Death In A Red Desert

Death in a Red Desert, a ground breaking case in animal DNA forensic investigation, was featured on the television network Animal Planet. The manuscript chronicles the unusual triangle between a woman, her lover and his transvestite partner, and the events leading up to the disappearance and murder of Elizabeth Langhorst-Ballard. The authors based the work on depositions, trial transcripts and tapes, and on interviews with the detectives, officials in the district attorney's office, the victim's parents and with Charles Martinez, one of the two convicted murderers. Some of the information, using as a guide court documentation and letters written by the other defendant Chris Faviell, is related in a conversational manner to enhance the flow of the story. Names of a few minor figures were changed. Many of the events and the trials are viewed through the eyes of the lead detective, Wolfgang Born, who was an invaluable resource in writing the account, as was the lead prosecutor Canon Stevens. After Born's dogged search for the victim's body in thousands of square miles of red desert in the Tularosa Basin of Otero County, New Mexico, yielded success, the persistence of the late Jim Biggs, a Ruidoso detective, led to Dr. Joy Halverson, whose DNA work on the case made history and was highlighted on the Animal Witness series in 2008. Canines played key roles in solving the crime from the pit bull pet of one of the killers to desert coyotes and a cadaver dog on his last assignment before retirement.