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A New Jersey classmate and a Utah genealogy sleuth are helping bring a murdered Utah woman's remains back home.

In February, a man walked by a Fruit Heights hillside and discovered the skull of Theresa Rose Greaves, a 23-year-old woman from New Jersey who went missing Aug. 5, 1983. But as detectives delved into the mystery of her murder, they were faced with a second problem: They couldn't find her family to help them lay Greaves to rest.

"They had a real difficult situation on their hands. It was very hard to find people because it had been so long and everybody had moved away," said Scott Fisher, a Fruit Heights resident and host of the nationally syndicated genealogy radio show "Extreme Genes."

That changed Wednesday night, when the sheriff's office finally reached a cousin and uncle in Florida. But getting there was one of the most difficult investigations Fisher says he's ever joined.

From day one, Fisher felt invested in Greaves' case; her bones were just down the road from his house.

"I have ridden past that site every day for decades," Fisher said. "So basically I offered to help. Like Liam Neeson, I told them I have a special set of skills."

On Aug. 5, 1983, Greaves left the Woods Cross mobile home she had been sharing with a friend for a job interview in Salt Lake City. Greaves arrived via bus in Salt Lake City about noon and called a friend. That was the last anyone had heard from her.

Greaves had been wearing her class ring, from Collingswood High School in New Jersey. Going off that, Fisher found a Facebook page dedicated to her graduating class of 1977 and, through its administrator, emailed everyone he could.

On the other end was Debbie Veevers, who still lives in the Garden State. She remembered Greaves from their teenage years in Collingswood, N.J., a borough on the other side of the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

"We were two shy girls at the back of the class," Veevers recalled. Though she never knew Greaves well, she felt a lot of compassion for her when she read Fisher's e-mail.

"I'm reading that they can't find any family members. She has no one," Veevers said. "But I thought, she has the class of '77."

Their high school yearbook listed the home addresses of every senior student. So Veevers knocked on doors of former neighbors and found people who remembered her classmate. One of them was a woman who lived a couple of doors down from one of Greaves' uncles, who Greaves spent her summers with as a child. They used to play together in the neighborhood.

From there, Veevers went to city hall and found the deed for the uncle's house, and passed along the names on the deed to Fisher. He matched those with U.S. Census records, and from there called and sent Facebook messages to people associated with Greaves' family.

"Then [Wednesday] afternoon, I heard from the first family member," Fisher said. "… They were [grateful], but certainly also very emotional. It opened up a wound that's been there for a long, long time."

On the "Extreme Genes" website, Fisher praised Greaves' "wonderful high school friends who have not forgotten her."

While their grassroots investigation was underway, Veevers was also running an online fundraiser at GoFundMe to help cover the costs of burying Greaves. The fundraiser was a success, reaching its $3,000 goal in just under three weeks.

But Greaves' extended family would rather handle the expenses, so Veevers plans to donate the money to a scholarship at her and Greaves' alma mater, in Greaves' memory.

The investigation into Greaves' death continues. While Davis County Sheriff's Sgt. DeeAnn Servey can't comment much about it, she said she "feels good about where it's going."

Woods Cross Police's initial report about Greaves' disappearance "was just exceptional," Servey said. When the sheriff's office pulled the files on her missing persons case, they found "literally binders" of information, she said. "This is so promising."

Nowadays, when an adult goes missing, "there's some investigation, but not as much detail" as what the Woods Cross police recorded about Greaves, Servey said. But in the wake of Ted Bundy's homicidal spree in the 1970s, which included several Utahns, police took extra care documenting Greaves' case.

In retrospect, the timeline appears to rule out the executed serial killer, whose slayings ended five years prior to Greaves' disappearance.

Douglas Anderson Lovell, who on Wednesday was sentenced to death for murdering a woman in 1985, remains a person of interest; he was questioned back then in connection with Greaves' disappearance. Lovell has denied any involvement with Greaves' demise.

Servey said that investigators are not ruling out any persons of interest at this point. The sheriff's office asks that anyone with information about the Greaves case call them at 801-451-4150.

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