But local historian Silvia Pettem is hopeful that an upcoming segment on "America's Most Wanted," scheduled for Jan. 28, will change that.

"I wish I could say we are further along than we are," said Pettem, who has led the efforts to identify the decomposed body and return the remains to her family. "I've got my hopes on this "America's Most Wanted" program.

The woman's face was seen in June for the first time in more than 50 years, when Sheriff Joe Pelle unveiled a reconstructed bust created by forensic sculptor Frank Bender of the Vidocq Society.

The results of that unveiling were disappointing, however. "There weren't any really good leads," Pettem said.

Investigators also collected DNA that can be compared to a member of the woman's mother's family, such as a sibling or the child of a sister, if anyone comes forward to identify her.

For a long while, some believed Jane Doe would turn out to be Twylia May Embrey, a Nebraska woman who was last seen in the early 1950s.

While that turned out not to be the case, Pettem has committed herself to helping the Embrey family find their missing loved one as well.

"They're hoping to find her alive and well," Pettem said. "Bender even created a drawing of what Embrey may look like now, if she is still alive, based on her high-school graduation photograph," Pettem said.

In the Jane Doe case, Pettem and other researchers are using genealogical techniques to track down names of missing women from newspapers of the time. Currently, Pettem is looking for Katherine Dyer.

"She's either still alive or Jane Doe or married," Pettem said. "(I'm doing) anything I can think of to learn what she was doing, what happened to her."