3. This Way to the Murderer's House

Summary

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The Unforgotten – Season 3: Finding Dolores Wulff

Episode 3: This Way to the Murderer's House

Release Date: August 18, 2025
Podcast by: Free Range Productions
Hosts: Adam Rittenberg, Kyle Bonagara

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Overview

This episode of "The Unforgotten" explores the family dynamics, community context, and aftermath of the disappearance of Dolores Wulff in Woodland, California, in July 1979. Through the voices of friends, family, law enforcement, and the hosts’ own on-site reconstructions, it reveals not only the impact of Dolores's vanishing but also the extraordinary actions her family took to seek justice and keep the story alive for decades. The episode spans personal memories, community intrigue, vigilantism, desperate searches—including the use of psychics—and the emotional fallout for all involved.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Revisiting the Wulff Home and Community Context

Timestamps: 00:14–08:31

• Setting the Scene: Hosts Adam and Kyle, led by local Darrell Ehrsman, revisit the former Wulff home on Hillcrest Drive—Dolores's last known location ([01:05]).
• Darrell's Memories: Darrell, a childhood friend of the Wulff family, describes the home as unremarkable but haunted by the memory of Dolores’s warmth and Carl Wulff’s "menacing presence."
  • “She would always have food... She came home, we’re sitting at the dinner table eating that chicken, and she goes, ‘What are you guys doing?’ and just shook her head.” – Darrell Ehrsman [05:22]
  • Darrell recalls Carl's temper, alcoholism, and the way he targeted Tom for most of his abuse ([06:23]).
• Tight-Knit, Powerful Neighborhood: The area housed several law enforcement families, making what (may have) happened all the more shocking.
  • "Sometimes he was the deputy sheriff.... Ron Rumsey and Mr. Murphy right here.” – Darrell Ehrsman [08:04]
• The Community Atmosphere: After Dolores’s disappearance, the neighborhood became tense, especially as the investigation ramped up.

2. Family Trauma and Aftermath

Timestamps: 09:00–11:33

• Immediate Impact: Darrell describes the abrupt end to his former everyday interactions with the Wulff family after Dolores vanished ([09:23]).
• Law Enforcement’s Role: Detective Ron Heileman, close to the Ehrsman family, monitored Carl's house early in the investigation.
  • “There were some evenings I would just go do that, you know, sometimes you get lucky. But that didn’t happen.” – Ron Heileman [10:14]

3. The Roaches Wage War

Timestamps: 10:46–24:30

• The Family Takes Action: Frustrated with official progress, the Rocha family, led by Dolores’s cousins Tony Rocha, Debbie Baker, and others, begins an overt harassment campaign against Carl Wulff.
  • "We didn’t want peace. We wanted revenge." – Tony Rocha [10:46]
  • The Rocha family admits openly discussing ways to kill Carl and “get away with it,” but ultimately opted for constant harassment instead ([12:40]).
• Harassment Escalates:
  • Public confrontations, following Carl everywhere, scaring him out of public places, and vandalizing his property ([13:54]–[17:39]).
    • “I chased him out of several grocery stores...” – Tony Rocha [13:54]
    • “We slammed those doors open... and [Wulff] made a run for the door...” – Tony Rocha [14:42]
    • “When he tried to show up at sporting events, they’d pop his tires, they’d write stuff on his house in blood.... did movie type stuff to screw with him.” – Matt Rocha Jr. [17:27]
  • Gruesome pranks included painting “Killer Wolf” on his driveway, placing a pig’s head and fish entrails on his property, and even throwing a jar of 13-year-old urine into Carl’s house ([18:09]).
• Neighbors Caught in the Crossfire: Some neighbors supported the harassment quietly; others distanced themselves in fear.
  • “[Neighbors] picked up their lawn chairs, ran in their garage, put the door down. They weren’t about to talk because they didn’t want this rain of terror brought down on us.” – Tony Rocha [19:29]
• Tensions with Law Enforcement: The family’s vigilante tactics frustrated Detective Heileman, who had his own undercover efforts planned ([21:01]–[21:46]).

4. Desperate Search Tactics – The Psychics

Timestamps: 25:10–35:34

• Turning to the Supernatural: With no official leads, Dolores's family began consulting psychics, a surprisingly consistent and expensive part of their search ([25:10]-[31:55]).
  • "She said, ‘She’s dead. Her husband killed her.’... When she said that, I knew she was right.” – Slick [25:39]
• Psychics Across America: The family flew in or consulted with psychics from around the country, each offering new “leads” and areas to search. One even produced automatic writing in Dolores’s handwriting.
  • "There was never a day go by where they weren’t actively planning physically trying to do something in regards to find her." – Tony Rocha [27:09]
• Skepticism and Selective Memory: Hosts discuss how selective memory and the psychology of believing psychics fit into the desperation of the era ([33:30]).
• Detective’s Role: Heileman was willing to humor them, but insisted on being called immediately if anything tangible turned up ([35:02]).

5. The Endless Digging and Emotional Fallout

Timestamps: 35:34–39:48

• The Foot Soldiers: The cousins dubbed themselves "the foot soldiers of the case," conducting physical searches, sometimes even skipping major life events for the effort ([36:10]).
  • “I missed the first half of the 1980 Super bowl... because I was out digging looking for Dolores.” – Tony Rocha [36:10]
• The Scale of the Search: Family members explain the near-impossibility of finding Dolores in such vast, rural territory.
  • “If you said there’s a dead body buried out there ... that’s how next to impossible it is.” – Janet [36:29]
• Relentless Hope: Family kept searching for years despite waning optimism ([37:47]).
• Law Enforcement Support: Detective Heileman often joined in the family’s searches, understanding their pain and the need for closure ([37:58]).

6. A New Father Figure – Life for Dolores's Sons

Timestamps: 38:30–39:48

• Paul and Tom Wulff’s New Home: After Dolores disappeared, her sons found a new home and father figure in their uncle Slick and aunt Janet.
  • “He treated me well, way better than my father ever did.” – Tony Rocha [39:00]
• Who Was Slick Rocha?: The episode foreshadows a deeper exploration into Slick's character and his central role in keeping the family together, emotionally and physically.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "We didn’t want peace. We wanted revenge." – Tony Rocha, on the family’s approach to Carl ([10:46])
• "She would always have food... we're like, oh man, the whole house smells awesome." – Darrell Ehrsman, remembering Dolores ([05:22])
• "Paul couldn't have took in the brunt. Mrs. Wolf, there's no way. It wasn't that Mrs. Wolf was not looking out for Tommy. It was just he knew how to do it and when to do it." – Darrell Ehrsman, on Carl's abuse ([06:23])
• "Carl once drove around for several days with a sign on his car that read, 'I murdered my wife.' It was placed there by Debbie's sister Kathy." ([17:01])
• “This is the sheriff's department, and I'm 16, hearing these stories and going out on digs with the shovel, looking. Thinking about it now, it's horrendous.” – Matt Rocha Jr. ([24:30])

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Essential Segment Timestamps

• [01:05] – Hosts revisit the Wulff family home with Darrell Ehrsman.
• [05:22] – Darrell recounts memories of Dolores’s kindness.
• [08:04] – Discussion about the law-enforcement-heavy neighborhood.
• [10:46] – The Roaches voice their desire for revenge, not peace.
• [13:54] – Details of how family cousins harassed Carl throughout Woodland.
• [17:01] – The incident with the “I murdered my wife” sign and other intimidation tactics.
• [25:10] – Introduction to the family’s reliance on psychics.
• [36:10] – Dedicated search efforts, even at the expense of missing major sports events.
• [39:00] – Paul describes being treated better by his uncle than by his father.

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Tone and Style

The episode interweaves first-person recollections, investigative journalism, and documentary-style storytelling with moments of dark humor, nostalgia, exasperation, and longing for justice. The familial voices range from regretful to defiant, the hosts blend objective reporting with empathetic understanding, and the law enforcement voices add gravity and complexity.

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Summary for New Listeners

If you haven't listened, this episode offers a riveting look at the aftermath of a tragic disappearance: a tight-knit, traumatized community, a family unwilling to let the case go cold, and a small town that becomes permanently changed. By weaving together voices from the past and present, the podcast paints a vivid picture of the enduring effects of violence and suspicion—not just on victims, but on all those who love them.

Transcript

[Darrell Ehrsman]

All these trees right here were here. They just weren't as big.

[Tony Rocha]

Hey, Darrell.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

Hey, Joel. I'm just sitting at your gate, brother.

[Tony Rocha]

Yeah, right on.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

I'll come out and open her up for you. Okay? Thanks, Joel. Yes, sir. Bye.

[Adam Rittenberg]

The story of what happened to Dolores Wolf in July 1979 begins at the last place she was seen. Her home. There, the best parts of Dolores personality shine through and the worst traits of her husband Carl became exposed. But what really happened inside those walls? What was the family dynamic like? Especially in the years, months and weeks leading up to the night of July 31st. We went to Woodland to find out. I'm Adam Rittenberg.

[Kyle Bonagara]

And I'm Kyle Bonagara. This is the Unforgotten Season 3 Finding Dolores Wolf Episode 3 this Way to the Murderer's house.

[Adam Rittenberg]

It's early March of 2025 and Kyle and I are at the gate of the house on Hillcrest Drive in Woodland where Dolores Wolf lived with her husband Carl and where they raised their four children. The single story ranch style home had beige and brown paneling and a black roof. The large yard backs up to eucalyptus trees. This is where Dolores was last seen alive on the night of July 31, 1979. To understand the significance of this house, we turned to someone who knew it well. Our guide is a man named Darrell Ehrsman. Darrell grew up a few houses down from the Wolfs and became good friends with Paul Wolf and the family. He still lives in the area. We met Darrell in the parking lot of a local grocery store, hopped in his dark gray truck and got rolling. Darrell is a talker and seems to know everyone in the area. He had a fascinating career as a corrections officer including 23 years at San Quentin where he spent time overseeing one of the death row units. He even served last meals to several of the condemned before execution. Darrell was the perfect person to take us around. He made contact with Joel Burton, who owns the old Wolf family home. Joel agreed to let us check out the property.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

Joel, how you doing sir? Hey, appreciate this man.

[Adam Rittenberg]

We meet Joel, a tall man with a beard who wore a trucker hat with a duck on it. He is a contractor and looked the part. A pencil in his ear, a tape measure clipped to his pocket. As we make our way towards the house, Darrell mentions that we had been on the property before when driving around in 2020. We showed up unannounced and Joel's wife, after initially being startled, was nice enough to let us look around that day. We didn't go inside the house, but saw A slab of concrete with small handprints in them. It had a date, 8, 1072, and initials TW for Tom Wolf and PW for Paul Wolfe. Joel had the slab removed and sent to Tom as a gift. To give you a sense of how close knit Woodland is. Joel revealed his aunt is a woman named Donna Shira, who became a surrogate mother to Tom after Dolores disappeared. Donna even took Tom into her home.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Oh, are you kidding me?

[Tony Rocha]

Yeah, that's my aunt. Yeah.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

Oh, it goes deep because Tom and the shears, that basically a second family.

[Tony Rocha]

Yeah.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

Oh, yeah, around Tom because she's at that age where that caused some deep wounds. And I remember my aunt Donna telling me a story when Tom had some.

[Tony Rocha]

Stuff in the house still.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

And at the time, Tom was living with Donna. So Donna came, not Tom, to come get some of Tom's stuff out of the house and met the dad. And she said as soon as he walked up to the door, she just felt like this huge. There's a darkness, like the whole house gloom.

[Tony Rocha]

Oh, yeah.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

You know, as a man of faith, I get there's a darkness to this world we live in when that man was living in it for sure.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Joel and his family are several owners removed from Carl and Dolores. As we entered through the back, Darryl noted that he hadn't been inside the home since wandering over in early August 1979 to find out what had happened to the woman he called Mrs. Wolf.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

Wow, it looks so small now as a kid. Yeah, this room was Anna's, so I'm trying to get it. Something's a little different in here. Yeah. And that was Paul's Tommy. And then their mom and dad's room was right here.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Joel had done significant renovations to the house and much of it looked different from what Daryl remembered. A sign above the living room read, you can spot a dad by their courageous heart and a love that lasts. Clearly, there was a different vibe in the home than when Carl Wolf lived there. Darrell was constantly around back then, playing sports with the Wolf boys and regularly tagging along to family outings. Darryl truly loved Dolores, who would always welcome him into their home. He essentially became the fifth Wolf sibling.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

She would always have food. So one day we got there and we opened up the front door from school and we're like, oh, man, the whole house smells awesome. We're like, well, she's not here. So we went in and we looked in the double oven. There was a chicken up top and a chicken down below. Paul goes, well, excellent one's for you. One's for me. So, man, we just finished them chickens off, right? And she came home, she walked in, we're sitting at the dinner table eating that chicken and she goes, what are you guys doing? And then she just shook her head and goes, I'll be back. I'm going to the store. They were having company that night.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Carl certainly wouldn't have had the same reaction to the chicken incident. Darryl remembered him as a menacing presence, the type of guy who would make all the boys scatter if they were playing outside. When he came home, Carl would acknowledge Darryl, but didn't say much to him other than to tell him that he talked a lot, which of course he did. Darrel had seen Carl's temper firsthand, especially when he took it out on Tom. While Dolores did her best to protect Paul, Tom bore the brunt of the abuse.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

I watched Mr. Wolf beat him up. I still get emotional when I think about that. He tore Tommy out of everybody, took the brunt. Paul couldn't have took in the brunt. Mrs. Wolf, there's no way. It wasn't that Mrs. Wolf was not looking out for Tommy. It was just he knew how to do it and when to do it.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Carl's drinking also wasn't a secret for Daryl. Standing in the kitchen of the old Wolf home with us in March, he pointed to a corner cabinet where Carl would keep his best liquor and recounted a scene he saw many times as a boy.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

I would watch him come home, he'd do it every day and he'd open that up, he'd pull out a bottle. I didn't know what it was and it was Bombay Sapphire. I don't know if you've ever seen the color of a Bombay Sapphire. It's that really pretty blue.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Darryl's parents didn't drink and he couldn't take his eyes off of Carl.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

He would pour that Bombay Sapphire and he'd swirl it. Same thing every day. It was a ritual. And then he would drink it and he'd go. And I used to tell myself, that's got to be some good stuff.

[Adam Rittenberg]

After touring the old Wolf family property, Darrell drove us around Hillcrest Drive, a mile long U shaped stretch that feels remote. Darrell tells us that the community generally looks similar to when he was a kid. But the trees have grown and each five acre lot is more cordoned off than it used to be because the homeowners association prevented individuals from building big fences. This is notable because neighbors could see each other's properties. And as Darrell showed us around, we learned this wasn't Just any neighborhood. It was a place with a deep undercurrent of power and authority.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

He was the deputy sheriff of Woodland.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Sometimes he was the deputy sheriff.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

This guy was a deputy sheriff too. Ron Rumsey and Mr. Murphy right here.

[Tony Rocha]

Wow.

[Kyle Bonagara]

So they had to have known Carl.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

Yes, they did know Carl, but they weren't like investigators. They're just patrol guys. And the first one, I told you, he actually ran for Sheriff Ron Rumsey of Yolo County. And then directly across the street from Paul's right there was Mr. Bigelow, and he was a CHP high patrol.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Daryl explained that all of these law enforcement neighbors wouldn't have been looking into Dolores's case. But Kyle and I still thought it was brazen for Carl to have possibly committed a violent crime just yards from where some police lived. Darrell didn't realize anything was wrong until a few days after Dolores went missing. Even when more people started showing up to the Wolf Home, he made his way over just like he always did and was stopped by Mary Thomas, one of Dolores cousins.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

I'm thinking, man, what are all the cars doing here? They didn't tell me there was a party or somebody's birthday. And I come up and one of the relatives, I think it was Mary, came out and said, daryl, come here. And I said, what? I want to get something to eat. And she said, you need to leave. And I said, I need to leave because, you know, I was part of the family. And she said, something's happened and we'll get a hold of you and let you know a little bit later. I was devastated. I didn't know what was going on.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Daryl's life changed the night Dolores went missing. He no longer could walk down from his house to hang at the Wolves and where he shot hoops, sorted through Paul's sport card collection and ate Dolores food. In the weeks that followed, as the investigation took shape, the neighborhood transformed into something much more ominous as Detective Ron Heileman began investigating with all suspicions pointing to Carl Wolf. He set up a makeshift command post outside Darryl's home, which is on a little hill overlooking the Wolf home. Heileman and Darrell's parents were close, and Darrell's best friend to this day is Heileman's son, Kevin.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

Ron used to sit in the driveway back when you could see when there's no trees. And so he would watch the house all the time and see the antics that went on.

[Ron Heileman]

I did that several times in the beginning because I just didn't know what his mindset was. You know, there were Some evenings that I would just go do that, you know, sometimes you get lucky. But that didn't happen.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Ron Heileman went the extra mile to try and solve the Dolores Wolf case. A group of Dolores relatives, though, went even further. After the break, Kyle will tell you about their mission to start getting answers from Carl.

[Tony Rocha]

We didn't want peace. We wanted revenge.

[Ron Heileman]

Foreign.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Missing her son Tom played in a high school football game. In a town like Woodland, those games became community events and many in the Rocha family went to watch. Tom had told his father he wanted nothing to do with them. But Carl showed up anyway. He had been laying low since his wife's disappearance, which was the talk of the town. Many people knew he had been questioned by police and was seen as a prime suspect. But he was still there to watch Tom, which many had to face his wife's relatives. Here's Dolores cousin Tony.

[Tony Rocha]

We were kind of head hunting him and we waited for him to come up out of the crowd. And we were standing there and he took off running back down the stairs into the crowd. And at that point we knew he did it. The whole community knew he did it. The assault on Carl Wolf pretty much started that day.

[Kyle Bonagara]

The period after Dolores disappeared included an investigation by local law enforcement just like any other missing persons case. But what made this different is that Dolores family became directly involved in mind blowing ways. Maybe they felt a sense of guilt for not really thinking Carl would follow through on his threats. And they certainly lost patience with the authorities. Other than Ron Heileman, the Roaches just weren't the type to wait around for justice. They were the type to take matters into their own hands. Carl Wolf might have technically been free, but he soon became a prisoner in his own home and in the town of woodland. Matt Rocha Jr. Slick's son and Dolores nephew, remembers several family members gathered at his house plotting how to deal with Carl.

[Matt Rocha Jr.]

One night it was my uncle, my dad and some of the older cousins. And they discussed ways of how could we kill him and get away with it. And I remember at 16 thinking we're going to be the first suspects. They're not going to think anything else. And they had decided that it wouldn't be worth it because then my dad or somebody else would be going to jail and it wouldn't make the situation any better. But my older cousins were always screwing with Wolf.

[Kyle Bonagara]

The group that would turn up the heat on Carl consisted of a group of cousins. Tony Rocha, his sister Mary Thomas Debbie Baker and her older brother who's also named Tony and a few others. Although dolores brothers knew about what was happening, as did her older children, this group of relatives mostly acted on its own.

[Tony Rocha]

Everything we could do to make his life horrible, we were doing it. And it was kind of a family run thing, you know, the whole family was involved. You know, like, you stay next to killing them, the only thing we could do is harass them.

[Kyle Bonagara]

The roaches were on call to make Carl's life miserable. They followed him around town and leaned on friends in the community to be tipped off. Whenever carl was spotted publicly.

[Tony Rocha]

I chased him out of several grocery stores. And we had carts full of food waiting in line. And we'd go, hey, wolf. And he would just run out of the store and leave his groceries right in the cart right there. One day he was paying, and he started to get his wallet out. And me and my nephew Tony in safeway, we come up behind him. We go, carl. And he looks at us and he just runs out the door. Doesn't pay for his groceries or nothing.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Carl stayed involved with the woodland chamber of commerce even after dolores disappeared. When the chamber honored woodland high's longtime principal in the fall of 1981, who, if you remember, Dolores served as the secretary for carl, showed up with the woman he was dating. Tony heard about it and rushed over with his cousin, Tony baker.

[Tony Rocha]

So we get there, and there's these two big open double doors that you walk into where the podium is facing right at you. And wolf was sitting like two seats over from the principal. And me and Tony went in, and we slammed those doors open against the wall. Boom. We go, wolf. And he jumped up right in front of the chamber of commerce and all those people, and he made a run for the door. We're running around the crowd trying to hit off, and we catch him just as he's getting in his car, and he's sitting there, and his girlfriend was with him. She comes running out, and it was in the fall or the winter, it was cold out. And she says, open the door. It's freezing out here. And he's saying, those guys will kill me. You don't understand. They'll drag me out of the car and kill me right here in the parking lot.

[Kyle Bonagara]

The roaches were relentless, not only following carl around woodland, but making sure he felt their presence at home. They posted signs along the road leading to his house, Marking the distance to what they called the murderer's house. It was a public act of defiance and an unsettling reminder of just how far they were willing to go. Here's Debbie Baker again.

[Debbie Baker]

We were all sitting at the table and we were making signs, and my mom worked at the hospital and she worked until about 10 o' clock at night. So she walks in the house and she sees us all sitting at the table and she thought maybe we were helping my younger brother do something for school. Well, she comes in and there's these signs and they're saying, follow arrows to Killer Wolf's house. She just kind of shook her head and like, oh, you guys.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Debbie's mom might not have been amused by what Debbie and the others were up to, but she soon saw that their strategy worked.

[Debbie Baker]

A couple days later, my mom is sitting in the cafeteria, the hospital, and there's some people at a table next to her and they're talking about, did you see Those signs on 24? There's a bunch of signs saying to go to Killer Wolf and follow the signs and everything. And my mom. Because I just sat there shaking my head, thinking, yes, I saw them. They were being made on my dining room table.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Carl once drove around for several days with a sign on his car that read, I murdered my wife. It was placed there by Debbie's sister Kathy. The cousins also painted Killer Wolf across Carl's driveway in red paint. Those signs were more than just words. They were a signal to the whole town that the roaches weren't backing down. Here's Matt Rocha Jr. Again.

[Matt Rocha Jr.]

When he tried to show up at sporting events, they'd pop his tires, they'd write stuff on his house and blood. After they'd slaughtered animals, they did movie type stuff to screw with them.

[Kyle Bonagara]

As you can hear, the roaches pushed a line of simple intimidation. They were unabashed, especially around Carl's house. They left a pig's head and fish entrails on the property. And that wasn't even the most disgusting thing they did. When Tony Baker was growing up, he slept in his home's attic. And instead of going to the bathroom downstairs, he used a jar to relieve himself. And what's worse is he never dumped it out.

[Debbie Baker]

And he did that all through high school. And then he joined the Navy and he was gone for nine years. And that jar was still up there. And it used to get real hot up there, and it was full and it was very dark. If I remember right, it's been there nine years, plus the four years of high school, so 13 years. Well, they decided to give it to Wolf.

[Kyle Bonagara]

And by give it to Wolfe, she meant throw the jar through one of his windows where it crashed and spilled all over his living room carpet. Carl's neighbors became part of the antics whether they wanted to or not. There was hamp shorty hobbs, a texas native who lived one lot over from carl.

[Tony Rocha]

He was a hot headed guy. Hated carl wolf. He knew what he did. They would let us sit at their house, and we would go out into the field between our house, and we would throw dirt clogs on Carl's house All night, all night, all night. And then he would come out with a gun, and then we'd hit him with a spotlight and throw rocks at him.

[Kyle Bonagara]

One time, Tony went to Carl's property with his nephew, Larry baker. Their plan was to cut off the power to his house. But after they did it, they noticed Carl's neighbors sitting in chairs on their driveway with a view of the whole scene.

[Tony Rocha]

We did our deed in his power box, and I turn around and go, oh, fuck, they're looking right at us. I go, larry, just turn around, Stare at him. We just turned around, glared at him. Those people picked up their lawn chairs, ran in their garage, put the door down. They weren't about to talk because they were like, we don't want this rain of terror brought down on us.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Initially, the family was willing to wait on local law enforcement and the local legal authorities to take action. But as the weeks and months went by, their patience wore thin, Especially for dolores younger cousins. Tensions were rising, and before long, the roaches clashed with the official investigation. Mary thomas came up with a plan to call carl. Pretending to be from the sheriff's office, they would tell him that they had found a body, Hoping that would lure him to where she was. They called him from a store several minutes from carl's home While keeping eyes on the house. And sure enough, Carl started loading things in the trunk of his car. But rather than wait for him to leave, Mary confronted carl.

[Tony Rocha]

She was still emotionally tied into the case. She got so mad, and she drove up in his driveway and started yelling at him. And when I got back around the corner, Wolf was pointing a rifle at her about 20ft away. So I jump out of my car and I have a 12 gauge in my car. I jump out with my double bear on. I said, dude, I'll cut you in half. It'd be the end of your days. He threw the gun back in the trunk and went in the house, told us we were crazy.

[Kyle Bonagara]

After carl went back inside, the cousins went to the home of frank rocha, Dolores's brother, who lived nearby.

[Tony Rocha]

At this point, we're saying, you know what? I think we got him stirred up. And we're in a house and we see Wolf going by and I'm talking, that car was whistling. Had to be going 100 miles an hour. So we're calling, they're calling. Mary was calling around Heileman. We're calling everybody to get cars out there to follow them because we're thinking at least we can get a direction right.

[Kyle Bonagara]

But Detective Heileman wasn't pleased with what the Roaches had done.

[Ron Heileman]

Oh man, did I get hot. Because my plan was similar type situation.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Even though the family's effort had complicated things, Ron wasn't ready to abandon his own ruse.

[Ron Heileman]

We had set up a plan where we had a couple officers and sometimes just one officer. We had about five or six vehicles stationed within a mile of his house. Different roads and we had an aircraft standing by. Me and another officer was at the airport. We had it set up. One of the Deputy DA's phoned him to tell him that oh, there had been a body found and there was some evidence possibly found and they acted like a newspaper person and they had this machine making a noise like some newspaper.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Carl eventually headed into town. He went to the post office with the police following behind. Then he went to the liquor store, bought a few bottles and returned home.

[Ron Heileman]

We sat on that thing for several hours and I said, he's not going anywhere. He knows that the family for what they did, he wasn't going to take a chance.

[Kyle Bonagara]

Ron let the other deputies go home.

[Ron Heileman]

I stayed there till way after dark and they didn't go anywhere again.

[Kyle Bonagara]

At this point, Rick Gilbert, the Yolo County DA wasn't confident all their circumstantial evidence was enough to convict Carl of murder. So the ruse became a last ditch effort to try to locate Dolores body.

[Tony Rocha]

I was very involved in that. By that time it didn't look like we were going to quote, find the body. And so the plot was let's do some somewhat extreme measures and see if we can, we can do two things. One, potentially find the body and in the course of doing that establish whether evidence that Carl Wolf did it, if he goes to the body.

[Kyle Bonagara]

But after the plan failed, the official investigation essentially fizzled out. There would be no new leads and no new evidence. The harassment from the Roaches would go on for years. And later Carl Wolf claimed he called the police more than a hundred times for protection from Dolores family. Those calls mostly fell on deaf ears because law enforcement in Woodland and Yolo county but believed he murdered his wife. Matt Rocha Jr. Said the family even received some Stunning advice from a member of the sheriff's department.

[Matt Rocha Jr.]

I'll never forget him saying that if he comes to our house and confronts us and we shoot him to make sure we drag him inside and shoot him again in the house a couple times.

[Kyle Bonagara]

In other words, he was recommending they stage the scene because it's easier to claim self defense if a shooting happens inside the home, not outside. It's a legal concept often referred to as the castle doctrine.

[Matt Rocha Jr.]

This is the sheriff's department and I'm 16, hearing these stories and going out on digs with the shovel, looking, thinking about it now, it's horrendous. But growing up on a farm, we just did what we had to do. Again, thinking about it now is I can't imagine having to tell my kids, you have to do this stuff or hear these stories that I heard.

[Kyle Bonagara]

As the roaches waged their personal war on Carl, they also launched increasingly desperate efforts to find Dolores, including turning to psychics. That's after the break.

[Adam Rittenberg]

The day after Dolores went missing, her sister in law, Janet received a recommendation from her sister about a psychic who lived nearby in Davis. Maybe this woman could help. Janet told her husband Slick about the psychic, but he was apprehensive.

[Janet]

I was always told not to believe in psychics growing up, but she got the phone number, started to call him, and I said, well, don't just say she's missing. See what she says.

[Slick]

I just called her and I said, can you tell me about my sister in law, Delores? Nothing else. And she was silent for a moment. And then she said one thing is she's kind of upset. She's trying to talk to her brothers, but they don't answer her. And then this big silence. And she said, she's dead. Her husband killed her. I got kid. This was hot summer, July. I got so cold I had the shivers. When she said that, I knew she was right.

[Janet]

I thought, whoa, maybe we ought to go talk to this lady. Which we did.

[Adam Rittenberg]

When Slick and Janet went to go meet with her, she asked Slick for a question that only he and Dolores would know the answer to. His mind took him back to childhood when his older sister would read him Donald Duck comic books.

[Janet]

I said, yeah, ask my sister what Donald Duck's uncle used to eat for breakfast. And here it comes, Caledonian chickadees. Well, how in the hell would that lady know that this lady's the real deal? There's no way you could lucky guess that one.

[Adam Rittenberg]

This psychic turned out to be the first of several who became involved in the search For Dolores, the roaches brought in psychics from all parts of the country in the years that followed, hoping to get a clue on where Dolores could be. Here's Dolores son Paul again.

[Tony Rocha]

They flew in some psychic from Boston, Massachusetts, that had uncovered some remains, some other people that they'd heard about. But they probably brought in three to four different psychics throughout the United States to try to help locate. It just seemed like there was never a day go by where they weren't actively planning physically trying to do something in regards to find her.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Dolores family was desperate, and they didn't see a significant downside to using psychics. Most did not charge much money, and the family used their feedback to determine where to dig. One psychic said Dolores was near stagnant water, which prompted her family to go to the property on Hillcrest Drive and drain the septic tank. But some of the experiences with psychics turned bizarre. One held a seance with Dolores family members sitting in a circle and said Dolores spirit was speaking through her own body. Mary Thomas told the Sacramento Bee in 1985 that the family never felt the psychics were doing a sham on them, that they had nothing to lose. According to Mary, the family spent three to $5,000 on psychics, with the highest cost coming from bringing them to Woodland. She said some psychics were very accurate in identifying elements of Karl Wolf's life, background and behavior. We wanted to find Dolores, Mary told the Bee. I would probably do it again. I think anybody would. So, Kyle, the psychics thing, I know we talked about this a lot. It just didn't seem to fit with the rest of this family, who they were. I think their philosophies, you know, where they live, there's just all sorts of layers that don't seem to line up with psychics. But the psychics were a huge, huge part of the story. What did you think when you found out more and heard from more of the relatives, just about how far they went to involve psychics and rely on psychics to try to find Dolores?

[Kyle Bonagara]

Yeah. So I think it speaks to a level of desperation.

[Tony Rocha]

Right.

[Kyle Bonagara]

If you have nowhere else to turn, where do you go? You're trying to make sense of something that can't be explained. I guess you turn to the supernatural and that's what happened here. Beyond that, it's interesting to hear that it wasn't just the family that used psychics and relied on psychics to go try to dig in these vast agricultural regions around Woodland. We later find out that there were psychics that popped up, up at Various points of the story involving several different groups of people. And so the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that it was just a sign of the times, that it was an accepted part of society in the late 70s, early 80s, that this is something that people were willing to believe in. And there is still some of that today.

[Tony Rocha]

Right.

[Kyle Bonagara]

You kind of hear these stories on occasion, but that it was so ingrained into the story kind of from start to finish, it is pretty revealing about that era. Yeah.

[Adam Rittenberg]

I thought about the time and the place, and, you know, both of us grew up in California. You still live there now. And I thought about California in the late 70s and early 80s. This is very much in line with the new age movement. You know, Nancy Reagan, the former first lady, you know, famously consulted an astrologist after there was an assassination attempt on her husband, obviously President Ronald Reagan, in 1981. So this is California at that time. And I think, again, it was a much more accepted thing, Even though it sounds wild and out there, and certainly the chances of any of this leading them to Dolores, it didn't seem to increase those chances. But was there any value in this, or was this just more, you know, pointing to the desperation overall that the family was essentially just willing to try anything they could at that point.

[Kyle Bonagara]

I think what's important to understand is it didn't hurt anything.

[Tony Rocha]

Right.

[Kyle Bonagara]

There was no real way to decide where to dig or where to search. So if you're getting it from a psychic or you're getting it from someone else who theorizes about where to dig based on their own premonitions or theories, it wasn't really going to make a difference either way. And so it almost feels like a way that the family coped with everything in that, hey, like, we need to be doing something. There needs to be some action on our behalf to help find Dolores. And if that helped them feel good about their own action in trying to help find Dolores, then, then I guess it's fine. Maybe there's a calmness that it provided them, knowing that they were doing everything they could to help find her.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Not surprisingly, the tips from the psychics didn't help. Here's Tony.

[Tony Rocha]

The professional psychics got us nowhere. We met a lady who called us just out of goodness, her heart. She didn't want to die. She wouldn't even let us buy her dinner. And she's a little lady in Auburn, California, and she was 78 or 79 years old. And she said, I've heard about your case, but I had A dream last night, and if there's anything I can do, I would gladly come and help you guys. I don't want no money. I don't want nothing. She goes, I'm 78. If you guys want to come and get me, I will gladly go out with you and scour the area, which was amazing.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Tony and Mary drove out to Auburn, about 50 miles away, and picked up the woman. When they arrived, she showed them a letter and asked if they recognized the handwriting.

[Tony Rocha]

And we go, well, I don't understand. The writing is a different language. And so first thing she says is, can I see your mom? Is it all right to go buy your parents? We go, yeah, you go by that. So we go by and we introduce her to my mom. And first thing he says to my mom is, she says, do you have any letters that your sister Doris's mom ever wrote? So my mom got one of those letters out, and it was exact match of the letter the psychic lady had. We were like, man, we had chill city. We were like, what's going on here? We said, where'd you get this? And she said, I had an intervention thing where the spirit goes into your body and wrote this message. And it gave us several tips about looking for water. Number one, she was in water.

[Adam Rittenberg]

These psychics weren't actually clairvoyant, obviously, but there is real science to it. Psychics often take advantage of how the brain works. One trick they use is called subjective validation. It's when people believe something is true that just because it feels personal or seems believable. The psychics in this story gave surprisingly specific details, but that's part of the act. People who are desperate for answers are much more likely to believe what they hear. Psychologists call this selective memory, when people remember only the details that seem to confirm what they want to believe. In this case, this probably means that there was more to those interactions with the psychics and than what came to mind 45 years later. As a police detective, Ron Heileman didn't think they were going to be of much help. But to appease the family, he was willing to talk with the psychics and sometimes accompany the family to digs based on the tips that had been conjured up first.

[Ron Heileman]

Couple of times, you know, there was a couple of them that seemed like they were pretty intelligent. When I talked to them on the. And the family would go out and they'd find places that these people would be telling them about the way things looked, and they'd go out there and they'd want to start Digging and stuff all around.

[Adam Rittenberg]

But after a while, Heileman was only willing to devote so much time to anything psychic related.

[Ron Heileman]

After a couple of times, I told him, here's the deal. I said, I don't mind coming out to some of these places, but if you find something with a psychic, as soon as you find something or able to say, hey, I think she might be here or something, you just quit. Stay there, call me immediately. There was a couple more times I did get a call, but of course it wasn't anything. So they knew after that that they better have something a little more serious.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Ron mentioned the digging, which became part of the family's efforts to find Dolores. The diggers were mostly the same group of cousins who had harassed Carl. Tony rocha calls them the foot soldiers of the case. They began going out to search the fields, ditches and creeks around woodland, hoping to find something. The searches started in a ditch near the wolf home.

[Tony Rocha]

Started digging in that ditch, you know, and that's kind of how we started the dig, you know, and we just dug and dug and dug and dug.

[Adam Rittenberg]

And they didn't stop.

[Tony Rocha]

I'm a big Pittsburgh steeler fan, right? And I missed the first half of the 1980 Super bowl against the rams because I was out digging looking for Dolores. I showed you how big it is.

[Adam Rittenberg]

To me, woodland is a large rural area, but Dolores family members set out to cover it.

[Janet]

A lot of times, depending on the time of year, I'd go out with somebody after work on the weekends. You had to do something. Obviously, there's nothing that we could do to find her. The big world. And they'd say, why can't we find her? I said, I'll tell you how hard it is to find her. I said, look at the football field. 100 yards long and what, 50 or 40 yards wide, something like that. If you said there's a dead body buried out there and that's it, there's no sign of any digging or anything, you got an idea how long it's going to take before you find that body? Just on a football field. This guy had a whole fricking world putter in. That's how next to impossible it is.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Here's Janet again.

[Slick]

For five years, if anybody wanted to go, they'd call and I'd go with them. And I can remember one time I was digging a hole and there was these mice, and I let out a scream while they thought I found her.

[Adam Rittenberg]

The amazing thing is they kept searching without much optimism.

[Slick]

My best way to say it is we Hoped like heck we could find her, but we didn't have any reason.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Ron didn't think the digging was going to help much either. But again, because it was important to the family, he showed support and would often come along, especially early on.

[Ron Heileman]

I did because I knew the family was really hurting and they wanted to try to find her. And I knew that they needed to know that somebody was out there trying to help find her. You know, I'd run things by and they'd call me, and I appreciated that they'd call me about anything they'd heard about a body being found. And sometimes it was far away, but I'd always try to make contact with the law enforcement people to find out about it.

[Adam Rittenberg]

As the investigation continued and the roaches kept harassing Carl Wolf and searching for Dolores, life went on. And for Paul and Tom, as we mentioned earlier, that meant moving in mostly with Uncle Slick, Aunt Janet, and their two cousins of the same age, David and Matt. For Paul especially, Slick was a blessing, stepping in to become a positive male figure at a time when the circumstances of his life could have easily taken him down a dark path.

[Tony Rocha]

Wow. I mean, he treated me well, way better than my father ever did.

[Matt Rocha Jr.]

It's not even close.

[Adam Rittenberg]

Who was Matthew Slick Rocha? As we found out through our reporting, he was the single most interesting person connected to this story. A father, a brother, an uncle, and a protector. He had carved a place in American history, and he was someone fully capable of doing whatever he wanted to. Carl Wolf, he's kind of like Popeye.

[Tony Rocha]

He's got those arms.

[Janet]

You got two choices, Wolf. You can tell me or the police tomorrow where she's at, or I can blow your head off.

[Darrell Ehrsman]

He was obviously the glue for not.

[Tony Rocha]

Only his own family, but our family and so many other people. And just an unbelievable human in every which way.

[Adam Rittenberg]

That's next time on the Unforgotten. Finding Dolores Wolf. The Unforgotten is a Free range production. Season 3 Finding Dolores Wolf is written and hosted by Kyle Bonagara and me, Adam Rittenberg. The story is edited and produced by Wes Ferguson, the executive producer at Free Range. Audio editing by Aislin Gaddis Audio production and sound design by Austin Sisler with Eastside Studios in Austin, Texas. Special thanks to ESPN.