Town note
The first people in the area were the Anasazi, who built the pueblo at the Aztec Ruins National Monument in the early 12th century.
about 0:13:03The story
In February 1994 Sandra Phillips was a seventeen-year-old girl living with her mother, Darlene Phillips, in a small house on the outskirts of Flora Vista in San Juan County, north-western New Mexico. She had moved there from Phoenix and was a cheerleader. She and her best friend, Lacey Miner, both loved animals and had planned to go to nursing school together, taking the same classes and sharing lifts. Sandra kept a pet iguana and was described as a reliable, friendly teenager.
On February 7th, 1994, Darlene was at work. At 12.40 p.m. Sandra called her from the house to say she was going to walk into town and apply for jobs. It was a town of about 2,100 people and the main drag was less than a mile from her home. Between 12.30 and 1.30 p.m. several people saw her walking around Flora Vista. She stopped at the Flora Vista Water Users Association to pay her mother's water bill, applied for a job at a restaurant and was seen near a convenience store. When Darlene came home that evening Sandra was not there and the vacuuming she had promised to do was undone. Darlene called the police and then searched the restaurant and the convenience store herself. Lacey was called and had heard nothing. The family stayed up all night.
The next day they spoke to the police and began putting up posters, not only locally but as far away as Flagstaff, Prescott, Holbrook and Phoenix, because Sandra had lived in Phoenix and they thought she might have run away. Weeks passed. Darlene walked the streets with a photograph, following every lead, and at one point she and Sandra's brother travelled to Colorado to consult a psychic. The family said they got up, went to work and slept, but it was not a life.
His mother later described him as a man who had killed a cat, pushed his sister down the stairs and punched his sister in the stomach while she was pregnant.
On March 21st, 1994, a shepherd found Sandra's partially decomposed body next to a tree in a remote, hilly area about three and a half miles north of Flora Vista. A denim coat belonging to Darlene was draped over the lower part of the body. Darlene had told her to wear it because it was chilly. The coat had blood stains consistent with Sandra's blood. Her shirt was pulled up over her bra, one lace-up boot had been removed and her trousers and underwear had been pulled off one leg. A forensic pathologist said the condition of the clothing was consistent with a sexual assault and found bruising on her inner thighs indicating a struggle. The cause of death was ligature strangulation: a rope had been wrapped tightly around her neck about four times, with knots after the third and fourth loops, and some of her hair may have been caught in it. The medical investigator thought she probably died on the day she disappeared and that she had been killed elsewhere and dumped there. A bootprint was found in the soil beneath her body.
He told other people different versions, including that he had talked about his marital problems with her and may have asked her to have a beer, and that he had picked her up because she had red hair and he liked red hair. His mother-in-law noticed a scratch on his face and a bruise on his lip around the time of the disappearance. Witnesses identified the rope used on Sandra as one that had long been kept in the back of a white pickup truck belonging to his wife's grandfather, where it held down a rubbish barrel on trips to the dump. Investigators also thought his boots matched a bootprint at the scene.
His wife told her mother, who eventually told the police. He said he carried her to the side of the road, threw her in a ditch and put the jacket over her.
The case was capital and the prosecution sought the death penalty, although New Mexico juries rarely imposed it. His wife testified that his carnival work involved talking to customers and tricking their minds.
His mother, Wanda Lindberg, testified for the prosecution that he had seen Sandra and given her a ride on the day she died, that he was incorrigible and that the death penalty would keep him from hurting anyone else.
He argued that testimony about what he told his lawyer was privileged, but the court held that telling a third party waived the privilege. He argued that his 1982 attack on a woman should have counted in his favour because he did not kill her.
In September 2014 the two men asked the state Supreme Court to spare them because of the repeal. Law professors and the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association supported the chge. In 2016 Governor Susana Martinez, the day after a police officer was shot dead, said she intended to seek reinstatement of the death penalty. In April 2018 the court heard two more hours of argument, with a ruling possibly a year away.