thathe could answer at the bar. Ralph
got up and went to the bar, and Ray continued talking with Ralph's friend.
After talking on the phone briefly,Ralph stepped outside, out of sight
of Ray and his friend. Whilehe was outside, Ralph left an envelope

(38:12):
of cash inside a pickup truck withCalifornia license plates. The cash was a
down payment for a professional assassin tokill Lewiston Police Captain Duane Ayler. Next
time on Still everywhere we went thosecuffs on our tail. Vick told my

(38:37):
husband, who worked for the guard, that he better watch out when he
was doing because he made his job. Anyone with information pertaining to the disappearance
of Patricia Otto should contact the LewistonPolice Department's tipline at two zero eight to

(38:59):
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 atDA at Union hyphen County dot org.
If you, or anyone you knowis a victim of domestic abuse, please

(39:21):
contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline ateight hundred seven nine nine. Safe Still
is a production of The Reporter's Notebookand Grayson Shaw Media. You can connect
with us online at the Reporter's Notebookdot com or via email at info at

(39:43):
the Reporter's Notebook dot com. Stillwas researched, written and produced by Karen
Shaw Anderson. Additional research and scriptediting provided by Christine Hughes. Original music
by Smith Uosa, Additional narration providedby b. J. Blackburn. I'm

(40:06):
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 CreekJane Doe Task Force. Like Follow and
subscribe to Still on your favorite podcastplatform, and follow us on Facebook or

(40:30):
Twitter to join the conversation. Ezekielthirty four sixteen. I will seek the
lost, and I will bring backthe stray, and I will bind up
the injured, and I will strengthenthe week.