Herlinda Soto

*This article includes content which may be disturbing to some readers, such as excessive violence or sexual assault/abuse. Discretion is advised.*

## Herlinda Soto

### Classification

Suspected homicide

**Herlinda “Linda” Ann Soto** was a woman who was violently abducted from her home in 1993.

## Background

At the time of her disappearance, Herlinda was working as a health inspector for the El Paso City-County Health and Environmental District and a member of the army reserves. She was a veteran who had been involved in Operation Desert Storm and served eight months in Saudi Arabia. Herlinda met her husband, Ulises Soto in 1980 and they married in 1983. They had two children together.

While Herlinda was deployed in Saudi Arabia Ulises filed for divorce. The separation was contentions. Initially, Ulises was granted full custody of the children after claiming Herlinda had abused them. However, Herlinda denied this claim and said that Ulises had actually been abusive towards her and she had suffered from “battered wife syndrome”. She was granted primary custody of the children shortly before her disappearance, while Ulises, who lived about five miles away, had visitations with the boys every second weekend. Herlinda also received the family home as part of the divorce settlement.

According to her family, Herlinda was a responsible, contentious person who wouldn’t have left her life behind without telling anyone. However, sometime before she vanished she had mentioned that she’d had a premonition that she was going to be murdered and that the perpetrator would bury her body in the desert where it would never be found.

## Case

Herlinda was last seen at 6:00 P.M. on July 2, 1993, when her ex-husband, Ulises, collected her sons, then 10 and 7 years old, from her house in the 1500 Block of Bill Ogden Drive in El Paso, Texas. She was last heard from at 11:00 P.M. that night when she spoke to a friend over the phone. Ulises returned to Herlinda’s house on July 5, at 6:00 P.M. to drop off the children. However, when he found Herlinda and her 1989 Mercury Tracer were gone. There were no signs of forced entry to the building but one of the garage doors couldn’t lock.

When police searched Herlinda’s three-bedroom house they found evidence of a violent struggle and what they described as the bloodiest scene they had seen in years. There was a large quantity of blood smeared across the floor in both the house and the garage and there were blood stains up to three and four feet high on the walls near the front door of the house. This was especially alarming as Herlinda usually slept on a cot near the front door and the blood appeared to lead through the garage out to the area where she usually parked her missing car. Due to the sheer amount of blood found at the scene, it is believed that Herlinda could not have survived her injuries. Police have theorized that on the day of her disappearance, Herlinda was attacked in her home and beaten to death. They believe there was probably more than one assailant and that robber probably wasn’t the motive as there weren’t any valuables in the home.

Herlinda’s vehicle was found abandoned later on July 6, in the 12400 Block of Rojas Drive, an underdeveloped industrial area on the edge of the desert, four miles away from her home. More of Herlinda’s blood was found in the trunk which lead investigators to believe it may have been used to transport her body, but there was no sign of her at the scene. There are two suspects in Herlinda’s case but they have never been named publicly.

Ulises has always maintained his innocence in Herlinda’s disappearance. After she vanished he moved back to his native Puerto Rico with their sons.

## Characteristics

* Brown hair.
* Brown eyes.

## Sources

* Herlinda Soto at the *Doe Network*
* Herlinda Soto at *NamUs*
* Herlinda Soto at the *Charley Project*