Thirteen Years of Silence: The West Mesa Murders

Major Crimes in History

Christine Ross and her dog Ruca were having their nightly walk along a dry creek bed in the undeveloped West Mesa area of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in February 2009. Ross let Ruca off his leash to run around the ghost of an abandoned construction site where the pair had walked before.

Ruca found a bone in the sand; this wasn’t the first time the dog found bones during their walks. It is a desert, and animal bones pop up here and there. Christine looked at the bone and immediately noticed it did not look like the usual bones Ruca had previously found.

She sent a photo of what looked like a femur to her sister, a nurse, for help identifying what it was Ruca had found. It was a femur, a human femur. Ruca and Christine had discovered the burial ground of a serial killer, and the first remains of the West Mesa Murders.