In 2009 the remains of eleven women and girls, and of the unborn child one of them was carrying, were found on the West Mesa, the high desert on the western edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Within a year all eleven had names. Monica Candelaria, Victoria Chavez, Virginia Cloven, Syllannia Edwards, Cinnamon Elks, Doreen Marquez, Julie Nieto, Veronica Romero, Evelyn Salazar, Michelle Valdez and Jamie Barela had gone missing in 2003 and 2004. Two of them, Syllannia and Jamie, were 15.
CBS News has described the investigation as the largest homicide case in the Albuquerque Police Department's history. The department has worked the case with the FBI for more than seventeen years, has taken well over a thousand tips, and has offered a reward of up to $100,000. No one has been arrested and no one has been charged. In February 2026, on the seventeenth anniversary, the president of the Albuquerque City Council said again that the killings remain unsolved.
The case is often called by a press nickname, the "West Mesa Bone Collector," which was already in use in November 2009, when News 9 in Oklahoma City reported on Syllannia Edwards. Police use plainer words. Their case page is titled the West Mesa Homicide Investigation, and the families have spent years asking that the women be remembered as daughters, sisters and mothers.
The Albuquerque Police Department lists the eleven women and girls with the ages it gives for each of them: Monica Candelaria, 22; Victoria Chavez, 26; Virginia Cloven, 24; Syllannia Edwards, 15; Cinnamon Elks, 32; Doreen Marquez, 24; Julie Nieto, 24; Veronica Romero, 28; Evelyn Salazar, 27; Michelle Valdez, 22; and Jamie Barela, 15. Michelle Valdez was pregnant, and her unborn child was found with her.
Some of the names appear in fuller form in New Mexico Senate memorials: Monica Diana Candelaria, Virginia Ann Cloven, Julie Cyndie Nieto, Evelyn Jesusmaria Salazar and Gina Michelle Valdez, who went by Michelle. The memorials record that Monica Candelaria was reported missing in 2003; that Victoria Chavez was last seen in 2003 and reported missing in 2004; that Michelle Valdez had been missing since September 2004; and that Cinnamon Elks, Julie Nieto, Virginia Cloven, Doreen Marquez, Evelyn Salazar, Veronica Romero and Jamie Barela had been missing since 2004. Syllannia Edwards left a group home in Lawton, Oklahoma, in August 2003.
Most of the women were Hispanic New Mexicans. Syllannia Edwards was the only one from outside the state and the only African American among them. Several were mothers, and several left children who were raised by relatives. Many of them knew one another, CBS News reported in 2022, and their relatives had not expected them to be found dead.
For years after they disappeared, the families looked on their own. Some filed missing person reports that, in the words of the 2009 Senate memorial, "go nowhere." Some relatives said later that the police did not treat the disappearances as urgent at the time.
Jamie Barela, who was 15, and her cousin Evelyn Salazar, who was 27, went missing together in the spring of 2004. The Albuquerque Police Department says the two of them left a family gathering and were heading to a park in the southeast of the city. Neither came home.
Her relatives remembered Jamie as outgoing and lively. She was a fan of the Tejano singer Selena, and she loved singing, dancing, sports, books and butterflies, Kent Paterson of the Frontera NorteSur news service reported in 2010. She had spent time with an aunt in Leadville, Colorado. Her mother told reporters that she still remembered what Jamie had been wearing the night she left, and that she had left the house with her curling iron still switched on. Jamie had gone missing once before, the year earlier, and had been found with her father, KUNM reported.
After she disappeared, her family heard rumors that she had been seen in Espanola, in Colorado, even in Canada. Relatives said the police never questioned them and treated her as a runaway. Her mother said in 2010 that, apart from a recent visit to collect a DNA sample, Albuquerque police had not been to see her since 2004.
Jamie was the last of the eleven to be identified, on January 26, 2010. Her funeral was held on March 4, 2010. Her brother spoke at the cemetery and asked the mourners to hold on to the best memory each of them had of her. Another brother recalled playing with her at the family ranch near Mount Taylor. A half-sister said she had not suspected that Jamie was among the women on the mesa, and hoped the authorities would do everything they could to find the person responsible. Her mother said, "Somebody took a bright smile away from us," and that the burial was not closure for her.
Evelyn Salazar had been identified two months earlier, on November 17, 2009. Her mother, in a statement released through the advocacy group Young Women United on the tenth anniversary, said the women "didn't deserve what they got" and that they "all had families that care for them."
Jamie's mother has spoken publicly about the case for more than fifteen years. In 2010 she told KUNM that law enforcement was not giving the families enough information. In 2025 she told KOB 4 that the department rarely contacted her and that she learned most news secondhand. "It doesn't matter what they were doing," she said of the women. "They were human beings, somebody's daughter."
Syllannia Edwards was 15 when she went missing in August 2003. She had been in the custody of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services since she was five, News 9 in Oklahoma City reported, and she left a group home for girls in Lawton. Lawton police took a missing person report and listed her as an endangered runaway. Her family lived in Texas. The Albuquerque Police Department says she was seen in Aurora, Colorado, in May 2004; an Associated Press report gave Denver.
She was identified on November 13, 2009, the department says. KSWO in Lawton noted that she would have turned 21 that month. She was the only one of the eleven who had not been reported missing in Albuquerque.
Julie Nieto was 24 when she disappeared in 2004. Her mother raised Julie's three sons after her death, and told KUNM in 2010 that losing her daughter had changed the way she brought the boys up. In 2024 she described Julie to KOB 4 as "a good kid" who had fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Julie's mother has been one of the most visible relatives in the case. She told NM News Port in 2019 that she had found "a little bit of closure" only after her daughter was identified, and asked people to stop gossiping about the women and remember that anyone's child could end up in the same place. In 2021 she said she visited the memorial park because it calmed her, that she had had no contact with police for years, and that she was tired: "I'm tired, and I just want closure." Of all the women she said, "Those girls deserve closure, but I don't know if we'll ever get it."
Michelle Valdez was 22 and pregnant. The Senate memorials record that she had been missing since September 2004, and she was the second of the women to be identified.
Her father searched for her for years. In April 2009, at a candlelight vigil for the women, he told the Daily Lobo, the University of New Mexico student newspaper, that the families would keep looking where the police stopped. He wanted the search widened to nearby neighborhoods, and had contacted "America's Most Wanted" and other national programs to bring attention to the case. By 2010 he told KUNM he preferred to focus on the living and did not want to learn the details of the investigation until someone was caught. He kept searching until his death in 2014, Weekly Alibi reported.
Michelle's daughter was a small child when her mother disappeared and was raised by her grandparents. As a teenager she often went to the mesa, which became her place to grieve. She named her own first daughter Michelle. "Not having my mom was hard," she told KUNM in 2019. At the dedication of the memorial park in 2020 she remembered her mother's smile and her joyful personality, and said she would rather visit the park than the cemetery because it was the last place her mother had been.
Victoria Chavez was the first of the women to be identified, in 2009. Cinnamon Elks, at 32 the oldest of the eleven, was the third, and Julie Nieto the fourth, according to the Senate memorials. By April 2009 police had identified Monica Candelaria, Veronica Romero, Victoria Chavez, Cinnamon Elks, Julie Nieto and Michelle Valdez and her unborn child, the Daily Lobo reported. Virginia Cloven and Evelyn Salazar were identified on November 17, 2009.
Doreen Marquez's sister, speaking at the park dedication in 2020, said she would never forget her sister, the other women or the unborn baby, and that the park gave her family a place to gather. Another relative held a photograph of Doreen through the ceremony.
The names of Monica Candelaria, Victoria Chavez, Virginia Cloven, Cinnamon Elks and Veronica Romero are read aloud with the others at the anniversary gatherings held each February.
Before anything was found on the mesa, one Albuquerque detective had already seen a pattern. Ida Lopez was working in the department's Missing Persons unit in 2005 when she noticed that women were being reported missing and not turning up again, the department said in 2022. Her list grew over the following years. Weekly Alibi, citing a 2007 interview with the Albuquerque Tribune, reported that she kept a file on at least 17 women who had gone missing between 2001 and 2006, women she called "her girls." When the first remains were found in 2009, she believed the women on her list would be found together. Many of them were.
Lopez stayed with the case. More than a decade later she was the department's cold case investigator, the contact named on its appeals for information. "These women were loved, each one has a unique story and their families want answers," she said in 2022.
The Albuquerque Police Department formed a task force, later known as the West Mesa Task Force or the 118th Street Task Force. The FBI carried out crime analyses in the early stages and again in 2013, the department has said, and FBI profilers were part of the team from the start, Vice reported in 2014. Police worked with agencies across New Mexico.
Police said little in public. In 2010 Chief Ray Schultz told KUNM that investigators held back information so as not to tip off suspects and to protect any future prosecution, and that the inquiry was deliberately broad, taking in strong and weaker suspects alike. A year and a half after the remains were found, no suspect had been named.
In August 2010, Albuquerque police and the FBI served search warrants on the business and homes of a man in Missouri who had spent time in Albuquerque in the years when many of the women went missing, and took away photographs, business records and other material. Police said he had not been named a suspect.
At the end of 2010 police released photographs of seven women they believed might be linked to the case. Two of the women were later found alive, and one had died of natural causes, Vice reported.
Over the years police have said they have several persons of interest. Two men have drawn the most public attention. One died in 2006. The other is serving a long prison sentence in an unrelated case. Police have publicly identified both as possible suspects, and neither has been charged in connection with the West Mesa deaths. In 2015 New Mexico PBS noted local reports that police appeared to have narrowed their search to two men, while the investigation stayed open.
The department has described its work in numbers at each anniversary. By 2022 it had documented more than 1,184 tips, interviewed about 200 women, carried out further searches in 2018 and 2021, and begun auditing every tip and reviewing other cold case homicides for similarities. By 2024 the tips numbered more than 1,400 and there had been seven additional land searches; by 2025 the figure was nearly 1,500. In 2019 a police spokesman said a task force of detectives was working the case about 40 hours a week and that it was an active case, not a cold one. In 2024 KOB 4 reported that five detectives were assigned to it, reviewing tips each week and working with the FBI.
Liz Thomson, a former homicide sergeant working as a cold case investigator, set out the department's thinking at the thirteenth anniversary in 2022. The person responsible, she said, would have needed the means and the knowledge to reach what was then a remote part of the mesa, and left little behind. A 2021 search of a possible burial site, she said, "did not find anything that provided us with any answers." Investigators worried that construction might have covered other sites, and asked anyone who had noticed something suspicious while houses were being built to come forward. She told KSFR that the person they were looking for had targeted vulnerable women and may have attacked others earlier without killing them.
Police have not ruled out more victims. The department believes eight women who went missing between 2003 and 2006 may have met the same fate, and in 2022 it devoted an episode of its podcast, Duke City Case Files, to them, under the title "The Missings." Among the women it named were Martha Jo Lucher, last seen in 2003; Anna Vigil, Felipa Gonzales and Nina Herron, in 2005; and Vanessa Reed, Jillian Ortiz and Leah Peebles, in 2006.
In July 2018 construction workers building a park on the West Mesa, less than a mile from the 2009 site, uncovered human bones. Police told the relatives of several missing women. Within days the Office of the Medical Investigator reported that the remains were Native American and centuries old, part of an archaeological site from about 1100 to 1300 A.D., and unrelated to the case. The state archaeologist took charge of the site so the remains could be reburied.
Later that year, in November 2018, a tip about disturbed ground on the mesa briefly raised hopes, NM News Port reported, but it led nowhere.
The FBI offered a reward of up to $50,000. Together with the Albuquerque Police Department and the victims' families, the total reached up to $100,000 for information leading to an arrest and prosecution. The department repeats the offer every February, with its tip line and the number for Crime Stoppers.
"I think that we have to remember that we can never give up hope," said Harold Medina, who was a lieutenant on the graveyard shift when the remains were found and later became chief, at the thirteenth anniversary in 2022. Mayor Tim Keller said the city would not quit, and called on anyone with information to come forward. Medina said again in 2024 that the department had put a tremendous amount of effort into solving the case over fifteen years.
The families' relationship with the department has been strained. In 2010 Jamie Barela's mother said law enforcement was not telling them enough. In 2021 Julie Nieto's mother said she had not heard from police in years. In 2025 Jamie's mother said the same: "They don't even contact us, nothing. Whatever I hear, I hear through the grapevine."
In 2009 a memorial was introduced in the New Mexico Senate honoring Victoria Chavez, Gina Michelle Valdez, Cinnamon Elks, Julie Cyndie Nieto and the women not yet identified, written when only four of them had been named. It said that families across the state filed missing person reports that went nowhere and then searched without support. It said that police and many media outlets had portrayed the women as criminals rather than as victims of crime, and that this denied their humanity and their roles in their families and communities. It urged the Albuquerque Police Department and the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department to pursue the case with due diligence, asked the city and county to put FBI, police and sheriff's resources to work as quickly as possible, asked the media to turn from the women's characters to the crimes, and asked the state to fund treatment rather than incarceration for women who needed it.
Similar memorials were introduced in 2017 and in 2019. The later versions added that a February 2016 Albuquerque Journal story had reported that only one detective was still assigned to the deaths, and that the women were daughters, mothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and granddaughters. The 2019 memorial was proposed by State Senators Michael Padilla and Linda Lopez. Padilla said the women needed a voice and people who would believe them, and that they were no longer alive to tell their side.
Advocates took up the same theme. Street Safe New Mexico, a nonprofit founded in 2009 because of the case, began weekly outreach along Albuquerque's stretch of Historic Route 66 and helps identify women who go missing. Its director, Christine Barber, said at the tenth anniversary: "You have to know people, their names and what they look like to know people are missing." The University of New Mexico professor Dirk Gibson, who has written about serial killings, said time and the lack of evidence made the case exceptionally hard: "You can't have a colder cold case."
The families asked for a memorial on the mesa itself. In 2017 the city parks department unveiled plans, and relatives said at the unveiling that they wanted a place to sit and reflect on women who were daughters, sisters and mothers, "not things to be thrown into the dirt," Weekly Alibi reported. Ground was broken in June 2018. In 2019 the project still needed $300,000, and City Councilors Klarissa Pena and Ken Sanchez were pressing to finish it.
Women's Memorial Park was dedicated on June 27, 2020, with a blessing ceremony attended by the families. The park covers just under an acre of land donated by the developer that had owned the area, and cost about $1.5 million; Pena said the last $50,000 came in at the last minute. State Representative Patricia Roybal Caballero told the families that "wherever a life is born, and wherever a life passes, that ground is sacred," and that their loved ones' lives mattered. State Senator Bill O'Neill broke down as he spoke, and said the women would not be forgotten.
On the anniversary in February 2019, before the park was finished, curanderas held a ceremony at the site, sang, and spoke the names of the eleven, and of women still missing from the same years. Women served by Street Safe wrote notes on paper tags and tied them to the fencing; one, decorated with a stick-figure angel, said the victims were watching over the writer.
In 2025 the Albuquerque Police Department asked the legislature for a change that it linked directly to the West Mesa case. Under existing practice, DNA taken at an arrest went into CODIS, the national DNA database, only once charges were filed. House Bill 340 allowed the DNA of a person arrested for a felony who died before being charged to be entered, along with that of some offenders who died in prison or were released before July 1, 1997. Commander Kyle Hartsock said the aim was answers for families, not necessarily new charges. One of the West Mesa persons of interest died before any charge, and his DNA could not be processed under the old rules, KOB 4 reported.
The House passed the bill unanimously in March 2025. The Senate passed it 35 to 6 on March 20, and the governor signed it on April 7, 2025, as Chapter 42 of that year's laws. The lead sponsor, Representative Yanira Gurrola of Albuquerque's West Side, said that "sixteen years ago, our communities were shaken by the discovery of the West Mesa murders." One victim's mother, who asked KOB 4 not to name her, said she supported the bill if it helped, though she believed the person responsible was already dead.
In 2024 a feature film based on the case, "Boneyard," was announced for release. Julie Nieto's mother said the families had learned of it from one another, had been given no warning, and felt its makers had gone behind their backs and got things wrong. The Albuquerque Police Department said the filmmakers had never contacted it, and that relatives were worried about how the film would portray the women.
In February 2026, seventeen years after the remains were found, Albuquerque City Council President Klarissa Pena marked the anniversary. "Seventeen years is an agonizingly long time for families to wait for answers," she said, and asked anyone with information, however small, to come forward. The killings remain unsolved, the case remains open, and no one has been charged.
August 2003: Syllannia Edwards, 15, leaves a group home in Lawton, Oklahoma, and is reported missing as an endangered runaway.
2003: Monica Candelaria is reported missing; Victoria Chavez is last seen (reported missing in 2004).
Spring 2004: Jamie Barela, 15, and her cousin Evelyn Salazar, 27, go missing together after leaving a family gathering.
2004: Virginia Cloven, Cinnamon Elks, Doreen Marquez, Julie Nieto and Veronica Romero go missing.
September 2004: Michelle Valdez, 22, who is pregnant, goes missing.
2005: Detective Ida Lopez, in Missing Persons, notices a pattern of women reported missing and begins a list.
2009: The remains of eleven women and girls and an unborn child are found on Albuquerque's West Mesa; a task force is formed with FBI support.
2009: Victoria Chavez is the first identified, followed by Michelle Valdez, Cinnamon Elks and Julie Nieto; a memorial honoring the women is introduced in the New Mexico Senate.
April 2009: A candlelight vigil is held for the women; families urge a wider search.
November 13, 2009: Syllannia Edwards is identified.
November 17, 2009: Virginia Cloven and Evelyn Salazar are identified.
January 26, 2010: Jamie Barela, the last of the eleven, is identified; her funeral is held on March 4, 2010.
August 2010: Police and the FBI serve search warrants on a man's properties in Missouri; police say he has not been named a suspect.
Late 2010: Police release photographs of seven women who might be linked to the case; two are later found alive and one had died of natural causes.
2013: The FBI carries out a second crime analysis.
February 2016: The Albuquerque Journal reports that one detective remains assigned to the case.
2017: Plans for a memorial park are unveiled; a second Senate memorial is introduced.
June 2018: Ground is broken for the memorial park.
July 2018: Bones found during park construction on the West Mesa are found to be centuries old and unrelated.
February 2019: Tenth anniversary ceremony at the site; a third Senate memorial is introduced.
June 27, 2020: Women's Memorial Park is dedicated.
2021: A search of a possible burial site, based on a tip, finds nothing.
February 2022: At the thirteenth anniversary, police report more than 1,184 tips and about 200 interviews.
August 2, 2022: The department's podcast episode "The Missings" seeks information on eight women still missing from 2003 to 2006.
February 2, 2024: Fifteenth anniversary; more than 1,400 tips and seven additional land searches.
May 2024: Families object to the announced film "Boneyard."
February 2025: Sixteenth anniversary; nearly 1,500 tips.
April 7, 2025: House Bill 340, allowing DNA of some people who died before being charged to be entered in CODIS, is signed into law.
February 2, 2026: Seventeenth anniversary; the case remains unsolved and no one has been charged.