Altemio Sanchez

Victims

3 convictions, all by GUILTY PLEA - Linda Yalem, 22, Majane Mazur, 32, and Joan Diver, 45, all pleaded to as SECOND-degree murder rather than tried. A separate 1981 rape conviction followed in 2011. A series of rapes is attributed to him, and a fourth killing, of fourteen-year-old Sherri Ann Weeks in 1988, was suspected and never charged

Years active

1990 / 1992 / 2006

Location

Buffalo, Erie County, New York, USA

Method

Strangulation

Status

Identified after DNA taken from his son during an unrelated arrest showed a familial match to the killings, and arrested on January 15, 2007. He pleaded guilty in Erie County Court on May 15, 2007 to three counts of second-degree murder, of Linda Yalem in 1990, Majane Mazur in 1992 and Joan Diver in 2006, and was sentenced on August 15, 2007 to seventy-five years to life, the maximum available, with no chance of parole. In 2011 he pleaded guilty to a 1981 rape in the Town of Tonawanda and received a further eight to twenty-five years. He is held at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York. Police have attributed a series of rapes along Buffalo bicycle paths to him across two decades under the name the Bike Path Rapist, and he was long suspected of a fourth murder, of fourteen-year-old Sherri Ann Weeks in 1988, but no charge was brought.

Sanchez was born in 1958 in Puerto Rico and lived in Buffalo, New York, working at an auto parts factory. He was married with two sons and, by every account of the neighbourhood, entirely unremarkable.

From 1981 he raped women on and near the bicycle paths around Buffalo and in Amherst; the press called the unknown attacker the Bike Path Rapist. Three women were killed: Linda Yalem, twenty-two, a student, in September 1990; Majane Mazur, thirty-two, in 1992; and Joan Diver, forty-five, in September 2006.

In 1987 Anthony Capozzi, a Buffalo man with schizophrenia, was convicted of two of the bike path rapes on the basis of victim identifications and sentenced to eleven to thirty-five years. He served twenty-two. He was refused parole repeatedly because he would not admit the offences.

Sanchez was identified in January 2007 after DNA from the Diver killing was matched through a familial search and a discarded cup, and he was arrested on January 15, 2007. His DNA also matched the rapes Capozzi had been convicted of. Capozzi was released in March 2007 and exonerated, and New York paid compensation.

Sanchez pleaded guilty and was sentenced on August 15, 2007 to seventy-five years to life with no possibility of parole. The higher figure reflects further attacks attributed and not charged; the number of rapes is put at a dozen or more.

Two things belong on the page. The first is the length of it: twenty-five years of attacks in one small area. The second is Capozzi, who lost twenty-two years to a misidentification while the man responsible went on attacking women in the same city.