The West Mesa Bone Collector’s Unfound

You have probably heard about the West Mesa Bone Collector, a prolific serial killer in Albuquerque. If you haven’t, here is a write-up that can bring you up to speed. Here is a list of the victims and a glimpse into their lives. I’m not going to cover the whole case simply because so many others have, in great detail.

The West Mesa Bone Collector Victims

What you may not know, however, is that there are other Albuquerque women who went missing between 2001 and 2006. These women are yet to be found. They all fit the profile of the West Mesa Bone Collector’s victims – young women involved in drugs and prostitution, predominantly Hispanic, small in stature, frequenting Central. But for some reason, they weren’t among the 12 victims in the mass grave.

Many people think these unfound women are in a second grave that has not yet been found. The police simply state that the cases may or may not be connected but there are startling similarities.

Lack of Attention to These Missing Women

In 2005, Missing Persons Detective, Ida Lopez, returned to the ABQ police force from some medical leave. She found the case of Michelle Valdez sitting on her desk. This case was one of the few sex worker disappearances that police took seriously as having a potential for foul play; this may be because Valdez’s father was a corrections officer.

Valdez’s case opened Lopez’s eyes to a pattern of other women, who had all vanished during the same time period from the “International District,” better known as the War Zone. All of these women had prior prostitution convictions or drug convictions or both, and many of them were friends or associates. Most of them were Hispanic, a few white, one black. Most of them were young, though a few were middle-aged. And they were all short in stature.

Lopez eventually compiled a list of 24 missing sex workers that she affectionately referred to as “her girls.” Of these 24 women, Lopez got dental records for 17 of them, suspecting that sooner or later she would find them dead. She sensed there was a serial killer at work.

Unfortunately, her hunch was dead-on. Nine of “her girls” ended up being found among twelve victims in the West Mesa mass grave. The only victims in the mass grave who were not on her list were Syllania Edwards, Jamie Barela, and Valdez’s unborn fetus. Lopez did not even know that Syllania Edwards was in Albuquerque, as she had gone missing from a foster home in Lawton, OK. The African American woman found in the grace was originally presumed to be missing sex worker Shawntell Monique Waites. Jamie Barela was 15 and not engaged in prostitution, but she had vanished with her cousin who was in that lifestyle.

Years before the mass grave was found in 2009, however, whispers of a serial killer had already started. Cinnamon Elks had told friends about a dirty cop beheading women and burying them on the West Mesa. So when she disappeared in 2004, friends said that she must have met the same fate. Cinnamon Elks was eventually identified as one of the eleven women who were buried on the West Mesa. Julie Nieto also said the same things about a dirty cop and she vanished around the same time as Cinnamon Elks. Michelle Valdez seemed worried when she last saw her dad and asked him to hug her tightly. Monica Candelaria’s friends said she was probably stabbed and buried on the West Mesa in 2005, a good four years before she was found.

These rumors were reported to authorities in 2005 by the family members of these missing sex workers – and then they sat on desks in dusty files until after 2009. Somehow the women of Albuquerque’s streets knew what was going on out on the West Mesa, years before the mass grave would be found. How could they have known? There must have been a witness or a survivor, or someone was openly bragging about what he did. (I write a little more about that here.)

Cindy Jaramillo founded Safe Streets in Albuquerque after her harrowing encounter with David Parker Ray in his infamous Toy Box torture chamber. With Christine Barber, she worked to help keep women on the streets safe. When she realized that sex workers were going missing, she immediately suspected what was going on. She, too, heard the rumors and she was disturbed by how little everyone cared. So she created a system where prostitutes could mark themselves safe and she started a “Bad Guy List” where sex workers warn each other about men to stay away from.

The missing sex workers didn’t lead glamorous or socially acceptable lives; the media generally shunned them. But after accompanying police on a ride-along, journalist Maggie Shepard was disturbed to hear about the many missing women in her city, who were not being investigated thoroughly. She featured these missing women in a September 15, 2007 article in the Albuquerque Tribune, which is now defunct. Her article featured 16 missing women, several of them later learned to be West Mesa Bone Collector victims. These women also happened to be on Ida Lopez’s list.

Beyond their loved ones and these four heroic women, most people didn’t care about the many missing sex workers. Many people thought of these women as trash. Police believed these women probably went missing of their own accord and might turn up eventually.

But they never did. They were either found dead on the West Mesa, or…they were never found at all.

The 2001-2006 Disappearances

In 2014, the El Paso Times published a massive list of young women missing in New Mexico. It will truly shake you to see how many women were missing at that time. But I compared that list to the New Mexico Missing Persons website and the Charley Project. With the exception of Tina Teal and Cindy “Tig” Rivera, all of the women on the list who vanished after 2006 have been found.

But all the women on the list who disappeared between 2001 and 2006? They were either found in the West Mesa mass grave or they remain missing to this day.

When the mass gravesite was found in 2009, the process of digging up the buried women was an arduous one. Using satellite imagery, law enforcement was able to identify “scars” on the earth that marked graves. There were also visible tire tracks leading to the area from Lorenzo Montoya’s trailer park. Every time police spotted a scar on satellites, they would dig and find another skeleton. They kept going until they had uncovered all eleven victims, one of whom was pregnant at the time she was killed (Michelle Gina Valdez), bringing the victim total to 12.

It took nearly a year to identify all of the women. Families with missing girls and women submitted dental records and X-rays and eagerly awaited some kind of closure. Only a few of them received it. There were still 8-11 vanished women from that time period in Albuquerque who remain unaccounted for. Now, in 2022, it seems likely that these women are dead. Some of them have even been declared legally dead, like Shawntell Waites.

All of the West Mesa mass grave victims were last seen in 2003 and 2004, with Cinnamon Elks being the last. Yet more women vanished from Albuquerque before 2003, and also between 2005 and 2006. They still haven’t been found. There appears to be a pattern that started in 2003 (possibly even 2001) and continued to 2006, when it abruptly ended with the death of Lorenzo Montoya.

For some reason, after 2004, the killer appeared to switch up his burial site. It could be because of he sensed development would soon begin in the area – though KB Homes did not acquire that land and start construction plans until 2006, after he had already abandoned this burial site. The second gravesite is most likely somewhere near Albuquerque, but police have extensively searched around the city with satellites and ground-penetrating radar to no avail.

It isn’t immediately clear why the West Mesa Bone Collector switched up his burial site. Sometimes serial killers switch things up. But an even scarier thought is that maybe there was more than one killer active in the area.

Who Are The Unfound?

So who are these missing women who were not found with the West Mesa victims?

Here is the afore-mentioned list of missing women from New Mexico, as reported in the El Paso Times in 2014. The list is not exhaustive. But you can see how there are a few missing women from 2003, then the West Mesa victims who went missing in 2003-2004, then suddenly more Albuquerque women reported missing in 2005-2006. There was a lull in missing women for six years, then the reports started again, but the women who disappeared after 2012 have (mostly) all been found alive or they vanished under quite different circumstances.

2001-2003 Still Missing

Darlene M Trujillo 07/05/01 from Albuquerque

Christine Julian Lopez 04/14/03 Albuquerque

Brenda Apalicio 05/30/03 Albuquerque

Martha Jo Lucher 09/03/03 Albuquerque

2003-2004 Missing

Now we come to 2003 and 2004. These women were all found in the West Mesa Bone mass grave.

Monica Candelaria 5/11/03 Albuquerque

Doreen Marquez 10/1/03 Albuquerque

Veronica Romero 2/15/04Albuquerque

Victoria Chávez 3/1/04 Albuquerque

Evelyn Salazar 4/2/04 Albuquerque

Jamie Barela 4/2/04 Albuquerque

Syllannia Edwards 05/04 Albuquerque (missing from Lawton, OK)

Julie Nieto 7/15/04 Albuquerque

Michelle Gina Valdez 9/22/04 Albuquerque

Virginia Cloven 10/04 Albuquerque

Cinnamon Elks 8/20/04 Albuquerque

2005-2006 Missing Women

Now we jump to 2005. None of these women have been found:

Anna Vigil 01/20/05 Albuquerque

Nina Herron 05/14/05 Albuquerque

Felipa Gonzales 04/27/05 Albuquerque

Jillian Henderson-Ortiz January 2006 Albuquerque

Shawntell Monique Waites 03/15/06 Albuquerque

Leah R. Peebles 05/22/06 Albuquerque

Vanessa Reed 06/13/06 Albuquerque

Missing after 2012

Here is where the list jumps from 2006 to 2012. Now we get into a new list of missing women, almost all of whom have been found and almost all of whom went missing in places other than Albuquerque. I believe this shows a serial killer pattern in Albuquerque that ended in 2006.

Jennae Sandoval 03/14/2012 – not currently reported missing

Brenda Salas 06/13/12 – Found dead in 2014 on a remote mesa and her cell phone had a video of her talking to herself about how she had been lost for two days. Her keys, clothes, and phone were near her remains and her abandoned car had been located nearby, stuck in the sand, two years before her body was found. She had taken off from Rio Rancho after arguing with her boyfriend but how and why she was wandering in the desert by herself is unknown.

Cindy Rivera 06/30/12 Las Vegas – Cindy is still missing, but she is believed to have been murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Christopher Trujillo, and his friend, Anselmo Ortiz, in a custody battle over their son. A recording found on Christopher Trujillo’s phone suggests he killed her and buried her in the National Forest but he committed suicide on May 2, 2021 and his accomplice, Anselmo Ortiz, is now in custody. Her body has never been located.

Desiree Gallegos, 08/17/12, Rio Rancho – not currently reported missing

Marriah Parra, 11/02/13, Albuquerque – not currently reported missing

Serena N Montoya, 05/01/13, Las Cruces – not currently reported missing

Mary Duncan-Pressley, 06/27/13, Santa Fe – not currently reported missing

Alejandra Martinez, 08/13/13, Sunland Park – not currently reported missing

Tina Teal, 9/3/13, Fort Sumner – still missing

Hope Oller, 9/10/13, Rio Rancho – not currently missing and appears to be living in Albuquerque

Rebecca Cordova, 9/17/13, Belen – not currently missing

Anna Franco, 9/30/13, Albuquerque – not currently reported missing

Pearl Morales, 10/1/13, Las Cruces – not currently reported missing; was arrested in 2018 for striking an officer and living at the Community of Hope homeless shelter on Amador in Las Cruces

Gabrielle Joe, 10/11/13, Farmington – not currently reported missing

Emily James, 10/13/13, Alamogordo – not currently reported missing

Alexandra Blea, 10/18/13, Santa Fe – not currently reported missing

Valerie Reinbold,10/23/13, Rio Rancho – not currently reported missing and is currently in jail in Bernalillo County, NM

Cassandra Sedillo, 11/11/13, Albuquerque – not currently reported missing

Lisa Martinez, 11/19/13, Chimayo – not currently reported missing and appears to be living in Santa Fe

Tomasina Smith, 12/04/13, Grants – not currently reported missing

Christina Lopez, 12/05/13, Clovis – not currently reported missing

Chelsea M. Movida, 12/10/13, Rio Rancho – not currently reported missing

Ashleigh N. Davis, 12/20/13, Santa Fe – not currently reported missing and appears to be living in Albuquerque

Ronica Sardo, 12/26/13, Grants – not currently reported missing

Martina E. Gonzales, 12/27/13, Albuquerque – not currently reported missing

Mariah Britt, 1/4/14, Albuquerque – not currently reported missing

Audrey A. Freeman, 1/1/14, Las Cruces – not currently reported missing

Tristen Tafoya, 1/3/14, Santa Clara – not currently reported missing

Alicia Martinez, 1/10/14, Santa Fe – not currently reported missing

Conalee Roseking, 1/10/14, Las Cruces – not currently reported missing and now living in Los Alamos

Jacquelyn Burke, 1/11/14, Rio Rancho – Burke was found safe. She was later killed by Albuquerque police in 2016 when she brandished a stolen gun. She had been in the Army but struggled with drug addiction and PTSD following her service.

Yahelin Flores, 1/14/14, Los Lunas – not currently reported missing

Priscilla Ortega, 2/11/14, Sunland Park – not currently reported missing

The Women Still Missing from 2001-2006

Here I offer as much information as I can find on the women who are still missing from 2001-2006. Then I’ll touch on the women who are still missing after 2012, to show how their circumstances do not seem to match the women who went missing in the early aughts. This may indicate that the West Mesa Bone Collector either stopped in 2006, or he moved on to another location.

Darlene Marie Trujillo – July 4, 2001

Darlene Trujillo vanished on the Fourth of July in 2001. She was the first of this spree of missing women from Albuquerque, but her circumstances are unlike the others, which is why she is often left out of mentions of the Unfound. She dropped her son off with her grandmother in Albuquerque, saying that she was going to Arizona for two days with a Hispanic man named Jorge. After not hearing from her for a week, her grandmother reported her missing.

Jorge came back to Albuquerque alone after the missing persons report had been filed. He visited the grandmother’s house and told Trujillo’s aunt that the two had gone to Tucumcari instead of Arizona. Along the way, however, they had gotten into a fight. Trujillo demanded Jorge let her out on the side of the road so she could walk, and he never saw her again. This doesn’t seem like a very likely story.

Police have been unable to track down Jorge to question him. Was Jorge even his real name? How did Darlene meet him? Has he been involved in any other women’s disappearances or domestic violence reports? Why did they go to Tucumcari instead of Arizona as they had planned? What was their reason for going to Arizona in the first place? Could he be a viable suspect in the West Mesa Bone Collector murders? I think he either killed her and hid her body somewhere in the eerie expanses of desolation around Tucumcari, or he sold her into the sex trade. Finding him would be very beneficial to this investigation.

Now, 21 years later, Darlene is still missing. Her family says she would not have abandoned her child. Darlene would be 41 years old today. I wasn’t able to find an age-progressed photo of what she may look like. It is most likely that she is dead. My heart goes out to her family.

Darlene has brown hair with blonde highlights, brown eyes, and weighs 130 pounds. She is 5’3”. She has piercing scars on her lip and eyebrow. She was wearing a white shirt and black pants when her grandmother last saw her. She has various tattoos:

Chris on her left wrist
Fran on her right wrist
Praying hands with a rosary and the words “Mi vida esta en sus manos” (My life is in your hands) on her right shoulder
Two angels on her right leg
Red and green flower on her left hand near her thumb
Spider on left middle finger
Red and green flowers on her left lower leg
A flowering vine on her neck

Christine Julian Lopez – April 14, 2003

Christine Julian Lopez vanished April 14, 2003. Prior to that, she had lived in Albuquerque and danced at a strip club. She was a known drug user and alcoholic and this is believed to have contributed to her disappearance because of the people she hung out with.

Lopez is Hispanic and Native American and 30 years old. She has several tattoos not described in the missing persons databases and she has pierced ears. She goes by “Chrissy Lopez” or “Christine Lopez.” She is 5’2” and 105 pounds. The clothes she was wearing when she vanished are not reported. On her left leg, she has a rose tattoo.

Lopez was last seen alive at her home in Albuquerque. After she went missing, her relatives said she must have moved to Wisconsin to live with her biological dad, but she never made it there. She was declared legally dead in July 2008.

Lopez does fit the type that this killer targeted. She also vanished during that exact time period as the other women. However, since she wasn’t at the mass gravesite, maybe the killer was interrupted in burying her there and he took her to another location. Alternatively, it could be that something else happened to Lopez on her journey to Wisconsin.

Brenda Jean Apalicio – May 26, 2003

Brenda Jean Apalicio was reported missing on May 26, 2003. She was near a family member’s house on the 3100 block of Lafayette NE in Albuquerque. There are no circumstances stated in her disappearance; it is just stated that she was never seen or heard from again. She had an unspecified medical condition. Frustratingly few details exist on the Internet beyond that.

There is no explicit mention that she was involved in drugs or prostitution. In fact, she is excluded from most of the articles and missing posters for the women missing from this time, as if she didn’t fit the profile of the other victims and was therefore ruled out as a potential West Mesa victim. I don’t know because not many details are available on her case.

Brenda had many nicknames and aliases. One is “Wedda,” which is probably a misheard form of the Mexican slang “guera,” or white girl. She also went by Melinda Apodaca, Jeanel Griego, Jean Brenda Wissar, and Brenda Arcenya. Why so many aliases? That makes me think she was involved in some type of criminal activity.

Her street name is Sad Eyes and she has that tattooed on her right shoulder. She also has Antonio tattooed on her left shoulder. She is only five feet tall and had blonde highlights in her brown hair when she vanished. The NamUs profile on her says “may have additional tattoos on her arms and legs.” Well, does she or doesn’t she? How could her family not know about her tattoos? The clothes she was wearing were also unknown. Very weird that the family members who reported her missing had so few details about her.

Martha Jo Lucher – September 3, 2003

Martha Jo Lucher was older than the other missing women from this time, but she was involved in the same lifestyle. She was good friends with Cinnamon Elks and she also knew two of the other West Mesa Bone Collector victims who were found dead (not clear whom). She disappeared in between the disappearances of Monica Candelaria and Doreen Marquez.

When the West Mesa killings were discovered, a friend of Lucher’s came forward and said Lucher was missing and she was concerned. This friend also named a man she believed to be a suspect but this name has not been disclosed to the public.

Lucher was reported missing by her family. She last visited them on the 3rd of September. Then she vanished sometime in the weeks after. Her family learned that she and a friend had been “walking back and forth from the street corner.” Then at one point she just didn’t come back. It sounds like a polite way of saying she was working the street when something bad happened.

It would appear her disappearance matches the circumstances of the other West Mesa Bone Collector victims. Yet her body wasn’t found at the mass gravesite. Was she targeted by the same killer but buried elsewhere? Or was she killed by someone else?

Lucher has a stab wound near her left eye from a previous incident. She apparently led a rough life. She has brown hair that she had dyed red before her disappearance. Her eyes are brown and her weight is about 100 pounds, and she is about five feet tall.

Anna Love Vigil – January 21, 2005

The West Mesa Bone Collector victims who were found in the mass gravesite all went missing in 2003 and 2004. Now we jump to 2005. Anna Vigil was the first missing woman reported in 2005 – on January 21, to be exact. She had a three-year-old son and was a heroin addict. That is all I can really find about her.

In January, Anna was arrested in a vice sting. Her charges were prostitution. She got out of jail on January 21 and was dropped off downtown, so she called her dad for a ride. She had apparently lived with him off and on since she was 16. When he showed up to get her, she wasn’t where she said she would be. That was the last time her family ever heard from her.

Her boyfriend claimed that he gave her a ride to apply at Taco Bell a few days after the 21. She never called him to pick her up. That was the last time he saw or heard from her.

She was reported missing on January 28, a week after she was last seen. I’m curious if the police bothered to investigate this boyfriend or ask Albuquerque Taco Bells if Vigil ever came in.

Her mother, Stacy Vigil, says that Anna had troubles but she also had a heart of gold. Stacy Vigil remembers Anna as a little girl who loved dressing up for Halloween. Anna lived with her mother in Arkansas but decided to move to her dad’s house in Los Lunas when she was 16 to be closer to a boy she had met there. After that move, her mother reported Anna started to get involved with drugs. At the time of her disappearance, she had a four-month-old baby. Stacy Vigil doesn’t believe that Anna would have abandoned him or cut off contact with her family, so she believes that Anna is deceased.

It is unknown who reported her missing. She was wearing a gray jacket, yellow ring, blue jeans, white shoes, and silver earrings of unknown design. Her right ankle has a tattoo of a rose and “Paul.” She is 5’6” and 130 pounds. “She may have broken her foot and/or her finger” according to the Charley Project.

Felipa Vickie Gonzales – April 27, 2005

Felipa Vickie Gonzalez prior to addiction

When I first saw that middle picture, I wondered if it was one of the unconscious women that the Albuquerque police found after raiding Robert Erwin’s property in Joplin, MO. But it’s actually Felipa’s most recent mugshot before she disappeared. Ida Lopez liked using the most recent mugshots of these women, as they were often the most up-to-date photos available. It seems that Felipa was maybe nodding off on heroin. Her Charley Project profile stated that she struggled with heroin addiction and sometimes worked the streets to pay for her habit. She was also struggling with postpartum depression after having her daughter two years before.

On April 27, 2005, Felipa had just gotten out of jail and her mother picked her up. Felipa then went for a walk and was never seen again. Felipa left behind a two-year-old daughter when she went missing. The girl was living with her father instead of Felipa because of Felipa’s postpartum depression.

Felipa’s mother is still grieving Felipa’s disappearance and prays for her safe return every day. She doesn’t like to talk about it. Felipa’s daughter is now 19 and probably doesn’t remember her mother at all. It is tragic that the little girl had to grow up without her mother in her life.

Felipa’s description is Hispanic with black hair and brown eyes. She is 4’11” and 130 pounds. She wore drawn-on eyebrows that are quite distinguishable.

Nina Brenda Herron – May 14, 2005

Nina Brenda Herron had problems with drugs and was known to occasionally engage in prostitution to pay for her alcohol and heroin problems. But beyond her drug problem, she was a beloved mother and daughter.

Nina didn’t come check on her son or her mom for 3 days. This was unlike her. Her mom got worried and tried to find Nina, but she learned that Nina had last been seen at her home in SE Albuquerque around 5 pm on May 14, 2005. Her mom thus reported her missing.

Nina was a kind person who was a cheerleader in middle school. She dropped out of high school due to her struggles with addiction.

Her mom, Theresa Fresquez, has raised her son, who was only 4 when Nina went missing. He struggles with anxiety and abandonment issues and has been homeschooled due to abandonment trauma. This shows the trauma that these disappearances left behind, affecting so many people. These women weren’t just bad criminals on the street, they were loved family members and friends. They had a place in this world that they were stolen from.

She is described as 5’2”, 100 pounds, and Hispanic with brown hair and brown eyes. She has a surgical scar on the side of her head and had previously broken her pelvis and right wrist, apparently in some kind of accident or cheerleading incident. She has NH tattooed on her left middle finger and 3 dots above her left thumb. The tattoo on her thigh is the most distinguishable – it’s a half-finished cartoon bunny with a female figure, wearing high heels and carrying a shotgun that has not been finished. Her ears are pierced. Her street alias is Jasmine.

Jillian Henderson Ortiz – January 16, 2006

Jillian Henderson Ortiz was more recently identified as a possible West Mesa Bone Collector victim. She was not on the original list of missing persons that Ida Lopez was investigating. Ortiz was from Moriarity, but she lived in and was last seen in Albuquerque. She called her mom on January 16, 2006, saying she was going to California to see her brother. Just before that, police had been dispatched to her home in Albuquerque for a domestic violence incident between Ortiz and her boyfriend, suggesting that maybe she was in danger at home and her trip to California was an attempt to flee a bad situation.

She was never seen or heard from again after that call to her mom. She never showed up at her brother’s door in California, either. When her family attempted to report her missing, the police refused to open a case on her for over a year. Her family stated to police they worried about her because she had a heroin addiction that she supported by working the streets.

Her family now can’t be reached for comment and not much information is available about her. She was 19 at the time she vanished. She is described as blonde with blue eyes and she has a scar on her forearm and a man’s name tattooed on her back. What that name is was not stated in any of the databases. She was only five foot tall and a hundred pounds. You can find her in both New Mexico and California missing persons databases.

Her circumstances do seem a little different than the other women, so maybe she wasn’t a WMBC victim. Her boyfriend would be a good place to start in trying to find her. She may also have turned up dead in another state, maybe a Jane Doe in California or Arizona. Is her DNA in the Codis database?

Shawntell Monique Waites – March 1, 2006

Shawntell Monique Waites was a known sex worker who disappeared March 1, 2006. She has never been seen or heard from since. She had four children who were being raised by her grandparents. When she didn’t visit them for seven months, her grandfather reported her missing. He was used to her coming and going, as she was involved in drugs and was homeless at the time of her disappearance. But she never went that long without seeing her kids.

At first, when the West Mesa gravesite was dug up, Syallania Edwards was presumed to be Shawntell Waites since she was an African American female. Waites was thus removed from the NCIC. Once the body was properly identified, however, Waites was added back to NamUs in 2013.

In 2012, Waites was declared legally dead so her grandparents could collect on a modest life insurance policy for her. They used that money to help raise her children. Now her grandfather has died without answers. Waites has eight grandchildren she has never gotten the chance to meet.

She has seven missing teeth, seven fillings, and one crown. She has a tattoo of the word “Lady” on her thigh. She wears her hair blonde or brunette and in unique weaves. Most people know her by her middle name, Monique.

Leah Rachelle Peebles – May 22, 2006

Leah Peebles had many different hairstyles

Leah Peebles was 23 when she vanished on May 22, 2006. She had just moved to Albuquerque after living in Fort Worth. She struggled with addiction but appeared to be doing well in Albuquerque. It is unknown but suspected that she may have gotten into sex work.

Peebles was molested at a young age by a family member. Later she was raped as a teen by a classmate. Though she was a cheerleader and active in yearbook and drama, she began using drugs in high school, likely to cope with the trauma. She got so involved with the drugs that her life derailed. She went into treatment at the age of eighteen at the Fort Worth Teen Challenge. She then graduated from the program with her cosmetology license in hand and began working at a salon. But she soon relapsed and was fired from the salon after two arrests related to her substance abuse.

On May 5, 2006, Peebles moved to Albuquerque for a fresh start. She moved in with friends who were involved in music ministry and she lined up an interview for waiting tables at the Flying Star Cafe. On May 22, she went on a date with a man she met at this cafe. It is not clear if their date was at the Flying Star or another location. After this date, she dropped off her car in a bad area of Central Ave in Albuquerque, saying that she had gotten into a wreck and needed car repairs. She never came back to get it.

She was never seen again. But Ida Lopez thought she spotted Leah walking along Fourth Street after her date of disappearance. The cops also got a tip that she was working as a prostitute and going by “Mia” in California. She allegedly worked for a Cali pimp named A.J. who supplied her with crack. The cops questioned A.J. This lead did not seem to help find her, so it would seem that cops determined Mia was not Leah Peebles. However, Leah used the name Mia sometimes before she went missing, and so it seems possible that this could be the same person.

I have no idea what happened to Leah but it could be that she relapsed the night she vanished and decided to flee to another place to escape the shame she may have felt. Or she relapsed and purchased drugs from the wrong person, who ended up trafficking her or even killing her. Maybe she simply became a victim of someone cruising Central that night, looking for easy victims.

Leah’s parents didn’t give up. They soon came to Albuquerque to find her. Her father traveled all across the Southwest, chasing leads, before he was killed in a motorcycle crash in 2013. Her mother, Sharon, still holds out hope that Leah might be alive. I can’t imagine the desperation and grief she must feel every day.

Leah has blonde hair. However, she loved to change her hair color and style and that is why I included so many photos of her, as she looks like a different person in each new style. She has a lip ring, double piercings in both ears, a nose ring scar, and an eyebrow ring scar. She has a Celtic cross tattooed on her lower back and a flower with scrolls on her upper back. She wears contacts but only had two weeks’ supply on her when she disappeared. She was last seen wearing hoop earrings and probably wearing jeans and sandals, since that was her usual attire. She was still using her Texas ID at the time she vanished. She stands at 5’4” and weighs 105 pounds.

Vanessa Reed – June 13, 2006

The missing woman who turned me on to this disturbing streak of disappearances was Vanessa Reed. Reed was living in a motel with her sister when she vanished on June 13, 2006. Both sisters were addicted to crack and heroin and believed to be involved in prostitution due to prior arrests.

The night Vanessa disappeared, she got into an argument with her sister and walked away from the motel where she lived, never to be seen or heard from again. Her sister didn’t report her missing and instead used Vanessa’s name when she had run-ins with law enforcement. However, she had a change of heart when the West Mesa gravesite was uncovered and Vanessa Reed was not among the victims. That was when she finally reported Vanessa as missing.

Reed has brown hair, brown eyes, and a heart tattooed on her right hand, “EC” tattooed on her left ankle, and “Amy” tattooed on her neck. She often goes by Amy. She stands at 5’4” and is about 145 pounds. At the time she vanished, she was only 24; today she would be 41.

Missing Women Not on the List

Here are missing Albuquerque women who weren’t featured on this list. They may or may not be related to the other cases, but I think their cases deserve mention regardless. You never know who might recognize one of their pictures or the details of their cases and come forward with something. If you know something about any of these women, please come forward.

Beatrice Marie Lopez Cubelos – September 24, 1989

The least likely to be related to the others, Lopez Cubelos vanished from Albuquerque on September 24, 1989. That evening, she was hanging out at the Silver Fox Lounge with two male acquaintances. She went home with them and asked for a ride home around 2 am. Her companion said his car battery was dead so he told her to wait until 7 so he could borrow jumper cables from someone. Cubelos didn’t want to wait and walked away, never to be seen again.

Her family believes the men she was with know more than they are letting on. But police have not made an arrest.

Cubelos struggled with bipolar disorder and needed medication. She was a Hispanic female with brown hair and brown eyes. She went by Bea. She had the tattoo “Lady” and “Ward” on her buttocks and double piercings in her earlobes and a scar on her neck. She had previously broken her right piggy toe and her right hand.

Teresa Reyes – September 1998

Teresa Reyes was only 17 when she left her apartment late at night, supposedly to meet some gangster types to party. She never came home. Her mother knew something bad had happened because, while Terry had a history of running away, she always called and always returned.

In 2004, Terry’s skull was found in a sandy gulch near the Jemez Pueblo. The rest of her remains were not recovered. She was not positively identified until 2009. Her family searched for her that whole time, unaware of the skull. DNA finally matched to her family in 2009.

Months after Terry vanished, her mother found a number written in lip pencil on a napkin and hidden in a hole in a teddy bear that Terry loved. Terry’s cousin verified that was the number Terry got from some gangster types earlier in the day she disappeared. The guys wanted her to come to a party. The number was for a disconnected and unlisted cell phone, and police never bothered to find its owner. The van and possible address of the gangsters were uncovered by a PI, but again, police never did anything with that lead.

A sex worker named Monica called in a tip that Terry was involved in prostitution with a Cuban drug dealer and pimp named Oscar. Could this Monica have been Monica Candelaria?

Betty Vigil Garcia – December 1998

Betty Vigil Garcia was with two men involved in narcotics trade at the Drift-In Lounge on Christmas day, 1998. She was never seen again after that. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance. Her death reminds me a lot of Teresa Reyes. She was 150 pounds, 5’6”, and 34, with long curly brown hair and brown eyes. She is Hispanic. She has a mole on the back of her neck and metal plates in her knee from a prior knee surgery.

Jeanette Marie Delacruz – October 1999

Jeanette was last seen on October 20, 1999. She was last seen at her home in Albuquerque on the 11800 block of Montgomery northeast. She was born November 3, 1979, and would be 44 today. She has brown hair and brown eyes, and she is 5’1 and 120 pounds. On her hands, she has “unspecified symbols” tattooed. Frustratingly few details are available on her case and it is not clear if she was involved in drugs or prostitution.

Yvonne Lopez – January 9, 2004

Yvonne Lopez was 44 when she vanished from Albuquerque on January 9, 2004. She is described as Hispanic, brown hair and brown eyes, 5 feet tall, 100 pounds, and with a surgical scar on her abdomen. The papers make no mention of her and she does not appear in articles about Ida Lopez’s list. It is not even stated where she vanished from or where she was last seen alive.

Anselma Guerra – March 2004

Anselma Guerra vanished in March 2004. Her skeletal remains were recovered in the East Mountains in September of 2005, but her family was not notified of her death until the spring of 2009. Due to the slashed and bloody shirt and bra found on the skeleton, it is believed that she had been stabbed to death.

Anselma Guerra struggled with mental retardation and received disability services and case management from ARCA. She told the staff at ARCA that if something happened to her, they should look into her boyfriend, who used her for her disability checks, made her sell her body when the money ran out, and abused her when he was drunk. However, this boyfriend was killed in a rollover car accident in 2007 where his friend was driving drunk, so he was never convicted. The police did not appear to entertain other suspects.

Guerra was originally expected to be found in the West Mesa mass grave in 2009. Her family did not know she had already been found 4 years before in the East Mountains. The police claim her family was hard to get a hold of and it is true that most of them did not speak to each other. Anselma had several siblings that she had not had contact with in years. They had not had pleasant childhoods. Their father, Ted Guerra, was stabbed to death in Santa Fe in front of her brother Francisco in 1971. Her brother Jesse was found dead beside a Gallup highway. Anselma Guerra was soon lost in a haze of drug addiction in Albuquerque, fending for herself on the streets under the brutal overprotection of abusive men.

Guerra also left behind four children who loved her very much, even though they had all been removed from her custody when they were infants. Their names are Violet, Dominic, John, and Ana. In 1995, she overdosed while pregnant, resulting in the death of her unborn child. She begged a priest to baptize the child so she could have a proper burial.

Nevertheless, her family loved her and both her daughter Violet and her brother Francisco were alarmed to see her face in an Albuquerque Journal article. Her drugged-out mugshot looked like a morgue reconstruction photo when it was prominently featured in an article about potential West Mesa victims, written by Joline Gutierrez in 2009. They were heartbroken to learn what had actually happened to her and how justice failed her.

You can see two of her daughters and one of her sons talking to her in spirit on a blog post about her that I cannot find now. It is heartwarming that they managed to find each other and love their mother despite not being raised by her. It is a pity that they were never given the chance to build relationships with her as adults.

Sonia Bernadette Lente – October 2002

Sonia Bernadette Lente vanished on October 3, 2002. She was last seen walking in Albuquerque to get a bus pass. Part of her body was found in a shallow grave off of I25 on the Isleta Pueblo on February 25, 2004, a day after what would have been her 46th birthday. What happened to her between the 3rd of OCtober, 2002, and when she was found dead is unclear. How she ended up dead on the Isleta Pueblo is even murkier.

Sadly, Lente was not identified until 2009. She lay in the crime lab for 6 years, awaiting identification, while her family desperately searched for her. When the West Mesa mass grave was excavated, state police asked dentists all over for records of all the NM women reported missing in order to help identify the remains found. The records for Sonia Lente matched the Jane Doe sitting in the crime lab and thus she finally got her name back. I don’t understand why the state didn’t ask for these dental records to identify missing women before the mass grave was found….

Lente was 44 when she was killed. She was from the Laguna Pueblo and loved making traditional pottery. She appears to be one of the thousands of indigenous women targeted with violence, but her family wants people to remember that she is not just another statistic, she is a loved and missed mother, aunt, sister, and daughter.

It is not clear if she was involved in drugs or prostitution. Lente also does not fit the profile of the other victims. Her death appears unrelated and instead seems to be part of the ongoing epidemic of violence perpetrated against indigenous women.

Missing Women After 2006

After June 2006, women seemed to stop disappearing from Albuquerque. Here are the women who are still missing from the original list posted by the El Paso Times. Their circumstances do not line up with the earlier victims we just talked about, making it appear that their disappearances have nothing to do with the West Mesa Bone Collector.

Tina Teal

Tina Teal vanished from Fort Sumner, NM, on September 3, 2013. She was 36 at the time. She had an argument with her family and walked out of the house, never to be seen again. Her family became worried because Tina apparently had mental health issues and left without her medication.

As far as we know, Tina had enough of her family and didn’t want to ever see them again. She may be alive and well somewhere far away. I hope that’s true, at least. It is also possible her depression got the better of her and she committed suicide in some place where she has been overlooked all these years. Maybe as she walked away, someone abducted her.

But it sure is weird that people are often reported missing after “arguments.” Did her family have something to do with her disappearance?

Tina is described as 5’3”, 105 pounds, and white. She had brown hair and hazel eyes. The name “Chris” is tattooed across her left knuckles. She was last seen in a pink shirt and blue jeans.

Cindy “Tig” Rivera

Cindy Rivera vanished on June 30, 2012, from the Las Vegas, NM house where she was living with her mother and two sons. They were live-in caretakers for an ill man who owned the home, named Pedro Martinez. Cindy’s mom became worried when Cindy called her at 1 in the morning, saying that her ex, Christopher Trujillo, was outside the home and was very drunk. Then, Pedro Martinez heard her son crying in the locked bathroom in the early morning, but there was no sign of Cindy.

Her son’s father, Chris Trujillo, and his friend, Anselmo Ortiz, were seen the next day in just pants with no shirts. They had scratches and bite marks all over their chests and shoulders, according to family members. Ortiz called his ex-wife on the night of the 30, saying that he was looking at prison for life. The next day, the two men carried in a bag of bloody clothing that they burned in the fireplace, according to Ortiz’s ex-wife. Cell tower records place them outside the home Cindy was living at between midnight and 4 am on June 30.

Ortiz went to prison from 2013-2019 for unrelated charges. When he got out, he began to work with Trujillo at a towing company. Trujillo accused Ortiz of using the company card for personal purchases and of having an affair with his wife. So Ortiz called investigators in April, 2019, saying that he had information about Trujillo and Rivera. He also sent Facebook messages to Rivera’s family members, saying that Trujillo murdered her and he would share more if they gave him the $50000 reward they were offering to find Cindy and also if they granted him legal immunity.

On May 2, Trujillo’s wife called the police and said that her husband wanted to kill himself. Two days later, he actually did in La Cienega. Therefore, he was never convicted of the crime and never revealed where he had buried Cindy Rivera. The phone he left behind had some damning evidence, though. In one phone recording, Christopher Trujillo told his wife that he had killed Cindy and buried her in the National Forest so she can never be found, and he planned to pin the crime on Anselmo Ortiz.

Ortiz admitted to helping bury Cindy Rivera. He has been incarcerated for kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Authorities believe that he knows where Cindy Rivera is buried, but he won’t divulge that information. He even took a plea deal in September 2021, where he said he would share where the body is in exchange for leniency. But he never shared this information. As a result, the plea deal was withdrawn.

Though the murder is solved, Cindy’s body has never been found. Now that Trujillo is dead, we may never find out where she is buried, unless Ortiz finally speaks up. Her family just wants to find her body to give her a proper burial. Her son deserves to be able to visit his mother’s grave.

Why These Women are Still Unfound

With time, the case has gone cold. Police spent over 2 and a half months excavating the mass gravesite. They hand sifted dirt for evidence and carefully extracted every bone. Since many women missing in Albuquerque were not at the gravesite, it means they are buried elsewhere. It is thought that the killer moved his gravesite in 2005 when he noticed construction activity moving out to his favorite area on the West Mesa.

This possible second site has not been found yet – and it may never be. Heavy construction in the area has made it impossible to expand the search as much as desired. The unfound women may be close to the other victims but they are now covered in concrete and steel and asphalt.

Construction workers in the West Mesa area were directed to watch out for bones. When a worker did find a bone on a construction site near the West Mesa mass grave, families of the Unfound Women became hopeful. But that hope crumbled when the bone was determined to be from an ancient Native American. There is not even a clue about where these women may lie.

Throughout history, women involved in sex work and drugs have been treated as second-class citizens. They are easy targets for serial killers due to fact that they are often transient and prone to disappearing by choice for periods of time, as well as the fact that many of them don’t have regular contact with their families. To make matters worse, police often don’t take missing persons reports for sex workers very seriously because these women tend to come and go. This can be seen with several of these missing women – for instance, Jillian Henderson Ortiz.

All in all, 24 women vanished in Albuquerque in the same time period, but that did not even make the news until 2007. Even today, most people still don’t know about these other women who still remain unfound. If there had been more public attention from the start, maybe someone could have said something earlier that would have cracked the case wide open.

In this case, Ida Lopez cared. So did Cindy Jaramillo and Christine Barber of Safe Streets in Albuquerque, and Maggie Shepard. But honestly, more people need to care than that. More attention needs to be given to missing sex workers. Just because they engage in a high-risk lifestyle does not mean that they deserve to die and lie in a mass grave somewhere for years, unfound, while their families ache for answers.

It is also unfortunate that Missing White Girl Syndrome is present in this case. This syndrome describes how missing white women get more attention than missing women of color. In the list of unfound women, the only non-Hispanic white woman missing is Leah Peebles. Far more details about Leah’s case are available than about the other victims. Some of these victims, like Darlene Trujillo or Brenda Apalacio, have next to no details available about their disappearances. Frankly, I’m not confident I could identify any of the unfound based on the slim details in their cases.

Some people feel that there is a cover-up in law enforcement. This is inferred from the lack of progress that the police have made on the case and the rumors among prostitutes that a dirty cop did this. I don’t know if that is true. I think the police have devoted a lot of man hours to the case. They have built timelines for each of the victims that eliminated many suspects, they have interviewed over 200 other sex workers who knew the victims, and they have followed leads and tips. It is possible that they just don’t have the ability to solve the case due to the amount of time that elapsed between the murders and the discovery of the gravesite.

As I write this, I can’t help it but wonder if there are even more victims that we don’t know about. Women who were never reported missing, or who were reported missing in other states. Syllania Edwards, for instance, was reported as an endangered runaway in Oklahoma and was last seen in Colorado. No one even knew she was in New Mexico. Yet her body was found in the West Mesa mass grave. What if other women were trafficked to Albuquerque and met a gruesome fate at the hands of this killer, and they lie buried in another location? What if this killer hunted in other places besides Albuquerque? What if a body or mass grave found in another city is because of the same killer? I think it is entirely possible that many other women had terrible encounters with this killer, beyond the ones named in this article. And if he hasn’t died yet, or been put in prison for unrelated crimes, then victims will keep piling up and families will keep getting shattered.

Sources

https://www.lasvegasoptic.com/news/community/suspect-in-cindy-rivera-kidnapping-death-jailed-on-10m-bond/article_b1bf552a-1020-11ec-8a5e-dfe175cff52b.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/plea-deal-withdrawn-for-man-charged-in-death-of-new-mexico-woman-a-decade-ago/ar-AA13f1eS