Commander Feist News Today

temporary field headquarters >> so many young women missing one woman determined to find them >> theres a story to her too. a young woman lucky to b alive. for a lot of people that would be the end to police work. >> so she searched the numbers grew the families hurt. >> she says i have some ba news for you under a desert sky a secret waited. >> this is not happening >> missing women forgotten by almost everyone but her. >> i have always felt they wer going to be together if you find o...

It was comforting that it didnt just happen to me. >> reporter: six weeks after the digging began out on the west mesa, even more sets of remains were identified. and sure enough, they too were names on ida lopezs list of missing women. >> investigators are looking for connections. any signs that the women knew each other. >> reporter: by now the street alongside the desert crime scene was a media encampment, where reporters were predictably live at 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00. sometimes reporting det...

They had literally spent weeks in the trenches looking for bones at that abandoned construction site. >> it is a lot of shovel and pick work. its a lot of sifting and actually in the dirt. >> reporter: two women on ida lopezs list had already been identified among the 11 sets of remains. now between the bulldozers and idas prayers the department was moving heaven and earth to find out if there were more women from idas list out there. commander feist knew every scrap of evidence recovered from t...

Work in the off hours, when he knew cameras would not be looking over his shoulder. >> i needed to know where they were all the time. that way, again, so if i were doing a different process or if i was looking at something specific, i needed to know that i didnt have the eyes of america in that hole with me. >> reporter: by mid april, after 2 1/2 months of intensive searching, mapping, and aerial photography, commander feist finally felt confident that his team had found all the bones there were...

Cinnamon elks, julie niedo, veronica, and doreen marquez. >> a lot of people said they were with drug addicts and prostitutes. well, if they were, then so be it. i didnt choose their lifestyle. but you know what the first thing is, they were human beings to begin with. >> commander feist who tried to keep the local press at arms length during the excavation finally allowed them to cross under the yellow tape and onto the crime scene along with crews from "americas most wanted". >> the tv show "a...

Sometimes reporting details that crime scene commander paul fiest preferred to keep secret. >> all of the victims buried out in the west mesa were barried naked with no clothing on. >> it was a problem. there were things we wanted to keep very secret, things we didnt want released. we had them in the air. they had the big telescoping lenses. they were there constantly and there were processes that posed a concern. >> caught between the pressure to keep the public informed and the need to prevent...

>> by mid-april, after 2 1/2 months of intensive searching, mapping and aerial photography, commander feist finally felt confident that his team had found all the bones there were to find and began shutting down the west mesa crime scene. >> just a few minutes ago, albuquerque police left the dig site after they say theyve met all the goals that theyve set. >> the total body count stayed at 11 sets of adult remains and one fetus. but for ida lopez, the discovery and identification of seven women...

Her job, and she realized that these women all had families. theyve got parents and grandparents, and some of them actually had children of their own. and she wanted to be able to provide them with some answers. >> reporter: in addition to victoria chavez and michelle valdez, the others from idas list were cinnamon elks, julie nieto, veronica romero, monica candelaria, and doreen marquez. >> a lot of people said they were drug addicts and prostitutes. well, if they were, so be it. i didnt choose...

Work in the off hours, when he knew cameras would not be looking over his shoulder. >> i needed to know where they were all the time. that way, again, so if i were doing a different process or if i was looking at something specific, i needed to know that i didnt have the eyes of america in that hole with me. >> reporter: by mid april, after 2 1/2 months of intensive searching, mapping, and aerial photography, commander feist finally felt confident that his team had found all the bones there were...

Rainstorm comes, unearths certain things, and now we locate these victims. >> so you get lucky. >> yes. very lucky. >> very lucky. >> reporter: by late february 2009, commander paul feist and his small army of crime scene investigators and volunteers werent feeling very lucky at all. they had literally spent weeks in the trenches looking for bones at that abandoned construction site. >> it is a lot of shovel and pick work. its a lot of sifting and actually in the dirt. >> reporter: two women on ...