there are, you know, maybe another one here, then another one there, and that sort o thing. >> soon there were five missin women with eerily simila profiles on ida's list all of them about the same age with a similar look. all were known to hang out in section of albuquerque s notorious that cops call it th war zone and all but one, a juvenile, had lengthy arrest records for drugs or prostitution. so she did what every good detective does she started keeping a list o missing women who match that profile. that was the easy part the hard part was that many of them had already been missin for more than a year before id even had a chance to start looking. it's one of those timing issue we told you about earlier. lengthy delays in reportin missing people as missing. >> it's like being in a race and somebody has a year ahea start. ready, set, go and i don't have phone records i don't have a normal, you know, regular address. you don't have a schoo schedule or work schedule, tha sort of thing. >> and you don't have anybod who saw them yesterday >> right >> and can tell you what the were doing, what their state o mind was, who they were hangin around with. >> right and the family knows the better than i do but they hadn't seen them. or they see them once a mont or every six months. >> add to that fact that mos of the missing women had supported their drug habit a street prostitutes who got int cars with strange men as often as 20 to 30 times a day. and it's easy to see how another detective, one with harder heart than the on beating inside ida lopez, migh have given up. >> a missing daughter and father's regret. >> i dropped her off at friends. i didn't do the right thing bu i knew i had to.
she said, well, dad, i'm going to run i said all right and she said -- she went up to put her arms around me, and hugged her and she said no, dad squeeze me tight squeeze me like you've never squeezed me before and i got her and i gave her the biggest hug a father could ever give his daughter >> remembered moments like tha sustained dan and drove him to continue his lonely search for michelle then in july 2005, about fiv months after dan had first reported michelle missing, h got a call from a detective wh had only recently been assigne michelle's case. a detective named ida lopez. >> i thought ida being a polic officer was awfully small. short lady but other than that it seeme that, you know, that she was o the up and up and that she was doing -- doing what she could, in her power, and the time tha she had to go out and -- out t the streets.
cinnamon elks, missing since august of 2004 but even if those rumors wer true and human remains wer cooling in the desert night on albuquerque's west mesa, the detective knew, it would take miracle to find them was a serial killer stalking the women working the war zone >> i just always felt that the were going to be together. >> in death as in life >> if you find one, you're going to find them all when "dateline" continues. every morning the sunrises ove the sandia mountains east of albuquerque and begins bakin one of the most celebrated stretches of asphalt in th united states -- historic rout 66, the highway famous for carrying dust bowl refugees an beat generation oddballs wes to california. the mother road's glory days are behind her now in albuquerque, where the ol highway becomes central avenue the city's decidedly down-scaled drug and prostitution trade flourishes.
looking for, including tha profile was a white male >> 35 to 50? >> your typical profile. >> lives alone or is away from home for extended periods of time probably had some brush with law enforcement. probably familiar with the prostitution trade >> yes >> i'm still right down th middle of the fairway on this, right? >> yes >> and that's still a lot of people >> it's a lot of people. and do you use that profile an rule somebody out just because they're not on that profile? >> you can't >> no, you can't >> no. >> the detectives needed a solid tip. and by the summer of 2009 th fbi and the city of albuquerqu were offering $100,000 t anyone who could help them catch and convict the ma responsible for killing th west mesa women. for the detective who'd long maintained that everybod counts, the existence of tha kind of reward was a sign of progress >> you're asked to cal 1-877--- >> though the polic tip line with hundreds of call from a trail mix of nuts, kook and the merely misguided -- >> detective babcock. >> -- no one who seemed to kno something about the five-yea missing persons cases wa dialing the phone. >> there were numerous rumor out there that certain individuals had killed several of them, and then one in
get into a car and do what thi person just told you to do there's no way and so that gave me an empathy for them on that part, and i thought, wow, this has got t be powerful. >> over the years ida's career blossomed. she made detective, marrie another cop, and started a family her future seemed assured. but in 2004 while pregnant wit her second child doctors discovered a mass in ida's right kidney >> it was growing, and i had kidney cancer. >> what did doctors tell you >> well, they were shocked they said it wasn't common i women and it wasn't common i women my age he wouldn't say what the plans were because the only, you know, close person i knew had cancer and died
>> whatever the killer's permanent address, those satellite photos were a huge break because they told police when he was active here and, most importantly, when he quit >> there could be somebody u there right now. >> yeah. >> and just depending on where they're at, you wouldn't eve see them up there. >> detective todd babcock an sergeant lou heckroft drew the job of trying to track down th killer all they knew was that he' killed at least 11 women and that the 2005 housing boom tha brought suburban sprawl to the west mesa probably forced hi to abandon this burial groun and find another one where there would be no neighbor around to watch him work >> you're up half a mile to 3/ of a mile from any populated area back in the time frame. >> a time frame, 2003 to early 2005, and 11 sets of bones not a lot to go on but the detectives knew simply finding the bones in the first place had been an incredibly lucky break. >> all the stars aligned yeah >> oddly enough, the west mesa investigators'good fortune began thousands of miles to th east, in the fall of 2008. that's when crumbling financia markets on wall street cause home construction on the wes mesa to grind to a halt.
>> was it possible ida lopez's list was just the tip of the iceberg? >> it's desert there could be ver realistically a lot of bodies. >> this, in a way, suggest maybe there are women out ther who aren't on any list >> that's a possibility. could be others. there could be others. >> when "dateline" continues after months of digging fo bones in the desert west o albuquerque, detective desperately wanted to get on with the work of catching killer so far all the remains identified had been names on ida lopez's list of missin women. and all had worked a prostitutes on the mean street of the city's war zone for police that seemed like good place to start thei search for i'm your overly competitive brother. check. psych! and i'm about to steal this game from you just like i stole kelly carter in high school. you got no game dude, that's a foul! and now you're ready to settle the score. game over.
were not good. but that's not what she told the families when they calle in, looking to hear somethin encouraging. >> i would tell them every single day we're one day close to finding your daughter yes, i pray that they're okay. hopefully they've been in commune in some mountainou town or in a rehab center or a jail or with friends tha they're actually doing okay. >> did you believe any of that >> i held on to the hope and possibility. >> reality, however, demande that the detective do more tha just hope for a happy ending so with the tact of a parish priest ida lopez began makin the rounds >> michelle. >> asking family members suc as dan valdez for dental records and dna swabs. >> when you go to some famil that's got a missing daughte or sister and say, i need some familial dna and i need your child's dental records, you're essentially saying to that family i do not expect to find
sometimes in the middle of her work week the albuquerqu detective feels a pressing nee for spiritual solace and divin guidance the fall of 2005 was one o those times. it was a time when a siniste force seemed to be snatching women off the streets of new mexico's largest city. and the devoutly religious detective knew she needed al the help she could get >> i think it's somebody who's very organized i think he's been preying on his victims, has a particula victim in mind >> sticking up for victims comes naturally to ida lopez it's the same instinct tha drew her to police work year ago, when she was a kid, growing up in albuquerque. >> i was about 9 years old actually, it was my grandfathe raised me. he was outside
of the other individuals we're looking at in this case. >> but that unfortunately will never happen the boyfriend shot and kille lorenzo montoya on the spot. it was a bit of frontier justice for montoya, who was about to literally get awa with murder. but years later his death woul be just as tough a break for detectives investigating the bodies found on the west mesa. >> there's nothing to connec lorenzo montoya to those 1 bodies >> not directly. >> just that he committed that kind of crime. >> it's hard to get over a guy getting shot with a dead prostitute in his arms it is. >> but as tempting as it might be to pin the west mesa murder on a dead man, the detective say there are a few disquietin facts, starting with this one. sapfira mora, one woman on ida lopez's list, had vanished after lorenzo montoya died >> and if you close this cas and decide it was lorenz montoya and then later you fin