Albuquerque's Murder Mystery...body count 13 / New Mexico (ALL 13 ID'd)
Nut44x4:
More bones found in NM desert; victim total now 13
15 hours ago
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Authorities say bones from 13 victims have been recovered from a desert site west of Albuquerque that authorities have been excavating for about a month.
The death toll had been 11, but police said that further examination of the remains Thursday showed that they must have belonged to 12 victims. Police recovered a 13th body Friday.
The bones have all been dug up from an area recently razed for a housing development. A hiker made the first grisly find.
Only two sets of remains have been identified.
Authorities say 22-year-old Michelle Valdez and 28-year-old Victoria Chavez of Albuquerque both suffered drug addiction and worked as prostitutes when they were reported missing in 2004.
Police say they suspect the remains were buried by one person.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jHoyOxB-E50OhIqc4aIyyfP0WNKQD96K80N81
Nut44x4:
Girl remembers mother found buried on West Mesa
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/kob-new-mexico/TMUUQ4TFQLUFV60V5
Mtnmom:
Cold cases reopened after bodies found in desert
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — In the desert outside Albuquerque, hikers have sometimes stumbled upon human remains partially buried under the hardy scrub and hard-baked dirt.
But few people could have imagined the crime scene now emerging: The bones of at least 13 people have been uncovered on the site of an abandoned housing development.
The grisly discovery last month caused authorities to reopen dozens of cold cases involving missing prostitutes, some of whom vanished as much as 20 years ago.
Since the bones came to light, forensic experts, detectives, anthropologists and medical investigators have raked tediously through mounds of dirt for the next sliver of bone or clump of human hair.
Police believe one person or group of people is responsible for the slayings, but they have been reluctant to make comparisons to any existing serial murder cases.
"We don't want to limit our investigation," Police Chief Ray Schultz said, calling the scene "one of the largest and most complex" ever investigated by his department.
So far, only two sets of remains have been identified. But detectives are reviewing cases involving dozens of women who vanished from the city over the last two decades. All of them were suspected of being drug addicts and prostitutes. Of particular interest are 16 women reported missing between 2001 and 2006.
The two bodies identified so far were Michelle Valdez and Victoria Chavez, both women who disappeared within months of each other in 2004.
Chavez was about 28 when she vanished, leaving behind a daughter. Valdez was 22, with two children and another on the way.
Valdez's mother, Karen Jackson of Myrtle Beach, S.C., said her daughter struggled with addiction and worked as a prostitute during periods when she would disappear without any explanation. But she would always resurface to get a hug or money from her father, share a laugh with her sister or call her mom.
Valdez's body and that of her fetus were unearthed Feb. 23. No cause of death has been determined.
Jackson said she was devastated to learn her daughter's fate after years of silence and searching.
"I wanted closure, but not this," she said. "My heart goes out to the rest of the families of the missing women."
The family of Leah Peebles, who is on the list of 16 missing women, is devastated by the discovery but holding out hope.
"I don't think she's out there. I really don't," Peebles' mother, Sharon Peebles, said from her home in Fort Worth, Texas. "I have fear and start worrying ... but until I hear otherwise, I feel she is alive."
Still, after two other women on the list were found in the desert, it's getting harder for Peebles and her husband to keep the faith.
"I want some conclusion, but I don't want that," she said.
Leah Peebles, 24, moved to Albuquerque just months prior to her disappearance. She was trying to start a new life free of drugs and the history of sexual molestation and assault that haunted her in her hometown. Her parents reported her missing in May 2006.
The first remains were discovered Feb. 2, when a woman walking her dog found a human rib bone on the site of a subdivision under construction.
The area had been abandoned when homebuilder KB Home ended its operations in New Mexico, leaving a cinderblock wall surrounding mounds of dirt, a drainage pond and a few retaining walls.
Before construction crews left the site in early 2008, many of the bones were damaged by earth-moving equipment that scattered the remains across 100 acres surrounding the concentrated burial site.
The tedious police work at the site has been creeping along seven days a week, drawing curious spectators from nearby neighborhoods.
Schultz said a task force of 40 detectives is checking leads and reviewing missing-persons reports.
"Everyone has taken a personal stake in this," he said. "We don't think anybody is a throwaway person."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jEQrHFS2Rc_0uKM8CVFtO8JNKRiQD96M4IKG0
Nut44x4:
FBI profiler joining mesa graves case
Perez family still seeking closure
Updated: Monday, 02 Mar 2009, 11:31 PM MST
Published : Monday, 02 Mar 2009, 11:29 PM MST
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Agents from an elite FBI unit are about to get involved in the investigation that so far has unearthed 13 sets of skeletal remains in a once-remote area of Albuquerque's west mesa.
In the last month Albuquerque police have found the remains of 12 adults and an unborn fetus buried in an area now being developed for a subdivision. Two have been identified as young Albuquerque women last seen in 2004.
No causes of death have been reported, and police have been reluctant to refer to a serial killer other than to say one is not on the loose in the city today.
The FBI has joined the investigation into to who may have dumped the bodies in the sandy graves and believes the people were murdered likely by a serial killer.
This week, someone from the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Va. will either come to Albuquerque to look at the details of the case or the files will be sent out to the profiler in Virginia.
"Our experts have the advantage of being able to study every serial killer in the country and find out the common themes that these guys have," FBI Special Agency Steve Marshal told KRQE News 13. "It's not an exact science.
"Occasionally they're completely off on what a profile is, but it gives us a place to start."
The profiler will look at all the similarities of the deaths. The two women identified so far both had histories of drug abuse and prostitution.
"How these women were chosen as victims is going to be very important," Marshal said. "How they were killed is going to be very important; where they were found is going to be very important."
Albuquerque investigators compiled a list of at least two dozen women, many involved in prostitution, who disappeared at from about 2000 to 2005. They have not speculated in public about what may have happened but have mentioned one man shot to death after killing a prostitute and a known pimp found to have pictures of some of the missing women after he died of natural causes.
Meanwhile the uncertainty and the massive media coverage of the case have been tough on the families of the known victims and on the families of other missing women.
"It's been a really hard day," Liz Perez of Albuquerque told News 13. "Today my grandson came home from school and saw the newspaper on top of the table and started asking me a lot of questions."
Questions like why is a picture of his mother on the front page of the Albuquerque Journal in an article about missing women and the dig for more bodies on the west mesa?
"I don't have the answers," Perez said.
The unanswered question is what happened to Darlene Trujillo who left her son with his grandmother in 2001?
It left a hole in his heart "'cause my mom's not here," Chris Perez said.
For Perez, 11, the digging on the other side of town unearths memories. When he was a toddler his mother went to Arizona with a boyfriend and never returned.
Her family held vigils trying to raise money for a private investigator to look into her disappearance and still hope she's not among the women unearthed from the mesa.
"I don't feel that Darlene is one of those women is up there because she left with a guy from Mexico," Perez said. "Darlene was not what they're saying these other girls were.
"I just hope we find closure" Trujillo continued. "I want my grandson to know what happened to his mom, where she's at."
The family believes Trujillo is being held against her will in Mexico and blames Albuquerque police for not doing enough to find her.
For their part investigators said they did look into the disappearance and listed her as a missing person. However hundreds of adults are reported missing in Albuquerque every year.
Many simply run away and the cases go cold.
http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/crime_krqe_albuquerque_fbi_profiler_joining_mesa_graves_case_20090302
Darlene Trujillo's picture was on the front page of the Albuquerque Journal Monday.
Nut44x4:
Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico)
March 2, 2009 Monday
LOST WOMEN;
Don't These Cases Deserve a Deeper Look?
A friend of mine whose husband works for a local TV news station told me last week that, when the identity of a second woman unearthed from the mass grave on the Southwest Mesa was released, he, like every other reporter, tried to lock down the requisite interview with the woman's grieving family.
The relatives said no.
They were angry, my friend said, because they had never forgotten that, four years before, the TV station had refused their plea for a little airtime to help them find the missing woman.
I don't know the reason for the station's dismissive stance then, but I can guess. Gina Michelle Valdez, 22, wasn't big news to them. She wasn't a blond-haired, blue-eyed, all-American college student inexplicably snatched from the nice part of town. No, Valdez lived - and, likely, died - on the dark, desperate fringes where death comes more easily, less lamentably. In her brief adulthood, she had amassed several charges both here and in Arizona for drug possession and prostitution. Her last arrest, on the Fourth of July 2004, was for a charge of aggravated assault. No one cared, some editor must have
wagered, whether she ever showed up again. Except for those who loved her, who knew she was more than her rap sheet, more than someone who had fallen too far, too fast. She had mattered to them even before she became Jane Doe No. 8, a dead pregnant woman and one of 13 bodies and counting, buried in what has become the biggest crime scene in Albuquerque's history, the repository for an apparent prolific serial killer's handiwork and a gruesome sound bite for CNN, ABC, Fox News and other national media. (By the way, just how many bodies need to be dug up before the Albuquerque Police Department is comfortable with the term "serial killer"? Just asking.)
The TV station certainly isn't alone in its easy dismissal of society's less-thans. During my days as a cop reporter at the Albuquerque Tribune, I remember being admonished by an editor to remember that crime was only news if she could imagine it happening in her own backyard. Of course, her backyard was situated in a swanky, saltillo-tiled enclave outside Santa Fe. Short of tax evasion or insider trading schemes, that didn't leave a whole lot for me to cover. So, as was typical of me (then), I ignored her. It always seemed to me that we journalists owe it to the public not to make such swift and elitist judgments for fear we might miss a truly compelling story about a truly remarkable person. Granted that's typically not the case for a majority of those whose lives end in violence. Still, you can't help but wonder whether the body count on the Southwest Mesa might not have gone so high had someone besides the families of the lost taken a second look. At least one woman had, though. For several years, Detective Ida Lopez of the Albuquerque Police Department's missing persons unit has been collecting the names and faces of women who disappeared into the rough world of prostitution, drugs and violence, then disappeared altogether.
Gina Michelle Valdez and Victoria Chavez, the first women to be identified from among the remains on the mesa, were both on that list.
I've included a list of the others, all gone since 2001. And I added a few more, including Teresa Reyes, a 17-year-old bipolar Albuquerque girl last seen in her family's Southeast Heights home in 1998. She's another one of those missing persons whose case gathers dust but no leads. Go ahead. Google their names. You won't find much except family generated blogs and Web sites maintained by various missing persons organizations, such as the Charley Project and the North American Missing Persons Network.
They're out there somewhere, and maybe they are out there on that mesa. Either way, maybe it's time to take a second look.
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100020825&docId=l:934366111&start=16
CHAVEZ: First body to be identified
VALDEZ: Was pregnant when she died
DARLENE MARIA TRUJILLO (2001)
SONIA BERNADETTE LENTE (2002)
MONICA DIANA CANDELARIA (2003)
JAMIE BARELA (2004)
CINNAMON ELKS (2004)
LEAH RACHELLE PEEBLES (2006)
VIRGINIA ANN CLOVEN (2004)
DOREEN MARQUEZ (2004)
JULIE CYNDIE NIETO (2004)
ANSELMA GUERRA (2004)
EVELYN JESUSMARIA SALAZAR (2004)
ANNA VIGIL (2005)
SHAWNTELL WAITES (2005)
NINA HERRON (2005)
FELIPA GONZALES (2005)
TERESA REYES (1998) VERONICA ROMERO (2004, not pictured) SOURCES: Albuquerque Police Department, The Charley Project, North American Missing Persons Project
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