Karen Baker was 20 and a mother of three when she vanished after being last seen June 5, 1987, at the Hawaiian Royale Motel on Dyer Street in El Paso. Witnesses said she had a date with a man identified as David Wood, described as tall, thin, blonde and tattooed; some accounts say she left on a red motorcycle with him. Her mother’s concern prompted an early FBI inquiry into a possible kidnapping and removal to Mexico.

On September 4, 1987, a utility worker found Baker’s body in a shallow grave in the Northeast El Paso desert, about 50 feet from the grave of 24-year-old Rosa Maria Casio. Advanced decomposition prevented a definitive cause of death, and examiners estimated she had been dead three to six months. Investigators noted a pattern: several young women disappeared within a three-mile radius that summer and were later found in shallow desert graves.

Police eventually linked these deaths to David Leonard Wood, a convicted sex offender paroled earlier in 1987 who frequented areas where victims were last seen. Witness identifications, a surviving victim’s account, and forensic matches such as fibers tied Wood to multiple graves. He was arrested in 1990, tried beginning in 1992, convicted and sentenced to death.

Does anyone have memories of Karen, the Hawaiian Royale Motel in 1987, or other details from that summer in Northeast El Paso that might shed light on her last movements?