You have undoubtedly heard of the West Mesa Bone Collector. But did you know that Albuquerque had another suspected serial killer in 1987-88? This man’s MO was running over young women around Albuquerque and leaving them in the road to die. He claimed 3 victims and severely injured and emotionally scarred 4 others.
The first known victim was Nancy Vice, who was severely injured by a driver in a white truck on September 18, 1987, around 5:20 am. Nancy Vice went out for her usual early morning jog when she noticed a strange white truck pass her and circle back to pass her again. She didn’t recognize the truck, and since she often jogged this route, she knew most of the people and vehicles along it.
She doesn’t remember what happened after the truck passed her a second time. A man walking along Haines NE, a few blocks from Valdez NE, found her sitting on the side of the road, bruised and battered, around 11 am. She was relatively far from where she had been jogging and she was in shock. He called the ambulance and she was transported to the hospital, where cops showed up to question her. But she had no recollection of anything, beyond the white truck that had passed her twice.
It was initially thought she had been abducted and beaten, but later, investigators determined she had been run over. They believed that she had been struck from behind and her head hit the windshield, knocking her unconscious and giving her amnesia. The driver then thought he had killed her, so he probably loaded her in his vehicle and dumped her on Haines, where she was found. Someone on Valdez NE found blood, a shoe, and broken glasses on the street directly in front of his yard and called police. Cops surmised that is where Vice was struck.
Cops also found the white truck, abandoned in an arroyo near Valdez and Haines. The owner of the truck lived in the area. He had not even realized that it had been stolen. Police found a dent in the hood that suggested it had been involved in the accident.
Meanwhile, Vice’s son noticed that she hadn’t returned from her jog, so he called her husband at work and they called the police. It took a while for police to realize she was their victim in the hospital. While she was fortunately alive, she had a long recovery ahead of her, especially emotionally. She suffered a broken nose, teeth knocked loose, a concussion, and cuts and scrapes. Even after those injuries healed, her emotional scars remain raw. She has never jogged after that terrible day. Vice was 47 at the time and a schoolteacher and mother. She had no known enemies. No one has been identified as the truck thief and the person who hit her.
The next victim would be Elaine Dyble. Her story does not have a happy ending like Nancy Vice’s. Dyble was a medical technologist, out for her usual jog along Tramway NW on November 11, 1987. She was run down by a beige truck and killed, leaving behind five children. Four of the children had been quadruplets. She was also married to a lietenant colonel in the Air Force, stationed at Albuquerque’s Kirtland Air Force Base.
The next known victim was 16-year-old Spring Miller, a girl with a toothy smile and a warm heart. Just days before her death, Spring had transferred from Highland High School to Del Norte. She made friends everywhere she went and she had a talent for drawing. The assistant principal at her former school thought she was quiet but friendly and kind.
On the evening of January 29, 1988, 16-year-old Spring Miller was walking with her sister, April Miller, who was 14 at the time. They were crossing in front of an entrance to an apartment complex at 7300 Montgomery NE. A man pulling out of the complex in a blue Bronco-type 4×4 truck with a white camper shell stopped to let them cross in front of him. April says she saw him grin wickedly before accelerating suddenly and striking Spring, running over her head with his front and rear tires. He also ran over April’s legs but apparently didn’t hurt her badly – physically, that is.
Eerily, April says a woman in a white car was behind the truck. She witnessed everything. April screamed and ran to beat on the woman’s window for help. But the woman refused to talk to her and drove off. This woman was sought by police but never found.
Spring was buried with donations from the community. She left behind April and another sister, Rita Lynn Miller, as well as a brother, Hal Buckland in Maryland. She was also survived by her mother, Dianna Miller, and her father, Johnny K Miller.
Sadly, her family members had to endure yet more tragedy after her death. Her brother Hal was killed in a car accident on May 4, 1988. This car accident was never properly diagramed or reconstructed. Dianna claims it was suspicious, though details are hard to come by. This was just months after she had to bury Spring.
April Miller never recovered from seeing her sister being run down. She turned to hard drug use. On May 25, 1997, someone called the police from a Shamrock Gas Station, saying that her body was in a nearby alley. Police found her there, dead, and identified her immediately. The autopsy determined she had overdosed. Nobody informed her family of her death for six weeks – even when her mother reported her missing on June 11. Her mother thinks that she had been at the home of a friend April called “Roland” who lived near the Shamrock station. Instead of getting her help, “Roland” and her other drug associates dumped her in the alley to die slowly.
The Hit and Run Killer didn’t stop there. On July 19, 1988, two victims were targeted by a man in a stolen maroon car. The first was Mary Beth Matthews. The second was Monica Robles. Their attacks led to the apprehension of the man who is most likely the Hit and Run Killer.
Mary Beth Matthews went for a jog that morning, not expecting anything unusual to happen. A man in a maroon car drove by and swerved at her, nearly striking her and giving her a good scare. The man appeared to enjoy scaring her. Matthews reported it to the police. Not many details are available about Mary Beth Matthews beyond that.
Monica Robles was only 23. She was a recent UNM graduate who just wanted to go for a jog near her home at 8:30 am that morning. She must have been very pretty because she says many young men would follow her on her jogs to try to talk to her and she wasn’t bothered by them. But that particular morning, Martin Martinez followed her in a stolen maroon car for about two miles from Juan Tabo to Spain. He kept turning to pass her and pulling into driveways in front of her, making her nervous. Four houses down from her own, Monica Robles slowed to a walk to cool down. That’s when the man finally accelerated and struck her from behind. She flipped into the air, over a low brick wall, into a yard. As she lay there screaming and bleeding, Martinez paused to watch her with “cold eyes.” Then he reversed into a mailbox and took off. Robles is certain he meant to kill her.
She ran to the neighbor’s house for help. Fortunately, the neighbor saw what happened and nabbed the license plate number. That’s how Monica’s and Mary Beth’s attacker was found. His name was Martin Christopher Martinez. He was 22 and had already done time for burglary. The maroon car he was driving had been stolen from a residence on the 4000 block of Oahu NE that morning. Martinez had aspirations of becoming a hairdresser. But instead, he liked to party and break into houses. And, apparently, he liked to steal cars and run down female joggers.
Police entertained the possibility that he was the Hit and Run Killer. They couldn’t substantiate any links to the other murders, though. This is weird, since his MO was the same, and April Miller’s description of the man who ran over Spring was similar to Martinez. It seems highly unlikely that there were two different dudes, stealing cars and running over women in the Northeast Heights. That is a pretty unusual MO for a serial killer.
Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and no contest to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on November 18, 1988. He was given eight and a half years in jail. Not much time for a man who had likely murdered two females, and hurt several others. It appears he still lives in Albuquerque and has had a rather peaceful life since getting out.
On September 23, 1988, someone hit and killed Krista Lavandoski while Martinez was still in jail. As she crossed Juan Tabo with her friend on a walk signal, she was struck by someone in a black four-wheel-drive truck who ran the red. Without bothering to see if she was OK, the driver sped off. Neither the vehicle nor the driver were ever found. Police never commented if they thought she was murdered by the same person running down women around the city or if her death was unrelated. It seems unrelated – Martinez was most likely the Hit and Run Killer in my opinion.
Regardless of whether she was a victim of the Hit and Run Killer, her death is a tragedy and her killer is a coward. Krista was only 13, with her whole life ahead of her. She was very creative and loved dance and theater and photography. She was active in Albuquerque Children’s Theater. She planned to move to New York City one day and make it big in the creative arts. She had lots of friends and was likely on her way to meet them at the Goody’s Restaurant nearby when she was killed. Her father was a teacher at La Cueva High School and he planned to take her with him to Mexico for a marine biology tour that summer, which she was very excited about. This little girl was a student at Hoover Middle School, where she played volleyball and was elected “secretary of state” to be an ambassador at other schools.
http://www.realcrimes.com/Miller/April_Miller.htm