In the 1980s, there was a rash of violent slayings of Albuquerque sex workers. The violence was again noted in the early aughts, when sex workers started going missing in droves and then eleven of them were found in a mass grave in the West Mesa. At least 11 more missing sex workers from this time period have never been found. But there were a few sex worker murders in the 1990s in Albuquerque, as well.
The three murders described below are probably not the work of the same killer, but I have considered that any one of these cases may also be the early work of the West Mesa Bone Collector. Many serial killers develop and evolve their victim preferences, murder methods, and disposal methods over the courses of their evil careers. They learn how to evade capture better and how to hurt and permanently silence their victims better.
Sex workers in Albuquerque have never been safe and continue to be preyed upon by (mostly) unknown creeps who have evaded justice. If you go to Street Safe Albuquerque, you can see a “Bad Guy” list, which is a disturbingly long list of men that sex workers are warned to avoid. The list details descriptions of many different men and the horrible things they do to sex workers. These men almost always get away with it, too, because sex workers know the police won’t help them.
The violence against sex workers is not new and it is not ending. The 90s may have seen fewer murders of sex workers than the late 80s or the early aughts, but the violence has always been present in the streets of Albuquerque – and in many other cities. It represents a much larger social problem of how men regard women and how our justice system works, at both the state and national levels.
So here are the sex worker slayings I could find:
Susan Lerman – 1992
Susan Lerman was a known addict who used prostitution to afford her habit. She was found dead on November 28, 1992. She had been stabbed in the back one time, which caused her death. She was nude, save for a bra, which had been pulled down to expose her breasts. This indicates that the killer wanted to dehumanize and humiliate her sexually, even after death. It is not clear if she was sexually assaulted.
Her murder was thought to have been committed about 1-4 days prior. She had been dumped on the mesa near Gibson and I25.
Lerman is referred to in Albuquerque papers as “Knife Woman.” The paper is sure to mention she had numerous prostitution arrests on her record. But the truth is that Susan Lerman was a person, not just a sex worker, and far too little detail is available about who she was in life. I can’t even find a picture of her. I want to know who she was, what her dreams were, what she was good at, what made her turn to drugs and sex work. The papers don’t bother to comment on any of that.
Let’s not let Susan Lerman become forgotten. She deserves justice.
http://nmsoh.org/lerman_susan_us.htm
Oleta Torbet – 1993
Oleta Torbet was found in a field off Elizabeth and Southern SE, near Kirtland Airforce Base, on December 4, 1993. She had been stabbed and beaten to death, then buried under debris and grass and leaf clippings. Her body was nude save for a gray tank top, which had been pulled up over her breasts. There were three injuries noted near her right breast. She had a black hair tie in her hair and three necklaces around her neck.
Oleta had a problem with crack and was trying to get clean around the time of her death. She had run away from home and dropped out of school at age 13 due to her struggles with addiction. When she tried to go back to school, it didn’t work out for her. She turned to prostitution to help make ends meet and she was arrested for solicitation during a sting on August 31, 1993. After pleading guilty to the prostitution charge, she went to a Juvenile Detention Center for 3 weeks and then received 6 months probation. As part of her plea deal, she attended rehab in Las Cruces for six weeks during her probation.
Her good friend, Pat Gallegos, noted that Torbet seemed ready to turn her life after rehab. He even found a card for a GED program among her things. But her murder robbed her of that chance. Her death occurred just two months after her 18th birthday. Eerily, she had always told her friends that she didn’t expect to live to 21. She was right.
Torbet was friends with many homeless people in Albuquerque. She would give people her last dollar or last cigarette. Though she struggled with homelessness herself at times, that never stunted her giving spirit. She was described as feisty and magnetic.
The first thing that popped into my mind when reading about Torbet’s case was Joseph Blea, aka the Middle School Rapist. Blea is considered a possible West Mesa Bone Collector suspect. Blea had a landscaping company and was known for illegally dumping trash from his jobs in the desert.
Though Joseph Blea was convicted of raping middle school girls in their homes in the 90s, he hinted on recorded phone calls to his wife from jail that he had killed someone in the past. He asked his wife to find out about the statute of limitations on murder for him.
The reason Blea is thought to be a suspect in the West Mesa serial killings is because he liked to dump landscaping-related trash in the same location as the mass grave and a tree tag from a nursery he frequented was found in one of the graves. Considering Torbet was found covered in grass and leaf clippings… could she be the girl that Blea hinted about killing in phone calls to his wife?
Most people think the girl he was alluding to was Jennifer Lynn Shirm, as his DNA was found on Shirm’s body back in 1985. But there are other likely suspects in Shirm’s murder: namely her ex-boyfriend from whom she had stolen meth and the pimps in a white Cadillac who had been trying to intimidate her into working for them. Blea may have just been one of her customers. He was known for using sex workers.
http://nmsoh.org/torbet_oleta_us.htm
Lisa Lorene Wortman – 1994
A man walking his dog near the UNM Basketball Arena on June 6, 1994, wondered why his dog kept going to a manhole. When he pulled back the manhole cover, he discovered the dismembered body parts that would later be identified as Lisa Wortman’s. Though Lisa Wortman was very decomposed in the water at the bottom of the manhole, she was able to be identified through fingerprints and dental records. Her cause of death was never determined due to the advanced state of decomposition.
Lisa Wortman had been an ambitious UNM student who wanted to go to law school and work as a lawyer for a pharmaceutical company. She had thrived in high school, despite dropping out her junior year of high school to have a baby girl. She gave up the baby girl to the father and returned to school to graduate and go to UNM. Not only was she an A student at UNM, but she also got involved in the budding new Albuquerque EDM scene. Her entrepreneurial spirit shined when she started a little business, charging people to attend huge drug-free raves. From the time she was little, she was dead set against drugs, probably because her mother was a drug addict who abandoned her and her twin, Lori, when they were babies.
Lori Wortman recalls that Lisa’s life began to go downhill in 1992 or 1993. She does not know what triggered the change. Lisa started working at two lotion parlors in Albuquerque, Cherry Blossom and Diamonds. In August of 1993, she was arrested for soliciting an undercover agent. Lori also reported finding syringes in Lisa’s purse around this time. Lisa tried saying she had confiscated them from another girl at one of the lotion parlors, but her increasingly gaunt appearance told the truth about her new extracurricular activities. She also dropped out of UNM at some point. When Lisa wrecked Lori’s car, the twins became estranged for a year. They started talking again shortly before Lisa disappeared in May of 1994.
Lisa Wortman was last seen by her father, leaving his house to get into an unidentified car on May 7, 1994. Then, a few days later, Wortman called one of her friends, saying she was at a payphone on Edith and Dan SE, and she needed some money. The friend told Lisa to come to her house and get the money. When Lisa never showed, her friend attempted to get a hold of her at the lotion parlor where she worked, with no luck. Someone else claimed that Wortman called for a ride and was not where she said she would be when they showed up.
No one ever heard from Lisa Wortman again. Police were also puzzled to find that there was no payphone on Edith and Dan. They think she may have been calling from a residence near the intersection. That residence might be where she was killed.
Lisa Wortman’s death is still unsolved, despite numerous leads. The way she was killed is unknown, but whoever dismembered her and threw her into a sewer to rot is a sick SOB. They also knew how to dispose of a body pretty well. It is pure luck that Wortman was ever found in that environment; she could have easily decomposed in the manhole and never been found.
There are at least three crime scenes here, maybe more. There is the scene where Lisa may have been abducted. Based on the phone call she made, it might be near the intersection of Edith and Dan SE. There is the scene where she was killed. Then the scene where she was dismembered, which may or may not have been the same place she was murdered. There is the vehicle she was transported to the manhole in. Finally, there is the manhole itself. Save for the manhole, the other crime scenes are not known. That makes the crime extremely difficult to solve because collecting witnesses and forensic evidence is significantly hampered. I wonder if new strides in DNA technology may be able to find some DNA on Lisa’s remains and connect it to her killer?
Lisa Wortman deserves justice and her family deserves answers. The person who did this to her does not belong on the streets, considering their blatant disrespect for human life and dignity. Let’s not allow Lisa Wortman to become forgotten.