it s like a little dark evil city out here. reporter: desiree gonzalez says she used to hang out on these streets and says she knew several of the missing women and had also heard those same rumors. i came out here looking for my cousin, and i bumped into cinnamon, and she had told me that that the girls were getting their heads cut off and tooken to the mesa. and that was the last time i seen cinnamon. i got scared. 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
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
for spiritual solace and divine guidance. the fall of 2005 was one of those times. it was a time when a sinister force seemed to be snatching women off the streets of new mexico s largest city. and the devoutly religious detective knew she needed all 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 particular victim in mind. reporter: sticking up for victims comes naturally to ida lopez. it s the same instinct that drew her to police work years ago, when she was a kid, growing up in albuquerque. i was about 9 years old. actually, it was my grandfather raised me.ctdehiizedis s co enowas ait wde.lo he was about in his 80s. and i m in the porch area. and there s a foot chase. and the guy goes toward him, and he s tackled by police. i just thought that was the coolest thing i d ever seen.ce and so that curiosity. n.d then there was the service part, the helping people part of police work. reporter: after college ida
after months of digging for bones in the desert west of albuquerque, detectives desperately wanted to get on with the work of catching a killer. so far all the remains identified had been names on ida lopez s list of missing women. and all had worked as prostitutes on the mean streets of the city s war zone. for police that seemed like a good place to start their search for the killer. we re looking for people who ve had histories of showing
and it s true today. out in the war zone there s a new crop of ragged women on the streets, willing to sell themselves in return for a puff of smoke from a glass pipe. i want to talk to you. reporter: most of the new girls either never knew or barely remember the women whose places they ve taken. and whatever you tell us, it s no judgment at all. okay? reporter: but some do. and in spite of their example, they can t quit the life. did you notice when the girls were going missing? reporter: though police say they have a half dozen suspects on their radar at any given time, so far they haven t been able to eliminate or arrest any of them. it s a cold case. so you have to recreate and you have to kind of go back in the time machine, so to speak, to that era or that time in these people s lives. memories fade, and witnesses disappear, and some just don t