Over the years, Patricia May would study the posters of missing people in the post office, wondering if one day she might spot her daughter's picture.

May never knew what to make of her eldest child's long absence. She always kept an eye peeled and an ear cocked for any possible news of the woman who disappeared at age 29.

Kathleen Goebeler in a photo taken around 1983, three years before she disappeared in April of 1986. Her death is now under investigation as a homicide.

When television mentioned the discovery of an unidentified body, May would perk up. She would hear rumors -- always discounted -- of her daughter being seen in a Carnegie bar. She wondered if her child joined a cult.

May tried to maintain hope. But it didn't always work. She sometimes allowed herself at her worst moments that maybe, just maybe, her daughter was dead.

Still, as one year slipped into the next and the years grew to a decade, and the decade stretched to nearly two, May remained optimistic even in the face of unlikely odds.

"I wasn't really thinking anything bad happened," May said earlier this month from the living room of her Stowe home, still digesting the news delivered six weeks earlier that her daughter, Kathleen Goebeler, actually had been murdered long ago. "I still had hope when they called me. I just was hoping there was a chance."

On May 20, 1986, about a month after May saw her daughter for the last time, the owner of a railroad company in rural Illinois went to inspect abandoned property about 130 miles west of Chicago. At 12:30 p.m. he stumbled over a decomposed body in a sparsely wooded area about 40 yards from what is now Interstate 88. It was on the other side of a barbed wire fence; someone had taken pains to put it there.

Illinois State Police were notified. They quickly determined the death was a homicide, said Sgt. Jerome Costliow, one of the two lead investigators.

The remains belonged to a white woman. She was between 4-feet-11 and 5-feet-3 and about 115 pounds . She had brown hair. Her right ear was pierced. She had an intrauterine device and had given birth at least once. All her wisdom teeth and two molars were gone.

Also gone was any identification, clothing or jewelry. The mystery woman had no personal effects, no driver's license, no credit card. In short, she had no name.

There wasn't much to go on.

Kathleen Ann Johnson -- called Kathy by her mother -- was born Nov. 12, 1956. She was May's first child and the only daughter among three siblings.

Today, May's memories of her daughter and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are hazy. So much time has passed that she answers many questions with "it's hard to say."

May, 63, recalled that her daughter didn't like school and never earned her diploma. She had a big heart toward her brothers and would sometimes take the youngest from his crib and tuck him into bed with her.

The two women of the family were close, but after Kathleen moved out of the house and then married Rodney Goebeler in 1974, May was not privy to the details of her daughter's life.

"A lot of times, kids don't tell their parents a lot of stuff," May said.

The marriage didn't last. Rodney Goebeler filed for divorce in 1977, and the split became official the next year.

Asked why they divorced, Goebeler, of Carnegie, blamed his ex-wife's "wildness."

"She was a pretty wild girl," Goebeler said recently. "Drugs, alcohol, partying, going out, not being the way she should have been. She was young."

Kathleen Goebeler had other troubles. Allegheny County Common Pleas Court records show that Pittsburgh police charged Goebeler in 1977 with burglary and criminal mischief after she entered an apartment building in the West End and caused $850 in damage.

Goebeler was convicted only of the criminal mischief charge. A judge ordered her to pay restitution and released her on a year's probation.

In 1978, Goebeler had a daughter, who now lives in New York. At some point after the birth, Goebeler went to live with another man in New Jersey for a time. She would see her mother sporadically. But she would never forget to call in September on May's birthday or for Christmas.

On April 1, 1986, May's ailing husband died. Goebeler was there that day. The women sat together on May's porch. "She had her head on my lap saying, 'I love you so much, Mom,' " May said.

During the next two weeks or so, May saw her daughter here and there. On the visit that would be their last, Goebeler asked to borrow cigarette money while she awaited an income tax refund.

May, who was on her way to Canada with one of her sons for a much-needed break after her husband's death, dropped her daughter off at a nearby convenience store.

They said goodbye, and May drove off. September came and went, and Goebeler did not make her traditional birthday call. Christmas was the same. May grew worried. In January 1987, she filed a missing persons report with police.

It took 17 years for her to hear any news.

While Illinois State Police tried to put a name to their victim, the woman was buried as a "Jane Doe" at Oak Knoll Memorial Park in a plot called the Garden of the Good Shepherd. Two small trees were planted nearby. A flat bronze grave marker reads "one of God's children."

Costliow refuses to say how the woman died, claiming that publicizing the information might hamper his investigation. The Whiteside County, Ill., coroner's office no longer has a copy of the case file. May said she might have been told by state police that Goebeler was asphyxiated. Costliow said he did not tell May that, but added, "I'm not saying that's not a possibility, but there's other possiblities, too."

State police sought help from the medical examiner's office in New Jersey, whose expert constructed a bust of the victim from her skull. When the Internet boom took off, a picture of the bust along with information about the case was posted online.

There was one more clue state police had: fingerprints from the woman's left hand.

Five times, starting in 1990, Costliow had the woman's fingerprint information entered into various law enforcement databases to see if there was a match from any arrests in the U.S. or Canada. He also scoured printouts from the National Crime Information Center, which carries information about missing people.

But the police department that took May's missing persons report did not input the case in to NCIC. Costliow refused to identify the department; Stowe police Chief Frank Marciw said it wasn't his. That oversight did not shock Costliow; at the time, Goebeler was an adult, and there was no hard information she was in danger.

Several times, state police thought they had promising leads on an identification. But each time, either fingerprint information or dental records did not match.

Without a name, Costliow had a dead-end case on his hands. In September, he spoke with an FBI agent about his quest.

"I said, 'I just had a hunch that the gal's fingerprints are out there.' " Costliow said.

The agent suggested inputting the Jane Doe's information into a powerful fingerprint database known as the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It checks a repository of 46 million sets of fingerprints dating to 1924.

The assignment went to FBI forensic examiner Kimberly Edwards. After a painstaking search, Edwards found matching fingerprints on file. Their owner: Kathleen Goebeler.

Costliow got the news Jan. 2."If she had not been arrested," Costliow said, "we would not know who she is."

With a name finally to put to his victim's face, Costliow enlisted a state police intelligence officer to track down Goebeler's family.

Three days later, he called May. Costliow didn't tell her anything at first. He said he would call back shortly, wanting to make sure May had a relative close by.

May's sister and her husband came over. At Costliow's behest, two Stowe police officers arrived, surprising the family. Within a half hour, Costliow called back.

"He did ask me if I had a daughter, Kathleen. I was wondering why, you know, how he knew I had a daughter," May said. "He just told me he had found her, they had found the body May 20, 1986, and that she was decomposed, no clothing."

Since getting the news, May hasn't slept well. She is smoking more than usual and frets that her workers' compensation income can't cover the cost of putting a marker with Goebeler's name at her gravesite, much less what it would take to exhume the body to bring her home. May wonders if her daughter suffered. She can still hardly believe that her Kathy was murdered.

"It's like a mystery to me," May said. "It's like watching a movie."

During the first week of February, Costliow and his partner, Paula Vercillo, drove to Allegheny County. They served three subpoenas locally and one in Virginia. Costliow would not specify who was served with papers, but said the subpoenas were meant to help establish a timeline of Goebeler's whereabouts. The investigators also interviewed about two dozen people.

When Costliow was in town, he looked at pictures of Goebeler kept by her mother in a small, plastic container.

"This is all I have left of her," May said, bringing out the box.

There is Kathy throwing the bouquet at her wedding.

There is Kathy, perhaps 5 or 6 years old, dressed up for the holidays and looking agape at Santa.

There is a black and white photograph of 2-year-old Kathy. She is standing ankle-deep in a lake in Slippery Rock at her great-grandmother's cottage, a fishing pole in her hands. She is bare-chested and has blond pigtails. She looks happy and innocent. Who killed Kathleen Goebeler? That is the key question investigators are asking.

But there is another question, one that might be harder to answer.

Why did the little girl with golden pigtails and a lifetime of possibilities one day end up naked and dead on a lonely patch of land 580 miles away from her home? How in the world did she get there from here?

First Published: February 23, 2004, 5:00 a.m.