For decades this infamous 911 recording has made the rounds, I don't know if I'm the first, but I think I've figured out exactly what happened, but before I get to that.

Summary

So I'm pretty sure this case is well known among a lot of true crime enthusiasts, and it's been covered to death by Youtubers. Here's an article covering the case, but I'll also do my best to quickly sum it up for those who are unfamiliar:

In the 1980s, an old woman by the name of Ruth Price, living alone, contacts 911 because of a man prowling around outside her home, she fears for her life. The 911 operator interrupts Ruth before she is able to give her address. In less than two minutes, the man seemingly breaks in, and brutally assaults and murders the elderly lady, her final blood curdling screams caught on tape. With her address unknown, help is not able to arrive.

Since then this audio has bounced around, with people trying and failing to find a record of such an incident, some think it's complete fiction, others think it might only be based on a real call, or that it's real, and that one of two Ruth Prices, one dying in 1988, another in 1994, could be the potential victim.

Here is a recording of the phone call, WARNING this call is pretty disturbing, and there's loud screaming starting at 35 seconds in, so if you're at all sensitive to that, either skip the video, or pause BEFORE that point.

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So the constant question about this call is "Was it real, or was it fake?", however, I think that there's an angle that hasn't really been considered for some reason: This phone call is real, BUT the story that has been retold over and over again, is completely fake.

Buckle up, grab a drink, because this is going to be a long post, but I'm hoping to get some good discussion to see if others agree to this being the most likely solution to this decades long mystery.

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TL;DR:

• The call is real, not a re-enactment, not a fake training example (comment explaining why I doubt that the call is fictional or a re-enactment)

• HOWEVER Ruth Price definitely didn't die during nor directly after the call, and likely didn't come to any harm at all

• What we're actually hearing is Ruth panicking over an attempted break-in, not her brutal demise

• The story was invented by 911 instructors during the 1990s to make the tape more shocking and memorable

• This occurred in San Diego, California sometime between 1986 and 1992

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HERE'S WHAT I THINK HAPPENED:

• Ruth Price was speaking with a phone operator, when an attempted break and enter happened, she started screaming while the man was trying to break down her door, or enter through a window.

• Ruth possibly runs away to hide or to make an attempt to get out of the house and seek a neighbour for help - alternatively, her screaming scares the man off then and there, and she runs to shut the window or check what he's doing.

• The man was likely just attempting a burglary - not out to murder an old woman. Alternatively Ruth states early in the call that the man had come by earlier, "looking for a guy" perhaps this was a dealer looking for a customer who owed him money or an addict looking for a dealer or to score some drugs? Who knows, either situation seems more plausible than a random murderer stalking an old lady.

• Ruth was not murdered, nor was she harmed at all, she survived the brief ordeal, and passed away in 1994.

• However, her blood curdling, screaming panic made this the perfect tape to shock trainees for 911 call taking, and so was born the legend of an old woman brutally murdered while on the phone with 911*.

• I firmly believe we don't have the full call recording, and that the tape was cut by whomever first used it for training purposes, there's more to it that we'll never get to hear

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Guesses, and Assumptions about the Call:

• It's very probable that Ruth called a phone operator, NOT a 911 call taker, probably out of habit; San Diego had only introduced 911 in 1982, Ruth had lived most of her life needing to dial '0' for an operator to connect with emergency services; this call happened at most, a decade after that. This might explain why the woman seems disinterested, and isn't "following the right procedure", and even why she doesn't talk while Ruth is screaming - she's frantically trying to get the police or emergency services in on the call to take over.

• At the start of the call, she's just trying to pass Ruth off to the police department with some details to know what to say to them. Later, when Ruth is screaming, she's already trying to get the police on the line - at 0:42 of the video, you can hear "Operator!?" in the middle of the screams. I believe this is when the operator had patched in a call taker from 911 or the police department. That voice possibly sounds like another woman on the line, addressing the operator, or the (phone) operator talking to the 911 operator, it certainly doesn't sound like Ruth.

• There's nothing in the audio suggesting a struggle to me, that Ruth is being strangled or stabbed, there's no man's voice nor any grunting/breathing from the supposed assailant. Ruth's voice never really gets much further away than would be reasonable for a corded receiver.

• The line "somebody help me to breathe" keeps showing up in transcripts. I think this is a misinterpretation of her pleading to the operator, and is more likely something like "somebody help me please!" "he's getting in, help please!" "(unintelligible, possibly "can you") send the police!". Ruth sounds like a natural, life-long English speaker, her saying "somebody help me to breathe" just doesn't make sense, and moreover, it just doesn't sound like she's being strangled either.

• My guess is that the deep "thud" we hear is Ruth dropping the receiver, and it hitting a table, wall or the floor, you can still hear Ruth briefly in the recording before it ends, making a sobbing sound, this clearly wasn't a killing blow.

• There are NO stories nor records about this supposed brutal murder of an elderly woman simply because there wasn't one. Not because this was "before the internet", if there was such a slaying - in the same decade that saw Richard Ramirez do similar, who had only been caught in 1985 - it would have the media, especially in California, all over a "Nightstalker Copycat?" headline.

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Facts Backing Up the Location, Time Frame and Who Ruth is:

The key to all of this is that Ruth begins to provide an address, "thirty-eight seventy-seven" - you can hear that in this uncensored version of the call from ScareTheater's video, if you want to confirm for yourself - and during the call, she mentions her house having an apartment at the rear. There was a Reddit thread two years ago, that had found a "3877 35th Street", in San Diego, California. From what I could see in Google Maps, the house shares a yard with a small, two story house to its rear, with its main entrance appearing to be facing that same yard, also, the address in Google Maps lists "#3879" in the full street address, suggesting the house to the rear is considered a part of the same property. Former resident of that property? One Ruth Price.

I mentioned "between 1986 and 1992", and here's why: first, the house at 3877 35th Street had last been sold in 1986, according to this listing.

According to this record, Ruth Price moved to that address in February 1986, and then later moved in August 1992 to an address in El Cajon, California. This location matches the information given in this obituary which states it as her last address.

The obituary and record back up the basic things we know about Ruth from the call, she was an old lady - born in December 1913 - making her somewhere between the ages of 73-78 depending on the year this took place, and indeed her home at the time has an apartment at the rear. The fact that her obituary reports her as living in El Cajon, instead of San Diego, lining up with the other record reporting a move to an address in El Cajon in 1992 tells me that Ruth Price survived whatever happened that night at 3877 35th Street, and that this call couldn't have taken place after August of that year, since she no longer lived at the address she began to give.

Unfortunately the records do have some discrepancies, they state that 3877 is her address up to the present day (and then lists the same address as a second entry, up to last year), and give yet another address in El Cajon dated 1998, despite saying clearly she was deceased as of May 1994. I can't explain the duplicate addresses, nor the second El Cajon address in 1998, but my assumption is that the house at 3877 stayed within the family, or that it's possibly owned by a landlord? Something to that effect.

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So to sum it all up - Ruth Mildred Price, of San Diego, CA had an attempted break-in at her home sometime between 1986 and 1992. Her screams were so fearful and shocking that the tape of the interaction she had with a telephone operator was later used unofficially by trainers with 911 call-takers - who spread a sensationalized story that the operator's mistake cost Ruth her life. However, the break-in was either a failed attempt, or Ruth didn't come to harm during it, and she lived on until 1994.

I'm almost dead certain that this is what happened, the last and only possible way to maybe know for sure, is if there was some way to get a record of any police reports filed regarding 3877 35th Street, between 1986 and 1992. Assuming a) that Ruth had made a police report about the incident, and b) that the reports still exist, and are accessible over 30 years later.

I know this is a tired, ancient mystery, I doubt I'm the first person to come to this conclusion, but after watching a video from Barely Sociable on the call (not the first I've watched either), something possessed me to do some investigation of my own to try and back up my conclusion. I figure this sub would appreciate the post, hopefully it was interesting? Tell me if I missed anything.

Edit (9/11/21): I don't know if this is customary, I don't make many posts, but thank you for all the awards/upvotes, and by far most importantly, for the interesting discussions about this mystery we've had so far.

Final Edit (25/4/22)

This mystery is officially solved!

This post wasn't far off - correct address, correct Ruth Price, and she scared off her attacker and survived the still unknown assailant - however, the incident in question occurred on November 3rd 1980, not between 1986 - 1992.

Farvaluable_5819 here on Reddit was able to solve this once and for all (link to their thread).

Since this post somehow still gets posts every once in a while (I've gotten two in the past month!), I felt I'd add this update and credit the person that finally figured this out for real.