Questions haunt family

RALEIGH -- Jenna Nielsen's family will lower her and her unborn son into the sandy soil of her native Utah today. They'll do their bravest best to celebrate Nielsen's life, taken as she was on the verge of delivering another.

More than 2,000 miles away, Raleigh police manned a hot line they hoped would ring with a tip that could lead them to the young mother's killer. The line's been ringing, but so far, there have been no major breakthroughs, police said.

A stranger attacked Nielsen, 22, in the early morning darkness of June 14 as she dropped off a stack of fresh USA Today newspapers in a machine outside a Raleigh market. A dome light in her Honda Civic shined bright in the dark parking lot when a News & Observer carrier made a delivery at 5 a.m. Police found her body, swollen with a son due July 8, abandoned near the drive-through window of an attached Subway sandwich shop.

Nielsen's friends and family will travel from around the country to bury her and unborn son Ethen in a vast Salt Lake City cemetery. The family will treat it as a funeral for two.

As Nielsen's family braced for a final goodbye, they couldn't shake images of what they fear were her final moments. Nielsen's grandmother Diane Frank rattles questions police say they can't answer for them.

"Was she molested? Was she hurt in any way? Did she suffer? Did she go quick? Did they hurt the baby or did he just die because Jenna died? These are things we need to know," Frank said from her home in Utah, where she's helping tend Jenna's two small boys. "My only prayer is that she went quick and didn't suffer and wasn't terrified."

Nielsen didn't scare easily.

As a teen, her canary yellow Volkswagen bug broke down in the middle of a busy exit ramp. She howled with laughter and signaled to her high school buddy Sarah Watts to start pushing. The girls shoved the dead car more than a quarter of a mile to a gas station.

"She just laughed," recalled Watts, a high school friend. "Nothing stopped her. Nothing stalled her. She just kept going. That's something you're born with."

Culture, not cartoons

Nielsen knew what she wanted and chased it with a singular intensity, said Frank, who helped care for her as a girl. She had little tolerance for distractions.

As a young girl, Nielsen loved ballet but dropped out of classes.

She told her grandmother: "I love it, but they just want to play, and I came to learn."

While girls her age splashed in pools all summer, Nielsen traveled the world with her grandparents, who conducted seminars on alternative health therapy. She digested that culture in charming ways, Frank said. A 7-year-old Nielsen requested her grandmother make fettuccine with shrimp scampi and fresh mushrooms for dinner. Instead of flipping on cartoons, Nielsen was glued to Victor Borge, laughing at the Danish pianist's comic performances.

Nielsen capitalized on her love of the arts in high school. She attended a performing arts charter school outside St. George, Utah, where she rehearsed ballet, tap and modern dance. She considered a career in dancing. Nielsen toyed with the idea of modeling, too.

Her 5-foot-1-inch frame prevented her from doing either professionally, Frank said.

Her life mission

Nielsen's future came to her one lazy summer afternoon after her junior year in high school. She and her friend Watts strolled a local mall and dropped by a Foot Locker shoe store to chat with a friend of Watts. That's when she first spotted Tim Nielsen. He, too, stopped in to visit a friend. The two barely spoke, but Watts knew she was witnessing a connection not easily severed.