ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Authorities are looking for men who hire prostitutes and are prone to violence as they try to find out who killed 11 women and buried them in a desert mesa on Albuquerque’s southwest side.
But one year after the first human bone was discovered by a hiker, detectives remain tight-lipped on what they’ve learned.
“We’ve got all our victims identified, so now johns are one of the groups of people that we are definitely focusing on,” Police Chief Ray Schultz said.
All the victims are female and all but one are from Albuquerque. Almost all worked as prostitutes before they disappeared in a time period from 2003 to early 2005.
“We’re especially looking for information on johns, people who were picking up women involved in prostitution, that were threatening, violent, attempting to force women to do things that the women did not want to do, people that were overly aggressive, people that were irrational,” Schultz said.
The chief is careful not to close the door on any theories and said the suspect is most likely a male who acted alone. The suspects include a man who was killed in 2006 by a pimp who caught him stuffing a prostitute’s body into a car trunk; a pimp who died of natural causes in 2009; and two people who are in prison.
The department has six employees committed full time to the case and sometimes other officers are called in. Schultz hopes a reward, boosted to $100,000 in December, will loosen lips.
A forensics laboratory at the University of North Texas, which identified most of the victims, continues to provide other clues from the remains, Schultz said. He declined to say what information was received.
“We continue to learn more about these 11 women and their lifestyles and their associates and what they were doing just before they were reported missing,” he said.
Schultz said the case remains one of the department’s top priorities.
