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The Alphabet Murders: Rochester’s Cold Case Mystery · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Imagine hunting a serial killer and finding like the absolute
0:04
Speaker 1: perfect setback.
0:05
Speaker 2: Right. The guy who just ticks every single box on
0:07
Speaker 2: the list.
0:07
Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, a man from the exact same hometown
0:10
Speaker 1: as your victims.
0:11
Speaker 2: Right.
0:11
Speaker 1: A man who has already been convicted of hunting women
0:13
Speaker 1: based on this totally bizarre obsession with their double initials.
0:17
Speaker 1: And a man who literally murdered a woman named Carmen Colon.
0:22
Speaker 2: Which, just to be clear, is the exact same first
0:25
Speaker 2: and last name as your very first victim. Right.
0:27
Speaker 1: Right. It is a statistical impossibility. It's a detective ultimate
0:31
Speaker 1: dream scenario. And yet the science proved he didn't do it.
0:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is a geometric puzzle where the pieces
0:37
Speaker 2: appear to, you know, interlock seamlessly from a distance. But
0:41
Speaker 2: the moment you put them under a microscope, the entire
0:43
Speaker 2: picture just dissolves into absolute chaos.
0:46
Speaker 1: It really does. Today, we are taking a deep dive
0:48
Speaker 1: into the chilling events that became known as the alphabet
0:51
Speaker 1: murders or sometimes the double digit murders.
0:54
Speaker 2: And when you examine the landscape of American cold cases...
0:57
Speaker 2: There are very few that possess this level of bizarre
1:01
Speaker 2: theatrical calculation combined with such a devastatingly long lack of answers.
1:07
Speaker 2: I mean, we are looking at a 50-year void here.
1:09
Speaker 1: 50 years. It's just wild to think about. So we
1:13
Speaker 1: are going back to upstate New York, specifically the Rochester area,
1:16
Speaker 1: between the years of 1971 and 1973.
1:19
Speaker 2: That specific time and place is so crucial to understanding
1:22
Speaker 2: how this all happened.
1:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and our mission today is to unpack the timeline
1:26
Speaker 1: of these three tragic disappearances. We need to examine who
1:30
Speaker 1: these victims were, dissect the incredibly eerie coincidences that tie
1:34
Speaker 1: them together, and look at this whole carousel of suspects
1:37
Speaker 1: that make up this enduring half-century cold case.
1:39
Speaker 2: Which is a lot to cover, honestly.
1:41
Speaker 1: It is, but before we even get into the names
1:43
Speaker 1: and the dates, we have to mentally transport ourselves back
1:45
Speaker 1: to that specific era.
1:47
Speaker 2: That is a crucial first step. Because if you are
1:50
Speaker 2: listening to this right now, you really have to strip
1:52
Speaker 2: away every modern technological safety net you take for granted.
1:55
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. This is Rochester in the early 1970s.
1:57
Speaker 2: Right. We were talking about a time long before cell
2:01
Speaker 2: phones were in every pocket or on every dashboard. There
2:05
Speaker 2: are no ring cameras on front porches. There is no
2:07
Speaker 2: GPS tracking on your kids.
2:10
Speaker 1: DNA fingerprinting is literally still science fiction at this point.
2:13
Speaker 2: Exactly. And the advent of modern technology. Sophisticated criminal profiling,
2:19
Speaker 2: the kind of behavioral science we see utilized by law
2:21
Speaker 2: enforcement today, is still in its absolute infancy.
2:26
Speaker 1: It's a completely different world. It was this heavily industrial
2:30
Speaker 1: working class era where kids just, you know, they walked everywhere.
2:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, they really did.
2:34
Speaker 1: Neighbors generally knew each other, and the concept of a
2:37
Speaker 1: stranger orchestrating such a complex, serialized nightmare was almost beyond
2:41
Speaker 1: the public's comprehension.
2:42
Speaker 2: At the time. It wasn't something people actively worried about.
2:45
Speaker 1: No, you sent your kid to the corner store for
2:47
Speaker 1: a normal, everyday errand, and you expected them to come
2:50
Speaker 1: back ten minutes later.
2:51
Speaker 2: The societal trust was just significantly higher back then, which
2:55
Speaker 2: is exactly what a predator relies on. The psychological landscape
2:58
Speaker 2: of a city like Rochester back then It was one
3:01
Speaker 2: of relative innocence, at least when it came to the
3:03
Speaker 2: idea of a boogeyman driving the streets in broad daylight.
3:06
Speaker 1: Right.
3:07
Speaker 2: When a child vanished, the immediate assumption wasn't a highly
3:11
Speaker 2: calculated serial killer. It was a runaway situation or a
3:15
Speaker 2: tragic localized accident.
3:17
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We have three young girls, all
3:20
Speaker 1: grabbed in broad daylight, mere blocks from their homes.
3:23
Speaker 2: That's a horrific thought. Truly horrific.
3:25
Speaker 1: We need to lay out the blueprint of this predator
3:28
Speaker 1: because the terrifying hook of this case, the thing that
3:31
Speaker 1: gave it its infamous moniker and pushed it into the
3:33
Speaker 1: national spotlight, is the chilling pattern.
3:35
Speaker 2: The pattern is what makes this case so notoriously difficult
3:38
Speaker 2: to forget.
3:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are talking about three girls, Carmen Colon, Wanda Wachowicz,
3:43
Speaker 1: and Michelle Manza. They were each separately abducted, sexually assaulted, strangled,
3:48
Speaker 1: and then dumped in brushy embankments near busy roads in
3:51
Speaker 1: the outskirts of the city.
3:52
Speaker 2: That horrific sequence of events... really forms the baseline of
3:56
Speaker 2: the crimes. But the detail that elevated this from a
3:59
Speaker 2: series of local tragedies into a nationwide true crime enigma
4:03
Speaker 2: is the initials.
4:05
Speaker 1: The double initials. Right.
4:06
Speaker 2: Law enforcement eventually came to this deeply unsettling realization that
4:11
Speaker 2: these victims were not just randomly snatched off the sidewalk.
4:14
Speaker 2: They were stalked and explicitly chosen. Because they had matching
4:18
Speaker 2: first and last initials, the twin initials.
4:20
Speaker 1: And the geographic game the killer played takes it to
4:23
Speaker 1: a level that feels almost fictional.
4:25
Speaker 2: It really does.
4:26
Speaker 1: I mean, the killer dumped their bodies in outlying towns
4:28
Speaker 1: around Rochester that perfectly matched those twin initials. So Carmen Collins, C.C.
4:34
Speaker 1: is found in Churchville. Wanda Walkovich, W.W. is found in Webster.
4:39
Speaker 1: And Michelle Mazenza, M.M. is found in Macedon.
4:42
Speaker 2: It's a twisted alphabetical checklist. It is.
4:45
Speaker 1: But I have to ask. Are we maybe overstating this pattern?
4:48
Speaker 2: How do you mean?
4:49
Speaker 1: Couldn't someone just, I don't know, grab a kid, do
4:51
Speaker 1: whatever horrific things they're going to do and then go, oh,
4:53
Speaker 1: her name is Michelle. Let's just drive out to Macedon
4:56
Speaker 1: and dump her there to mess with the cops.
4:58
Speaker 2: Like an afterthought.
4:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, was this an incredibly disciplined, methodical hunter who
5:02
Speaker 1: scoured the city for these specific initials? Or was this
5:06
Speaker 1: just an opportunistic predator who somehow got lucky with the
5:09
Speaker 1: names and then just leaned into the pattern after the fact?
5:12
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the sheer mathematical improbability of it
5:16
Speaker 2: being a post-abduction afterthought. To execute that kind of geographic
5:21
Speaker 2: matching requires intense premeditation.
5:24
Speaker 1: Because of the logistics.
5:25
Speaker 2: Exactly. You have to know the roads, you have to
5:27
Speaker 2: know the jurisdictions, and you have to know the victim's
5:30
Speaker 2: name beforehand. You can't just stumble into an alphabetical murder spree.
5:33
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
5:34
Speaker 2: But when we strip away the terrifying gimmick of the alphabet,
5:38
Speaker 2: we find a shared profile among these three girls... that
5:41
Speaker 2: tells us vastly more about how this killer operated than
5:44
Speaker 2: the letters C, W, and M ever could.
5:47
Speaker 1: The victimology. Yes.
5:48
Speaker 2: The alphabet pattern is the signature, but the underlying victimology
5:52
Speaker 2: is the actual blueprint of the predator.
5:54
Speaker 1: When you look at the historical records, the connective tissue
5:58
Speaker 1: between these three girls is just devastating. It goes way
6:00
Speaker 1: beyond their names.
6:01
Speaker 2: It really does.
6:02
Speaker 1: All three of them were Catholic. All three came from
6:05
Speaker 1: financially struggling, working-class families. They all had fathers who were
6:09
Speaker 1: either absent or deceased.
6:11
Speaker 2: Which is a huge vulnerability factor.
6:14
Speaker 1: Absolutely. The case files note they all had trouble making
6:17
Speaker 1: friends in school. They experienced social isolation. And at least
6:21
Speaker 1: one of them was believed to have learning disabilities.
6:24
Speaker 2: And perhaps most terrifyingly, they were all abducted incredibly close
6:28
Speaker 2: to home.
6:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. We are talking just blocks away in environments where
6:32
Speaker 1: they should have felt completely safe.
6:34
Speaker 2: Those factors are not coincidences. They are targeting criteria. Predators,
6:39
Speaker 2: especially those who have the audacity to operate in broad daylight,
6:43
Speaker 2: are astute observers of human behavior and vulnerability.
6:46
Speaker 1: They aren't just guessing.
6:48
Speaker 2: No, they don't just pick names out of a phone
6:49
Speaker 2: book or grab the first child they see. They look
6:52
Speaker 2: for marginalized or vulnerable children.
6:54
Speaker 1: Right, because a child from a financially struggling family, perhaps
6:57
Speaker 1: with an absent father, might be more easily lured by
7:00
Speaker 1: the promise of resources or attention or just simple kindness.
7:04
Speaker 2: Exactly. A child who struggles to make friends or has
7:07
Speaker 2: learning disabilities might not have the same social defenses or
7:11
Speaker 2: the same protective network of peers walking with them.
7:14
Speaker 1: They are looking for the kid who is walking alone,
7:17
Speaker 1: head down, maybe looking a little lost or lonely.
7:21
Speaker 2: Precisely. The killer targeted girls who might have been craving
7:24
Speaker 2: a positive interaction, making the initial approach that much easier
7:28
Speaker 2: and less likely to cause a scene.
7:30
Speaker 1: Which is just so incredibly sad.
7:32
Speaker 2: It is. If a child is isolated, they are less
7:35
Speaker 2: likely to be immediately missed and less likely to have
7:38
Speaker 2: someone witness the abduction and recognize that something is wrong.
7:41
Speaker 2: The alphabet gimmick is what the killer used to taunt
7:44
Speaker 2: the police and terrify the public, but the exploitation of
7:47
Speaker 2: vulnerability is how he actually achieved his crimes.
7:50
Speaker 1: It really paints a picture of someone who was watching, waiting,
7:53
Speaker 1: and calculating long before he ever made a move.
7:55
Speaker 2: A very disciplined stalker.
7:57
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the first tragic piece of this puzzle.
8:00
Speaker 1: The catalyst for the panic. that would eventually grip the
8:03
Speaker 1: whole region. The first victim's ordeal really highlights the tragic
8:07
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities of that specific era we were just talking about,
8:11
Speaker 1: and it sets the stage for a 50-year mystery.
8:13
Speaker 2: The timeline begins with Carmen Colon. She was just 10
8:16
Speaker 2: years old.
8:17
Speaker 1: 10 years old. Just a baby, really. Carmen was a
8:20
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican girl living with her grandparents in Rochester, and
8:23
Speaker 1: she spoke very little English.
8:25
Speaker 2: Which adds another layer of isolation. It does.
8:28
Speaker 1: She was known to be a really helpful kid, and
8:30
Speaker 1: she would often run errands in the neighborhood for her grandfather,
8:32
Speaker 1: Felix Klon.
8:33
Speaker 2: Right.
8:34
Speaker 1: On November 16, 1971, at 4 p.m. in the afternoon,
8:38
Speaker 1: she walked just two blocks from her home to a
8:41
Speaker 1: local pharmacy. She was picking up a prescription for her grandfather.
8:45
Speaker 2: Just a totally mundane, everyday task.
8:47
Speaker 1: Exactly. The historical accounts say she waited for the prescription,
8:52
Speaker 1: stepped outside the drugstore, and simply vanished into the afternoons.
8:55
Speaker 2: Think about the immense vulnerability of that specific moment. You
9:00
Speaker 2: have a 10-year-old child navigating a neighborhood where she has
9:03
Speaker 2: a significant language barrier.
9:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so true.
9:07
Speaker 2: She is carrying the adult responsibility of securing her grandfather's medicine.
9:12
Speaker 2: That hesitation outside the pharmacy, maybe she was trying to
9:16
Speaker 2: figure out which way to walk. Maybe she was just
9:18
Speaker 2: pausing to adjust her coat against the November trill. That
9:23
Speaker 2: brief moment of static vulnerability is exactly the window of
9:26
Speaker 2: opportunity a seasoned predator looks for.
9:29
Speaker 1: It's all they need.
9:30
Speaker 2: It takes less than five seconds to convince a confused
9:32
Speaker 2: or hesitant child to step toward a vehicle.
9:35
Speaker 1: But here is the most harrowing detail of Carmen's case
9:38
Speaker 1: and honestly one of the most disturbing aspects of this
9:41
Speaker 1: entire deep dive.
9:42
Speaker 2: It's a tough one to talk about.
9:43
Speaker 1: It really is. About an hour after she vanished from
9:46
Speaker 1: outside that pharmacy, she wasn't just hidden away in some
9:49
Speaker 1: dark basement. She was actively spotted.
9:51
Speaker 2: Yes.
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Speaker 1: She was seen on Route 490 West, which is a
9:54
Speaker 1: major highway about 12 miles away from her neighborhood.
9:57
Speaker 2: In broad daylight.
9:58
Speaker 1: Yes, and multiple ways. witnesses saw her. She was completely nude.
10:02
Speaker 1: She was waving her arms frantically. And she was running
10:05
Speaker 1: in terror from a car that was actively backing up
10:09
Speaker 1: on the shoulder of the highway to get to her.
10:11
Speaker 2: It is an agonizing, haunting image that really defined the
10:15
Speaker 2: early days of this investigation. A 10-year-old child in the
10:18
Speaker 2: middle of November... in upstate New York, which means the
10:21
Speaker 2: temperature would have been bitterly cold, fighting for her life
10:24
Speaker 2: on the side of a major interstate.
10:26
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
10:27
Speaker 2: She had managed to escape her captor momentarily, and she
10:30
Speaker 2: was doing everything humanly possible to signal for help.
10:34
Speaker 1: I have to pause here because I genuinely struggle to
10:36
Speaker 1: wrap my head around this. A naked, terrified child is
10:40
Speaker 1: running from a vehicle, backing up on a highway shoulder,
10:42
Speaker 1: actively waving for help, and nobody stops.
10:45
Speaker 2: It's hard to accept.
10:46
Speaker 1: People just drove past her. How does a human being
10:49
Speaker 1: process that visual and just keep their foot on the gas?
10:52
Speaker 2: It sounds incomprehensible, even monstrous, to our modern sensibilities. But
10:57
Speaker 2: to understand it, we really have to delve into the
10:59
Speaker 2: psychology of the bystander effect.
11:01
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into that.
11:02
Speaker 2: Specifically, we're talking about the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility,
11:07
Speaker 2: which was heavily compounded by the realities of highway driving
11:10
Speaker 2: in 1971. When police later interviewed drivers who called in
11:14
Speaker 2: the sighting, Captain Andrew Sparacino told the press... that people
11:17
Speaker 2: gave excuses like they were going too fast or they
11:20
Speaker 2: were in a hurry to get home.
11:21
Speaker 1: Wait, going too fast to save a child's life? Are
11:24
Speaker 1: you kidding me?
11:25
Speaker 2: It sounds callous, but it's a defense mechanism used to
11:29
Speaker 2: justify inaction after the fact. The psychological mechanism happening in
11:33
Speaker 2: the actual moment is much more complex.
11:36
Speaker 1: How so?
11:36
Speaker 2: Think about the cognitive load of driving on a highway.
11:39
Speaker 2: You are in a metal box moving at 65 miles
11:41
Speaker 2: per hour. Your brain is tuned to look for brake lights,
11:45
Speaker 2: lane lines, and other cars.
11:46
Speaker 1: Right. You're on autopilot.
11:48
Speaker 2: Exactly. When you suddenly see something radically anomalous like a
11:51
Speaker 2: nude child running on the shoulder, your brain experiences a
11:54
Speaker 2: severe cognitive dissonance. It struggles to process the information because
11:59
Speaker 2: it completely violates the expected environment.
12:01
Speaker 1: So you're saying the drivers literally couldn't process what they
12:03
Speaker 1: were seeing fast enough.
12:05
Speaker 2: Exactly. The psychological research pioneered by Darley and Latane on
12:10
Speaker 2: bystander intervention is shows that people have to go through
12:13
Speaker 2: a series of steps to act. First, they have to
12:16
Speaker 2: notice the event, interpret it as an emergency, assume personal responsibility,
12:21
Speaker 2: know how to help, and then actually implement the decision.
12:24
Speaker 1: That's a lot of steps to go through at highway speeds.
12:26
Speaker 2: Precisely. At 65 miles per hour, by the time your
12:29
Speaker 2: brain moves from what was that to that's a child
12:32
Speaker 2: in danger, you are already a mile down the road.
12:35
Speaker 1: And this is where the technological gap of 1971 becomes
12:37
Speaker 1: a fatal flaw, isn't it?
12:40
Speaker 2: It is the defining tragedy of the moment. Investigator Patrick
12:43
Speaker 2: Croft of the Monroe County Sheriff's Office pointed this out
12:46
Speaker 2: years later.
12:47
Speaker 1: What did he say?
12:48
Speaker 2: He noted that the people who witnessed this felt profound,
12:51
Speaker 2: sickening guilt afterward, and it took genuine courage for them
12:54
Speaker 2: to come forward to the police days later. But in 1971,
12:58
Speaker 2: you couldn't just tap a glowing screen on your dashboard,
13:00
Speaker 2: hit a button on your steering wheel, or grab a
13:02
Speaker 2: phone from the passenger seat and connect to a 911
13:05
Speaker 2: dispatcher in three seconds.
13:07
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah. To report this, a driver would have
13:11
Speaker 1: had to make a massive, conscious, physical effort.
13:14
Speaker 2: A huge effort.
13:15
Speaker 1: They would have to process the shock, make the active
13:18
Speaker 1: decision to pull off at the next exit, navigate to
13:21
Speaker 1: a gas station or a diner, find a public payphone,
13:24
Speaker 1: hope they had the right change in their pocket, call
13:26
Speaker 1: the local operator, and then try to explain to the
13:29
Speaker 1: police exactly what mile marker they were near on a
13:32
Speaker 1: highway they had already left.
13:33
Speaker 2: The friction to intervene was incredibly high. And when friction
13:38
Speaker 2: is high, the diffusion of responsibility, the subconscious comfort of thinking, well,
13:42
Speaker 2: there are 50 other cars on this road. Someone else
13:45
Speaker 2: will surely stop. Someone else probably already called it in,
13:48
Speaker 2: becomes an overpowering psychological force.
13:50
Speaker 1: Because it's easier to just assume it's being handled.
13:53
Speaker 2: Yes. It is a tragic, fatal reality of human psychology,
13:57
Speaker 2: mixing with the era's limitations that prevented immediate intervention and
14:01
Speaker 2: sealed her fate.
14:02
Speaker 1: And that lack of intervention led to the worst possible outcome.
14:05
Speaker 2: It did.
14:06
Speaker 1: Two days later, two teenage boys were out riding their
14:09
Speaker 1: bicycles near a town called Churchville. Keep in mind, Churchville
14:12
Speaker 1: is about 35 miles southwest of Rochester. Carmen Cullen, C.C.
14:17
Speaker 1: found in Churchville.
14:18
Speaker 2: The first piece of the pattern. Right.
14:20
Speaker 1: The boys found her lifeless body in a ditch alongside
14:23
Speaker 1: a rural road. And the detail that just breaks your
14:26
Speaker 1: heart is that the teenagers initially thought they were looking
14:29
Speaker 1: at a broken doll discarded.
14:31
Speaker 2: In the brush. That detail is always so jarring to
14:33
Speaker 2: read in the files.
14:34
Speaker 1: The subsequent autopsy showed she had been raped and manually strangled.
14:38
Speaker 1: Strangled by bare hands.
14:40
Speaker 2: Manual strangulation is a critical piece of behavioral evidence for investigators.
14:44
Speaker 2: It is a brutal, intensely intimate way to murder someone.
14:48
Speaker 1: It's very up close and personal.
14:50
Speaker 2: Very much so. It requires significant physical strength, and more importantly,
14:54
Speaker 2: it requires the killer to be in close physical proximity
14:56
Speaker 2: to the victim, physically feeling the life leave their body.
15:00
Speaker 2: It often points to a deeply personal, violent rage or
15:03
Speaker 2: a sudden loss of control. It is not a detached
15:06
Speaker 2: method of killing.
15:07
Speaker 1: For a while, the absolute horror of Carmen's death might
15:10
Speaker 1: have seemed to the community like an isolated nightmare.
15:13
Speaker 2: As these things often do at first.
15:15
Speaker 1: Right. The police were looking for a child killer, certainly,
15:17
Speaker 1: but they didn't yet know they were looking for a
15:19
Speaker 1: serial pattern. You would think a shock like that would
15:22
Speaker 1: change a city forever, that parents would never let their
15:25
Speaker 1: kids out of their sight again.
15:26
Speaker 2: But time passes. Seasons change.
15:28
Speaker 1: Exactly. 17 months go by. People tell themselves it was
15:31
Speaker 1: a one-off tragedy until April 1973.
15:35
Speaker 2: That is the insidious nature of serial crimes with long
15:39
Speaker 2: cooling-off periods. The public consciousness simply cannot sustain a state
15:44
Speaker 2: of high alert indefinitely. It's exhausting.
15:46
Speaker 1: It is.
15:47
Speaker 2: People have to go to work. Kids have to go
15:48
Speaker 2: to school. Errands have to be run. The community slowly,
15:52
Speaker 2: cautiously returns to its baseline routines. And that is precisely
15:57
Speaker 2: when the killer's need to act flared up again.
15:59
Speaker 1: And this time, the bizarre alphabetical signature that police had
16:03
Speaker 1: largely overlooked or dismissed as a coincidence in Carmen's case
16:07
Speaker 1: suddenly became impossible to ignore. Let's talk about the second victim,
16:11
Speaker 1: 11-year-old Wanda Walkovich.
16:12
Speaker 2: Wanda's circumstances share those eerie socioeconomic similarities we established. Yet
16:18
Speaker 2: her case brings its own unique, heartbreaking details to the forefront.
16:22
Speaker 1: Who is Wanda?
16:23
Speaker 2: Her sister, Rita DeCan, described her to the press as
16:27
Speaker 2: a real tomboy. She was incredibly slight, weighing a mere
16:32
Speaker 2: 65 pounds, and she had these distinctive red hair. Oh, wow.
16:36
Speaker 2: Her father had previously died of a heart attack, which
16:38
Speaker 2: plunged the family into deep emotional and financial strain. Wanda,
16:43
Speaker 2: despite being only 11, took on responsibilities to help her
16:47
Speaker 2: mother out, like walking to the local store to pick
16:49
Speaker 2: up groceries for the family dinner.
16:51
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what she was doing on April 2, 1973.
16:53
Speaker 1: It was around 5 p.m., so again, we are dealing
16:56
Speaker 1: with a breezing broad daylight abduction.
16:59
Speaker 2: A plain view of the neighborhood.
17:00
Speaker 1: She walked to a grocery store by herself on the
17:02
Speaker 1: east side of Rochester. The store owner later confirmed to
17:04
Speaker 1: investigators that she came in, bought some groceries, and started
17:07
Speaker 1: walking north on Conkey Avenue toward her home.
17:10
Speaker 2: And then the timeline gets fuzzy. Right.
17:12
Speaker 1: But about an hour later, a witness spotted her. She
17:15
Speaker 1: was still holding her groceries, but she was hesitating at
17:18
Speaker 1: the door of a stopped car.
17:20
Speaker 2: That moment of hesitation on Conkey Avenue is a textbook
17:23
Speaker 2: execution of the lure. We talked about how predators exploit
17:27
Speaker 2: vulnerability earlier.
17:28
Speaker 1: Right.
17:29
Speaker 2: A predator rarely just grabs a child off the street
17:31
Speaker 2: forcefully in broad daylight, if they can avoid it, because
17:34
Speaker 2: a screaming, thrashing child draws immediate unwanted attention.
17:39
Speaker 1: It's too risky.
17:40
Speaker 2: Exactly. Instead, they manufacture a reason for the child to
17:43
Speaker 2: approach the vehicle willingly. Captain Sparicino suggested that the lure
17:47
Speaker 2: dangled before these children might have been something incredibly simple,
17:51
Speaker 2: the promise of a hamburger, a soft drink, or a
17:53
Speaker 2: ride home with heavy groceries.
17:55
Speaker 1: Which makes perfect sense for a kid in her situation.
17:57
Speaker 2: It does. To a hungry kid from a struggling family,
18:01
Speaker 2: carrying heavy bags down a sidewalk, a friendly adult offering
18:04
Speaker 2: a burger and a lift is a very powerful temptation.
18:07
Speaker 1: And whatever the lure was, it worked. Because the next day,
18:09
Speaker 1: at 10.5 in the morning, a New York State trooper
18:12
Speaker 1: found her body.
18:13
Speaker 2: Less than 24 hours later.
18:15
Speaker 1: She was discovered at the bottom of a hillside at
18:17
Speaker 1: a rest area off State Route 104. And the location? Webster.
18:23
Speaker 1: Wanda Wachowicz, WW, found in Webster, about 15 miles northeast
18:27
Speaker 1: of her home.
18:28
Speaker 2: The pattern solidifies.
18:30
Speaker 1: But I need to stop you here because this is
18:31
Speaker 1: where the forensic details throw a massive wrench into the narrative.
18:36
Speaker 1: The crime scene was vastly different from Carmen Colon's.
18:39
Speaker 2: Yes. The modus operandi, the MO, the way the killer
18:43
Speaker 2: committed the crime shifted significantly between the first and second victims. Right.
18:47
Speaker 1: Carmen was found naked and the autopsy shows she was
18:50
Speaker 1: strangled with bare hands. But Wanda was found fully clothed.
18:54
Speaker 2: A huge distinction.
18:55
Speaker 1: And the medical examiner determined she was strangled not by hands,
18:59
Speaker 1: but by a belt or some similar type of ligature.
19:01
Speaker 2: Right.
19:02
Speaker 1: Furthermore, She had been sexually assaulted, but chillingly, the autopsy
19:06
Speaker 1: proved she had been fed a meal before she was murdered.
19:09
Speaker 2: Which completely changes the psychological profile of the event.
19:12
Speaker 1: So we have a massive shift in how the crime
19:14
Speaker 1: was committed. Aren't investigators falling into a confirmation bias trap
19:17
Speaker 1: here by linking these two?
19:19
Speaker 2: It's a valid concern.
19:20
Speaker 1: Couldn't some local creep have read about the CC in
19:23
Speaker 1: Churchill pattern in the newspapers and decided to copy it
19:26
Speaker 1: with WW to throw the cops off his own trail?
19:29
Speaker 2: That is an excellent question, and it is the exact
19:31
Speaker 2: debate that completely fragmented the police investigation for years. In
19:36
Speaker 2: criminal psychology and behavioral analysis, investigators constantly have to distinguish
19:41
Speaker 2: between a serial offender who is evolving their MO and
19:45
Speaker 2: the presence of a copycat killer.
19:47
Speaker 1: How do you tell the difference when the signature, the initials,
19:50
Speaker 1: is identical?
19:51
Speaker 2: You have to look at the psychology behind the methodology.
19:54
Speaker 2: Usually an MO evolves as a killer, refines their technique,
19:58
Speaker 2: they learn what works, what doesn't, and what fulfills their
20:00
Speaker 2: psychological needs.
20:01
Speaker 1: So they get better at it, basically.
20:03
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, yes. Moving from manual strangulation to a ligature might
20:07
Speaker 2: indicate a desire for more mechanical control. Or a way
20:10
Speaker 2: to kill without expending as much physical energy or risking
20:13
Speaker 2: defensive scratches from the victim.
20:16
Speaker 1: But what about the clothing and the food? That seems
20:18
Speaker 1: like a totally different mindset than just dumping a naked body.
20:21
Speaker 2: It implies a horrifying psychological shift. The fact that she
20:25
Speaker 2: was fully clothed and fed suggests the killer was spending
20:29
Speaker 2: significantly more time with her in a controlled environment.
20:32
Speaker 1: Like keeping her captive. Yes.
20:34
Speaker 2: In behavioral science, we sometimes see a concept called reaction
20:37
Speaker 2: formation or undoing. where a killer tries to alleviate their
20:41
Speaker 2: own subconscious guilt or assert this twisted godlike paternal control
20:46
Speaker 2: by caring for the victim, feeding them, keeping them closed
20:51
Speaker 2: right before destroying them.
20:52
Speaker 1: That is so messed up.
20:53
Speaker 2: It creates a horrific, fake sense of security for the
20:56
Speaker 2: child and feeds the perpetrator's sense of absolute power over
21:00
Speaker 2: life and death.
21:00
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily a different guy. It's the same
21:03
Speaker 1: guy getting more sophisticated and more twisted in his fantasies.
21:06
Speaker 2: Precisely. The differences were stark enough that police seriously entertained
21:10
Speaker 2: the copycat theory, but the logistical difficulty of perfectly matching
21:14
Speaker 2: the double initial signature, combined with the geographic dumping pattern,
21:18
Speaker 2: strongly pointed back to a single evolving intelligence.
21:21
Speaker 1: And there are bizarre forensic details that complicate things even further,
21:26
Speaker 1: suggesting the lure might have been even more manipulative than
21:29
Speaker 1: just offering a hamburger.
21:30
Speaker 2: The physical evidence in Wanda's case was very peculiar.
21:34
Speaker 1: You're talking about the cat hair, right?
21:35
Speaker 2: Yes. The cat hair?
21:37
Speaker 1: According to the historical files, investigators found cat hair on
21:40
Speaker 1: Wanda's clothes. But her family didn't own a cat. They
21:43
Speaker 1: didn't have pets. Right. This led investigators to theorize that
21:47
Speaker 1: the killer might have used a pet, an actual animal,
21:50
Speaker 1: as the lure instead of, or in addition to, food.
21:54
Speaker 2: Which is terrifying.
21:55
Speaker 1: Imagine a guy pulling up to an 11-year-old girl and saying, Hey,
21:58
Speaker 1: I lost my kitten. Can you help me find it? Or,
22:01
Speaker 1: do you want to see the puppy I have in
22:02
Speaker 1: the backseat? It is classic. devastatingly effective predatory tactic.
22:08
Speaker 2: It is arguably the most insidious tactic a predator can
22:11
Speaker 2: use because it exploits a child's natural empathy, innocence, and curiosity.
22:15
Speaker 1: They just want to help the animal.
22:17
Speaker 2: Exactly. If an adult asks a child for help finding
22:19
Speaker 2: a lost pet, it flips the social dynamic. The child
22:23
Speaker 2: feels empowered, helpful, and important. If that cat was indeed
22:26
Speaker 2: the lure, it demonstrates a highly manipulative, pre-planned strategy.
22:31
Speaker 1: It's not just a crime of opportunity.
22:33
Speaker 2: No, it's not just an opportunistic grab of a kid
22:35
Speaker 2: walking by. It's a calculated psychological trap designed to bypass
22:40
Speaker 2: all of the child's natural stranger danger defenses.
22:44
Speaker 1: And speaking of eerie calculated behavior, there is a post-mortem
22:48
Speaker 1: detail in Wanda's case that is so incredibly strange it
22:52
Speaker 1: feels like it belongs in a movie.
22:54
Speaker 2: It's one of the most unsettling aspects of the whole timeline.
22:57
Speaker 1: Relatives who visited Wander's gravesite over the years reported something
23:00
Speaker 1: highly unusual to the authorities. They noticed that for 15 years,
23:04
Speaker 1: a decade and a half, an unknown visitor had been
23:06
Speaker 1: actively tending to her grave.
23:08
Speaker 2: Just think about the dedication that takes.
23:10
Speaker 1: Someone was meticulously cleaning the gravestone and continually placing fresh
23:14
Speaker 1: flowers on it.
23:15
Speaker 2: That is a staggering behavioral detail. In the realm of
23:18
Speaker 2: criminal psychology, we occasionally see killers insert themselves into the
23:21
Speaker 2: aftermath of a tragedy.
23:23
Speaker 1: Like going to the funeral.
23:24
Speaker 2: Exactly. Sometimes they attend the public funerals. Sometimes they insert
23:28
Speaker 2: themselves into the search parties. Or they might even anonymously
23:31
Speaker 2: reach out to the families.
23:32
Speaker 1: But to keep it up for 15 years, that's not
23:34
Speaker 1: just a quick thrill.
23:36
Speaker 2: To maintain that routine for a decade and a half
23:39
Speaker 2: suggests a profound pathological obsession. It goes far beyond simple curiosity.
23:46
Speaker 2: It can be driven by a twisted sense of remorse,
23:49
Speaker 2: a desire to relive the crime, or, more darkly, a
23:52
Speaker 2: continued sense of ownership over the victim.
23:55
Speaker 1: Like they feel she belongs to them. Yes.
23:58
Speaker 2: It's a detail that deeply haunts investigators. Because it means
24:01
Speaker 2: the person responsible, or at least someone intimately connected to
24:04
Speaker 2: the crime, was continually stepping out into the open, hiding
24:08
Speaker 2: in plain sight in a cemetery, performing this ritual while
24:11
Speaker 2: the police were scouring the entire state looking for them.
24:14
Speaker 1: Hiding right there under the noses of everyone, masquerading as
24:17
Speaker 1: just another grieving family member.
24:19
Speaker 2: It's chilling.
24:20
Speaker 1: By this point, after Wanda's discovery in Webster, the alphabetical
24:23
Speaker 1: pattern was undeniable. Two girls, matching initials, matching towns. The
24:28
Speaker 1: community of Rochester must have been on absolute high alert.
24:32
Speaker 2: Panic would have been setting in.
24:33
Speaker 1: Parents holding their kids tighter, looking twice at every slow-moving car,
24:36
Speaker 1: schools issuing warnings. You would assume a predator would sense
24:40
Speaker 1: the heat and go deep underground.
24:42
Speaker 2: That would be the logical assumption.
24:43
Speaker 1: Yet, incredibly, the killer's boldness only escalated. Just months later,
24:48
Speaker 1: the third strike happens.
24:50
Speaker 2: The cooling off period shrank drastically. And this brings us
24:53
Speaker 2: to the final confirmed victim in this terrifying sequence, Michelle Manza.
24:58
Speaker 1: November 28, 1973, just seven months after Wanda, Michelle is
25:00
Speaker 1: 11 years old. And the social situation surrounding Michelle is
25:06
Speaker 1: heartbreaking on multiple levels.
25:08
Speaker 2: The victimology here is very pronounced.
25:10
Speaker 1: Historical reporting from late 1973 detailed that Michelle and her
25:14
Speaker 1: younger sister were actively, ruthlessly tormented by their classmates. The
25:18
Speaker 1: bullying was severe and relentless.
25:20
Speaker 2: Children can be incredibly cruel.
25:22
Speaker 1: They were targeted because they came from a deeply impoverished home,
25:25
Speaker 1: they weren't required to bathe regularly, and their clothing was
25:29
Speaker 1: often ragged and dirty. The psychological isolation this poor girl
25:33
Speaker 1: must have felt every single day is hard to overstate.
25:36
Speaker 2: And again, we return to the core blueprint of this killer, victimology.
25:41
Speaker 2: The predator is targeting a child who is deeply alienated,
25:46
Speaker 2: someone who is being actively pushed to the fringes of
25:49
Speaker 2: her own peer group.
25:50
Speaker 1: She was completely marginalized.
25:52
Speaker 2: A child enduring that level of daily torment at school,
25:55
Speaker 2: who is ostracized for her hygiene and clothing, is incredibly
25:59
Speaker 2: vulnerable to anyone showing them a shred of positive attention.
26:02
Speaker 1: It makes perfect sense.
26:03
Speaker 2: If a child feels entirely rejected by their world, an
26:07
Speaker 2: adult offering a ride, a meal, or just a friendly
26:09
Speaker 2: conversation appears not as a threat, but as a desperately
26:13
Speaker 2: needed escape, however brief.
26:15
Speaker 1: On that Monday after Thanksgiving, the bullying was apparently so
26:18
Speaker 1: bad that Michelle went to the school nurse's office in tears.
26:21
Speaker 1: She just couldn't take it anymore.
26:22
Speaker 2: She just wanted out of there.
26:24
Speaker 1: The nurse actually allowed her to leave school early. She
26:27
Speaker 1: was last seen by classmates walking alone about a fifth
26:30
Speaker 1: of a mile from the campus. But there is a
26:32
Speaker 1: tragedy within the tragedy here, a sliding doors moment that
26:36
Speaker 1: is just agonizing.
26:38
Speaker 2: These are the details that keep investigators up at night.
26:40
Speaker 1: Her brother, Steve Medenza, told the press years later that
26:44
Speaker 1: their uncle had actually seen Michelle walking that afternoon. He
26:48
Speaker 1: saw her, he pulled his car over, and he offered
26:50
Speaker 1: her a ride home.
26:52
Speaker 2: Such a close call.
26:53
Speaker 1: But Michelle declined. She just wanted to walk.
26:56
Speaker 2: It is one of those agonizing what-if moments that define
26:58
Speaker 2: the emotional toll of cold cases. Steve Menendez noted that
27:02
Speaker 2: his uncle was deeply upset with himself for decades, carrying
27:05
Speaker 2: this lifelong crushing guilt because he didn't insist on picking
27:09
Speaker 2: her up.
27:10
Speaker 1: How could he have known, though?
27:11
Speaker 2: He couldn't have. He respected her decline, he drove away,
27:14
Speaker 2: and likely, shortly after his taillights faded, the killer made
27:18
Speaker 2: his approach. It highlights how fragile the timeline of survival
27:21
Speaker 2: can be. A matter of minutes, a simple polite refusal
27:25
Speaker 2: to a family member, It revocably changed the course of history.
27:28
Speaker 1: And this is where the killer's audacity reaches a completely new,
27:33
Speaker 1: terrifying level. Because this time, eyewitnesses actually get a look
27:36
Speaker 1: at this guy and the victim together.
27:38
Speaker 2: This was a major breakthrough at the time.
27:40
Speaker 1: Police received a tip that a girl matching Michelle's description
27:44
Speaker 1: was spotted at a public hamburger stand in a man's car.
27:47
Speaker 1: This is broad daylight.
27:49
Speaker 2: Almy open.
27:50
Speaker 1: A witness specifically noted that the man had dirty hands,
27:53
Speaker 1: and they saw him return to the car carrying a
27:55
Speaker 1: bag of food and a cup. Later on, other witnesses
27:58
Speaker 1: saw a similar-looking man driving a car with a flat tire,
28:01
Speaker 1: and they saw a girl matching Michelle sitting quietly in
28:04
Speaker 1: the back seat.
28:05
Speaker 2: Which is just staggering.
28:06
Speaker 1: This is massive. After two phantom abductions, it provided the
28:10
Speaker 1: police with the very first real physical description of a
28:13
Speaker 1: possible suspect and his vehicle.
28:15
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the broader picture of the
28:17
Speaker 2: killer's psychological evolution, This behavior is astounding. Going from snatching
28:22
Speaker 2: a child outside a pharmacy and speeding off in a
28:24
Speaker 2: panic to actively driving a victim to a public food stand,
28:27
Speaker 2: turning off the engine, getting out, buying food, and getting
28:31
Speaker 2: back in the car. Well, it shows a terrifying evolution
28:34
Speaker 2: in confidence and control.
28:36
Speaker 1: He feels completely invisible.
28:37
Speaker 2: He feels invincible. He is no longer operating entirely in
28:40
Speaker 2: the shadows or the margins. He is incorporating his crimes
28:44
Speaker 2: into the mundane routines of daytime society.
28:47
Speaker 1: It's like he's showing off.
28:48
Speaker 2: He has normalized his own monstrous behavior to the point
28:52
Speaker 2: where he feels comfortable standing in line for a burger
28:55
Speaker 2: with his victim waiting in the car. It suggests a
28:58
Speaker 2: psychopathic detachment and a supreme arrogance that he will not
29:01
Speaker 2: be caught.
29:02
Speaker 1: But despite the eyewitnesses, the outcome remains tragically the same.
29:06
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, yes.
29:07
Speaker 1: Two days later, Michelle's lifeless body was found. She was
29:11
Speaker 1: discarded in a ditch, virtually in plain sight, and the location...
29:15
Speaker 1: macedon about 20 miles northeast.
29:17
Speaker 2: Of rochester a final piece of the puzzle.
29:19
Speaker 1: Michelle marinza mm found in macedon she was fully closed
29:23
Speaker 1: she'd been strangled with a ligature just like wanda and
29:27
Speaker 1: the autopsy proved she had eaten a burger at some
29:29
Speaker 1: point shortly before her death the pattern was.
29:32
Speaker 2: Locked the ritual was complete and the mo was solidified
29:36
Speaker 2: the ligature strangulation the victim remaining closed the psychological control
29:41
Speaker 2: tactic of feeding her beforehand, these markers firmly link Michelle's
29:45
Speaker 2: murder to Wanda's.
29:46
Speaker 1: Without a doubt.
29:47
Speaker 2: And the geographic alphabetical dumping links all three girls together
29:51
Speaker 2: under one overarching intelligence. The police now had composite sketches
29:56
Speaker 2: based on eyewitness descriptions and They had forensic traces like
29:59
Speaker 2: the ligatures, the specific food contents in the stomach, and
30:02
Speaker 2: potentially that cat hair from Wanda's case.
30:04
Speaker 1: They had a ton of clues.
30:06
Speaker 2: They had a timeline. You would think, with all this
30:08
Speaker 2: data finally coming together, unrest was imminent.
30:11
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. And that is the most frustrating, mind-bending
30:14
Speaker 1: part of this entire deep dive. Armed with all of
30:17
Speaker 1: this evidence, police launched investigations that have spanned decades, generating
30:21
Speaker 1: thousands of leads.
30:23
Speaker 2: The man-hours spent on this case are incalculable.
30:26
Speaker 1: Yet every single promising avenue turned into a confounding dead end.
30:32
Speaker 1: Let's walk through this carousel of suspects, because some of
30:34
Speaker 1: these connections are so wild they defy belief. You have
30:38
Speaker 1: to remind yourself you are listening to nonfiction.
30:40
Speaker 2: The suspect list in The Alphabet Murders is a testament
30:43
Speaker 2: to how complex and contradictory circumstantial evidence can be, and
30:47
Speaker 2: how desperately the human brain wants to find a neat
30:50
Speaker 2: narrative resolution to chaos.
30:52
Speaker 1: Let's start with suspect one. We mentioned him briefly earlier
30:54
Speaker 1: in the timeline, Miguel Colon. This is Carmen's uncle.
30:57
Speaker 2: A family connection.
30:58
Speaker 1: Now, police initially leaned heavily into the theory that Carmen
31:01
Speaker 1: might have had a separate killer from Wanda and Michelle.
31:04
Speaker 1: As we discussed, the MO was different, bare hands versus ligature,
31:08
Speaker 1: nude versus clothed. So they looked close to home, which
31:12
Speaker 1: is standard police procedure.
31:13
Speaker 2: It is. Statistically, most victims are killed by someone they know.
31:17
Speaker 1: Right. Miguel became a primary suspect. But the investigation into
31:21
Speaker 1: him ended abruptly and violently. Following a domestic dispute, Miguel
31:25
Speaker 1: Colon committed suicide. He shot himself right in front of
31:28
Speaker 1: responding police officers.
31:30
Speaker 2: A violent public suicide in front of law enforcement certainly
31:34
Speaker 2: casts a heavy, undeniable shadow of suspicion. To an investigator,
31:39
Speaker 2: it looks like the ultimate act of guilt or a
31:42
Speaker 2: desperate evasion of justice.
31:43
Speaker 1: It looks terrible for him.
31:44
Speaker 2: However, it's vital to note that the Colon family vehemently
31:49
Speaker 2: maintains his innocence regarding Carmen's murder.
31:51
Speaker 1: But why would the police eventually move away from him
31:54
Speaker 1: if he killed himself like that?
31:55
Speaker 2: Because of the overarching pattern. Without definitive forensic evidence linking
31:59
Speaker 2: him to the crime scene and facing the undeniable alphabetical
32:03
Speaker 2: and geographic connections to the later murders of Wanda and Michelle,
32:07
Speaker 2: investigators had to look at the macro picture.
32:09
Speaker 1: The forest for the trees.
32:10
Speaker 2: Exactly. The shared initials and the corresponding dumping grounds strongly
32:15
Speaker 2: suggest a single organizing intelligence behind all three events. It
32:19
Speaker 2: is highly unlikely that the uncle killed Carmen and then
32:22
Speaker 2: some unknown serial killer decided to perfectly mimic that obscure
32:26
Speaker 2: alphabetical detail twice more.
32:28
Speaker 1: It's just too much of a stretch.
32:29
Speaker 2: While his suicide is tragic and suspicious, making him fit
32:33
Speaker 2: the entire three-victim pattern is a square peg in a
32:36
Speaker 2: round hole.
32:37
Speaker 1: Okay, so the local family theory falls apart. This brings
32:40
Speaker 1: us to suspect two. And this is where the true
32:43
Speaker 1: crime history books intersect in a major, shocking way.
32:48
Speaker 2: This one always throws people.
32:49
Speaker 1: The suspect the police zeroed in on was a man
32:51
Speaker 1: named Kenneth Bianchi, better known to the world as one
32:55
Speaker 1: half of the infamous Hillside Stranglers.
32:57
Speaker 2: This is a connection that always stuns people who are
32:59
Speaker 2: new to this specific cold case.
33:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.
33:02
Speaker 2: Feels like a crossover episode of Nightmares.
33:04
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Bianchi, along with his cousin, Angelo Borno, terrorized
33:08
Speaker 1: Los Angeles between 1977 and 1979. committing a series of
33:13
Speaker 1: horrific rapes and strangulations, and dumping the bodies of young
33:16
Speaker 1: women on the hillsides around L.A.
33:18
Speaker 2: A very prolific, terrifying duo.
33:20
Speaker 1: But before he went to California, where was he? He
33:23
Speaker 1: was born and raised right there in Rochester, New York.
33:26
Speaker 1: He lived there during the exact time of the Alphabet murder.
33:28
Speaker 2: It's a huge red flag.
33:29
Speaker 1: And get this, he was a former ice cream vendor
33:32
Speaker 1: in the area, a job that would give someone unlimited
33:34
Speaker 1: access and a perfectly innocent reason to approach children in neighborhoods.
33:38
Speaker 2: The circumstantial overlay is incredibly compelling. You have a known,
33:43
Speaker 2: documented serial killer whose eventual confirmed M.O. in California included
33:48
Speaker 2: sexual assault and strangulation, living in the exact city where
33:52
Speaker 2: three young girls were sexually assaulted and strangled.
33:54
Speaker 1: It's almost too perfect.
33:56
Speaker 2: He is working a job that puts him in direct,
33:59
Speaker 2: friendly contact with kids, providing a perfect cover for the lure.
34:03
Speaker 2: It is no wonder police put him directly in their crosshairs.
34:06
Speaker 2: When you look at those facts, it feels like the
34:09
Speaker 2: perfect logical answer.
34:11
Speaker 1: But the science stepped in and ruined the perfect story.
34:14
Speaker 1: Former FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood noted that investigators had actually
34:18
Speaker 1: found a latent palm print on Michelle Manza's body or belongings.
34:22
Speaker 2: A crucial piece of physical evidence.
34:24
Speaker 1: When Bianchi was captured in California, they tested that Rochester
34:28
Speaker 1: palm print against him. It didn't match.
34:30
Speaker 2: And that is the brutal reality of forensic science. It
34:32
Speaker 2: does not care about your compelling narratives, your geographic coincidences,
34:36
Speaker 2: or how well a suspect fits a behavioral profile.
34:39
Speaker 1: It's completely objective.
34:40
Speaker 2: A palm print is definitive. It is physical architecture. While
34:44
Speaker 2: some armchair detectives and even some stubborn investigators over the
34:48
Speaker 2: years still harbor suspicions that Bianchi might be involved, perhaps
34:53
Speaker 2: working with an accomplice in Rochester, as he later did
34:55
Speaker 2: in L.A., the hard, physical evidence on Michal did not
34:59
Speaker 2: point to him.
35:00
Speaker 1: So if it's not the local uncle and it's not
35:02
Speaker 1: the notorious serial killer from the exact same hometown, who
35:06
Speaker 1: is it? Well, buckle up, because suspect three is a
35:09
Speaker 1: mind-bending anomaly. Enter Joseph Nasso.
35:12
Speaker 2: Joseph Nasso is a statistical impossibility that somehow actually existed
35:16
Speaker 2: in the real world.
35:17
Speaker 1: I cannot get over this guy. Like, Bianchi, Joseph Nasso
35:20
Speaker 1: hailed from Rochester. He lived there. He worked as a photographer.
35:23
Speaker 1: He traveled a lot. And he eventually moved out west
35:25
Speaker 1: to Northern California. Right. Decades later, between the 1970s and 1990s,
35:29
Speaker 1: Nasso was arrested and convicted of the brutal murders of
35:32
Speaker 1: four prostitutes in California. And what was his signature? He
35:35
Speaker 1: was a literal double initial killer.
35:37
Speaker 2: It's just so bizarre.
35:38
Speaker 1: All of his victims had matching first and last initials.
35:41
Speaker 1: He killed Roxene Rogash, Pamela Parsons, Tracy Tafoya, and eerily, terrifyingly,
35:49
Speaker 1: he killed a woman in California whose name was Carmen Colon.
35:53
Speaker 2: It is almost impossible to wrap your mind around the
35:56
Speaker 2: math of that coincidence. I know. You have a man
35:58
Speaker 2: originating from Rochester, New York, who grows up to be
36:01
Speaker 2: a serial killer who exclusively targets women With double initials.
36:07
Speaker 2: And one of his confirmed victims in California shares the
36:10
Speaker 2: exact first and last name of the very first victim
36:14
Speaker 2: in the Rochester double initial murders.
36:16
Speaker 1: It's absurd.
36:17
Speaker 2: If you wrote this in a script for a crime drama,
36:20
Speaker 2: it would be rejected by the network as too unbelievable
36:22
Speaker 2: and lazy.
36:23
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this right now, you're probably screaming
36:25
Speaker 1: at your phone, case closed. That's the guy. He started
36:28
Speaker 1: in Rochester and keep doing it in California.
36:30
Speaker 2: It's the most natural conclusion to draw.
36:32
Speaker 1: That's exactly what the police thought, too. You find a
36:35
Speaker 1: guy who kills people based on double initials, he's from
36:37
Speaker 1: the same city, and he literally killed a Carmen Colon.
36:40
Speaker 1: It is a slam dunk.
36:41
Speaker 2: Or so it seemed.
36:42
Speaker 1: But once again, science throws a massive wrench into the gears.
36:46
Speaker 1: Advanced DNA evidence was eventually retrieved from the Rochester crime scenes.
36:51
Speaker 1: They tested it against Joseph Nasso's DNA profile, and it
36:54
Speaker 1: did not match.
36:55
Speaker 2: It is a profound, frustrating lesson in the reality of
36:58
Speaker 2: investigative work. Versus the narrative satisfaction of true crime storytelling.
37:03
Speaker 1: It really is.
37:04
Speaker 2: Human beings are biologically wired to seek patterns. When we
37:08
Speaker 2: see a man from Rochester killing a Carmen Colon because
37:11
Speaker 2: of her initials, our brains scream that it absolutely must
37:15
Speaker 2: be connected to the Rochester Carmen Colon.
37:18
Speaker 1: We want it to be him so badly.
37:19
Speaker 2: It feels like the universe is handing you the answer.
37:22
Speaker 2: But DNA is unforgiving. It clears these perfect suspects and
37:25
Speaker 2: leaves investigators staring right back at a blank wall.
37:27
Speaker 1: So circumstantial evidence is like a funhouse mirror. It warps
37:30
Speaker 1: everything to look exactly like the suspect you want to see.
37:32
Speaker 1: You can make the clues fit the guy. But DNA
37:35
Speaker 1: is a barcode. It doesn't care about your narrative or
37:37
Speaker 1: your incredible coincidences. It just scans as yes or no.
37:41
Speaker 2: That is an excellent analogy. DNA doesn't contextualize. It simply identifies.
37:46
Speaker 2: And in this case, it identified that Nasso wasn't the guy.
37:49
Speaker 1: Just crazy.
37:50
Speaker 2: It highlights incredible statistical anomalies in crime. The two completely
37:55
Speaker 2: distinct serial killers could independently develop a psychotic fixation on
37:59
Speaker 2: double initials and target victims with the exact same name
38:03
Speaker 2: originating from the exact same city. It is baffling to
38:07
Speaker 2: the point of absurdity.
38:08
Speaker 1: It's beyond baffling. It is maddening for the families and
38:11
Speaker 1: the police. But the police haven't stopped trying to use
38:13
Speaker 1: that barcode. As recently as 2009, they went to extreme measures.
38:17
Speaker 2: They really did.
38:18
Speaker 1: There was an unnamed city firefighter in Rochester who had
38:20
Speaker 1: passed away, but he had been suspected of being a
38:23
Speaker 1: serial rapist in the area during that era. The police
38:26
Speaker 1: actually got a court order to exhume his corpse from
38:28
Speaker 1: the cemetery, specifically to extract his DNA and compare it
38:32
Speaker 1: against the crime scene evidence from the Alphabet murders.
38:35
Speaker 2: Exhumation is not a step taken lightly in the legal system.
38:38
Speaker 2: It requires significant legal hurdles, probable cause, And it demonstrates
38:42
Speaker 2: how desperately law enforcement wanted to close this case.
38:45
Speaker 1: They were pulling out all the stops.
38:46
Speaker 2: The fact that they went to those extreme morbid lengths
38:49
Speaker 2: in 2009, nearly 40 years after the crimes, shows that
38:52
Speaker 2: the investigation was still highly active and that they believed
38:56
Speaker 2: they were one swab away from solving it.
38:59
Speaker 1: But the barcode scanned no again. The DNA didn't match
39:03
Speaker 1: the firefighter. The case remains cold and no further major
39:06
Speaker 1: updates regarding that suspect or any others have been publicly
39:09
Speaker 1: disclosed since.
39:11
Speaker 2: Which leaves us with a deeply unsettling reality to confront.
39:14
Speaker 2: The perpetrator, assuming they were in their 20s or 30s
39:17
Speaker 2: in the early 1970s, could potentially still be alive today,
39:21
Speaker 2: living quietly somewhere as an old man.
39:23
Speaker 1: That's a terrifying thought.
39:24
Speaker 2: Or they lived out their entire life passing away of
39:27
Speaker 2: natural causes without ever facing a single death. day of
39:30
Speaker 2: justice for stalking, terrifying, and murdering three vulnerable children in
39:34
Speaker 2: such a calculated theatrical manner.
39:37
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the enduring shadow of this
39:39
Speaker 1: case today. We are over 50 years out, half a
39:42
Speaker 1: century since Carmen, Wanda, and Michelle were taken from their families.
39:46
Speaker 2: It's a long time to wait for answers.
39:48
Speaker 1: Yet, Four separate law enforcement agencies in upstate New York
39:52
Speaker 1: refused to give up. They are still actively looking for answers,
39:55
Speaker 1: still running down leads. State police investigator Thomas Crowley said
39:59
Speaker 1: it best in an interview back in 2009. He said,
40:02
Speaker 1: the thought that we would be able to solve this
40:04
Speaker 1: someday is always there and keeps us going quite a bit.
40:07
Speaker 2: It's a testament to the dedication of those investigators who
40:10
Speaker 2: inherit these massive files. And they still actively solicit tips
40:13
Speaker 2: from the public, knowing that allegiances change, people pass away.
40:17
Speaker 2: and secrets kept for decades sometimes finally slip out.
40:21
Speaker 1: They need people to come forward.
40:22
Speaker 2: The New York State Police maintain open lines for this case.
40:25
Speaker 2: Anyone with information, even now, can still call 585-398-4100 or
40:31
Speaker 2: email nanisveitkamp at troopers.ny.gov. They were waiting for that one
40:36
Speaker 2: piece of the puzzle that finally fits the barcode.
40:38
Speaker 1: As we wrap up this deep dive, I want you
40:40
Speaker 1: to reflect on the immense butterfly effects of this case.
40:43
Speaker 1: Think about the tragically spanning decades rippling out from those
40:46
Speaker 1: three quiet abduction sites.
40:48
Speaker 2: The impact is immeasurable.
40:49
Speaker 1: Think about those drivers on Route 490 who didn't stop
40:52
Speaker 1: because they were in a hurry or because their brains
40:55
Speaker 1: couldn't process the horror fast enough, carrying that realization and
40:58
Speaker 1: that guilt for the rest of their lives.
41:00
Speaker 2: A heavy burden.
41:01
Speaker 1: Think about Steve Mainza's uncle bearing the lifelong, crushing burden
41:05
Speaker 1: of simply respecting his niece's polite wish to walk instead
41:09
Speaker 1: of forcing her into his car.
41:11
Speaker 2: It alters families forever.
41:13
Speaker 1: Think about a community in the 1970s that completely lost
41:16
Speaker 1: its innocence, realizing that the monsters weren't just in fairy
41:20
Speaker 1: tales or dark fiction, but driving the suburban streets in
41:23
Speaker 1: broad daylight, looking for a matching letter.
41:26
Speaker 2: The collateral damage of a serial predator extends far beyond
41:30
Speaker 2: the immediate victims. It rewires the psychology of an entire region.
41:34
Speaker 1: It really does.
41:35
Speaker 2: It changes how parents raise their children, how neighbors view
41:37
Speaker 2: each other. It creates a legacy of suspicion and trauma.
41:41
Speaker 2: that is passed down through generations of families and generations
41:44
Speaker 2: of law enforcement officers who carry the heavy weight of
41:47
Speaker 2: the unsolved.
41:49
Speaker 1: And as you think about all of that, I want
41:50
Speaker 1: to leave you with one final chilling thread to pull on.
41:55
Speaker 1: Revisit that eerie detail we discussed earlier.
41:57
Speaker 2: The cemetery.
41:58
Speaker 1: The stranger at the cemetery. For 15 years, an unknown
42:02
Speaker 1: visitor meticulously cleaned Wanda Walkovich's grave and left fresh flowers.
42:08
Speaker 1: Who was that?
42:09
Speaker 2: We may never know.
42:10
Speaker 1: Was it just a bizarre, unconnected, eccentric with a morbid hobby?
42:14
Speaker 1: Or is it possible that a killer's ultimate hiding place
42:17
Speaker 1: is right out in the open?
42:18
Speaker 2: It's a haunting possibility.
42:19
Speaker 1: Masquerading as a grieving loved one, driven by a twisted,
42:22
Speaker 1: pathological sense of remorse or continued ownership, carefully wiping away
42:26
Speaker 1: the dirt from a gravestone while the police and the
42:28
Speaker 1: entire world fruitlessly search the shadows for a phantom.