Jane Doe, South St. Vrain Canyon June 2006 CO.
Not the first ‘Jane Doe' By HEATHER PARK Colorado Daily Staff Thursday, June 8, 2006 8:47 PM MDT The recent discovery of a badly-decomposed body is proof that history repeats itself in the form of bad horror movie plots. The unidentified female body, which was found in the South St. Vrain Canyon last Sunday afternoon, triggers a flashback to the similar case of “Jane Doe,” a murdered woman who was found by the banks of Boulder Creek in 1954. “The circumstances are exactly the same as the 1954 case,” said Silvia Pettem, a Boulder freelance writer who has covered the Jane Doe case since September 2003. A preliminary autopsy has identified the more recent body as an adult female. Her height and age were undetermined due to the extent of decomposition. The Boulder County Sheriff's Office is treating the case as a homicide investigation due to the circumstances in which the body was found. “If you consider the fact that there is an unidentified body found in the Forest Service area that has obviously been there for quite some time. In and of itself, it is suspicious. It is not an area that is particularly frequented,” said Cmdr. Phil West of the Boulder County Sheriff's Department. West said there are other reasons to believe this most recent case is a homicide, but he states that the information cannot be revealed at this time. The Boulder Sheriff's Office is trying to match the body with one of the 350 women reported missing since November in Colorado. A second autopsy that took place on Wednesday will uncover physical characteristics, such as height, hair color, and other identifying features such as dental work and old fractures that could help investigators. The results of the second autopsy have not been released to the public. Boulder County Coroner Thomas Faure was unavailable for comment for this story by the Colorado Daily's deadline late Thursday afternoon. Late Thursday, the Sheriff's Department released additional information in the case. It provided photographs and a description of a ring found on the body, in hopes that someone might identify its origin or make a connection with the unknown victim. Investigators are still searching the scene in South St. Vrain Canyon, 3.5 miles southwest of Lyons, north and west of Boulder, for clues that could lead to uncovering the woman's cause of death. As West examines the case, he acknowledges the similarities between this case and the 1954 Jane Doe case. “Some of the similarities are pretty striking. The fact that the body was found by a couple of hikers, that she is unidentified, she had been there for quite some time and the situation was alongside a creek - it is eerie in that respect,” he said. However, West predicts that this case will be solved much quicker than the Jane Doe case, which remains unsolved after 52 years. “The tools that we have now with making identification, the advances in forensic science, DNA, the computer systems where we can exchange information with other law enforcement agencies, not only locally and in state, but across the nation, really promote the likelihood that we'll be able to identify her in the next few weeks,” he said. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, established in 1967, is currently working with the Sheriff's Department to analyze forensic evidence for this case. “In a case like this, we will mostly be working with DNA,” said Lance Clem, spokesman for the CBI. Clem explains that the numerous advancements in DNA will help solve this case. This includes quantity of DNA that is needed to conduct a DNA test and the repository of DNA profiles from convicted criminals, which gives the CBI the ability to match the evidence with criminal DNA profiles and databases. West said the investigation will also be helped by the Sheriff's Department's increased competency and all the changes it has undergone in the last half-century. “We have more experience with dealing with death investigations than they did in the 1950's,” West said. “The Sheriff's Office of that time consisted of five to six people and I've got that number of people working on this case alone.” Pettem, who is currently writing a book about the Jane Doe case, takes this new case as an opportunity to reflect on the social changes that Boulder has undergone in the more than 50 years since the 1954 case. “Boulder was a much smaller town then and there was a much greater interest. The community came together, donated money for her gravestone, sent flowers. They embraced her as one of their own,” said Pettem, “It is a lot less personal now. Missing persons are all put in some database somewhere.” The Jane Doe case is scheduled to air on the television program “America's Most Wanted” on July 8. Information about that case may also be found at www.boulderjanedoe.com. To contact Heather Park in regard to this story, please call (303) 443-6272, ext .113, or visit editor@coloradodaily.com. http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2006/06/08/news/c_u_and_boulder/news1.txt