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. i said, just the information you gave me was plenty. reporter: of course there was more dan needed to do that evening. he would have to tell michelle s 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. it s i said, honey, i m not. i m telling you the truth. reporter: it was a scene that no doubt had played out earlier at the family home of victoria chavez. but for the families of the
boys. oh, yeah. davy. reporter: this michelle according to her sister camille was an all-american girl with a future as bright as the new mexico sun. i looked up to her for many things. you know, i was always the tag-along with her and her friends. and she didn t mind? no. not at all. not at all. reporter: then came the teen years. when life started coming at michelle valdez fast and furious. by then dan and michelle s mother were divorced, and dan was raising michelle and camille alone while working days at the juvenile detention center. and nights and weekends playing steel guitar with his country band, cimarron. dan tried to keep a watchful eye on his girls and even took them to work with him at the juvenile detention center to show them where careless mistakes can lead.
numerous times. but you know, you have to have faith in your law enforcement. if you don t have faith in your law enforcement to treat everybody equal, then what do you have? reporter: what you have in dan valdez s case is a search you do yourself. as spring turned to summer that year, dan, his ex-wife, and his daughters plastered flyers with michelle s picture all over central avenue asking anyone who d seen her to call the albuquerque police department. at night dan drove through the war zone. sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. looking for michelle. it was real hard because you know, i d be circling the block or whatever, see somebody that may appear to be the size of michelle, a small person, and go around the block two or three times and me wondering who they were as well as them wondering who i was. it had to be brutally difficult to think of michelle living that kind of life. definitely. definitely. it was not the way that her mother and i raised her. reporter
have her around. we were always bumping heads. we weren t as close. because of the drugs. she d come over and steal my things or, you know, i would see how upset it would make my dad. so i would tell her, you know, mean things. reporter: before long michelle valdez stopped showing up in her father s videos. sometimes because she avoided the camera. other times because she simply didn t show up. she knew that there was events at the house because she d call and ask if she could borrow $25, she was hungry or whatever. she was at you know, at a hurting spot. so i gave her the money. even though you knew even though i knew that it could be going for drugs. it was my gateway to making contact with her and seeing her in person. reporter: dan may have had the patience of job. but by 2004 camille, the tag-along little sister, had had enough. when michelle asked dan if she could move back home for a while, camille put her foot down. he was going to let her stay with us. and i
maybe it was camille saying no or whatever. reporter: but dan s confidence that michelle would turn up alive was suddenly shaken one night when the phone rang at the valdez home. the caller on the other end of the line had heard something shocking. we had gotten a call from a family friend of ours that i grew up with, and you know, i pick up the phone and she s like, oh, my gosh, i m sorry about your sister. and i said, you know, what are you talking about? she said, michelle. michelle s michelle and cinnamon were stabbed and buried on the west mesa. did you know who cinnamon was? 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