Alphabet murders

The "Alphabet murders" (also known as the "double initial murders") took place in the early 1970s in the Rochester, New York, area; three young girls were raped and strangled. The case got its name from the fact that each of the girls' first and last names started with the same letter and that each body was found in a town that had a name starting with the same letter as each girl's name (Carmen Colon in Churchville, Wanda Walkowicz in Webster and Michelle Maenza in Macedon).

Investigators have theorized that a series of murders with similar circumstances in California in the late 1970s is connected to the earlier New York murders.

New York alphabet murders

While hundreds of people were questioned, the killer was never caught. One man, considered to be a "person of interest" in the case (he committed suicide six weeks after the last of the murders), was cleared in 2007 by DNA testing.^[1] In the case of Carmen Colon, her uncle was also considered a suspect until his suicide in 1991.^[2]

Another suspect was Kenneth Bianchi, who at the time was an ice cream vendor in Rochester, vending from sites close to the first two murder scenes. He was a Rochester native who later moved to Los Angeles, and with his cousin Angelo Buono, Jr. committed the Hillside Strangler murders between 1977 and 1978.^[3] Bianchi was never charged with the alphabet murders, and he has repeatedly tried to have investigators officially clear him from suspicion; however, there is circumstantial evidence that his car was seen at two of the murder scenes. He remains under suspicion. However, on Investigation Discovery's television series "Dark Minds" (episode name "Double Initial Murder" which first aired 22 February 2012 and was hosted by M. William Phelps) it was reported that Bianchi's DNA profile was tested in 1985 and it did not match the biological evidence left at the crime scene of Wanda Walkowicz.

Rochester victims

• Carmen Colon, 10, disappeared November 16, 1971. She was found two days later, 12 miles from where she was last seen. Although found in the town of Riga,^[4] the village of Churchville is the town's center of population, and the town of Chili is nearby.
• Wanda Walkowicz, 11, disappeared April 2, 1973. She was found the next day at a rest area off State Route 104 in Webster, seven miles from Rochester.
• Michelle Maenza, 11, disappeared November 26, 1973. She was found two days later in Macedon, 15 miles from Rochester.

California alphabet murders

On April 11, 2011, 77-year-old Joseph Naso, a New York native and former photographer who lived in Rochester in the 1970s, was arrested in Reno, Nevada, for four murders in California dating back to 1977. The California murder victims, like the New York victims, had double initials: Roxene Roggasch, Pamela Parsons, Tracy Tofoya, and Carmen Colon (a different woman from the Rochester, New York victim). All four women are described by authorities as prostitutes.^[5][6] Naso is also considered a "person of interest" in the New York Alphabet Murders.

On January 12, 2012, in his preliminary hearing in Marin County, California, his alleged "rape diary" was entered into evidence. It mentioned the death of a girl in the "Buffalo woods," a possible allusion to Upstate New York.^[7] Naso was a professional photographer who traveled between New York and California extensively for decades.^{[5][6][8][9][10]}

On June 18, 2013, Naso was tried for the murder of the four California alphabet murder victims.^[11]
On August 20, 2013, Naso was convicted by a Marin County jury of the murders.
On November 22, 2013, Naso was sentenced to death for the murders.^[12]

California victims

• Roxene Roggasch, 18, was found slain on January 11, 1977, off the side of a road near Fairfax, California.
• Pamela Parsons
• Tracy Tofoya
• Carmen Colon (not the Rochester victim of the same name)

In the media

• In 2001, the Discovery Channel aired a program revisiting the murders.^[13]
• A 2008 film called The Alphabet Killer was very loosely based on the murders.^[14]
• In 2010, a book called Alphabet Killer: The True Story of the Double Initial Murders was released by author Cheri Farnsworth, detailing the actual events, from the time they occurred through to the present.^[15][16]
• On April 1, 2011, the AMC network aired a short-form documentary regarding the murders titled Countdown to The Killing: The Alphabet Murders.^[17]

See also

• The A.B.C. Murders, a 1936 detective novel by Agatha Christie describing a similar series of killings.

References

External links

• New York State Police Homicide Victim, Wanda Walkowicz case profile