ID ID - Patricia Lee Otto, 24, Lewiston, 2 Sept 1976

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Suzanne Timms, Finley Creek Jane Doe and Patty Otto

Suzanne Timms was scrolling through Facebook one day and stopped cold. It was the drawing of a woman that caught her eye. That woman, she thought, was her.

“Why would somebody draw me?” Suzanne wondered. “It’s like they took my picture at 30 and penciled it.”

Of course, the woman was not her. The post was about the long-ago cold case of a woman simply known as the Finley Creek Jane Doe.

“And then it says, ‘Red pants and a white blouse.’ And I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ I literally sit up in my bed, and I wake up my husband.”

She was shocked to read the clothing description because red pants and a white blouse was what her mother was last believed to have been wearing when she disappeared in August of 1976...
www.nbcnews.com

Daughter takes to TikTok to fight for mother Patty Otto, who disappeared 47 years ago in Lewiston, Idaho

The 24-year-old mother of two went missing on August 31, 1976, after an argument with her husband, Ralph Otto.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
 
Very lengthy article with lots of pics..rbbm
Dec. 31, 2023, By Anna Turning
www.nbcnews.com

Daughter takes to TikTok to fight for mother Patty Otto, who disappeared 47 years ago in Lewiston, Idaho

The 24-year-old mother of two went missing on August 31, 1976, after an argument with her husband, Ralph Otto.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
''The body from the August 10 APB was later identified as a woman named Annette Willis, whose body was found on July 28 in Portland. “She is identified by the extensive dental work– she had, like, 11 fillings,” Suzanne said. She told Dateline she looked at the dental records for the Finley Creek Jane Doe which show the “exact same record” as what was on file for the Portland Jane Doe, Annette Willis. “That’s astronomically impossible to have two bodies found within a month of each other and they have the exact 11 fillings,” Suzanne said.

Suzanne told Dateline she has a report saying Oregon police ruled out Patty Otto for the Finley Creek Jane Doe. “They said the x-rays don’t match,” she said.''

''Suzanne said she feels like she’s never going to get an answer in her mother’s case. She believes that the Finley Creek Jane Doe was, in fact, her mother, Patty Otto. But since the body was cremated, there is no way to get information from the DNA. “I paid for DNA testing twice on the box of cremains,” Suzanne said. “There’s never, never been a successful extraction of DNA from human cremains. Unless science advances to something that’s beyond what they are capable of right now.”
 
What a tragic case... Nobody objected to a 34-year-old man seeing a 16-year-old girl? This guy was very creepy and it's no surprise that she probably killed her... There's a special place in hell for guys like him. I think there is a good chance that Jane Doe is Patty and I hope the daughter can get closure and find out what happened to her mother...beautiful young woman with two babies and that trash of a husband...I sincerely hope that her case is resolved...
either way
rest in peace
 
On that night, the then-3-year-old daughter of Otto, Suzanne Timms, saw a physical fight between her mother and father.
1707405454693.jpeg
"I was a curious 3-year-old, so when I heard crashing and screaming, I went to go investigate and I creeped up the stairs and looked through the railing and my mother and father were in a physical argument and they were putting hands on each other and I was scared," Timms said. "And I remember him putting his hands on her neck, pushing her up against the wall and dragging her out of my sight and that was the last time I saw her.”
www.king5.com

Could Patricia Otto be a Jane Doe found in Oregon nearly 50 years ago? Her daughter thinks so

Patricia Otto was a 24-year-old mother who went missing from Lewiston, Idaho, in 1976. Now, some think she could be a Jane Doe who was found in Oregon two years ago.
www.king5.com www.king5.com
 
The Fall line Podcast released a 2 part episode about Patty's disappearance. The host interviews Patty's daughter Suzanne. Missing Mothers, Part 3: Patty and Suzanne — The Fall Line

After her mother’s mysterious, late-night disappearance one August night in 1976, an Idaho-born woman must unpack her early childhood memories, local law enforcement’s suspicions regarding her own father, and the possible intersection with another case: a Jane Doe homicide victim discovered just two hours away.

Season 17, Missing Mothers, covers the stories of two daughters, their missing mothers, and cases—and people—who have intersected with their searches.


www.thefalllinepodcast.com

Missing Mothers, Part 4: Patty’s Voice — The Fall Line

We continue our coverage of Patricia Otto’s 1976 disappearance, local law enforcement’s suspicions regarding her husband, and the possible intersection with another case: a Jane Doe homicide victim discovered just two hours away. Season 17, Missing Mothers, covers the stories of two daughters, thei
www.thefalllinepodcast.com www.thefalllinepodcast.com

We continue our coverage of Patricia Otto’s 1976 disappearance, local law enforcement’s suspicions regarding her husband, and the possible intersection with another case: a Jane Doe homicide victim discovered just two hours away.

Season 17, Missing Mothers, covers the stories of two daughters, their missing mothers, and cases—and people—who
 
But on Jul. 28, 1978, while Otto was serving his time, a woman’s body was discovered in the woods in Portland, Oregon. The description of the body was similar to Patty’s, and police in Lewiston sent Patty’s dental records for comparison. The day before those records were being prepared to go out, another body was discovered in Oregon at Finley Creek.
Lewiston police were told Patty Otto wasn’t a match, but could her body have been that of the Finley Creek Jane Doe?
Finley Creek Jane Doe’s identity remains a mystery to this day and is the subject of Facebook posts and speculation.
Timms stumbled across one of those posts two years ago and it changed her life.
“I run across an unidentified Jane Doe forensic image and the image is so much my face that it literally pulls me out of bed and I think why would someone draw me as an unidentified Jane Doe?” Timms said.
She began searching for articles on the Finley Creek Jane Doe and had another shocking revelation.
“She saw in a newspaper article, one of the names of the hunters who’d found her and she recognized the name as her husband’s grandpa. So she said, ‘I think my father-in-law was there when they found the body of the Finley Creek Jane Doe,'” said Mel Jederberg, with the Finley Creek Jane Doe task force. “Within the week, he went out to the site and said, ‘Yeah I went right to it. There’s more growth there but I remember it like it was yesterday.'”
Timms believes Finley Creek Jane Doe is her missing mother, but she has no body. Oregon state police closed the case in 1990, sending the remains of Finley Creek Jane Doe to be cremated. A few remains were never found, including her hands, an arm and a pelvic bone.
In the last two years, cadaver dogs have caught a scent near the grave site and Timms is hoping to find the resources to sift through the woods for that missing DNA.
“Nobody anywhere has been able to extract DNA from the cremains,” Jederberg said.
Timms fears she’s running out of time.
“We’re at the point where I’m just begging someone who has to have the information to solve this case because otherwise it leaves me with what? The hope that I think I’ve found her? I think I’m not the only one who needs closure. Her parents are gone, my sister’s gone, but I’m still here,” Timms said.

Source:
How was Finley Creek Jane Doe ruled out?

Edit to add this:
In the summer of 2019, a volunteer task force was formed by two researchers, Jason Futch of Portland and Mel Jederberg of La Grande. Jason had been researching the case since January 2018, Mel a year later when she found the information on the case from Websleuths. The research team has established communications with the Medical Examiners Office in Clackamas to help aide in the identification of the Jane Doe. In 2020, the team consulted Anthony Redgrave of Redgrave Research in to begin work on a facial reconstruction for the Jane Doe based on photos of the skull that was provided to the team in March 2020. Soon after, the case file was made available to the team and has since been published on Websleuths and Crimewatchers.
A major focal point of the group is to locate the cremains of the Jane Doe and her baby so that they are returned to the Oregon State Medical Examiners Office for possible DNA extraction by DNA Labs International and Parabon in an effort to recover any useful DNA and repair the damage to them so they are able to be used for genealogy research.
On May 5, 2020, Dr. Nici Vance and the team members of the Finley Creek Jane Doe Task Force unveiled the forensic reconstruction of the Jane Doe for the first time. The artwork had been done by Anthony Redgrave of Redgrave Research and was a collaboration with Dr. Amy Michael of the University of New Hampshire Forensic Science Department. This was the first time since the case began that a forensic reconstruction had been made on the Jane Doe.
After the release of the forensic rendering, similarities were observed by relatives of Patricia Otto, who remains a missing person. Significant media attention followed the potential lead, but Otto was eventually ruled out.
Source: Unidentified wiki
 
Last edited:
Diane Redfern said:
But on Jul. 28, 1978, while Otto was serving his time, a woman’s body was discovered in the woods in Portland, Oregon. The description of the body was similar to Patty’s, and police in Lewiston sent Patty’s dental records for comparison. The day before those records were being prepared to go out, another body was discovered in Oregon at Finley Creek.
Lewiston police were told Patty Otto wasn’t a match, but could her body have been that of the Finley Creek Jane Doe?
Finley Creek Jane Doe’s identity remains a mystery to this day and is the subject of Facebook posts and speculation.
Timms stumbled across one of those posts two years ago and it changed her life.
“I run across an unidentified Jane Doe forensic image and the image is so much my face that it literally pulls me out of bed and I think why would someone draw me as an unidentified Jane Doe?” Timms said.
She began searching for articles on the Finley Creek Jane Doe and had another shocking revelation.
“She saw in a newspaper article, one of the names of the hunters who’d found her and she recognized the name as her husband’s grandpa. So she said, ‘I think my father-in-law was there when they found the body of the Finley Creek Jane Doe,'” said Mel Jederberg, with the Finley Creek Jane Doe task force. “Within the week, he went out to the site and said, ‘Yeah I went right to it. There’s more growth there but I remember it like it was yesterday.'”
Timms believes Finley Creek Jane Doe is her missing mother, but she has no body. Oregon state police closed the case in 1990, sending the remains of Finley Creek Jane Doe to be cremated. A few remains were never found, including her hands, an arm and a pelvic bone.
In the last two years, cadaver dogs have caught a scent near the grave site and Timms is hoping to find the resources to sift through the woods for that missing DNA.
“Nobody anywhere has been able to extract DNA from the cremains,” Jederberg said.
Timms fears she’s running out of time.
“We’re at the point where I’m just begging someone who has to have the information to solve this case because otherwise it leaves me with what? The hope that I think I’ve found her? I think I’m not the only one who needs closure. Her parents are gone, my sister’s gone, but I’m still here,” Timms said.

Source:
How was Finley Creek Jane Doe ruled out?
Click to expand...
I'm also wondering who the remains found on July 28. belonged to. I found articles indicating the remains may have been there since the 1960s. There was no identification I could find and articles stop in September 1978.
www.newspapers.com

Aid sought on skeleton

Clipping found in The Oregonian published in Portland, Oregon on 8/10/1978. Aid sought on skeleton
www.newspapers.com www.newspapers.com
www.newspapers.com

Police ask help

Clipping found in The Capital Journal published in Salem, Oregon on 9/11/1978. Police ask help
www.newspapers.com www.newspapers.com
Was this woman ever identified?
 
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