Sixteen years after 11 women and an unborn child were discovered buried on Albuquerque’s West Mesa, the person responsible — often referred to as the “West Mesa Bone Collector” — has still not been identified. For the families left behind, the search for answers has never stopped.
The case began on February 2, 2009, when Christine Ross was walking with her dog, Ruca, along a dusty trail near 118th Street SW. She noticed a bone sticking out of the ground and texted a photo to her sister, a registered nurse. The reply was immediate: it looked like a human femur.
That moment set off an excavation that would become the largest homicide investigation in the Albuquerque Police Department’s history…