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Thread: West Mesa Serial Killer

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    West Mesa Serial Killer




    May 5, 2014

    By Jeff Proctor and Kim Holland

    ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – There’s a dusty patch of desert mesa off 118th Street, just north of Dennis Chavez Boulevard, that still bears the deep scar of the most horrific crime in this city’s history.

    Running from west to east, the work of the bulldozers and backhoes is still plain to see. At the bottom of the gouge: 11 shallow graves.

    Over the course of nearly a year, from February 2009 through January 2010, Albuquerque learned the women’s names — and that police believed they’d died at the hands of a serial killer whose identity remains shrouded in mystery.

    Some investigators believe they know who did it, although police refuse to say publicly. KRQE News 13 has learned the names of two prominent suspects in the West Mesa Murders case and is reporting for the first time details about both men — and some of the tactics detectives have used through the years to solve the riddle — as the investigation limps to the end of its fifth year.

    One of the men is dead; the other is in jail facing a slew of violent, unrelated rape charges.

    The Albuquerque Police Department concedes that tips in the case have somewhat dried up through the years.

    But Cmdr. Anthony Montano, who oversees APD’s violent crimes division and is among the new sets of eyes brought in recently to take a fresh look at the West Mesa case, insists that it’s still a “very active investigation.”

    Montano is hopeful.

    “I’m confident we’re going to solve this,” he said in an interview with KRQE.

    Montano answered “no” when asked whether he had a gut feeling about who the killer was. He won’t say whether APD believes it’s any closer to solving the case than it was at the height of the investigation in mid-to-late 2009. At that point, detectives had narrowed the suspect list to five or fewer.

    The commander won’t discuss suspects, other than to say the department now has more than a dozen on its list. He said he isn’t familiar with many aspects of the investigation that predate his time on the task force assigned to get to the bottom of the women’s deaths.

    KRQE’s findings are based on information provided by sources familiar with the investigation over the course of nearly five years, interviews with family members and others connected to the case, police documents and court records.

    Some of the victims’ family members who spoke with KRQE this month share Montano’s optimism about solving the case. Most don’t. All of them say police haven’t done enough in recent years to push the investigation over the finish line.

    And some haven’t been to the site in years.

    Today, there are no more flowers leaning against the cinder block wall that surrounds the most infamous 92 acres in the city, which have been described as the largest crime scene in American history.

    There are no more signs reading “We miss you, Michelle,” or “Veronica, we will never forget.” There are no more cherished pictures of the victims in better times, before the horrors of drug addiction drove them to desperate lives of prostitution on East Central Avenue — and into the arms of their killer.

    The burial sites have been abandoned.

    Some wonder whether the case has, too.

    “It’s been really kind of, kind of disappointing that it hasn’t been kept up more,” Dan Valdez, whose pregnant daughter, Michelle Valdez, was among the victims, said of the investigation.

    Joseph Raymond Blea caught the attention of detectives investigating the West Mesa murders not long after another team from APD began meticulously unearthing remains at 118th and Dennis Chavez
    SW in February 2009. Just 11 days after the digging began, police arrested Blea on charges that he violently kidnapped his girlfriend, beat her and threatened to rape her.



    He has been in jail ever since, awaiting trial on several pending cases, all of which involve violence against women. In October, Blea was moved to the Santa Fe County Detention Center as part of Bernalillo County’s effort to reduce jail crowding here.

    After Blea was locked up, a profile began to develop of a man who had a history of violent sexual fantasies dating back to his early teen years, KRQE has learned. Court records in several cases allege that he has acted on those fantasies many times. Evidence from other cases point to the same thing.

    Blea’s DNA, taken after his arrest, matched DNA discovered on the pants of a young prostitute whose body had been dumped off East Central in the 1980s, KRQE has learned.

    Statute of limitations issues prevented a charge in that case, but detectives got a different kind of break from their counterparts at the dig site.

    The West Mesa victims were reported missing between late 2003 and mid-2005, and their bodies were buried naked. They had been strangled. Aside from bones, next to nothing remained in the makeshift graves by the time police uncovered them. That meant a decided lack of physical evidence to use in the investigation.

    The killer had been careful.

    A little piece of plastic may have been the only mistake.

    The excavation team found an identification tag from a tree that was purchased at an Albuquerque nursery in one of the graves. It took months of cross-referencing to put it all together, but detectives were able to trace the tag back to a nursery where Blea, who had worked as a gardener and landscaper, was a frequent customer, KRQE has learned.

    It was among the things that vaulted Blea to the forefront of the suspect list, where, some investigators say, he remains today.

    Montano refused to comment on Blea, now 56. He said there is no primary suspect.

    “We have some good suspects,” he said. “We don’t want to narrow it down to just one person and give one person particular attention because that will take the attention from maybe a couple other viable suspects.”

    Blea’s name has never been publicly reported as a suspect in the West Mesa case.

    Through his attorney, Blea denied involvement in the killings.

    Court documents point to West Mesa investigators having a keen interest in Blea over the course of several years. Lists of APD personnel associated with several pending cases against Blea include detectives who have dedicated countless hours to the West Mesa investigation.

    A criminal complaint filed against Blea in 2010 case alleging he raped and mentally tortured a young relative says that “as part of a separate investigation, Mr. Joseph Raymond Blea’s family members and associates were interviewed.”

    KRQE has learned that Blea talked to law enforcement at least twice about the West Mesa killings. It’s unclear what he told police. His lawyer declined to comment.

    On March 15, 2013, a Bernalillo County grand jury returned an indictment against Blea, charging him with nine counts of first-degree criminal sexual penetration and four counts of kidnapping with great bodily harm. At the time, Blea already had been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest in 2009. All of the charges are pending and, if Blea is convicted, he could be sentenced to 234 years in prison.

    A week later, on March 22, then-Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz held a news conference in the APD conference room. Behind Schultz was a poster board with a map; the words “McKinley Middle School Rapist;” images of a grey sweatshirt, a serrated knife and a black ski mask; and Joseph Raymond Blea’s jail booking photo.

    Schultz told reporters his detectives had linked Blea to the rapes of a handful of McKinley Middle School students and other young women in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

    He did not mention the West Mesa case.

    http://krqe.com/2014/01/31/does-apd-...-mesa-murders/
    Last edited by Helen; 05-10-2014 at 08:18 PM.
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