Dorothy Delilah Scofield

• Missing Since 07/22/1976
• Missing From Ocala, Florida
• Classification Non-Family Abduction
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 01/08/1964 (60)
• Age 12 years old
• Height and Weight 4'11, 90 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A red short-sleeved body suit with a blue flower design and snaps at the crotch, a button-up shirt tucked inside blue jeans, a brown leather belt with a metal buckle and lime-green high-top Keds sneakers.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Brown hair, blue eyes. Dorothy wore eyeglasses with gold-colored, teardrop-shaped frames at the time of her disappearance. Her upper incisor slightly overlaps her upper front tooth, and she was missing one tooth when she was last seen in 1976. She has freckles across her nose, pierced ears and a mole on her knee. Dorothy's nicknames are Dee and DeeDee (sometimes spelled "Dee-Dee" or "DeDe"). Her middle name my be spelled "Delila" by some agencies. Her hair was styled in two pigtails at the time of her disappearance.

Details of Disappearance

Dorothy and her mother left their Ocala, Florida residence together on July 22, 1976. Her mother took a driving test while Dorothy exchanged a pair of sandals at the J. M. Fields department store. She also planned to buy a birthday present for her brother.

Dorothy returned the shoes and was last seen at the mall at approximately 2:00 p.m. that day. Dorothy never met her mother at the designated location they had agreed on and she reported her daughter as missing. She has never been seen again.

A witness reported having seen a girl matching Dorothy's description two hours after she was reported missing. The child was in Nuby's, a convenience store at the intersection of Highway 40 and State Road Highway 314, less than a mile from the Ocala National Forest. with one or two adult males. They purchased sodas and left.

The child was shaking and appeared to be very frightened. She and the adult male companion(s) were never identified and law enforcement authorities are not sure if she was in fact Dorothy. A sketch of a possible suspect is posted with this case summary.

Dorothy is the youngest of five children and lived with her family in a mobile home in Citra, Florida in 1976. She was an honor student at Marion Middle School, regularly attended church, and worked at her parents' barbecue. Investigators do not believe she ran away from home, as she was not having any personal problems at the time of her disappearance.

There was some speculation at that her disappearance might be linked to the 1975 disappearances of the sisters Sheila and Katherine Lyon, but no evidence connecting the cases was discovered.

Dorothy's parents divorced in 1981 and her father died ten years later. Her case remains unsolved.