Alphabet murders
| The Alphabet Killer | |
|---|---|
| Born | Joseph Naso |
| Other names | The Double Initial Killer |
| Killings | |
| Victims | 3 |
|
Span of killings
|
November 16, 1971–November 26, 1973 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | New York, California (possible) |
The alphabet murders (also known as the "double initial murders") occurred in the 1970s in the Rochester, New York, area and possibly in Los Angeles, California.
Three young girls were raped and strangled in the Rochester, New York area.
The case received its name from the fact that each of the girls' first and last names started with the same letter. Furthermore, each body was found in a town that had a name starting with the same letter as the victim's name:
Investigators have theorized that a series of murders with similar circumstances in California, in the late 1970s, is connected to these three murders.
Although hundreds of people were questioned, the killer was never caught. One man, considered to be a person of interest (he committed suicide six weeks after the last of the murders) was cleared in 2007 by DNA profiling.
In the case of Carmen Colon, her uncle was also considered a suspect until his suicide in 1991.
Another suspect was Kenneth Bianchi, who at the time was an ice cream vendor in Rochester, New York, 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.
Bianchi was never charged with the alphabet murders, and he has repeatedly tried to have investigators officially clear him of suspicion. However, there is circumstantial evidence that his car was seen at two of the murder scenes.
On April 11, 2011, 77-year-old Joseph Naso, a New York native who lived in Rochester, New York, during the 1970s, was arrested in Reno, Nevada, for four murders in California (in 1977, 1978, 1993, and 1994). He was a professional photographer who had traveled between New York and California extensively for decades.
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Wikipedia