The woman's naked body already had begun to decompose when two University of Colorado students found her near Boulder Creek on April 8, 1954, so no one knew what her face looked like.

"Everything about the case has remained a mystery," Pelle said during a news conference at the Judicial Center. "Even the original police file – if there was one – has gone missing,æ Pelle said.

"It's our hope that, someday, every aspect of this mystery could be solved," Pelle said.

Using the resources of the Vidocq Society, which is dedicated to solving "cold cases" from around the country, and private donations, the sheriff's department removed Jane Doe's body from her grave in June 2004.

A year later, a forensic sculptor has re-created the woman's face and head.

Because some hair remained with the woman's body, officials knew she was blonde. However, Frank Bender, a founder of the Vidocq Society, used charts of facial tissue thickness and other information, as well as his artistic sense, to create the bust.

"I feel very confident that what I put out there will ring a bell," Bender said. "I wouldn't release it if I weren't very sure it looks reasonably like her."

"It's a balance of art and science, said Bender, who once created an age-enhanced bust of a murder suspect that is credited with leading to the man's capture.

Before Bender could begin his work, Walter Birkby, a forensic anthropologist at the Human Identification Laboratory in Tucson, Ariz., spent three to four weeks piecing together the woman's skull. It had been crushed when her grave collapsed sometime in the past 50 years.

That collapse turned what should have been a four- or five-hour job into a two-day ordeal. Volunteering her time, deputy coroner Beth Conour spent that time stretched across a ladder above the grave, reaching through the rungs to brush off and retrieve the bone fragments.

"The skull was in small pieces," Conour said.

In the attempt to identify the woman, Pelle will send a photograph of the bust to national missing-persons databases and Web sites, he said. When she was killed, such technology did not exist; files on missing people were kept at local law-enforcement agencies, shared only via telephone or telegraph, Pelle said.

Frederick Bornhofen, the Vidocq Society's chairman, said this is the oldest case the society has been involved with.

"Hopefully, what'll happen is that someone will recognize this young lady and bring it to the sheriff's attention, Bornhofen said.

Bender and other members of the Vidocq Society donated their time for the case.

Just as the Boulder community came together in 1954 to provide the young woman with a proper funeral, grave and headstone, community members are financing the current search for the woman's identity.

Silvia Pettem, a local historian, learned about the case during a "Meet the Spirits" event in 1996, she said.

I don't think anybody should have to go to their grave without a name, Pettem said.

Through the Boulder History Museum, Pettem began raising money for the cause. Pelle was reluctant to spend public funds on a 50-year-old investigation, he said. So far, the department has incurred incidental expenses for the case, Pelle said.

Expenses still will accumulate, however, as DNA tests are conducted to see who Jane Doe belongs to, Pelle said. The DNA recovered from her body will have to be compared with a member of her mother's family, such as a sibling or the child of a sister, if one is found, Pelle said.

Investigators have spoken to a Nebraska family that is missing a family member, but DNA tests in that case have not yet been conducted, Pelle said. Another family already has been ruled out as a match.

"From the onset, we knew solving the case would be a longshot," Pelle said.