this is storied territory, where native american tribes, conquistadors, and cowboys once roamed. make febreze part of your clean routine for whole home freshness. With her call to the Albuquerque Police Department, Ross had begun to expose horrors the city had never seen. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. >> sit. >> reporter: a time frame, 2003 to early 2005, and 11 sets of bones. sure, why not? they use stamps.com all the services of the post office only cheaper get a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. Thats why the West Mesa killer was able to do it, she said Christine Barber, the head of Safe Streets New Mexico, a non-profit that helps get women off the streets. >> reporter: but that unfortunately will never happen. Globe staff photographer Ron Erwin would like to shed the suspected serial killer tag. that. >> i thought ida being a police officer was awfully small. >> it is a lot of shovel and pick work. you know, we could chase them out, but for me there was always a story to them. Apparently he had made numerous comments about abducting prostitutes from the New Mexico state fair and taking them to his mother's property on the outskirts of ABQ. and it's almost frustrating because you look at this picture, and you see the disturbed earth which later we learned are grave sites, and you see the tire tracks. she confirmed that that looked like a femur bone and i should call the authorities. The killings are called the "West Mesa murders" because the bodies were buried on the west side of Albuquerque. if you don't have faith in your law enforcement to treat everybody equal, then what do you have? after months of digging for bones in the desert west of albuquerque, detectives desperately wanted to get on with the work of catching a killer. >> but while police try to prove it, another attack. >> well, just a few minutes ago albuquerque police left the dig site after they say they'd met all of the goals that they set. >> 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. where did she come from? Blea has been dubbed the "Mid-School Rapist" for his activities in the 1980s; police say he would often break into the homes of 13- to 15-year-old girls who lived near McKinley Middle School in Albuquerque and rape them. michelle's little girl angelica was now the center of attention. pi fr no, i can't believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on my car insurance with geico. didn't look like the normal animal bone you find out here. After more than five years of court proceedings, Wozniak went to trial and was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. backing you. >> we figured she had been sexually assaulted and dumped here. >> and you thought, this is it. a name and face detective babcock knew quite well from an encounter in 1999, when babcock was working the vice unit in albuquerque. some passed on grisly rumors to ida, that the missing women were dead and had been dumped in the desert west of town. Dateline Full Episodes. Colorado Department of Corrections/Facebook Paige Birgfeld and Lester Jones. >> i got to know a lot of them. >> i thought maybe she'd turn up a few days later, a few weeks, or we'd -- you know, she'd call us. >> you can't. to start their search for a killer. to discuss leads on missing persons, on cold cases, on sexual predators, and on unidentified remains. They gathered information from grieving families and locals, which helped clear up when the victims were last seen but not how they died. her aunt ran the streets, knew michelle, knew certain people, and they had heard it from her aunt. >> yes. Between 2001 and 2005, 11 women were buried by an unknown assailant in an arroyo bank on Albuquerque's West Mesa, in an undeveloped area within city limits. I watched that Dateline Re-Run last night. they were able to get me a booking photograph of what syllania looked like around the time that she died, we believe. there's no way. 's criminal investigations unit, says the department chased leads all over the country, from texas, where a woman with profile similar to those of the west mesa women-v also gone missing. it's not the call girl. By 2006, development had encroached on the area, and soon after, the site was disturbed, buried, and platted for residential development. >> i just always felt that they were going to be together. In the preceding decades he had tortured and killed around 40 other women, and Jaramillo knows her fate would have been the same had she not escaped. n.d then there was the service part, the helping people part of police work. >> reporter: in february, five months after michelle was last seen, dan went down to the albuquerque police station and formally reported his daughter missing. She was from Lawton, Oklahoma, and was reportedly last seen in Denver, police said. >> well, they were shocked. than tylenol extra strength. >> it was real hard because you know, i'd be circling the block. yet. her face bore the kind of sores that suggested she'd been hitting the crack pipe.ug >> when did you notice things were going wrong? we had them in the air. >> are truckers a particular problem? >> police have set up a tip line. their customers. >> no, you can't. A 2004 image showed a set of tire tracks leading directly to the area. >> so you were being a father all over again. Lopez spent years investigating the case and soon became a significant figure in the West Mesa murders. i am comfortable with the fact that we gave her a proper burial as a human being should be buried. dan valdez, her father, had reported michelle missing six months before ida got the case.c he was the guy who kept the calendar. -yeah, she's my ride. The case has had special interest to the Joplin area since Albuquerque police, FBI, and Joplin police conducted searches on properties owned by Joplin businessman Ron Erwin in August. the killer, whoever he was, and police naturally assumed the killer was male, had a five-year head start. >> reporter: nine months after the discovery of the first bone on the west mesa the detectives were back to square one. there's a better choice. they came up with their profile of who they thought we were looking for, including that profile was a white male. After learning about the West Mesa murders, read about the gruesome cult sacrifice of Mark Kilroy. and i get to call the dad and say, we found her. but she was unable to find the aunt or to pin down the source of the rumor. Police were at a loss. Her husband, Orlando Mesa, and 18-month-old son were shot just moments after the pair were captured on haunting surveillance camera enjoying the spring evening. but the detectives knew simply finding the bones in the first place had been an incredibly lucky break. it turns out that even though that evidence was long gone by the time those bones were discovered in 2009 a bird's eye view was precisely the perspective investigators needed. he has pics of you on his phone. One bears a. Dateline NBC also promises to reveal new details about the death of Stephen Smith, whose 2015 death investigation was reopened two weeks after the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.Smith's . 2023 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Albuquerque police spokesperson Tanner Tixier stated that she returned in 2015 to continue working on the unsolved case. Ive been looking for a cast on yhis case. so why am i still thinking about this? most common side effects are vomiting and diarrhea. you know, it's stuff you read about. soon could be years. The Disturbing Story Of The West Mesa Murders And The Serial Killer Who Remains Uncaught. but for the most part the public didn't even know there was a list. >> the company kind of left town and just kind of left the land the way it was. >> do you think we're dealing with one guy here? some of it didn't. Investigating a 10-year-old crime where the police think that the victim had it coming theres just no incentive for that.. you're lying to me. New Mexico Authorities Offer $100,000 Reward for Help Solving West Mesa Murders of 11 Women and Unborn Child . i mean he's a wreck without me. that nobody really ever sees. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> she came over to the house one day, and i'd given her a few dollars, and she stood up. had been booked. everything was in a pretty contained area. and i said, you know, what are you talking about? >> i have to keep believing that we'll find an answer soon. >> suggesting possibly that the killer met her in denver, brought her here? [2] He was found guilty and sentenced to death in September 2016. >> reporter: jane doe's number 7 nose had been broken sometime before she died. Getty Stock Images . im i remember that. glad i could help. >> reporter: that felony assault charge against lorenzo montoya went nowhere because the victim later refused to testify. They found rope and electrical tape during the search. a detective named ida lopez. >> if you find one, you're going to find them all. The victims' names will be read Saturday at a brief memorial service organized by Street Safe New Mexico next to a place where city officials in June broke ground on a memorial park. okay? >> my personal opinion, i believe that that person is still out there. After more than five years of court proceedings, Wozniak went to trial and was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. >> reporter: but as erratic as michelle had become in recent years, she'd somehow always managed to show up. Lopezs alma mater) who has written several books on serial killings, said: You cant have a colder cold case, Gibson said. for all-day, all-night protection. One bears a stick-figure angel and a message from a woman who says the victims watch over her. by 2Paragraphs in Culture, True Crime Murder TV | July 27, 2019, The Dateline episode Somebodys Daughter shines the light on Albuquerque Detective Ida Lopez. >> i would tell them every single day we're one day closer to finding your daughter. Or, died from other indirect causes, including assault, abuse, or homicide, prior to being funeralized; preped for burial? with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe eczema, or atopic dermatitis, you feel like you're itching all the time. >> somebody was trying to send a message at some point. dupixent is not a steroid, and it continuously treats your eczema even when you can't see it. it was when the company returned to the site to fix the runoff problem that they inadvertently brought some bones to the surface, where five months later those bones were discovered by christine ross and her dog ruca. now that two women from ida's list had been identified, jolene had an idea. Her daughter had found womens clothing and jewelry in their home, with some families later revealing that the victims jewelry was missing. >> right. 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