The Alphabet Murders
Taking place between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester, New York, three young girls were raped and subsequently strangled at the hands of an individual in a case that would come to be known as the Alphabet murders.
Apart from the method used to take the life of these three daughters, another strange factor would come into play, the conspicuous repetition of their identical initials and the fact that their bodies were dumped in locations that shared the first initial of their respective names.
Carmen Colon was discovered in Churchville, Michelle Maenza in Macedon, and Wanda Walkowicz in Webster. Their alliterative names seemed too curious a coincidence not to be of note. Another interesting and definitely coincidental series of murders would take place just a few years later.
Californian serial killer Joseph Naso displayed similar modus operandi between 1977–1994 when he would take the life of between six to ten victims. Strangely, one of his victims would share an identical name with one of the Alphabet murder victims, Carmen Colon.
Naso would be eliminated as a suspect after police discovered an entry in his journal where he made reference to the death of a girl in the Buffalo woods. This would lead investigators to test his DNA against DNA they had recovered from the Alphabet murders scenes.
Another suspect would be peek the interest of investigators would be Kenneth Bianchi, who went on to commit the Hillside Strangler murders with his cousin, Angelo Buono, Jr. Despite Bianchi being from Rochester, living there at the time of the murders and protesting his innocence, he was never charged with these murders and to date, no one has.
