Not in our database....Adding this now as one more from my unidentified remains folder can be deleted....RIP Martha, it has been a long wait.
Body found in national park identified
Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008
Nine months ago, a jogger found human remains in Hot Springs National Park.
Since then, authorities have learned they were the bones of Martha Teresa Lamas, a 37-yearold housekeeper with a history of drug use and prostitution.
She was married once and has children somewhere, but authorities don’t know much else about her.
The FBI and the National Park Service on Wednesday released her identity and other information about Lamas, hoping to drum up leads to find who killed her.
“We’re hoping, through this, we can get more people to step forward,” Amanda DeFriese, an investigator with the National Park Service, said during a news conference at FBI headquarters in Little Rock.
Authorities confirmed Wednesday that they are exploring whether a man accused of killing two other Garland County women could have been involved in Lamas’ death.
Vernon Capshaw, 20, of Hot Springs is awaiting trial in the murders of Janice Bills, 41, and Melinda Jenkins, 29, whose bodies were found in creeks last spring. They had been raped and strangled.
“Because of a similarity between the cases, he is someone we’re going to follow up with,” FBI Special Agent Scott Falls said.
Authorities declined to release Lamas’ cause of death, citing the ongoing investigation. Her remains and a few belongings were discovered Nov. 26 off a trail on West Mountain.
Capshaw was in and out of the Garland County jail on various charges last year, but he was free on bond in August when Lamas was reported missing, records show.
Investigators said they had not yet interviewed Capshaw in the Lamas case. No specific evidence leads to him or to Lamas being a victim of a serial killer.
But it’s something they haven’t ruled out.
“We want to make sure we hit every angle,” DeFriese said.
Investigators said Lamas has family, including children, in dif- ferent parts of the country, but they don’t know specifics about them. She lived in Los Angeles, Texas and North Carolina before settling in the Hot Springs area in 2003.
Someone reported her missing a year ago today, but nothing at the time indicated foul play, Hot Springs detective Eric Stockwell said. Much about the woman is a mystery to him, he said.
He tried to find Lamas’ mother, but it turned out the telephone number someone gave him wasn’t correct.
“I didn’t have anything to go on, and then she turns up,” Stockwell said.
Federal authorities declined to identify the person who reported Lamas missing. They said they still are trying to determine who was the last person to see her alive.
She had worked as a housekeeper and landscaper in Hot Springs Village, a gated retirement community that straddles the Saline-Garland county line. When she was booked into the Garland County jail in February 2007 on a public intoxication charge, she listed an address in Jessieville, north of Hot Springs Village.
While living in Texas during the 1990 s, she was arrested several times on prostitution and drug charges, records show. While in jail she had dental work, which produced records that were key in positively identifying her remains, authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators said they are unsure if her life on the margins played a role in her slaying.
“She does have a criminal history. Small misdemeanors. Drugs, larceny, burglary. Those kinds of crimes,” DeFriese said.
Falls, the FBI agent on the case, described her as an “intermittent prostitute.” Investigators they said they have been playing catch-up with the case since her body was so badly decomposed by the time it was found in November.
“Obviously, it’s a little bit difficult when you kind of start three months behind when she came up missing in August,” after her remains were discovered, Falls said.
To provide information on Lamas, call (866 ) 686-5234. Callers may remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward.
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