HOLLY SPRINGS - Tears fell uncontrollably from Kevin Blaine's face as he addressed the audience at a leadership convention in Greensboro two months ago.

He doesn't know how many times he's told the story of Jennifer "Jenna" Nielsen, his 22-year-old daughter, who was stabbed to death while delivering newspapers late last spring. She was eight months pregnant. Every time he begins, Blaine says, he struggles.

It's a story he has to tell.

In the year since Jenna Nielsen was found dead, her family has fought to keep the spotlight on her killing. Nielsen's family has taken to attending vigils and supporting causes -- including the Unborn Victims of Violence bill. Family members said keeping the slayings of Jenna and her unborn son in the public eye keeps the community interested in helping solve the crime.

"We're talking to everybody who will listen to us, and we're attending everything we can," Blaine said. "We're just trying to keep this out in the public. There's a murderer on the loose, and we want to help get this guy off the streets.

"You just want to think of things you can do."

Time doesn't heal loss

In 2005, Blaine and his son-in-law, Tim Nielsen, settled into a Fuquay-Varina apartment after moving from Utah to work at Boon Edam Tomsed, a revolving-door manufacturer in Lillington. The majority of their family -- which included Blaine's wife, Staci; their three children; Jenna and the two children she and Tim had together -- arrived that August.

In the early morning hours of June 14, 2007, Nielsen left her apartment while her husband and young children slept to begin her job stocking USA Today newspaper boxes, mostly in Garner and South Raleigh.

Nielsen's body was found behind the AmeriKing Food Mart and Exxon station at Lake Wheeler Road and Centennial Parkway, across from the State Farmers Market. It was usually the second or third stop on her route.

The child she was carrying, a boy she and her husband had already named Ethen, also died. Autopsy information revealed the baby weighed about 6 pounds and was nearly 20 inches long.

Time hasn't helped the close-knit family to heal.

"People who say it gets easier with time ... have never been through this," Nielsen said. "It doesn't get better."

He occupies his time with work. He has adapted to the dual role of mom and dad for sons Schyler, 4, and Kaiden, 23 months.

Sometimes, he said, Schyler will talk about the bad guys who took Mommy away. When he's being reprimanded, he sometimes asks for Jenna, seeking a sympathetic ear.

'It's a solvable case'

The Raleigh Police Department has "scaled back" the use of a composite sketch released last summer, drafted from a witness's recollection of someone allegedly spotted near the scene. Requests are being made for people who may have traveled in the area of the gas station to report anything they remember from that morning.

"[The sketch] was a way one witness described," Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue said. "There could be something that someone sees differently."

The Jenna Nielsen homicide is a compilation of interviews, detectives' notes and photographs that are pored over daily. More than 700 people have been contacted in connection with the case, and about 1,000 leads and tips have been investigated. Officials are still confident that the case will be solved.

"Every day, we get closer to finding Jenna Nielsen's killer," said Maj. R.W. Grayson, head of the department's detective division. "We want to make an arrest. We want to give the family closure. It's a solvable case. We just want the piece or pieces of information needed to solve it.

"Our detectives will continue to work hard until we find a killer."

Reminders of Jenna

On Saturday, the family that has focused on keeping the story in the public eye gathered privately for a butterfly release in Jenna and Ethen's memory. Schyler and Kaiden tugged bows on opposite sides of an accordion-like box, making way for the butterflies to flutter into the air.

It was a good day, they admit, but none of the Nielsen family gatherings have been the same without Jenna, a 5-foot-3-inch ball of energy who was always the center of attention at family functions.

"We're used to Jenna being the life of the party," said Jenna's sister, Sharlee Kubota. "And she wasn't there."

But reminders of Jenna are all over the place.

Over the last year, Kubota said, the boys have started showing signs of her rambunctious spirit. Kevin Blaine said both are beginning to look more like their mother.

Tim Nielsen tattooed a fairy on his left arm. Jenna loved fairies, he said, and had planned to get one tattooed on herself.

And today, when Kevin Blaine sits down to open Father's Day cards, he'll finally get to open the one Jenna bought to give him last year.