Tyra Perry was a 16-year-old Black / African American female whose disappearance in late December 1987 became a long-running Albuquerque-area cold case. Perry was five months pregnant and living with her mother, Faye, and her grandparents. She attended New Futures High School, a school serving teenage parents, and her mother later remembered her as a sweet young woman who appeared to be trying to make changes in her life as she prepared for her baby.
Perry was last known to be alive on December 28, 1987. Accounts of her final movements have differed over the years. Bernalillo County cold-case information states that witnesses reported seeing a male force Perry into a large white vehicle near a store in the 3800 block of East Central Avenue. Other reporting described the vehicle more specifically as a white Cadillac and connected its driver to people involved in Albuquerque's drug and prostitution scene. Another account indicated that Perry may instead have been seen getting into a truck on Central Avenue, leaving investigators with conflicting descriptions of how she disappeared.
On January 2, 1988, a man walking his dog discovered Perry's body in the La Cueva campground area of the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque. Authorities determined that Perry and her unborn child had been killed by stab wounds. Retrospective reporting based on contemporary accounts described two stab wounds to her back, while Bernalillo County cold-case information more generally describes multiple stab wounds. The isolated mountain location where she was found was some distance from the Albuquerque streets where she had last been seen, suggesting that she had been taken there either before or after the attack. The publicly available records establish January 2 as the date her body was found, but do not clearly establish exactly when during the preceding days she was killed.
One of the more detailed theories arose from a witness who claimed Perry had been forced into a white Cadillac by a man associated with the East Central drug and prostitution scene. According to that account, she was taken to a cocaine party, where she rejected a man's sexual advances and was stabbed. The witness reportedly said Perry's family knew the man involved. Investigators did not treat that story as established fact, however; retrospective reporting says the witness failed a polygraph examination and authorities discounted the account. Other theories were subsequently explored, including the possibility that a young woman who was jealous of Perry had been involved. None of those theories resulted in a publicly announced prosecution.
Perry's killing was also examined against the backdrop of several unsolved murders involving women connected to Albuquerque's Central Avenue street and drug scene during the 1980s. Investigators and later researchers noted recurring references to a white Cadillac and men involved in pimping and drug trafficking, but no publicly established evidence has proved that Perry's murder was committed by the same person or group responsible for any of those other deaths. The limited forensic evidence recovered in Perry's case and conflicting witness accounts made establishing what happened particularly difficult.
Decades later, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office continued treating Perry's homicide as an unsolved cold case. In 2013 and 2014, the department distributed decks of playing cards featuring unsolved homicide victims to correctional facilities in hopes that inmates might recognize cases and provide information. Perry's case generated significant attention. By February 2014, sheriff's officials said calls from prisons had produced new information and that investigators were following up with several people who might possess valuable knowledge about her murder.
Despite those renewed leads, publicly available information does not show that anyone has been arrested, formally charged, tried, or convicted for killing Perry and her unborn child. No individual has been publicly established by law enforcement as her killer. More than three decades after she was found in the Sandia Mountains, the case has continued to be described as unsolved, with investigators left to reconcile old witness statements, possible connections to Albuquerque's late-1980s drug and prostitution network, and tips that surfaced many years after the homicide.
