I read with shock and dismay the front-page story about the unidentified murdered woman found in Boulder Canyon in 1954 ("50-year-old Jane Doe murder still haunts county," Feb. 2). While the crime and horror of the woman`s death are truly terrible, what I find most alarming is the push for exhumation and "modern" forensic testing. While it is feasible, as one academic points out, that the identity of the woman could be ascertained using DNA matching technology, it is extremely unlikely.

For an accurate DNA identification to be made there must be an existing sample to match to the newly harvested DNA.There is virtually no chance that such a sample exists. Each year tens of thousands of Americans are reported missing. Assuming that accurate missing persons records exist for the early '50s (remember we cannot assume that she was reported missing at the time of her death), does anyone think that we could gather a DNA sample from every family who filed an unresolved missing persons case? Who would pay for such an effort? Can the cash strapped city and county of Boulder afford such an effort?

Finally, what makes anyone think that the Boulder County investigative community is capable of successfully carrying out such an investigation? They have failed time and again to solve fresh cases with a wealth of forensic evidence; the Ramsey and Susannah Chase cases immediately come to mind. As the sidebar to the story points out, an infant John Doe was found in a dumpster in Louisville in 2001, and remains unidentified and his parents and killers remain at large. During the height of the JonBenet frenzy, the Boulder Police Department called a press conference to announce that a break and an arrest in the decades-old Spanish towers murder was imminent, but nothing ever came of that. Why should the community expect different results in this case?

If there were a reasonable chance that this woman could be identified and her family`s minds and hearts put at ease, I would be the first to advocate exhumation. But the real motivation here seems to be to satisfy the curiosity (and to perhaps flesh out a book proposal) of a few local history buffs. As the circumstance are, I think that the words of Rev. Paul Fife should be heeded: Let Jane Doe rest in peace.