Serial murder is never a pleasant business, but it is seldom boring. Alas, this prolix documentary is an extreme exception. Sure, the story of Detective Ida Lopez is inspiring, especially the way she overcame a potentially fatal illness, but realistically "Somebody's Daughter" could have been cut by at least half an hour without losing anything important.
While recovering from her illness, Lopez was given a desk job, looking into missing persons, the only detective in the city so assigned. With that sixth sense that so many good police officers, especially detectives, have, she soon came up with a list of missing persons who had possibly been murdered, all of them women, all of them Hispanic, and all of them at the lower end of the food chain.
Then in 2009, a human bone was discovered in the desert, something that was neither surprising nor sinister for that part of the country, but this one was soon identified as recent rather than historic, and eventually, excavation led to the unearthing of no fewer than eleven complete bodies (plus one foetus). All the victims were eventually identified; all but one were Hispanic; the odd one out was a teenager who was both black and from out of town, which led to much intelligent speculation about the perpetrator being a trucker or some such.
An Hispanic truck driver was identified as a good if not prime suspect, but unfortunately for the police and even more unfortunately for him, he was shot dead shortly after strangling a teenage prostitute.
At the time of writing, Albuquerque authorities are offering a $100,000 reward to bring to book the West Mesa Serial Killer. Hopefully when he is caught and convicted, the resulting documentary will be less of an ordeal.