Bodies Found but Mystery Lingers for Kin of Missing Women

By DAN FROSCH
Published: March 23, 2009
ALBUQUERQUE — The last time anyone saw Michelle Valdez, she was working the streets of the War Zone, a neighborhood of housing projects, heroin and sex shops near the University of
Sergio Salvador/Associated Press
The authorities also identified the remains of, from left, Cinnamon Elks, Julie Nieto and Victoria Chavez.
It was 2004, and like a growing number of young prostitutes here, Ms. Valdez, a 22-year-old mother of two, had vanished one day. Save for the close-knit group of women she hustled with, and the parents who had lost her to the streets, Ms. Valdez’s disappearance went virtually unnoticed.
But on Feb. 2, a woman walking her dog came across bones scattered about a dusty mesa on the western edge of the city. Soon after, the police found Ms. Valdez’s remains and those of the four-month-old fetus she was carrying. They also discovered the remains of 11 other bodies — bodies the police say could match a list of at least 16 young women who disappeared in Albuquerque from 2001 to 2006.
The emerging story of the bodies on the West Mesa has held the city rapt for weeks, unmasking a darker Albuquerque where young women were vanishing and not many people were paying attention.
“Even with her faults, Michelle was sensitive, generous and loving,” said Karen Jackson, who had been searching for Ms. Valdez, her daughter, since the day she stopped calling home. “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 I am angry.”
Three other bodies have been identified — Julie Nieto, 28; Cinnamon Elks, 36, and Victoria Chavez, 30 — and the police say the women knew each other from the streets. Chief Ray Schultz of the Albuquerque Police Department said that the 100-acre crime scene was the largest in the city’s history and that his department had committed considerable resources to the case.
“We are looking at every different possibility and scenario,” Chief Schultz said. “Everyone in the organization is taking this case personally.”
Such assurances have rung hollow for many families who fear their loved ones were buried on the mesa. For years, they said, they implored the police to do something; but the lead detective assigned to the missing women, they said, rarely returned calls and kept families in the dark.
Lori Gallegos, whose childhood friend Doreen Marquez vanished in October 2003 and is on the police list of lost women, said Ms. Marquez’s family had relayed many tips to the police but waited months before hearing back. Family members described Ms. Marquez as an outgoing young woman who drifted into prostitution to support her heroin addiction.
“You think the police are supposed to help,” Ms. Gallegos said. “It makes me angry. They disregarded Doreen as if it was not important she was missing.”
Chief Schultz disputed accusations that the cases were ignored because many of the women were prostitutes. “We didn’t write these cases off,” he said.
He said some of the women were not reported missing until months after they had disappeared, making the investigation difficult.
At a meeting in Albuquerque, families of women on the list passed around photographs of loved ones and told of scouring the city’s streets alone.
One man, John Peebles, has driven from Fort Worth each year hoping to find his daughter Leah, who disappeared on May 22, 2006.
Mr. Peebles said his daughter, a hairstylist, started using heroin as a teenager after being raped by a high school acquaintance and had come to Albuquerque for a fresh start. Almost three weeks later, she was gone.
Mr. Peebles peppered the city with fliers, staked out dangerous neighborhoods and was cornered by angry pimps. One day, a drug-dazed prostitute led him behind a truck stop where she had promised Ms. Peebles might be waiting. But the woman’s lead proved fruitless.
“I really thought I was going to find her,” Mr. Peebles said. “It’s just been sleepless nights and sick-filled days. I would give anything to see her again.”
Indeed, theories about the killer have been whispered among families and through the Albuquerque streets.
Ms. Jackson recalled that just months after Ms. Valdez disappeared, her sister Camille received a strange phone call from a friend offering her condolences and saying she had heard that Ms. Valdez had been “stabbed a bunch of times and thrown out somewhere.”
Last year, Ms. Gallegos tracked down a pimp who she said had nude pictures of some of the missing women, including Ms. Marquez. But the man told her he did not know what happened to Ms. Marquez, and he died in January before Ms. Gallegos could press him further.
The family of Darlene Trujillo, another missing woman, is convinced that she was abducted and taken to Mexico after disappearing with a heroin dealer on July 4, 2001. A man who claimed to have information about Ms. Trujillo turned up murdered, said Liz Perez, a family friend.
One of many theories the police say they are considering involves a man named Lorenzo Montoya. On Dec. 16, 2006, in a well-publicized case, the police said Mr. Montoya bound and choked to death a young prostitute, Shericka Hill, after luring her to his trailer a few miles from the West Mesa. Ms. Hill’s pimp, who had grown suspicious while waiting outside, burst into the trailer, shooting and killing Mr. Montoya.
According to an article in The Albuquerque Journal at the time, Mr. Montoya had a record of soliciting prostitutes. He had also been charged with sexually assaulting a prostitute, but the case was dismissed.
The police note that the sharp increase in the number of missing women stopped around the time of Mr. Montoya’s death.
One former prostitute, who was close with some of the victims, said in an interview that she had been choked and raped by Mr. Montoya after he picked her up in the War Zone in 1995.
“He told me, ‘You’re lucky; I was going to kill you,’ ” recalled the woman, who was granted anonymity because she said she believed that she and her family could face repercussions.
Back on the mesa, a team of F.B.I. forensic experts, local police officers and an archaeologist continue to dig through the dirt, as the state medical investigator’s office works to identify the remaining bones.
Some families, meanwhile, are trying to raise money for the funerals they sense are coming. Others continue to seek answers on their own.
“It’s been the most horrible feeling, because we don’t know whether we should grieve, be angry, or cling to that small glimmer of hope,” Ms. Gallegos said. “Nobody has listened to us for so many years.”