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The Mesa Bone Collector (2001-2005)
- Paul Balmer
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 hour ago
On the outskirts of Albuquerque, a vast stretch of undeveloped land lay quiet for years. Once intended for suburban expansion, it was left abandoned when the housing market stalled. To most, it was just empty desert. But in 2009, a chance discovery by a woman walking her dog revealed what had been hidden beneath the surface — a series of shallow graves that would lead to one of the largest unsolved serial murder cases in New Mexico’s history.
📍 Location
West Mesa, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
📅 Date(s)
Victims disappeared between 2001 and 2005. Bodies discovered in 2009.
Known Victims
Jamie Barela (15)
Monica Candelaria (21)
Victoria Chavez (26)
Virginia Cloven (24)
Syllannia Edwards (15)
Cinnamon Elks (32)
Doreen Marquez (24)
Julie Nieto (24)
Veronica Romero (27)
Evelyn Salazar (27)
Michelle Valdez (22) and her unborn child
The Discovery
On February 2, 2009, a woman named Christine Ross was walking her dog along 118th Street, near the unfinished edge of a housing development. The lot was bare, dry, and mostly forgotten — the kind of place a city expands into when it runs out of options. Her dog darted ahead and began digging at something in the dirt. What surfaced wasn’t trash or a buried toy.
It was a human bone.
Ross called the police. Forensics arrived. Soon, more bones were found. Then more. Over the next several weeks, a sprawling field of death emerged. What had looked like a barren hillside was, in truth, a mass grave.
Eleven women. One unborn child. Scattered and shallowly buried. A serial killer had used this land to erase people. And for years, it had worked.
The Vanishing Years
Between 2001 and 2005, women began disappearing from the streets of Albuquerque. The pattern should have been obvious — many were young, Hispanic, and involved in sex work. Others had struggled with addiction or homelessness. One by one, they went missing.
But the city wasn’t looking.
Families reported their daughters and sisters gone. Flyers went up. Warnings circulated. Police often labeled them runaways, or dismissed the cases altogether. Without urgency, leads dried up. Without bodies, cases went cold. The women were forgotten — until the desert gave them back.
A Killer’s Graveyard
The spacing of the graves suggested calculation. The killer had returned to this patch of earth multiple times. He had dug with purpose, buried with care, and covered his tracks with the convenience of society’s indifference. No one would look for women like these, he must have believed. No one would miss them loudly enough to stir a real search.
And for a long time, he was right.
The Largest Crime Scene in New Mexico History
In the days after the discovery, the West Mesa transformed from empty land into an active crime scene. Cadaver dogs swept the brush. Forensic crews marked each new find with a small flag. Yellow markers dotted the earth like an unspoken language — each one a person, a loss, a grave.
Over several months, the remains of eleven women and one unborn child were recovered. Their bones were scattered across a wide grid of sand and weeds, spaced apart as though planted. Investigators noted the consistency in burial depth, position, and distance between sites. This was not chaos. This was someone who knew what he was doing.
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The Prime Suspect Who Never Answered
Lorenzo Montoya. His name wasn’t new to police. He had a history of violence, particularly toward sex workers. In the early 2000s, he lived just a few miles from the burial site. He often solicited women on Central Avenue, the same area where many of the victims were last seen.
And in 2006 — a year after the final suspected murder — Montoya was killed.
The story is brutal.
He had arranged to meet a 19-year-old woman at his trailer. When she didn’t respond to her boyfriend’s calls, the boyfriend showed up. He caught Montoya dragging her lifeless body outside. A confrontation erupted, and Montoya was shot and killed at the scene.
After his death, the disappearances stopped.
His proximity, his history, and the timing were hard to ignore. But police never found physical evidence linking Montoya to the graves. With no confession, no witness, and no DNA, he remains the most likely suspect — and an unresolved one.
Other Theories
Though Lorenzo Montoya has long been the most discussed suspect, he wasn’t the only man whose name surfaced in the wake of the West Mesa discovery.
Fred Reynolds, a local man known for photographing sex workers, reportedly knew several of the victims. He died of natural causes in 2009, before the bodies were found, and no concrete evidence ever linked him to the crime — but his connections and timing raised suspicion.
Ron Erwin, a Missouri-based photographer who had traveled through Albuquerque, was briefly investigated after FBI agents searched his property. His interest in Route 66 culture — and the fact that his travel dates overlapped with the period of the murders — drew attention. But no charges were ever filed, and Erwin denied involvement.
Then there's Ron Blea, a man with a deeply troubling record. Between 1990 and 2009, police encountered Blea nearly 140 times, often in drug-heavy areas known for sex work — the same areas where many victims were last seen. When he was arrested in 2003 for exposing himself to a woman, police found electrical tape and rope in his car.
After the West Mesa graves were uncovered, officers reportedly saw Blea stalking sex workers in the same neighborhoods. His own cellmate later told police that Blea had admitted to knowing many of the murdered women — and even confessed to hitting one for trying to steal his money.
Still, as disturbing as the details are, police were never able to find the kind of evidence needed to formally link Blea to the West Mesa murders. He remains in prison today, serving a 90-year sentence for a string of sexual assaults committed in the 1980s and 1990s.
Some believe he was involved. Others are convinced he knows who was. But like so many leads in this case, the truth remains buried.
Status
Unsolved. No charges filed. Case remains open.
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