Genetic samples taken from the body of a young unknown woman killed in Boulder County shortly after Embrey disappeared are not a match with Embrey. And perhaps oddly enough, for a family that has for generations fruitlessly searched for their missing loved one, they are happy.

"We were actually very relieved," said Jennifer Kitt, Embrey's great-

niece, who has continued the search for Twylia that her great-grandparents started. "For my grandmother (Twylia's sister), you can just feel a burden has been lifted. She didn't want to feel that her sister had gone in such a horrible way and laid there for so long."

The young woman found dead in Boulder Canyon in April 1954 for now remains Jane Doe, just as it says on her headstone. She was a woman of no more than 20, detectives said, with strawberry blond hair. She had been beaten to death, stripped naked and tossed off a steep embankment to the creek below.

Learning her identity and catching her killer were top priorities at the time. Over the years, the case had been almost forgotten when Silvia Pettem, a Boulder County historian, began taking an interest in 1996.

In the time since, Jane Doe's body has been exhumed, her skull reconstructed and, from that, an image of her face has emerged.

Embrey's family contacted Pettem after learning about the Jane Doe case to see if it might give them a conclusion to their search.

Boulder County sheriff's Lt. Phil West isn't surprised that it wasn't a match, even though he is disappointed.

"It just seemed improbable that after 50 years, one of the first names we would check would be a hit," he said.

And so now, the twin mysteries brought briefly together - who was Jane Doe and where is Twylia May - will go in different directions.

Embrey's family plans to continue searching for her. Embrey, just a teenager, was last seen getting into a yellow Cadillac with Nevada plates and bull horns on its hood in 1953. Kitt said she wants to check more in Nevada to see if she can find Embrey. She and the rest of the family are hopeful that she is still alive somewhere with a family.

"We want her to have had a great life," Kitt said.

Boulder sheriff's detectives will continue working on their mystery, as well. But West said the leads are not promising. Maybe as many as a dozen. All long shots.

"But we're really looking for that real long shot that somebody somewhere is going to pick this up and see the picture and say, 'Maybe that's my missing great-aunt or sister or cousin,"' West said. "We just really need to get as many people as possible to see that picture."

And for Pettem, mysteries, though separate, have intertwined nonetheless. She will continue searching for Jane Doe's identity, even as she adopts the new challenge of helping Embrey's family find Twylia.

She repeats the mantra of the Jane Doe search, which could work just as well for Twylia May Embrey:

"We need to keep this story out to as large an audience as possible," she said, "because somebody somewhere is missing this woman."

Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.