Something’s very wrong
Now turn out the lights
Heavy thoughts are haunting me tonight
~James Hetfield, Metallica
On the night of January 11th, 1986, University of New Mexico student Linda Daniels was abducted by four drifters and taken to a low-budget, east central hotel in Albuquerque. Drugged, repeatedly assaulted and videotaped, Daniels was later put in the trunk of a car and taken to an isolated location in the Jemez Mountains when media coverage put the entire citizenry in a panic. Under an angry moon, Daniels was forced to lie beneath a bridge where she was shot in the head. It would be more than a week before her killers would provide police with the whereabouts of her body.
There are some things in this world for which there are no explanations. As a UNM student in 1986, I remember being scared to the very core of my being when this story broke. More than 20 years later, the city of Albuquerque has yet to recover from Daniel’s murder.
To this day, the senseless death of Linda Daniels still haunts me.
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