The Dateline episode “Somebody’s Daughter” shines the light on Albuquerque Detective Ida Lopez. In 2005, she was handed two missing persons files including missing 25-year-old Michelle Valdez, who worked as a prostitute on the streets of New Mexico’s largest city. Lopez’s investigation found that close to two dozen women with similar profiles were missing. According to Dateline, “because of what they did and how they lived” their stories “might not have been told.”
In 2009, the bodies of 11 women were found in multiple shallow graves on the West Mesa of Albuquerque but the cases remain unsolved.
Dirk Gibson, a communications and journalism professor at the University of New Mexico (Det. Lopez’s alma mater) who has written several books on serial killings, said: “You can’t have a colder cold case,” Gibson said. “In this case, there was almost nothing but bones.”
If you have information about the West Mesa murders, please contact APD at 1-877-765-8273 or (505) 768-2450.
Dateline airs Saturdays at 9 pm on NBC.
