“Be a good girl.” Those were the last words Ashley Dotson’s mother Camille ever said to her before vanishing in Las Vegas in 1994. Ashley’s life, which had already been quite rough, would never be the same. She spent a lot of her childhood waiting in the car outside seedy strip clubs and bars while her grandmother would go inside to ask if anyone had seen her mom around. Nobody ever did.
They held out hope that Camille was alive somewhere. After all, she had some legal troubles, so it wasn’t impossible that she just chose to skip town. But as the weeks turned to months and the months turned to years, their hopes of her returning alive began to fade away.
Today most people aware of her case believe she is deceased. But at whose hand? The estranged husband? The new guy she was staying with? An obsessed regular at the club? The local mobsters or 1%ers? Maybe even a total stranger on the street. In most missing person cases, you need to search far and wide to find a single suspect. But in Camille’s, there are more suspects than one can count – and without help from law enforcement, there’s no discernible way for us to figure out if any of them are actually guilty.
While Camille’s death has never been proven, the various theories and rumors continue to haunt her daughter. “How did she die?” Ashley often wonders at night, “Did she beg for her life? Did she cry? Was she thinking of me?”
Currently, Ashley has not been contacted by the Las Vegas Police in over half a decade. She hasn’t spoken to her father in over 15 years. Her stepfather Cruz Diaz will not answer any of our calls or pleas for information. Her grandmother, Barbara, has severe dementia and no longer even remembers her missing daughter. Sometimes Ashley feels like she is the only person in the world who still thinks about and misses her mother.
If you had met Camille Dardanes in her youth, you never would have believed her life could turn out the way that it did. She came from an upper middle class family in Chicago and was described as a highly intelligent, mature girl with natural beauty and a plethora of talents. Everybody assumed she had a bright future ahead of her.“When Camille was 14, she used to speak dialogue like she was Lauren Bacall in the movies,” recalls her first love Joe Arce, “She was Natalie Portman stunning and whip-smart beyond her years.”Camille managed to excel in every aspect of her life, from school to athletics. “She was a semi-pro ice skater, a straight-A student, and she took ballet for nine years.” says her childhood best friend Sheri Miller.
When Camille was 21, she found herself captivated by the ongoing news reports about Gary Dotson – an infamous convicted rapist whose accuser recanted her story and admitted that he was innocent all along. Camille was smitten with him but couldn’t really explain why. Things like that weren’t out of the ordinary for her. She had a lot of empathy and always saw the best in people. “Do you know that guy or something?” Camille’s friend Laura once asked her, after noticing how she ran straight to the television every time there was a news story about Dotson on. “No. I don’t,” Camille replied, “But I will.” When she found out Dotson’s clemency hearing was open to the public, she felt compelled to attend. Everyone in the courtroom that day watched on as she approached him and presented him with a single white carnation. Her simple act of kindness was reported on in the newspapers and considered a highlight in the high profile trial. Gary Dotson couldn’t stop thinking about the beautiful girl with the white carnation, and he began dating her as soon as he was released. It all felt like a fairytale to Camille. The man she loved at first sight was finally free from prison – and he loved her back.
Their 1985 marriage made all of the newspapers. The couple was often photographed and written about, once even appearing on Good Morning America together. Things were looking up financially as well since Gary’s false accuser wrote a book about their case and gave him the proceeds. Gary and Camille then had their first and only child, a little girl they named Ashley. Not long after, Camille’s dream life began spiraling into a nightmare.
Gary quickly blew through all of their funds. He began drinking too much and too often. The more he drank, the more violent he became. She involved police once, after he hit her and threatened to harm her young daughter. He admitted it too. “I said I’d kill the kid before I let Camille take her away,” Gary told the Illinois parole board after confessing to drinking a lot on the night in question. But like many abused wives, Camille couldn’t bring herself to proceed with charges and instead continued to stand by him. “Gary’s far from a criminal,” Camille stressed to the Chicago Sun, “I was tired, Gary was tired, the baby was screaming. It had just been a real long day.” But more turmoil followed and Gary went on to rack up several arrests for DUI’s and drunken bar brawls. Once she tried to kick him out and end things, but he broke into her home and refused to leave – eventually being arrested for trespassing. Shortly after, Camille finally filed for a legal separation and decided to move back to Las Vegas so she and Ashley could be as far as possible from Gary.
As a single mom with no higher education and very little job experience, she struggled to support herself. After a string of low-paying diner and bar jobs, she began dancing at various local strip clubs. At one point she worked at the original Crazy Horse – owned by mobster Jack Galardi and located at the infamous Paradise Market Strip on Paradise & Flamingo. She then worked at the second club in this chain, the Crazy Horse Too, located at Industrial & Sahara and owned by Galardi’s associate Rick Rizzolo, who later ended up in prison after Operation G-string. While working in those clubs, Camille was casually using some narcotics like marijuana and cocaine.
While in Las Vegas, Camille fell in love with a man named George “Cruz” Diaz Jr. Ashley remembers Cruz having an “overwhelming presence” that frightened her. They married soon after and Camille even got a tattoo on her hip of the name “Cruz”. It wasn’t long before Cruz allegedly began physically assaulting Camille. It was around this time that she started to have a serious crack cocaine dependency. She also got involved with prostitution, first with regulars at the club she danced at and later on the street. Between the drug use and the prostitution, Camille was getting arrested pretty regularly. Now heavily addicted to drugs, in and out of jail, and stuck in yet another abusive relationship, it was clear that Camille was on a downward spiral. In the midst of this tumultuous time period, her mother Barbara decided to move home to Chicago and she brought Camille’s daughter Ashley with her. Unbeknownst to Barbara and 7 year old Ashley, this was the last time they would ever see Camille.
At the time of her disappearance, there was very little left of the woman Camille once was. Her lengthy list of drug charges resulted in several warrants for her arrest. Her teeth were discolored due to substance abuse and years of chain-smoking. Her nose had been recently broken during one of Cruz’s violent episodes. Around this time, Camille began showing signs of fear and paranoia. She felt she was being followed and she confided to friends that she was afraid of something, but never elaborated on exactly what it was. Even Ashley could sense something was wrong during their last phone call. According to her, Camille “almost sounded like she knew she was leaving” as she told her she loved her and to be a good girl. Perhaps the saddest part of this case is that we still do not know the date she disappeared. She was here one day – gone the next. Yet nobody seemed to notice or care. It would be 7 months before a missing person’s report would be filed. With Ashley in tow, Camille’s mother Barbara moved back to Las Vegas just to find out that her daughter was long gone. She told the Las Vegas Metro Police Dept but they were uninterested. “We have no reason to believe the missing person met with foul play or suspicious circumstances,” the original police report read, “So we have reclassified the case from unfounded to zero”. With no help from law enforcement, Camille’s mother had to be a one-woman search team. She hung posters, checked out all of Camille’s former places of work, questioned countless locals, and did all she could to try to find her daughter. All to no avail. The police never followed up, no more information came in, and the trail had seemingly gone cold. In 2003, Camille’s childhood friend Sheri heard about her missing status and decided to call LVMPD and ask if there were any updates in the investigation. But she learned that there was, in fact, no such investigation in existence. Camille’s missing person’s report had been mysteriously deleted by someone in the police department just weeks after it was filed. Nobody understood why, as she was still missing. Even the LVMPD had to admit that 9 years without contact was serious, so they finally classified her status as “endangered” on the new missing person’s report that they re-filed. But recovering any useful information after almost a decade of inaction proved to be quite difficult, especially in a busy city like Vegas with citizens that tend to be nomadic in nature. Ashley gave them DNA in case they ever found an unidentified body to test. But besides that, nothing else got done.
That’s where things left off – until this year. After all of this time she’s spent waiting for updates that never come, Ashley and I felt compelled to try to get some answers ourselves. Together we decided we would re-investigate everything. Our little search team grew bigger by the day as friends and strangers pitched in to share what they know and help us with research. As they say, it takes a village. Our hard work has definitely paid off. Through court files, arrest reports, public records requests, and tips, we have learned quite a bit about Camille’s final year in Vegas. At the time of her disappearance, she and Cruz reportedly were separated. She was living at 2110 Paradise Rd, Apt 26 with Francisco “Kiko” Fernandez. They got arrested there together on 9/2/94 and currently the last recorded time anyone saw her alive was on 9/3/94 at 4:20pm when she was released from jail for this arrest. She did not show up for her arraignment hearing on 9/26/94, leading Las Vegas Metro Police to believe that the events leading to her disappearance must have occurred in the three weeks between the 3rd and the 26th.
It’s been alleged that Francisco may have occasionally left the country, possibly spending time in Mexico or Cuba. Ashley would like to believe that he could’ve helped her mom flee the country as well. “My aunt and grandma both saw psychics many years ago and both predicted she was alive hiding in a foreign country,” Ashley once told me. She doesn’t give those readings much credence, but she hasn’t fully ruled out the possibility. “I’m scared to have hope,” she confesses, “But yet I still have it.”We find ourselves wistfully dreaming about this possibility often, but reality sinks in eventually every time. After all, it’s unlikely that an actively-using addict would have survived 25 years without police contact or further arrests. And if she ran away because of her criminal charges, why hasn’t she returned now that the case has been dismissed and the statute of limitations has worn out? As much as we want her to be alive, all of the evidence points to her most likely having died that Fall. But who did it, and why?
Some point to Fernandez, the last person known to be living with her. We believe the LVMPD subscribed to this theory at times as well. It certainly makes sense as they were co-habitating and being charged in crimes together. He does have several charges for domestic battery on his criminal record, two of which specifically included “attempted strangulation” in the description of his charges. But we just can’t be sure since there are so many other suspects out there.
As for the husband Diaz, we learned he was convicted of attempted murder later in life. He has never filed for divorce from Camille even after she disappeared. We found some contact information for him but he still will not answer us. At this point, we have not ruled him out.
One tipster told us they believe she was murdered by a 1%er biker gang and buried in the desert in order to silence her about the gang’s criminal activity. There’s also a friend who recalls her spending lots of time with a cop. He believes they had a personal relationship and that this officer could be involved in her disappearance – which may also explain the mysteriously erased missing person’s report.
We must also remember that due to her high-risk lifestyle, a random attack is very possible. Studies show that sex workers, especially on the street, are 60-100 times more likely to be murdered than the average woman.
Mafia involvement is still a valid possibility too. Somebody very close to her told us they recall Camille talking about being approached by police to be a confidential informant against the mob-related owners of the Crazy Horse, her place of work. This theory is supported by her friend Sheri, who called the numbers in her phone book after she vanished. One of those numbers – under the name “Dimitri” – was a number for the FBI. On facebook threads about Camille’s former boss Rick Rizzolo, Vegas natives speculate about the “bodies” he is rumored to have left in the desert.
“Where do we go from here?” is the question I ask myself the most these days. What use are our findings if nobody will look at them and follow up? Foolishly, we thought the new LVMPD guard might actually right the wrongs of the old guard. But after weeks of unanswered phone calls and emails, we are beginning to lose hope in the current department as well. They haven’t even changed their missing person’s report, which for unexplained reasons says she was last seen in May 1994 despite them having her in their custody months later in September. While we don’t fault law enforcement for not knowing what happened to her, we do fault them for not caring. Where were they when it mattered in 1994? Why did it take a decade just to label her endangered? Why were none of these men in her life taken in for questioning or polygraphs? How could a human being get lost and have not one single person care about finding her? As Paul Farmer once said, “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” Camille matters. All missing people do. Their lives had value. Their mistakes or faults do not change the fact that they are human beings who should be looked for and fought for. Camille was not perfect but she was a human being, a daughter, a sister, a mother, and a friend. She continues to be missed and loved by everyone who knew her. We will not stop until she comes home. And when she does – whether she’s on her feet or in a casket – her daughter will be right here waiting for her. With the satisfaction of knowing she never gave up – and with a handful of white carnations.
Physical Description & Identifiable Information:Camille was a white woman with brown hair and brown/hazel eyes. She stood 5’7 and weighed between 125-145lbs. Her teeth were slightly discolored and her nose was recently broken. She had a tattoo on her right hip of the name “Cruz”. She smoked Marlboro cigarettes. May have used the first names “Nicole”, “Renee”, or “Kim” and the last names “Clarke” or “Diaz”. She was 30 when she disappeared and would be 55 now. She last resided at the Siegel Apts at 2110 Paradise Rd right under the strat. At some point she lived near the Treasure Island Casino, possibly in the Villa De Flores apartments. In 1993, she lived at 1309 E Bridger Ave with a man named Allan Walker. She also stayed at the address 711 E Twain, apt 3-C. She was known to stay at multiple hotels in the area, including the Continental, Rummel, Algiers, and Hard Rock. She also spent some time with friends at the Rainbow Highlands Apts on Rainbow Blvd.We know she worked at the Crazy Horse on the corner of Paradise & Flamingo, and Crazy Horse Too on Sahara & Industrial. She was sighted walking in the 300 block of S Casino Center Blvd in the time shortly before her disappearance. If you knew her or have any information, even something you may consider insignificant, please email us at findcamille@yahoo.com
Finding Camille 