7. 41 Years

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Unforgotten

Episode 7: 41 Years
Date: September 15, 2025
Season 3: Finding Dolores Wulff

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Overview

This gripping episode unpacks the recent breakthrough in the 41-year-old case of Dolores Wulff, a mother who vanished from her Woodland, California home in 1979. It traces how a cold case sergeant, unexpected clues, and dogged family perseverance led to the identification of Dolores's remains—discovered just weeks after her disappearance but long left unidentified as "Jane Doe 16." As the episode unfolds, it reflects on heartbreak, missed opportunities, and the meaning of finally bringing Dolores home.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing Benicia and Detective Kenny Hart

• Quick background on Benicia’s location and significance, linking it to major California waterways and true crime history (Zodiac Killer’s first murder).
• [02:53] Introduction of Kenny Hart, Benicia PD sergeant with experience in homicide, investigations, and the coroner’s office:
  • Hart is described as hands-on, experienced, and deeply committed.

2. The Doe Network Tip & the Mystery of Jane Doe 16

• [04:43] In July 2020, Hart receives a tip from the Doe Network—a missing persons volunteer org—about unidentified remains found in Benicia in 1979 (Jane Doe 16).
• Initial suspicions swirl around Patty Toliver, a presumed victim of serial killer James Toliver, but records and DNA would quickly cast doubt on this theory.

3. Lost Case Files and Psychic Connections

• [07:55] Kenny struggles to locate 1979’s physical case files, learning they were likely purged in the late '80s/'90s.
• Coroner’s archives yield bizarre surprises: a psychic’s handwritten notes led authorities to bury a mismatched skull and Jane Doe 16 together—a detail that resonates as both surreal and tragic.

4. Rediscovering Dolores Wulff

• DNA and contextual clues eliminate Patty Toliver as Jane Doe 16. Hart expands the search in missing persons databases, zeroing in on cases from the right timeframe, geography, and physical description.

  “As I kept broadening the search... I added a lot of the Sacramento area and Yolo County.” — Kenny Hart [13:38]

• He is drawn to Dolores Wulff, missing mother of four, matching the description almost exactly.

5. The Shoe Clue & Personal Investment

• A pivotal moment: Jane Doe 16 wore a wooden-soled shoe—the same kind Dolores was last seen wearing. Kenny asks his wife, a shoe expert (and police chief), for her opinion:

  “Her eyes got missing. She said, that’s gonna be her.” — Kenny Hart [16:30]

6. The Exhumation Process

• [17:32] Hart leads the exhumation of Jane Doe 16's remains, braving poor conditions and waterlogged evidence. Thoughtful CSI work preserves the integrity of the DNA sample.

7. Contacting Dolores’s Family for DNA

• [20:01] Paul Wulff (Dolores’s son and college football coach) is asked for a DNA sample but, hardened by years of false hope, doesn’t expect a breakthrough.

  "You totally had given up on finding her. And we were content with that." — Paul Wulff [31:51]

• Other family members are cautiously informed. Each reacts with a mixture of shock, numbness, and long-dulled emotion.

8. The Long Wait and Emotional Toll

• Both Kenny and Paul express how expectation management is crucial—neither fully allows themselves to hope.

  “Yes. I mean, the professional side hit me was don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” — Kenny Hart [22:17]

• Kenny admits to rarely displaying such personal investment in a cold case, even placing Dolores’s photo on his board:

  “Help me bring you home.” — Kenny Hart [22:41]

9. The Breakthrough: DNA Confirms Dolores’s Identity

• [27:30] On October 20, 2020, results come back: the remains are conclusively identified as Dolores Wulff.

  "My cop brain kind of kicked in. I said, hey, can I talk to the scientist?...because there’s no take backs once I deliver that phone call." — Kenny Hart [27:47]

• Notification calls to family are deeply emotional, filled with disbelief, grief, but also relief.

  “Paul, we found your mom.” — Kenny Hart [30:21]
  “I didn't know what to say... you got this rush in your body.” — Paul Wulff [30:41]

10. Family, Resolution—and Regret

• Family members process their feelings: some are angry at the missed opportunity for closure decades prior.

  “My first reaction was anger because I thought, you know, all this could have been resolved for us, you know, 40 some years ago, and here we are dealing with it, and it shouldn't have been that way.” — Tom Wulff [32:30]

• Dolores’s brother “Slick,” at 82, is deeply moved:

  "He's a tongue. Give her a decent burial...And I know I'm going to run into her on the other side." — Slick [35:53]

11. The Lingering Mystery & Institutional Critique

• The episode closes with the recognition that Dolores could have been identified in 1979, had there been better inter-county communication. The mishandling—across agencies and decades—leaves unresolved anger and a push for accountability.

  “She was found literally, I think, 48 days after she disappeared. And yet they couldn't connect the dots at that time...” — Paul Wulff [38:11] “Sort of pissing me off now.” — Adam Rittenberg [38:50]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On how cases get lost:

  "Somehow that file...got purged in the late 80s, early 90s." — Kenny Hart [07:55]

• On personal connection:

  "Tiny 2 by 2 inch picture on that and pinned it to my board for motivation. And usually in the mornings I would come in...just kind of look at her and go, help me bring you home." — Kenny Hart [22:41] "Actually, never. ...but I never really had a victim on my board." — Kenny Hart [23:08]

• Family’s pain and resignation:

  "There wasn't like, great excitement or anger. I was just like, wow, you know." — Anna Wulff [33:53] "I guess I will die...not knowing what happened." — Tom Wulff [33:49]

• Final family wishes:

  "That's why we wanted to find her. To give her a decent burial." — Slick [35:56] "And I know I'm going to run into her on the other side." — Slick [36:00]

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Important Timestamps

• 02:53 – Introduction of Kenny Hart and his investigative background
• 04:43 – Tip received from Doe Network regarding Jane Doe 16
• 07:55 – Missing/purged case files; psychic involvement
• 13:38 – Kenny broadens his search and lands on Dolores Wulff
• 16:30 – Shoe clue connects Jane Doe 16 to Dolores Wulff
• 17:32–18:41 – Exhumation of remains
• 20:01 – Paul Wulff gives a DNA sample
• 22:41 – Kenny pins Dolores’s picture to his bulletin board
• 27:30–28:20 – DNA results: Jane Doe 16 is Dolores Wulff
• 30:21–31:32 – Notifying family of the identification
• 32:30 – Tom Wulff’s anger and reflection on missed closure
• 38:11–38:50 – Final reflections on failure of authorities to connect the case

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Tone & Narrative

The episode is deeply empathetic, at times procedural and methodical, but with bursts of raw emotion—especially from Dolores's family, who speak with candor about decades of frustration and hope. The hosts and interviewees maintain a tone of respect, realism, and determination, balancing the technical aspects of forensics and law enforcement with the very human costs of unsolved crime.

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Conclusion

Episode 7 lays bare the wrenching mix of closure and regret at the heart of cold case investigations. Though Dolores Wulff’s family can finally lay her to rest, the story provokes sharp questions about law enforcement communication, bureaucratic loss, and the power of individual initiative. The story isn’t fully over—another family, linked to the misplaced skull, still waits for answers. The haunting, persistent question remains: How many other families are waiting, still, for connections long missed?

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Transcript

[A]

Did you know we have a newsletter for the Unforgotten? It's totally free and you can sign [e-mail] we're also on Facebook and Instagram and those are great ways to stay in touch. But the newsletter is cool because it's an email that we send straight to your inbox every time we have a new episode. You get to go behind the scenes with the series creators. We also share photos and case files when we have them if you want. We also have a premium version of the newsletter. It's pretty cool because it lets you listen early and ad free. So I hope you'll head on over to unforgottenpod.com and sign up for our newsletter today. Whether you sign up for the free version or the premium version, you're the reason that the Unforgotten is able to shine a light on these unsolved crimes and other cases of injustice that are so important to a lot of people. We just thank you for listening and we thank you for your support. Again, that's unforgottenpod.com.

[B]

Benicia is a historic town of about 30,000 people that sits on the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area. It incorporated in 1851, becoming the third city in California to do so, and had a 13 month stint as the state capital before giving way to Sacramento in 1854. Benicia is a safe place, but it also has the unfortunate distinction as being the town where the Zodiac Killer murdered his first victim in 1968. Kyle and I both grew up in the East Bay, not far from Benicia, and Kyle still lives in the area, about 25 minutes away. For most people who live around there, the town is probably best known for the Benicia Bridge, which is sort of an unofficial gateway to what many consider the Bay Area. Benicia sits on the northern side of the Carquinez Strait, part of an estuary that connects the Sacramento river, the state's largest, with the San Francisco Bay. What this means is that most of the water that winds its way through the rivers and streams in Northern California eventually finds its way under the bridge and past Benicia. Located about a third of the way from San Francisco to Sacramento, Benicia is about a one hour drive from Woodland, the small town where Dolores Wolf disappeared from in 1979. Their counties, Solano and Yolo, share a border, and while Dolores didn't have any ties to Benicia, this is where her story would take us. I'm Adam Rittenberg.

[C]

And I'm Kyle Bonagara. This is The Unforgotten Season 3 Finding Dolores Wolf Episode 741 years.

[B]

Kenny Hart is a stocky man in his late 50s, with a round face, close cropped brown hair, and a broad, warm smile. He joined the Benicia Police department in early 2005. Kenny had previously worked patrol investigations for the Solano County Sheriff's Department and then as a detective for the coroner's office. But after a friend suggested a move to Benicia pd, Kenny thought it would be a fun change of pace. He started out in patrol, but with a smaller department. He had a lot of different responsibilities.

[D]

The captain at the time knew I had a investigation background, so I ended up finding myself into investigations and then I was the lead violent crimes detective, which I handled all the robbery homicides, any kind of suspicious death, things like that.

[B]

After being promoted to sergeant in 2011, Kenny bounced between administrative roles in patrol and investigations for several years before becoming an Investigation Sergeant in 2018. Occasionally his role would loop him in on tips related to the Zodiac Killer, who is linked to at least five murders in Northern California in the late 1960s and became one of the most famous unsolved cases in American criminal history. But during that time, there was a lot of staff turnover within the Benicia pd and Kenney was bringing a lot of the new officers up to speed.

[D]

That was mainly focused on getting them developed and trained and learned how to become a case manager and work an investigations case. And then Covid hit and then for the most part, most everybody went home and worked remotely, except I was assigned to stay at the PD and just triage cases and try to see what I can do from afar.

[B]

Then on July 21, 2020, Kenny received a call from a friend at the Solano County Sheriff's Department that would upend his life for the next several months.

[D]

I think I just got back from my daily run to Starbucks, walk in, and he's a friend of mine, so I recognize the number right off I picked up. He told me that he received an email from the DOE Network about a Jane Doe case that Benicia had, that where some remains were found off the shoreline in Benicia.

[B]

As we explained in episode six, the DOE Network is a grassroots organization of volunteers and those with law enforcement and forensics backgrounds that tries to match missing and unidentified people. While Kenny was on the phone, he tried to look up details of the case, which traced back four decades, but he didn't find anything right away.

[D]

I thought, okay, well, we've fairly new archive systems. It's probably not in our system yet. Hadn't Been scanned up yet, so. So I knew nothing about this case.

[B]

The tip from the Doe network theorized that the body found just off the Benicia Shoreline in 1979, labeled Jane Doe 16 was a woman named Patty Toliver, the wife of suspected serial killer James Toliver. Patty was last seen in 1978 at her home in Modesto, a city about an hour and a half from Benicia. After she disappeared, her husband, who had a history of threatening to kill her, claimed that she ran off with his money. James Tolliver died of a heart attack in 1980, shortly after murdering another woman and robbing her of $98,000. He was suspected of killing at least two other women. Jane Doe 16 was seen as a potential match for Patty Toliver for several reasons. They were women in their 40s, about the same height. And Jane Doe 16 was discovered a relatively short distance away Within a year of when Toliver disappeared. There was enough there for Kenny to be intrigued.

[D]

Well, the first thing I thought is, I have a very brand new staff, and I was hesitant on dropping something like this because it's going to turn into basically an onion, because there's going to be layers all over. And I didn't want to drop this kind of a case on one of my new employees, investigators. So I thought, well, as a sergeant, I don't get to play cop very often. I'll just, I'll keep this investigation and use it kind of as a training ground for everyone else to see how I put this together.

[B]

Kenny was willing to pursue the case, but it's easy to see how someone else might have taken a pass. There's only so much time in the day and only so many resources. So to devote meaningful energy to a Jane Doe case from four decades ago that had a low probability of being solved isn't a straightforward decision. Had Kenny received this tip at another time when he was deep in something more urgent, it's possible, even likely, that he wouldn't have been able to personally pursue it. Almost immediately, he ran into a problem. After not finding the case files scanned into their database, he went searching for the hard copy, went to the old.

[D]

File room, and that file room had a box from that year. And there was a sheet on the front said cases purged. And it's not uncommon to get rid of after every so often old cases that are, you know, lost bike or just non critical cases. But somehow that file, and I don't know why, got purged in the late 80s, early 90s.

[B]

This was long before Kenny came to the department.

[D]

I ended up going back to my office and trying to think, where am I going to get this? And I remember when I was at the coroner's office, I often got cases from agencies where the coroner's office responded to just to put in the case file. I called the coroner's office, spoke to the sergeant. He went and pulled the file and he goes, hey, I got some good documents here.

[B]

The coroner's office still had a copy of the initial report filed by Benicia PD along with the coroner's own report about Jane Doe 16's death. The reports were filed with a missing person's case from 1978 and a report about a skull found in 1983. There was speculation they were related because, well, we'll let Kenny explain.

[D]

There was some notes, and in those notes was a document from the deputy coroner who stated that one of the investigators in the office was a psychic and had made a connection. And then the psychic had handwritten notes in the case file that she had a vision that the skull found in 1983 belonged to Jane Doe 16, who was found in September of 79.

[B]

Yes, because what this story needed was more psychics. So, partially based on the belief of a psychic, Jane Doe 16 and a skull from 1983 were buried in the same plot at a cemetery in the nearby town of Vallejo. The police report that the coroner's office had on file was brief. It ran one page and had only two handwritten paragraphs with basic information. A party of four sailboaters had noticed the badly decomposed body 500ft off the shore. They marked the body with a life preserver and red flag and reported it to the Coast Guard. Benisha pd, though, were the ones who responded and took possession of the body. One of the officers on the report was a retiree who Kenny was familiar with. He still lived in town, and Kenny would run into him quite a bit.

[D]

His name was Dennis Adams. So I went to our volunteer coordinator and asked, hey, can I get Dennis's phone number? Because I need to give him a call about an old case. I know he's a brown town and there's not a lot of notes in his report, so I'd like to see his impressions if he remembers it. Well, my volunteer coordinator starts tearing up and gets all emotional. He died just a few hours ago on the same day. I get this case handed to me.

[B]

Kyle and I were stunned when we heard this after all those decades. Dennis Adams death on the day Kenny Hart reached out about talking with him felt Like a haunting coincidence, the other detective who worked the case had passed years earlier. Without the full case file or the ability to talk to detectives who worked the case, Kenny's best source of information about the body would be the coroner's report, which turned out to be quite helpful. The report determined that Jane Doe 16 was a woman of about 40 years old who had given birth at least twice. She had dark pubic hair and was approximately 5 foot 6. There was no head or arms attached to the body, which was found with floral print bikini panties, pantyhose, and a shoe on the left foot with a 2 inch artificial wood grain heel. The coroner estimated the body had been in the water for between four to six weeks, meaning she had likely died sometime in early to mid August of 1979. After reviewing the coroner's report, Kenny immediately doubted Jane Doe 16 would be a match for Patty Toliver.

[D]

I got a picture of Patty Toliver and I could see that she had kind of a strawberry blondish hair. But I do remember the detective saying she had no children. So in my mind I've already pretty much DQ'd her as being possible for Jane Doe 16.

[B]

By this point, Kenny had already started the process of having the remains of Jane Doe 16 exhumed in order to get a DNA sample and decided to go forward with obtaining a separate sample from someone related to Toliver. Even If Jane Doe 16 did not turn out to be a match, he Kenny reasoned that it would be good to have some familial DNA in the system in case another body turned out to be Toliver or maybe it was a match. He didn't know for sure.

[D]

When I determined it was most likely not going to be Patty Toliver, and I knew that I was going to get her DNA, I started focusing on, okay, if this isn't going to be her, who else is it going to be? So I started broadening the search.

[B]

He started checking two databases. The first was the one compiled by the DOE Network, which put him on the trail in the first place. The second was namus. In his first NAMUS search, Kenny focused on skulls and upper torsos found in Solano and Contra Costa counties, specifically around the waterways from 1978 to the present time.

[D]

I broadened the search for possibles for Jane Doe 16, and as I kept broadening the search, I added a lot of the Sacramento area and Yolo County. Placer County, I think, was the other one.

[B]

He started narrowing things down based on what was known from the coroner's report. Height Dark hair, things like that. Eventually, he was left with 11 names as possible matches. 10 of them already had DNA in the system or were in the process of being collected. So Kenny was drawn to the other one. A woman had disappeared just 48 days before Jane Doe 16 was discovered. She was in her 40s, the mother of four children with dark brown hair, and she lived an hour away. Her name was Dolores wolf.

[D]

The world is full of tours.

[E]

But.

[D]

You don't choose a Toyota truck to follow the beaten pat path. You choose it to find the places in between the detours where each adventure pulls you toward the next. And wrong turns turn out right. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota trucks.

[C]

As Kenny looked over Dolores file in namus, and everything fit the description of Jane Doe 16. The physical attributes, the location, the timing of her disappearance. So on the same day he made that connection, August 21st, he called the yolo county sheriff's department and left a message for them to call him back.

[D]

At this point in time, I probably had gone home, and I'm sitting in front of the fireplace, my laptop going, all right, who's Dolores Wolf? And I'm finding all these stories about her, her husband, a lot of the.

[C]

News articles, just like Adam and I did. Kenny logged into newspapers.com and read all the Sacramento bee articles about the Dolores Wolf case. There were also other feature stories later on that mentioned Dolores once her son Paul became a prominent college football coach.

[D]

I'm pulling all this information out, and I just kind of got more and more invested in thinking, if this is her, I really want to bring her home, Because I'm looking at this family just at this point. It's just stuff I've seen online. I'm kind of drawing on her.

[C]

Kenny also keyed in on something notable about Dolores Doe network profile. It mentioned she was last seen with a wooden soled shoe, which was consistent with Jane Doe 16.

[D]

I remember coming home, my wife, who will hate me for saying this online, has probably got over two or three hundred pairs of shoes. She's a shoe aficionado. She knows everything about shoes and who, by the way, is a police chief as well. So I go, would you look at these two reports and tell me if you think that this could be the same shoe? And her eyes got missing. She said, that's gonna be her. So that really set me on a course of, okay, I'm now kind of tunneling in that this is gonna be her.

[C]

That revelation gave Kenny a heightened sense of determination.

[D]

I Just wanted to do anything and everything I could. I mean, this is the point. I'd work a 12 hour day at work, primarily this case, along with supervising my unit on their cases. And then if it was a busy day, with what they had, whatever I needed to do on this case, I'd go home at night, sit in front of the fireplace, and I'd work it at night till midnight or so. And even if it's just reading, doing research on the family or know how could she have gotten to our area.

[C]

Kenny had been working on getting the body exhumed for weeks. But with a strong lead, he scheduled it for 9:00am on September 3, 2020.

[D]

I remember it was windy that day. So they dug the hole. Had a hard time finding the crypt exactly because it wasn't really well marked.

[C]

They found the skull that had been buried with Jane Doe 16. First, Kenny wanted to test it separately, assuming it wasn't a match.

[D]

And then they opened up the crypt with the remains Jane Doe 16. And then they brought out Jane Doe 16's bones, which unfortunately the crypt had leaked and it was basically a lot of water in there. Without getting too descriptive, and so I was a little concerned about the quality of the DNA sample I was going to get. Luckily, when the initially did the measurements of the bone, they sent the, I don't remember as a right or left femur bone out for the measurement to get a height. And that was triple wrapped. So I had a really good dry bone.

[C]

Between Benicia pd, the Solano County Sheriff's Department and the cemetery, there were about eight people present for the exhumation. Once the skull and femur were properly packaged, they were sent off to the lab.

[D]

I sent my evidence tech directly from the cemetery to the Department of Justice DNA lab. I just said drive it straight there because I don't want to bring it to the office and have any chance of any other contamination on it. I just want it going straight there.

[C]

Later that day, Kenny had a conversation with a detective from the Yolo County Sheriff's Department who was able to provide him with more details about the Wolf case.

[D]

I was really hopeful and keeping my fingers crossed. There was children around in the area for Dolores. He told me there was four children. He believed two or three of them were out of state and then one was still in state, but not in a specific area. So he was going to track them down, reach out and see if he can obtain a DNA sample.

[C]

For law enforcement officials working these types of cases, part of the job is managing expectations. They don't want to get family members too excited about the possibility of a match because the odds in these types of exercises are usually not good. So that was the approach when the yolo county detective called Paul in early September.

[E]

What they were trying to do is he said they had a request from solano county. You know, they were working on some unidentified remains of multiple people and that there was roughly six to 12 people that they were interested in that had gone missing during this time frame that they were trying to identify these remains and that could give them a DNA sample.

[C]

Paul was an assistant coach at Cal poly during this time and lived about 300 miles away. But it just so happened he was headed up to woodland the next day for the memorial service of Dolores cousin Mary Thomas. If you remember from episode three, Mary was the one who came up with the ruse to call Carl, pretending to be from the sheriff's department, which led to her confronting him in his driveway and Carl pulling a rifle on her. Among all of dolores relatives, Mary might have been the most determined to find her.

[E]

So we arranged that and met him at our friend's house. They took the swab and the DNA sample from ming. That was pretty much it.

[C]

After hearing more about the process, Paul didn't think much about what would happen after his DNA was collected. Other than his wife, the only person he told was his oldest brother.

[E]

I didn't tell anybody other than my wife and my brother Carl, because I didn't want to lead him on. It just felt like we'd been down this road so many times, and, like, now, at this point, there's no way.

[C]

And when Paul first heard the details about Jane Doe 16, some of them didn't line up with what he remembered.

[E]

I told my wife, the guy gave me a description, a little bit of the body that was found and some of the items that were found on the body. My mom was last seen with a robe on, and this person had a wooden shoe on and had nylons on. I'm like, yeah, that doesn't fit. Really. To be quite honest, I probably shelved it for three, four weeks without even thinking about it very much at all. So I wasn't really anticipating anything at first.

[C]

Kenny wasn't anticipating anything either. He had a promising lead, but the law of averages was still working against him at that point. What is your level of optimism? You had mentioned your kind of. The pieces were falling into place, but is it tough not to get too excited about the possibility of making this sort of connection?

[D]

Yes. I mean, the professional side hit me was don't put all your eggs in one basket. I was still doing more searches, but nothing else was having as much of a viable lead as the Dolores Wolf case.

[C]

He felt a personal connection to the case in a way that he hadn't for others over the years. Kenny ended up printing out a picture of Dolores from her file in Namus.

[D]

Tiny 2 by 2 inch picture on that and pinned it to my board for motivation. And usually in the mornings I would come in, have my coffee and just kind of look at her and go, help me bring you home. And that was my little kick in the butt to get my coffee going and do whatever it took to, you know, pull all the stops out to bring her home as soon as I could.

[B]

How often did you do that in your career? How often did you do exactly what you just described?

[D]

Actually, never. My wife's pictures on my board, my kids are on my board, but I can't recall ever doing that. I'd have pictures in my office of suspects. I was looking for things like that just so I would stay familiar with what they look like, but I never really had a victim on my board.

[B]

Why did you feel compelled to do that in this case?

[D]

It all goes back really to when I was reading the stories. There's a very touching article about Paul and his mom and how old he was. And I just kept reading how the community was rallied together with the family. And there was just so much information out there. It was really compelling that, you know, if I've never seen a community rally behind a family so much.

[C]

Kenny later added a post it note to the picture which read, YOLO to get DNA from children. Strong connection with strong in all caps. After reading more and more about the family, he got on the phone with the detective from YOLO county and asked for Paul's number. It had been explained to Paul in general terms why they wanted a DNA sample, but Kenny thought Paul might want more details. So three weeks after Jane Doe 16 had been exhumed, he gave him a call.

[D]

We had a really nice conversation. I introduced myself, explained why I wanted to get his DNA sample and how I kind of came across his mother's case. And I just remember telling him, I kind of the same thing. I go, I can't promise this is going to be her, but I want to assure you that this was a great thing to do by getting your DNA, because if it's not her, at some point, it's going to be very useful to hopefully find your mom.

[C]

Since the murder charge against Carl Wolf is dismissed in 1985. Kenny's call to Paul was the first time a member of Dolores family had been contacted by anyone actively working her case. No one still expected any sort of meaningful development, especially after Carl died without confessing 15 years earlier. @ this point, the picture's already up, you're already invested. But does it take it to another level once you have that conversation with Paul and have the voice to the.

[E]

Name, someone you've been reading so much about?

[D]

Yeah, I mean, it's like that with any family. You know, I've talked to countless families of victims of traumatic cases and things like that. So it was. I understood possibly what he might be thinking or feeling, but I mean, nobody knows really, unless you're that person. But I just wanted to be very sensitive to his feelings. I obviously didn't tell him I had his mom's picture on my wall.

[C]

At the end of the call, Kenny told Paul he would let him know as any updates became available, but that he didn't expect the DOJ crime lab to be done with the comparison for another month or so.

[D]

I gave him my personal cell phone, which again is something I've never done with family members, but I just felt it was very different. I wanted him to have 24 access if he had something in the middle of night. I knew the gravity of this because I started reading at this point in time, I think we were 41 years that they had not known where their mom was. So I wanted him to have full support of whatever that meant, whether it was a question or if it's just a frustration of something or just I wanted him to be able to reach out at any point in time.

[C]

All Paul could do was wait. And for the most part, that was all Kenny could do too. Over the next few weeks, he would call the DOJ lab at least once a week in search of an update. It got to the point where the woman at the lab could only laugh at his persistence. And before she told him where things stood after the break, Kenny finally gets an answer.

[B]

On the morning of October 20, 2020, Kenny Hart arrived to work early. He had a meeting and got to his office around 7:45am where there was a blinking light on his desk phone indicating he had a voicemail. This could have been anything, but Kenny was expecting to hear from the DOJ lab and sure enough, they had called.

[D]

So I called the lab back, excited. Hopefully I'm going to have good news. Or hopefully it's not going to be something like, hey, we need more of this or that.

[B]

Once on the Phone with the lab. Kenny was given the news. It's a match to the wolf family.

[D]

At this point, I'm maybe a little shocked or just, I kind of was like, wow. But then my cop brain kind of kicked in. I said, hey, can I talk to the scientist? I go, okay, it's not that I don't believe you, but I'm about to change a family's life forever. And I need to make sure that I have a full understanding this is her without any question because there's no take backs once I deliver that phone call. And I really, I need to prepare myself and know that I don't have any question about it.

[B]

His request was reasonable. So Kenny was put in touch with the senior criminologist who had compared Paul's DNA sample with what had been pulled from the femur bone of Jane Doe 16. He was told a bit about how the process worked and that the skull buried in the same plot was as he expected from a different person. But what really comforted Kenny was how conclusive the comparison was. In the report, it said, Jane Does 16's remains were approximately 14 to 37 million times more likely to be Paul's mother than if she was unrelated. Armed with that information, Kenny prepared himself to break the news to Paul. When he worked for the coroner's office in Solano County, Kenny had regularly made death notifications. After more than two decades in law enforcement, he had grown accustomed to being the bearer of bad news. But this call would be different.

[D]

I've never delivered this kind of notification, so I had to kind of prepare what questions I was going to get asked. And I had a whole bunch of questions. My head was kind of spinning at that point in time. And I remember calling Paul. He didn't answer, so I left a voicemail.

[B]

Here's a recording of that message.

[D]

Hi, Paul, it's Kenny Hart with Denisha P. Can you give me a call back at 7?

[E]

Thanks.

[D]

And it was a little relief that he didn't answer because I don't know if I was fully ready to give that news yet. And I'm sitting in my office just like, wow. Had my door closed because I didn't want to talk to any of my detectives. I didn't want to be distracted because I knew the phone was going to ring probably at any point in time.

[B]

Paul listened to the message a few minutes later and didn't think much of it. But he called Kenny immediately from his office at Cal Poly.

[E]

I called him back. I had zero idea that it was even going to Come up about my mom. It was. I wasn't even thinking that way.

[D]

I think it was about five minutes later he called me back and he goes, hey, Kenny. The first words out of my mouth were, paul, we found your mom. And I think there was a little silence on the phone for a little bit. I could hear a little emotion. I don't know if that was his or mine. We were both, I think, a little choked up.

[E]

And I'm like. I didn't know what to say. There's just, like, a rush through my body. And like, is this for real? And then he started going into details immediately about, yes, she was in a cemetery. And I'm like, oh. And then it was like she was found 41 days after she's disappeared. And I'm trying to put the pieces together. So you got this rush in your body. And I'm trying to see if what he's saying is. Makes sense and matches up, right? So just a whirlwind of thoughts and the emotion, and yet trying to hear what he's saying to put the pieces together. And I go, God, I guess this makes sense. And then he just went very detailed through what happened and how we got to this point. And I was just. And I just like, I gotta tell my wife. I gotta tell my brothers. And I just remember getting off the phone with him. He said he was gonna get back to me and let your family members know.

[B]

Paul left his office in a bit of a daze. He told Cal Poly's head coach at the time, a man named Bo Baldwin. Then he went back to his office and started making calls, starting with his wife, Sherry. After he brought her up to speed the best he could, Paul called his oldest brother, Carly.

[E]

He said, hey, I gotta talk to you about something. Like, I'm gonna merge Tom. And I merged him, and I told him exactly what Kenny told me. And so it just blindsided you because you totally had given up on finding her. And we were content with that.

[B]

Tom was out in his yard working when he got the call from Paul.

[E]

And he just said, they found mom. And I was like, oh. I was a little bit in shock.

[B]

As Paul told them the story of how she was identified, that their mother had been discovered. Within weeks of her disappearance, just one county over from yolo, Tom started cycling through all sorts of emotions.

[E]

My first reaction was anger because I thought, you know, all this could have been resolved for us, you know, 40 some years ago, and here we are dealing with it, and it shouldn't have been that way. It's Understandable to think about that today in comparison to back then because of the way communications are now compared to then. I mean, it's, you know, since that initial reaction, I have become not as critical about the situation. But that was my first emotion, was just anger that she was found a month later and they couldn't communicate well enough between two counties to figure that out. It was disappointing.

[B]

Tom would tell us that time had a way of deadening a lot of the emotions related to his mother's disappearance. But even before he got the news from Paul, he would find himself thinking about her. It would mostly be on holidays or birthdays, days of significance. But there were other times where she would just pop into his head.

[E]

I had just recently, just days prior to that phone call. It had gone through my mind one day, a fairly significant portion of that day. And I kind of resigned myself to the fact of, well, I guess I will die. We're gonna all die not knowing what happened.

[B]

Their sister Anna was at home when Paul called her.

[E]

I was just here, sitting here in my bedroom, which is where I am now, and I just was like, wow, you're kidding me. I don't know. There wasn't like, great excitement or anger. I was just like, wow, you know.

[B]

I didn't think that was going to.

[E]

Ever happen, but I just was like, oh, that's great.

[B]

You know, I didn't think anything big about it. Anna's response was somewhat muted, almost like she didn't know how to feel. Her mother's disappearance and everything that followed had played such a large part in shaping her life. The fallout had been so overwhelming that at times she had grown numb to it. And here was another unexpected twist. There was a long list of people who deserved to be fully debriefed on everything that happened. And Kenny had told Paul he would give him a few days before circulating the word within his own department. He wanted to make sure the family was able to share the news with each other before any type of public announcement.

[E]

I said, I got to tell Slick. He was the first person that came to mind, talking to everybody. And I go, I can't call him. You know, I don't know what he'll hear, what he'll believe. I knew he wasn't in great shape, and I said, I'm going to drive up there.

[B]

The next day, Paul got in his car with his wife and made the 300 mile drive to Woodland to tell his uncle Dolores, only living siblings, the news in person.

[E]

He looked at me and my wife were there, and he just said, wow. Wow. They just kind of paused for a while. But it hit him. There's no doubt about it. But there was a level of surprise, too, like. And happiness, like, we can be next to each other. We can be in the same sentiment. We could be right next to each other. So it was a different. Different perspective.

[B]

At 82 years old, Slick thought he would go to his grave wondering where his sister was. He felt peace knowing that her remains would one day be next to his.

[D]

He's a tongue. Give her a decent burial.

[E]

That's why we wanted to find her.

[D]

To give her a decent burial.

[E]

And I know I'm going to run into her on the other side.

[D]

I've got to chew her out for not telling us where she was.

[B]

But Kenny had told Paul he would make sure Benicia PD kept the news about the identification in house until Dolores family members were told what had happened. But he had other notifications to make, too. Remember, this whole process got started from the theory that Jane Doe 16 could have been Patty Tolliver, the. The woman who disappeared from Modesto before Benisha PD received a DNA sample from Paul. It also collected one from Patty's elderly sister. Kenny had all but ruled out Patty as a match weeks earlier. But the Dolores confirmation meant he had to inform Patty's family that their wait would continue. There would be other calls to a detective in Stanislaus county who. Who helped with the Toliver case. Another to one from yolo county who obtained Paul's DNA. Then to the coroner's office so they could start processing a new death certificate for Dolores. He called the cemetery to inform them Dolores family would be requesting the rest of her remains, which would then be transported to woodland. And the next day, Kenny went back to working the case. Someone's skull had been buried with Dolores for the last 37 years. And there was another family out there who also deserved answers. Dolores family appreciated all the work Kenny had done to identify her remains. But the resolution also brought about a fresh round of questions. Tom wasn't the only one angry about what the discovery meant. This case should have been closed over 40 years ago. Dolores Wolf's body was discovered one county over just weeks after she went missing. Her disappearance was a major news story, and yet Solano and yolo counties weren't able to make the connection. Here's Paul.

[E]

She was found literally, I think, 48 days after she disappeared. And yet they couldn't connect the dots at that time. From Solano county to Yolo county, which is right there, the border sits right between that area.

[B]

How was this possible? What opportunities to solve the case earlier had been missed along the way.

[E]

One agency one county over literally had a portion of her body, but didn't bother to contact the one next door. Somehow the report got taken away from the department and it just sat there. I work fine with this, no question about that's.

[B]

Sort of pissing me off now. That's next time on the Finding Dolores Wolf the Unforgotten is a Free range production. Season 3 Finding Dolores Wolf is written and hosted by Kyle Bonagura 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.