To help identify this woman, contact Albuquerque police Detective Rich Lewis at 768-2404 or rlewis@cabq.gov. Or call Crime Stoppers at 843-STOP to remain anonymous.

Albuquerque police hope to identify victim with a forensic artist's sketch based on this skull, shown here with markers used by the artist to determine the depth of the facial tissue.

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The woman has a secret identity.

It's soaked in her shirt, dirty and bloody.

It's in her bones, dry and scattered in the West Side desert.

But is it in this face? Is this her face?

For the first time in Albuquerque, a face has been reconstructed from the skull of a Jane Doe homicide victim.

Detectives hope the sight of it and her distinctive shirt will stir up a memory of the woman and move someone to call in with her name.

Detective Rich Lewis with the Albuquerque Police Department's Cold Case Unit would be happy to get even a hint of her identity, residence or history.

"We're not going to give up until we identify her," Lewis said. "I'm hoping someone sees this and says, `That might be my sister, my daughter, my wife.' That is what I'm hoping to get."

When that happens, Lewis said the case has enough clues that it should be solvable.

That is one reason Lewis and Detective Mary Brazas, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department forensic artist, selected the case from among the estimated 300 John and Jane Does waiting for their attention.

"This is a workable case," Lewis said. "There's going to be leads. I don't think it's a random crime."

Lewis has theories about what type of crime it was. He knows how the woman was killed.

But he isn't releasing details in order to weed out tips that aren't viable.

"We are being very careful," Lewis said. "And Mary (Brazas) has been meticulous with the reconstruction, because we know this may be the only shot to reach the family."

Reconstruction

The skeleton was found in early 2005. Brazas started reconstructing the face in the fall of 2006.

She is trained in making sketches of suspects based on witness memories. She can touch up pictures of recently deceased people to help in identification.

And now she's reconstructed a face.

To start, she applied markers to the skull that indicate how deep the flesh would have been on various sections of the face.

The depths are determined by a science, albeit not an exact science, that uses gender, race, age and other details as guidelines, Brazas said.

She then hand-drew the face using a computer system.

Brazas said the woman had long straight hair, but because detectives believe the body was of mixed race, she provided images of other hairstyles.

"I just hope she gets identified; I really, really do," Brazas said. "It's time for her to go home."

Other clues

Reconstruction of a missing person, though, is more than just the face.

The woman's skeleton was found in the desert on the city's far West Side on Feb. 25, 2005, by a hiker.

"She wasn't wearing clothes that made me think she was a prostitute," Lewis said.

This woman was found in a distinctive T-shirt. After washing it with distilled water, Lewis said he and Brazas found the words Just Move It.

Lewis tracked the shirt to a campaign advocating healthy lifestyles for American Indians, specifically the Navajo Nation.

Her T-shirt was likely handed out during a race in Chinle, Ariz., in late May 2004.

With hours of work and help from the FBI in Gallup, Brazas determined the shirt also said, in Navajo, T' áá hwó áji t' éego, which translates as It's up to you, and the words Din‚ Nation.

Lewis believes the woman received the shirt from the race, a subsequent event or through a center that got leftover shirts. He does not think she picked it up at a thrift store, but said he can't rule that out.

Ultimately, he thinks the shirt is a clue to her identity.

He even got a list of the 3,000 people who ran the Chinle race or participated in related events and tracked them all down.

DNA hit and miss

Lewis also entered the woman's mitochondrial DNA - the DNA shared through a mother's lineage and usually used by detectives to loosely identify relatives - into a national database.

And he entered her dental records and other information.

But none of that does any good unless a missing-person report is filed or if a female relative of the woman has submitted a DNA sample in anticipation of a body being found.

In the summer of 2007, the DNA got a hit.

A woman estimated at between 14 and 23 years old stole a car in San Juan County in February 2002 from a home just outside the Navajo Nation border, Lewis said.

The young woman sped into Farmington, crossed into oncoming traffic and crashed.

She was burned beyond recognition, but her mitochondrial DNA was put into the national Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.

"The match means they could be (from) sisters to zero relation," Lewis said.

But with the Just Move It case's potential link to the Navajo Nation and the car crash victim's link to the Navajo Nation, Lewis thinks the DNA hit means something.

"Maybe a mom is missing two daughters," he said.

Many missing

The state Office of the Medical Investigator has accumulated about 350 John and Jane Doe cases since 1972.

Hundreds more come into the Albuquerque office a year, but at year's end between 94 and 98 percent are identified, said Amy Wyman, supervisor of investigations for the office.

Terry Coker works as an investigator for the office, coordinating the collection of fingerprints, DNA, dental records and X-rays.

"You work on all of them and say, `This is someone who has someone out there,' " Coker said.

Finding their survivors takes a lot of work.

DNA is uploaded to CODIS with the hope that a family member has submitted DNA or has been in the criminal justice system.

Since the office started DNA comparisons in 2002, about 10 cases have been solved, Wyman said. Currently, 160 cases with DNA have been submitted.

Dental records are uploaded to a database, too, but that is notoriously inefficient. The office is working to streamline the national database. Results from that comparison take about a year - if a report has been filed, and if that report includes dental records, and if the report has been uploaded to the database.

Fingerprints are scanned, enlarged and then faxed to the FBI for comparison in their database.

"People are surprised by that" old-school method of communication between agencies, Coker said. "They think `CSI,' " referring to the crime-reconstruction TV show. "But we aren't `CSI.' "

Last chance

But none of the efforts to date have helped identify the woman in this case.

Lewis said if no one recognizes her from the Brazas' reconstruction, he plans to send letters to each of the 3,000 participants in the Chinle race.

"I'll write 3,000 letters and ask where their shirts are," Lewis said. "But this (reconstruction) is what I have left."

That is, he said, until she is identified.

"Then the real work begins," he said.