ALBUQUERQUE — Police said Tuesday that the bones from six bodies they uncovered in the desert west of Albuquerque probably were put there by one person, and they are building a list of suspects.
The list of possible victims is growing to include a group of 16 prostitutes who went missing from Albuquerque between 2001 and 2006 and others reported missing to other area law enforcement agencies.
Of the six sets of remains, only one has been identified, through dental records provided by the family of Victoria Chavez when they reported her missing in 2004. Police said her remains were found in a grave 18 inches deep.
Bones from the other five bodies, the most recent of them recovered Tuesday, were scattered across a 100-square-foot area recently leveled by bulldozers building a housing community. The bones were sent to the coroner’s office for identification.
Albuquerque homicide Sgt. Carlos Argueta said some of the victims probably were transient drug addicts and prostitutes — women who often don’t have family members who report them missing and provide DNA or dental records.
Argueta said his detectives are looking at a handful of suspects in connection with Chavez’s case. He said two names that have come up belong to dead men: Fred Reynolds and Lorenzo Montoya.
Reynolds, 60, was an Albuquerque-area pimp who was found dead of natural causes in January. Police say he had pictures of some of the missing prostitutes in his home.
Montoya, 39, was shot and killed in 2006 after he killed a 19-year-old prostitute, Sherika Hill, and tried to put her nude body in his trunk without her pimp seeing him. Her pimp, parked outside a trailer waiting for Hill, shot Montoya.
Argueta said identifying the bodies found in the desert could take months because of a backlog of DNA test requests. He also said it’s possible more names could be added to the list of victims.
Even if the victims are identified, Argueta said determining the cause of death from skeletal remains can be difficult. And without a cause of death, prosecuting a case becomes a big challenge.
“But we have to investigate these cases for these women and for their families. This was someone’s daughter,” Argueta said.
