In February , the skeletal remains of a woman and fetus were found on the western edges of Albuquerque by a hiker. Police eventually uncovered the remains of eleven women, most of them known to have worked as prostitutes in the city within the previous decade. It is still not known who killed these women. In November , a young woman testified in federal court that she was taken from Texas to Albuquerque by a pimp who coerced her into satisfying the sexual demands of paying customers.
The woman, who was 16 at the time, told federal authorities that the pimp had sex with her in order to confirm that she was not an undercover police officer. She was then forced to perform sexual services under threat of violence for over a year. Since at least the s, Albuquerque has been the site of a thriving and continuous market for the sexual services of women and girls and probably men and boys.
From to , the city hosted two successive zones where women in brothels, cribs one-room operations , and on the streets were free to lawfully trade sex for value. The first district, located on what is now the Old Town Plaza, prospered until about The second flourished for more than three decades in the heart of modern-day Downtown Albuquerque.
But, prostitution did not disappear like the crusaders had anticipated; it simply went underground β where it has remained right up to the present. Unlike the mythic image of the good-hearted and gaudy western prostitutes promoted in films and television, life for the vast majority of prostitutes in Albuquerque was grim.
Then and now, the life and career of a sex worker was one of virtually unending poverty, violence, degradation, exploitation, and social marginalization. The women who worked the streets and houses of Albuquerque worked in hazardous conditions for little money, and often ended their brief and turbulent careers physically and mentally shattered, impoverished, and addicted to drugs and alcohol.
