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Forensic Tests Support Potash Woman Is 1998 Missing Wendover Mother

Written by Howard Copelan

Friday, 30 July 2010

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A forensic report supports or at least does not rule out that the identity of the body found last month at Wendover potash mine could be that of a of a Wendover woman missing since 1998, said Tooele county Detective Travis Scharmann
   “We got the report this week,” Scharmann said. “What it found was that the body probably belong to an Hispanic woman and had been out there from roughly ten years ago to last year.” He explained. “We are still waiting for the DNA analysis to come in but at least this report doesn’t rule her out.”
   A month ago, a worker at the Intrepid Potash plant spotted the skeletal remains near a long abandoned canal on the property.
   While it was originally believe that the remains were between 2-5 years old, detectives are now leaning toward the theory that they may be much older.
   “We are working on the theory that they may belong to Mireslaba (Vasquez Ramirez),” Scharmann explained earlier this month. “She was an Hispanic woman who went missing in the Wendover area in 1998. “That canal was also shut down around that time.”
   According to the detective, DNA samples have been collected from the remains and the missing woman’s family and the Sheriff’s Department is currently awaiting tests results for a match.
   “Those tests can take up to three months,” Scharmann explained.
   If the remains do belong to Mireslaba Vasquez Ramirez they would solve a case that has long troubled Tooele County detectives.

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     Mireslaba Vasquez Ramirez was a 21 dealer at Wendover’s State Line Casino and a mother of three when she was first reported missing by her estranged husband Jose Ramirez Rodriguez. She was 29 years old at the time of her disappearance.
    According to then Tooele County Sheriff Frank Scharmann, Ramirez-Rodriguez told friends a day later that the woman jumped out of their car near the Ibapah Indian Reservation about 40 miles south of Wendover on alternate US Route 93.
    Scharmann added Rodriguez never reported his wife missing before he disappeared a day later. Police, Scharmann said, immediately became suspicious of the man’s story since they had already learned that the woman told friends that the couple was planning to travel to Elko 110 miles to the west of Elko on Interstate 80. A week after the disappearance the Tooele County District Attorney’s office charged Rodriguez with felony kidnapping.
    The man has not been heard or seen since his wife’s disappearance almost 12 years ago, however some in Wendover’s tight knit Mexican community believe that since his disappearance in 1998, the man has returned to Wendover to exact more revenge on his wife’s alleged infidelity.

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     While police have never been notified at least one other death, a suicide in her supposed lover’s family is popularly blamed on Rodriguez.
   While the missing woman was the primary bread winner in the family, her husband occasionally worked at the potash plant.
   In the late 1990’s work at the plant was scale back dramatically and some two dozen workers lost their jobs. In addition to jobs losses some of the plants canals extending for miles into the salt flats were abandoned.
   Intrepid Potash the current owners of the property told investigators when the body was discovered that they haven’t done work in that area for quite some time.
   “It was by a canal, but it was not in the water. It was just laying face-down, and it had been there ... Uncovered, not buried, for quite a while,” said Tooele County Sheriff Frank Park.

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