Division Chief Phil West said that in a "good news, bad news" development, Katharine Farrand Dyer is alive and well and living in Australia.

In 1954, Dyer was living at a boarding house at 1118 Washington St. in Denver. She disappeared from the boarding house on March 26, 1954.

"Jane Doe" was found in Boulder Canyon just a few days later on April 8, 1954.

West said that diligent research by Boulder author and historian Silvia Pettem, along with a "bit of dumb luck," located Dyer, 84, through an Internet contact in Queensland, Australia.

"While it's a relief to know that Katherine is alive, it's also discouraging in that we are back to square one with essentially no viable candidates for who 'Jane Doe' might be," said West, operations division chief at the Sheriff's Department.

The Boulder Sheriff's Department re-opened the investigation of the murder in February 2004 at Pettem's request.

The young woman found in Boulder Canyon — Boulder's "Jane Doe" — was in her early 20s with strawberry-blond hair. After being beaten to death, she was stripped naked and tossed off a steep embankment into the creek below.

Dyer was slender and blond, like "Jane Doe."

Before she married Jimmie Dyer in 1949, she went by the name of Katharine Farrand.

Boulder sheriff's Detective Steve Ainsworth, who has worked the "Jane Doe" murder, said Dyer was "quite a mysterious person.

"Even before she disappeared, there is not a whole lot known about her life. I think, for some reason, she didn't want to be found," Ainsworth said last year.

West said today that circumstantial evidence led to a strong supposition that "Jane Doe" and Katharine Farrand Dyer were one and the same.

He said detectives and Pettem spent a significant amount of time attempting to locate relatives of Dyer in the hope of establishing a connection.

West said the connection was established last week, when Dyer's caretaker in Australia found an address book among Dyer's belongings and queried the owner's name through the Internet.

From there, she discovered Pettem's "Jane Doe" website and that the woman she knew as "Barbara" was known by several other names, including Katharine Farrand Dyer.

West said that to protect the privacy of "Ms. Dyer" and her family, she Sheriff's Department will not release her birth name or the other aliases she has lived under.

West emphasized that the Sheriff Department's investigation into the "Jane Doe" murder remains open. Anyone with any information is asked to contact Ainsworth at 303-441-3627.

Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com