Fresh off their trip to CrimeCon in Las Vegas, KHTS hosts Jade Aubuchon and Sophia Lesseos welcomed special guests connected to the award-winning documentary “The Vanishing of Dolores Wulff” during Thursday’s edition of Hometown Drive.

Joining the show Thursday were “The Vanishing of Dolores Wulff” documentary producer and executive producer Paul Sadowski and actor Lars Slind, who portrayed Ron Heilaman, Tony Rocha and Paul Wulff in the documentary. Slind, who lives in Neenach near Santa Clarita, has a personal connection to the story. His former football coach at Eastern Washington University was connected to the Wulff family, making the project especially meaningful.

“The family sort of pivoted fairly early on to thinking that a particular family member had done it,” Sadowski said. “What makes it infinitely worse is then the prime suspect becomes someone in your family, in your immediate circle, someone who you love. The film really explores the inner dilemma. It’s a true crime story, and it took it from when she disappeared in 1979 to when the case landed on Detective Kenny Hart’s desk in 2020.”

The documentary tells the decades-long mystery surrounding the disappearance of Dolores Wulff, who vanished under suspicious circumstances from her home near downtown Woodland in Yolo County in July 1979. From the beginning, investigators suspected her husband, Carl Wulff, but prosecutors declined to file charges due to a lack of evidence and the absence of a body.

Less than two months after Dolores disappeared, boaters discovered a partial torso floating off the coast of Benicia in Solano County, Northern California. With no immediate connection to any missing persons case, the remains were identified only as a Jane Doe and buried.

“So, there was a lot of stuff converging at that time, because there was this new sort of emergence of these serial killers,” Sadowski said. “In this case, the Golden State and Zodiac were suspects, and James Carlin Toliver.”

 

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More than four decades later, now retired Benicia Police Detective Lieutenant Kenny Hart reopened the case in 2020. Through renewed investigative efforts and advances in DNA technology, Hart was able to match DNA from one of Dolores’ children to the unidentified remains, officially identifying them as Dolores Wulff.

During an interview with KHTS, Hart described the case as one of the most fulfilling investigations of his 31-year law enforcement career. While he said detectives often maintain professional distance from victims’ families, this case was different.

Hart shared that after exhuming the remains in September 2020, he printed a photograph of Dolores and hung it on his office wall. Every morning, he would speak to the photograph and say, “Dolores, help me bring you home.”

“The family was very much, I would say, suspect of any law enforcement that gravitated around the case, even 41 years later,” Sadowski said. “Even though Detective Ron Heilemann, who was the original detective on the case, did his best to try to figure out what happened and bring justice, he just wasn’t able to do it. So when Kenny popped on the scene, I think there was sort of a natural reluctance that we would all have. You almost get to the point where you sort of don’t want any more hope.”

Years of persistence eventually paid off when the DNA match confirmed her identity, providing long-awaited answers to a family that had spent more than 40 years searching for the truth.

The documentary follows Dolores’ children and extended family as they pursue answers through decades of setbacks, dead ends and legal obstacles. Their determination ultimately helped uncover the truth behind a mystery that had remained unsolved for generations.

The film has earned significant recognition on the festival circuit. At the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival, it won both Best Documentary and the Audience Favorite Choice Award. The project also received international acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival, where it earned honors for Best Producer Documentary and Best Director Documentary.

“Several of them showed up to the premiere at Cinequest, and for me that was kind of the pinnacle moment, because ultimately that’s what I did it for,” Slind said. “Starting out, I just really wanted to do something for Coach Wulff. They were over the moon. There was a lot of emotion, and I’ve spoken to all the family members, all the children during and after the filming of the documentary, and they couldn’t be happier. For me, that was it. That was the award I needed.”

For Sadowski, Slind and the families involved, the documentary represents more than a true crime story. It serves as a testament to perseverance, the power of modern forensic science and a family’s unwavering commitment to bringing their mother home.

“The thing that, for me, that stands out is these are tough topics, obviously, but if you handle them with care and a level of decency, you can talk to anybody about it,” Slind said. “If I respect the family in the story and you respect the person who I’m talking to, we can have a conversation about really gruesome and hard details with respect. I think that is really, really important in this space.”

Their appearance on Hometown Drive offered Santa Clarita listeners a behind-the-scenes look at the remarkable journey that transformed a decades-old cold case into an award-winning documentary and, ultimately, helped deliver long-awaited justice and closure.

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