Carmen Colon, ten, disappeared in November 1971 and was found at Churchville. Wanda Walkowicz, eleven, disappeared in April 1973 and was found at Webster. Michelle Maenza, eleven, disappeared in November 1973 and was found at Macedon. All three were from poor families in Rochester, all three were sent out on errands and did not come back, all three were raped and strangled.
The pattern that named the case is the initials. Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz, Michelle Maenza, each found in a place beginning with the same letter as her own name. Whether that was the killer's design or coincidence has been argued about for fifty years, and there is no way to settle it with three cases.
Carmen Colon's death produced one of the most disturbing details in American police records: she was seen alive, naked from the waist down, running along the shoulder of Interstate 490 and waving at passing cars. Nobody stopped.
The most persistent suspect was Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, who was living in Rochester at the time and drove for an ambulance company; he was excluded by DNA in 2007. Carmen Colon's uncle, Miguel Colon, shot himself in 1991 and has been suspected. Another candidate, Dennis Termini, a serial rapist who killed himself in January 1974 as police closed in, was excluded by DNA from the Walkowicz case in 2007. The killings remain unsolved.