1987: 2 bodies unearthed in desert
Desert Deaths: The bodies of two girls were found in the desert by a Water Utilities worker.
1987: 2 bodies unearthed in desert Desert Deaths: The bodies of two girls were found in the desert by a Water Utilities worker. Check out this story on ElPasoTimes.com: http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/archives/2017/08/10/1987-2-bodies-unearthed-desert/480122001/
El Paso Times Published 10:30 a.m. MT Aug. 10, 2017
05 SEP 1987 - El Paso police officers Jim Rodriguez, left, and Steven Bilbo carried shovels used in uncovering two bodies discovered Friday morning about a mile east of McCombs drive in Northeast El Paso.(Photo: El Paso Times)Buy Photo
September 5, 1987, El Paso Times
Janet Perez
Skeletal remains of two young women were found in separate shallow graves in the Northeast El Paso desert Friday morning. Homicide detectives late Friday said they had not identified the women or determined the cause of death. They said one had been dead longer than the other.
The decomposed bodies were found in graves about 2 feet deep and 50 feet apart in the desert about a mile east of McCombs Street, Sgt. Jorge Ortiz of the Northeast substation said.
Police Lt. Paul Saucedo of the Crimes Against Persons Division said detectives have no suspects and are not making any assumptions, but that three young women have been reported missing from Northeast El Paso in the past three months.
The mother of a woman missing since June 5 said detectives told her they are 95 percent sure one of the bodies is that of her adopted daughter, 20-year-old Karen Baker. Mary Baker said she is scheduled to meet with detectives at the district attorney's office at 9 a.m. today.
Autopsies are scheduled to be preformed today, Saucedo said. "We'll be calling those (families) who have reported missing people if we feel they might be our victims," Saucedo said.
He described the first body as being that of a 5-foot-2 Caucasian woman in her mid-20s to 30s. The nude body was found by a city Water Utilities employee who was working in the desert at about 9 a.m. Friday.
Saucedo said preliminary reports from the medical examiner's office say the body was in the desert probably between several weeks ad three months. Police officers who were called to the scene by Water Utilities officials found the second body, which was partially clothed, within an hour.
Saucedo would not describe the clothing found at the scene. He said the second body was that of a 5-foot-2 Caucasian in her 20s and had been there probably between three and six months.
Mary Baker said detectives contacted her at about 7:30 p.m. Friday asking for her daughter's dental records. She said they told her the woman who was partially clothed was wearing panties and that a pair of red pants and a denim jacket with Marlboro cigarettes in the pocket were found at the scene.
Karen Baker was last seen wearing red stirrup pants, a denim jacket and short white boots, according to the people who saw her last, at the Hawaiian Royale Motel at 8735 Dyer June 5. Mary Baker said her daughter smoked Marlboro cigarettes.
"Everything they said fit," she said, crying, Friday night. "They didn't say that it was violent. They didn't say very much."
Vera Vasquez, mother of Cheryl Lynn Vasquez Dismukes, said she had called detectives Friday after seeing news reports about the bodies. "The detectives told me he's pretty sure it's not my daughter," Vasquez said. Dismukes was reported missing June 28 from the Circle K store at McCombs and Sarah Anne.
More than a dozen investigators from the police Identification and Records and Crimes Against Persons divisions, along with investigators from the county medical examiner's office, were at the crime scene Friday morning.
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