Where is Camille Dardanes Dotson? - Part 2

Camille was last seen alive in Las Vegas on September 3rd, 1994. She grew up in Chicago, but her mom lived in the Las Vegas area. Following her divorce from her first husband, Gary Dotson, Camille moved to Las Vegas with the couple's daughter, Ashley, to get away from Gary and to be closer to her mom, Barbara. At the time of her divorce, Gary had become abusive toward her and was drinking heavily.

By moving away, Camille hoped to find some safety and stability. However, her life in Vegas turned more unstable and more dangerous. As this episode will reveal, it will become evident that Camille's work and her relationships put her at risk of harm.

Although the specifics of the circumstances surrounding her disappearance remain unexplained, there is no shortage of potential suspects in her disappearance. She's been missing for almost 30 years,

 but someone knows something. 

Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors,

 a Las Vegas true crime podcast where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence. I'm your host, Sean, and with me, as always, is the one and only John. 

I am the only John in the room.

In last week's episode, we gave some background on Camille Dardane's Dotson and her first husband, Gary Dotson, who was convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl in 1979. Gary had a string of brushes with the law even after his accuser recanted her accusation and Gary's sentence was commuted.

He was ultimately exonerated on the rape allegation through the use of DNA analysis. Gary became abusive toward Camille and she finally had enough in 1989 and relocated to Las Vegas along with her three-year-old daughter to put some distance between her and Gary and to be closer to her mom.

Just like the governor and the criminal justice system, Camille had given Gary a lot of chances and none of them had worked out. After Camille left Gary for good, she arrived in Las Vegas in '91 to start her life over in a new city as a single mom to Ashley.

Unfortunately, she didn't have a higher education or much job experience, so she found work as a server and as a bartender. She was also very likely dealing with the trauma from her relationship with Gary.

After struggling with these low-paying jobs, Camille found success working as a dancer at two infamous strip clubs in Las Vegas, the Crazy Horse and the Crazy Horse Too. In the early 90s,

 the Crazy Horse was located at Paradise and Flamingo in the Paradise Market Strip Mall, and the Crazy Horse Too was on Industrial, just about a block west of the Sahara Casino. 

So fun fact, both the Crazy Horse and the Crazy Horse Too, and note that “Too” is spelled T-O-O, not like the number 2, are both gone now, but thankfully we have the Crazy Horse 3, and I'm glad they figured out a creative numbering scheme. I'm glad they finally worked it out. 

So anyway, during that time in Las Vegas, organized crime was still heavily involved in Las Vegas businesses, such as strip clubs and casinos, although at that time all of that was slowly coming to an end. If anyone is a fan of the movie Casino, while that's not a documentary, it does show how by that time in the late 1980s the mob was losing control of all the crime.

At the time she worked there, owners and managers of the Crazy Horse and the Crazy Horse Too clubs were allegedly linked to organized crime families. The Crazy Horse Too was raided by the FBI, the IRS, and the DEA in 2003, in connection with a bribery scandal involving Clark County Commissioners. It's quite possible that during her time working there, Camille had contact with or even relationships with people in or linked to the mob.

It seems to me though, that bartending, stripping, prostitution, drugs, is pretty much the definition of that downward spiral, and it's also pretty unsurprising that the further into the spiral you go, the more at risk you are for domestic and sexual violence. 

At some point, while working at the Crazy Horse, Camille met George Cruz Diaz Jr., who went by Cruz. The two got married on December 23rd, 1993. Unfortunately, for both Camille and Ashley, Cruz turned out to also be a domestic abuser at one point, breaking Camille's nose.

It seems like it was around this time that Camille continued her downward spiral, like you said, and became addicted to crack cocaine, and got involved in prostitution.It's unclear what Cruz's involvement was with regard to Camille's prostitution. As her drug addiction and sex work continued, Camille was being arrested regularly.

We'll go into this in more detail later because it's possibly connected to something that Ashley and Gabby found out much later in the early 2000s when they were investigating Camille's life.

 And although her life was apparently quite a mess, she was dealing with a lot and she was struggling. She did have the presence of mind to see that all of this was a very bad situation for Ashley to be living in. Shortly after Camille's mom, Barbara, decided to move back to Chicago, and it was decided that it was best for Ashley to move back with Barbara for the sake of her safety and well-being. It was obviously not the environment that Camille wanted her daughter to grow up in. 

Her abusive marriage to Cruz was mercifully short-lived though. By September of '94, she had left Cruz for good. Oddly though, according to later information uncovered by Ashley and Gabby, Cruz never filed for divorce. He seemed weirdly blasé about her leaving and about her eventual disappearance. At times, he even denied knowing her and definitely denied knowing anything about her disappearance. 

After she left him though, things would get arguably worse when she met Francisco Quico Fernandez. The research shows that she was living with Fernandez after she and Cruz separated. Fernandez has a long criminal history, including several domestic battery charges, including one that was particularly concerning for strangulation.

During this time, Camille was still in contact with Ashley via telephone. The two talked a lot in 1994, and Ashley has recalled that her mom sounded really upset and told her to,

 quote, “a good girl," and it seemed to her like she was almost saying goodbye. 

Also, from last week's episode, just a quick reminder that Gabby is a friend of Ashley's Camille's daughter who has helped her research Camille's disappearance.

On September 2, 1994, you'll notice that all these events seemed to happen in quick succession. Las Vegas Metro was called to Kiko Fernandez's apartment because of a domestic disturbance. Kiko was heard yelling at Camille, who was crying. Metro answered the call, and while in the apartment, they discovered that Kiko was attempting to conceal an amount of marijuana,which at this time is many years from being legal in Las Vegas, and cocaine as well. The package of marijuana was labeled for Kiko, so there wasn't a lot of room for Kiko to deny that it was his. Unfortunately for Camille, they were both arrested and booked into the Clark County Detention Center in downtown Las Vegas. The next day, September 3, 1994, Camille is seen walking south on the 300th block of Casino Center Drive, and that's the last reliable verified sighting of Camille that we have. 

Approximately seven months later, Camille's mother, Barbara, moved back to Las Vegas in the spring of '95. At that point, they hadn't heard from Camille in months. It was odd, but they were hoping that it was easily explained, possibly by Camille being back in jail. 

When Barbara moved back to Las Vegas, she realized that Camille was truly missing and had been for months, so she contacted Metro and attempted to open a missing persons report in the spring of 1995, which was seven months after Camille's last recorded sighting. It seemed very much to Barbara like Metro was absolutely disinterested in doing the work needed to find her daughter, or really investigating at all. After a brief investigation, they put out a statement on April 27, 1995, declaring that no evidence of foul play or suspicious circumstances was found. But I guess that's not surprising that they didn't discover any evidence of foul play because they didn't do much, if anything, in the way of investigation. Barbara was told that the report had been reclassified from "unfounded to zero," whatever that means. Just for reference, in 2023, Metro states that approximately 10 adults are reported missing each day or 300 a month according to their website. 

Barbara then took matters into her own hands. She put up flyers around town and visited the places where Camille worked and hung out. She asked people about Camille trying to learn where her daughter might have gone or what had happened to her. Ashley has shared memories of traveling around Vegas and waiting in the car while her grandma went into bars and clubs to ask about Camille.Unfortunately, Barbara didn't turn up any leads. Camille's friends said they hadn't heard from her in months, but some did report that Camille had been acting afraid or feeling paranoid lately.The police never shared any new information with Barbara, and despite her hard work, all the leads had dried up. Ellen, a childhood friend of Camille's, never forgot her old friend and was troubled by her unsolved disappearance.

Ellen called the Las Vegas Metro police to ask for an update on the investigation in 2003. And shockingly, no missing person report for Camille existed.Metro had no record of it. The original 95 report had been deleted just a few weeks after it was filed by someone in the police department. Gabby and Ashley's research hasn't revealed by who or why. 

However, we can make some reasonable speculation here. A friend of Camille's has mentioned that Camille did spend time around a cop and Ashley has similar recollections recalling that as a child her mom did spend time around cops and that police officers would give Ashley rides sometimes. A dancer that worked with Camille has stated that it could have been deleted by a dirty cop who frequented the clubs during that time. 

As soon as I heard that her missing person report had mysteriously disappeared weeks after it was filed the first thing the first thought I had was about who would have had access to delete that report. It seems likely that only a member of Metro would have had that access and the second thing I thought was well why would a police officer do that and the only reasons I could come up with are that they were somehow involved in or aware of what happened to her and didn't want it investigated so it all seems incredibly sketchy to me that that happened.

A new missing person's report was filed for Camille and Metro conceded that nine years of no contact from Camille warranted investigation and they labeled Camille as quote "endangered." It's a little jarring how obvious this is and how it really highlights their lack of concern.

When the police began investigating Camille's case very much for the first time after nine years as you'd expect they faced a lot of challenges. Since so much time had passed the people that Camille had lived with and worked with were unlikely to be living or working in the same places. Las Vegas is known to be a very transient place with people moving in and out of town and all around town all the time. 

Also the crazy horse was demolished in the 90s and the crazy horse too was raided by the feds in 2003 as we mentioned so it wasn't likely that they would find any leads there and just as a side note the crazy horse too actually closed in 2014 and was only torn down finally in 2022 after years  of people squatting in it and occasionally lighting it on fire. That place was a bit of a mess. 

Generally speaking about the people in Camille's orbit at that time they were people with criminal histories with histories of substance abuse disorders and possibly even involved in organized crime.So how likely is it that any of them are going to raise their hands to speak to the police? 

So much like Barbara, Ellen launched her own investigation. She spent hours and hours researching Camille's life, and she passed everything she discovered onto Metro. However, her assistance was not appreciated. It seems Metro got increasingly defensive, and Ellen actually received a cease and desist notice on Las Vegas Metro police stationery. 

I can only think of two reasons why this might happen, but really it's only one reason. The first reason is that Ellen's work was probably making them look bad, or at least making more work for them, assuming they followed up on any of Ellen's leads, which seems kind of likely.

 Or number two is maybe Ellen's work was interfering with the other in-depth investigations that Metro had going on at the time. This one seems a little bit less likely, given that the events were 20 years in the past and Camille was still missing. It didn't sound at all like the police were hot on the trail of anything new, and Ellen was getting in the way, especially if you consider how not involved they were when the trail was much more fresh back in 1994.

That cease and desist was enough to get Ellen to back off, whatever the reason was for it. And around this time, Ashley and Camille's parents did provide DNA samples in case of a Jane Doe or unidentified persons remains were uncovered. 

Within the next few years, Ashley herself would begin her own search for answers. She teamed up with Gabby and other enthusiastic web sleuths who were skilled in online research and background checks.

Ellen re-entered the picture and she provided all the information she had gathered during her investigation. And the four of them, with the help of other friends of the family and online strangers, put together a timeline and photos of Camille's places of residence, her workplaces, photos of Camille from different phases of her life, and video clips of Camille and her first husband, Gary, just an incredible archive of information about Camille. They were even able to access police records and rap sheets on Camille's second husband cruise and information on Kiko as well. And one key lead they found was Camille's Rolodex.

For folks who might not be familiar with what a Rolodex is, it's basically a mini filing cabinet type device that people would keep near their landline phones. So you'd hand write people's contact info on little cards and keep it in the Rolodex. It's basically a hard copy version of your cell phone's contact list. 

Ashley and Gabby have identified a few key contacts from the Rolodex that they think might be good leads, or at least these people might be old friends of Camille's who have new information to share with Ashley about her mom. The list is up on the Camille Dardin Dotson missing person Facebook page. The list is only first names and phone numbers with Vegas area codes, but one of the numbers is for a person named Dimitri, and the number is for the FBI Vegas field office.

This fact links to an interesting theory about what could have happened to Camille. Some key things we do know include, (1) she was involved with a drug dealer. (2) she was working at clubs that were owned by individuals who are connected to prominent organized crime families. (3) she was being arrested frequently for petty crimes for things as basic as jaywalking.

The theory is that Camille may have been acting as an informant or either informing on the drug dealer she was involved with or possibly the mob. The arrests may have been an excuse to bring her in for questioning and not alert those around her or the police may have been overwhelming Camille with criminal charges to have leverage against her to get her to talk or flip on someone. 

The FBI number being in her Rolodex seems to support that idea and provides a possible motive for her disappearance if she had been discovered or to be informing on someone,

 although if I'm being honest I would hope that if she were an informant she would just commit a number like that to memory not leave it around where someone like Kiko or some mob boss could get ahold of it. We definitely admit that this falls into the category of speculation but we think it's worth mentioning.

Ashley deserves answers about what happened to her mom. When you look at the information we've discussed there's a lot of red flags, serious issues and questions that come up. First the fact that the initial report was created and then deleted. As John said, why would someone do that? Did they know what happened to Camille and didn't want it to be uncovered to tie into that dirty cop theory? Or maybe it was just a mistake but that seems unlikely to me, but either way a lot of time was lost and critical leads dried up in the nine years that followed.Another fact about this investigation that is sketchy is why did they issue that cease and desist against Ellen when she was investigating?

Like you pointed out, did this just annoy the police because they didn't want it to seem like they were doing a bad job? Or could Ellen have been on the trail of something that they didn't want her to find? I want to go with the simpler explanation but it almost feels like they had something against Camille. 

Was Camille an informant and if so who was she informing on? Could that explain what happened to her? And not to get overly technical but Camille's last documented sighting was at the Clark County Detention Center so it's likely that the last people or person that saw her were law enforcement officers. 

One of the most important things I want to stress is how this case again seems to be a story about a police department treating someone who works as a sex worker or someone who has issues with substance abuse as a person that doesn't matter and is disposable. It's evident here that there was little effort made to investigate Camille's disappearance. Certainly, absolutely, certainly, not with the same energy they would have investigated the disappearance of celebrity Camille Dardens of 1985 who had just appeared on Good Morning America. 

Based on Ashley and Gabby's and their team's research, we've compiled a list of possible suspects or explanations for Camille's disappearance. We've tried to put them in order based on what we think is the least likely to the most likely. 

The first one would be that Camille suffered an accident, an overdose, or died by suicide. As no remains have been found, these explanations do not seem likely to me, but I understand how Ashley's recollection of the last phone call she had with Camille would make a suicide seem like a likely occurrence. 

Option number two is that Camille was murdered by a 1 % or biker gang and was buried in the desert. Allegedly, Camille may have known too much about the operations of this biker gang she hung around with, and that knowledge might have gotten her killed. According to Gabby and Ashley, this tip was received from a credible source, but it is based on rumor and without more information, it doesn't seem likely. 

The next obvious suspect would be her second husband, Cruz. Friends of Camille have recounted that Camille and Cruz had a very strange relationship. They were on again, off again, they broke up, got back together multiple times. And we already talked about how he was an abuser and he broke Camille's nose once. Ashley had recalled being fearful of him as a child and has relayed in interviews several violent incidents involving Cruz. At one point, he denied knowing Camille when Ashley and Gabby tried to find out more information about what happened to her. So that alone seemed suspicious. And he never filed for divorce and he never reported Camille missing. 

The next one is the theory about her being an informant or otherwise involved in organized crime. The information we discussed about her being observed and spending time with the police, the FBI agent's number and her Rolodex, the fact that she was arrested numerous times and worked at the clubs known to be connected with the mob, it certainly seems plausible that Camille might have been caught up in something serious. Maybe that's why the police didn't investigate, deleted her report, and wanted Ellen to stop her investigation. 

These next two theories to me are the most plausible given what we know about Camille and the last few years of her life before her disappearance. Camille was working as a sex worker, which would put her at risk for increased violence from a random stranger. There are stories like that all across the country and have been occurring for decades. She could have become victim of a violent man just randomly or even a serial killer by just getting unlucky one night. 

Lastly, we believe the person who is most likely to have answers about what happened to Camille is Kiko. Kiko has a history of violent domestic violence, including strangulation. But more importantly, it follows that since they were living together, they got arrested together that they likely would have seen each other after they both got bailed out of CCDC. It feels like Kiko, at the very least, would have some information as to when he last saw Camille and where she might have gone. 

Camille is a Caucasian female with brown hair and brown or hazel eyes. She's five feet seven inches tall and weighs between 125 and 145 pounds. Her teeth show some discoloration due to smoking and drug addiction. And she has a recent injury to her nose, allegedly from a domestic violence incident with Cruz. On her right hip, she has a tattoo bearing the name Cruz. And she is known to smoke Marlboro cigarettes. And she might use aliases such as Nicole, Renee, or Kim, with last names like Clark or Diaz. She was born in 1964 and disappeared in 1994 at the age of 30, which means she would be around 59 years old today in 2023. 

Please visit the Facebook page and findcamille.com to see photos of Camille from different times in her life and see photos of where she lived and worked or was known to hang out. We'll be sure to share those links, so make sure you're following our social media at Sins and Survivors on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. If you lived in Vegas in the early 90s or maybe you have relatives or friends that did, please share Camille's photos and this information with them. In the nearly 20 years I've lived here, it always surprises me how Vegas, as large as it is, can still have a small town feel about it, especially when it comes to the locals. It's definitely worth a look for Ashley's sake. If you have information, please contact Las Vegas Metro Homicide Division at 702-828-3521 or email homicide @lvmpd .com, and you can remain anonymous by reporting tips to Nevada Crime Stoppers website at CrimeStoppersofNV .com. 

As a reminder, we will be covering the story of Camille's first husband, Gary Dotson, in upcoming episodes, so be sure to subscribe and follow because what happens here happens everywhere.