you re keeping that quiet because you don t want somebody to confess to this who didn t do it. that s correct. that s why we re staying with homicidal violence. okay. reporter: homicidal violence. there was no shortage of names on the police list of potential suspects who were capable of that. but one name stood out. a name and face detective babcock knew quite well from an encounter in 1999, when babcock was working the vice unit in albuquerque. the vice unit was watching a particular prostitute. see a vehicle pick this girl up.
freedom or he thought nobody s going to come out here? probably because he felt safe out here. reporter: for detectives like todd babcock it all seemed to add up. except for one thing. the crime lab had determined that one of the unidentified
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 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 d
when he was active here and, most importantly, when he quit. there could be somebody up there right now. yeah. and just depending on where they re at, you wouldn t even see them up there. reporter: detective todd babcock and sergeant lou heckroft drew the job of trying to track downtown killer. all they knew was that he d killed at least 11 women and that the 2005 housing boom that brought suburban sprawl to the west mesa probably forced him to abandon this burial ground and find another one where there would be no neighbors around to watch him work. you re up half a mile to 3/4 of a mile from any populated area back in the time frame. reporter: a time frame, 2003 to early 2005, and 11 sets of bones. not a lot to go on. but the detectives knew simply finding the bones in the first place had been an incredibly lucky break. all the stars aligned.
equally short temper and a taste for prostitutes. babcock says he saw marks on the woman s throat and that she told him montoya looked like he was enjoying it. did you believe her story? yes. so lorenzo was arrested for charges beyond just patronizing a prostitute. yes, he was. reporter: that felony assault charge against lorenzo montoya went nowhere because the victim later refused to testify. but it was what had happened next that really focused the detectives attention. in 2006, years after being caught in the act of choking one prostitute, lorenzo montoya was caught in the company of a dead one. on the surface seems like a pretty good suspect. yeah. but we don t know if it s him or not. reporter: according to police, montoya lured the woman to his home near the west mesa burial ground. he killed her, wrapped her body