Mary Lou Sena and Billy Sena have been missing since September 22, 1979. Their case is one of Albuquerque’s oldest cold cases. No one knows what happens to these kids, but there is a strong suspect, a former boyfriend of Billy Sena’s mother. A statute of limitations prevents charges from being filed so justice will never be done in this case. Their bodies have never been found.
Some think they were murdered and buried somewhere; others think they were simply abducted and taken elsewhere to grow up. I am not sure the latter theory is possible when Billy was 11 and Mary Lou was 9. Both kids should have retained at least some memory of their childhoods, enough to try to locate their families after they grew up.
Billy and Mary Lou were cousins and they were very close. Billy spent the morning at Mary Lou’s house in Martineztown that day. That evening, Billy was supposed to come home so that his mother could take him to the fair as an early birthday present. His sister’s father had already taken her and offered to take Billy Sena earlier in the week, but Billy and his mother Frances agreed to go together that night. Billy Sena’s twelfth birthday was in just five days.
But he never came home.
The cousins went outside to play that afternoon. Billy briefly went inside Mary Lou’s house for a glass of water. That’s when he asked his aunt and Mary Lou’s mother, Phyllis Sena, for permission for them both to go to the lawn in front of the local post office on Mountain and Broadway NE. Phyllis granted them permission.
The Sena children then supposedly walked to the 1135 Broadway Street post office, near the railway line. Bear in mind that this is a poor area of Albuquerque, where lawns were uncommon, so playing in the luscious grass in front of the post office makes sense. The children had played here before.
When the Sena children didn’t return home after several hours, Phyllis Sena went to Billy’s house to see if they had gone there. Frances Sena had not seen the children at all. The two mothers searched the neighborhood and the nearby fairgrounds, in case the children had gone to the fair alone.
At this point, they reported the kids missing. Police told them not to worry and said the kids were most likely at a friend’s house. But both mothers doubted this very much. Billy and Mary Lou were not naughty children. They never took off without telling their parents where they were going.
The mothers searched all night without luck, panic growing in their hearts. The next morning, police finally began to take the disappearances of the Sena children seriously. Their reticence to search for the children sooner may have cost the investigation precious time.
Neighbors reported that they saw the children near Edith Road at 10 am the day they vanished. One person said she saw the children at the post office. No other witness sightings of them were reported after that.
This gave rise to a number of theories. Police surmised the kids may have climbed into a rail box car which then took off. They tracked the train to Denver and searched ever box car to no avail.
Others think they were abducted by a stranger on the busy road, though that seems unlikely without any witnesses. Who would be ballsy enough to take them in broad daylight off a busy road? But this seems the most likely explanation.
Yet others think they ran away. A female witness thought she saw the children hitchhiking south on I25 and she was concerned because they seemed so young. But she did not know if the description really matched the children, nor did she remember what time she had spotted the young hitchhikers.
But the eeriest theory is far closer to home.
One interesting thing about this case was Billy Sena’s home life. One newspaper article reported that Billy Sena lived with his mother, Frances, and a woman named Rosemary Chavez. Later sources, like the Charley Project, state that Billy Sena lived with his half-sister Sarah, his mother Frances, and Frances’s boyfriend, Michael Cordova. There was also a woman named Liza Ramirez who apparently lived in their house, though it is not clear how she was associated with the family.
It appeared drugs were used and sold in the home. Michael Cordova grew marijuana in the backyard. The day before Billy Sena disappeared, Cordova had accused him of stealing one of his marijuana plants and then beat Billy badly. Locals believe that Cordova murdered the children and buried them in a basement, but police have never been able to locate the bodies.
It is not clear how long Michael Cordova and Liza Ramirez remained in the picture after the children went missing. Since non-family members moving into the home are more likely to abuse children, these two do seem like good people to focus on. Unfortunately, the two vanished at some point after the Sena children disappeared, and police have never been able to track them down.
Billy Sena did exhibit classic signs of a child struggling at home. His grades and behavior were suffering in school and Billy said teachers were always on his back. He told his mom he did not want a stepfather.
Police did not name Cordova and Ramirez as suspects until 2011. Given the number of years that have passed though, it is possible Michael Cordova is dead. Are we even sure that was his real name? Or Liza’s real name?
Another suspect was also investigated. She was an unnamed woman who knew the family but was not a friend. She was apparently over-involved with the children. She disappeared to Gallup when the Sena children disappeared and police could not track her down. Police searched for the Sena children all over Navajo Nation and in Gallup without success.
I am not sure who Rosemary Chavez is, Frances Sena’s supposed housemate. She spoke to the papers early on in the investigation and also seemed to be involved in searching for the children. I am not sure if she was ever properly investigated.
Months after the kids vanished, Phyllis Sena received a phone call. She immediately recognized the girl’s voice and said, “Mary Lou, where are you?” The girl on the phone said she had the wrong number and hung up. But Phyllis remains convinced it was Mary Lou. I imagine she missed her daughter badly and imagined the voice sounded like the little girl. I doubt that call really was Mary Lou Sena. After all, why would Mary Lou say it was a wrong number if she was intending to call her mother? Maybe it was something similar to the case of Anthonette Cayedito, where she called home but then got caught?
Frances Sena was heartbroken. She said that Billy was half her life. After he disappeared, she said she turned to the Bible and Dial-a-Prayer for solace. She also made her own money and lived without a man, which she said Billy wanted for her. Phyllis Sena was equally heartbroken and she also turned to religion for solace. She just wanted her daughter and her nephew to be found.
The chilling thing is that the investigation now focuses on Michael Cordova. But what if he didn’t do anything to the Sena children? What if someone else did, someone who has gotten away with it for decades, living right under our noses?
I worry something really heinous happened to these children and they died that day. Statistically, most abducted children are murdered within 3 hours. I think it would be important to investigate people living in Albuquerque at the time who had sex offense charges against children, or who went on to get charges within the next few years. Usually sex offenders offend repeatedly.
I wonder if this case might be related to the disappearance of Patricia Joan Chesher ten years prior. The newspaper in Albuquerque noted that an unusually high number of kids disappeared in Albuquerque between 1969 and 1980. Most of the cases were eventually solved, but the cases of the Sena children, Patricia Joan Chesher, Bucky Kephart, and Veronica Jackson have all gone cold. Police do not think these cases are linked. But the details of Chesher’s disappearance is eerily similar to that of the Sena children, and they were also close in age.
Most of the Sena relatives have now passed on. Surviving relatives’ memories have begun to fade with time. But we have to keep the memory of these kids alive, just on the off chance this case might be solved. These children and their surviving family members deserve justice at last. If Sharon Lee Gallegos‘s abduction and murder could be solved after 62 years, maybe the Sena children’s case will also be solved.
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