Four died in the Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre, as that bloody Saturday morning 13 years ago today came to be known. A fifth died two years ago from injuries she sustained in the shooting. It remains one of New Mexico's worst mass slayings.

For Teran, who lost a brother and two young nieces that day, it became the worst heartache imaginable and a search unavoidable for the two gunmen responsible for their deaths.

Teran, an electrical engineer who lives in Mesa, Ariz., has come back to Las Cruces today to honor the memory of those he lost and to remind others that somewhere out there killers roam unaccounted for and unaccountable.

"We've got to find them," he said in an interview from Las Cruces. "There have been so many leads over the years, and all it may take are a few more of them."

In early 1990, Teran was a 19-year-old student at New Mexico State University who looked up to his oldest brother, Steven, for guidance and support. For a time, he slept on Steven's couch in the tiny married student housing apartment Steven shared with his wife, Audrey, and their two daughters, Paula, 5, and Valerie, 2.

"That was how Steven was," Teran said. "He might have lint in his pockets and no dollars, but he would still help you out the best he could. Their apartment was so tiny, but he welcomed me in. Audrey, too."

Steven Teran, 26, worked odd jobs to support his young family, but the good times were coming. He had graduated from NMSU that December and was choosing between law enforcement jobs with either the Las Cruces Police Department or the Border Patrol. He also was preparing to assume the role of commander for his Army National Guard unit in Alamogordo, his brother said.

He had already put in his two-week notice at one of his odd jobs and had just three more days left. That job was as a pin mechanic at Las Cruces Bowl.

On Feb. 9, 1990, Steven Teran stopped by his younger brother's new digs to drop off mail he had retrieved from their parents' home in Bayard, N.M.

"We talked about us fixing up his pickup truck the next day," Anthony Teran said. "He never talked about having to go to work."

Anthony Teran was almost out the door sometime after 8 the next morning and on his way to Steven's house to help with the truck when he caught a few words on the radio about a shooting in town. His phone rang. He remembers someone from Las Cruces Memorial Hospital telling him to come quickly because his sister-in-law needed him.

"I didn't connect the news of the shooting with the call from the hospital," Teran said. "I thought it must be that Steven was in a bad car accident. I was freaking out. I kept saying, `Hang on, Steven, hang on, Steven.' "

His sister-in-law broke the news to him of the shooting at the bowling alley and Steven's death.

"I started getting scared about his little girls," he said. "I said to Audrey, `How will we tell them?' And she looks at me and tells me, `They shot them, too.' "

Steven Teran and his daughters were buried Valentine's Day.

If his brother had been 10 minutes later to work at Las Cruces Bowl, if he had quit three days earlier, there might not have been as much death, as much pain.

Anthony Teran speculates that Steven arrived earlier than his normal 8:30 a.m. start time because he had to drop off his wife at beauty school first that morning.

Already at the bowling alley were Stephanie Senac, the 34-year-old manager and daughter of the business owner; Senac's daughter, Melissa Repass, 15, and Repass' friend, Amy Houser, 13.

Ida Holguin, a snack bar cook, hadn't planned on coming in that day but had switched shifts with another cook at the last minute, Teran said.

In published reports, Holguin said she thought the two men who entered the bowling alley sometime between 8:10 and 8:12 a.m. were there to clean up. Instead, they brandished their guns and ordered the two women and two teens into the bowling alley office and onto the ground.

Before opening fire, the men rummaged furiously through the building, finally pocketing $5,000 but leaving other money, including a large sum kept in a bag in a safe, Teran said.

"They weren't happy with the money," Holguin said in a 2000 interview. "They were looking for something in the cabinets."

Holguin speculated in the interview that they may have been seeking a hidden cache of drugs.

Holguin and Senac survived the storm of bullets as they cowered on the floor, each of them struck three times. Repass, who was also wounded, lived, too. Amy Houser was not as lucky.

Steven Teran and his daughters arrived just as the gunmen were on their way out. Anthony Teran said it is unclear whether his brother put up a struggle or complied with the gunmen's orders to lie on the floor with his daughters next to the other bleeding women before they, too, were shot and killed.

"They executed them," Teran said.

The gunmen left about 8:25 a.m., setting fire to paperwork in the office in an apparent attempt to conceal their trail. The smoke and ensuing water damage from firefighters' hoses destroyed much of the forensic evidence that could have helped to identify the killers, Teran said.

Witnesses said the gunmen fled the bowling alley on foot, splitting up and running on opposite sides of Amador Street near downtown Las Cruces. Both were described as being Hispanic males - one in his 40s and darker-complexioned, the other in his 20s with slicked back hair. Neither had heavy accents. One may have been carrying what looked like a cassette case. Both had weapons of an undisclosed caliber. Both fired more than 12 shots.

"They were big guns is all I can say," Teran said.

Anthony Teran punched a hole in the wall of the hospital waiting room the day his brother died, but he pretty well punched holes in the rest of his life as well.

His football career at NMSU was put on hold, and he struggled just to keep up with even the minimal amount of college work.

"I was so angry. I didn't want anyone to console me," he said.

But about two years ago Teran said he recalled a conversation he had with his brother three or four months before his death.

"He had asked me to promise him that if anything ever happened to him that I would take care of his daughters and his wife," he said. "I realized that the thing I could do to honor that promise was to make sure that their killers were caught."

Since then, Teran has convinced national TV shows such as "America's Most Wanted," "Unsolved Mysteries" and "The Montel Williams Show" to profile the case in the hopes of bringing forth new leads. He has posted information on the case on Web sites, collected thick files of information on the case, hounded Las Cruces police detectives, even sought out the original forensics artist to redo a sketch of the suspects with aging-enhancement techniques.

He runs scenarios over and over in his head as to how things might have happened that morning, what his brother must have thought in those last minutes, what detectives might have missed.

He has many questions.

"There's just so many twists and turns," he said.

That includes whether the gunmen had come looking for the cook who had been scheduled for work that morning instead of Holguin.

And how the gunmen got inside that morning through front doors that should have been locked until the bowling alley opened for business. Reports indicate that manager Senac's brother may have unlocked the doors after dropping by early that morning to pick up a backpack. Reports also indicate that the brother has denied leaving the doors unlocked.

Senac died two years ago as a result of the destruction caused by the two gunshots to her brain. Her death has been ruled a homicide.

Her brother could not be located for this story. Neither could other members of the Senac family, who no longer own the bowling alley.

Like Holguin, Teran said he also believes that drugs may have been what the gunmen were looking for that morning. Police have told him that the men may still travel in and out of the Las Cruces area.

Teran is also searching for Melissa Repass, who would now be about 28 and who could be the only survivor competent enough to identify the shooters. Former snack bar cook Holguin, Teran said, has been incapacitated by the shootings, suffering panic attacks and subsisting on what he called a bucket full of prescription medications.

"She still has the bullet in her brain," he said. "She has all those terrible memories in her brain, too."

And so does Teran.

"There are people who ask me, `Why can't you let this alone? Why can't you just let the dead rest in peace?' " he said. "But I tell them that somebody is out there walking among us, somebody who killed five people. How can you let the issue just rest?"