Archuleta County detective reopens 1982 killings

PAGOSA SPRINGS • The slaying of a couple found dead more than a quarter-century ago in Archuleta County are getting new attention from a detective who wants to know who they are — and who killed them.

A woman was found strangled in the San Juan River in September of 1982. A few weeks later, a man's body was recovered nearby, dead of gunshot wounds. Neither victim was identified, and no one was charged in their deaths.

At the time, people around the Four Corners area reported having seen the couple at bars in Durango and in Farmington and Dulce, N.M. But no one knew who they were.

The only clues led nowhere. The woman was found wearing a T-shirt with the logo of Lazy B Guest Ranch, a now-defunct brothel in Fallon, Nev. The reverse showed a map of brothels in that area. No connection was made.

And in her pocket: the name and phone number of a Farmington, N.M., woman. But the woman said she had no idea why her name and phone number ended up in a dead woman's pocket, and she was eventually cleared as a suspect.

The case went cold, the woman buried in Espanola, N.M., and the man at Fairview Memorial Park in Albuquerque. His grave is marked only by a number.

An Archuleta County Sheriff's Office detective wants to take a fresh crack at the killings.

George Barter is re-interviewing witnesses and ordering new sketches of what the couple might have looked like to try to solve the mystery murders.

"These people deserve to be known," Barter told the Durango Herald. "And their families deserve to know where they are."

The witnesses to the case are also interested in settling what happened to the suspected hitchhikers.

Rancher Frank Chavez, now 76, recalls riding his horse on Carracas Bridge near the New Mexico state line and seeing what looked like a football in the San Juan River.

Chavez investigated and discovered a human foot, attached to a dead woman, her upper body skeletonized. Investigators concluded she'd been strangled and had been in the river four to six weeks before her body was found.

The man was found a month later, on Oct. 22, 1982. His body was even more decomposed. His body was also found in the San Juan River, his corpse mostly eaten by coyotes.

New Mexico authorities at the time used the skulls to draw sketches of what the victims may have looked like. But Jane Doe and John Doe were never identified. Barter says the skulls remain in storage at a museum used by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator.

Some neighbors haven't forgotten.

"It was a dark day in our community here to have something like that happen in our backyard," Chavez said.