Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre ////// Part 1 | Forensic Files

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chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] emergency please help me oh well Slow
Down slow down we were all shot and hold up okay where are you at 12 one East Amador lusus Bowl Los cruus bow yes okay
and there there were shots fired yes all of us were hurt huh all of us were hurt
I think I'm the only one conscious all of you were hurt okay we'll get an ambulance rolling please okay what's
your name Melissa repass please hurry okay Melissa we've got him dispatched did you see who did it no sir they told
us all to get down they shot me five times okay we'll get them rolling Melissa just hang on take a deep breath
that Patrol uniton R how many people are hurt 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven seven people are
hurt yes I think I seven subjects hurt okay okay Melissa it hurts it hurts okay Melissa I've got an ambulance and
I've got the police officers in route they'll be with you just shortly okay okay you didn't see what any of the men
were wearing all our money you didn't see what any kind of the men were wearing or anything no nothing huh they
just walked in MH do you know if they were black men white men from black men they both black two black men yeah
okay no they've left two black male sorry okay okay it's okay Melissa there fire too there's a fire right on the
desk they're going to burn us up are the men still there I don't know you don't know I don't know they put us in the
office they put you in the office yes I need a fire engine too please help me 10
too okay Melissa she said they locked them in the office she doesn't know if they're still there or not the door is
open there's a fire it's on Amador yeah please help can you smell smoke Melissa yes I can see it okay can I get
the fire fire department too she says she smells smoke they may have lit the building on
fire no it is on fire it is on fire it is okay Melissa can I go get by utility one oh okay Melissa we've got him coming
hun we've got them coming somebody my mommy okay Melissa there's a police officer there now okay there he is yes
there he is he's going to try and find you we're in the office just I have 33 [Applause]
traffic God okay die I know hold on Melissa we've got the ambulance coming they're just down the street huh she
said vises all seven are shot they're injured they're in the office where's the office at M in the door the desk and
then you take a right and we're right in the build okay she say you go in the first death take a right they're right
there at the office okay I'm giving the directions on how to get to you to the police officers that are there oh my God
please help me we're helping you Melissa we've got them rolling okay you got to be brave got to be strong now okay oh
God it's going to burn us right now okay can you see Flames yeah okay it's burning us okay oh I got bullets in my
feet okay bullets in my head you bu the bullets in your head too I can't of my go I'm still go ahead I hear the
officers telling you to get out get out I can't there's nobody [Applause] else was that the police officer to get
out then get out okay [Music] we have been doing this for a long time now captain and we have played and
reviewed many 911 calls on this little garage show of ours and that my friend is one of the more disturbing ones I
have heard on this show or really anywhere yeah what you just heard was a 911 call that came in at 8:33 a.m. on
the morning of February 10th 1990 the caller is 12-year-old Melissa repass whose bravery and quick thinking
despite having been shot several times called 911 and without doubt prevented further loss of life in a case that
would later be dubbed the Los cruus bowling alley Massacre Los cruus is the second largest city in the great state
of New Mexico Albuquerque is the largest shout out to my old friend Jose Salazar Las Cruses today is pretty big
with a population of over 100,000 people our case is 30 years old and this case is going back to 1990 and unfortunately
all of this time has passed and yet this case remains unsolved it looks like the population
was right around 57 ,000 back in 1990 so the city has almost doubled in size since the day in question Las cruus is
home to New Mexico State University and it's located just 41 miles north of the Mexican border at Sunland Park anytime
you get this close to the Border Captain this could play a part in the bigger picture here if someone did something
terrible and wanted to flee well one would not have to go too far I mean you could enter the Los Cruses bowl at 8:
a.m. or so Rob kill steal thousands of dollars leave by 8:30ish and with the right amount of
horses you're in line to cross the Good Old Mexico line at 9:00 a.m. but the other thing we should point out is Los
cruus was safe in 1989 for the entire year the city of Los Cruses only had two homicides
1990 would be an entirely different situation let's go through the known details of this
case on the morning of Saturday February 10th 1990 34-year-old Stephanie cak was
scheduled to open the bowling alley for the day a couple of quick things to note
here captain that will be a particular interest it's a Saturday morning after what is regularly a very busy and
profitable Friday night at the bowling alley yeah a lot of bowling alleys have their leagues on Friday nights Stephanie
cak is the day manager at the bowling alley but she is also the daughter of the bowling alley's owner Ronald
cak it's my understanding that Ron started up Los Cruz's Bowl in 1984 so the bowling alley at this time in our
case timeline has been open for 6 years and is operating with a good deal of success Stephanie brought to work with
her that morning her 12-year-old daughter Melissa repass and Melissa 13-year-old friend
Amy Hower the two were planning to run the bowling alley's daycare for the day now
it's unclear what time the three of them you know manager Stephanie cak and the two girls arrived but we do know they
were the first to arrive at the bowling alley for the day mhm the Next To Arrive
would be employee Ida Hogan Saturday is typically a busy day for most bowling alleys but on this day at Las Cruz's
bowl there were some events scheduled for this day and they were expected to be quite busy starting at 10:00 a.m.
when they have a youth league starting up action and then they were also anticipating a busy lunch hour Ida was
in charge of the kitchen that morning this would mean arriving early before the doors open to prep food so they can
keep up once they start to get busy at 10: a.m. yeah there's nothing better than some hot
nachos with that bowling ball grease mixed in the only place that I drink pictures of beer the bowling alley I
don't know what it is I will never get past a great pitcher of beer at the bowling alley everything we just talked
about started before 8:00 a.m. that morning and we know this for good reason because just before 8:00 a.m. another
bowling alley employee will arrive on the scene this is Steve cak so you can tell by the last name cak that Steve is
Stephanie's brother also son of the owner and Uncle to Stephanie's daughter Melissa Steve is not scheduled to work
on this day it sounds like he worked there the busy Friday night before he was actually in route to go to class
that morning but he left his backpack there the previous night very simply he was going to swing by the bowling alley
retrieve his backpack and then be on his way yeah I'm guessing he went to the university this is to be a very quick in
and out for Steve right so Steve said that when he arrived he went through the building's main door the only thing that
seems to be strange to him is when he arrived he found that the door was unlocked
he says he went and he grabbed his book bag in the office he saw his sister his niece and his niece's friend he told his
sister that the door was unlocked and advised her to lock the door hey you got to lock the door we're not open yet he
then left later of course he would be asked if he locked the door when he left he says he did not I don't know if this
was because he was in a hurry or maybe he didn't have his keys with him yeah or maybe he's trying to prove a point to
his sister hey when you open up the bowling alley you need to keep the doors locked that's your responsibility all
the reports that we have they have Steve leaving the facility around sometime after 8:00 a.m. some State just after 8
and others as late as 8:15 the thing here is all reports are in this time frame and only vary by a
matter of just a few minutes so we have employee Ida working in the kitchen and manager Stephanie doing the books in the
office and after Steve leaves the two girls they leave the office and they go to the front of the building to get
something from the vending machines it is at this time that the two girls see two men enter through the
unlocked door one of the men went into the kitchen Ida says she was busy working not aware that someone else had
entered the kitchen she started to chop up some lettuce when she felt something shoved into her side she looked down and
it was a gun the unidentified man had a 22 caliber pistol and ordered her into the bowling alley's office the two
gunmen walked Ida and the two girls into the office where they confronted Stephanie the gunman ordered the women
and children to lie down face down in a corner of the office office the four all
have been coralled all fa down in this corner of the office while the gunmen were taking approximately $4,000 to
$5,000 from the bowling alley safe this after asking where the safe was and we should note Stephanie is the
only one with access to the safe right now there are some conflicting reports Captain as there always are in these
matters but most reports stated that the younger gunmen and note judging by appearance
there seems to be a considerable age discrepancy between our two offenders this will later cause the one
unidentified gunman to be labeled and referred to as the younger gunman or the younger as salent and the older gunman
or the older as salent so most reports state that the younger gunman moved the money from the safe to a briefcase the
briefcase was brought to the scene by the perpetrators there are a couple of reports that one or both of the younger
girls was ordered by one of the offenders to load the briefcase with cash from the safe yeah this is very
similar to like a bank robbery but normally in a bank robbery you have somebody go up to a teller they slide a
note saying give me all the money right they normally don't go to the safe you even see this with like Point Break and
and movies like the town where they're like don't go to the safe it's it's too risky mhm well yes this is a business
and yes they only have one safe and there's not that many employees but this is a large location that these two
individuals have to basically uh control and contain so this is like a bank takeover the lanes itself there were 32
Lanes plus a kitchen an office I mean you're picturing this I believe there were pool tables dart boards so this is
a large building but at this time because the the building is not open to the public because they're closed
they're getting ready to open there's very few people in this large space and usually with businesses you kind of have
to go to the safe where the in a bank you see that sometimes they don't want to go to the Vault right but in a
business you want go to the safe because a lot of times these businesses are trying not to keep a lot of cash on hand
or cash in the register itself in case there is some type of robbery or if you close up somebody breaks in then they
have to break into the safe which is usually very difficult to do to get to the actual big stash of cash but again
with this business I mean this is a bowling alley this is not it's it's not like a lot of people have worked in a
bowling alley if I if I told you well I'm going to go rob a restaurant or something a lot of people have worked in
the restaurant they kind of understand how it works so and what what I'm getting at is that these two individuals
had to know a lot about who worked there if there was security what time people were arriving how they arrived what
exits there were well and regardless of who loaded the cash into the briefcase I
did bring that up because I think we'll swirl back back into that a little bit later but either way soon after all of
this commotion in the office another bowling alley employee this is 26-year-old Steve
teron he's the bowling alley's mechanic he walks into the bowling alley with him
is his two daughters 2-year-old Valerie Terron and six-year-old Paula hogen no relation to Ida the two little kids they
were going to spend the day at the bowling alley's daycare while Steve worked his shift not seeing anyone in
the alley Steve and the two girls entered the office and unfortunately stumbled onto the robbery in
progress the three of them were ordered just like the previous four down to the floor and to put their heads down the
gunman then shot all seven victims multiple times at Point Blank Range then the offenders gathered a
bunch of papers from around the office scattering them about the desk and the floor and ignited the papers setting the
office on fire before fleeing the scene the bowling alley fire was reported at 8:33 a.m. so let's examine the time
frame of everything going on here real quick before we get get too far along a lot of things start to go into motion
around 8:00 a.m. this is when Steve CAC arrives to get his backpack and leaves without locking the door sometime
between a few minutes after 8 and 8:15 per the reports so during a very short time frame as little as 17 minutes to
maybe 29 minutes at the very very most and I think Captain this all went down closer to the 17-minute range I would
agree let's call it 20 or so minutes two guys enter the bowling alley take four persons hostage from three different
locations inside the bowling alley they robbed the joint reports state that the men searched through filing cabinets or
desk drawers or both stole money from the safe and the register if there was money in the register yet and what time
was the bowling alley supposed to open 9:00 a.m. Okay so that to me like I said it's the knowledge of the business who
works there the exits what time they have to have this all done so there's not the public involved and this was
very quick we'll get to the money we're going to shoot any eyewitnesses and then
we're going to set the place on fire which one get rid of the witnesses as well but also it'll get rid of any
evidence fingerprints anything that they might have messed up fire destroys all that right and not only did they shoot
all seven victims they managed to control all four and then on top of that intercepted three more victims
controlled them before shooting all seven and reports stated 25 shots in total were fired then the two gunmen set
the office on fire and fled the scene all in a very short amount of time [Music]
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[Music] all right we're back cheers to you Captain cheers to all the Pirates the
911 call heard in today's trailer the call came in from our little hero this is 12-year-old Melissa repass who has
been shot multiple times five times this in the hands and the head the hands likely as the result of trying
to Shield herself the call comes in at precisely 8:33 a.m. James hash is the man working dispatch that took the call
that day the call lasted a total of 4 minutes and 2 seconds and you can hear on the call that an officer or officers
arrived on the scene before the end of the call so a good response time by our Police Department of under 4 minutes
and by 8:37 a.m. a nightmare that started just 25 or so minutes earlier now we have police fire rescue and
Emergency Medical Services dispatched and some of them are starting to arrive at 1201 East Amador Avenue the Lac cruus
bull First Responders were walking into hell responding to a dire situation of a
robbery a mass shooting and a fire yeah execution of seven people officers responding to the call arrived and they
found a smoldering fire in the bowling alley office with a lot of smoke now at home we have detective Chuck
Franco he gets a call from his Sergeant saying there has been a major crime several people are dead we need you here
right away down at the crime scene his boss didn't go into specifics simply saying there was a major crime and we
need you here now he wouldn't say anything else detective Franco could hear and feel the severity of the
situation just from the brief call but also the serious tone of his Sergeant on the call but when the seasoned detective
arrived at the scene he had no idea what he was walking into this would be one of
the most horrific crimes in the history of Los cruus Amy Hower Paula hogin and Steven Terron were pronounced dead at
the scene Valerie Terron was rushed to the hospital but declared Dead on Arrival the survivors were rushed to the
hospital the dead were left in place in the building for Crime Lab personnel which arrived on the scene around noon
the dead were removed from the building at 400 p.m. we have Dead adults but we have dead children as well mhm I mean
that's just makes it worse the yes it's a special kind of evil it's a certain kind of evil that thankfully does not
exist in very many people walking on this planet that took out just some regular good people on that very sad day
well it seems these perpetrators it seems almost like their actions are very militant you know we're going to go
in there we're not going to be in there long we're going right towards the money
we're going to take all the eyewitnesses we're going to put them all in one location
we're going to cover our surroundings we have new eyewitnesses that come into play we put them into the office now
we're containing the situation we're going to shoot all of them I think all that was premeditated once we get them
into the office there we've seen takeovers before we've seen robberies gone bad we've seen all these things
before and a lot of times even if there's violent violence towards the people that they kidnapped or
took hostage or however you want to phrase it there there's sometimes discussion like in the Hi-Fi murders
there's almost like a discussion of what do we do with these individuals in this
case it doesn't seem like that at all seems like no uh step one go into the building step two take all the hostages
and put them into the office step three get all the money step four shoot all the hostages step five light the place
on fire and then take off you're right you're absolutely right really looks like the two of these gunmen had agreed
upon everything that they set out to do that morning before arriving inside the walls of the bowling alley this is
actually a better case study of what we did what a month or so ago when we covered the Hi-Fi murders that's labeled
as an indiscriminate homicide robbery case study the problem with that is once there some of the offenders has decided
to torture the hostages that's not part of that whole bit it's only a part of that story of that case here it's even
more precise even more just straight up coldblooded we have a mission to carry out and let's
let's go for it here's what we're going to do a b c d and e and then we're out of there this is a very perfect case
study for indiscriminate homicide robbery just meaning that no matter who is in there they are going to be taken
out because we don't want any eyewitnesses afterward the early reports were that
four are dead three are wounded police would not comment on the identities of the survivors but did say that the
survivors were believed to be in critical condition detectives were hoping to get some good information from
them well and hold on I I think one of the reasons that they did that is like I said again the knowledge that these
individuals would have to know to carry out these crimes so precisely they would
possibly know some of these individuals the individuals might not know them but that the perpetrators would know those
individuals if that makes any sense at all well even if they don't they know that they're in the hospital right so
it's the same situation as the high-fi murders where we have some survivors thankfully we have some survivors who
might be able to identify these guys by description at least or give clues or leads to the detectives and they're not
going to say who these people are they don't want it make it they don't want to make it any easier for you to locate
them in the hospital and we very likely have officers set up for security purposes to make sure that these two
gunmen don't come back and try to finish the job after they learned that they were unsuccessful in killing all all of
the witnesses cuz we know that that was their goal right police set up 10 roadblocks in and out of the city
stopping every vehicle and asking the driver and passengers questions we know we are looking for two men we are
looking for two guns who got away with about four to $5,000 that's the simplest form of what
we are looking for police set into motion a massive Manhunt for The Killers immediately this included but was not
limited to the following Los cruus City police State Police the County's sheriff's department University Police
US Customs the border patrol and the federal drug enforcement agency six aircraft and helicopters were used this
including a US Customs Blackhawk helicopter but the suspect specs successfully eluded capture right but we
okay but we have no eyewitnesses outside of the bowling alley so we don't know what these individuals were traveling in
well let's get to to leads and suspects here and see what we do have because we do have some leads on the suspects and
some fairly good ones I guess first remember Steve cak who left the bowling alley right before this Robbery Homicide
went down right he says during his quick stop that he saw two guys and given the
very short time frame we are working with these two guys might be the perpetrators he says he saw two guys one
older than the other both he believed could be Hispanic he saw the men come from around the back of the building to
the side of the building one guy gave the other what appeared to be a briefcase I believe Steve said it was
the younger susp that then kind of kneeled down and looked at Steve M Steve told the
investigators about this and provided a description this very shortly after the case broke now two other Witnesses a man
working outside said he saw men matching this description given to police by Steve that he saw the two men running
from the bowling alley parking lot another individual working nearby said they heard the gunshots but saw nothing
based off of what Steve saw and what he reported to police as well as the other eyewitness that we just discussed here
is the descriptions of the perpetrators that was released to the newspapers one man is described as Spanish with a dark
complexion approximately 29 or 30 years of age 5' 10 in in height and weighing 170 lb the suspect possibly had a 6 to 8
in blue steel revolver in his possession he was last seen traveling in a Westerly
direction from the intersection of espia and Amador Avenue the second suspect is
described as a Hispanic male 5' 6 in in height weighing 135 240 lb with a medium
build and dark complexion he has black hair comb back and brown eyes approximately 45 to 50 years of age so a
discrepancy of 15 to maybe 20 or more years between the two perpetrators yeah and we do end up with a vague vehicle
description and we also end up with sketches as well yes yeah we we'll get to that part of it because the first
descriptions that come out out of our suspects are these computer generated I don't know if that's the right term
computer generated images but they're computer images that are put together and released we do end up with vague a
vague vehicle description in the papers anyway it says the suspects may have been driving a
green older model utility van or truck or pickup and some descriptions of this state that it was a
4wheel drive vehicle that to me Captain for vehicle description is about as vague as it can
get when it says older model utility van or truck or pickup it's kind of like we
don't really know yeah but this is also in a time where there was less vehicles on the road like that anyone whether
you're familiar with this case or not is will be familiar with the sketches that
the captain was talking about the suspect sketches that come out this actually comes out 5 days into the
investigation and the way that this comes about is these are not technically different it's not different
descriptions of the two suspects it's just a better composite drawing of the two suspects right what we have at first
is the old system would be you sit down you tell the detectives you tell somebody what you saw and they go okay
well point to which nose perpetrator A's nose looks like and okay so maybe it's nose C10 on their
nose category and then somebody punches that into a computer and after you go through each of the features of the face
and the body then it will it will the computer will put all those together and now you have an image of what this
person looks like based off of what your eyewitness says each of the features look like once put together the pictures
that were released to the paper to be honest with you Captain it it was hard for me to discern exactly
what I was looking at with those old pictures now what we have here is we have Steve CAC who says I sat down with
somebody else and they actually did a hand drawn sketch of what I was telling them and when they turned over the page
and showed me I said wow that looks exactly like the two guys that I saw so days into this we have a physical
somebody sitting down and having an actual sketch drawn of the two suspects we have our number one witness who says
it looks just like the two guys that he saw that day that will then become what I would refer to in this case as the
famous composite drawings for the Lac cruus Bowl case it's the one that even if you don't know this case very well
but you're kind of dialed into True Crime and you're dialed into to Crime you have seen these composite sketches
before you've seen them somewhere even if you weren't looking into this case well yeah cuz if you're looking at the
one sketches the first thing you think is oh crap Eddie Murphy did this several people have said that one of the one of
the persons in the composite has a resemblance to Eddie Murphy yeah like coming to America Eddie
Murphy I I look at Eddie Murphy and I don't see a man that has aged more than a few days in
physically in over decades we're talking decades Eddie Murphy still looks very young to me well I was talking about the
thickness of the mustache and the thickness of his hair reminds me more of coming to America than it does like
Beverly Hills coper yeah m Beverly Hills Cop good or Dr ditt what I meant Captain by famous
composite sketches is that when researching other cases these composits pop up on the
internet if you go and you try to look up another case and you you're looking up for suspect composite drawings in
that case there's a good chance that on your image panel there this image will be in that row and that's why when we
started really looking into this case a few months ago I thought it was kind of Haunting for me to see the composite
sketch of the two suspects because I'm like I've seen that several times before and now I have the case to connect it to
and who would have thought that the Donkey from Shrek would be capable of murders this heinous the one thing
that's interesting to me about the uh vehicle description the vague vehicle description yeah this is 30 years ago
this is a 30y old case what we have seen with the the composite sketches of the suspects that has been sent out and
plastered everywhere over the following three decades after this case broke we've also even seen age progression
sketches based off of those original sketches from 1990 what is left out of the future
suspect information is this vehicle description what that what I'm kind of inferring from that is
that maybe at some point the detectives believe that including this very vague vehicle description might be
hurting that information more than it's helping so I think it's purposely left out because I think that they go this
might not have anything to do with our case at all what we end up happening have happening is that we have Steve CAC
who is called by police and brought down to the Border because they pull over four guys who were stopped in a vehicle
and they have a large sum of cash with them they want to know if Steve believes that any of these guys were the gunmen
for that he saw lcu's bull right he says he cannot identify any of the four men as being one or both of the two men that
he saw that day well it makes sense though hey we're going to send two people in we got two people in the
vehicle and maybe the idea was to hit multiple places and they just never did well and necessarily the other two guys
don't always have to know what the other two guys were up to earlier that day right or the previous day regardless
what's important here is Steve says those the people you're showing me are not the two people that I saw uh at
lcu's Bowl before the murders now there is one very bizarre incident this all the while police are securing the
bowling alley murder crime scene setting up and executing roadblocks questioning
and searching the area and conducting what very quickly became a massive Manhunt this is on the same day as the
Lac cruus bull massacre around 2:30 in the afternoon police found a man wandering around the
streets he was the victim of a stabbing that took place shortly before they found him it's thought that the man who
is only identified as a male in his 30s identified the person who stabbed him and maybe even identified the as salent
by name and now police are looking for that guy too the attacker was described in the paper as a male 20 to 30 years
old 5 fo8 to 5' 11 in tall the stab victim was taken to the hospital to be treated for his wounds unfortunately
that man died while undergoing surgery the police have stated that this crime has nothing to do with the Lac cruus
bowling alley Massacre and I fully believe them 100% because could you imagine a better break
for police right in this very difficult situation where you are very quickly executing a massive State and even at
the border Manhunt for two Mass murderers that you don't have a solid ID for or solidication of the vehicle
either what a better break that one of them decides to stab the other one and now you got one in in a hospital bed and
you're out looking for the other one and and he's been identified by the person that he stabbed yeah it's kind of like
scream at the end where he you know he has to stab his partner so they can cover up the murders yeah so
those two things have nothing to do with one another but remember we stated earlier that lausus the whole city for
the entire year of 1989 only had two homicides on this single day in 1990 they have a situation where two
separate incidents ended up in homicides and the one unfortunately was multiple homicides four people were killed in a
press conference that evening the police chief apologized to the room full of reporters this for not having much
information to pass along to them this poor man told the room he was sorry but it has been a very hectic day well like
you said with such a safe area the whole department and the community has to fill
somewhat defeated yes 100% I mean we have the police chief who feels defeated some other feedback some other thoughts
going on at the time we have a statement from Captain Fred Rubio he said the following he said we're looking at the
motive as robbery we're looking at the motive that for some reason or other they decided to rid themselves of any
Witnesses and we also have a local business owner that was interviewed by the papers who offered up some
speculation saying that he thought that the person's responsible studied it I'm guessing meaning the business in the
building and planned it the robbery especially because Friday night after all of the leagues and everything and
all the business that's one of their busiest nights meaning they would make off with a pretty good take on Saturday
morning the case was also featured on everyone's favorite old show Unsolved Mysteries and aired in April of 1990 on
season 2 episode 19 it was one of four stories some may remember it it was the Bobby Kennedy episode well and also
we're thinking that they got roughly around $4,000 $4 to $55,000 is what has been reported so that'd be roughly
$8,000 to $10,000 in today's money so we're not talking about like this could get you out of trouble if maybe you owe
somebody drug money maybe you owe some some bad gambling debts or whatever right but this is not money that's going
to set you up for the rest of your life right right 100% it's not lifechanging money unless you're in some serious hot
water with somebody yeah unless it's getting hot in the hot tub on un hot in the hot tub on Unsolved Mysteries the
the lasu's bull murders segment was titled no one spared it was a short part of the episode and the story was the
only one that fell under the wanted category that's kind of a shitty pun don't you think what's that no one
spared well that's the thing because you got strikes and Spares that's the thing
with Unsolved Mysteries that I that I like to try to uh point out when we do reference it because a lot of times we
we don't get any information like um the the cases are never called what the victim's names would be or what the case
goes on to be known as you know we covered boys on the tracks which generally that case of the of those two
teenage boys is known as boys on the tracks that case I believe was called friends till the end or something like
that right and this one was called no one no one spared and you're right it absolutely is kind of a bad there um but
it's also that was the intention of the two gunmen was to get rid of all seven of these people or what what's
terrifying is it didn't matter to them how many people were there at all if it was one they were going to attempt to
kill one person if it was 7 10 12 whatever it was going to be they were going to attempt to kill that many
people it was only about a 4minute piece but one thing that I think is really kind of cool that that we should give a
big kudos to Unsolved Mysteries for you got to keep in mind that they're recording and producing all of these
episodes in advance of them being released right this case took place in February February 10th of 1990 it was in
April that they aired the their coverage of the Las cruus bowling alley murders and it was really
just the one segment flashing those composite sketches of the two suspects and asking the public for help think
about the turnaround on that it's two months turnaround really that's them stepping in some people would look at
that and say they only did four minutes on this big case MH that's them stepping
in and saying after the fact providing some kind of help any help that they could well and it's tough sometimes when
these cases come out and they start getting some legs on them in in the social media world and people say cover
them and you go well there's not a lot of information out there and maybe we don't have a source that we can get
information that's not out in the media yet like we've had like we've been able to do in many cases mhm but some of the
cases when it's a missing person or it's a murder of a child you just put out the
episode the best you can and hopes that it gets people talking and leads to some
results the interesting thing that I found here Captain was I went back and I was looking okay well what was going on
on the local scene right around the time of the Unsolved Mysteries episode that featured this case and what I found was
we have police chief well then Police Chief Ron Axel um he says publicly that 312 potential suspects had
been questioned by that point so two months later that's a lot of potential suspects that they have spoke to by this
point and it does look like the unsolved mystery spotlighting the case did generate some leads but those don't seem
to have really have gone anywhere the piece did Inspire future filmmaker Charlie Min to make a
fulllength documentary film called a nightmare in Los crues the documentary was released around the 20th anniversary
of the the massacre so in 2010 it came out and it features actual crime scene video pictures and interviews with
family members since its release more tips have been reported to the local police and this film really got a lot of
folks talking not just talking about potential leads or potential suspects but it got people that were very close
to the crime the victims themselves to get out and talk you know know sometimes it takes the passing of time for people
to not be afraid or to have some time to grieve for their lost loved ones before
they can come out and speak to what they know about the case or their feelings on
a tragedy such as this [Music] a lot more to dive into tomorrow and until then be good be kind and don't
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you

Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre ////// Part 1

Part 1 of 2

Original Release: 7-1-2020

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

This week Nic & the Captain go through the details, updates and speculation of a horrific mass shooting. The Las Cruces Bowl shooting of 1990 is one of the most well known unsolved cases of the Southwest, but there is still hope. Investigators believe that after 30 years of searching this case is still very much solvable. Join the conversation and find out if the Garage agrees.

Beer of the Week - Aztec Death Whistle Garage Grade - 4 and a half bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

The episode details the Los Cruces bowling alley massacre and Melissa Repass's heroic 911 call during the incident.

Key points

The Los Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre. A robbery at a bowling alley leads to a tragic shooting of seven victims.
A Disturbing 911 Call. A 12-year-old girl calls 911 after being shot during a robbery, showing incredible bravery.
The Call for Help. 12-year-old Melissa Repass calls 911 after being shot multiple times.
A Nightmare Unfolds. First responders arrive at a mass shooting scene, discovering a horrific crime.
The Manhunt Begins. Police set up roadblocks and initiate a massive manhunt for the killers.
Composite Sketches Released. Witnesses provide descriptions leading to composite sketches of the suspects.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Please help me!

3:58WatchFeb 17, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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