A well-known activist from San Francisco is murdered in New Orleans--her family is asking why, while police search for a motive.

A group of people gutting houses found 25-year-old Kirsten Brydum's body in the 3000 block of Laussat Place. She had been shot in the head.

Her family described Brydum as a free spirit, an activist who traveled the country, simply searching for people to help.

Her journey ended abruptly, and brutally, Saturday morning in New Orleans, when her body was found a half-mile away from where she was staying in the Bywater.

"She was just traveling with what she had," said her uncle Rick Brydum, acting as the family spokesman. "(We) try to figure out why somebody would possibly want her dead or what could have caused anything like that to happen, whether it was robbery, an argument. None of that seems to make any sense at all," he said.

Brydum's stop in New Orleans was her latest in a series of cities; a trek across the country, she called an "educational tour" in her online journal.

Her last journal entry was written Thursday, September 25, as she was arriving in New Orleans by train.

She wrote, in part, that she was "grateful to the strangers I have met along the way who have been willing to go out of their way to welcome me to their cities."

Brydum's uncle said she had only acquaintances in New Orleans and relied on those connections for a place to stay.

"That is how a lot of this tour was, traveling from one place to another and seeing how she could help, but not necessarily knowing where she would go next, or what she would find there," he said.

Investigators said Brydum came to the Howlin’ Wolf Friday night, a nightclub in the Warehouse District. She arrived alone around 11:30 p.m., then left two hours later the same way she arrived, riding a black bicycle.

The bicycle is now missing, but investigators say the few other belongings she had were at the home where she stayed. What remains is a seven hour gap from the time Brydum was last seen, to the time her body was found. That span of time has investigators, and the family, hundreds of miles away, asking why.

"We don't know the circumstances behind how she left the club and ended up on Laussat Place," said Marlon Defillo, deputy superintendent for the New Orleans Police Department. "Did she leave with someone? Did someone befriend her? We don't know all of the variables," he said.

"Why did these things happen," said Rick Brydum. "It makes it harder, not only having lost her as a dear member of our family but not knowing why or what happened."

Police believe Brydum was murdered in the same desolate area where her body was found. They are searching for the black cruiser-style bicycle she was riding. It has a basket on the back.

Crimestoppers is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to an arrest. Call (504) 822-1111 with information.