UNION COUNTY — A four-decade-old Union County mystery may be on the verge of being solved or taking another unforgettable twist.

The Oregon State Police are set, next month, to conduct an examination and possible excavations at a site near Finley Creek, 18 miles north of La Grande, where the remains of an unidentified woman were found in August 1978.

“We are planning on mid-August or late August,” said Sgt. Sean Belding, a member of OSP’s major crimes division.

Belding will be joined by Calvin Davis, director of the OSP’s crime lab in Pendleton, and Dr. Nici Vance, from the State Medical Examiner’s office, plus members of the Finley Creek Jane Doe Task Force.

Belding, Davis and Vance recently decided to conduct the examination and possible digs after learning of how a pair of cadaver dogs responded on Thursday, June 23, at the Finley Creek site. Each dog, trained to smell human bones and brought there by the task force, indicated they had found buried human bones at the same two places while operating separately.

Belding, who accompanied the task force on its June 23 visit, said he was impressed with the interest each dog showed in the two sites. The canines, one of which is a German shepherd, laid down at the same place, an indication they were positive human bones were underneath the location, said Melinda Jederberg of La Grande, a leader of the Finely Creek Jane Doe Task Force, which she founded in 2019.

This was the second time the cadaver dogs were brought to the Finley Creek site by the task force. They were also brought there in the summer of 2021, when they also indicated they detected human bones there.

The task force members have never dug at the Finley Creek site because it is a crime scene and thus it would be illegal to disrupt it.

A daughter who will not give up hope

Suzanne Timms of Walla Walla, Washinhton, who is assisting with the search as a volunteer, is elated that the OSP investigators will be examining the site because she is certain the Finley Creek Jane Doe is her mother, Patricia “Patty” Otto, of Lewiston, Idaho, who has been missing since Aug. 31, 1976.

“Oregon is giving resources toward the case. It gives me hope,” she said.

Timms first suspected that the Finley Creek Jane Doe was her mother in 2021 when she saw an image created by a forensic artist in Massachusetts, Anthony Redgrave, the operator of Redgrave Research Forensic Services. Redgrave was assisting the Finley Creek Jane Doe Task Force, and the image he created looked very similar to Timms’ mother. The images were created based on photos of the skeletal remains found in 1978 — those bones are believed to have been cremated by the state after they were found, Timms said.

Other details have contributed to Timms’ belief that the Finley Creek Jane Doe is her mother. The remains were found with a white shirt and red pants, which is what Patty Otto was last seen wearing before she disappeared in 1976.

A possible Lewiston, Idaho, murder

Timms believes her mother was murdered in Lewiston by her father and then taken to Finley Creek where he buried her in a shallow grave.

The OSP’s autopsy records for the Finley Creek Jane Doe, however, do not match those of Patty Otto.

Timms believes the discrepancy is due to an error made by the OSP’s medical examiner while doing examinations of the skeletal remains of two Jane Does in his office at about the same time in 1978. She suspects he assigned his reports to the wrong remains, because his report for the second Jane Doe matches her mother’s autopsy photos and dental records.

Should human bones be found at the Finley Creek site they will likely be tested by the state to determine if their DNA indicates they are those of Timms’ mother. Should such bones turn out not to be those of Patty Otto, another layer of mystery will be added to the Finley Creek case.

Timms is striving to keep the memory of her mother alive with a ceremony in Lewiston, Idaho, set for Aug. 4, which would have been her 70th birthday. Seventy signs with Otto’s name will be carried by 70 people for 24 minutes down main street in Lewiston. The time will symbolize Otto’s age, for she was 24 in 1976 when she disappeared.

Timms is touched by the number of people who are volunteering to participate in the memorial.

“It shows that my mother is not forgotten,” she said.