DNA evidence closes cold-case killing

MAGDALENA, N.M. (KRQE) - Police have finally identified bones they found years after a mother's disappearance.

And while her family is relieved they can move on, they are furious that the man they think killed her will never be punished because he is now dead.

Helen Torres was 31 when she went to a dance in downtown Magdalena in 1987 with the man she was dating.

She never returned.

Torres was wearing shoes she borrowed from her sister Sofie Leyba.

"She left my home all dressed up and ready to go dancing that night," Leyba recalled during a phone interview.

After the dance Helen and her boyfriend, Gilbert Espinosa, went to a bar, which is now a restaurant.

She and Gilbert left fighting.

Helen then vanished and her sister reported her missing.

Nothing happened until 1994, seven years after the disappearance, when a hiker found bones, clothing, a purse and the shoes Torres wore to the dance.

They were found two miles from town just off a road.

Police could not positively identify the bones, but they knew foul play was involved.

"Well in 1994 they didn't have those kind of tests that they could run to cross match DNA," Magdalena Marshal Chief Larry Cearley said.

The case was dead.

But Cearley spent the past two years trying again to ID the bones.

"I kept pursuing the case cause i knew it was probably Helen Torres," he said.

In July Cearley got DNA results back showing the remains were in fact hers.

He said new analysis of the bones shows she was murdered, but he will not say how.

Leyba said her and her family finally have some answers.

"Twenty-five years is is a long time not really knowing," Leyba said.  "At least now we can let her rest in peace."

There will not be an arrest or a hunt for a suspected killer, because Torres's old boyfriend is dead.

He died of gangrene years ago.