Unfortunately, the discovery of the whereabouts of Twylia May Embrey, who ran away from North Platte, Neb., in 1952, came three weeks too late.

Embrey, who had started a new life under an assumed name in Massachusetts, died March 30 at age 71, before she could be reunited with three surviving sisters and a great-niece who had revived the search.

"I'm so happy that we found her and that we have closure. I'm so sad that we were late," said Jennifer Kitt of York, who had promised her grandmother - Embrey's sister - that she would find the woman.

"It goes to show, you shouldn't give up," Kitt said. "Things can happen even over 50 years."

The search took more twists than a Nancy Drew mystery.

It began in December 2004, when Kitt and other family members thought that Embrey might have been a long-forgotten murder victim in Boulder, Colo., dubbed "Jane Doe" because that woman had never been identified.

DNA testing ruled out that link last year, but three women who met through the Jane Doe case continued an almost daily search for Twylia May: Kitt, Boulder, Colo., historian Silvia Pettem and Micki Lavigne, a Woodbridge, Va., researcher.

Kitt and Lavigne took the lead, calling every woman they could locate who had a name close to "Twylia" or a similar birth date.

"We literally made thousands and thousands of phone calls," said Kitt, a 30-year-old married mother of two who works as a hospice aide.

Kitt twice traveled within Nebraska to meet women who matched Embrey's background.

Then on Tuesday, Lavigne got a hit from one of her thousands of Internet queries - an obituary from a New England newspaper listing a woman "born and raised in Keystone, Neb., to the late Charles and Adeline (Cowman) Enberey."

Other than the misspelling of the parents' last name, the information was the same as for Embrey, Kitt said.

Two of Embrey's surviving sisters - Midge Garner of Wellfleet, Neb., (Kitt's grandmother) and Margie Danbom of Curtis, Neb. - identified a photograph accompanying the obituary as being Twylia May.

A longtime friend of the "new" Twylia May Embrey also confirmed that on her deathbed, the woman said she had run away from Nebraska as a teenager and had assumed a new identity.

"We're all in a state of shock still. It's just astounding," said Pettem, whose writings had reopened the "Jane Doe" case in Colorado and ultimately brought the three female sleuths together.

Embrey's husband of 45 years, who died a couple of years ago, apparently never knew his wife's secret identity, Kitt said.

She said the family was withholding Twylia May's other identity and her exact hometown until all relatives could be notified. The couple had no children of their own, but several nieces and nephews don't know the whole story yet, she said.

"All these people wrote in the (funeral) guest book about how much they loved her," she said. "I just didn't want anyone to think any differently of her, at this point."

Kitt said she, her grandmother and her grandmother's sister hope to eventually travel to Massachusetts to meet a close friend of Twylia May's and learn more about her life.

Through one phone conversation with the friend, Kitt said she learned that her great-aunt had a wonderful life and retained her gift of art. A favorite painting showed two horses - another of her passions.

One of her surviving sisters, Danbom, 73, said she didn't know how to react.

"It's a mixed feeling - we mourned for her for so many years," she said. "We're glad that she led a good life. It's just too bad we wouldn't have seen her, even when she was dying."

Embrey died after a long battle with a lung ailment, Kitt said. She added that the friend told her that Embrey had considered contacting her family while she was ill but thought they had forgotten about her.

That was far from the truth, Kitt said. Besides the recent search, Embrey's father had spent several summers traveling the West Coast in search of his missing daughter.

Danbom said that some of what her sister told the friend in Massachusetts wasn't accurate.

Her sister fled Nebraska after her stern father slapped her in an argument, Danbom said, not because the father wanted her to marry an older man, the story told to the friend in Massachusetts.

Still, she said, she can't wait to go to the East Coast to find out more about her lost sister.

"The hardest part of it is, there were eight of us kids and only three of us (are) left," Danbom said. "It's too bad they didn't know what happened to her."