Between November 1971 and November 1973, three girls from Rochester, New York, were taken from the city's streets and found dead in the towns around it. Carmen Colon was 10. Wanda Walkowicz and Michelle Maenza were 11. Each had gone out alone, on an errand or on her way home, and none came back. Each had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
The press noticed early that each girl's first and last names began with the same letter, and that each had been found in or near a place beginning with that letter: Carmen near Churchville, Wanda in Webster, Michelle in Macedon. The cases became known as the Double Initial Murders, and later, more widely, as the Alphabet Murders.
More than half a century later, no one has been charged with any of the three deaths. The New York State Police, which holds the Walkowicz file, says the three cases have never been officially connected and that all of them remain open. DNA evidence from Wanda's case has survived and has never been matched to anyone. Evidence from the other two cases was destroyed long before modern testing, according to a 2023 Newsweek report.
The record left in reliable sources about the girls themselves is thin. Carmen Colon was 10 years old when she disappeared in November 1971. Her family lived in Rochester, and members of her family later spoke with a Rochester writer who was researching the case, the magazine 55 Plus reported in 2019.
Wanda Lee Walkowicz was born on August 4, 1961, according to the New York State Police. She was 11 years old.
Michelle Maenza was 11 when she disappeared in November 1973, on her way home from school. Her first name is spelled "Michele" on the State Police's own page about the cases and "Michelle" in most news reports.
Carmen Colon disappeared on November 16, 1971. According to a 2023 account in Reporter, the magazine of the Rochester Institute of Technology, she had left home to run an errand for her grandfather. She did not come back.
Witnesses later said they had seen her on an expressway after she was taken, Newsweek reported in 2023, and that she had been running from a car. No one stopped to help her.
She was found two days after she disappeared, in the town of Riga, near the village of Churchville, according to a 2019 report by the Rochester station WHAM. The State Police page on the cases also gives the town of Riga in Monroe County. She had been strangled.
Her death drew wide attention in Rochester. The RIT account describes a period of unrest in the city afterward and says that extra police patrols produced no new leads.
The first person the public came to know as a suspect was a member of Carmen's own family. Her uncle, Miguel Colon, became the chief suspect in her death, according to Newsweek. He left Rochester for Puerto Rico two days after the killing. A Monroe County detective, Nicholas DeRosa, traveled to Puerto Rico to find him. Miguel Colon came back to Rochester and was questioned, but he was never charged.
In 1991, during a domestic dispute at his home in Rochester, he shot and wounded his wife and his brother-in-law and then took his own life, Newsweek reported. He was never charged in Carmen's death, and no court has ever found that he was responsible for it.
On April 2, 1973, Wanda Walkowicz left her home in Rochester to buy groceries for her mother at a corner store, according to the State Police and WROC. The State Police say she left at about 5:15 in the afternoon. She reached the store, bought several items and was last seen walking home.
She never reached home. She was found the next day, April 3, 1973, in the town of Webster, according to the State Police. An autopsy found that she had been strangled.
The Walkowicz case is held by the State Police's Troop E Major Crimes Unit in Canandaigua. Over five decades, investigators have checked many leads and conducted many interviews without making an arrest, according to the agency's public statements reported in 2018 and about 2019.
The physical evidence from Wanda's case has proved the most important in the whole series. A DNA sample was recovered from her clothing, the RIT account says, and it has never matched anyone. Newsweek reported in 2023 that the DNA from her case still exists and was being re-examined, and that no suspect had matched the profile.
The biological evidence from the Colon and Maenza cases no longer exists; it was destroyed before modern DNA testing, Newsweek reported in 2023.
In March 2018 the State Police chose the Walkowicz case for its "Cold Case Tuesday" public appeals, asking anyone with information to call the agency, WROC reported. In a later appeal, 46 years after her death, the agency again pressed for new leads, WHAM reported.
On November 26, 1973, Michelle Maenza disappeared as she walked home from school in Rochester, according to the RIT account. Witnesses reported seeing her in the front seat of a large brown car. Police built a composite sketch of the man from witness interviews and released it, but no arrest followed.
She was found two days later, on November 28, 1973, in the town of Macedon in Wayne County, according to the State Police. She had been strangled.
The writer Michael Benson, who co-wrote a book on the cases with the retired investigator Donald Tubman, told Newsweek in 2023 that Michelle's case closely resembled Wanda's.
By the end of 1973 the press had joined the three deaths under one name. The State Police say the media called them the "Alphabet Murders" and the "Double Initial Murders," because each girl's first and last names began with the same letter and all three cases were in the Rochester area. Reports by WHAM and WROC add the second element: each girl was found in or near a place whose name began with the same letter as her own.
The fit is looser than the label suggests. The State Police page and WHAM both give the town of Riga as the place Carmen Colon was found; the C is supplied by the nearby village of Churchville. Wanda was found in Webster and Michelle in Macedon, both of which match exactly.
Whether the pattern meant anything has been argued for decades. Benson told Newsweek in 2023 that there was "no logical reason" for the double initials to be a factor, and that he regarded them as a coincidence. Tubman told the magazine that the initials were an unhelpful coincidence that had added "hysteria" to the case. The State Police's own description of the cases records the name the media gave them without suggesting the letters had any significance in the investigation.
The double-initial label made it easy to assume one man killed all three girls. The investigators and writers who have studied the cases most closely are not sure of that.
In 2018, WXXI News reported that police and the two researchers, Benson and Tubman, believed at least two separate killers were responsible. Benson told Newsweek in 2023 that he did not think all three deaths were connected. In his view the killer was a man who looked for girls walking alone. He saw the Walkowicz and Maenza cases as closely alike, and he thought Carmen Colon's case was different, pointing to differences in how she was strangled and in other findings. Tubman told Newsweek that Carmen's killer was probably a different person from the man who killed the other two girls.
The State Police say only that the three cases have not been officially connected.
In April 2011 the case returned to national news when police in California arrested Joseph Naso, a 77-year-old freelance photographer from Reno, Nevada, and charged him with the murders of four women in Northern California between 1977 and 1994. Each of the four women had first and last names that began with the same letter: Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colon, Pamela Parsons and Tracy Tafoya. One of them had the same name as the first Rochester victim, Carmen Colon.
Naso was a New York native who had grown up in the Rochester area and moved west in 1969, ABC7 in San Francisco reported, and investigators believed he had traveled back to the Rochester area from time to time. The Associated Press reported that he had moved between Rochester and the West in the early 1970s and had once lived near Rochester. His name had not come up in the New York investigation until he came under suspicion in California, CBS News reported.
The comparison that mattered most was the DNA. A sample from one of the New York victims did not match Naso, the Associated Press reported, and State Police Trooper Mark O'Donnell said no other evidence linked him to the Rochester cases. New York authorities did not rule him out. The AP noted the differences between the two series: the California victims were adult women, and the Rochester victims were children.
Naso was tried in Marin County Superior Court. On August 20, 2013, a jury found him guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of the four California women, KQED reported. On November 22, 2013, Judge Andrew Sweet sentenced him to death for three of the killings and to life in prison for the fourth, Bay City News reported. In September 2025 ABC7 reported that he was 91, held in a California prison health care facility, and pursuing an appeal.
Naso has never been charged with any of the Rochester deaths. The only scientific test reported, the comparison with the Walkowicz DNA, did not match him.
In 2018 Benson and Tubman told WXXI News that their research had produced two new suspects, one of whom they regarded as strong. By 2019 they had written a book on the cases, 55 Plus reported. Tubman spent 17 years as a Wheatland police sergeant and 20 years as a New York State senior criminal investigator before becoming a private investigator, 55 Plus reported in 2019.
In November 2023 Newsweek reported that the man Tubman considers the most likely killer of Wanda Walkowicz and Michelle Maenza had been released after more than 30 years in custody. Newsweek did not name him. He was a Rochester man, then 76, who had been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for the rape of an 11-year-old girl. When that sentence ended he was held under civil confinement because a court found him to be a danger to the public, and he had since been released and was living in Rochester. Tubman's reason for suspecting him, Newsweek reported, was that the man had lived in the same neighborhood as Wanda and Michelle. Tubman said police should obtain a fresh DNA sample from him. He also urged caution, saying that many people who had called him over the years had accused their own relatives.
The man has never been charged in connection with any of the three deaths. Newsweek reported that it had sought his comment through his former lawyer. As of November 2023, Newsweek said, no suspect had matched the Walkowicz DNA profile.
In March 2022 a woman posted a video on TikTok explaining why she believed her late grandfather might have been involved in Wanda Walkowicz's death. Newsweek reported on the video in April 2022 and noted that it had drawn about 620,000 views. The claims were hers, and Newsweek did not verify them. Its November 2023 report said that the grandfather was not the man whose release it had described. No official has linked him to the cases.
The girls' families have lived with the cases for more than five decades. Wanda's two sisters have campaigned for the use of DNA evidence in unsolved killings, Newsweek reported in 2023. Members of Carmen Colon's family spoke with the Rochester writer Deb Sperling for her own research into the case, 55 Plus reported in 2019; Sperling said the most important reason for the work was the chance of bringing some closure to the families.
As of October 22, 2026, the three cases remain open and unsolved. The State Police page on Wanda Walkowicz, read on that date, says the three cases have not been officially connected and that all remain open, and it asks anyone with information to call the Troop E Major Crimes Unit in Canandaigua at (585) 398-4100. No arrest has been made in any of the three deaths, and no one has been charged.
Investigators have kept saying the case can be solved. In 2019 Mark Mariano, who retired in 2008 as commanding officer of the Rochester Police Department's major crimes unit and had served on a task force on the murders, said there was still "meat on the bone" and that there were active leads to follow, 55 Plus reported.
The meaning of the initials. The name of the series rests on a pattern that the people who have studied it most closely regard as a coincidence. Benson and Tubman both told Newsweek in 2023 that the initials were not a factor, and the State Police record the name only as the media's label. Carmen Colon was found in the town of Riga; the matching C comes from the nearby village of Churchville.
One killer or several. Police and the two researchers told WXXI in 2018 that they believed at least two killers were responsible. Benson and Tubman both think Carmen Colon's killer was probably a different man from the one who killed Wanda and Michelle. The State Police say the cases have not been officially connected, and the evidence from the Colon and Maenza cases no longer exists, Newsweek reported.
Miguel Colon. Carmen's uncle was the chief suspect in her death, left for Puerto Rico two days afterward, was brought back and questioned, and was never charged. He died in 1991. No court or official finding has ever tied him to her death or to the other two.
Joseph Naso. Naso was convicted in 2013 of four murders of women in California whose names also had matching initials. He had lived in the Rochester area. A DNA sample from one of the New York victims did not match him, and officials said in 2011 that no other evidence linked him to the Rochester cases. He has never been charged in New York.
The man released in 2023. Tubman regards a Rochester man convicted of the rape of an 11-year-old girl as the most likely killer of Wanda and Michelle, because he lived in their neighborhood. He has not been named publicly by any official, has never been charged in the three cases, and no DNA match to him has been reported.
The grandfather in the 2022 video. The claims were made on social media by a relative, were not verified by Newsweek, and have not been taken up publicly by any official.
Other names. Popular accounts of the case name other men as suspects. None has been confirmed as a suspect in reliable reporting, and none has ever been charged in the three cases.
November 16, 1971: Carmen Colon, 10, disappears in Rochester while on an errand.
Two days later: She is found in the town of Riga, near Churchville.
Two days after her death: Her uncle, Miguel Colon, leaves for Puerto Rico; a Monroe County detective travels there to find him. He is brought back and questioned, and never charged.
April 2, 1973: Wanda Walkowicz, 11, leaves home at about 5:15 p.m. to buy groceries for her mother and does not return.
April 3, 1973: She is found in Webster.
November 26, 1973: Michelle Maenza, 11, disappears on her way home from school.
November 28, 1973: She is found in Macedon, Wayne County.
1991: Miguel Colon dies after shooting and wounding his wife and brother-in-law.
April 2011: Joseph Naso is arrested in California and charged with four murders of women with matching initials; a DNA sample from one New York victim does not match him.
August 20, 2013: A Marin County jury convicts Naso of the four California murders.
November 22, 2013: Naso is sentenced to death for three of the killings and to life for the fourth.
March 2018: The State Police feature the Walkowicz case in a "Cold Case Tuesday" appeal.
October 2018: Benson and Tubman say they have identified two new suspects; police and the researchers say they believe at least two killers were involved.
About 2019: The State Police press for new leads in the Walkowicz case.
March 2022: A TikTok video in which a woman suggests her late grandfather was involved draws wide attention.
November 2023: Newsweek reports the release of the man Tubman considers the likeliest suspect in two of the deaths; he has never been charged.
October 22, 2026: All three cases remain open and unsolved; no one has been charged.