The nude body of the young woman was found by two young college students along the banks of Boulder Creek below Boulder Falls in Boulder Canyon on Thursday, April 8th, 1954. An autopsy determined that she had been beaten severely, stripped of her clothing, and left to die of exposure at the bottom of the highway embankment. Her death had occurred some days prior to the discovery of her body, as there was evidence of rodent predation. Aside from an appendectomy scar and remarkably good teeth, there was little that would serve to identify the young women, who was estimated to be about 20 years of age, a petite 5-3 to 5-4 in height, and weighing 100-110 pounds with "light brown, almost blonde hair with a faint reddish cast."

The young woman was subsequently buried in Boulder's historic Columbia Cemetery under a tombstone marked simply "Jane Doe, April 1954, age about 20 years."

Despite an extensive investigation and hundreds of tips from across the country, Sheriff Art Everson was never able to put a name to the battered face. Neither was he able to identify her killer, though circumstances led him to suspect Harvey Glatman, a serial killer from California, who was known to be residing in Colorado in 1954. Glatman was subsequently convicted of killing three women in California and was put to death in 1959.

In 2004, largely at the instigation of local historian Silvia Pettem, Sherif Joe Pelle
re-opened the investigation, in the hope that advances in forensic technology might provide an answer to the 50 year-old question. With generous financial contributions from the community, Sheriff's investigators exhumed the body, and with the assistance of forensic experts from the Vidocq Society, re-examined the victim's remains, developed a DNA profile, and fashioned a likeness of the victim from the re-assembled skull.

The case has received extensive local and national publicity and was featured on "America's Most Wanted" national television program. The leads generated were considered and the promising ones examined in detail. Nonetheless, each potential candidate was excluded in turn.

With one notable exception–

A diligent search of period newspaper files by Ms. Pettem identified a young woman who was reported as missing to the Denver Police Department on March 26th, 1954. The missing party, identified as Katharine E. Dyer (nee Farrand), 27, was separated from her husband, Jimmie Dyer, and living alone in a boarding house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. She was described as being approximately 5-6 tall, weighing 110 pounds, with blond hair that she frequently tinted red. She was employed as an elevator operator for the American Furniture Company in downtown Denver.

While presumably she would have been considered a likely candidate by investigators at the time, the fragmentary reports of the investigation that are still extant do not mention her. Denver PD's records are inconclusive as well; there's no indication that Ms. Dyer was ever located.

Putting her research and networking skills to use, Ms. Pettem and a team of researchers have traced Ms. Dyer's life back from her disappearance, through her residence in Denver from 1948-1954, to her marriage to Jimmie Dyer in Prescott, Arizona, on September 25th, 1949. Her marriage affidavit indicates that she was born October 14th, 1926, in San Antonio, Texas; however, there is no record of her birth in the Bexar County records. Neither is there any record of her having obtained a social security number, giving rise to a suspicion that she may have been living under an assumed name.

Ms. Pettem was able to locate a photograph of Ms. Dyer, taken by her ex-husband, presumably circa 1949. The photograph, along with a casting of "Jane Doe's" re-assembled skull, was submitted to Dr. Todd Fenton, a forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University, for photographic super-imposition and comparison earlier this year. Dr. Fenton recently informed Sheriff's investigators that of the two options  "exclude" or "fail to exclude," he could not exclude Jane Doe as a possible match with Katharine Dyer.

With no identifiable family, her ex-husband dead, and significant questions about her true identity, the investigation is stalled, pending someone coming forward with new information about Ms. Dyer. To that end, the Sheriff's Office is publicizing Ms. Dyer's photograph in the hope of locating a friend, acquaintance, or co-worker who might be able to provide the last link in the chain of circumstantial evidence that would lead to confirmation, and ultimately, a name for Jane Doe.

For additional information about Ms. Pettem's decade-long quest to identify Jane Doe, check out her web-site, www.boulderjanedoe.com [since replaced with this site, www.silviapettem.com], e-mail her at pettem@earthlink.net, or call at #303-459-0193. Anyone with information to offer regarding Ms. Dyer is asked to contact Detective Steve Ainsworth at the Boulder County Sheriff's Office at #303-441-3627 or e-mail him at sainsworth@bouldercounty.org .

This media release may also be found on the Sheriff's Office web-site at: www.boulderhseriff.org