But lack of information about the woman suspected of being Boulder Jane Doe –  Katharine E. Farrand Dyer – has stalled the investigation to conclusively close the book on the 54-year-old mystery.

Historian Silvia Pettem has dedicated countless hours since she persuaded Sheriff Joe Pelle to reopen the 54-year-old case in 2004 to identify Jane Doe, whose remains are buried in Boulder's Columbia Cemetery. Her efforts also turned up Dyer, who was listed as a missing person with the Denver police in March 1954. Dyer, who was separated from her husband, was living in a boarding house in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Pettem also found a photo of Dyer taken in 1949, which was provided to Michigan State University for a photo super-imposition onto a cast of the remains of the skull. The university concluded that the photo technique "failed to exclude" Dyer as the possible identity of Jane Doe.

The technique yields only two possible results: exclude or fail to exclude.

"For the past two years, I have believed that circumstantial evidence pointed to Katharine Dyer as Jane Doe," Pettem said in a prepared statement Friday. "This promising new forensic evidence validates my opinion."

Cmdr. Phil West of the Boulder County Sheriff's Office wrote in a prepared statement Friday that the result is "promising" in light of other circumstantial evidence.

"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," West wrote, noting that the sheriff's office is releasing Dyer's photograph in another public attempt to find anyone who knew her to "provide the last link in the chain of circumstantial evidence that would lead to confirmation, and ultimately, a name for Jane Doe."

Officials suspect Jane Doe – whose remains were discovered by two college students April 8, 1954, in Boulder Canyon on the banks of Boulder Creek – was killed by California serial killer Harvey Glatman, who was living in Colorado at the time. Jane Doe's body was badly beaten, and officials believe she was left to die of exposure by her killer.

Glatman was dubbed "The Lonely Hearts Killer" by newspapers in California that followed his murders there.

He was executed in September 1959 in California after he was convicted of binding, raping, photographing and murdering three women in 1957 and 1958, according to the CourtTV Crime Library's biography of Glatman.

Jane Doe was about 20 years old when she died; stood between 5 feet, 3 inches and 5 feet, 4 inches tall; and weighed between 100 and 110 pounds. Her hair was a light brown that bordered on blonde with a reddish tinge.

Jane Doe's body was exhumed in 2004 to obtain a DNA profile and create a model of her face and head as she may have appeared.

Dyer's landlady reported her missing from the boarding house 13 days before Jane Doe's body was found. Dyer was an elevator operator at the American Furniture Co. in Denver and matched well the description of Jane Doe, down to the red tint in her hair. Denver police records do not indicate that Dyer was ever found.

Pettem and a team of researchers found records that Dyer married Jimmie Dyer in Prescott, Ariz., on Sept. 25, 1949. Her marriage license shows she was born Oct. 14, 1926, in San Antonio, Texas, although records there don't include her birth certificate or that she ever had a Social Security number. Sheriff's officials suspect she may have been using an assumed name.