When A.C. Ralston’s older cousin went missing from Phoenix, Ariz. in 1954, the family hoped and prayed the 18-year-old beauty hit the road to pursue her Hollywood dream. Ralston was only 5 at the time of the disappearance and he remembers his cousin’s aspirations to be a model or movie star.

“She was beautiful,” Ralston said.

When Dorothy Gay Howard, her family called her Dot, disappeared, her family assumed as she came into young adulthood that she simply changed her name for the movies and would one day return home or at least contact them, said Ralston, who now lives in San Mateo.

But she never did.

At about the same time Howard went missing, a woman’s nude and battered body was found along a Boulder, Colo. creek April 8, 1954. Law officials were unable to identify the body that was eventually buried under a gravestone that reads “Jane Doe — April 1954 — Age About 20 Years.”

The case was closed on Jane Doe until 2004, when an aspiring writer and historian, Silvia Pettem, led an effort to identify the body. The skeletal remains of Jane Doe were exhumed to profile her DNA and create a facial reconstruction.

Jane Doe was reburied Sept. 9, 2008 with law enforcement officials still unsure of her identity.

But on Wednesday, Oct. 28, Boulder Sheriff Joe Pelle announced a positive identification of Jane Doe. Forensics determined the body to be that of Dorothy Gay Howard, Ralston’s long-lost cousin. Her DNA was matched to another member of the family.

Boulder police are speculating Howard’s killer may have been serial killer Harvey Glatman, executed in 1959 at San Quentin. Glatman, who confessed to killing three women, had served time in a Colorado state prison for violent assaults on women before Jane Doe was discovered, according to the Boulder Sheriff’s Office.

Howard’s parents and older sister are now dead, but she is survived by her younger sister Marlene, who is overwhelmed with sadness by the news, Ralston, 60, said.

“Her little sister was always looking for her. She mistakenly thought other women might be her sister,” Ralston said. “We were expecting to run into her at some point.”

The family, however, felt abandoned by the young woman, Ralston said.

“As we were growing up, we were wondering if she would ever come back,” he said.

Now that the truth about his cousin’s past has become clear, Ralston almost wishes he didn’t know what happened.

“It makes you sick. It’s so sad. It could have turned out a lot different than this. This is the worst,” he said. “It doesn’t help to know the truth. It’s best her parents didn’t find out, or her older sister. I’m so sad for her younger sister.”

Now that Ralston knows what happened to Howard, it has become important to him to find out who her killer is.

“If it was Glatman, he shouldn’t have ever been let out of jail to commit another crime like this. Too many times these things happen,” he said.

Glatman was known as the “The Lonely Hearts Killer” by the media.

Although Ralston is not necessarily relieved to know the truth, he does commend author Silvia Pettem for helping to solve the case.

“I commend her for her effort. But it also highlights that someone dropped the ball on this. It didn’t have to go this long without knowing who Jane Doe was,” Ralston said.

Pettem is the author of “Someone’s Daughter: In Search of Justice for Jane Doe,” published just a few days before police revealed Dorothy Gay Howard was the woman whose body lay beneath the gravestone whose identity remained a secret for 55 years.

Ralston has lived in San Mateo for 40 years and owns the Peninsula German Car Service on 17th Avenue. He was also the commanding officer of the San Mateo American Legion Post 82 for 13 years.

His memory is blurry from the days he was just 5 years old when he lived down the street from his aspiring movie-star cousin.

He remained close to her parents though, the two families left Phoenix after Howard’s disappearance and moved together to Scottsdale, Ariz. Howard’s father even drove out with Ralston’s family when they relocated to San Mateo 40 years ago.

It has been a while since he’s seen Dorothy’s little sister Marlene. He doesn’t keep in touch with that part of the family too much. He does hope Marlene is OK after hearing the tragic news, though. News he wishes he never had to hear.

Bill Silverfarb can be reached by e-mail: silverfarb@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.