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 had 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 circing the block, 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.
looking at everybody. by the end of that year, ida s list had grown to more than a dozen women with. ida knew the odds of finding any of the missing women alive were not good. but that s not what she told the families when they called in looking to hear something encouraging. i would tell them every single day, we re one day closer to finding your daughter. yes, i pray that they re okay and hopefully living in a commune in some mountainous town or in a rehab center or a jail or with friends that they re actually doing okay. did you believe any of that? i held on to the hope and possibility. reality, however, demanded that the detective do more than just hope for a happy ending. so, with the tact of a parish priest, ida lopez began making the rounds. michelle asking family members such as dan valdez for dental records and dna swabs.
something that surprised even veteran crime scene investigators. in the grave of jane doe number 8, investigators found a tiny second set of bones. it was a fetus. jane doe number 8 was four months pregnant at the time of her ath. they would say, we found a skull. it had a lot of hair and she was pregnant. michelle valdez, after years of having only her rap sheet and her father s bittersweet memories to go on, ida lopez was now sure she knew where michelle valdez 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 8 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
i thought she was alive and well and doing good but just didn t want to have any contact with the family. maybe i did something wrong. maybe it was me not letting her come back to the house. maybe it was camille saying no or whatever. but in 2006, more than a year family friend of ours that i grew up with. 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 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.
thing you said to her? no. but it might not have been a nice thing? no. but as erratic michelle had become in recent years, she had always managed to show up for the moments that mattered most to her daughter angelica. that changed when michelle failed to show up for angelica s seventh birthday party. that day it felt a 15-year-old camille to fill in for michelle and act as mom. that christmas angelica opened her presents alone with no sign of her mother michelle. i thought you maybe she would turn up a few days later, a few weeks or she d ul call us. it was breaking angelica s heart that day when she wasn t there. 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