Suspect in ad isn't fugitive; he's dead

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A wanted man featured in an Albuquerque Police Department advertising insert published Friday will be impossible to arrest because he's dead.

The ad for most-wanted property-crime offenders appearing in the Albuquerque Journal included a jail booking photo of Kenneth Traiger.

Traiger has been in the news before.  He was jailed for a robbery at a Starbucks back 2009 and in 2010 was severely beaten and sexually assaulted by three other inmates at Metropolitan Detention Center.

A judge suspended the sentence and let Traiger out, but he then he was arrested for robbing a bank in November 2011.
 
A short time later Traiger committed suicide at the Sandoval County Detention Center.

APD Criminal Investigations Commander William Roseman said there is no statewide central database that shows those with active warrants and those who have passed away. 

It's not just police who didn't realize Traiger was dead.  Bernalillo Metropolitan Court issued an arrest warrant for him in June, 6 1/2 months after he died.

APD says this is not the first time this has happened and isn't surprising given the lifestyles of the people featured. Some become victims of crime themselves, die of drug or alcohol problems or commit suicide.

Police said there will now be one more check before putting somebody on the monthly most wanted newspaper ad, a call to the Office of the Medical Investigator.

The city of Albuquerque pays about $5,900 for the once-a-month color inserts in the paper.