In the spring of 1992, two young women were discovered along the highways of Wyoming—one near Bitter Creek along Interstate 80, the other in a drainage ditch beside Interstate 90 near the Montana border. Both had been murdered. Both had been left in remote roadside locations along major trucking corridors. And for decades… investigators didn’t know their names.

The first victim became known only by a nickname taken from the lonely desert turnout where she was found: Bitter Creek Betty. The second was labeled simply Sheridan County Jane Doe—a young woman discovered weeks later in northern Wyoming, pregnant and unidentified. For years the two cases moved forward separately, cold files in different counties, each holding fragments of evidence but no clear answers.

In this episode of Rocky Mountain Reckoning, we examine the discovery of both victims, the early investigations that struggled without identities, and the quiet persistence of detectives who preserved evidence that would one day change everything. Decades later, advances in forensic DNA analysis would reveal a chilling connection—biological evidence linking both murders to the same unknown man. What once appeared to be isolated crimes would slowly reveal a pattern moving along the highways of the American West.

But before investigators could identify the killer, they first had to restore the identities of the victims.

This episode focuses on the lives behind the case files: Irene Vasquez and Cindi Arleen Estrada, two women whose names were lost for decades before modern forensic science finally began returning them to the story.

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