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- [00:04]
A
Six years. That's how long Dolores Wolf's family waited for justice. Six years of heartbreak, harassment and unrelenting turmoil, but no real answers. At first they gave authorities time, but as weeks turned into months with no progress, they grew increasingly impatient. Much of the family's ire was directed at Yolo County District attorney Rick Gilbert, who you heard from in episodes two and three. He was a fast rising young lawyer admitted to the California Bar in 1972. He was elected the Yolo County DA at just 30 years old and took office the year Dolores went missing. Gilbert would hold the DA role for four years before becoming a superior court judge. For a time, Gilbert gave the family hope. They started showing up at his office and pleading for action. Here's Dolores cousin Debbie Baker.
- [01:01]
B
It was every two weeks, oh, we're going to arrest him in two weeks. We're going to arrest him in two weeks. He'd have the family come and have meetings and he'd sit there and talk and we'd ask questions and he, he would say, oh, we're going to arrest him in two weeks.
- [01:17]
A
Gilbert found himself in a difficult position. He told us he agreed with the family. He thought Carl Wolf had murdered Dolores, but he was not confident he could win a murder conviction without a body. We've laid out a lot of the strong circumstantial evidence that existed. But Gilbert felt the defense attorney could introduce enough plausible explanations to create reasonable doubt. This was difficult to relay to Dolores family.
- [01:43]
C
Those people were hurting terribly. I know they were not happy. They were very angry with me. But it's not something I begrudge. I have every right to be here trying to tell these people, don't they know in their hearts, not unreasonably, this is what happened. We know what did it. Why are you sitting on your ass and doing nothing and trying to explain some subtle judgment that, you know, we just are fearing that actually making things worse by doing things now is just an understandably difficult so.
- [02:15]
A
And in your conversations with them, what are you telling them? Is it. Yes, I'm with you. I know that the evidence points to Carl, but this is why we can't go forward.
- [02:24]
C
What do you think? That's the thing about expressed doubt. I mean, I believed he did it. I thought the explanation just didn't add up. But I also understood I was not by any means a veteran homicide prosecutor. I wasn't stupid. And I interacted with people who were veteran prosecutors and veteran investigators, both in the county and outside the county, because I had other people to talk to it was just an extremely difficult judgment to try and explain to them. We believe this guy did it. We don't think we can prove it. We think we're better off holding off for a while and continuing to probe and poke and wait for that moment.
- [03:09]
A
The risk of taking the case to trial was that if Carl was acquitted and then new evidence surfaced later, double jeopardy laws would have prevented him from being tried again. Yolo county would have one chance. And Gilbert reasoned that by holding off, maybe the body would turn up or maybe Carl Wolf would confess privately to someone or the case could be bolstered incrementally in other ways. Eventually, Gilbert told Dolores family that despite his own belief that Carl was responsible, he would not pursue charges. Here's Tony.
- [03:41]
C
And he said flat out, you guys are just going to have to get over it. I am not to prosecute a case out of body.
- [03:50]
A
Gilbert still grapples with the decision more than 40 years later.
- [03:54]
C
You're looking at not only dealing with this, this family's loss, but you're also considering we're letting somebody who we think murdered somebody remain in the community. Is that the right thing to do? That's tough to live with. It's one of those decisions, quite frankly, one of a couple of decisions or outcomes in the DA's office are just one that I think back on and they continue to question, was that the right call?
- [04:21]
A
With no real progress and only their own efforts in the fields and streams around Woodland, the family reached a standstill. So in February 1982, they turned up the heat. A lawsuit on behalf of Paul Wolf, the youngest child of Carl and Dolores, was filed against his father. I'm Adam Rittenberg.
- [04:43]
D
And I'm Kyle Bonagara. This is The Unforgotten Season 3 Finding Dolores Wolf Episode 5 Catch and Release.
- [04:59]
A
Dolores family couldn't force Yolo county to file criminal charges against Carl Wolf, but they could sue him in civil court. On February 19, 1982, a $3 million wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the 47 year old. Statute of limitations laws prevented any of Paul's older siblings from filing, but Paul, who was 14, had the option until he was a legal adult. The lawsuit read on or about July 31, 1979, the defendant, Carl L. Wolf Sr. Did willfully, intentionally and maliciously kill Delores Wolf. Tom Frankel, the attorney who filed the lawsuit and a friend of the Rocha family, told us this was part of a larger strategy. The goal was to keep the case in the public eye and urge Gilbert and Yolo county to take action. And to a degree it worked. All the local newspapers covered the lawsuit. Ron Heileman, the detective who doggedly investigated Dolores disappearance, also wouldn't let it go. By that time, Heileman had left the Yolo County Sheriff's Department and, and was actually working for the district attorney's office. He wanted to keep the pressure on Carl Wolf.
- [06:17]
E
I made several contacts with him during those years because he was living with different women and in the beginning I would contact them and just ask him about, let them know what the situation was because they probably didn't know about what went on with him. And the first couple they didn't. And of course he'd call. He said, you can't be coming out here and asking my girlfriend's questions, you know. And I said, well, I can.
- [06:43]
A
Heileman wasn't the only person in touch with Carl. His three sons had essentially cut him out of their lives. But his daughter Anna remained in contact. As we laid out in episode two, Anna was the first person to talk with Carl the morning of Dolores disappearance and went to the police station the next day to point the blame at her father. But her viewpoint would change over the years in what was a very complicated relationship.
- [07:10]
F
I was thinking, oh, I'll just be his friend and I'll just keep in communication with him and then if he's going to confess, he's going to confess to me. There's that self centered thing going on again, you know. I stayed in contact with him and at first it felt very scary and uncomfortable. But then the more I was around her, the more I thought, oh no, you know, this is crazy, everything's fine. You know, she must just have ran away because she couldn't handle the life I was living.
- [07:38]
A
Before Dolores disappearance, Anna was admittedly self involved and had a lifestyle unlike her mother's that she believed brought some level of disapproval from Dolores. And after her mother went missing, Anna moved around a lot with her musician boyfriend. Lacking much financial or career stability.
- [07:57]
F
I just went out and did the survivor mode. For a long time Anna had been.
- [08:03]
A
Around her family members who would gather regularly to dig for a body. She knew about the harassment of her father and the use of psychics.
- [08:13]
F
I just started to think this is just too weird. This is just really weird. These people are getting obsessed and we don't know anything. So I started to have more doubts about it. I had just gotten myself to the conclusion that she just ran away. So I just left it at that. She ran away, she's living a better life. And she couldn't handle what I had done with my life. So I just kind of buried it that way in my brain.
- [08:38]
A
The theory Anna settled on was one Carl had pushed from the start, that Dolores had willingly run away from a place she had lived her entire life and from a family she adored. And Anna somehow convinced herself that Dolores did all of that just because of her own lifestyle. She had made such an extraordinary leap to reach that conclusion, which speaks to how emotionally fragile and perhaps immature Anna was at that time.
- [09:04]
F
I mean, now I see I was a baby 40 years later. You do whatever you can to survive, you know, emotionally and mentally and all of that. You got my dad killed, my mom or my mom ran away. What's easier to handle, right?
- [09:22]
A
Anna wasn't completely cut off from her family like her father and would still come around for holidays and other events. But she felt very much on her own. The loyalty she showed towards Carl strained the dynamic when she was around her siblings, cousins and extended family. Here's her older brother, Carly.
- [09:41]
E
I just figured she's not very stable at the time. I didn't question her, just kind of ignored what she said, didn't include her in anything that we talked about because I felt that she was going to say something to the old man.
- [09:55]
A
The wrongful death lawsuit didn't affect the criminal case. In 1983, Gilbert left to become a judge and his chief deputy, Charles Van Court, took over as acting DA for an 18 month term. In 1984, Dave Henderson became the DA, a role he would hold for more than 20 years. Van Cort stayed on as the top deputy and would play a crucial role in the Wolf case. By this point, Delores Wolf's family had lost all confidence in the Yolo county authorities to act. So they looked for other options. One of their cousins worked for the District Attorney's office in Sacramento and was advised to go to the state Attorney General's office. Here's Dolores brother Slick.
- [10:42]
E
The local police wouldn't arrest him. We thought that there was enough to arrest them, but they wouldn't do it.
- [10:49]
C
I have no qualms with them, but.
- [10:51]
E
We went to the attorney general statewide in Sacramento and they said, oh, we'll take the case.
- [10:59]
A
Finally, the Roaches had found a pressure point that surprisingly worked. State AG offices are usually deferential to local prosecutors unless there's an ethical violation or a major issue that would trigger their involvement. But in this case, the threat of a state investigation forced Yolo County's hand. They scrambled, went before a grand jury, and finally, after Years of waiting. Got an arrest Warrant at about 5pm on Friday, March 8, 1985, 2,048 days after Dolores Wolf went missing, Carl Wolf turned himself in to Yolo county authorities. Ron Heileman was there to meet him.
- [11:42]
E
He came into the sheriff's department with his attorney. I advised him of his rights and then told him he would be arrested.
- [11:50]
A
Carl Wolf was behind bars in lieu of $400,000 bail. But would he stay there for good? Would the Rocha family actually get some justice? After the break, Kyle will take you through 1985, a year when the Delores Wolf case finally entered the courtroom.
- [12:13]
D
By the time Carl was arrested, Paul had blossomed from a quiet 12 year old kid into an imposing 18 year old football star at Davis High School. He had accepted a scholarship to play offensive line at Washington State and would soon leave home behind. But before Paul could start the next chapter, the case pulled him back in. This time more directly. With Carl in the local jail, the DA asked Paul if he would be willing to sit with his dad and try to pry out a confession. Paul agreed. He described the scene as something right out of a movie.
- [12:48]
C
He was in his orange suit and then I had a wire on, you know, I sat across from him and talked to him and asked him questions and asked him if he would say where she was at or give me some kind of information, please and can you help us at all? And I kept denying it. I wish I could help, wish I could help. He'd look down and not look me in the eye.
- [13:06]
D
The scene was unlike anything Paul has experienced since.
- [13:10]
C
I've been involved in a lot of crazy things and done different things but you know, here you're on one side and you're questioning, you know, your father at the end of the day, still your father. You're questioning what he's done to your mother. Really not knowing what I was doing. To be honest, I didn't know what the heck I was doing other than just asking questions and hoping he would just fill his guts.
- [13:32]
D
Paul's attempt to get a confession failed. Not a surprise, but it was still disappointing for everyone involved.
- [13:39]
C
Frustrated, getting up, walking away like he ain't never going to say, he's never going to say. That was the feeling. He's going to go to his grave.
- [13:49]
D
For Dolores family, Carl's arrest brought a surge of hope. Maybe after six years they would finally see him held accountable. Here's Dolores's sister in law Janet.
- [14:01]
G
We were so happy that he had been arrested. We thought that was the beginning of him not getting away with it.
- [14:08]
D
In the three years leading up to Carl's arrest, Dolores disappearance had faded from the headlines. But his arrest made front page news throughout the region day after day. The family's message was simple. It was about time. Dolores brother Frank Rocha told the Sacramento Bee, I think they've got enough to hang him. Slick acknowledged that Carl hadn't always been despised, telling the Bee quote, at one time he was a good husband, he was a good father. He was an accepted member of this family for 20 years. The stories also noted how Carl's business failings in drinking had eroded that standing and how Dolores family had spent years pushing for his arrest. But Carl still had supporters, most importantly Anna. Carl had a lawyer representing him in the wrongful death case, but he did not do criminal work. So Anna took it upon herself to find a criminal defense attorney who could represent her father.
- [15:09]
F
So I went through a friend of mine who I'd met in the midst of all this trauma, who was a psychic who had kind of tried to help in this stuff at one point in time too. And she's the one that sometime had a connection to this very well known attorney, another psychic.
- [15:29]
D
Because of course, the psychic connected Anna to a lawyer named Tony Sarah. Sarah is widely considered to be one of the best attorneys of his generation and certainly among the best in Northern California. He ended up initially representing Carl. Here's a clip of Sarah during closing the arguments of another case.
- [15:50]
H
We strive for truth, but there will be no absolute truth. But there is reasonable doubt standard. So don't search here for absolutes. You just measure this case by whether or not there is reasonable doubt. If for instance, at the end of the case you say, I think he probably did it.
- [16:17]
C
Probably.
- [16:19]
H
Probably skilled, what then would be your duty under the law? Your duty then under the law is to return a verdict of not guilty. Because the criterion is not probability. The criterion is beyond a reasonable doubt into a moral certainty. If you think he possibly did it, he could have done it. He probably did it. He's not guilty. Do you understand that? It's the highest standard ever conceived on the face of the earth.
- [16:52]
D
Sarah was no stranger to high profile cases. In 1982, he was named runner up for best lawyer in America by American Lawyer magazine. The following year, he helped overturn the murder conviction of a man named Chul Su Lee. A case that inspired the 1989 film True Believer starring James woods as a character based on Sarah. The movie even spawned a short lived TV spinoff called Eddie Dodd. Rick Gilbert had moved on from yolo county by the time Sarah entered the fold. But he would later cross paths with Sarah as a judge in another high profile case.
- [17:32]
C
Tony Serra was bigger than life. An amazing lawyer, completely uncontrollable. He was a powerhouse in any courtroom in any county. Despite his eccentricities and the drama that surrounded him. I mean, he literally moved with an entourage. He was this kind of tall, hulking guy with suit jackets that were busting open and weren't, you know, wearing high end suits. He had long hair, pigtail, he was fearless. It was interesting that he wound up representing Carl Wolf. That one wouldn't think Carl Wolf would be attracted to some left wing radical lawyer. But you can't do any better if you need somebody to go in there and just, pardon my language, beat the crap out of everybody, He's a good choice.
- [18:23]
D
After Sarah was hired, he was able to get Carl's bail reduced to $25,000. But there would be other legal expenses. Not knowing where else to turn, Anna called her uncle Richard Wolf, Carl's younger brother who still lived in Minnesota. Richard and Carl had a cordial relationship, but were not particularly close. They would visit each other sometimes, but Richard estimated that it had been over a year since he had any sort of contact with Carl at the time. Dolores went missing in 1979. After Dolores disappearance, her sister in law, Janet, not Carl, was the one who informed Richard of what had happened. Richard got on a plane with their sister Mercedes. They showed up unannounced at Carl's house and spent a few days in town trying to get a handle on the situation.
- [19:12]
E
What I found out was a mixed bag. So I left there totally confused, not.
- [19:18]
C
Knowing what went on.
- [19:20]
E
But within a couple weeks, then I hear from Carl, I need some money, can you send me money? I said, we don't have any savings. So I think the only money we had scraped together again was $2,000.
- [19:35]
D
He consulted with his wife, Pat, and she encouraged him to send the $2,000. But after that, he didn't hear much from Carl. And their communication remained minimal over the next several years, up until Carl's arrest. When Anna reached out.
- [19:50]
E
Send money. He's in jail, I gotta get him out of jail. She begged me and I said, anna, we don't have any money back then. At that time, I had a good job, but we have a family. We have two children. Our kids were trying to go to school. Pat was trying to go back to college. I didn't have any excess funds, but she begged me and then she had the attorney call Me and the attorney begged me to send money. They had nowhere else to turn. They scraped together $5,000 to send to the attorney to get him out of jail.
- [20:24]
D
On March 19, 11 days after Carl Wolf was arrested and a few days after Sarah was hired, he posted bail and was released from Yolo county jail. Carl left wearing a gray pinstripe suit and was greeted outside the jail by Anna and a girlfriend he was living with at the time. He declined public comment, but Anna advocated for his innocence. Anna told the Sacramento Bee, I believe my mother's still alive. This torture has gone on too long for me to be silent about it any longer. Sarah's involvement in the Wolf case would be short lived. Here's Anna.
- [21:03]
F
He kind of stood in and news people came and because he was a very well known attorney and he didn't stick around for long.
- [21:12]
D
Tony Sarah is 90 years old and is still an active member of the California state bar. We reached out to him back in 2021, but he didn't recall his two week involvement in the Wolf case from 36 years earlier. According to newspaper accounts, Sarah transferred the case to another San Francisco based lawyer, a woman named Sally Soliday. The crux of Soliday's defense strategy was to emphasize the same issue that had troubled Gilbert six years earlier when he unwilling to file charges. There wasn't a body. And not only wasn't there a body, there were multiple people who said they had seen Dolores after she was reported missing. In the first court filing on Carl's behalf, a man named Manuel Lemos was quoted as having said he saw Dolores in 1981 shopping in the town of Fairfield in a neighboring county. The documents described Lemos as a Wolf family friend of over 30 years. As part of the wrongful death case filed on Paul's behalf, Lemos told Carl's original attorney, I think it was her. I believe she is alive. Lemos claim was all that was needed to generate a front page headline in the Sacramento Bee that read missing woman seen alive. Court is told the details of Lemos story were fuzzy at best. First of all, none of Dolores family members had any idea who this guy was. And when Carl's attorney asked him if he tried to talk to Dolores when he saw her, he responded, no, I was surprised to see her there. I was concentrating on these vitamins I was looking at. To recap, a man who was apparently a Wolf family friend for over 30 years, even though no one had ever heard of him, provided testimony in a murder case that he saw the victim alive four years earlier, he never told any of her family, only the lawyer defending Carl against a wrongful death lawsuit. And when he saw Dolores, he couldn't be bothered to talk with her because he was distracted by a bottle of vitamins. Lemos wasn't the only person who claimed to have seen Dolores. By early May, less than two months after Carl was arrested, two others came forward claiming they had seen Dolores. One said she was riding a bus up to Reno to gamble. The other said she was working as a waitress at a Denny's restaurant outside Sacramento. In an interview with the Sacramento Bee, Sally Soliday said, quote, if somebody is making sightings, obviously it makes it very difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she's dead. Two months later, a Woodland High School student claimed to have seen Dolores that week and casually spending a day at the Sacramento Zoo with a young girl. This led to another headline in the Bee that read, alleged murder victim Alive Girl says.
- [24:18]
A
Okay.
- [24:18]
D
And so let's, for a second allow for the possibility that Dolores did run away to start over, to get away from Carl, to start a new life. It wasn't going to happen, but let's, you know, allow that it did. Why then would she be hanging out around Sacramento visiting the zoo with a young girl while her husband is, you know, in a murder trial, a very public murder trial. He's on the front page of the Sacramento Bee, you know, regularly during that time. The idea that she would be prancing around publicly while all of this is going on and she's supposedly dead, it really complicated the story for the public. I think if you're seeing these headlines and you're seeing sighting after sighting being reported in the newspaper, it's certainly going to cloud your understanding of what is happening.
- [25:06]
A
Yeah. And again, we didn't talk to those reporters, but you do wonder, like, the ethical responsibility of including every. Every sighting as though it was likely or true. And it was just hard to believe at the time. I just keep looking back to her history as a person. Never lived outside of Woodland, very connected to her family, just not the type of person, even if she was under the worst treatment you could imagine from her husband that would just pick up, leave the house without any of her stuff, and then settle in a neighboring area without having any contact with her kids or her brothers or whoever. This would just seem so easy to me to kind of be written off and dismissed as. Like you said, I think distraction is a really good word because I think that's all it was to put, I guess, the smallest shred of doubt in someone's mind that she actually did this, but it seemed to be so easily invalidated by her own history as a person.
- [26:02]
E
Right.
- [26:03]
D
And a few of them were right. There was a sighting that she was at this Denny's, and that was debunked pretty quickly by the manager there. But I think it's also important to understand that sightings in the wake of missing persons cases are really common. This happens all the time. It's not ill intentioned. For the most part, people are trying to help and they've tricked themselves into believing this was her. And if they believe that, in their heart, they feel like a moral responsibility to report that. For me, where it becomes dicey is the media side of things. Like you. You shouldn't probably report every reported sighting when a woman is missing. And these aren't confirmed. But then again, they're also showing up in the court records. Right. There was a man who testified or was deposed in the civil case, this Manuel Lemos guy, that he had seen her, you know, shopping in Fairfield, and that's the first thing entered into the record in defense of Carl in the murder case. So there is a tricky line to navigate there because, you know, if you're a reporter at that time and this is actually a real sighting and you gloss over that, what does that say, too? So it's hard to put ourselves in the shoes of the people back then, but it certainly complicates this story in a way that didn't do Delores family any favors.
- [27:13]
A
Right. And I was thinking about, you know, them hearing about what had been brought forth as these potential sightings, reading about it at the Bee and just being infuriated, knowing in their hearts there was no chance that this was her. There was no chance she was in Fairfield or at the Sacramento Zoo or going to gamble at the casino because they knew her. They knew she never would have left. You know, she could have left her husband, but she never would have left the area. It's just got to be almost re. Traumatizing them and stirring up even more emotions to hear things that they knew were false, but then portrayed as, well, you never know. And that obviously is all that Carl Wolf ultimately needs in a case like that to create some level of doubt.
- [27:59]
D
The most shocking claim about Dolores being alive, though, came from a deputy within the Yolo County Sheriff's department. The man previously boasted he had seen Dolores after she went missing, then was called on to testify to the same effect at a preliminary hearing. Here's Ron Heileman.
- [28:18]
E
He was one of Those officers that liked to be in the middle of things and tell people about cases and such. I think he was just doing that. But he was caught now because he had him on a stand testifying, and he didn't want to change his story other than, well, I was pretty sure it was her. But that was one thing that didn't help the case.
- [28:38]
D
With the criminal case moving forward, Tom Frankel filed a motion to dismiss the wrongful death suit against Carl. A trial date had been set for that summer. But since the original goal of having criminal charges filed was met, the family saw no need to carry on in civil court. There were more legal filings and preliminary hearings all through the summer of 1985. In early October, Carl requested Yolo county help fund his defense, stating he had racked up roughly $150,000 in legal expenses since Dolores went missing. He was essentially broke, even though David Henderson had become the da Charlie Van court would try the case. But early on in the proceedings, Vancourt also had to tell the court the reasoning behind his decision not to prosecute the case. When he officially reviewed it as the acting DA in 1983, he told the court in part, quote, I felt like the case would take a substantial expenditure of time and resources, and there was a possibility of a conviction, but it wasn't likely. Imagine that the prosecutor standing in court and conveying his belief that he probably would lose the case to Dolores family. It felt like sabotage disguised as honesty, a betrayal that deepened their frustration. Vancourt died in 2007. But we asked Gilbert about this key moment.
- [30:09]
C
I knew Charlie Van Cort very well. He is an incredibly thoughtful, careful prosecutor. He's an honest, straightforward guy. He's not a local politician. In fact, he could have been the da, but he just doesn't have the heart for the politics of it. But he's a skilled on a straightforward lawyer, and he was expressing what the anomaly of it is. You have to explain to a judge why you didn't bring this case forward and offer a legitimate explanation for it, which needs to be balanced against the alleged prejudice.
- [30:43]
D
The point Gilbert thinks Vancourt tried to make was that being careful and deliberate in prosecution serves the public interest and that any harm Carl suffered as a result of the delay was due to the circumstances.
- [30:57]
C
He was saying what was both true and what was the only way to explain this. Yes, there were deficits in this case. That's why we delayed it. And I bet he said, we finally decided nothing more was to come and we needed to go forward.
- [31:11]
D
But for Dolores family, no Explanation could justify Vancourt's performance in prosecuting the case. Dolores sister in law Janet was one of several family members questioned by Vancoort on the standard.
- [31:25]
G
Charlie Van court was a district attorney that I was personally friends with. There were times that the judge actually had to intervene and bring him to task for not asking relevant questions of me or whoever was on the witness stand.
- [31:48]
D
Janet was later barred from retaking the stand because it was discovered she had undergone hypnosis to refresh her memory about the events surrounding Delores disappearance. State law did not allow anyone who had undergone hypnosis to testify in court. Dolores cousin Debbie Baker was one of the first family members called upon to testify.
- [32:12]
B
I was a main witness about him threatening, so I told him what I told you.
- [32:20]
D
Debbie is referring to the story she told in episode one when she was at Dolores's apartment and Carl threatened to kill her.
- [32:28]
B
You're threatening to kill her? And he goes, yes, and I mean every word I say.
- [32:35]
D
When Debbie took the stand, a strange habit of Carl's also emerged. He had been recording calls he received at his house. How long he did that was unclear, but he likely started doing so while being harassed by Dolores's family. With Debbie on the stand, Soliday played one of the recordings.
- [32:55]
B
He answered, hello. And I said, Is this Mr. Wolf? He goes, yes. And I said, I'm calling to confirm your reservations. And he goes, reservations for what? I'm calling to confirm your reservations to hell. I had said I was the devil secretary. And they played that in court. And they go, do you remember making this call? And I didn't recognize my own voice.
- [33:21]
D
After court that day, Tony Rocha had to remind Debbie they were together when she made that call. All of the hearings over several months weren't technically a trial. They occurred so the judge, a man named Donald L. Balding, who was from another county, could determine if the case should proceed to trial. Meanwhile, most of Dolores family wasn't allowed in the courtroom because so many of them could be called upon as witnesses. But one of their cousins was there and relayed what took place. For the most part, Dolores family had to wait as the wheels of justice continued to spin at an agonizingly slow pace. After the break, you'll hear from Adam about some major developments in the lead up to the judge's decision on on how to proceed.
- [34:18]
A
In early November, a woman named Deborah Morgan was called to testify at another preliminary hearing. She revealed that at about 10:30 on the night of Dolores disappearance, Carl had called and asked if she wanted to meet up for a drink. She declined, but they went to lunch together the next day. Morgan was a volunteer with the reserves in the Woodland Police Department and had met Carl Wolf months earlier when they were on a committee to help plan the police chief's retirement party. She came forward in the days following Dolores disappearance and was interviewed by Ron Heileman. Here's Ron.
- [34:56]
E
She was talking to him and he was asking her different things and wanted to know if she'd go out with him or whatever. But during the conversation, Debbie told me that she heard somebody say something loud and Carl said, oh, I got to get off the phone. So what I think occurred that night is I think Dolores caught him on the phone with Debbie and that all hell probably broke loose.
- [35:25]
A
We tried to track down Deborah Morgan, but came up empty. Carl had originally told authorities that he was asleep by 8:30pm that night after taking pain medication related to a dental procedure the previous day. He had told the same story to Debra during their lunch. Only later, Debra told Ron did she realize that wasn't possible because he had called her much later that night. She would testify as such on November 5, 1985. On a related note, the dentist told police Carl wasn't prescribed any pain medication and was given Tylenol to deal with any minor pain after getting a tooth pulled. The same week Deborah Morgan testified, so did Delores oldest son, Carly.
- [36:11]
E
Well, it wasn't very comfortable, especially when his attorney, Silly Sally Soliday is what I called her at one point, she was accusing me of killing her. Pretty soon on the stand and I'm getting accused of murderer and I'm going, how in the hell do we get to this point? Yeah, so it's quite uncomfortable for me.
- [36:33]
A
Carly's testimony also turned out to be problematic for the prosecution because he told the story of bringing a bloodhound to look for his mom, which wasn't true. The decision to tell that story led to a fresh round of headlines that questioned whether Carly would face a perjury charge, which he ultimately did not. While Carly took the stand against his father, Anna held a different position. She remained on her dad's side throughout the proceedings and was willing to testify as a character witness on his behalf.
- [37:03]
F
I remember getting ready to go in and waiting outside the courtroom and my Aunt Janet trying to be real open and friendly to me. And I knew I was going to be testifying for my dad. And I remember just being so afraid and tense and just avoiding her and everybody. She was trying to be all warm and loving. So I remember that emotion went through.
- [37:22]
A
That as part of the prosecution's early preparation, Anna was brought in to discuss her relationship with Carl. If you recall from episode two, Anna shared with police that she had endured multiple incidents of inappropriate conduct by her father. And the lawyer from the Yolo County DA wanted those experiences captured in a.
- [37:43]
F
Letter he wrote up, a letter that was much more suggestive, made things speak in a way that there was much more of, you know, a molestation thing than what I had tried to describe or somehow it was like the words were twisted so that it sounded a lot more horrific than it did, and it was very offensive to me personally.
- [38:07]
A
Given the psychological toll those experiences had on her, Anna found it especially upsetting to see them misrepresented in court, especially during a time where she had become sympathetic to her father.
- [38:19]
F
I went onto the stand and they brought that letter up, and I was like, no, I can't remember. But at some point I was trying to defend my dad. So I remember that was just kind of an uproaring thing.
- [38:33]
A
The rest of Anna's memories from court are a bit hazy. She doesn't recall if she spoke to any family after testifying that day or in the days and weeks that followed. She has suppressed a lot of her memories from that time. The preliminary hearings concluded the second week of December. That's when Charles Van Court effectively blew up his own case. On the final day, he told the judge, I won't strain my credibility. I think this is a triable case from a prosecution standpoint. But as I've said before, proof beyond a reasonable doubt may be extremely difficult. And he didn't stop there. It's a highly defensible case, and it's being defended by an extremely competent attorney. But I think the public would be best served if this were resolved by a trial and put to rest. Soliday delivered the obvious rebuttal, calling it outrageous for a prosecutor to concede his case was weak, then asked for it to go to trial. By the end, she was openly mocking the job Vancourt had done, calling the prosecution's performance one to, quote, be joked about in the inner sanctums of law enforcement. With all due respect, Soliday told the judge, I don't think anybody should be tried under those circumstances. On December 16, 1985, more than six years after Dolores vanished, Judge Balding dismissed the murder charge. Not because of the evidence or the 10 months of testimony, but because the Yolo County DA had waited too long. He ruled Carl's right to a speedy trial had been violated. The prejudice against Wolf was substantial, critical and was caused by the delay. Balding said essentially the county's only justification was that it hoped the body would turn up or that the defendant would somehow incriminate himself. The judge continued saying, quote, the prosecution says that a bodiless homicide case requires patience and diligence. Diligence was simply not exercised, and at some point, patience must give way to decision. But outside the courtroom, balding went further, telling a reporter, it's a weak case. Carl wolf also spoke to reporters outside the courtroom and said, all this ridiculous pressure is over, but it's been a trauma. I'll never be the same again. Dolores family was devastated. After all their digging, pleading, and hoping, the man they believed killed her simply walked away. Here's Janet.
- [41:09]
G
I was so upset. I couldn't stand it. I just got up and went out to get in my car and leave. I had the newspaper just running after me and saying, what do you think about? I think this is ridiculous. And I just got out of there as quick as I could. And then I said to myself, okay, it's been five years. I've done everything that I could possibly do to find dolores. I've done my best to take care of her kids. What I promised to do for dolores, I just have to accept it. There's nothing more I can do. And I have to trust that Carl will pay in one way or another.
- [41:56]
A
For detective ron heileman, the ruling was difficult to process. He was sure that they had the right man and couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if Gilbert had listened to him and charged wolf years earlier. Still, Ron found a silver lining.
- [42:12]
E
They did leave it open that if we ever found the body and that it looked like, you know, it was still a situation where we had any more evidence, we could still rearrest him.
- [42:23]
A
If only they had found her body. After the case was dismissed, everyone did their best to move on with their lives. Tom wolfe wasn't around for much of the legal proceedings. As he was away at cal poly for college, Paul went to washington state to play football. Shortly after, he tried to get his dad's jailhouse confession. Carly and his wife heidi remained in woodland, and Anna Marie would move to southern California. At first, carl remained in the area, living about 30 miles from Woodland in the town of citrus heights. He was financially ruined, his family ripped beyond repair, and he was spiraling down a path with no return. The following July, Carl filed a $200 million civil lawsuit for intentional deprivation of civil rights that named 37 defendants, all of whom were connected to the case. Against him in some way. Several of them you've heard from in this podcast. Slick Janet, Carly, Tony Rocha, Debbie Baker, Ron Heileman, Rick Gilbert, Charles Van Court and David Henderson were also included, both as individuals and in their capacities as Yolo county district attorneys. When Henderson was reached for comment about the lawsuit by the Sacramento Bee, he said, when you kill somebody and avoid paying the legal penalty, you certainly shouldn't complain about having to go through the rigors of a criminal proceeding. Soliday, who died in 2018, handled the complaint, which spends nearly an entire page listing the harassment Carl received at the hands of Dolores family, much of which was shared in episode 3. Phone calls @ all hours of the day and night, constant digging on and around his property, acts of vandalism and property damage placement of signs pointing to his home reading Murderer Pervert Butcher Carl Wolf as a wife killer. This way to Killer Wolf's house. There were references to the pig's head and fish entrails, the jar of urine painting Killer in huge letters on his driveway, and threats of death. In response to this long list of public accusations, Dolores cousin Mary Thomas told the Sacramento Bee, he doesn't have proof that anyone harassed him. You have to have proof, right? Just like we had to have proof that he killed Dolores. The lawsuit, like everything else Carl wolf touched after July 31, 1979, would crumble to nothing. But the damage was done. A family was destroyed, and somewhere in California, the truth about what had happened to Delores Wolf remained buried. Next time on the Finding Dolores Wolf, Carl moves back to Minnesota and trouble follows. The Unforgotten is a Free range production. Season 3 Finding Dolores Wolf is written and hosted by Kyle Bonagoura 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.