Investigator absorbed in mesa murders

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - An investigator who lives and breathes the West Mesa murder mystery case has come up with a list of 10 missing women who could be Jane Doe No. 7, the youngest of 11 victims.

Tips have come in since a sketch of the unidentified female was released two weeks ago, but Wendy Honeyfield refuses to wait. Police have said identifying all the women is key because it will help them figure out how their paths may have crossed and who killed them.

For days the investigator with the Office of the Medical Investigator has searched for missing teens and young women across the country. She came up with about 50 women who fit the description of Jane Doe No. 7.

From there whittled the list down to 10. They're African-Americans between 13 and 21, and they all vanished between 1998 and 2005.

Because Honeyfield is still looking for their relatives, she didn't want to release all 10 names. But she said Tineshia Jackson, who went missing from California, was one of them as well as Dominique Roberson from Louisiana.

"From Louisiana to North Carolina," Honeyfield said of the women she's focused on. "New York has three that match the criteria.

"There's Pennsylvania, Washington, DC."

Honeyfield said she needs their dental and medical records to compare to the unidentified West Mesa victim. The autopsy on Jane Doe No. 7 revealed she had suffered a broken nose, lesion on her femur and wore hair extensions as well as fake nails when her skeletal remains were unearthed early this year.

She's now waiting on x-rays of those 10 women from investigators who are assigned to their cases.

This has turned into more than just a job for Honeyfield. She calls missing women in New Mexico: the girls.

"You know, just to call them females or the remains, it's just kind of cold," she said.

Some of those girls' pictures hang above her desk. In 2007 an Albuquerque police detective compiled a list of missing women who worked the streets.

Honeyfield immediately went to work on those cases.

"It became a personal goal of mine that I was going to find X-rays on them," she said.

What she didn't know was that she was working on the West Mesa murder mystery before police even knew there were bodies buried out on the west mesa.

Every time a Jane Doe came through OMI she looked for a match.

But nothing. Then came February 2009 when a woman walking her dog discovered the first bone at the once remote mesa site now being developed as a residential subdivision.

Over the next few weeks there was a match and then another one.

Seven matches; seven women.

"The crossed girls have been identified," Honeyfield said points to her list of missing women.

Eleanor Griego's daughter was one of those women.

"I appreciate everything she's done," Griego said.

Julie Nieto's body was identified quickly because of Honeyfield's work a year and a half beforehand.

But there are still four unknown West Mesa victims, and Honeyfield won't stop until she crosses every name off that list.

There are three other unidentified victims besides Jane Doe No. 7, but their bones were badly broken time. Honeyfield said some of them may have to be identified through DNA.

"My coworkers make fun of me," Honeyfield said. "I'm the West Mesa person.

"There's nothing to lead where they went to, and it's really sad that someone can just up and disappear, you know, without a trace."

Police said they have a handful of suspects. Some are dead or in prison.