Lisa Wortman’s death and dismemberment was one of the worst in Albuquerque history. Amazingly, few people know about this crime. It is officially unsolved all these years later.
Lisa Wortman had dreams of going to law school before that was all taken from her. She was an ambitious, well-liked UNM student with a bright future. But in 1992, Lisa’s twin, Lori Wortman, recalls that “somewhere it just went bad.” Lisa Wortman turned to heroin and cocaine, and she started working at two lotion parlors in Albuquerque. Her family believes this lifestyle played a role in her gruesome unsolved murder.
She was only 22 when she vanished without a trace. Her father last saw her on May 7, 1994, when she left his home with an unknown person in a car that has never been tracked down. She was last heard from a few days later, when she called some friends, saying she was at a phone booth on Edith and Dan Ave SE. Newspaper reports are conflicting – some say she was calling to get money from a friend and another says she wanted a ride to a spot on Broadway and Stadium SE.
Per the report she was picking up money, she apparently got a hold of her friend and arranged to pick up the money from the friend’s house. When she didn’t show up at the house, her friend tried to reach her at the number she had called from, but never succeeded. Police were puzzled to find that there was no phone booth at the intersection of Edith and Dan, so they think Lisa Wortman may have been calling from a business or residence in the area.
After that day, she was never seen again. It is believed she may have met her grisly fate that same day.
Her family was used to her coming and going, so they didn’t realize anything was wrong at first – except for her twin, Lori. Lori had a dream that Lisa was murdered right around the time it likely happened. Twins have such an amazing connection.
Her father eventually reported her missing. Police didn’t take the missing person report seriously. They believe that adults have the right to disappear and that Lisa’s high-risk lifestyle made her less of a priority. The report can’t even be found in their records.
Then, on June 6, 1994, a man and his son were walking their dog near the Basketball Arena on the UNM campus. The man wondered why his dog kept running to a sewer manhole and sniffing. When he removed the lid from the manhole, he saw body parts. He called the police, and they found Lisa Wortman’s dismembered body stuffed into the manhole.
Her body was very decomposed in about three feet of sewer water. Identification could only be done through dental records. Her heart tissue had metabolites from recent cocaine use, though it’s not clear if overdose may have been the cause of death.
There are no additional details released publicly about Lisa’s body. It is not stated what her cause of death was determined to be, or if it was even determined. It is also not stated what type of instrument was used to dismember her, and if the killer had done it in a professional or haphazard manner.
Detective Jeff Arbogast was the one to retrieve her body parts from the sewer shaft. An article in the Albuquerque Journal illustrates how law enforcement isn’t always glamorous, especially in this case. Arbogast donned a paper suit and filter mask and descended a ladder into the shaft, where he found Lisa’s body parts floating in the sewer water. The air in the shaft was found to be pure methane, which is toxic, so Detective Arbogast was given an air tank as he fished body parts out of the sludge and sent them back up the shaft in a bucket. He spent about four or five hours in that hellhole, gathering up Lisa’s body parts and searching for evidence. Then the shaft was drained and Arbogast descended into an adjoining chamber to look for additional evidence. Arbogast became extremely ill in the following days due to exposure to a parasite in the sewage sludge. But he told the Albuquerque Journal that he had a sense of humor about it and he loved his job.
Lisa Wortman’s Life
Lisa didn’t have an easy life. Her mother abandoned her and her twin sister when they were barely a year old. They were raised by their father, Tom Wortman. Lisa was an honor roll student and played volleyball. She was even on the 1987-1988 Who’s Who of American High School Students and she served as president of her sophomore and junior classes.
Then, in the middle of her junior year, she became pregnant and dropped out. Court records indicate that Lisa had a daughter, Lori Elizabeth, when she was 16. Lisa gave the baby’s father custody and she always carried a lot of guilt for giving up the child. Though she had visitation rights, she completely abandoned her daughter just like her own mother had abandoned her in the years before she died.
After giving up her daughter, Lisa went back to school, graduated, and became a UNM student from 1989 to 1993. She majored in chemistry, with the ultimate goal of going to law school and becoming an attorney for pharmaceutical companies. On top of maintaining excellent grades, Lisa also hosted drug-free raves and charged fellow students admission to support herself during this time period.
It wasn’t until 1992 that Lisa began to work in strip clubs, making hundreds a day. Lori Wortman found syringes in Lisa’s purse but Lisa claimed they were confiscated from her co-worker. Lisa told many lies that made her appear clean, but her personality changed and she grew distant from her family. Lori was floored by Lisa’s descent into drug addiction, as Lisa had always been dead-set against drugs growing up.
During the 1992 September Balloon Fiesta, Lisa offered to perform a sexual act for $100 on an undercover cop at the strip club Cherry Blossom. She was consequently arrested for prostitution and given a 90-day deferred sentence. Court records also reflect that Lisa had shoplifting charges incurred during this time.
Lisa’s relationship with her family had really deteriorated by 1994. She even grew distant from Lori after wrecking Lori’s car. But in March and April of 1994, the twins began to talk more. Lori recalls that Lisa had scars on her face, had lost a lot of weight, and was obviously hooked on drugs at that time. Tom and Lori Wortman both believed that Lisa’s lifestyle contributed to her murder.
Leads
While her murder hasn’t been solved, cops said in 1994 that they had good leads and the investigation was going smoothly. Police believed that Lisa had been killed by a local who was familiar to her and her death wasn’t random. Her murder didn’t appear to fit a pattern so it wasn’t thought to be the work of a serial killer. However, the case has gone cold and the last credible tip was reported in 2006.
Lisa Wortman was found less than half a mile from the area she was last known to be, near Edith and Dan Ave SE, so that area may have been one of the crime scenes. There are at least three or four crime scenes that are unknown: where Lisa met her killer or was abducted, where Lisa was killed, where she was dismembered if different from the murder site, and the vehicle by which she was transported to the manhole. Finding even just one of these crime scenes could solve her homicide, but unfortunately, that hasn’t happened.
In 1994, a man called Arizona police and claimed that he had been present at a Banditos party in Albuquerque when he witnessed four men kill a female hitchhiker. A man named JD picked her up and brought her to a house, where she smoked marijuana and meth with four men. Two of the men had consensual sex with her. But when JD tried to have sex with her, she refused, so JD stabbed the woman in the pelvis and cut her stomach open. Police could not substantiate this man’s claims. They did find blood at the house where the crime supposedly happened, but they think that the blood could have been from bikers who were cut while working on their bikes. A few family members of the tipster said that he made the story up. However, some people think that this tale may have been related to Lisa Wortman’s death.
Given the large amount of crimes that have been committed against sex workers in Albuquerque, I wonder if her death may have been related somehow? Perhaps the person responsible for the deaths of the West Mesa Bone Collector victims had a hand in this. In fact, Lisa Wortman could have been one of his first kills.
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