In June of 1959, a fisherman on the Rio Grande west of El Paso pulled a black suitcase from the slow, muddy current near Montoya, Texas. Inside was a headless, handless torso — mutilated, skinned, and wrapped in the previous day’s newspaper. Within hours, El Paso County Sheriff Bob Bailey was standing over what he’d later call “the most brutal murder in El Paso history.” What followed was a multi-state investigation that spanned Texas, New Mexico, and beyond — an effort to name the victim and find the sadist who cut him apart.
Over the next weeks, more body parts surfaced downstream and across the desert near Tularosa. Each discovery added a new layer of horror — feet in a sandwich box, organs in a cereal carton, and hands packed in plastic and left in the sand. Every clue pointed to someone who knew anatomy and took their time.
Despite help from the FBI, countless missing-person matches, and even a copycat case a year later in New Mexico, the Rio Grande torso murder remained one of the Southwest’s most chilling mysteries. The body was never identified, the killer never found.
This is Part One of Three of The Torso Murders — a case that haunted El Paso lawmen for years and stretched from the cottonwoods of the Rio Grande to the deserts beneath the Sacramento Mountains.
If you have any information about the 1959 Torso Case, please contact the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office at (915) 538-2292.
Sources: The El Paso Times, The El Paso Herald-Post, The Carlsbad Current-Argus, The Albuquerque Journal
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