A Saturday Morning at the Lanes
On Saturday, February 10, 1990, staff at the Las Cruces Bowl on East Amador Avenue were getting ready to open for a normal day of league play and family bowling.
Manager Stephanie Senac, 34, was in her office balancing money and preparing deposits while her 12‑year‑old daughter Melissia Repass and Melissia’s 13‑year‑old friend Amy Houser waited to help in the daycare area.
In the kitchen, cook Ida Holguin, 33, prepped for the day.
Around 8:00 a.m., two men slipped in through an unlocked side door and walked into the quiet building, heading straight for the back corridors.
Within minutes, they had gathered employees and children into the manager’s office, turned a small-town bowling alley into a hostage scene — and set in motion one of New Mexico’s most haunting unsolved mass shootings.
Case Snapshot
- Location: Las Cruces Bowl, 1201 E. Amador Avenue, Las Cruces, New Mexico
- Date and time: Morning of Saturday, February 10, 1990 (fire reported at 8:33 a.m.)
Victims
- Killed at or from the scene:
- Amy Houser, 13
- Paula Holguin, 6 (no relation to Ida)
- Valerie Teran, 2
- Steven Teran, 26 (pin mechanic and father of Paula and Valerie)
- Stephanie Senac, 34 (died in 1999 from complications related to her injuries)
- Survivors:
- Melissia Repass, 12 – Stephanie’s daughter, shot multiple times, made 911 call
- Ida Holguin, 33 – cook, shot but survived
Crime details
- Robbery amount: Approximately $4,000–$5,000 taken from the safe.
- Method:
- Two gunmen forced seven victims into the office at gunpoint, shot them execution‑style, then set papers on a desk on fire to torch the room and destroy evidence.
Suspect descriptions
- Two Hispanic men, dark complexions, fluent English, no masks; both in their late 20s–early 30s at the time.
- One described as about 5’10”, 160–170 lbs, with wavy dark hair.
- The other about 5’6″–5’8″, heavier set, black mustache, possibly wearing thick‑rimmed glasses.
- Composite sketches were widely circulated; no confirmed identities.
Status
- Case remains unsolved more than 35 years later.
- Las Cruces Police and Crime Stoppers currently offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to the suspects.
The Robbery and the Shooting
According to survivor accounts, the two men:
- Entered through an unlocked employee door as the building was being prepared for opening.
- One pulled a .22‑caliber pistol on cook Ida Holguin and forced her at gunpoint into the manager’s office.
- There, Stephanie, Melissia, and Amy were already being held by the second gunman.
The men demanded money from the safe, ordering the victims to lie face‑down on the floor.
Stephanie complied, opening the safe and giving them several thousand dollars in cash.
During the robbery, pin mechanic Steven Teran arrived with his daughters Paula and Valerie: he hadn’t found a babysitter and planned to drop the girls at the bowling alley’s daycare.
Finding the lanes strangely quiet, he walked back toward the office — and walked straight into the armed robbery.
The gunmen forced Steven and his daughters into the office with the others.
At some point after getting the money, they opened fire, shooting all seven victims at close range.
To cover their tracks, they then set fire to papers on Stephanie’s desk, hoping the flames would spread and erase evidence.
They left the building and disappeared, believed to have fled in a vehicle that has never been definitively identified.
A 12‑Year‑Old’s 911 Call
Despite being shot five times — including in the head and abdomen in some accounts — 12‑year‑old Melissia Repass regained consciousness after the gunmen left.
She managed to crawl to the office phone and dial 911.
Her call brought police and firefighters to the scene just after 8:30 a.m.
Responders arrived expecting a fire call.
Instead, they found:
- Smoke and flames in the office.
- Seven people on the floor, including small children.
- A mixture of gunshot wounds and fire damage.
Amy Houser, Paula Holguin, and Steven Teran were dead at the scene.
Two‑year‑old Valerie Teran was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.
Stephanie, Melissia, and Ida were critically injured but alive.
All three underwent emergency treatment; Stephanie lived with lasting complications for nine more years before dying in 1999 from health issues linked to her injuries, effectively raising the death toll to five.
Melissia’s survival and 911 call are widely credited with saving Ida’s and Stephanie’s lives — and preserving the crime scene enough for investigators to get a basic picture of what happened.
Sketches, Roadblocks, and Dead Ends
In the immediate aftermath, Las Cruces police:
- Put up roadblocks and canvassed surrounding streets.
- Collected shell casings, fingerprints, and other forensic evidence from the office and building.
- Interviewed survivors, staff, and people living near the alley.
Using descriptions from Melissia, Ida, Stephanie’s brother (who had been in the building earlier), and other witnesses, artists produced composite sketches of the two suspects.
The men reportedly did not wear masks during the attack, meaning several people got a clear look at them.
Investigators believed the killers may have used a green or dark‑colored van as a getaway vehicle, based on witness reports from the area that morning.
Despite this:
- No reliable suspects were identified.
- Leads pointing to parole violators or similar robberies fizzled out.
- Periodic re‑enactments of the crime on TV and local news brought in tips, but none led to arrests.
Some early crime‑scene handling also caused problems.
First responders, initially thinking they were arriving at a fire or even a training scenario, moved around the office to rescue victims, disturbing some potential evidence before the scene was fully locked down.
Families Still Waiting for Justice
For families of the victims, the passage of time hasn’t dulled the loss or the anger.
Relatives like Anthony Teran, Steven’s brother and uncle to Paula and Valerie, continue to speak publicly about the case, describing it as a wound that never fully heals.
They emphasize:
- The brutality of shooting four children and three adults execution‑style over a relatively small amount of cash.
- The fact that the gunmen didn’t wear masks, suggesting they may have felt confident they could escape or leave the area quickly.
- The frustration that, with sketches, survivors, and widespread coverage, no one has yet named the two men responsible in a way that stands up in court.
On anniversaries, Las Cruces police renew their appeals:
- Releasing photos of the original composite sketches.
- Highlighting the $25,000 Crime Stoppers reward.
- Visiting other states to chase lingering leads and jailhouse rumors.
Investigators say they still believe the case is solvable — that someone knows the shooters’ identities and may be willing to talk after decades of silence.
Why This Case Is on True Crime Maps
The Las Cruces bowling alley massacre is tied tightly to place:
- The Las Cruces Bowl at 1201 E. Amador Avenue, once a busy family entertainment spot, now remembered primarily as the site of a morning mass shooting.
- The surrounding streets and highways the gunmen likely used to escape, vanishing into the wider desert Southwest.
- The homes and neighborhoods of survivors and victims’ families, where anniversaries are marked not by trophies or league scores but by memorials.
On True Crime Maps, this pin marks a classic “everyday” location — a bowling alley in a strip of low‑slung buildings — where an ordinary Saturday became a long‑running mystery:
- Armed robbers who turned witnesses into targets.
- Survivors who lived with physical and emotional scars.
- A pair of faces on composite sketches that, decades later, have never been matched to real names.
It’s a map point that shows how a single morning in a small Southwest city can ripple across generations — and how two unidentified men can still walk the edges of a story that everyone in Las Cruces knows, but no one has finished.
