The Chilling Story of tye Alphabet Murder, the 1970s predator who targeted little girls with the same first and last initial

On the afternoon of November 16, 1971, 10-year-old Carmen ​​Colón went to a drug store a block and a half away from her home in Rochester, New York to pick up a prescription for her mother. After speaking with the pharmacist, Carmen stepped outside to wait for the prescription — but she never stepped back inside, and never returned home again. ⁠

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Less than an hour later, motorists reported seeing a young girl running down the side of Interstate 490 near Rochester, waving her arms frantically. She was naked from the waist down and appeared to be fleeing from a car that was backing toward her along the shoulder. About a hundred drivers passed this disturbing scene, but not one of them stopped to help. A few days later, Carmen ​​Colón was found dead in a gully near the Rochester suburb of Chili. For over a year afterward, police searched in vain for Carmen Colón's killer — until the murder of a second girl named Wanda Walkowicz finally suggested a possible motive. Both girls had the same first and last initial, and both had been found in a town whose name began with the same letter as their own name. Police now suspected they had a serial killer on their hands, and his reign of terror wasn't over yet.⁠

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Discover the full story of the Alphabet Murders by visiting the link in our profile.⁠

The Alphabet murders (also known as the Double Initial murders) are an unsolved series of child murders which occurred between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester, New York.

All three victims were girls aged ten or eleven whose surname began with the same letter as that of her first name. Each victim had been sexually assaulted and murdered by either manual or ligature strangulation before her body was discarded in or near a town or village near Rochester with a name beginning with the same letter as the victim's name.

At 4:20 p.m. on November 16, 1971, a 10-year-old Puerto Rican child named Carmen Colón disappeared while returning home from an errand in Rochester, New York. According to eyewitnesses, Colón entered the pharmacy her grandmother had instructed her to visit on West Main Street,[6] but left the store upon learning the prescription she had been instructed to collect had not been processed, informing the storeowner, Jack Corbin: "I got to go. I got to go." She was then observed entering a car parked close to the pharmacy. Colón was reported missing to the Rochester Police Department at 7:50 p.m.

Approximately fifty minutes after Colón exited the pharmacy, scores of motorists driving along Interstate 490 observed the child, naked from the waist down, running from a reversing vehicle believed to be a dark-colored Ford Pinto hatchback, frantically waving her arms and shouting in an attempt to flag down a passing vehicle. At least one of these witnesses observed Colón being submissively led back to this vehicle by her abductor.

Two days later, two teenage boys discovered Colón's partially nude body in a gully not far from Interstate 490, and close to the village of Churchville. This location was approximately 12 miles from where Colón had last been seen alive. Her coat was discovered in a culvert some three hundred feet from her body; her trousers were only discovered on November 30, close to the service road near where numerous motorists had observed her attempting to escape her abductor.

An autopsy revealed that, in addition to having been raped, the child had suffered a fracture to her skull and one of her vertebrae before she had been manually strangled to death. Furthermore, her body had been extensively scratched by fingernails.

Both the murder of Colón and the fact no individual who had observed the child attempting to flee from her abductor alongside Interstate 490 had attempted to offer her any assistance generated intense public outrage.

 Two New York newspapers, the Times Union and the Democrat and Chronicle, initially offered a combined reward of $2,500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her murderer, and all information each publication received was relayed to police. Numerous local businesses and residents added private donations to the reward fund, gradually leading the sum to exceed $6,000. Although police interrogated several suspects in the months following Colón's murder, all were cleared of involvement, and by December 21, the number of investigators assigned to the case on a full-time basis was decreased to three.

All three child murders generated intense public outrage; each received intense publicity. Following the murder of Michelle Maenza, investigators released a composite drawing of the individual seen with the child by numerous witnesses to the media.[48] They also installed a telephone hotline exclusively devoted to the manhunt for the perpetrator, whom they strongly suspected had committed all three murders. Anonymity was again offered to any caller offering information, and a reward was again offered for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator.[42] Although these efforts resulted in numerous calls from the public, no credible suspect was located.[7]

Although investigators interrogated more than 800 potential suspects in relation to the Alphabet murders, the perpetrator or perpetrators of the homicides was never caught, and the case remains unsolved. As each child hailed from a poor Catholic family,[49] had few friends, and had recently experienced issues such as bullying[50] or poor academic performance at her school, investigators have not discounted the possibility the murderer may have been employed by, or held knowledge of the practises of, a social service agency in his efforts to initiate contact with and/or gain the trust of each victim.[40]

Similarities

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All three victims were preadolescent females who had disappeared from Rochester in the early afternoon on days of light or heavy rain[51] and whose bodies were later discovered within nearby towns. The body of each girl had been discovered either fully clothed or partially clothed close to an expressway at a location typically accessible by vehicle and each victim had evidently been thrown from or carried from a car to the location her body had been discarded.[52]

Each child was short in height,[53] and all three girls had been raped before being strangled to death. In addition, all three were known to be viewed as somewhat lonely outcasts among their peers. Furthermore, an analysis of the stomach contents of both Walkowicz and Maenza revealed both girls had ingested food shortly before their death which neither girl is known to have eaten prior to her disappearance, and the bodies of both girls had been redressed after death.

Both contemporary and current investigators have stated the possibility each victim had been selected due to the double initials of her name is extremely unlikely, as for an offender to preselect his victims for this incidental reason would likely involve his stalking his victim over an extensive period of time, thus increasing the risk of his being noticed. Furthermore, some investigators believe that, although the murders of Walkowicz and Maenza may have been committed by the same individual who had lured the girls to their deaths, the overall modus operandi of the murder of Carmen Colón strongly indicates her murder had been committed by an individual known—and possibly related—to her as opposed to an individual unknown to her, who had abducted her by force.

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