(See the August 20, 2009 media release from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office.)

The revelation occurred when a Queensland, Australia, resident moved an 84-year-old woman known to her as “Barbara Jones” into a nursing home. Prior to the move, the resident reread “Barbara’s” old faded address book and a divorce decree—belonging to “Katharine Farrand Dyer.”

Unfamiliar with the name, the resident and her sister started an internet search which led them to www.silviapettem.com, with archived articles from 1954, as well as many recently published articles that speculated that Katharine Farrand Dyer may have been the Jane Doe murder victim.

The Queensland residents then emailed Pettem, explaining that they had the address book as well as separation and divorce documents that proved Katharine’s post-1954 existence.

“Eliminating a lead in a cold case is progress,” said Pettem. “This new information is intriguing, and we would like to know more, but my fellow researchers and I are refocused on our initial purpose—to identify Jane Doe.”

Pettem and her internet-connected team of researchers had documented Katharine’s life from 1948 through 1954. Then, in March 1954, the young woman’s paper trail stopped abruptly, and the Denver Police Department filed her as a missing person—just 10 days before two college students found Jane Doe’s body. 

With the newfound information from Katharine’s address book, Pettem is now in contact with Katharine’s brother and sister in Virginia. The sister described Katharine as “adventuresome, with a love of horses and a yearning to live in the West.” She stated that “Katharine” was not her birth name, but that she had adopted it because friends compared her looks to that of actress Katharine Hepburn.

The family had lost contact with Katharine throughout the years and had never heard of Boulder Jane Doe, but once they got over the shock of learning their family member had been a missing person, as well as a suspected victim in a homicide, they were able to fill in some of the gaps.

The sister (now age 79) revealed that Katharine had personal reasons to leave Denver when she did, and she then spent the next several months in Virginia. The sisters have not seen each other since 1955—a separation of 54 years— and they are in the process of re-establishing contact.

After leaving Virginia, Katharine moved to California, then Hawaii, and finally, in 1963, to Australia where she married again and became an Australian citizen. She had one child, a daughter, who is now deceased.

“Katharine’s story, as unusual as it may be, has similarities to that of Twylia May Embrey, another woman once thought to have been Jane Doe,” said Pettem. “Finally located three weeks after she died, Twylia, too, had changed her names and started a new life far from home. The Jane Doe case brought closure to her family, and I hope it will do so for Katharine’s family, as well.”