by the fall of 2004, dan valdez s calendar was beginning to fill with xs. each x marking another day without word from his oldest daughter, michelle. when was the last time you saw her? it was in september of 2004. how did she look? thin. wired out. strung out maybe. had spots on her face. did you see her then. honestly i don t remember the last time i seen her. i don t remember the last words we spoke. you don t remember? no. but it might not have been a nice thing? no. as erratic as michelle had come, she d somehow always shown up for the moments that mattered most to her daughter. that failed when she failed to show up for angelica s seventh
they would say we found a skull. it had a lot of hair. she s pregnant. this is michelle valdez. but they hadn t made an i.d. yet. michelle valdez, after years of having only her rap sheet and her father s bitter sweet memories to go on, ida lopez was sure she knew where michelle val dez was. did you know michelle was pregnant when she disappeared? i did. a few days later lab work confirmed ida s hunch. jane doe number eight was michelle valdez. i had to tell dan. the hardest part of this whole thing is having to go to somebody s house and say we found her. and she s not alive. i see her pull up out front and i go out and stand on the sidewalk. she gets out of her car and comes up to me and ida says dan, she says i have some bad news for you.
count stayed at 11 sets of adult remains and one fetus. but for ida lopez the discovery and identification of seven women from her list meant that years of careful detective work were finally paying off. she s very passionate about her job, and she realized that these women all had families. they ve got parents and grandparents, and some of them actually had children of their own. and she wanted to be able to provide them with some answers. reporter: in addition to victoria chavez and michelle valdez, the others from ida s list were cinnamon elks, julie nieto, veronica romero, monica candelaria, and doreen marquez. a lot of people said they were drug addicts and prostitutes. well, if they were, so be it. i didn t choose their lifestyle. but you know what? the first thing is they were human beings to begin with. reporter: commander feist, who tried to keep the local press at arm s length during the excavation, finally allowed them
birth to a baby girl she named angelica. so you were being a father all over again. a father all over again. i was only eight years old and becoming an aunt. it was tough. but once, you know, we had that bond, me and angelica, it was nice. i enjoyed it. at 14 most kids rightfully think their best years are ahead of them. high school. college. career. that was not the track michelle valdez was on. though dan continued to tape the usual family functions, michelle s little girl angelica was the center of attention. on the periphery in offhand moments, dan s camera also caught something else. the look and the unspoken despair that signaled the death of a young girl s dreams. she struggled to hold it all together, but michelle
dan, she was i.d. and it was her and she was pregnant and the baby. it was just very difficult. i looked at her in disbelief. 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. i said just the information you gave me was plenty. 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