died. i started looking into the missing and exploited children s website and was able to search through as many african-american females that matched the possible stature, where they might have been when they went missing. reporter: from a pool of hundreds wendy first narrowed the field to 30, then to 10, and then to 1. one girl whose face, age, and biography seemed to match what she saw in the sketch. her name was syllania edwards. according to the website, she d been a 13-year-old runaway from a group home in lawton, oklahoma in 2003. and that s what we re trying to figure out. possibly the killer? don t know. i have no idea how she got here. reporter: so detectives started checking with police departments and jails throughout the southwest on the hunch that syllania, as young as she was, might have been entangled in a
but that only generated more questions, like, when did the oklahoma teenager get to new mexico, and, who brought her? don t know that s what we re trying to figure out. possibly the killer? don t know. have no idea how she got here. so detectives started checking with police departments and jails throughout the southwest on the hunch that syllania, as young as she was, might have been entangled in a prostitution circuit that shuttles women from city to city. what we see very often is women involved in prostitution working what s called the circuit so they ll move from phoenix to albuquerque and los angeles to vegas and maybe not return on that circuit for years. it was in denver, another city on the circuit, that detective todd babcock hit pay dirt. at one point she was arrested in the denver area for prostitution, going by a different name at the time, had
time, to her ending up out here, possibly two prior times. nine months after the discovery of the first bone on the west mesa, the detectives were back to square one. the odds were good that syllania, like the others, had simply strolled out into the war zone and climbed into the wrong car. but her presence in the west mesa boneyard raised a troubling prospect. are there other girls from out of state in the same with are we going to find another repeat? we don t know. now investigators fear the serial killer they were hunting may have buried other bodies elsewhere in the vast desert west of town. it s desert. there could be very realistically a lot of bodies. this in a way suggests that maybe there are women out there who aren t on any list. that s a possibility. could be others. there could be others.
paydirt. at one point syllania had been arrested up in the denver area for prostitution, going by a different name at the time. had been booked. they were able to get me a booking photograph of what syllania looked like around the time that she died, we believe. reporter: syllania edwards was released from that denver-area jail in july 2004, the same year almost all the other west mesa women had gone missing. the next time anyone heard anything about syllania, she was here in this makeshift grave site outside albuquerque, sharing it with ten other women she never knew in life but will be forever linked with in death. the biggest thing that makes syllania different is she s not a local girl. all of her other victims were local. they had ties to albuquerque. she was last seen in denver. last known police positive contact was in denver.
reporter: dental records from oklahoma confirmed that jane doe number 7 was, in fact, syllania edwards. one answer found. but that only generated more questions, like when did the oklahoma teenager get to new mexico and who brought her? don t know. and that s what we re trying to figure out. possibly the killer? don t know. i have no idea how she got here. reporter: so detectives started checking with police departments and jails throughout the southwest on the hunch that syllania, as young as she was, might have been entangled in a prostitution circuit that shuttles women from city to city. what we see very often is the women involved in prostitution work in what s called the circuit. so they ll move from albuquerque to phoenix to las vegas to los angeles and maybe not return on that circuit for several years. reporter: it was in denver, another city on the circuit, that detective todd babcock hit