Howard, Dorothy Gay

In 1954, Boulderites were shocked by the brutal murder of an unidentified young woman. After a futile attempt to establish her identity, as well as that of her killer, citizens donated funds for the woman’s burial in Columbia Cemetery. She’s still there today, with “Jane Doe” engraved on
her headstone.
Police didn’t have much to go on. Two male CU students hiking along Boulder Creek below Boulder Falls found her body lying on rocks at the bottom of a 29-foot embankment.
“At first we thought it was a store window dummy,” one of the students was quoted as saying. “We didn’t think it could possibly be a human body.” But it was. They jumped in their car, rode into town, and returned with a skeptical sheriff.
All identification had been removed from the slender young victim, estimated to have been 20 years old. She had been stripped, beaten, and left
to die, and then was exposed to the elements for three or four days. All that remained of her personal belongings were three bobby pins in her long reddish-blonde hair.
There were no fillings in her teeth, so there could be no dental records. The only clue was a scar from an appendectomy.
Police combed Boulder Canyon and nearby mountain areas for her clothing,but nothing was ever found. Requests for missing persons went out all over the country. Several parents, whose own daughters were missing, traveled to Boulder, but no one could identify her.