>> reporter: over the years ida's career blossomed. and that's when angelica looked at me and started crying. YouTube/KOATA makeshift memorial for the victims. [23], In December 2010, convicted Colorado serial killer Scott Lee Kimball stated that he was being investigated for the West Mesa murders, but he denied killing the women.[24]. love for your gut. one woman determined to find them. >> i came out here looking for my cousin, and i bumped into cinnamon, and she had told me that -- that the girls were getting their heads cut off and tooken to the mesa. >> we figured she had been sexually assaulted and dumped here. >> reporter: homicidal violence. >> reporter: whether in costume for a school play, dressed up for her first communion, or showing a budding interest in boys. and was he still at work? >> 35 to 50? and what we hope to happen is that someone that's had an encounter with this killer will. >> thin, wired out, strung out maybe. "They didn't deserve what they got. >> i have to keep believing that we'll find an answer soon. turning up on the mesa. >> reporter: the name, the face, belonged to michelle valdez, one of the first women on ida's list. i wasn't done. -they're very tasteful. it's been nine years since that summer night when ida lopez first took to the streets of albuquerque's war zone alone, searching for a couple of missing women. or whatever, see somebody that may appear to be the size of michelle, a small person, and go around the block two or three times and me wondering who they were as well as them wondering who i was. you know, we could chase them out, but for me there was always a story to them. as spring turned to summer that, year, dan, his ex-wife, and his daughters plastered flyers with michelle's picture all over central avenue asking anyone who'd seen her to call the albuquerque police department. >> what we see very often is the women involved in prostitution work in what's called the circuit. FULL EPISODE: Somebody's Daughter. where did she come from? >> it's a lot of people. bill's back needed a afvacation from his vacation. The case reportedly began in 2005 when Lopez was handed files of a few missing women, one of whom was a 25-year-old prostitute named Michelle Valdez from New Mexico's largest city, Alberquerque. >> daddy, can i have something to eat now? sad but common, especially for these dark streets where drug addiction and prostitution literally go hand in hand. The Albuquerque officers did not say that Erwin was a suspect. Several arrests and convictions in El Paso, Texas, indicated that Albuquerque is part of a broader sex trafficking route that includes the states of Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as the Mexican city of Juarez. but her presence in the west mesa bone yard raised a troubling prospect. -i'm sorry? >> correct. for the moments that mattered most to her daughter, angelica. A&E reported how the group burial had all the hallmarks of a serial killer's actions.According to the Associated Press, February 2, 2022, marked the 13th . this bone belonged to someone who had died in the not too distant past. and thoughts of rare moments together before she went missing. the mother road's glory days are behind her now. Contact the Journal about the West Mesa murders at westmesa@abqjournal.com or 505-823-3860. with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe eczema, or atopic dermatitis, you feel like you're itching all the time. probably familiar with the prostitution trade. The Bone Collector- 11 bodies were found in the dessert of New Mexico. and most of these boxes were returned. possibly two prior times. i don't have a normal, you know, regular address. Edwards was from Oklahoma, but was known to have been in Texas and Colorado before ending up in Albuquerque. so, let's make this the summer of loving your gut. local station as finding a femur bone. a meticulous man whose grim will had brought him back to the mesa again and again to bury his victims. He said. As a result of the subsequent police investigation, authorities discovered the remains of 11 women and girls[8] and a fetus buried in the area. -he did show us how to bundle home and auto at progressive.com and save a bunch of money. but the police who arrived at the scene shortly after nightfall soon determined that this was no ancient artifact. >> reporter: caught between the pressure to keep the public informed and the need to prevent key details from leaking out to cranks and copycats who routinely clogged tip lines, commander feist found himself scheduling sensitive excavation, work in the off hours, when he knew cameras would not be looking over his shoulder. >> i love you, michelle. >> did you know michelle was pregnant when she disappeared? he wouldn't say what the plans were because the only, you know, close person i knew had cancer and died. Someone called Father Reynaldo at the St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe to provide the last rites to a dying grandfather. Police also saw him stalking sex workers after the West Mesa murders. >> reporter: a few days later lab work confirmed ida's hunch. [3][4][5][6] This small fragment of a human trafficking ring involves numerous population centers, including Las Vegas in Nevada, El Paso and Killeen in Texas, and Denver in Colorado.[2]. so she did what every good detective does. >> reporter: surgeons also removed ida's adrenal gland because it too had a mass on ite. >> reporter: though police say they have a half dozen suspects on their radar at any given time, so far they haven't been able to eliminate or arrest any of them. >> missing women. >> honestly, i don't remember the last time i seen her. >> reporter: and it's not just there for inspiration. >> can you tell me what that is? West Mesa murder victims Evelyn Salazar, left, and Cinnamon Elks. albuquerque police were looking at the evolving work of a serial killer. >> reporter: that was true then, and it's true today. in a sense michelle never was a teenager. there were whole bunches of them. >> reporter: dan immediately called detective ida lopez with the tip. >> you're finding this, and you're just going, i wonder if it's going to be the rest of the girls. "You can't have a colder cold case," Gibson said. all of her other victims were local. Combing the undeveloped West Mesa near 118th Street SW, detectives spent weeks uncovering all 11 graves. activia. if you don't have faith in your law enforcement to treat everybody equal, then what do you have? All but one had fallen into prostitution and struggled with drug abuse, according to police. >> and just depending on where they're at, you wouldn't even see them up there. Fifteen-year-old Syllania Edwards was identified as the only Black victim at the site, as well as the only one from out of state. >> i just always felt that they were going to be together. each x marking another day without word from his oldest daughter, michelle. According to the Albuquerque Journal, Blea was no stranger to the parts of the city where sex work is known to take place. there's no way. not at all. there's a better choice. Starting tonight at 8 p.m., NBC will air a special two-hour "Dateline" episode dealing with the notorious West Mesa Murder Mystery. The 58-year-old Joplin businessman and photographer informed the Globe last week that he has been cleared of. do you know -- -room 303. Although Montoya fit the description, the West Mesa serial killer remains unidentified. and then i'm thinking, okay, is it somebody that's nice at picking them up? >> i would tell them we're one day closer to finding your daughter. The mysteries surrounding the West Mesa Murders, an unsolved case of 11 female bodies discovered in a desert graveyard near Albuquerque in 2009. >> a college campus gripped by fear. There has been little pressure on the police to investigate.. A prostitute named Christine said the same year that other prostitutes in that area had become more conscious about watching out . >> if you find one, you're going to find them all. and the editor didn't say a whole lot. - Investigation Discovery", "93 - Live At The Grove In Anaheim My Favorite Murder With Karen Kilgariff And Georgia Hardstark podcast", "20/20: 'The Final Act' Watch Full Episode", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daniel_Wozniak_(murderer)&oldid=1142204623, Prisoners sentenced to death by California, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 02:21. "They all had families that care for them.". everyone. >> it's like being in a race and somebody has a year ahead start. it was tough. However, two names have been widely. pe reporter: the michelle valdez that appears in these home videos with her little sisters is a far cry from the thin, drug-wasted young woman police would later come to know and fingerprint. >> oh, yeah. An unsolved murder case has haunted the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico for more than a decade. [15][16] On December 13, 2010, police reported that two of the women in the photos had been identified as alive, and could have valuable information if they can be located. It was the most disturbing murder case Albuquerque police had ever seen and it remains unsolved to this day. In 2005, she was handed two missing persons files including missing 25-year-old Michelle Valdez,. and the women who work its. >> reporter: working alone, the detective distributed flyers with the women's pictures at truck stops, convenience stores, even the new mexico state fair. >> when they found the second, third, and fourth sets i said to myself i have to realistically look at this, that michelle i'm sure probably is out there. and one of the locations that was searched was right next door to a newspaper. detective ida lopez, who would later make it her mission to find michelle and the other missing women, was on medical leave at the time. a restless night's sleep. he has pics of you on his phone. >> yeah, i think there's no doubt that you're dealing with one guy. In 2007, before the harrowing discovery, the detective reportedly claimed that she had a file of more than 17 women, whom she referred to as "her girls," with similar backgrounds of addiction or prostitution who went missing between 2001 and 2006 from the Albuquerque streets. >> then in february 2009 came unsettling news. and all had worked as prostitutes on the mean streets of the city's war zone. Wozniak was deeply in debt and wanted money to finance his upcoming wedding and honeymoon. Albuquerqueans dont relate to the victims. The serial murders of 11 women in the West Mesa area of Albuquerque will be featured in a two-hour edition of NBC's Dateline tonight. Albuquerque detective Ida Lopez took it upon herself to uncover the story behind the remains of 11 women and an unborn fetus, which were discovered over 13 years ago, buried in shallow graves in a West Mesa desert. >> reporter: in addition to victoria chavez and michelle valdez, the others from ida's list were cinnamon elks, julie nieto, veronica romero, monica candelaria, and doreen marquez. TV Archive [8][9], After repeatedly lying to police, Wozniak finally confessed. >> investigators are looking for connections. apoquel is for the control of itch associated with allergic dermatitis and the control of atopic dermatitis in dogs. because, they suppose, all those earlier rumors about the women being abducted, killed, and dumped in the desert had to have started somewhere. [3] He was incarcerated at California's San Quentin State Prison until July 2021, when he was moved to Salinas Valley State Prison as part of the Condemned Inmate Transfer Pilot Program. >> reporter: dan continued to cruise the war zone, willing himself to believe that his daughter was still out there. and all with the same name. let's see, aleve is proven better on pain. let's get to be each other's support system. Last edited on 19 February 2023, at 14:32, List of fugitives from justice who disappeared, List of serial killers in the United States, "The West Mesa Murders: A Central American Connection? Not the clients. Ida Lopez, a missing persons detective from the Alberquerque Police Department, became increasingly attached to the unsolved homicide of 11 women and an unborn fetus, whose remains were discovered in one of the city's deserts back in 2009. >> so you were being a father all over again. now that two women from ida's list had been identified, jolene had an idea. American convicted of murder on death row, Dr. Phil: Was She an Accomplice to Murder? but they hadn't made an i.d. Police say Wozniak killed combat vet Samuel Eliezer . In addition, a tree tag from a nursery was found in the area where the West Mesa victims' bodies were buried; it was tracked to a nursery Blea once frequented. t and so that gave me an empathy for them on that part, and i thought, wow, this has got to be powerful. The 11 victims whose remains were discovered at the West Mesa site in 2009. Photos, information and videos from Dateline here. It took nearly a year for medical examiners to identify the decomposing victims, most of whom were Hispanic and all of whom were female. >> we all had a common denominator.