El Paso, like so many other cities in America, has seen its share of runaways in recent years. With drugs and broken homes, the promise of excitement to be found in other cities, other states, uncounted teens have fled their homes and schools to search for fame and fortune on the road. A few make good, some wander back in time, but nearly all leave tokens of themselves behind, some indication of their motive for departure. During 1987, though, a rash of disappearances around El Paso baffled parents and police as normal, well-adjusted girls and women dropped from sight, without a trace. Fourteen-year-old Marjorie Knox was the first to go, reported missing from nearby Chaparral, New Mexico, on February 14, 1987. Three weeks later, on March 7, 13-year-old Melissa Alaniz vanished from El Paso, police noting that both girls had parents working at the Rockwell plant, outside of town. Desiree Wheatly, 15, disappeared in El Paso on June 7, last seen in the company of a man with heavily-tattooed arms. Three days later, Karen Baker's disappearance seemed to break the pattern. At 20, she was a legal adult, but police learned that her mother worked in the same Rockwell plant, with a nodding acquaintance to Marjorie Knox. Was there some hidden link between the missing girls, thus far unknown to the police? On June 28, 19-year-old Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes vanished from El Paso, followed on July 3 by 17-year-old Angela Frausto. Maria Casio, age 24, was staying with friends when she failed to come home on the night of August 19. They reported her missing next day, and her car was found on August 21, without a trace of the missing woman. On August 28, 14-year-old Dawn Smith left her El Paso home, promising to "keep in touch," and abruptly dropped out of sight. On September 4, utility workers unearthed Maria Casio's remains in the desert northwest of El Paso. Police were summoned to the scene, and they soon found Karen Baker buried in a shallow grave 100 yards away. With no obvious wounds on either body, the cause of death for both victims was listed as "apparent strangulation." On October 20, 1987, hikers found the remains of Desiree Wheatly and Dawn Smith within a mile of the other grave sites. Two weeks later, desert prospectors found Angela Frausto in a nearby shallow grave. Marjorie Knox, Melissa Alaniz and Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes are still missing, but all are now presumed dead by authorities. Police, meanwhile, have focused their attention on a suspect in the case. On September 19, 1987, an El Paso prostitute complained to police that one of her "tricks" had driven her into the desert, near the grave sites, where he pulled a knife and threatened her before she fled on foot. Another hooker, raped some weeks before, came forward after the report was published, both women remarking on their assailant's numerous tattoos. A search of police tattoo files led to the October 22 arrest of David Leonard Wood, an ex-convict with a history of violence against females. Born in 1957, Wood logged his first arrest at age 19, for the attempted rape of a 12-year-old girl. In court, he pled guilty to a reduced charge of indecency with a minor and spent three years in prison, paroled in January 1980. Four months later, he raped a 13-year-old stranger and a 19-year-old acquaintance, the latter mistake earning him concurrent prison terms of 20 years on each charge. He was paroled again in January 1987, days before El Paso's string of deaths and disappearances began. Wood denies any involvement in the spate of murders, and he has never been charged in the case. (Conviction of kidnapping and rape, in March 1988, has returned him to prison with a new 50-year sentence.) In the absence of an indictment, authorities note that Woods - and his tattoos - perfectly match descriptions of the man last seen with Desiree Wheatly in June 1987. He was also seen riding a motorcycle with Karen Baker, several months before she died, and witnesses have placed Woods at a local convenience store where Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes was last seen alive on June 28. (Wood admits hearing "rumors" that Cheryl's family suspected him of her murder, and claims he "went searching" for her, all in vain.) Finally, friends of Wood have identified photos of Maria Casio and Dawn Smith as friends of the suspect, a claim Wood dismisses as simple "mistaken identity." Hanging tough in the face of mounting suspicion, Wood granted an interview to local journalists in March 1988, prior to his sentencing on the kidnap and rape charges. Avoiding the question of guilt or innocence, he harped on the killer's apparent carelessness in disposing of victims. "If I am going to kill somebody," he declared, "I'm going to put them 15 feet under, up in the mountains, where the coyotes can't get to them."