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Authorities Encouraged In 1954 Cold Murder Case

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Apr 23, 2008 6:00 am US/Mountain

Authorities Encouraged In 1954 Cold Murder Case

Reporting
Shaun Boyd
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) ― An unsolved murder case more than a half-century old could be closer to being solved as authorities try to match a photo of a missing woman with a casting reconstructed from the skull of a "Jane Doe."

A forensic anthropologist has said he can't rule out that the woman, found dead in April 1954 in Boulder County, was Katharine Farrand Dyer, reported missing to Denver police in March 1954. Todd Fenton at Michigan State University super-imposed a photo of Dyer to compare the photo to a likeness of a woman constructed from pieces of a skull exhumed from Jane Doe's grave.

The Boulder County Sheriff's Department called the results promising in light of other circumstantial evidence. Authorities are circulating the photos to try to spur more leads.

Boulder historian Silvia Pettem helped persuade authorities in 2004 to reopen the case after spotting Jane Doe's headstone in a Boulder cemetery and researching the case. She became interested in Jane Doe in 1996 and wrote about the unknown woman, whose gravestone reads "Jane Doe. April 1954. Age about 20 years."

Pettem also recruited the help of the Vidocq Society, a Philadelphia-based group of forensic analysts who volunteer to help solve cold cases. The community donated money to pay for exhuming the body and other expenses.

A gypsum-and-fiberglass bust of a young woman using Jane Doe's skull was unveiled in 2005.

"When somebody's life is taken and particularly under these circumstances, as egregious as they were, there's a commitment to bringing the suspect to justice," said Cmdr. Phil West of the Boulder Sheriff's Department.

Two men walking along Boulder Creek west of Boulder found the woman's nude body in April 1954. She was beaten and left to die at the bottom of a highway embankment.

Residents raised enough money to bury her in a private cemetery plot marked with a small granite headstone.

Tuesday, Pettem visited Jane Doe's grave again on the anniversary of the day she was buried thanks to the generosity of people in Boulder.

"Nobody knew who she was," Pettem said. "The headline in the paper was 'Will This Grave Be A Mystery.'"

Authorities weren't able to identify her. Former Boulder County Sheriff Art Everson suspected a serial killer from California who was executed in 1959.

The case received national publicity, but generated no solid leads until Pettem found information about Dyer, a 27-year-old Denver woman reported missing in March 1954. She was separated from her husband, Jimmie Dyer, and living alone in a boarding house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Pettem located a photograph of Dyer taken by her husband. Dyer's marriage affidavit shows she was born Oct. 14, in San Antonio, Texas, but there's no record of her birth in the county records and no record of her getting a social security number. She was married in 1949 in Prescott, Ariz.

Authorities haven't been able to identify any of Dyer's family and her husband is dead.

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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