Cinnamon Elks, a 32-year-old White woman, vanished from Albuquerque on August 20, 2004. Her disappearance remained a missing person investigation until February 2009, when a woman walking a dog on the West Mesa found a human bone and police uncovered a burial site near 118th Street SW. Among the remains recovered from that desert site was Cinnamon Elks, whose skeletal remains were identified in March 2009. Authorities concluded she was killed sometime between 2004 and 2005 and that her body had been buried on the mesa.

The West Mesa burial site linked Elks to ten other victims found clustered in the same area. Investigators publicly said the burials suggested a single person or group was responsible, but official records list the suspect as unknown and no arrest or charge has been announced in connection with the murders. Investigative attention has included several men—most notably Lorenzo Montoya and Joseph Blea—but no one has been tied by charges to the burial ground where Elks was found. Anyone with information about Cinnamon Elks or her disappearance is asked to come forward.