Second body discovered in southern Santa Fe County

First body found stuffed in trash container on side of remote rural road

SANTA FE - The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office says it has now found two bodies in southern Santa Fe County, in an investigation that apparently started after a rancher in Stanley discovered a dead woman stuffed into a garbage container along the road near his home on Monday.

The sheriff’s office is not releasing details, including where the remains were found, but calls the deaths “suspicious” and says the bodies have been sent to the state Office of the Medical Investigator.

Rancher Fidel Montoya told the Journal in a telephone interview that he went to pick up his mail late Monday morning and decided to inspect a yellow garbage container that had been sitting about 30 feet from Montoya Road, off N.M. 41, near a fence line for a week to 10 days.

He figured it was full of leaves or something but when he tried to move the container, “it wouldn’t budge,” he said.

So he removed a yellow strap stretched over the lid and tipped the container over to have a look inside. He found weeds, rags and paint and a black plastic bag sealed with something in it. “I was thinking it was a dog or a pig,” he said.

Montoya reached inside the bag and felt what he thought was toes and fingers. “I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s a body,” he recalled.

He opened the bag and discovered “a lady huddled up inside. She had been dumped in head first,” he said. He didn’t notice any blood, but it appeared to him it was the body of a young woman and she was naked.

Montoya then ran to a neighbor’s house and called 911. He said he later was questioned by the FBI.

Montoya had no first-hand knowledge about the second body that was found Tuesday. Neighbors told him the body was found about two miles away from where he found the dead woman in a more remote area along Anaya Road, possibly in a “trash box.”

“This is an open, ongoing investigation,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release Wednesday. “No other information is available at this time.”

Montoya said his discovery shook him up. “That was awful hard on me. It bothers a person to find a body in a bag,” he said, adding that he felt for the victims’ families.