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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were. What they did. Episode 221.
I am your humble host, Thomas Roseland Weyborg Thun, and tonight I bring to you a true TSK classic standalone episode. Serial killers are oftentimes caught. The majority are not, as the media loves to portray, highly intelligent super criminals. Most of them are rather dim perverts who enjoy causing pain and suffering.
But some killers elude the law and are never caught. Prominent examples are the Zodiac Killer and Jack the Ripper. Tonight's subject killed far more than both of them. His moniker is the West Mesa Bone Collector. Enjoy. This episode, like all other sagas told by me, would not be possible without my loyal Patreones. They are
Elizabeth, Russell, Lisa, Kathy, James, Cody, Kylie, Robert, Val, Marilyn, Craig, Emily, The Duggletons, Jonathan, Jennifer, Lunavar, Roy, Cheryl, Richard, Brad, Laurie, Manuel, Haley, James, Jeff, Ayulan, Meg, Crystal, and Ricky. You are truly the backbone of the Serial Killer podcast, and without you, there would be no show. Thank you.
I am forever grateful for my elite TSK Producers Club, and I want to show you that your patronage is not given in vain. All TSK episodes will be available 100% ad-free to my TSK Producers Club on patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. No generic ads, no ad reads, no jingles. I promise.
And of course, if you wish to donate $15 a month, that's only $7.50 per episode, you are more than welcome to join the ranks of the TSK Producers Club too. So don't miss out and join now. Skirting the edge of the high desert plateau of the Rio Grande Valley, the West Mesa area of Albuquerque, New Mexico,
was the sacred home of countless Native Americans and diverse wildlife for ten thousand years. Modern hikers may stumble upon ancient Puebloan petroglyphs etched into the volcanic basalt blanketing the storm-prone western foothills.
During the 2000s, the rate of violent crime in Albuquerque was more than double the national average with the West Mesa region, including the quote-unquote war zone neighborhood on the outskirts of town, representing the statistical high watermark.
In the subterfuge of this turbulent environment, a prolific monster operated right under the noses of law enforcement, preying on victims from the city's most vulnerable population demographic. On the 2nd of February 2009, Christine Ross was walking her dog Rocca,
through the morning shadows of Paradise, her West Mesa subdivision community, when the hound caught a scent. Within a minute, the dog had dug up a large bone and proudly presented it. Disturbed, Christine texted a picture of the fossil to her sister, who was a nurse. "'It looked like a human femur bone,' her sister replied."
Police investigators arrived on the scene and discovered the remains of multiple human bodies buried across 100 acres of barren land. The Albuquerque Police Department, APD, launched a massive effort, methodically excavating the entire site using heavy equipment, hand-sifting and satellite pictures to study ground disturbance and determine possible grave locations.
It was the largest crime scene in American history, requiring around-the-clock work for nearly three months. Ultimately, the APD recovered the skeletal remains of 11 bodies and one fetus. Detectives suspected the work of a serial killer, later dubbed in the media as "The Bone Collector." In an interview with the local paper, Christine Ross said the discovery still haunted her. I quote:
I think about it constantly, looking back on what happened. I'm glad I had a role in finding the missing women. This way the families could stop their searching and be able to give them a proper burial." It took nearly a year to identify all the victims based on the forensic evidence gathered from the burial site. The medical examiner designated the manner of death as undetermined,
though the autopsy listed the cause of death as homicidal violence, likely strangulation or suffocation. Investigators and medical examiners believe the women were killed between 2004 and 2005. Dirk Gibson, an expert on serial killers, called the unsolved West Mesa murders "Albuquerque's crime of the century,"
which could have involved more than one killer. Gibson stated, and again I quote, This is almost certainly a case of serial murder, but the West Mesa site is only a dumping ground. The murders were committed elsewhere. It is possible that the murders are ongoing, but that a different dump site is being used. End quote.
Investigators faced two significant hurdles. The first was forensic. Because only bones, no clothing or personal effects were recovered, investigators had limited evidence to examine. The second hurdle involved what former police chief Meyer described as the victims' lifestyles. Most of the women were prostitutes who had drug problems.
Many of them hadn't been close to their families in years and lived nomadic lifestyles. Reconstructing timelines of their final days and months from five years earlier was difficult. They needed the help of the victims' families for this effort, but this would require careful diplomacy, as some of the family members were already distrustful of law enforcement. Detective Ida Lopez
began to develop relationships with the families to assist with this phase. There was a problem with this approach. Many of the families had reported the victims missing years earlier, in 2004-2005, when the murders were believed to have occurred. The families were furious at the APD for neglecting the cases when it could have made a difference.
now the department had a public-relation disaster a serial killer loose in the city and they had no choice but to take it seriously but they had been warned about the rise in missing-person cases among albuquerque's minority women the warning came from one of their own
In mid-2005, APD detective Ida Lopez herself began documenting and investigating the increasing numbers of Albuquerque prostitutes going missing. Many belong to one of the most marginalized demographics: Latina prostitutes with drug connections. Serial killers often target such people
because they believe the police response and public reaction will not be as swift or severe. And they are often right. Strongly believing that these women deserve equal justice under the law, Lopez made a list and tried to galvanize a department task force to find them. But there was no appetite for such investigations within the APD Sex Crimes Division.
Fast forward four years when the remains had been painstakingly identified. Detective Lopez realized that ten of the missing women on her initial list, Monica Candalleria, Cinnamon Elks, Veronica Romero, Victoria Chavez, Michelle Valdez, Virginia Cloven,
Julie Nieto, Evelyn Salazar, Jamie Barela and Doreen Marquez were no longer missing. Their bones had been recovered from the West Mesa site. Had the department taken Lopez's work seriously from the beginning, the missing women could have been discovered in time to build a compelling case against the killer.
It's possible they could have even saved the lives of additional women who went missing thereafter. Lopez was devastated by the department's failure, but determined to do right by the families and find the killer. What you may not have known at the time was that the role of the police department was even more complicated and solid.
Not only had the APD been complacent at best in investigating the city's missing women, but there were also multiple reports of APD officers themselves abusing prostitutes. As the APD began the task of trying to reverse-engineer the work of a serial killer for whom little to no information existed, the public mistrust of law enforcement continued to climb.
On the 22nd of March 1999, Cynthia Vigil, naked, except for a dog collar attached to her neck, stumbled down the middle of a street in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, imploring passing motorists to stop their cars and help her. She had just escaped serial killer David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer.
who transformed a cargo trailer into a mobile torture chamber in which he abducted and brutally murdered as many as sixty women, maybe more. You, dear listener, will perhaps remember my expose on this case some years back.
Parker used handmade torture devices, including a custom-built gynecological chair equipped with electrocution cables. Parker also used psychological torture, playing sadistic recordings for his victims in which he explained in detail what he planned to do to them. Cynthia was the only known victim of Parker who did not die and to tell of her experiences.
though law enforcement believed there were likely more across the country. Her escape and subsequent court testimony ensured Parker would never get out of prison. After her ordeal, Cynthia co-founded the non-profit Street Safe New Mexico with activist Christine Barber.
Cynthia and Christine assist women who work and live on the streets, many of whom have histories of drug problems and abusive homes.
StreetSafe hit its stride after the discovery of the bones in West Mesa. As detectives and officers from the APD launched a major investigation, Christine and Cynthia unwittingly became street-level investigators, collecting first-hand testimony and back-channel information. Both law enforcement officials and victims' family members felt comfortable talking to them.
The early stages of the West Mesa investigation saw detectives collaborating with officers from Las Cruces and El Paso, Texas, on a variety of potential connected cold cases. One theory was that a long-haul trucker was the killer, someone who could abduct a victim from one town, kill her in another, and dump the body in a third town, in this case the West Mesa crime scene.
Such homicide patterns are highly confounding for law enforcement officials who must coordinate difficult investigations across multiple jurisdictions. The FBI's Highway Serial Killings Initiative, launched in 2009, the same year the West Mesa bones were found, analyzed nationwide sequences of such murders.
The 40 APD investigators comprising the 118th Street Task Force, the official squad working the West Mesa cases, soon leaned toward believing their killer was local, someone with a connection to Albuquerque and for whom the West Mesa area was a stomping ground. According to former police chief Michael Geyer, the pattern of the killer may have changed over time,
as a disorganized psychopath with a growing bloodlust gradually became more careful and pattern-oriented. Meyer said the man-hours during this phase of the investigation were incredible, and that he became personally obsessed with finding the so-called unsub, unknown subject. At night, he would drive down Central Avenue, looking for clues.
Over time, he and other investigators, such as Lopez, interviewed over 200 women who lived and worked on the streets of the war zone neighborhood. In July 2009, only five months after Roca the dog fetched the first bone, then-police chief Ray Schultz announced that investigators had narrowed down the suspect pool to five people,
The first major suspect in the case was a local man, Joseph Blee. A week after the West Mesa bone discovery, Blee's ex-wife April called the police and told them to search him for evidence of his involvement. For the APD, he was already a suspect.
An unsealed search warrant affidavit later revealed that between 1990 and 2009, Blee had been in nearly 140 law enforcement encounters involving prostitution and drugs along the East Central Corridor, where many of the West Mesa victims had worked before they went missing.
One police report documented Blee exposing himself to a prostitute before dispatched discovered rope and electrical tape on his front seat. APD's repeat offender project detectives followed Blee for four days as he stalked prostitutes in his car and drove back and forth between the west side of Albuquerque and the east side where the West Mesa crime scene lies.
Detectives interviewed a prostitute who described an incident in which Blee took her to his home and tried to tie her up against her will. Lee's then-current wife and daughter also reported finding women's jewelry and underwear hidden in their shed. This was a significant clue to police, who had heard from many of the victims' families about missing jewelry.
Blee's former cellmate told investigators Blee had bragged about knowing some of the victims and hiring them for sex. Blee had also physically assaulted sex workers and he had raped a 14-year-old girl.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Blee was arrested, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to 90 years in prison, which is where he now resides.
He was undoubtedly a violent serial rapist, but it is not clear that he is the killer behind the West Mesa mass grave. Personally, I highly doubt it. Plee was disorganized and impulsive. He targeted all sorts of prostitutes, not just Latinas, and there is no proof he was an actual serial killer, only a serial rapist.
If he had killed, it would have been a spur-of-the-moment thing, not like something the bone collector would operate. Blee has been dubbed the mid-school rapist for his activities in the 1980s. Police say he would often break into the homes of 13 to 15-year-old girls who lived near McKinley Middle School in Albuquerque and rape them.
In one case there was a DNA sample but the rape test kit was not retested until 2010, eventually linking Blee to the rape. In 2015 Blee was also suspected by police of killing a prostitute. His DNA sample was located on the inner waistband and belt of a victim found dead on Central Avenue, a notorious street for sex work in the eastern part of the city.
In addition, a tree tag from a nursery was found in the area where the West Mesa victims' bodies were buried. It was tracked to a nursery Blee once frequented. Blee had women's underwear and jewelry not belonging to his wife or daughter in his home and allegedly told a cellmate he had hired the West Mesa victims who he called "trashy."
Lee, in the mid-school rape case, was sentenced to 36 years in June 2015, at 58 years of age. Frequent prison interrogations, however, did not yield a confession or any actionable evidence related to the West Mesa murders. The investigation continued into a new decade, and the APD task force faced a grim reality. There were likely other victims and additional burial sites.
In 2010, the Albuquerque police released photos to the public identifying seven women they feared were also victims of the West Mesa serial killer. The photos were disturbing. Grainy, amateur shots of young Latina women who appeared to be unconscious or dead.
The APD launched new searches, using satellite imagery, helicopters and ground-penetrating radar to scout for the telltale disturbed landmarks indicative of burial grounds. However, this area was much more developed than it had been in 2004, and a comprehensive search would at the time be virtually impossible.
Former Chief Geyer worried the recent search in real estate development and home construction would end up concealing bodies and preventing them from finding new victims. Someone's home basement could very well have bodies buried beneath it, and no one would ever know. There were new suspects too. Ron Irwin, a photographer from Joplin, Missouri,
spent an entire year being investigated by detectives because of pictures he took while traveling in Albuquerque. Ron was eventually cleared of all suspicion. Despite setbacks, the 118th Street Task Force locked onto a new suspect as horrifically promising as a blee: another local man suspected of hiring prostitutes and sexually assaulting them.
This man, Lorenzo Montoya, would loom over the case for years. In addition to the backlash the APG received from the media, public and family members of the victims regarding their West Mesa investigation,
The department was still embroiled in corruption allegations. As mentioned, multiple officers in the APT were themselves being investigated for allegations of rape and additional crimes. The situation was so serious the US Department of Justice got involved. The Department of Justice announced its investigation into the Albuquerque Police Department in 2014.
Federal investigators revealed that an independent civil investigation had uncovered a stunning pattern. Between 2009 and 2012, APD officers participated in 20 fatalities that officials suspected of involving excessive force. This tracked with a shocking 2014 incident in which APD deputies were caught on camera shooting a mentally ill man.
The case garnered national headlines, though second-degree murder charges against the officers were later dismissed. Just as disturbing, if not more so in the context of this case, were the allegations of rape. In 2013, a former prostitute filed a lawsuit accusing ex-New Mexico State Officer Timothy Carlson of raping her in his police cruiser.
The lawsuit named another prostitute who alleged a similar assault by Carlson. In 2007, APD officer David Mays was arrested and charged with raping a woman he transported from the Veterans Park Hospital, a case the city eventually settled for $575,000.
In 2005, an APD vice squad detective was arrested and charged with kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old girl, but he was acquitted in 2007. In 2004, APD police sergeant Mike Garcia was arrested and charged with statutory rape of a 12-year-old girl, but he too was acquitted.
These are only a few of the dozens of allegations against APD officers, as well as a district judge who was arrested in 2011 for raping a prostitute. And these are just the alleged crimes that we know of. The vast majority of rapes are not reported, especially when the perpetrator is a cop.
Perhaps one of the stranger cases in Albuquerque during this time involved the ostensibly unrelated death of prominent attorney Mary Hann.
Han built a career out of litigating civil rights abuse cases levied at the Albuquerque police. At the time of her death, Han's firm was prosecuting another case of rape alleged by a prostitute against none other than the aforementioned rapist cop Carlson. In 2010, in the middle of the prosecution,
Hahn died in a suspicious suicide that State Attorney Gary King said looked more like foul play. Multiple private investigators and city officials have gone on record saying her death should be investigated as a murder cover-up.
Han's family members sued the city and won, an injunction that overturned the designation of her death as a suicide, which was no easy legal task. Former district attorney Carrie Brandenburg was pressured to leave her position because of statements she made regarding the Han case and others. In an interview with the Albuquerque Journal, she said, and I quote,
Frankly, if any other group of individuals were acting the way APD has allegedly been acting, some of us in law enforcement might refer to them as a continuing criminal enterprise and or engaged in the act of racketeering. I appreciate how bold a statement that is. End quote.
Then there are the chilling alleged details surrounding Cinnamon Elks and Jamie Barela, two of the victims whose bones were found at the West Mesa burial site. Diana Wilhelm, Cinnamon's mother, reported to police that before her death, Cinnamon had told friends that a dirty cop was killing sex workers, beheading them and burying their remains. Cinnamon went missing soon after this claim.
Throughout 2005, Wilhelm told police she received multiple calls from various individuals, including a private investigator, telling her Cinnamon had been beheaded. According to Wilhelm, the APD did not respond to her reports. Then, Wilhelm said Cinnamon's friend, 15-year-old Jamie Barela, called her to confirm that Cinnamon had been murdered.
Jamie herself went missing soon thereafter, and her bones were also found buried at the West Mesa site. The evidence of direct police involvement in any of the West Mesa deaths presently remains unsubstantiated, though certainly worth investigating. Amid accusations of police corruption, investigators continued compiling suspects.
One of the most disturbing was a man named Lorenzo Montoya, who, like Blee, was known to stalk women on the East Central Corridor and had a long track record of violence against prostitutes. For years before the West Mesa murders, APD detectives had investigated Montoya in connection to several missing women in the city.
In 1999, the same year Cindy Virgil escaped the toy box killer, Vice Detectives tracked and eventually arrested Montoya as he picked up a prostitute and attempted to rape and strangled her in his car. Montoya only had two dollars in his possession. Detectives believed he had no intention of paying the woman and instead planned to kill her. In 2006,
Only one year after police believed the West Mesa victims were murdered, Montoya was shot and killed by the boyfriend of a freelance dancer who allegedly caught him in the act of dragging the woman's dead body out of his trailer home. The victim was naked and bound by the ankles, knees and wrists with duct tape and cord. Police believe Montoya strangled her to death
and may have been in the process of transporting her body to the West Mesa burial site when he was killed himself. For the families, bitter heartbreak was now a way of life. Many of them had strained and in some cases broken relationships with the victims at the time they went missing. Living with unfathomable grief, families waited years to get a city park devoted to the victims.
something that took years to negotiate with a private property firm that wanted to monetize the space and city officials who dragged their feet on allocating construction funds.
At Street Safe, Christine and Cindy did not wait for the APD to act. Their advocacy on behalf of one of the most marginalized populations in the city began years earlier, when they began person-to-person distribution of condoms, medical supplies, clothing, food and other rations on the seediest of streets.
Christine also worked to compile a weekly list of prostitutes and other local women who were missing, as well as dangerous predators, aka johns, to avoid. StreetSafe meticulously updated and distributed this list every week. StreetSafe also created a series of billboards lining Central Avenue in the heart of Albuquerque's most dangerous neighborhood.
They intended the billboards to remind the public that this had happened, and that our sisters and mothers and friends were killed and buried on the West Mesa, and that the killer has never been found.
These billboards remind me, dear listener, of the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a truly magnificent film that won several awards and also concerned a woman's fight to raise awareness of violence against women. The billboards generated ten tips for the decade-old case.
As of late 2023, the Albuquerque Police have still not announced a killer in the West Mesa murders. Based on official police statements, it would seem the most likely suspects remain Blee and Montoya. The former is alive and in prison. The latter died in 2006.
Blee is serving a 90-year prison sentence for raping four young teenage girls. Despite previously admitting that he knew several of the victims, Blee hasn't yet indicated he has any direct knowledge of the West Mesa killings.
Official details from the APD has been sparse in recent years, though former Chief Geyer openly admits the West Mesa saga is a huge stain on the department.
In 2015, police spokesman Tanner Tixier said the list of suspects could have been as many as 20 names. Yet as of 2021, only one detective, Mark Manery, was working on the case full-time. Detective Manery stated, and I quote, The longer a case goes, the harder it is to collect certain evidence that is time-sensitive. But at the same time,
a witness that may have been too scared to talk at the time of the incident because of their personal situation, may be more willing to talk at a later date. End quote. However, according to several sources close to the case, including former police chief Meyer, Montoya is the suspect most likely to be the killer. While initial DNA tests on his home's carpets didn't yield any matches,
Montoya lived near the burial site and had a criminal history of physical assault and attempted rape against prostitutes in the same area where the victims went missing. He was also killed in the act of trying to dispose of a hired dancer's nude body. There are still multiple missing women in the city that investigators believe were probably also killed by the West Mesa serial killer.
Christine and StreetSafe continue working to build a coalition to fund a specially equipped drone that can search for disturbed ground and indications of additional mass graves and burial spots. In 2018, the parents of these missing women experienced a heartbreaking false alarm.
Investigators thought they may have discovered a second burial site in an undeveloped West Mesa park only a half mile south of the original site. Forensic experts determined, however, that the skeletal remains belonged to Native Americans from circa 1100 to 1300 AD. In June 2020, three former APD detectives filed a whistleblower lawsuit
alleging the sex crimes unit retaliated against them for raising concerns about the department's handling of rape cases. An attorney representing the detectives said, and I quote, "It's clear this wasn't just incompetence. This is absolutely a purposeful effort to undermine the arrest and prosecution of serial rapists." End quote.
Family members continue to maintain the department systematically neglected to investigate missing prostitutes. The mother of one victim told journalists a high-ranking APD detective had, upon learning her daughter was a prostitute, snidely remarked to her that the young woman was quote-unquote one of his favorites. The data is stark.
Women who engage in street prostitution are 60 to 100 times more likely to be murdered than women who do not. But this goes beyond just examining the repercussions of a dangerous profession, or assessing how serial killers target prostitutes because of their vulnerability.
The chance that a sex worker reporting an assault against them by a police officer will result in punishment of any kind is very unlikely. In Albuquerque, several prostitutes have told a street-safe team that upon reporting sexual violence, the police laughed at them and said what they experienced was simply part of their job and to be expected.
We'll be right back.
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I'm sending my brother money directly to his bank account in India because he's apparently too busy practicing his karaoke to go pick up cash. Thankfully, I can still send money his way. Yes, I know I'm sending to your bank account. Western Union, send it their way. Send money in-store directly to their bank account in India.
And with that, we come to the end of this standalone saga covering the West Mesa Bone Collector. Next episode, I'll bring you a fresh serial killer expose. So as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.
