A young woman was viciously stabbed to death, her body found in 1969 not far from the notorious murders by Charles Manson’s band of followers. For decades, the circumstances led people to wonder about the woman known only as Jane Doe 59: Was she another victim of the cultlike group?

The Los Angeles police this week revealed her identity as Reet Jurvetson, a 19-year-old from Montreal, while leaving open, if only narrowly, the possibility that Mr. Manson played a part in her death.

Ms. Jurvetson had recently moved to Los Angeles when her body was found by a passer-by in the brush off Mulholland Drive near Laurel Canyon on Nov. 16, 1969. She had been stabbed more than 150 times.

The style of the killing along with the timing and location of the discovery — about five miles down the road from the mansion where actress Sharon Tate and four others met their end at the hands of the Manson family a few months before — led to speculation that the cases were connected.