The Boulder Colorado Sheriff's Office on Oct. 28, 2009, released this 1953 photograph of Dorothy Gay Howard of Phoenix, Ariz., who they have identified as a homicide victim known as Jane Doe since her death in April 1954. The battered and naked body of Jane Doe, an unidentified female homicide victim, was found along the banks of Boulder Creek near Boulder Falls, eight miles west of Boulder, on April 8, 1954. Despite an intensive investigation at the time, she was never identified. Her body was buried in Boulders Columbia Cemetery in a simple grave beneath a donated headstone that read 'Jane Doe - April 1954 - Age about 20 years.' According to Sheriff Joe Pelle Dr. Terry Melton, president and CEO of Mitotyping Technologies, LLC, of State College, Pennsylvania, confirmed that her lab had made a match between Jane Does DNA profile and that of a woman who thought the unidentified murder victim might be her long-lost sister.

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PHOENIX – A murdered young woman buried as Jane Doe in Colorado 55 years ago. An Arizona family puzzled and saddened as Dorothy Gay Howard's disappearance stretched into decades.

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Howard's younger sister, Marlene Howard Ashman, the last surviving member of the immediate family, was relieved last month when authorities announced the identification.

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"All these 55 years, I guess I learned as a child to put it in an abstract form so I could deal with it; it's easier to accept," Ashman said.

But the younger sister is grappling with the fact that Howard was murdered and is aching to know who killed her.

"Now that I know, it isn't so much that she died, but the horrible death," she said.

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At the time, the mystery made headlines across Colorado, and Boulder residents raised enough money to buy her a gravestone, which read "Jane Doe — April 1954 — Age About 20 Years."

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Meanwhile, Howard's grandniece Michelle Marie Fowler decided to contact Ainsworth after reading an article about Jane Doe and suspecting for years that Howard had been killed.

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Ainsworth said it was gratifying to tell Howard's family what had happened to her, but he now has a new focus.

"We know who she is, but there's still another mystery and that may be the biggest mystery of all, and that's who did it," Ainsworth said.

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Because of marks on her body, evidence at the scene and a passing reference Glatman made to a California police detective, Ainsworth's theory is that Glatman hit Howard with his car as she tried to get away. Now, Ainsworth just has to prove it.

Ashman said all she wants is justice for her sister.

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Petite and attractive with blond hair, Howard was the oldest of three sisters born in the Texas Panhandle. The girls' parents moved the family to Phoenix in 1942 for "greener pastures."

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Howard was working as a live-in nanny in Phoenix the last her family heard from her; they reported her missing when she didn't show up to take one of her sisters to the movies.

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Ashman still has a letter that her sister wrote to her parents soon before she disappeared.

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