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March 21, 2006, Daily Camera, Jane Doe May be ID'd, by Christine Reid

The name of a young woman found slain a half-century ago in Boulder Canyon may be on one of nine sheets of paper that historical detective Silvia Pettem has fastened together with Scotch tape.

The list is of 43 women who had gone missing from around the country just before April 1954, when Jane Doe's beaten body was discovered by two college students hiking about 300 yards south of the Boulder Falls pull-off.

Only one name is in bold print – No. 7, Katherine or Catherine Dyer.

Dyer was 24 when she vanished from her Denver boardinghouse at 1118 Washington St. between midnight and 7 a.m. March 26, 1954.

She was an elevator operator at American Furniture Co. on 16th Street in Denver. She had separated recently from her husband, "Jimmie" Dyer – a now-deceased 1950 graduate of Northern Arizona University and Denver Public Service employee.

The missing woman was slender and blonde, which fit Jane Doe's description. She was living within a block of a dating club – the Clara Lane Friendship Society – the same type of club that serial killer Harvey Glatman trolled for victims.

Police and Pettem have pointed to Glatman, who raped and killed three women in California and was put to death in 1959, as a possible suspect in Jane Doe's murder. Once a Denver resident, Glatman was arrested in 1945 by Boulder authorities for abducting a woman at gunpoint and driving her up Sunshine Canyon, where he held her captive for a night before setting her free.

"This theory fits," said Pettem, a historical columnist for the Daily Camera.

Boulder County Sheriff's Office Cmdr. Phil West calls the Glatman connection "interesting" but not "concrete."

As for Jane Doe's identity, West said, there are no credible leads.

Pettem began a campaign in the fall of 2003 to exhume Jane Doe's remains from Boulder's Columbia Cemetery with hopes of matching her DNA to surviving family members. Two DNA tests have been done, but her identity remains a mystery.

A nationally known forensic sculptor reconstructed Jane Doe's facial features based on her bone structure that was unearthed, and investigators are hoping someone will recognize her.

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