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West Mesa Bone Collector · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:13
  Discretion is advised. This is ten minuted murder. On February two, two
• 0:36
  thousand and nine, a lady was walking her dog in the West Mesa,
• 0:40
  a large elevated land mass in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Midway through her walk,
• 0:45
  she came across what appeared to be a human bone. Alarmed, the
• 0:49
  woman reported her finding to the police, who confirmed that the bone was human
• 0:56
  and began an in depth search of the area where the bone had been found.
• 1:00
  The searchers expected to find the rest of the body that the bone had
• 1:03
  come from, but they found much much more than that. The investigation uncovered
• 1:10
  eleven sets of human remains buried in the area, as well as the remains
• 1:15
  of an unborn fetus. All of the victims were female. The youngest was
• 1:21
  fifteen years old and the oldest was thirty two. Most of the victims were
• 1:26
  Hispanic, and almost all of them were from backgrounds that would have made them
• 1:30
  vulnerable to predators, such as sex workers and drug addicts. Satellite images of
• 1:34
  the area were reviewed, allowing the police to estimate a time frame of when
• 1:40
  the bodies had been buried. Whoever this killer was, they had killed prolifically
• 1:45
  over an extended period of time. The first body had been buried in two
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  thousand one and the last one in two thousand five. The satellite images also
• 1:55
  gave investigators insight as to how the bones were eventually exposed to the elements.
• 2:00
  They had all been buried in the bank of an arroyo, a type of
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  dry water course that fills with water during heavy rain. It was an area
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  that was well within the city limits, but that had not been developed at
• 2:10
  the time the killings began. The series of satellite images showed soiled disturbances and
• 2:16
  tire tracks appearing between two thousand and three and two thousand and five, indicating
• 2:22
  that the killer was able to visit the sites whenever he needed to dispose of
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  a body without being disturbed. Then, in two thousand and six, the
• 2:30
  burial site was mapped for development of residential properties and the arroyo was buried.
• 2:37
  Because the arroyo acted as a reservoir to store and naturally direct heavy rain flow
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  without its, flooding began to encroach on the nearby houses, and after enough
• 2:46
  people in the neighborhood complained about the flooding, an artificial retention pond was built
• 2:52
  in the same area. Where the remains had been buried. It was only
• 2:54
  through this series of coincidences that the bones were gradually exposed to the surface.
• 3:00
  One by one, The remains were matched to missing girls and women who had
• 3:05
  gone missing between two thousand and one and two thousand five. The dates that
• 3:09
  each victim vanished matched up with the satellite images showing that the final body had
• 3:15
  been buried in two thousand and five. The youngest victim was fifteen year old
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  Solonia Edwards, who had run away from her home in Lawton, Oklahoma.
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  Out of all the victims, she was the only girl of African American descent,
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  and she was also the only one who had lived in a different state.
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  The fetus in the grave was the unborn baby of twenty two year old
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  Michel Valdez, who had been about four months pregnant when she was killed.
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  In December twenty ten, six photos were released by the Albuquerque Police showing seven
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  women who investigators believed might be linked to the West Mayson murders. The next
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  day, a seventh photo was released. This time, the woman in the
• 3:55
  photo was quickly identified by members of her family, who said that she had
• 3:59
  passed away due to an unrelated illness. Four days after the photos were released,
• 4:04
  two more of the women in the photos had been identified by their loved
• 4:08
  ones, and both of them were still alive. However, the remaining women
• 4:13
  in the photos were never named. Investigators had a good reason to be concerned
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  for the well being of the women and several of the photos. They seemed
• 4:20
  to be asleep or unconscious, and several of them looked similar to the eleven
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  victims found buried in the West Mesa Desert. In the early days of the
• 4:30
  investigation, the police realized they'd stumbled upon the dumping ground of a serial killer.
• 4:35
  They couldn't rule out that the killer may have worked with an accomplice,
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  but they were certain that the same person or group of people was responsible for
• 4:44
  the murders and burials. As news of the case spread, the unidentified killer
• 4:48
  became known as the West Mesa bone collector. Considering that the case began with
• 4:55
  eleven unidentified sets of skeletal remains, The progress made in the investigtion gation was
• 5:00
  initially impressive, but since the day that the last victim was identified, the
• 5:04
  case went cold. As of November twenty twenty three, no suspects have been
• 5:11
  officially named. By authorities in connection with the West Mason murders, and that
• 5:15
  despite a one hundred thousand dollars reward for information leading to the killer's arrest,
• 5:21
  the FBI received an anonymous tip that potentially linked the crimes to a suspect who
• 5:27
  lived in Central America. At several points in the investigation, the police wondered
• 5:31
  if the murders were the result of a sex trafficking ring that targeted sex workers
• 5:36
  at times when there was a large influx of people in the area, such
• 5:41
  as during the popular New Mexico State Fair, but no suspects being officially named
• 5:46
  by the authorities doesn't mean that there were no suspects at all. In fact,
• 5:50
  several people attracted the suspicion of the police since the early days of the
• 5:55
  case, and some of them have even had a connection with the victims.
• 6:00
  One of the earliest unofficial suspects was a pimp named Fred Reynolds, who allegedly
• 6:05
  kept photos of prostitutes and escorts who had gone missing. He also had connections
• 6:11
  to at least one of the women, but he was never able to be
• 6:14
  connected to the crime itself, and in early two thousand and nine he passed
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  away Then, in late twenty ten, the police carried out an extensive search
• 6:23
  of multiple properties in Missouri which were connected to Ron Irwin, a businessman and
• 6:29
  photographer who regularly visited the Albuquerque State Fair. Although the police removed tens of
• 6:34
  thousands of photographs from Ron's property, they later stated that they were confident that
• 6:41
  he was not involved with the West Mason murders. Joseph Blee, a man
• 6:46
  known as the mid School Rapist, was a sex offender who targeted teenage girls
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  in the around area of Albuquerque's McKinley Middle School. He would break into the
• 6:55
  girls houses and sexually assault them before running away. He'd also convicted of murdering
• 7:00
  a sex worker who was found dead on the street. After a breakthrough in
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  an unsolved unrelated case led to Joseph Blee being identified as the perpetrator, the
• 7:10
  police began to wonder if he could be the West MASA bone collector close to
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  where the bodies had been dumped, a tree tag had been recovered by the
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  investigators, and it turned out to come from a plant nursery where Joseph had
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  been a frequent customer during his time behind bars. Joseph also reportedly told a
• 7:27
  fellow prisoner that the West Masa victims were trashy, but that he had used
• 7:31
  their services anyway. Joseph was never convicted of the West Mason murders. In
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  June twenty fifteen, he received a thirty six year sentence for the other crimes
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  he committed. Out of all of these unofficial suspects, there is one man
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  whom many people believe to be the strongest link to the case. His name
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  is Lorenzo Montoya. Lorenzo lived close to the West Masa bone collector's dumping site.
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  In fact, the trailer park where he lived was a little under three
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  miles away from the graves. Allegedly, he visited the arroyo often enough in
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  two thousand and six that there were visible trails between his trailer and the burial
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  site, although this has never been confirmed by the police. Lorenzo also had
• 8:16
  a history of violence. His girlfriend reported that he had repeatedly threatened to murder
• 8:20
  her and then bury her remains in lime to counteract the smell of decay.
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  On multiple occasions, he had been arrested for brutally attacking the prostitutes that he
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  hired, and his coworkers found his conversation topics equally disturbing. Several of Lorenzo's
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  co workers reported that he talked to them about how he'd killed sex workers and
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  then disposed of the remains on a spots on the West Mesa. However,
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  Lorenzo was never investigated in connection with the murders because he was long dead himself
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  by the time the bodies were discovered. In late two thousand and six,
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  he hired a teenage prostitute. He took that girl back to his trailer,
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  he attacked her and strangled her to death. That girl's boyfriend tracked Lorenzo down
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  and shot him to death. After that, no more bodies were dumped by
• 9:09
  the West Masa bone collector. Whether the timing of Lorenzo's death was a coincidence.
• 9:16
  Something eventually did stop the West Masa bone collector from returning to the site
• 9:20
  where he had disposed of the bodies all those years, But the question of
• 9:24
  whether he truly stopped killing or just started burying his victims in a new location
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  remains unanswered. That's ten minute Murder for today brief and bingeable true crime.
• 9:48
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• 9:52
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• 9:56
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• 10:00
  and what made you do one where the stories are in a condensed format?
• 10:03
  I love it and have noticed a few copycats pop up since I started listening
• 10:07
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• 10:11
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• 10:16
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• 10:20
  It just says winky face Mackenzie. I don't know that I've answered this
• 10:24
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• 10:30
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• 10:35
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• 10:39
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• 10:43
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• 10:58
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• 11:01
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• 11:20
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• 11:30
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• 11:46
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• 11:48
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• 11:52
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• 11:54
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• 11:58
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• 12:03
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