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 JANE DOEA young woman, known only as "Jane Doe" (now believed to have been Katharine E. Farrand Dyer) was brutally beaten and left to die in April 1954 in a mountain canyon west of Boulder, Colorado. The local community raised the funds to bury her; then 50 years later they rallied again to exhume her skeletal remains, profile her DNA, and complete a facial reconstruction – all in the hopes that with today's advances in technology she can be identified and her remains returned to her family. In cemetery symbolism, the cinqfoil (a yellow wildflower with five petals) denotes a "beloved daughter." In 1954, a local monument company poignantly incorporated the flower's design into the inscription on the victim's gravestone. Although written many years ago, the words of Alexander Pope's "Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady" are equally appropriate for Jane Doe today – By foreign hands your dying eyes were closed. By foreign hands your comely limbs composed. By foreign hands your humble grave adorned. By strangers honored and by strangers mourned. Left: Flowers donated by Sturtz & Copeland Florists on the 54th anniversary of Jane Doe's burial. |
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For more information on the progress of the case, as well as articles dating from 1954 to the present, go to Silvia Pettem's other site, www.boulderjanedoe.com. See also the Boulder County Sheriff's Office Press Release of April 18, 2008. and the 9NEWS video: "Detectives hope photograph will solve 54-year-old mystery of Jane Doe." When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). |
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