The Alphabet Murders #truecrime

In the early 1970s a disgusting monster murdered 3 girls in the Rochester area of New York. This vicious creature seemingly picked his victims based on the first letters of their first and last names. The killer would also dump his victims by a town that began with the same letter. To this day the killer has not been apprehended or even conclusively identified.

This is the story of the Alphabet Murders

The Alphabet murder victim’s first and last names all began with the same letters. The girls names were Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza.

The first murder was that of 10 year old Carmen Colon. On November 16 1971 she was running an errand for her grandmother. After school that Tuesday Carmen was sent to a pharmacy on West Main Street in Rochester by her grandmother and arrived a bit after 4 pm.

When the pharmacist told her that the prescription was not ready she left. Passerby’s saw her getting into a dark colored Ford Pinto parked nearby. Less than an hour later she was seen running along the side of Interstate 490. She was stripped nude from the waist down and the Pinto was in reverse on the shoulder chasing her.

Despite dozens of witnesses none of the drivers passing by stopped to help the young girl even as they saw her being led back into his vehicle. At 7:50 that night, Carmen Colons family reported her missing. And 2 days later her body was found.

On April 18th, 2 boys found her body doscarded in a ditch along the same highway outside a town called Churchville. Her jacket was found nearby but her pants were not found for weeks, near where she had been seen running from her captor.

Her autopsy revealed that she had been violated and viciously beaten. She had a skull fracture and a broken vertebrae. She had also been extensively scrarched from what appeared to be fingernails. However the cause of death was found to be strangulation.

Public outcry over the brutal murder led to billboards a $6000 reward was rAised for information leading to the perpetrators arrest. An advertising company contributed 5 billboards to use for the search for the killer for a month. Despite several suspects being interviewed no one was identified as the killer.

There were no other known victims until 1973. On Monday April 2nd 11 year old Wanda Walkowicz was on her way to buy groceries shortly after 5 pm. She was then seen walking along Avenue B in Rochester carrying the heavy load of groceries. She was reported missing at 8 pm.

A search was immediately started but she was nowhere to be found along the route to the store nor the areas she liked to play. The next morning however, Wanda Walkowicz was found fully dressed near an access road near Webster New York. Investigators believe that she had been pushed out of a moving vehicle to roll down a small hill.

She too had been assaulted and strangled. While the medical examiner believed Carmen had been strangled by hand, it appeared that Wanda was strangled using a belt. She also had denfsive wounds from trying to fight off her attacker and she he killer had put her clothes back on after her death. There was fluid and hair found on her as well as hair from a white cat.

There were 2 sightings of Wanda reported. The first was a person who had seen her talking to someone in a brown car. The other said they had seen her being forced into a light colored Dodge Dart, but neither led to an arrest.

A $10,000 reward was offered and a tip line set up, though once again there were no solid leads. While police said that they did not think the two girls murders were connected, one of the investigators from the Colon murder was moved to the Walkowicz investigations.

The last of the murders attributed to the Alphabet Killer was that of 11 year old Michelle Maenza. She seen on November 26 1973 at around 3 PM leaving school to walk home. She had planned to stop at a store where her mother had left her purse. Michelle was later seen in the passenger seat of a tan car driving quickly. The witness said she appeared to be crying as the car turned and sped out of sight.

This was not the last sighting of Michelle. At 530 pm a driver saw a car parked on the shoulder of the freeway near Walworth New York with a flat tire. There was a man standing beside it with a young girl who the witness was nearly sure was Michelle Maenza.

This time the driver stopped to try to help. However, when he approached the pair, the man pushed the girl behind him and stood in front of his license plate to avoid it being seen. The witness said the man looked at him with such anger that he turned and drove away without trying to intervene, leaving the girl alone with the killer.

2 days later Michelle Maenzad body was found in Macedon New York. She had been viciously beaten and violated by her killer. The cause of death was ligature strangulation using a rope or cord. Once again, whit cat hair was found on her body as well as the fluids of her assailant.

She also had a partially digested hamburger which corroborated the reports that she had been seen at a fast food restaurant with an unknown man 1 hour before being seen along the roadway beside the car with a flat tire. A composite sketch was made of the man she was seen with, however it did not lead to an arrest.

The police conducted many interviews and an extensive investigation. There were a handful of suspects that seemed promising however none were convicted of the murders.

The first main suspect in the murder of Carmen Colon was her uncle, a man named Miguel Colon. Shortly before she went missing, he bought a car that matched the car witnesses saw her running from. When police examined the vehicle, they found that it had been scrubbed clean with soap including the trunk.

A friend of Miguel said that 2 days after the murder Miguel had said that he had to flee the country since he had “done something bad in Rochester.” He relocated to Puerto Rico soon after. When he was brought back for questioning, he was unable to provide a strong alibi for his whereabouts when the murder occurred.

With no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, he was not indicted despite the circumstantial evidence. In 1991, Miguel committed suicide after an altercation in which he shot his wife and brother, who survived.

Another suspect in the murders was a 25 year old Rochester Firefighter named Dennis Termini. He committed more than a dozen assaults on young women during the same period as the murders and was known as the “garage rapist.”

Dennis Termini owned a vehicle similar to that seen by witnesses and lived near where Michelle Maenza was last seen alive. His crime spree ended abruptly in 1974. He kidnapped a young girl, but was pursued by police. A chase ensued which ended when he shot himself in the head.

When investigators examined his vehicle, they found white cat hair similar to that found on the Alphabet murder victims. In 2007, his body was exhumed so that dna tests could be run against the fluid found on the body of Wanda Walkowicz. It was not a match and the dna from Maenza and Colon could not be tested to confirm or reject him as the killer.

The next suspect in the murders was well known serial killer Kenneth Bianchi, one of the hillside stranglers. At the time of the murders he was working in Rochester at an ice cream shop near the first 2 murder sites. While denies any connection to the killings, he is known to have had a vehicle similar to that driven by the killer.

The last major suspect in the Alphabet murders was a man named Joseph Naso. In 2011, Naso was arrested for 4 murders he committed in California from 1977 to 1994. Each of these victims first and last names began with the same letter similar to the New York murders.

However, once again the dna testing rejecting him in the Wanda Walkowicz murder. In 2013 he was sentenced to death for the California murders. Investigators had no way to pursue him as a suspect in the Alphabet murders as there was no useable dna to compare him with for 2 of the 3 victims.

To this day, no one has been conclusively identified as the killer of these 3 girls. It is possible that there was more than 1 perpetrator although this cannot be proven. Up to the 2000s tips have come on to police, but none have led to an arrest.

It seems strange that the killer would be able to find victims with first and last names that start with the same letter which lead me to believe it was someone who would know the kids names already such as a teacher or community leader of some sort.

#serialkiller #crime #newyork