Boulder Colorado Jane Doe identified from April 8, 1954 Dorothy Gay Howard,

n 1954, Boulder community members pooled their resources in order to give deserved respect to a murder victim — an unidentified young woman who was dumped down an embankment in Boulder Canyon.

Contributors raised funds to buy “Jane Doe” a plot, as well as a gravestone, in Columbia Cemetery, on 9th Street. The generosity of these citizens made it possible, more than a half-century later, to identify the victim and put her real name on her grave.

On April 8, 1954, when the fruit trees in Boulder were just beginning to bloom, two young men, both freshmen students at the University of Colorado, finished their last midterms before Easter vacation. Eager to get out of their classrooms, they drove into the mountains to go hiking.

From the Boulder Falls parking lot, the students hiked downstream along Boulder Creek, and stopped dead in their tracks when they came across the corpse of a naked young woman.

They jumped into their car, sped down the canyon, and rushed into the sheriff’s office (then located on the first floor of the Boulder County Courthouse on Pearl Street), told Sheriff Art Everson of their discovery and Everson called Coroner George Howe.

Before long, news of the “mystery woman” was splashed across the front pages of local newspapers. But, no one came forward to identify the victim.

After “Jane Doe” spent two long weeks in the morgue, city officials announced their intention to bury her in an unmarked grave.

A Camera reader then started a fund drive by stating, “It would be a darn shame when someone’s daughter is to be buried in a pauper’s grave, and we decided we would do something about it.”

In addition to raising money for the victim’s burial, the community members arranged for her funeral and a grave-side service.

At Howe Mortuary, an organist played familiar hymns. “Jane Doe’s” casket was banked with red gladiolus and other flowers, and a pillow had been placed under her head. Rev. Paul Fife of Boulder’s Sacred Heart of Jesus Church led the service.

Pallbearers then gently placed “Jane Doe” in a Cadillac hearse for the short ride to the cemetery where mourners re-grouped around the newly purchased gravesite. The Reverend then gave the victim his final blessing.

“We don’t know who she was or what religion she followed,” added Coroner Howe. “We can only do what we think is right.”

At the time, a local monument company donated a headstone that simply read, “Jane Doe, April 1954, Age About 20 Years.” That simple granite slab kept her memory alive for more than half a century.

In 2004, the Boulder community again came together and accepted cash and in-kind donations to exhume her remains for DNA comparison. She was identified, in 2009, as Dorothy Gay Howard, from Phoenix, Arizona.

Howard now has a new gravestone that has been combined with the original one for “Jane Doe.” Family members and the rest of us (her extended family) still visit her grave.

After 55 years, Boulder Jane Doe's story finally coming together – The ...
https://www.denverpost.com/.../after-55-years-boulder-jane-does-story-finally-coming...

Nov 14, 2009 - This undated photo provided by the family of Dorothy Gay Howard shows Howard when she was 15 years old. The Phoenix woman ...

Dorothy Gay “Dot” Howard
Birth 26 Mar 1936
Pampa, Gray County, Texas, USA
Death Apr 1954 (aged 18)
Boulder, Boulder County, Colorado, USA
Burial
Columbia Cemetery
Boulder, Boulder County, Colorado, USA

The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office identified its famed Jane Doe — an 18-year-old woman who was found naked and badly beaten on the banks of Boulder Creek near Boulder Falls on April 8, 1954 — as Dorothy “Dot” Gay Howard.