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1:05

Previously, in parts 1

1:07

and 2 of our series, Who

1:09

Killed Jennifer, we explored the initial

1:11

investigation into Jennifer Lynn Sherm's murder.

1:14

The witnesses, the suspects,

1:17

the rumors, the evidence, and

1:19

the unforgivable crimes committed against Jennifer

1:21

as a child. By

1:23

a former sheriff's captain. Circumstances

1:26

that paved the way for her to

1:28

begin living a high-risk lifestyle as a

1:30

young adult. I

1:32

feel for my mom. She went through

1:34

so much. More than what, like, most

1:37

people could fathom. And she survived

1:39

as long as she did. Whenever I'm feeling kind

1:41

of f***ed up, I think about her now. And

1:43

I'm like, yo, bro, like, you ain't, you ain't

1:45

been through s***. You, you don't really know struggle.

1:52

I just want to feel like I did

1:54

something and that all of this had some sort

1:57

of meaning to it. In

1:59

a case that... can unsolved for

2:01

nearly four decades. Police believe they'd

2:04

arrested Jennifer's killer, a

2:06

man named Jean Audrey Hill back

2:08

in 1985 after a woman named

2:11

Benita Godin claimed to have

2:13

witnessed the murder. But after

2:15

her statement fell apart police

2:17

found themselves back at square

2:20

one until a cold case

2:22

unit in 2000 dusted off

2:24

Jennifer's case file discovering two

2:26

tips that hadn't been followed.

2:30

Going me now as we take

2:32

a look into the cold case

2:34

of Jennifer Lynn Sherm, a 22

2:36

year old woman who was brutally

2:38

murdered leaving her 15 month

2:40

old son handy without a mother,

2:43

a son who 39 years

2:45

later is still looking for

2:47

answers. For

2:50

the longest time like I didn't

2:52

understand what exactly happened to

2:54

my mom all I knew is that

2:56

she was gone and she

2:59

was gone forever. There's always been a

3:01

part of me that's wondered like what exactly

3:03

happened. I don't feel like

3:05

I feel like a normal person would about

3:07

their mom because I didn't

3:09

know her. I literally don't

3:11

have one memory of my mom, not one.

3:24

The only thing Andy has to remind him

3:26

of his mother are just a

3:29

few photos. There's

3:31

actually two photos. The one

3:33

that's always kind of been like sacred to

3:35

my family. It's a picture

3:38

of me and her and my

3:40

dad and I'm just

3:42

a baby. She has

3:44

a huge smile. She looked happy.

3:48

I don't know just honestly speaking like it

3:50

could just be me like trying to compensate

3:52

for something but like every time

3:54

I look at that picture like I

3:56

feel loved. I feel

3:58

like that smile was was for me

4:01

she was happy. Learning

4:03

all this stuff I think made

4:06

us a type of connection that I never would

4:08

have had. Before

4:10

Jennifer was murdered in 1985, Danessa

4:13

Howard had been found murdered nine

4:15

months earlier, only a hundred

4:18

feet from where Jennifer's body would be

4:20

discovered. Then, just two

4:22

weeks before charges were officially

4:24

dropped against Gene Autry Hill,

4:26

there was another unsolved murder

4:29

along Central in January 1986.

4:32

When 23 year old Kathleen Bendle's

4:34

body was found, and just

4:37

like Jennifer, her cause of death

4:39

was blunt force trauma. Although

4:42

Kathleen had been living in Albuquerque

4:44

for just a few months, detectives

4:46

debated whether she'd been a sex

4:49

worker. After hearing reports, she'd

4:51

been spotted weeks before her murder in

4:53

the company of a known pimp. Again,

4:56

this is where Jennifer's

4:58

case files became important as

5:01

our head writer Ryan originally

5:03

discovered mention of a mysterious

5:05

white Cadillac again. In

5:18

the span of a few years, several

5:21

unsolved homicides of women

5:24

off the cruise start turning up and

5:26

you start seeing mention of this

5:28

white Cadillac. With Kathleen Bendle,

5:31

she had been seen talking with a

5:33

man in a white Cadillac several times

5:35

before her murder. When

5:37

we looked into Jennifer's case file, one

5:39

of the things that really stuck out

5:41

was the eyewitness statement given by Antonio

5:43

Valdez. That car is the

5:45

exact description that Antonio claimed that Jennifer

5:47

got into on the night she was

5:50

murdered. So after Kathleen's

5:52

murder, over the next two

5:54

years there were another four unsolved murders

5:56

that took place along the cruise and

5:59

all the victims kind of ran in the

6:01

same circles. They were either sex workers or adjacent

6:04

to them in the same subculture, the

6:06

same milieu. Among

6:08

these cases, there didn't seem to

6:10

be a consistent MO, but certainly

6:12

enough similarities to grab the attention

6:14

of Mike Gallagher, the journalist Shane

6:17

Waters interviewed for us in episode

6:19

2. As

6:21

I was looking over the articles,

6:23

I had found Mike's expose

6:25

and I saw in the early 90s, Mike

6:28

had compiled a list of

6:30

seven unsolved homicides and

6:33

he featured all of these in his

6:35

Death on the Cruise article. In

6:38

his opinion, just as in mine, they all

6:40

seemed to be linked. They happened

6:42

between the years of 1984 and 1988. These

6:46

people were Danessa Howard, Jennifer

6:48

Sherm, Kathleen Bindel, Ferms

6:51

Strickland, Tyra Perry,

6:53

Alexis Gural, and

6:55

Lisa Ann Fortin. One

6:57

of the things that he discovered was that

6:59

all of these victims seemed to

7:02

be linked to the subculture that

7:04

was located on Albuquerque's East Central

7:06

Avenue. Something that all

7:08

of these victims shared was that

7:11

they not only were extremely vulnerable,

7:13

they were also very easy for

7:15

the press, the public, and also

7:18

sometimes the police to ignore. According

7:21

to Mike's expose, all of the

7:23

victims were killed by hand,

7:26

they were beaten, strangled, they

7:28

were stabbed, or suffocated. In

7:31

each case, the killer was also extremely

7:33

careful not to leave behind any physical

7:35

evidence. Not even a single

7:37

fingerprint was left behind, except

7:40

for Jennifer's case where DNA

7:42

was left. Because

7:44

of all these similarities, Mike

7:46

wondered if all of

7:48

these murders were committed by the same

7:51

people or group, and that's

7:53

also what I wondered as well. Although

7:56

it was possible the murders

7:58

were completely unrelated, that

8:00

the victim's only connection had

8:02

been their proximity to Central

8:04

Avenue's high-risk lifestyle. Still, when

8:06

it comes to crime, when

8:08

you start noticing the pattern,

8:11

any pattern, coincidences begin

8:14

looking like connections, correlation

8:16

begins looking like causation,

8:19

and it becomes awfully difficult to

8:21

shake the idea that something bigger

8:23

might be going on. While

8:26

speaking to Mike, Shane asked

8:28

him two important questions. The

8:31

first was, who did he

8:34

think was responsible for Jennifer's murder?

8:36

He said he thought that it was

8:39

likely Pimps from this Memphis group who

8:41

was trying to recruit her to work

8:43

for them. Now, whether or not it was one

8:46

of these men that Benita Gaudin talked

8:48

about, we're not sure.

8:50

And then I asked him if he thought

8:53

that all of these victims, all seven of them,

8:55

if they were all killed by the

8:57

same person and if they were all

8:59

killed for the same reason. And

9:02

he said that he thought that they

9:04

were all murdered for different reasons every

9:07

time. And it always derived

9:09

from this drug culture that

9:11

was alive at that time.

9:14

The best evidence to support Mike's

9:17

theory is the fact that the

9:19

murders seem to suddenly stop at

9:21

the end of 1988, a time

9:23

period coinciding with Albuquerque police ramping

9:26

up their efforts to combat violence,

9:28

drugs and vice on the cruise,

9:31

which by that point had reached

9:33

epidemic levels. One of

9:35

the ways police began cracking down

9:38

was by having narcotics agents specifically

9:40

targeting members of the Memphis group

9:42

and locking them up. The

9:45

logic behind Mike's theory was solid. These

9:47

big members of the Memphis group go

9:49

to jail and suddenly this

9:52

string of seemingly linked unsolved murders

9:54

comes to an end. And

9:56

it appears that the police and homicide

9:59

investigators in Alberta, Kirk must

10:01

have come to the same conclusion because

10:04

after the failed case against the Memphis

10:06

group pimp, Gene Hill, it didn't appear

10:08

that they ever reexamined Jennifer's case in

10:10

any meaningful way, at least for a

10:13

while. This

10:15

is when the investigation into Jennifer's

10:18

murder first seemed to go cold

10:20

and how it would stay for

10:22

well over a decade. In

10:24

the meantime, the Sherm family grew

10:26

more and more frustrated with law

10:28

enforcement, not only had

10:31

they started to feel they'd

10:33

completely stopped investigating Jennifer's homicide, they

10:35

felt ignored and forgotten. There

10:42

was always like a beef with law

10:45

enforcement because of their attitude. You

10:48

know, they were getting irritated

10:50

with my family because we

10:52

were taking over the investigation

10:55

pretty much. I

10:58

never felt respect. They were

11:00

always so like rude and

11:03

it always would come back to

11:05

prostitution, no matter what. Ultimately,

11:08

they were trying to push this

11:11

concept, I guess if you want to call it that,

11:14

that it was just, you know, a trick gone

11:16

wrong. But when you're

11:18

around the type of people that my

11:21

mom was around, you

11:23

know, these guys are dangerous. They're

11:25

the real deal. The police knew

11:28

that. They knew the circles that she ran.

11:31

It's just this constant back and forth. My

11:34

grandma, she'd wait outside, I

11:36

think it was the courthouse, the district attorney's

11:38

office. She sat up there and waited for him.

11:42

So you know, I'm sure there

11:44

was this level of frustration on their

11:46

end, but it just seemed lazy and

11:48

disrespectful. And the one thing that

11:50

you're just trying to drill is this prostitution

11:52

thing. Hey man, it's the oldest profession

11:54

in the world. You

11:56

know what I mean? Like right, wrong

11:59

or indifferent. That

12:01

doesn't mean someone deserves to die. Andy

12:07

would experience his own frustration with law

12:09

enforcement when he tried reaching out to

12:11

the cold case unit before we got

12:14

involved, trying to find out the

12:16

status on his mother's case. I

12:18

called and I talked to this lady and she

12:20

kind of did this song and dance. Did

12:23

her best to try and satisfy

12:26

my appetite temporarily. I

12:29

don't know, it's the only way I could put it. I

12:32

call her and we start to discuss her case

12:34

and then obviously we ended up

12:37

getting off the phone and she told

12:39

me she was going to call me. I think it was either that

12:41

next day or the day after. I

12:43

got no calls and whenever

12:45

I would try and call her,

12:47

you know, it's like if a

12:49

phone rings twice and then goes to the boys,

12:51

they cleared the call. You know

12:53

what I'm saying? So she cleared

12:55

my call and I tried twice. I

12:59

take it really personal, you know,

13:01

like I'm going out on a limb because

13:04

we're just trying to do like the right

13:06

thing, man. And then to

13:08

be let down like that, like kind of took the

13:10

wind out of my sails. Here

13:13

we go again. That

13:16

sucked. That sucked. That sucked

13:18

pretty good, man. In

13:25

1999, which was 14 years

13:27

after Jennifer's murder, the Albuquerque

13:29

Police Department established its first

13:32

ever dedicated cold case unit.

13:34

The team was very small. It was

13:36

retired detectives. They were working part time

13:39

and it was just their job to comb

13:41

through unsolved cases. And it

13:43

came up with 72 different case files that they

13:46

wanted to take another crack at between 1972 and

13:48

1998. And

13:51

among these was Jennifer's. The

13:54

concept of working a cold case

13:56

wasn't anything new to law enforcement,

13:58

but until fairly recently. Almost

14:00

all detectives were tasked with

14:02

working active homicide cases at

14:04

the same time. That meant

14:07

old cases were constantly pushed

14:09

to the back of the

14:11

pile until modern forensics totally

14:13

changed the playing field. Suddenly

14:16

assigning manpower to work on

14:18

previously unsolved cases became justifiable

14:21

and by the late 90s

14:24

the number of dedicated cold

14:26

case units across the country

14:28

exploded. 50 years

14:30

ago the 1974 murder

14:32

of a Texas woman named Carla Walker.

14:35

Her case went cold for decades and

14:37

just like thousands of other murders all

14:39

across the country the evidence sat on

14:42

the shelf and then in 2019 investigators

14:44

found this very small stain on her

14:46

bra strap it was barely visible to

14:49

the naked eye not enough for a

14:51

normal DNA test but from that tiny

14:53

decades old stain this lab called Othrom

14:56

in Texas was able to create an

14:58

entire genetic sequence then they cross-referenced it

15:00

with publicly available genealogy databases. Now this

15:03

new kind of DNA technology is opening

15:05

up a whole new world to forensic

15:07

investigators. It

15:13

is Ryan here and I have a question

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16:15

Just a year after its creation

16:18

in September 2000, this tiny cold

16:20

case unit of the Albuquerque Police

16:22

Department, they announced that they

16:24

believe that they've cracked their first unsolved

16:27

case on their list and

16:29

that was the murder of Jennifer Sherm. But

16:31

the reason this cold case unit was established

16:33

in the first place was because they have

16:35

all this new technology, this new DNA evidence,

16:38

these new databases. But

16:40

ironically, the tip that they

16:42

got in Jennifer's case didn't come

16:44

from any of these advanced sciences and

16:46

new ways of looking at a case.

16:49

Instead their tip came from the oldest source in

16:52

the book, which was a confession. They

16:55

had two witnesses who had called

16:57

in a tip to crime stoppers years

16:59

ago and they claimed that someone

17:02

had confessed to Jennifer's murder. The

17:07

cold case detectives presented these tips

17:09

to the DA's office, hoping to

17:11

obtain an arrest warrant for the

17:14

person who'd become their new prime

17:16

suspect for a second time. And

17:19

it's a name you're going to remember. Jennifer's

17:22

ex-boyfriend, Alex. I

17:29

remember my grandmother, that was

17:31

over at her house one day and her phone was blowing up.

17:34

She had a house line obviously, it was

17:36

four cell phones and all that. I could

17:38

just tell something was going on, you know,

17:40

and she was really elated, upset, thousand

17:43

different emotions. And then my aunt Jessie

17:45

came over and then my uncle Larry

17:47

came over and then my aunt Judy

17:49

came over and something was going on,

17:51

but no one was telling me grandma

17:54

wanted to wait till everyone was there. I

17:57

don't know who it was that really this information to

17:59

her, but She basically said,

18:01

hey, you know, they finally found Alex. They're

18:04

bringing him back from North Carolina.

18:07

And not only that, they're going to officially

18:10

charge him with the murder of

18:12

Jenny. And so for

18:15

me, I was really still. I

18:18

didn't know how to express how I really felt because

18:20

I didn't know how I felt when that happened. I

18:23

just froze. I didn't

18:25

know really how to feel. And then

18:27

finally, like, after breathing

18:30

and probably smoking a pack of

18:32

cigarettes, the first thing I felt

18:34

was anger. All I

18:36

wanted was to see the man in the

18:38

flesh, and I wanted to make sure that

18:41

he saw me, that he looked in my eyes. I

18:44

obviously had some crazy thoughts. I

18:47

was really mad. I was like, I'm finally going to

18:49

get to face this son of a bitch. And

18:51

he's finally going to see me and look at

18:53

me, and he's going to know,

18:56

like, that's Jenny's son. At

18:58

that time, I didn't know, I

19:00

didn't find out until much,

19:02

much later, that his

19:05

brother, I guess, and his ex-wife or

19:07

something, claimed that he

19:09

had confessed to murdering Jenny.

19:12

As far as I knew otherwise, he had never admitted

19:14

it to anyone. He was always, you

19:16

know, very adamant to the police and

19:19

to what people in the streets that he had nothing to do with

19:21

it. It

19:27

turned out that one of the

19:30

tips that was reported to Crime

19:32

Stoppers was actually from Alex's ex-wife.

19:35

Now she claimed that Alex

19:37

had confessed to her that he'd murdered

19:39

Jennifer, and that he'd done it

19:41

because he was mad at Jennifer for stealing

19:43

his drugs and breaking his heart, which

19:46

was actually the original theory. Now,

19:48

this alone wasn't exactly enough to act on.

19:51

After all, it was a tip from an ex-wife. But

19:54

they got a second tip, too. A

19:57

second tip that Alex had made the same confession. This

20:00

one came from Alex's own

20:02

brother. So

20:12

with these tips they had enough to issue a warrant,

20:15

but once they issued this warrant there

20:17

was a massive problem. Alex

20:19

was nowhere to be found. It

20:22

appears that Alex had skipped town sometime way

20:24

back in the 90s, and the reason he'd

20:26

skipped town it looks like is because he

20:28

was trying to avoid other warrants on drug

20:31

charges. Crime Stoppers

20:33

had actually even listed Alex as one of

20:35

its fugitives of the week in 1999, and

20:38

that's before the arrest warrant for Jennifer.

20:41

But after Jennifer's arrest warrant was issued,

20:43

Alex actually remained a fugitive for five

20:45

whole years and nobody knew where he

20:48

was. Until September 2005,

20:51

when police in North Carolina

20:53

contacted Albuquerque police to let

20:55

them know that they had

20:58

Alex in custody. I

21:03

believe it was myself, my

21:05

Aunt Jessie, and my

21:08

grandmother. We all went to this

21:10

court hearing and I remember my

21:13

Aunt Jessie was to my left, my grandmother

21:15

was to my right, and we were off to the

21:17

left and he came in and

21:20

right as that door opened and the very

21:23

first thing, it's like

21:25

the universe made

21:27

him unconsciously look right

21:29

at me. That

21:31

was the first thing he saw when I reopened

21:34

that door. It was kind

21:36

of a blank stare, and to be honest I don't know

21:38

if he even realized who I

21:40

was or anything like that, you know?

21:43

I remember I got exactly what I wanted, I

21:45

got to look him right in his eyes. I

21:48

remember I clenched my fists so

21:51

hard my nails broke skin in my

21:53

palm. I don't think I've ever

21:55

even told anyone that. He

21:58

said very little. My

22:00

mind serves me right. I think it's

22:02

my aunt Jessie. She got to got to say

22:04

something. I can't remember what it

22:06

was that she said, but I know it

22:09

wasn't very nice. There were certainly

22:11

profanities layered therein. And

22:14

I mean, that was that. That

22:16

day, like a lot changed for me. I got

22:18

to see this boogie man. He was

22:21

a dude. The minute

22:23

we locked eyes, like all that fear,

22:25

just it dissipated. It was gone.

22:27

So it was a

22:29

very profound top 10

22:31

in my whole life. I lived

22:33

like moments that had a huge

22:36

impact on me. 20 some

22:38

years of fear and anger

22:41

and desperation and wonder

22:44

and every emotion

22:46

you could think of. I'd

22:48

gone through it with this guy in my head.

22:52

20 some years of this

22:54

vision of this dude in my head

22:56

and these panic attacks and these bad

22:58

dreams and hallucinations. One

23:00

second, I finally got the

23:03

chance to face like my ultimate

23:05

fear. And it was over like, like

23:08

that. It was done. I can't

23:11

even really describe how I felt except for a

23:14

weight was lifted off me and

23:17

all that trauma for all those years

23:19

was gone. And that's great. But a

23:21

new trauma was created

23:24

because after over

23:26

20 years of suffering,

23:29

this endless waiting,

23:33

finally, it looks like my

23:35

mother might get some justice. But

23:38

as usual, with life, things

23:41

don't always turn out the way that you

23:43

want them to. After

23:57

Alex is arrested, police spent the

24:00

entire next year trying to build

24:02

a case against him. But

24:04

all they really had were these two

24:07

eyewitnesses claiming that Alex had confessed to

24:09

murdering Jennifer and that's not enough

24:11

for a conviction. Even confessions

24:13

need to be corroborated by some sort

24:15

of evidence. So then police are

24:17

forced to go back and try to find

24:20

any evidence that proves this confession that Alex

24:22

made. And so they go

24:24

back and attempt to use the most modern weapon

24:26

in their arsenal, which was DNA. You

24:31

might remember how we mentioned that back in 1985, investigators

24:34

were careful to gather all the

24:36

trace evidence found on Jennifer's body,

24:39

even though there was very little they could do with

24:41

it at the time. Well

24:43

that time had come to finally

24:46

analyze the hairs, fibers and debris.

24:48

They carefully stored away into evidence

24:50

and one of those samples was

24:53

sent off to a lab. They

24:56

took a sample of DNA from Jennifer's body and

24:58

they sent it off to be tested to try

25:01

to get this first potential glimpse

25:03

at a forensic profile of the person

25:05

responsible for murdering Jennifer. But

25:07

when the results came back, the DNA

25:09

sample did not match Alex. Now

25:13

without this DNA match, the

25:15

murder charges against Alex were officially

25:17

dismissed in Without

25:20

that DNA match, they literally had nothing

25:22

except these two witnesses claiming that Alex

25:25

confessed. And this was not enough for

25:27

a conviction. The charges were dismissed. So

25:30

this was the second time that the

25:32

Albuquerque Police Department were convinced that they'd

25:34

caught their man. They'd arrested

25:36

and brought charges and attempted to take him to trial.

25:39

Only to have the charges all dropped

25:41

due to a lack of evidence. So

25:44

once again, Jennifer's case went cold.

25:48

But the DNA samples they analyzed

25:50

trying to convict Alex weren't filed

25:52

away on a shelf like the

25:54

Oldton days. Instead the

25:56

DNA went into a database, a place

25:58

where it could sit. Waiting

26:00

patiently until the day someone

26:03

uploaded a match. In

26:11

1990, when Mike Gallagher wrote his expose,

26:13

Death on the Cruise, he

26:15

concluded his investigation by saying essentially

26:18

what he still believes today as

26:20

the most plausible theory, not

26:23

just for Jennifer's murder, but for all

26:25

seven of the unsolved cruise murders. He

26:28

wrote, the pimp's claimed it

26:30

was actually narcotic agents who stopped

26:32

the killings by making cases against

26:34

key members of the Memphis group

26:36

and their local connections. But

26:39

in the very last line of his article,

26:41

he ends the piece with an incredibly haunting

26:43

line. The sex workers on

26:45

the cruise have a different theory. They

26:48

say the killers just started dumping the

26:50

bodies where no one will ever find

26:52

them. This last line

26:54

may turn out to be more prophetic

26:56

than Mike could have ever predicted at

26:58

that time. It

27:07

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at chumbacasino.com. That's chumbacasino.com. Since

28:03

the beginning of this series, we said Jennifer was surrounded

28:05

by danger on a daily basis.

28:14

But over the course of 20

28:16

years after Jennifer's murder, police had

28:19

never really considered a John as

28:21

a possible suspect. That

28:24

all changed in 2009 when the

28:26

DNA sample taken from Jennifer's body

28:28

in an attempt to convict Alex

28:31

finally struck a match in the database.

28:34

A match with someone who'd never

28:37

been on the investigators radar in

28:39

Jennifer's case. A man

28:41

who was not only a convicted

28:44

serial rapist, but a man who's

28:46

being a person of interest in

28:48

what is undoubtedly the most notorious

28:51

unsolved crime in the history of

28:53

New Mexico. The

28:59

last death on the cruise murder happened

29:02

in March 1988. And

29:04

this is when the killing spree really seems

29:06

to stop. And it stops abruptly out of

29:08

nowhere. All of a sudden there's

29:10

no more unsolved homicides of sex workers off

29:12

the cruise, even though there had been a

29:15

rash of them over the last several years. But

29:17

that very same fall, just after these

29:20

killings stopped, another disturbing

29:22

pattern emerges in a nearby

29:24

area. In November 1988, a

29:26

13 year old

29:28

girl was raped in her home

29:30

by a masked man wielding a

29:32

knife. The young

29:34

girl had come home from school

29:36

to an empty house, or so

29:39

she thought, when a man suddenly

29:41

came out from behind a bookshelf

29:43

wearing a mask and holding a

29:45

knife before brutally attacking her. At

29:48

first this was seen as a

29:50

one off incident until it happened

29:52

again and again and again. Over

29:56

the course of several years, between the late 80s and

29:58

1993, There

30:00

were a shocking number of school-aged

30:02

children who were assaulted or raped

30:05

in a very similar fashion, but

30:07

police had no idea who this

30:09

masked, knife-wielding rapist was. The

30:13

attacks occurred mostly in the area

30:15

surrounding McKinley Middle School in the

30:18

city's northeast heights of Albuquerque. Eventually,

30:21

police would come to believe that

30:23

at least a dozen young girls

30:26

became the victims of this serial

30:28

predator that they began calling the

30:31

Mid-School Rapist, and police believed

30:33

that it was the same perpetrator because

30:35

there was such a recognizable pattern to

30:37

these attacks. But what

30:39

happens when a perpetrator goes against

30:41

their pattern? This

30:43

would happen on October

30:46

7, 1990 when the

30:48

Mid-School Rapist struck again.

30:51

This time, the victim was not

30:53

a teenager. She was not

30:56

a school-aged girl. This

30:58

victim was a 29-year-old,

31:00

part-time university student. The

31:06

young woman had come home one

31:08

night, just like the 13-year-old, thinking

31:10

she was alone when a

31:12

masked man appeared out of her closet.

31:15

Twenty-five years after her attack, this victim actually

31:18

wrote a letter. She

31:20

described the lingering, enduring psychological

31:22

trauma of that moment, saying

31:24

that after that moment she never felt safe in

31:26

the world. She didn't know who had

31:29

attacked her. He was wearing a mask. She

31:31

could be walking down the street, and the

31:33

man who had attacked her could just walk past her,

31:35

and she wouldn't even have a clue that

31:37

that was the man. It could literally be anybody. But

31:40

the thing about this particular attack was

31:42

that it didn't fit the known, established

31:44

pattern from what they knew about the

31:46

Mid-School Rapist because of her age. She

31:49

wasn't a teenage girl. In

31:51

the end, the Mid-School Rapist turned out to

31:53

be just as elusive as who'd ever been

31:55

murdering the women on East Central Avenue. They

31:58

were not able to find out who this was. for many years.

32:02

With no fingerprints and no

32:04

clues, suddenly the perpetrators seemed

32:07

to stop and then came

32:09

another pattern. When

32:12

it comes to law enforcement, police

32:15

and detectives often speak about following

32:17

their instincts or trusting their gut.

32:20

Well in 2005, an Albuquerque detective

32:22

named Ida Lopez started to get

32:25

that feeling. At the

32:27

time, Ida was a promising young

32:29

detective, rising through the ranks in 2004

32:31

until a battle with

32:34

cancer forced her to step away

32:36

from her job temporarily. When

32:39

she returned in 2005, she was

32:41

given a part-time desk job allowing

32:43

her to ease back into her

32:45

role. The new role

32:47

established Ida as the only

32:50

detective in the APD assigned

32:52

exclusively to investigating missing person

32:54

cases and she dove in

32:56

head first, as if it were the

32:58

most important job on the force, because

33:00

to her it was. Very

33:03

quickly, Ida began noticing a pattern,

33:06

a pattern no one else had seen.

33:17

So Ida Lopez has hundreds of missing

33:19

persons cases coming across her desk and

33:22

as she's looking through them, she realizes that

33:24

many of them fit a

33:27

unique profile. Looking

33:29

into these girls backgrounds, she saw that there were

33:31

a number of missing young

33:33

women that were Latino and

33:36

that their lives had really become intertwined

33:38

with this drug culture and the sex

33:41

industry on East Central Avenue. Over

33:43

these years, Ida actually starts putting

33:46

together a separate list of all these

33:48

girls that fit this very similar profile,

33:50

thinking that maybe they were all related

33:52

somehow and she actually began referring to

33:54

these victims as her girls. By

33:57

the end of 2007, this list

34:00

of her girls contained the names of 16

34:03

missing women who all fit this

34:05

very similar profile who had gone

34:07

missing between 2001 and 2008. She

34:12

believed that these victims were almost

34:14

likely linked in some fashion, and

34:17

she did the legwork, all the shoe leather

34:19

detective work into doing anything she could to

34:21

get as much information about these girls as

34:23

possible to prepare for the day that one

34:26

of them might be found. She

34:29

collected dental records, she collected familial DNA

34:31

from as many of the missing young

34:33

women's families as she could, and

34:36

one of the purposes for doing all

34:39

this was so that maybe one day

34:41

if an unidentified body was found that

34:43

it would be able to be cross-checked with

34:46

the DNA and information she'd gathered on her

34:48

girls to see if it was potentially a

34:50

match. But as

34:52

long as there wasn't any matches, and there

34:54

wasn't, it left the door open

34:56

for the possibility that one or

34:59

all of these women might still be alive.

35:02

As the years went on and it got longer

35:04

and longer and further and further away from their

35:06

disappearances, the likelihood that

35:09

these girls were okay got less and less every

35:11

year. While

35:18

covering a case like Jennifer Shurms

35:20

that's been nearly four decades, it's

35:23

impossible to overstate how

35:25

revolutionary DNA technology has

35:27

become for law enforcement.

35:30

You heard how Jennifer's ex-boyfriend was arrested for

35:32

her murder in 2005 only for the charges

35:36

to be dropped when the DNA in

35:39

the case failed to match his. But

35:42

three years later, in 2008,

35:45

two significant DNA-related events

35:47

unfolded, almost simultaneously

35:50

creating a remarkable coincidence

35:52

in timing. 13

36:00

year old girl who had been raped by

36:03

the mid-school rapist, she's now a grown woman,

36:05

and she starts wondering if the

36:07

rape kit that had been taken after her

36:09

attack had ever been tested or analyzed or

36:11

put through the system. So she

36:14

actually reached out to a friend of

36:16

hers that worked in Albuquerque's sex crimes

36:18

unit and this friend was able to

36:20

find out that her rape kit had

36:22

never been tested. But probably

36:24

because of this connection, it finally

36:26

was. So

36:31

after 20 years of wondering who attacked

36:33

her, she was now going to hopefully,

36:36

maybe, get an answer and

36:38

this turned out to be miraculous

36:40

timing really. Because at the

36:42

exact same time that her DNA results from

36:44

this rape kit were being developed,

36:47

there was another significant event

36:49

happening at the exact same

36:51

time. On August 13th,

36:53

2008, a domestic

36:55

violence call led to the

36:57

arrest of 51 year old

37:00

landscaper Joseph Blea charged with

37:02

aggravated assault and battery against

37:04

his wife Cheryl. After

37:07

his arrest, Joseph's DNA was

37:09

collected as required by New

37:11

Mexico's Katie's Law, which mandates

37:14

DNA collection from people arrested

37:16

for specific violent felonies. Eventually,

37:19

Joseph was released from jail.

37:22

But before that could happen, his

37:24

DNA had already been sent away

37:26

to be processed, analyzed and uploaded

37:28

into the database. And

37:31

on January 13th, 2009, police got ahead. A

37:36

big one and then another. Joseph's

37:39

DNA came back as a match for

37:41

the 13 year old victim of the

37:43

Midskill Rapist case back in 1998. So

37:47

this is the victim who as an adult woman

37:49

had gone to police and asked that a rape

37:51

kit be tested. So after waiting

37:53

for 20 years, more than 20 years, she

37:56

was finally about to find out the name

37:58

of the masked man. who attacked

38:00

her as a child, and his

38:03

name was Joseph Blair. That

38:05

wasn't all, because Joseph's DNA, now that

38:07

it was in the system, was also

38:09

a match for another sample that had

38:12

been collected. And this was

38:14

the sample collected from Jennifer Sherm's body

38:16

when they were trying to convict Alex

38:18

back in 2005. It

38:21

seemed crazy to think that one

38:23

man's DNA could be linked to

38:25

so many unsolved crimes. But

38:28

just like that, two incredibly

38:30

cold cases suddenly saw

38:32

the light of day again, and

38:34

this time there was actual physical

38:37

evidence. So

38:39

police begin seriously investigating Joseph,

38:42

trying to make a case against him for all of

38:45

these other unsolved mid-school rapes, and

38:47

they're trying to make a case against him for

38:50

Jennifer's murder. And this is actually

38:52

really heating up. But

38:54

just a couple weeks after this

38:56

investigation into Joseph starts ramping up,

38:59

the entire Albuquerque Police Department, the

39:02

entire city of Albuquerque, was

39:04

basically interrupted by the biggest

39:06

news story of the year. And

39:09

it was the most disturbing news

39:11

story in the history of New Mexico crime. This

39:14

is where Detective Ida Lopez comes back

39:16

in, because suddenly the pattern that

39:18

Ida had been seeing this whole time started

39:21

to make a lot more sense. It

39:32

was a shocking story that a

39:34

local TV news station in Albuquerque

39:36

would heavily cover over the next

39:38

15 years. On

39:41

February 2nd, 2009, a woman

39:43

walking her dog in southwest Albuquerque

39:46

discovered a bone. We went

39:48

out there the first time, we thought it was no tragic,

39:50

it was a regular call. After police

39:52

determined it was from a human, scenes like this

39:54

went on for weeks and weeks. What

39:56

looked more like an archeological dig than a crime

39:59

scene, a eventually turned up the

40:01

remains of 11 women in a fetus.

40:03

The movie-like plot unfolded in the months

40:05

and years that followed. Police say one

40:07

person targeted and killed the young women

40:09

in their teens and twenties, sometime between

40:11

2001 and 2006. Directly

40:16

to the west of Albuquerque lies

40:19

a vast, desolate expanse called the

40:21

West Mesa, a desert

40:23

wilderness that begins as soon as

40:25

the city's pavement ends. Within

40:28

the 2000s, a mini-boom

40:30

of new housing developments built out

40:32

on the West Mesa began extending

40:35

the city farther and farther into

40:37

the desert. Then

40:40

in 2007, all the

40:42

construction came to a sudden halt

40:44

during the subprime mortgage crisis,

40:47

leaving large swaths of

40:49

land, already excavated, completely

40:52

undeveloped. If the

40:54

construction had never stopped, it's highly

40:56

likely this would have been a

40:59

story that's deep buried forever. Hey

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the following weeks, the crime scene

42:40

became an excavation on a truly

42:42

massive scale, with heavy

42:44

equipment, ground-penetrating radar, and satellite

42:47

imagery brought in data in

42:49

the search. Despite the

42:51

massive size of the excavation,

42:53

about 75 football fields,

42:55

the bodies were all discovered in

42:58

an area roughly the size of

43:00

a tennis court, or

43:02

as Christine Barber would comment, the

43:04

size of a CVS. So

43:08

he buried these 11 women in this

43:10

area the size of CVS, and kept

43:12

going out there and out there. So much

43:14

so, you can see the tire tracks. He

43:16

made a road point out there. Christine

43:19

Barber is the former executive director

43:21

of StreetSafe New Mexico, and the

43:23

new executive director of As You

43:25

Are New Mexico. And

43:28

she's just one of the many people

43:30

who's taken a personal interest in the

43:32

West Mesa case over the past 15

43:34

years, doing some digging of her own.

43:38

In fact, Christine Barber shared some of

43:40

the case files she's obtained on the

43:42

case, as well as some of her

43:44

theories. In

43:53

the West Mesa case, the women who

43:55

were found buried on the West Mesa, the 11 women, went

43:58

missing in 2015. in 2003 and

44:00

2004. However, there's

44:02

a group of women who witnessed

44:05

in 2005-2006. They match

44:08

women who were found in West Mesa as

44:10

far as their statute, that they were out

44:12

on the street, that they were doing

44:14

dates, which again is the terminology

44:16

we use and what's used on the street to refer to

44:19

the sale of sex. To us

44:21

it's clear that the serial killer didn't

44:24

stop at 2005.

44:26

So even though the West Mesa

44:28

victims were 2003-2004, he kept killing. What

44:33

we do is we look at the type of

44:35

crime scene that he had, and the only crime

44:37

scene we have which is the burial site. First

44:40

of all, a serial killer who

44:42

is killing quote unquote prostitutes,

44:45

it's very uncommon for them to actually

44:48

bury. It's less than 2% of serial

44:50

killers who kill prostitutes will bury them. And

44:53

the FBI in their 2015 report say,

44:56

the most likely reason for burial

44:58

is that you are trying to conceal that these

45:01

people went missing because you had a connection with

45:03

them or that you're afraid you're going to be discovered.

45:06

You could also on the aerial photos

45:08

see where the burials are. You

45:10

can see the dirt differentiation of where

45:13

they were buried. And so

45:15

you get an idea of how they're spaced out from each

45:17

other in this area. So

45:19

what you have from just the site is

45:22

that he visited this place a lot. So

45:25

I personally think of him as like a gardener. This

45:28

is a site that doesn't necessarily mean

45:30

something to him, but what's there means

45:32

something to him. And he keeps going over

45:34

and over. He buried them, suddenly

45:36

went back to the same site and buried the next

45:38

person close to them and closer to them and closer

45:40

to them. So knowing all

45:43

that, people might assume that this

45:45

woman who went missing between 2003 and 2004,

45:48

the last woman in 2004 in

45:50

September, she was the last victim

45:53

because otherwise he would have kept using this site. We

45:55

don't believe that is true because another group

45:57

of women went missing in 2006.

46:00

2005 and 2006. So we believe he changed sites. If

46:12

this were true, was it possible

46:14

this also hadn't been the only

46:16

time the killer had changed the

46:18

location of where he disposed of

46:20

his victims? Was it also

46:23

possible this same person could also

46:25

be connected to the murders on

46:27

the cruise? Someone specifically

46:29

targeting women just like

46:32

Jennifer Sherm, vulnerable women,

46:34

sex workers whose disappearances

46:37

wouldn't be noticed. But

46:40

here's the problem with the skeletal remains

46:42

that were discovered in 2009. None

46:45

of them reveal any clues about

46:47

the manner of death. For

46:49

instance, there's no bullet wounds that can

46:52

be found on the skeletal remains. Now

46:54

this means that the victims were most

46:57

likely killed by hand, or by some

46:59

other non-obvious means, and this

47:01

starts to sound a little bit familiar to other

47:03

unsolved cases we've been looking at. But

47:06

due to the extreme decomposition of

47:08

the bodies found at West Mesa,

47:10

the exact cause of death of these

47:12

victims will probably never be known. interesting

47:18

barber refer to this serial

47:20

killer as a gardener. Other

47:23

people in Albuquerque started calling

47:25

this unknown predator, this

47:27

unknown serial killer, by another

47:30

name. They call him the

47:32

West Mesa Bone Collector. With

47:35

nothing else to go on except

47:37

the bones themselves, identifying

47:39

all of the victims was

47:41

an incredibly daunting task. But

47:44

this is where the extensive load

47:46

work already done by Detective Ida

47:48

Lopez proved to be invaluable.

47:52

Just days after the first bone was

47:54

found, a set of teeth

47:56

was able to be matched to dental

47:58

records already on file. The

48:00

victim was Victoria Chavez.

48:03

A woman reported missing in March 2005 when

48:05

she would have been 25 years old. One

48:10

of the women on Ida's list, one

48:12

of her girls. Victoria Chavez

48:15

will finally be given a proper burial

48:17

by her family. Her remains were the

48:19

first to be discovered back on February

48:21

2nd. All

48:24

along Ida believed if they could find

48:26

one of the missing women, they'd find

48:28

them all. And as it

48:30

turned out, she wasn't far off. Over

48:42

the course of the next year,

48:44

the identities of all 11 women

48:46

would eventually be confirmed. Many

48:49

of them, by using the records

48:51

already collected. Nine

48:53

of the 11 women had

48:55

been on Ida Lopez's list. These

48:58

nine were Monica Candelaria, Victoria

49:00

Chavez, Virginia Cloven, Cinnamon

49:03

Elks, Doreen Marquez,

49:05

Julie Nieto, Veronica

49:08

Romero, Michelle Valdez, and

49:10

Evelyn Salazar. But

49:12

of the remaining two victims that weren't

49:14

on her list, one

49:16

was Jamie Barela. Now she was a

49:18

15 year old cousin of Evelyn

49:20

Salazar, who was on the list. Both

49:23

victims had last been seen heading to a

49:25

park together in April 2004. But

49:28

there was one victim discovered that

49:30

wasn't on Ida's radar at all.

49:33

And the reason this victim wasn't on Ida's radar

49:35

is because she did not fit

49:38

the pattern that Ida had established. And

49:40

her name was Selania Edwards. after

50:00

running away from foster care in

50:02

Oklahoma, making it difficult to identify

50:05

her. Selenia Edwards,

50:07

that's the name of the eighth West

50:09

Mesa murder victim to be identified, and

50:11

she is the youngest of the 11

50:13

women found buried nude in a mass

50:15

grave. News 13's Maria Medina is live

50:17

in the newsplex with who Edwards was.

50:20

Well, came investigators say Edwards was only 15

50:23

when she ran away from her foster home in

50:25

Lawton, Oklahoma in 2003. That

50:28

was the last time anyone there saw her.

50:30

Police called her a chronic runaway. She landed

50:32

in foster care at the age of five

50:34

when her mother went to jail. After

50:38

running away, it's believed that

50:40

Selenia became involved with sex

50:42

work, probably traveling from

50:44

state to state. But

50:46

the diversion from the known pattern of

50:49

the other victims at the burial site

50:51

on the West Mesa was that Selenia

50:53

was not Latino. Selenia

50:55

was African American. And

50:58

this was a diversion from the pattern that Ida had been keeping

51:00

track of. And this meant

51:02

that it was possible that race was

51:05

not actually a factor at all in

51:07

the pattern of the serial killer. In

51:14

an interview with Duke City Case Files, Ida

51:17

Lopez expressed her belief that

51:19

the killer's selection of victims hadn't been

51:21

primarily based on their appearance or race.

51:25

It may not have been a factor at all. Instead,

51:28

she chalked it up to one word,

51:31

opportunity. The

51:33

first monumental step for the Albuquerque

51:35

police was identifying all of the

51:37

victims that were found on the

51:39

West Mesa. But identifying who

51:42

the bone collector was has

51:44

been something that police have been trying to figure out for

51:46

the last 15 years now. And

51:49

over these years, there's actually been many,

51:52

many, many possible leads and

51:54

possible suspects. Some

51:56

were absolutely crazy and coincidental.

51:59

And... It's a really deep rabbit hole

52:01

that I went down while investigating the story.

52:04

But over the years, most of these

52:06

suspects have been able to be crossed off

52:08

the list entirely for one reason or another.

52:12

The Kirkley police have eliminated one of

52:14

the people they were looking at in

52:16

the West Mesa murders. Ron Irwin, a

52:18

Missouri photographer whose home and business were

52:20

raided by FBI agents and APD detectives

52:23

last year is no longer

52:25

a person of interest. Fox

52:27

31 news out of Denver is reporting that

52:29

Scott Lee Kimball says he is

52:31

being investigated for the murders of 11

52:34

women whose bodies were found buried on the

52:36

West Mesa in February of 2009. Hey,

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53:52

a week. You are why they make it

53:54

easy to schedule service at care heating and

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cooling.com. Concerned for your safety is

53:58

why they check every gas furnace. for carbon

54:00

monoxide. It's because of you that their technicians

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you need a company, you can trust. Almost

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as soon as the investigation on

54:22

the West Mesa began, there was

54:25

one name that shot to the

54:27

top of APD's persons of interest

54:29

list and for good reason,

54:31

Lorenzo Montoya, a

54:34

man with a history of

54:36

soliciting sex workers, domestic violence and

54:39

weapons charges.

54:42

In 1999, police observed

54:44

a sex worker getting into

54:46

Lorenzo's car and after she

54:48

did, he began to choke her and he began to

54:50

rape her. Police ran over

54:52

immediately and arrested him and stopped the

54:54

attack and it was also

54:57

reported that Lorenzo actually only had $2

54:59

in his wallet when he was arrested,

55:01

which means that he clearly had no

55:03

intention of even paying the woman. And

55:06

this is something that Cynthia V Hill

55:08

from StreetSafe actually mentioned in the first

55:10

episode. Now, although Lorenzo

55:12

was charged after this for

55:15

kidnapping and for rape, these

55:17

charges were actually completely dropped later

55:20

because the victim refused to testify

55:22

against him for whatever reason. But

55:25

the biggest reason police believed Lorenzo might

55:27

be the man they were looking for

55:29

was because of what happened in

55:32

the early hours of December 17th, 2006. The

55:34

night he died. In

55:39

our final episode of Who Killed

55:42

Jennifer, we'll explore how a series

55:44

of patterns and coincidences all seem

55:46

to converge at the same time.

55:49

We'll delve further into Joseph Blayas

55:51

past and criminal history, uncovering the

55:54

reasons why he became a prime

55:56

person of interest in both the

55:58

West Mesa murder. Earth and Jennifer

56:01

Lynn Shurm's case. Could

56:03

the DNA found on Jennifer's body

56:05

hold the key to unraveling one

56:07

of the most unsettling unsolved crimes

56:10

of the century? Tune

56:12

in next week for our

56:14

concluding episode where we'll reveal

56:16

even more information to Jennifer

56:18

Lynn Shurm's son. Kind

56:21

of knocked the wind out of me a little

56:23

bit because I can

56:25

tell this means something to you and

56:27

this obviously means a whole hell of a lot to

56:29

me. I keep calling

56:32

you bloodhounds because you get that scent and

56:34

you guys put in the work and you get

56:37

the result man. I have so much respect for

56:39

that. Regardless of how

56:41

this turns out, I

56:43

get to get oriented with

56:45

someone that I

56:47

never had a chance to. Follow

57:00

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57:03

Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify,

57:05

or wherever you get your

57:08

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57:13

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57:25

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57:28

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using our promo codes, you're also helping support

57:32

the show. We've got all the links in

57:34

our episode notes. So until

57:37

next week, thanks for listening. Care

58:00

Heating and Cooling put you first. You are

58:02

the reason they are open 7 days a

58:04

week. You are why they make it easy

58:06

to schedule service at careheatingandcooling.com. Concern

58:08

for your safety is why they check every gas

58:10

furnace for carbon monoxide. It's because of you that

58:13

their technicians are paid to fix your furnace and

58:15

air conditioner, not sell you a new one. And

58:17

if you do need a new furnace, their team

58:19

will make sure you get exactly what you need

58:21

at a cost that fits your budget. Care Heating

58:23

and Cooling is committed to doing business right. Call

58:26

them at 1-800-COOLING. When

58:28

you need a company, you can trust.