HOLLIS – It was 1977, and each day Eddy Segall borrowed a car to attend an exercise class at Women’s World in Merrimack.

On June 15, the 28-year-old Nashua resident borrowed the car, but she never arrived at the gym and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

Segall was reported missing and, two weeks later, the car was found in the woods, about 1 1?2 miles from Wheeler Road, with the keys on the road about 150 feet away, according to the state Attorney General’s Cold Case Unit files.

Thirty-three years later Hollis police have reopened the case and are encouraging the public, including town historians, old hunters, and anyone who might be familiar with the area to get involved.

Hollis Police Lt. James Sartell said Hollis police became interested in the case when the Cold Case Unit was organized in 2009.

The original investigation “doesn’t meet the standards of 2010. There are a lot of loose ends,” said Sartell, and police “decided it was well worth it. There are still family members looking for closure. We do have a crime here.”

Police are reviewing all the evidence in the entire case file, he said, and have gone into the woods about a half dozen times with “firefighters, hunters, retired police officers and history junkies.”

It will be a long process, Sartell said, and searching the woods is looking for “a needle in a haystack.”

Police are trying to figure out where the woods trails were located in the mid 1970s, and since there have been many houses built in central Hollis over the 33 years, many of the old trails are overgrown with vegetation.

“We want to determine how people moved in and out (of the woods) in 1977,” Sartell said.

Police did not get far in their 1977 investigation, he said, because Segall came from Tampa, Fla., and did not know many people up here, didn’t “have a lot of family, no social network.”

Joseph Manning was a young Hollis police officer when Segall was reported missing, and last week he helped direct local police to a spot deep in the woods where police long ago found the green 1969 Oldsmobile.

Manning, who left the Hollis department in 1979 and went to work for United Parcel Service for 28 years, said he has been haunted by the case and still remembers that a towel and a leotard were found inside the car.

“Someone got away with something,” he said, standing in the parking lot across from Silver Lake State Park on Dec. 9 after police had left on their search.

“I promised her mother I would find her.”

The state’s Cold Case Unit director, Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker, said Hollis police contacted his unit about the search, but the state unit is not actively involved in the investigation.

The unit investigates cases of homicide or suspected homicide, and Delker said it is focusing its resources on the most promising cases and is also in contact with a number of local police departments who are doing their own cold case investigations.

The Cold Case Unit made its first arrest earlier this year when it and California authorities arrested David McLeod, 53, in connection with a fatal fire in Keene in 1989.

Anyone with information about the Segall case can call the Hollis Police Department at 465-7637.

According to the state’s files, Segall was described as 5 feet, 1 inch tall, about 118 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes.

At the time of her disappearance she was wearing blue jeans, a white tank top and rubber shower sandals, and carrying a brown, shoulder-type pocketbook.

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 21 or kcleveland@cabinet.com.