Kenneth Bolagh was abducted in August of 2021 and later found dead, but police refuse to investigate it as a homicide. The evidence begs to differ. Maria Jacquez, Kenneth’s mother, is pushing for Kenneth Bolagh’s death to be taken seriously. I was honestly boggled by this case and I don’t even know what to say. Here are the basic facts.
Kenneth Bolagh lived in a six bedroom house in Belen with his parents, brother, and nine-year-old daughter. Due to a mental disability, he had the maturity of a fifteen-year-old and his friends were mostly around that age. Despite some of the trouble he got into, he was known to be funny, fun-loving, and caring.
In 2019, he was convicted of manslaughter for shooting and killing Brian Johnson. The killing honestly sounds gang-related. Bolagh and Johnson had been arguing from the backseats of separate cars. Vidal Ortega was driving Bolagh. Someone fired a gun into Johnson’s car, killing him. Bolagh was charged with murder and Ortega was charged with tampering with evidence and harboring a fugitive. However, many say that Ortega actually was the one who fired the weapon, and Bolagh took the fall.
Bolagh spent less than two years in jail and called his mom often crying, saying he was being bullied. His mom urged him to turn Vidal Ortega in, but Bolagh insisted he could not do that. Due to the fact the jail calls were recorded, Vidal Ortega somehow found out Bolagh was telling his mom the truth and so Ortega spread rumors that Bolagh was a rat.
Bolagh was released in February of 2021, the same year he died. But the bullying didn’t stop. Ortega and his friends and family continued to harass Bolagh for being a rat, even though he never ratted on Ortega.
Late at night on July 27, 2021, Bolagh told his mother three men were in the alley behind his house. His mom glanced outside and saw no one there. She assured her son everything was all right and he should go to bed.
Later, she woke up when she heard Bolagh’s car starting around 1 am. She assumed he was going out to get laid and she went back to sleep. By morning, he still wasn’t home and she called him. The first call did not connect; the second went to voicemail.
Bolagh answered the third call at 9:04 am and sounded confused. He told his mom that he was somewhere in a canyon and he could see Los Lunas Hill way in the distance. He also said that the back of his head was killing him and he couldn’t recall the passcode to his phone, hence why he hadn’t called. His mom urged him to get in his car and drive home, but he replied that he didn’t know where his car was. Chillingly, he knew who had left him in the desolate spot and he told his mom their names. “They’re the ones who took Ashley,” he said.
Though he had no idea where he was, he was able to describe the desert area around him. When his mom offered to come find him, he said that she wouldn’t be able to find him. She promised she would and so he asked her to bring him something to drink because he was extremely thirsty.
So Maria hopped in her car and searched for her son all around Los Lunas. She frantically tried to call him again on Facebook Messenger, hoping to use video chat to find his whereabouts, but he never answered. Whoever abducted him may have gotten to him again. Desperation soon set in.
It is believed that Kenneth Bolagh was abducted from his home. His daughter said that she woke up late and heard thuds coming from her dad’s room. Her mother then heard the car starting in the wee hours of the morning. The family discovered that their back door had been busted open, taking out part of the wall. The back garden gate had also been busted open. The back door led directly into Kenneth Bolagh’s room from the driveway, so it would have been easy to remove him from his room and force him into his car. Kenneth’s laundry basket was missing along with several of his things. And, of course, his 2006 Dodge Charger was gone as well.
Maria tried to report him missing. But police refused to report him until 24 hours had passed. Maria stressed that her son had a mental disability and was clearly in trouble. Nobody seemed to care. Once he finally was reported missing, law enforcement did not bother to enter him in databases so that other counties could assist in the search.
His family encountered a lot of resistance from police. Bolagh’s history seemed to make law enforcement discount the importance of his disappearance. The family said only Sandoval County was helpful to them, but that county was outside their jurisdiction in searching the Rio Rancho area where his phone last pinged.
However, the Sandoval County Sheriffs helped get the attention of the State Police, who entered the investigation on July 29. They gave his mom some coordinates on Central and Eubank in Albuquerque as his possible location.
The National Guard joined the search for one day. They said they pinged Bolagh’s phone between US 66 Casino and the Double Eagle Airport in Rio Rancho on I40. In subsequent searches of the area, though, he was not found. The National Guard’s search orders were canceled the next day for an unknown reason.
Amanda Kimbrel-Romero, whose son Colin Romero had been murdered, decided to help the family search after that and gave them more assistance than law enforcement ever did.
The family wasn’t allowed to search on the Isleta reservation, where they suspected he was. But a friend of the family advocated for Isleta police to search for Bolagh. That’s when Isleta Pueblo law enforcement stepped in. It was one of their rangers who finally found Kenneth Bolagh.
On August 13, the ranger found Kenneth Bolagh’s body in Bernalillo County, several hundred yards from his abandoned car. This area is quite far from where his phone last pinged near Rio Rancho. He was totally nude except for his shoes; he wasn’t even wearing socks. It took five days to formally identify him as Kenneth Bolagh. His cause of death has still not been released.
His car was also on the reservation land. It had scratches and dents all over it, which it had not had when Bolagh was driving it. The backseat was torn up with foam coming out of it and tools not belonging to Kenneth Bolagh or his family were littered around the car. The tools appeared to include a shimmy, often used to break into a car door. The laundry basket containing his affects was in the backseat. His phone was charging in the car – though Bolagh had told his mom he didn’t know where his car was when he took her call, making all of this even weirder. A black tarp was wadded up in the backseat, and for some reason it was never fingerprinted. The car was full of sand, making fingerprints impossible to take, according to the State Police.
Even more eerie, an unknown person using a fake number with a Point Arena, CA, area code texted Bolagh’s aunt demanding $7000 in exchange for Bolagh’s release. They were, of course, unable to furnish proof that Bolagh was still alive. The number they were using was discovered to have been generated on a site called Bandwidth. If you check Bandwidth out, they provide online phone numbers to over 38 countries.
His family is disgusted that his death is not being investigated as a homicide. They don’t believe he did this to himself, and the evidence doesn’t look like it either. The family held a candlelit vigil for Kenneth Bolagh on August 21, 2021. Since then, they have been petitioning for a full investigation into this weird death. You can sign that petition here.
https://www.lasdesaparecidas.com/murders/the-death-of-kenneth-bolagh/
https://news-bulletin.com/family-friends-mourn-belen-man-call-for-full-investigation-of-death/