May 14, 2009 - Thursday
NY TIMES ARTICLE RUNNING TOMMORROW BY DAN FROSCH Category: News and Politics
Identities of Bodies Found on Mesa Emerge, but Killer Remains Cloaked
By DAN FROSCH
Published: May 14, 2009
ALBUQUERQUE — Three months after the remains of 11 adults and a fetus were found buried on a dust-swept mesa here, the police say they are making progress in solving the killings. But relatives of the victims are skeptical.
Seven sets of remains have been identified, and the similarities are haunting. All were young women. All had drifted into prostitution or drugs. And all matched a police list of young women who had vanished off the streets of Albuquerque from 2001 to 2006.
Clues have been hard to come by, however, and digging at the 100-acre crime scene was suspended last month. On April 24, the police released photographs of a beige acrylic fingernail belonging to one of the victims, hoping someone would recognize the salon that produced it. But there have been no matches.
An “America’s Most Wanted” segment on the deaths, which was broadcast on April 25, generated dozens of tips, but most turned out to be psychic “premonitions” about the case, said Officer Nadine Hamby, a spokeswoman for the Albuquerque Police Department.
Investigators are also now looking into “persons of interest” in the case, both alive and dead, Officer Hamby said. That includes people incarcerated in New Mexico and Texas and those with a criminal history of soliciting prostitutes and drugs.
“Not only is the chief confident,” Officer Hamby said, “but the entire task force is confident that we’re going to find who’s responsible for these poor victims.”
Still, many families of the victims have grown uneasy with the handling of the case. They praise the resources law enforcement has devoted to the crime scene but insist it has come too late.
Monica Candelaria’s remains were among those discovered on the mesa. Her mother, Isabel Candelaria, said that shortly after her daughter disappeared in May 2003, she reported to a Bernalillo County sheriff’s detective that a man in her neighborhood named Isaac was overheard saying that Monica Candelaria had been killed and taken to the mesa.
Unconvinced that the police would follow up, Ms. Candelaria said her family spent nearly a month scouring the same land where her daughter’s body would be discovered years later.
A 2003 missing persons report from the Sheriff’s Department confirms Ms. Candelaria’s account. The report said that after Ms. Candelaria informed the department about Isaac, a detective had searched an area near the mesa; the report said that a human jawbone was found there but that it did not match Monica Candelaria’s. The report also shows the matter was turned over to the cold case unit, which followed leads.
“I knew my daughter was buried out there, I just didn’t know if they would ever find her remains,” Ms. Candelaria said. “Maybe some of the girls’ lives would have been saved if they had found my daughter’s body then.”
Like other victims’ family members, Desireé Gonzales, whose cousin Veronica Romero was also found on the mesa, told of filling out missing persons reports and blanketing the city with posters shortly after Ms. Romero went missing in 2004. Ms. Gonzales said she had lost hope the case would ever be cracked.
“They haven’t done nothing for all these years,” she said of the police.
At a meeting on April 30, families said the police told them not to speak with reporters or they would risk ruining the investigation. Many left the meeting feeling frightened and confused, said Dan Valdez, whose daughter Michelle was found on the mesa with her unborn fetus.
“They want people to forget about this,” Mr. Valdez said. “But I’m not going to let them, and neither is anybody else.”
Officer Hamby said the police simply requested that families keep important information to themselves for now.
Meanwhile, families have taken to holding public vigils and meetings. Last week, after being approached by a few victims’ families, Clear Channel Outdoor New Mexico began running images of the seven identified women, along with the number for a tip hot line, on 17 of its digital billboards here.
Lori Gallegos, whose friend Doreen Marquez was buried on the mesa, said the families remained fearful their loved ones would be forgotten.
“The police have done an outstanding job with the crime scene,” Ms. Gallegos said. “But right now, the families don’t know who to trust. They don’t know who to believe.”
