The Unsolved Mystery Of The West Mesa, New Mexico Bone Collector

Two things led Cheryl Blea, Joseph Blea’s wife, to suspect that he may have been the West Mesa Bone Collector. First, there was a large collection of jewelry found in their home that didn’t belong to either her or their daughter, and then a stash of women’s underwear was found in their backyard shed.

Blea had already been on law enforcement’s radar thanks to his habit of stalking prostitutes in Albuquerque’s East Central neighborhood. Plus, he had also been arrested for exposing himself in public. When the police finally caught up with him to bring him in for questioning, they discovered electrical tape and rope in his car. In fact, after the bones were found in West Mesa, Blea’s ex-wife, April Gillen, promptly called the police to inform them that she believed her ex-husband was the killer. However, so far nothing has definitively connected him to the crimes.

Blea is currently in prison serving a 36-year sentence for raping a 13-year-old girl.

After studying satellite imagery of the area where the bones were uncovered, law enforcement officials were able to pinpoint the approximate years that the ground had been disturbed in the area. They were even able to identify tire tracks leading up to and around some of the burial sites that appeared between the years 2003 and 2005. Those photos also showed evidence of soil movement, most likely from when the graves were dug.

In 2010, George Walker, a private investigator in the Albuquerque area, began receiving messages from someone who claimed to know the identity of the West Mesa Bone Collector. In fact, the emails and phone messages are suspected to even be from the killer himself. However, law enforcement still hasn’t determined who has been leaving the messages, and they aren’t sure if that person even knows anything reliable, as none of the information provided has been verified.

Fred Reynolds, who died in early 2009 of natural causes, left quite a mystery behind. Reynolds was a former heroin addict who was supposedly looking for several missing women before he passed away – one of whom was Doreen Marquez, whose body was found buried in West Mesa. According to Lori Gallegos, a friend of Marquez’s, Reynolds might have been operating an escort service that employed many of the victims. The real question here is why did he have pictures of Marquez and the other missing women before the body dump was even found? Did he know something that the police didn’t, or was he actually the killer?

The main obstacle in the West Mesa Bone Collector case is that there is a surprising lack of evidence. The bodies decomposed drastically while they were buried, and any reliable physical evidence, including DNA, decomposed right along with them. In fact, the coroner couldn’t even definitively tell how the victims were killed, beyond defining it as “homicidal violence.” Additionally, no one has come forward with any eye-witness testimonies that suggest the victims were ever seen with the murderer.

In 2002, Scott Lee Kimball was released from prison early after having agreed to work for the FBI as an informant, but instead he went on a killing spree causing him to wind up back in prison by 2005. Since then, he has been accused of murdering his former cellmate’s girlfriend, Jennifer Marcum, as well as a 19-year-old woman named Kaysi McLeod, who would have technically been his stepdaughter, as he married her mother after she “vanished.” Kimball also reportedly killed his uncle, Terry Kimball, and a woman named LeAnn Emery. He is currently serving a 70-year prison term.

In 2011, the authorities listed Kimball as a suspect in the West Mesa killings. He allegedly visited the area regularly between 2002 and 2005 for his job, and has a history of violence. However, he denies being the killer, and no direct connections have been made between him and the victims.

Unfortuntely, this case has gotten little attention from media outlets, and many suspect that this could have to do with the occupation of the victims. All of the victims were known to work as prostitutes and others had known drug problems. Each of these factors are believed to have played an important part in the amount of attention that the case has so far received. People living in the area continue to be dismayed that the police haven’t given more attention or provided more answers and continue to hope for a future break in the case and peace for the women who were killed.