Meet Convicted 35-Count Rabbit Abuser
'Jane Doe' Body is Identified 55 Years After Murder
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 8:00 am
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Pettem, a mother of two women who were 19 and 23 at the time, instantly felt a connection. "When I learned that she had been a murder victim and her killer not only took her life but also her identity, I became indignant that Jane Doe was buried without a name," Pettem writes on her website...
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| Silvia Pettem petitioned to have Jane Doe's body exhumed |
A history columnist at The Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado, Pettem put her investigative skills to use and began pouring over old clippings about Jane Doe's grizzly 1954 murder.
At around 6 p.m. on April 6 of that year, two Colorado University students were walking through the woods and taking pictures when they stumbled across a body lying on the rocky bank of the Colorado Creek. It was a girl, around the age of 20. She had reddish hair and her 5 foot 2 body -- which was naked -- was badly decomposed. Her teeth protruded from her face, half eaten by animals -- half-smiling, half-screaming at them. When police arrived at the scene, they estimated that the girl had been there for over a week. "There is no doubt she was murdered," Art Everson, Boulder County's Sheriff at the time, told the Rocky Mountain News.
An autopsy later showed that the girl had been thrown by the river when she was still alive. She'd been badly beaten and raped. Her skull was fractured. So were her arms, jaw, and ribs. Still, they could not identify the body. The only evidence left on her body were three bobby pins left in her hair.
At first, police were convinced they'd found the body of Katherine Dyer -- a local girl who'd gone missing. But it wasn't. For days, investigators were flooded with groundless tips. Some calls were from as far away as Texas. One man -- an AWOL airman driving through Oklahoma in a bloodied Ford sedan -- was picked up for the murder, but was quickly released when he provided alibis.
Within two weeks, the trail went completely cold. The girl's attacker was never found and her body was never identified. She was buried in an anonymous grave in Boulder. One women placed red galioli at the grave with a card that read "to Someone's Daughter."
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| Police believe her killer was Harvey Glatman, who was executed in 1959 |
After watching a television program in which the body of an unidentified murder victim was exhumed and identified in Tennessee, Pettem petitioned Boulder County law enforcement to do the same. She agreed to raise funds for the project by starting a non-profit and enlisting forensics experts as volunteers. In 2004 -- on the 50th anniversary of the case -- the body was finally exhumed and the girl's DNA was extracted.
For the next four years, researchers followed countless leads as to the identity of the young red-head who'd been left to die that April day. But each trail quickly went cold. Only one major breakthrough occurred. Katherine Dyer -- who was long assumed to be 'Jane Doe' -- was found living in a nursing home in Australia. It appeared that Pettem was only one step further from her goal.
Then, in 2008, she received an e-mail. It was from a woman who claimed to be a relative of the girl who'd been so viciously killed more than fifty years earlier. She'd been following the story on Pettem's website and wanted to know how she could help. Pettem told her that a bit of her DNA might work. The woman agreed -- only if she could remain anonymous.
Last week, after analyzing the woman's DNA and comparing it to Jane Doe's, researchers finally had a match. After fifty-five years, Jane Doe had her identity back. Her real name was Dorothy Gay Howard. And she wasn't from Boulder -- but from Phoenix, Arizona. The mystery was solved -- or, at least, part of it.
Howard's murderer has still not been established, though the details of her killing match up with the methods of Harvey Glatman, a serial killer who was living in Boulder around the time Howard went missing. Glatman was executed in 1959 for three similar crimes.
Next month, Pettem's book "Someone's Daughter: In Search of Justice for Jane Doe" will be released. She is also trying to raise funds to buy Howard a proper headstone.
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