Thirty-three years ago, Lisa Staes was laid to rest in a rural cemetery near Rock Springs after she was found dead under a county bridge.

Her funeral was videotaped in the hope that her family would be found. Her headstone was at the time marked with a Sauk County Sheriff's Department case number as a reminder that authorities would never stop investigating.

After nearly two years hard work paid off and the 20-year-old's identity was finally discovered. The taped funeral was presented to her parents, John and Susan, from the town of Leawood, Kansas.

"It was certainly a relief to have the knowledge that she had been found," Susan recalled. "It's really a terrible thing to never know anything that happened when someone just disappears."

Although things seemed promising at the time, the case then turned cold.

Authorities still do not know why the college student went missing during her semester break after staying with a cousin in Oak Park, Ill.

Three decades of Sauk County Sheriffs continually faced the question of why her body was found naked in the Harrison Creek nearly 10 days after she went missing.

Her anonymous headstone has since been replaced and is visited twice a year by her family, who decorate the grave before heading back to Leawood. Though the case number "4826" is no longer carved on her headstone, authorities have not stopped referencing it.

Recently John and

Susan received a call from Sheriff Randy Stammen, to tell them there could be new hope of justice.

The Sheriff's Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation is re-examining the cold case homicide. The investigation is part of a $500,000 federal grant Wisconsin received to look into cold cases with retired investigators and new investigative strategies, like DNA analysis.

A previous grant helped obtain four convictions were obtained for cold case homicides and dozens of new leads were generated in others.

In the 1970s, authorities conducted an extensive search of the area where Lisa was found. A state crime lab helped in the investigation, and it is unknown if any evidence collected then could be seen as a break now. State officials claim they only select promising cases to pursue with the grant money.

Susan, reached by telephone at her Kansas home, said that even though there are signs of progress now, she never thought authorities gave up on her. She said she formed this opinion by visiting the sheriff's department every few years.

"The sheriffs changed through that time, one to another, but they always received us graciously and would sit down and talk with us," Susan said. "We always felt confident if there was any possibility of this being solved it would be."

John said after 30 years, he has learned to not get his hopes up too high that Lisa's murderer will be found even though he knows there is a trail out there. "I feel that there is someone who knows something, someplace. I'm sure of it, though it's been a long time, so it's possible whoever did it wouldn't be alive anymore. In any case, there's always got to be some kind of trail somewhere," he said.

In the meantime, without justice for three decades, Lisa's parents have found more comfort in the memories of the years they spent together. "She was very outgoing and very confident, she had a buoyant personality and she was always interested in just doing something interesting," Susan said.

Anyone with information into Lisa's death is asked to call the Sauk County Sheriff's Department at (608) 356-4895.