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Alberti was last seen in October 1983, in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, which comprises a large part of suburban New Orleans. Based on the information on the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office Web site, Alberti seems an unlikely candidate for Princess Blue. The height is on, but the age, 31, is off. Alberti's photograph vaguely resembles the Princess Blue sketches, but certainly not more than Cheatham.

It's on the Web sites of the Doe Network and the Charley Project — privately established sites run by volunteers — that Alberti comes more into focus. A second photograph on those sites shows Alberti smiling, revealing what appears to be a gap in her upper teeth where a tooth might have been. Those sites also reveal that Alberti fractured her ribs as a child. Princess Blue's upper two ribs were fractured; the autopsy never established if that occurred post- or antemortem. The sites also state, "She may have been involved in drugs and prostitution."

Of course, the chances of Alberti being a match for Princess Blue would rise and fall dramatically on whether she was actually missing a tooth, and, if so, which one. But a call to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office proved a dead end.

"I cannot give any information out," said Captain Hilda Montecino of the JPSO. She said she would contact the Manvel Police Department, and any information would have to come from them. All she could disclose was that Alberti was last seen in St. Bernard Parish in September 1983, placing her last known whereabouts in a different parish and a different month than what's listed on the JPSO Web site.

Montecino offered to put the Houston Press in touch with the JPSO's public information officer, although he wouldn't be able to say anything, either. When the Press asked for the PIO's name and number, Montecino said he would be the one calling. That's because, when it comes to the name and number of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office's public information officer, "We just don't give that out to the public."

When Coffman and Rosser reopened the Princess Blue case, they knew they had to talk to Tommie Tolson, the original ­investigator.

By that time, the former Manvel police chief had moved to Hallettsville, where he works as a truck driver. Coffman and Rosser wanted to see if he might be able to tell them anything that had been left out of the original report. It was only a few paragraphs long and was never supplemented. If Tolson ever sketched or photographed the crime scene, that evidence has long disappeared. He did not appear to have interviewed anyone other than the motorist who found the remains.

Tolson didn't have much to tell them. Besides, he had another life now, and he had more important things to deal with than a bunch of bones dumped on a dead-end road nearly two decades earlier.

"He said he's not interested in saying nothing," his wife, Susan, told the Press. And even if he wanted to talk, what could he say about an unidentified body?

"Nothing came of it," Susan Tolson says of the original investigation. She laughs when she says it, just like she laughs when she adds, "They did what they could."

The bottom line: Tommie Tolson cannot be bothered with this stuff. He's out in his rig, trying to keep a schedule.

"He has to keep his mind on the road," she says.

So the reason he sat on the single most important clue in the case remains a ­mystery.

"I can't think of a reasonable explanation why the high school ring would not be put out there [to the public]," says Vernon Geberth, a consultant in homicide and forensic case investigations for authorities in the U.S. and Canada. Geberth was a member of the New York Police Department from 1965 to 1987, retiring as the commanding officer for the Bronx Homicide Task Force.

"It's been a traditional practice in law enforcement to withhold information about the case so only you and the actual killer know what has happened," Geberth says. "But if I have an unidentified body, my biggest quandary is the identification of the deceased. Because I don't have a base for my investigation unless I know who I'm investigating."

If he doesn't have a name, he doesn't have the victimology, which means he doesn't have an idea why she was chosen as a victim, which means there's nothing pointing to a suspect.

Or at least a new suspect. There was always an old standby.

Roy Alan Stuart had a knack for turning up in towns where young women went ­missing.

His talent came to fruition in 1971, when the body of Linda Kay Simmons was discovered in a pasture outside Amarillo. When investigators there followed the leads, they wound up at Stuart's front door. He was arrested on July 13, charged, released for want of proof and arrested again three weeks later when the bludgeoned body of 40-year-old Kay Sands was found in a field. This time, there would be a trial.

While he was out on bond, two women accused him of assault in separate incidents. He was charged for those assaults, which were dropped when the women refused to testify. Ultimately, a jury found him not guilty of Sands's murder.

Four years later, police would arrest him again, this time for aggravated sexual assault. And this time, Stuart pled guilty. He would be remanded to the Darrington Unit in Rosharon, Brazoria County. His sentence was 15 years; he served seven.

Some months before Stuart's release, Brazoria County Sheriff's Deputy Matt Wingo got a call from a sheriff in north Texas, up near Amarillo.

"He told me of the man named Roy Alan Stuart," Wingo wrote in a memoir for The Police News. "The Sheriff understood Stuart was to be released soon from TDC and our caseload may go up."

When Stuart was released, he didn't leave Brazoria County. He got a job as an auto mechanic and moved into a trailer near Clute with the woman he married while in prison. Wingo writes that his office and the Houston Police Department began a surveillance on Stuart, who proved less than a faithful husband.

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