Transcripts for MSNBC Dateline 20210510 06:45:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
and the baby. but knew it was reality. i just could feel all the strength in my body just kind of just drain all of a sudden. and i kind of was wobbling a little bit, and ida consoled me a little bit and said it s okay, you know, it s okay. and then she says is there anything that we can do? do you need anything? i said no. 12-year-old daughter, angelica. and i said, angelica. i said, detective lopez just told us that your mother has been positively i.d. d as one of the west mesa women victims one of the west mesa women. and that s when angelica looked at me and started crying. she said, no, don t tell me that. you re lying to me. don t lie to me. for ida lopez there was the fear that her nightmare prediction was coming true. i just always felt that if you find one you re going to find them all. reporter: and for albuquerque s homicide detectives there was the most pressing question of all. who was responsible for turning the west mesa into an unmarked cemetery? protectio
no. no. never heard of her before. did you ask her where she heard that? yeah. her aunt ran the streets, knew michelle, knew certain people, and they had heard it from her aunt. reporter: dan immediately called detective ida lopez with the tip. but she was unable to find the aunt or to pin down the source of the rumor. it was all just unverifiable street talk, the kind ida lopez had heard before. except for one tantalizing tidbit. cinnamon was a name on ida s list. cinnamon elks, missing since august of 2004. but even if those rumors were true and human remains were cooling in the desert night on albuquerque s west mesa, the detective knew, it would take a miracle to find them. was a serial killer stalking the women working the war zone? i just always felt that they were going to be together. in death as in life? if you find one, you re going to find them all. licking, scratching, scooting, and rubbing. may be signs of allergic itch, a medical condition that may require f
when they looked at old pictures of the mesa. in this 2002 image of the area where the bones were discovered there s nothing unusual. just desert and sage brush with a dry stream bed running through it. but two years later, in 2004, when most of the women on detective ida lopez s list were disappearing, the images show tire tracks leading from this road to a few bare spots in the vegetation. spots that weren t there before. this photo, taken the following year, shows even more bare spots. clustered within 20 yards of each other. it s kind of eerie looking at those satellite photos. that really sends a chill up and down your spine. reporter: the conclusion was inescapable. albuquerque police were looking at the evolving work of a serial killer.
heart that day when she wasn t there. reporter: in february, five months after michelle was last seen, dan went down to the albuquerque police station and formally reported his daughter missing. detective ida lopez, who would later make it her mission to find michelle and the other missing women, was on medical leave at the time. so in ida s absence the valdez family was at the mercy of the police department s bureaucracy. what d the police tell you? she didn t want to be found. and i can understand it. a.p. doesn t just deal with missing. they deal with all kinds. for a long time the news would be full of stories about girls who were missing and everybody s looking for them.