The State Bureau of Investigation is trying to solve a cold case that happened in Newport 47 years ago.

A new billboard is up in Newport with the picture of 15-year-old Donna Emmel, who authorities found strangled in a ditch.

Her family is speaking out.

Officials with the SBI said they, along with NCIS are trying to find new leads on the nearly 50-year-old case and want the public’s help in finding who is responsible for the death of the 15-year-old girl.

“She was beautiful, she was,” Emmel's cousin Beverly Boston said.

Now, her family looks up at her on this billboard, still without answers, still wondering who cut her life so short.

“She was a baby when they killed her. She never got to have babies. She never got to get married. She never even got to graduate and here she would be my age, in her 60s, if she was living,” Boston said.

What we know about Emmel’s disappearance is that she and her brother were at a variety store when Donna left following a phone call from her mother, according to Statesville Record and Landmark, a newspaper that published an article in 1976.

It also said her brother watched her cross the highway and head down a path leading to their home and saw a man follow her into the woods.

Boston doesn’t know what happened but she’s not giving up hope that someone out there in the community may know.

“Her mother passed away never knowing what happened to her, who did it. So, we feel like as surviving members, that we owe it to her. We owe it to her to see that her justice is done,” Boston said.

Sometimes, the smallest details can help solve a cold case. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call law enforcement.