Who's Murdering the Prostitutes of Albuquerque?

AP Photos At least 12 young women have been murdered, their bodies found in a pit in the desert. Sally Denton investigates the unanswered questions.

The body count stands at 12—13 if you include the fetus—all young women heinously murdered and then deep-sixed into the grit of a forlorn desert. Their families claim the local police made no effort to find them after they were reported missing. The women knew each other from Albuquerque’s War Zone—the notorious neighborhood where prostitutes and drug dealers ply their trade. They were young and Hispanic, many were mothers, and all were living what the Albuquerque police euphemistically refer to as a “high-risk lifestyle.”

They disappeared between 2001 and 2006 and were apparently afraid for their lives.

Cinnamon Elks, one of the seven who have been identified so far, told friends shortly before her August 2004 disappearance that “a dirty cop was chopping off the heads of prostitutes and burying them on the West Mesa,” according to Joline Gutierrez-Krueger of the Albuquerque Journal. Police have not revealed the causes of death, so whether the victims were decapitated is unknown. But that has not stopped the rumors flying wildly on the streets of the city. The police have refused to reveal details of the evidence uncovered at the crime scene—an 18-foot-deep pit called “the bowl” on a 92-acre site west of the city. Nor have they speculated about suspects except to assure residents that if the murders were the work of a serial killer, the perpetrator has either died or moved to another city. But despite law enforcement reassurance, the macabre excavation has kept the community on edge for the past 12 weeks and has spotlighted the dark side of the largest city in New Mexico.

“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.”

The gruesome discovery belied the tranquility of the once-picturesque basaltic plateau, a sacred site for Native Americans that was home to coyotes and eagles, and situated near the most dramatic petroglyphs in the Southwest—carvings created between 3000 B.C. and 500 A.D. by Anasazi farmers, hunter-gatherers, and Spanish sheepherders. Now, the “West Mesa is a dusty escarpment littered with trash dumps and tire tracks, spent slugs and brambly weeds,” as High Country News writer Laura Paskus recently described the crime scene. Like the discarded bones of these forgotten women, the ravaged landscape has come to symbolize the violence against women.

It all began innocently enough, on February 2, 2009, when Christine Ross and her dog Ruca took their regular walk in an area that had been recently leveled for a housing subdivision. On top of the dirt, Ruca found a large femur bone. “It didn’t look normal. Our gut instinct told us it wasn’t supposed to be there,” Ross told a reporter. Suspecting it was human, she photographed it on her cellphone and texted it to her nurse sister who confirmed the suspicion. She called the police who began the three-month-long dig at the country’s largest crime scene—the landscape equivalent to 75 football fields. On April 25, they ended the search, declaring that no more bodies could be found. “We estimate we’ve moved over 40,000 cubic yards of dirt,” Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz told the media. Seven victims have been identified: Monica Candelaria, 21; Veronica Romero, 26; Cinnamon Elks, 31; Julie Nieto, 23; Victoria Chavez, 28; Doreen Marquez, 27; and Michelle Valdez, 22, who was four months' pregnant.

Police are still seeking clues about the remaining Jane Does, and have published the photograph of an acrylic nail with an unusual hot pink design hoping that a local manicurist might recognize it. All of the identified women were on a list of 16 compiled by the department’s missing-persons unit, and all had a history of prostitution. Many were addicted to heroin, some were police informants, and several left small children behind.

“That somebody would do this to my daughter and dump her like she was a piece of trash and leave her lying out there with no dignity. I am devastated and angry,” said Karen Jackson, the mother of Michelle Valdez, capturing the grief and fury that the women’s families feel. After years of frustration with the local police, who rarely returned their phone calls or pursued the investigative tips the families provided, the victims’ relatives are outraged. “Nobody has listened to us for so many years,” said Lori Gallegos, a childhood friend of Doreen Marquez, who was last seen in October 2003 dropping her son off at Calvary Christian Academy. “These girls all had dreams,” said the father of one of the missing. “No girl grows up wanting that.”