>> probably because he felt safe out here. >> reporter: for detectives like todd babcock it all seemedd determined that one of the unidentified sets of remains, jane doe number 7, was a young black female. >> when they told us that they had a young black girl, i thought, i didn't have a young black girl on my list. >> reporter: for medical investigator wendy honeyfield the bones of jane doe number 7 and her pink-tipped acrylic nails were a beguiling puzzle. >> she's like a lot of other cases that we had skeletal remains that come in. and there's so much work that's always done behind the scenes to get them identified. that nobody really ever sees. >> reporter: for the detectives who were trying to catch a serial killer those remains represented a wild card with staggering implications. what if the west mesa grave digger was a prolific transient? what if jane doe number 7 was just the first of many victims the grave digger brought to the west mesa from somewhere else? >> who was she? where did she come from? how did she get to albuquerque? not all those questions have been answered as o

. >> reporter: detective todd babcock and sergeant lou heckroft drew the job of trying to track down that he'd killed at least 11 women and that the 2005 housing boom that brought suburban sprawl to the west mesa probably forced him to abandon this burial ground and find another one where there would be no neighbors around to watch him work. >> you're up half a mile to 3/4 of a mile from any populated area back in the time frame. >> reporter: a time frame, 2003 to early 2005, and 11 sets of bones. not a lot to go on. but the detectives knew simply finding the bones in the first place had been an incredibly lucky break. >> all the stars aligned. yeah. >> reporter: oddly enough, the west mesa investigators' good fortune began thousands of miles to the east in the fall of 2008. that's when crumbling financial markets on wall street caused home construction on the west mesa to grind to a halt. >> the company kind of left town and just kind of left the land the way it was. >> if those houses had been built, they would have been built right on top of that graveyard. >> correct. >> and nobo

. >> for detectives like todd babcock, it all seemed to add up except for one thing.b had determined that one of the unidentified sets of remains, jane doe number 7, was a young black female. >> when they told us they had a young black girl, i thought, i didn't have a young black girl on my list. >> for medical investigator wendy honeyfield, the bones of jane doe number 7 and her pink tipped acrylic nails were a beguiling puzzle. >> she's like a lot of other cases that we have skeletal remains that come in and there's so much work that's always done behind the scenes to get them identified that nobody really ever sees. >> for the detectives who were trying to catch a serial killer, those remains represented a wildcard with staggering implications. what if the west mesa gravedigger was a prolific transient? what if jane doe number 7 was just the first of many victims the gravedigger brought to the west mesa from somewhere else? >> who was she? where did she come from? how did she get to albuquerque? not all those questions have been answered as of yet. >> it would take