belonged to one of them. but the police who arrived at the scene shortly after nightfall soon determined that this was no ancient artifact. this bone belonged to someone who had died in the not-too-distant past. february 2nd is when one of our violent crimes detectives said, oh, they found a bone on the mesa. i ll let you know. tonight they say the search is far from over. i saw it on tv, on february 2nd when christine ross and her dog ruka was report on the local station as finding a femur bone. i was on a ski trip, and when i came home i had seen it on the news. and i told my boyfriend, i said, you know, what if that s michelle?
reporter: chilling, if true. but but in the light-spangled darkness of albuquerque s war zone, where women sell themselves for as little as $20 a trick, truth and rumor are interchangeable commodities. still, in her quieter moments, ida allowed herself to fear the worst. i ve just always felt that they were going to be together. in death as in life? yeah. i just you know, there was nothing that led me factual to believe that. i just always felt that if you find one you re going to find them all. unfortunately, ida s theory would soon be put to the test. one of our violent crimes detectives said oh, they found a bone. simparica is what kills tick and fleas, like us. kills? kills! studies show at the end of the month, it kills more ticks in less time than frontline plus and nexgard. guess we should mosey on.
feet. it was an eye opener that taught everyone from seasoned criminal investigator to backhoe operator to tread lightly. and from the time that bone came out of the hole just about every single remaining victim came out intact. reporter: they were using the best technology the department could bring to bear such as lasers and ground-penetrating radar. but the work was slow. and the commander would soon feel as if the eyes of the nation were watching every move he made. i m wondering how many more am i going to find and how many more names am i going to go home with tonight? parents who lost a child find a cause. we all had a common denominator. our daughters.
you know, it seems like they knew or something. reporter: ida didn t completely disbelieve what her girls were telling her. but the mesa, a vast expanse of desert west of town where people frequently dump things they no longer have any use for, was simply too big an area to launch a search based on just a rumor. and so this case was going nowhere. until late in the afternoon on february 2nd, 2009. sit. reporter: when christine ross decided to take her dog ruca for a walk. okay. reporter: they strolled out of her new subdivision, one of many that had recently sprouted up in the desert west of albuquerque, and then over to an abandon construction site, where christine let ruca off the leash to run. she ran up ahead of me, and she was messing with something on the ground. and then she left it. we came upon it, and it appeared to be a bone.
2nd, when christina ross and her dog ruca was reported on the local station as finding a femur bone. i was on a ski trip. and when i came home, i had seen it on the news, and i told my boyfriend. i said, you know, what if that s michelle? when you heard it, what did you think? hoping again. the old parental parental feeling is hoping that it wasn t. reporter: over the next few days investigators would find more bones scattered over a 30-yard swath of that abandoned construction site. one mystery was ending. another was just beginning.