Detectives start digging
1,000-year-old artifacts previously found on site
An empty lot in the Anderson Heights subdivision in far southwest Albuquerque has been the site of a lot of digging over the years.
On Thursday, detectives were methodically sifting dirt there after a construction crew building a park found human remains buried under about a foot of earth Tuesday. Police have said they were looking into whether the discovery could be related to the unsolved West Mesa Murders case.
But a team of archaeologists had also been digging in the park just a few years earlier. They researched a 1,000-year-old food-storage pit, a campsite and pottery fragments found there in 2015.
Matt Schmader, an archaeologist on the dig, said it’s possible the remains found Tuesday are historical.
“When I heard those bones were there I went, ‘Man, I just can’t
believe we were so close.’ It was just the wrong part of the site,” he said.
The Office of the Medical Investigator has the final say. Investigators are analyzing the bones, but haven’t offered any details about age or gender or how long the bones may have been in the ground. A spokeswoman for OMI didn’t return a phone call Thursday.
Albuquerque Police Chief Mike Geier held a press conference after the remains were found Tuesday to talk about similarities with the West Mesa Murders. That investigation began in 2009 when the remains of 11 women who were reported missing in 2003 and 2004 were found buried less than a mile north of the Anderson Heights park.
The West Mesa victims were likely buried before there were any paved roads or developments in that area.
Investigators have said they believe the killer may have stopped using the field when development began on the subdivisions around the area. They have suspected there was a second burial site for a group of women who went missing a little later, in 2005 and 2006, and who have never been found.
But the subdivision where the remains were found Tuesday was already being prepared for construction during those years.
And Mayor Tim Keller said it’s possible the bones are older than those found in the West Mesa murders.
“We certainly understand and are very concerned that this might be one of the six to eight missing women from the original West Side group,” he said. “It is also possible that it’s not. It could be a separate incident, or could also be remains that are much, much older.”
Simon Drobik, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said the bones discovered this week were found without clothing.
That’s congruent with evidence in the West Mesa Murders case. The 11 West Mesa victims were buried naked.
Cenote Road SW, which marks the park’s southern boundary, will be blocked off while investigators sift through the dirt lot. That could take a while.
Workers with PNM spent the Fourth of July marking off power lines in the area. On Thursday, the dig began in earnest.
Drobik said one investigator is shoveling up dirt, while another sifts through each shovelful.
“We’re doing it shovel by shovel,” Drobik said.
Investigators have areas of interest marked off and will figure out how much digging they need to do based on what they find.
“It’s going to be very slow and methodical,” Drobik said. “There’s no end date.”