Noted TV journalist revisits the West Mesa murders
Host hopes to bring attention to case that has gone cold
María Elena Salinas has built a career on storytelling and finding the truth.
Her latest endeavor with Investigation Discovery — “The Real Story with María Elena Salinas” — brought the acclaimed journalist to the Duke City to revisit one of the grimmest cases in the state’s history.
It’s one that remains unsolved. In 2009, a woman walking her dog stumbled across a human bone — the first of many in what would become one of the largest crime scenes in American history.
Police worked around the clock frantically to identify the human remains and catch a serial killer.
It took investigators a year to identify the 11 women who were unearthed.
Public outcry demanded police action.
Nearly a decade later, the case is getting colder as both the police and the families struggle to find the truth.
The episode revisits the tragic events in the West Mesa murders. It will air at 8 p.m. Monday on Investigation Discovery.
“This is probably the only one that hasn’t been resolved out of the 10 stories,” Salinas said of her series. “Several things drew me to this. There have been so many people who have worked hours, days, years, and they can’t come up with anyone. The second part
is that there is a certain group of women that seem to be disposable. These were minorities and women on the fringes.”
While Salinas worked on the series, she teamed up with Albuquerque Journal staffers Joline Gutierrez-Krueger, Maggie Shepard, Nicole Perez and Robert Browman.
“(The Journal) were one of the few media outlets that took interest in it,” she said. “The staff
told the stories of the women. As we learned their identities, we could see who they were.”
Over the course of her career, Salinas has covered plenty of tragedy.
But the West Mesa murders haunted her, not only as a journalist, but as the mother of two young women.
“It concerned me how parents aren’t in touch with their children,” she said. “That’s one thing I learned from it. Sometimes, parents don’t pay attention. If we paid attention more, many of these types of crimes could be prevented.”
Another aspect of the case also stumped Salinas.
In her reporting, she got information from sources about a “corrupt officer,” who may have been involved.
“No one could get to the story of the alleged police officer,” she said. “They wrote it off. It seems like it was someone who was pretending to be a police officer. There were a lot of hints of who it could possibly be.”
Salinas conducted many of the interviews in Miami because of her hosting job with Univision. She said her producers spent a few months in Albuquerque.
“With these ‘true crime’ types of shows, fortunately, there are a lot of stories to cover,” she said. “Unfortunately, to tell these stories, crimes have to happen. That’s the worst part. I hope to continue doing these stories, because they are stories that need to be told.”