Woman says West Mesa case has stalled

ALBUQUERQUE, NM {KRQE} - Have police done enough on the West Mesa Murder mystery? One woman, who's sister is still missing, said no way.

She wants more, and is taking her fight for justice to the streets.

Since 11 women were unearthed on the West Mesa over a year and a half ago, rumors and speculation about what else and what happened to these women have been flying.

One woman says APD needs to step it up.

Lupe Lopez-Haynes explained the last time she saw her sister 21 years ago, “Said she was going to go with my friends and that was the end of it.”

Her sister vanished more than a decade before the first known West Mesa Murders.

But she believes her sister's also buried on the West Mesa, a feeling she says is shared by a lot families of missing women.

Lopez-Haynes said, “Our daughters are buried there in that crime scene that's what they are saying right now.”

Lopez-Haynes is handing out this flier to announce her group will be demonstrating next week in front of APD headquarters.

The flier features all eleven West Mesa victims, and four other women she thinks could also be buried somewhere out there.

“We would like to have the digging resumed and better investigations and also of course find the killer,” she said.

We took her concerns to Police Chief Ray Schultz.

“We haven't found any reason why we need to still be digging there,” Schultz said.

The chief said his investigators did more than necessary just to be on the safe side, ”We went much bigger much larger and deeper than we needed to and we feel confident that all the woman that were buried at that site 118th street have been recovered.”

He said investigators continue to follow leads and work the case, and pointed to the recent searches in Joplin, Missouri of Ron Erwin's property.

Erwin's mother said her son traveled to Albuquerque every year during the first part of this decade, the same time the women found on the West Mesa went missing.

She said he liked to take pictures of the State Fair parade along Central.

The chief says investigators are still combing through everything taken from Erwin's photography studio.

“A lot of it contains photographs and we are looking at 10's if not hundreds of thousands of photographs to see if that one tip can link this individual to the case of not,” Schultz said.

A West Mesa victim's mother who did not want to be identified says she doesn't support the flier or the demonstration.

She said she believes APD is doing everything it can to find her daughter's killer.

APD isn't calling Ron Erwin a suspect; he's just at the end of another lead.

APD continues to say it has a handful of suspects in the case, but the chief has said he's confident the West Mesa serial killer is not still on the loose.