I have written quite a bit about the West Mesa Bone Collector. You can read my other posts here:
Creeps Behind the West Mesa Murders
Most of the time, I think the West Mesa Bone Collector was Lorenzo Montoya. Now that he’s dead, he’s out of the way and the killings have stopped. But other times, I don’t think the West Mesa Bone Collector is a serial killer preying on women alone. Instead, these murders were a systematic removal of women who somehow posed threats to higher-ups in Albuquerque. Maybe these women were informants who knew too much about dirty cops or they were suspected to be snitches by drug dealers or pimps they associated with.
Here is why I wonder that.
Too Many People Knew
Eleven of the victims were found in 2009. But between 2003 and when the mass grave was found in 2009, there were whispers that these women had been beheaded or stabbed and buried on the West Mesa. The rumors varied slightly from victim to victim, but they shared many features that indicated some people knew what had really happened.
Too many people knew.
First, rumors of Monica Candelaria’s death started in May 2003, 6 years before her body was found. Her mother Isabel reported that she had heard about Monica being murdered and buried in the West Mesa by a man named Isaac, who lived in her neighborhood. How Isaac knew Monica, and how he knew with fair accuracy what had happened to her and where she had been buried, is unclear. But I find it very troubling. One of the original police reports documented the rumors about Monica’s murder and made a note for further investigation into them. It is not clear if that investigation happened.
Then there were rumors of Gina Michelle Valdez’s death, spoken long before Valdez was even reported missing. Michelle Valdez vanished sometime in 2004, with conflicting accounts of when she was last seen. Her father, Dan Valdez, last saw her on September 22, 2004, and he grew concerned when she didn’t come by to borrow money like she usually did. She was finally reported missing on Valentine’s Day, 2005. Her family was especially concerned because she was pregnant.
But in November 2004, about 4 months before she was reported missing, Michelle’s sister Camille got a call one day from a friend, giving her condolences for Michelle’s death. When Camille asked what the friend was talking about, the caller claimed that her aunt had told her Michelle Valdez had been stabbed 22 times and buried in the desert.
Based on these awful rumors, Michelle’s family began to search for Michelle off of 118th street, mere yards from where the mass grave was found years later. They even found a jawbone but it was not matched to Michelle. I have tried to find out if the jawbone was ever identified. There were human remains found in 2018 that turned out to be ancient indigenous remains. Maybe the jawbone was part of those remains? So far I have not been able to find out more about that jawbone but I will update if I learn anything.
Cinnamon Elks was rumored to have been taken to the West Mesa and beheaded by a dirty cop in August 2004. Many women on the streets reported this when Cinnamon vanished, and some of them called Cinnamon’s mom, Diana Wilhelm, to tell her what they had heard. There are concerning ties between Cinnamon and a cop named David which I go more into momentarily.
The rumors of her beheading seemed to start with a man named Art Johnson, whom Cinnamon sometimes stayed with. Art Johnson and Cinnamon were not dating but had a relationship of some type that is unclear. Cinnamon referred to him as a roommate. Art was the first person to notice Cinnamon missing, possibly the last to see her alive. He called Cinnamon’s mother, Diana Wilhelm, to say he was worried about Cinnamon. Wilhelm urged him to call the police and warned him he would be a prime suspect. Police noticed that Art Johnson’s name repeatedly popped up in the West Mesa investigation and he is referenced in several police reports in the case. He appeared to have connections to many of the victims. Does he know something? Or is he involved somehow?
Cinnamon’s mother claimed that Jamie Barela called her one day in a rush and told her Cinnamon had been murdered. I am puzzled by this. Jamie Barela was only 15 when she vanished with her older cousin Evelyn Salazar while walking to a park in April 2004. She was reported missing long before Cinnamon was. She did not appear to be involved in the drugs and prostitution that Evelyn Salazar engaged in. It is thought she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. So how did she know Cinnamon and her mom? Why did she call Cinnamon’s mom after she herself had already vanished?
Then there were the rumors swirling around Julie Nieto’s disappearance in July 2004. Nieto was reported missing by two women, Melodie Carmona and Angela Romero, fellow prostitutes who pretended to be her cousins. Then Nieto’s aunt and mother were informed, and they revealed to police that Carmona and Romero were not actually relatives of Nieto’s. As a result, Carmona and Romero became people of interest. They evaded the police and have never been properly questioned.
I think they probably had nothing to do with her death and just pretended to be her cousins to get the cops to take them seriously. Something similar happened with Jennifer Lynn Shirm’s death in a rash of Albuquerque sex worker killings in the 80s. But I do think these sex workers probably knew something terrible had been done to Nieto, just like many other sex workers seemed to know what was going on at the time. And of course these women would evade police – they were on the wrong side of the law and they knew the police did not care about them. Just look at how their sisters on the streets were vanishing without any care from law enforcement at all!
Valerie Nieto was Julie’s sister. The two were involved in drugs together, and it sounds like they did sex work together too. Previously, the two girls had been taken to the Manzanos by a trucker and brutally raped, which they refused to talk about. They had also been chased on Central by some unknown person, an incident which had them afraid for their lives shortly before Julie Nieto vanished. It certainly appears they were both tied up in some people and activities that did not mean them well.
Heartbroken after Julie went missing, Valerie fell into drugs even worse and died with a needle in her arm in a motel in 2007. But their mother wondered if Valerie’s death wasn’t so accidental. She felt that Valerie knew what had befallen Julie and someone silenced her by intentionally overdosing her. She believes the person who reported Valerie dead was probably also involved in Julie Nieto’s death. This hunch could be wrong, but with all of the fishy stuff and connections between victims, I can’t help it but wonder if she’s on to something.
So, seriously, how did people know as far back as 2003 that women were being murdered and buried in the West Mesa? The bodies wouldn’t be found for another 6 years. If these murders were being committed by a lone wolf psychopath, hunting women single handedly, then all these people would not have known. Serial killers tend to be quite discreet, or else they wouldn’t be able to claim so many victims.
The fact that these (true) rumors circulated about the deaths of these women suggests that someone was talking. Someone knew the truth. Someone either witnessed some of the murders and lived to tell the tale. Or someone was bragging about the murders, using them to intimidate others.
That certainly doesn’t sound like the work of a lone sexual predator picking vulnerable women off the street. Rather, it sounds like someone was targeting these women for a reason, and then bragging about it with impunity. Julie Nieto’s father thinks that more than one person was involved. In fact, many people believe that a ring of pimps or dirty cops or even cartel members worked together to create this mass grave.
The Recurring Theme of Dirty Police
From the beginning, police dismissed the family members of the missing women who reported them missing. They simply didn’t believe these women could have met foul play. One notable exception would be Julie Nieto, when two different women reported her missing while claiming to be her cousins despite not being related to her. Valdez’s case was also treated with some degree of seriousness, possibly because her father was a corrections officer at the juvenile detention center in Albuquerque, and therefore he probably had a camaraderie and respect among the police force.
Sadly, this isn’t necessarily an indication of a cover-up. Police are inundated with missing persons reports and most of the missing persons end up being found alive and well. So taking every report seriously calls for more resources and manpower than the force has.
However, the police’s actions in the case since the bodies have been found is inexcusable. It seems that these crimes should be relatively easy to solve. There is tons of evidence. There is probably DNA on the bodies. There are rumors on the streets that seem to be pretty accurate. So why is this still unsolved?
It could be that the police of Albuquerque were just too ill-equipped to handle the crimes. Sometimes it takes time, as we saw with the Long Island Serial Killer. But it could also be that the police knew exactly who perpetrated these murders and they are unable, or unwilling, to take action. Convicting these killers may require tackling a huge criminal organization, which may be paying some dirty officers off. The clean cops are turning the other cheek out of fear.
I wouldn’t believe this, except for all of the murders of Abq sex workers that happened in the 1980s. Those murders remain unsolved 4 decades later, even though journalists and vice officers knew they were linked to the Memphis Mob. Could the West Mesa killings be related to the same mob, or a similar enterprise? And if so, could it be the same story, with Albuquerque police forced or bribed into inaction?
The Memphis Mob
It could be the Memphis Mob is the organization that cops are protecting. (When I say that the cops are protecting them, I don’t mean all cops, I mean a select dirty few.) This criminal group was believed to be responsible for several brutal sex worker murders in the 80s, and they may be responsible for the murders today. They appeared to have taken a little break from killing prostitutes in the 90s for some reason and started up again in the early aughts.
In a 2009 article, police claim that they have rounded up all members of the “Memphis Mob” attempting to establish a drug distribution territory from Mexico to Tennessee. They claimed that the group had moved in around 2006 and were totally eradicated after Operation Falling Star in 2009. The media bragged cops had “foiled” the gang’s plans to set up a criminal enterprise in New Mexico, as if everything was completely over within 3 years.
But this is obviously false. Don’t believe me? See this 1990 Albuquerque Journal article about women going missing or turning up dead in the 1980s in Albuquerque. The pimps in the white Cadillac were purported to be members of the Memphis Mob, controlling the sale of sex and Preludin in Albuquerque’s War Zone. These pimps were believed to be responsible for the beating deaths of so many women. A group of Cuban cocaine dealers were also thought to be involved.
The Memphis Mob, or “Memphis Group” as it is erroneously referred to in the article (the Memphis Group is an Italian design group from the 80s), has been around in Albuquerque for a long, long time. They have always been up to their eyeballs in the Abq vice trade. They are very territorial and very violent. And they don’t like their prostitutes leaving their clutches!
Frederick Williams is actually a Memphis Mob member. If you don’t remember, he was the one who shot and killed Lorenzo Montoya over the murder of Sherrika Hill. It could be he was defending his territory and the Memphis Mob had no interest in killing the women of the West Mesa. The West Mesa Bone Collector may have been a big drain on their income.
But it could also be that the mob wanted women taken out for certain reasons. Maybe these women were about to rat, or they were trying to leave the lifestyle. Some even theorize that Lorenzo Montoya was their gofer due to his vicious nature and his proximity to the gravesite. Maybe he was ordered to kill women who posed a threat to the Mob for whatever reason – like informing on them to the cops or wanting to leave the organization. Hill may have been slated for “disposal” which is why Montoya solicited her services online. Williams just didn’t know it when he brought Hill to Montoya’s trailer. Williams intercepted her body being disposed of by Montoya and shot him in terror. Williams was only 18, suggesting he was a relatively young and possibly new member of the Memphis Mob.
Yet an even more insidious theory is that the Albuquerque police, at least some of them, are in on all this.
There were many rumors of dirty cops taking sex workers to the West Mesa or the mountains and raping them. The women were then expected to find their own way home, beaten and bloody. This instilled an even deeper mistrust and dislike of cops among the Albuquerque sex work community. But did some of these women not make it back alive? Cinnamon Elks was one of the women rumored to have been murdered by a dirty cop on the West Mesa.
Cinnamon Elks’ family heard often about her deep terror of a cop named David. David even called her grandfather’s house, looking for her, after she disappeared. That could indicate that he didn’t know she was dead – or it could be his efforts to cover his tracks and make it seem he didn’t know she was dead after he had killed her.
It is not clear what Cinnamon’s relationship with David was, but I think it is possible that she was serving as a confidential informant for him. It could that he used his power to intimidate her into informing and maybe also having sex with him. If she were an informant, then that could explain why she was killed.
Oddly, Cinnamon had stored items at her grandfather’s shed and they went missing shortly after she did. Why would this happen? Were some of those items incriminating of someone? Who took them and why?
Many people believe the cops were involved in these killings or a cop himself was the serial killer targeting sex workers in Albuquerque. It could be people just like this story because it is sensational and exciting. It supports modern-day rhetoric that the police should be defunded. But there is a lot of compelling talk that cops were involved, and given the fact the Golden State Killer was a cop, it is certainly possible. This whole case reminds me of the Jennings 8.
The Cuban Connection and the Mexican Cartels
Many of the victims’ loved ones report hearing rumors from police and others about Cuban drug traffickers playing a role in the West Mesa murders. Interestingly, Cubans come up often in talk about crime in New Mexico. There is a suspected Cuban connection in Teresa Reyes’s murder. There is also a suspected Cuban connection in the Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacres. And now this. This is certainly not a racist statement about Cubans, just an observation that there appears to be a criminal organization with Cuban ties deeply rooted in New Mexico. That, or Cuban criminals are convenient scapegoats for the awful things that happen in this state.
Given New Mexico’s proximity to Mexico, one would think the Mexican cartels and their notorious violence and drug distribution efforts into the US would feature more prominently in these rumors. And there is some speculation that the cartels played a role in the West Mesa murders. Cinnamon Elks’s mother Diana Wilhelm believes that Cinnamon may have engaged in trafficking for the cartels due to her furtive trips to El Paso. Cinnamon never disclosed why she went to El Paso. Could the cartels have executed these women for some reason?
Some people on Websleuths point out the similarities between these killings and the killings of women in the desert near Juarez. They think that Mexican cartels who initiate members by having them kill women might have played a hand in the West Mesa Bone Collector killings. There is no doubt that the cartels are bad, bad, bad, and that they have a hand in crime in the Southwestern states. However, there are also other players involved in the Albuquerque underworld that seem to come up more often in conversation. Could the cartels be involved, or do they take a backseat to the Cubans and the Memphis Mob in Albuquerque?
I wish I could conclude this post with answers. But I only have more questions. Who killed these women? Was it a lone serial killer, preying on vulnerable women that few would miss? Or was it an organized crime ring or gang, targeting these women because they knew too much or because they had outlived their usefulness to the gang?
What happened to the many others who vanished from Albuquerque without a trace? Will we ever know? Sometimes I wonder if we won’t because someone doesn’t want us to know. Fortunately, they can now pin it all on Lorenzo Montoya and avoid any real consequences.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/albuquerque-journal-death-on-the-cruise/136997283/
https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/nm-west-mesa-murders-2003-05.80639/page-16
http://web.archive.org/web/20141202190436/https://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_25155151/