Episode Transcript- The Double Initials Murders Part 2

[Amanda] Hey podcast listeners, I’m Amanda, and you’re listening to New York’s Dark Side

[Intro Music]

[Amanda] Welcome back for part two of our coverage of the double initial murders of Rochester, NY. If you haven't listened to part one, we covered all the victims in the first part, so you may want to go back and listen to that episode first. Today we're going to be covering the suspect profiles as well as some of the suspects that were looked into for this case. Again, a lot of the information for this episode comes from the books ‘Alphabet Killer: The True Story of the Double Initial Murders’ by Cheri Farnsworth and ‘Nightmare in Rochester: The Double Initial Murders’ by Michael Benson and Donald Tubman. I highly suggest you check out both of these books because they provided so much more information than I could have put into these episodes. 

[Amanda} Rochester, New York in the early 1970s had been rocked by the murders of three young girls with double initials, Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza. After Michelle's murder in November of 1973, investigators would get more witness statements that had potentially gotten a good look at the killer. At this point though, investigators were no closer to solving the case than they were after Carmen and Wanda’s. As we ended the last episode, a witness had come forward after reading about Michelle's murder in the paper, stating that he had seen a light-colored car parked on a Wayne County road on Route 350 near the intersection of Eddy Road. Eddy Road was where Michelle's body had been left. The witness thought that the man was having car trouble, so he stopped to see if he could help and noticed that there was a girl in the car. The man attempted to hide the girl behind him as the witness approached and the man refused his resistance and even raised his fists at him. As he offered his help, this witness was able to give a description and work with investigators to create a composite sketch. 

[Amanda] On December 3rd, investigators released a composite sketch to the media, which after running, did bring a few more witnesses forward. A security guard at the Gannett Rochester newspaper came forward stating that that he had seen the suspect and that the suspect had approached him on December 1st asking if there were any new developments in the case. The suspect acted sketchy and ran out of the building when the security guard asked him to wait while he looked at the latest paper and the guard saw him climb into a light brown Ford Pinto. On December 5th, a woman also came forward stating that she had potentially seen Michelle and the suspect in the parking lot of Carroll's Drive in a fast-food restaurant at the Panorama Plaza in Penfield about an hour after Michelle's abduction. The witness said she recognized him from the composite sketch that had come out. She described the car as a light colored, possibly beige Plymouth Duster either 1971 or 1972. When the witness was entering the restaurant, the suspect was exiting. She also gave a description for a composite sketch and said that the man had boots on that had a buckle on the top. Police released this information and urged the man to come forward, but he never did. The buckle on the shoe description was a bit exciting because Wanda and her friend had described a man with buckles on his shoes to police when they had been called a week prior to her abduction when a man had been following them on their way home and then hid in some bushes. Was this the same man? We don't know. 

[Amanda] On December 11th, 1973, the witness who had stopped and potentially offered aid to the suspect came forward again and stated to law enforcement that he had seen the suspect again and this time he had a license plate number for them. The Wayne County Sheriff's Department was able to locate and pick up the man and he was interviewed by detectives. This suspect was in his twenties and resembled the sketches, but I couldn't find that a name had ever been publicly released for him. Detectives would interview him for nine hours and he did agree to a search of his home, which investigators conducted and did not find anything of significance. The suspect also took and passed a polygraph. Investigators would later clear him completely when they looked at phone records which showed him to be out of the Rochester area at his home. He had made some phone calls on November 26th, the day of Michelle's murder, between 2:00 and 4:00 PM. He did live with two other relatives, but the relatives stated that he had been the one to make the phone calls. Michelle had been abducted at around 3:30 PM so investigators felt like he could not have been the one to commit the murder as there wasn't enough time. I don't know if they ever revisited this suspect later with the advent of DNA testing to test his DNA against any of the DNA found at autopsy.

[Amanda] On New Year's Day of 1974. Police were called when someone on Ashwood Drive near Lytham Street in Rochester witnessed a man get out of a car, grab a woman and lead her at gunpoint to a nearby garage. A Sergeant in the Rochester Police Department happened to be nearby and reported to the scene, and by the time he got there, the man had forced the woman to undress. The man heard the officer approaching and ran, locking himself in a parked car about a block and a half away. The man would ultimately shoot himself before he could be obtained by police. He was later identified as a city firefighter, 25-year-old Dennis S. Termini. A search was conducted of Termini's car where they found white cat hairs and hair that would later be described as similar to Michelle Maenza’s. White cat hair had been found on all the victims. His car was also similar to the description given by the Good Samaritan in Macedon. Termini turned out to be Rochester's garage rapist who had been active during the double initials era, raping 14 women between 1971 and 1973. He was laid to rest in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, where all of our victims were laid to rest. And in 2007, Termini's body was exhumed and DNA was obtained and tested against the DNA from Wanda Walkowicz 's case. It was found not to be a match. The DNA from the autopsies of Michelle and Carmen was no longer available for testing at this time. In February of 1974, investigators working on Michelle Maenza’s case met with psychiatrist Doctor David J Barry. Doctor Barry at the time was the director of Monroe County's Mental Health for Court and Probation, as well as an assistant professor at the University of Rochester. He had been interviewed by the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper multiple times after the murders. Doctor Barry's theory of the killer was that he was in his 20s or 30s and that he had a “chaotic childhood and had been abused by his parents”. He speculated on whether the killer would have had a criminal record or not. He also theorized that the killer was orderly, potentially had established some type of rapport with the victims prior to their abduction, since all three victims were abducted from high traffic areas during the day without anyone seeing them get into the car. And the killer had carefully planned each of these abductions and murders before the facts so he did not feel that these were impulse crimes. Doctor Barry also believed that all three murders were conducted by the same killer, whereas some still harbored doubt whether Carmen was conducted by a separate killer. Doctor Barry felt that the circumstances in Carmen 's case were similar enough, even though there were some differences, there were some significant potential patterns displayed by the killer that had them all intrigued-- the double initials of the victims, the victims being left in or in Carmen's case, near towns with the same initial, the double initials occupying the numbers of the alphabet 3, 13, and 23 was another potential significance. Doctor Barry theorized that the killer was a  “diabolically clever Zodiac type who was carefully plotting these crimes in advance as a way of carrying out some complex and largely unconscious scheme for getting a revenge on the world”.  The people of Rochester were terrified after this theory was printed in the paper, especially those with alliterative names though police still did not believe that the initials had anything to do with the crimes and was just a coincidence. 

[Amanda] On August 3rd, 1974, two nine-year-old girls were abducted from Lyons Park in the Rochester suburb of Gates by a man who approached them. He had first asked them if they had seen any snakes nearby and then they assisted him in looking for snakes. After looking for snakes for a while, he told them that he had baby bunnies in the trunk of his car and when they went to see them, he forced them into the trunk and took them to a vacant house where he tied one of them up in the basement and assaulted the other one upstairs. The girls were with him for about 3 hours before he released them at 4:30 PM back at Lyons Park. Investigators were able to get a composite sketch of the suspect from the description given by the girls and witnesses at the park. They were also able to get a description of the car, which was described as a 1968 or 9 compact car with pinstriping on the driver side, potentially a Ford Falcon. Gates Police Chief Thomas Roche stated in a press conference that he did not believe this rape case was related to the double initial killer’s case. On August 5th, police received a call from an unknown male reporting that he knew where the vehicle was being kept and eventually gave an address for a house on Child Street in the Dutch Town section of Rochester, not far from Bulls Head. Bulls Head, if you remember, was where Carmen Colon was abducted from. The caller named the suspect as Ted Given. Police responded to the address where they located the car and conducted a search of the house where they found 27-year-old Theodore Given Junior hiding in the rafters of the attic. He was taken into custody and charged with kidnapping and rape. The book ‘Nightmare in Rochester’ gives some interesting information and I'm going to read an excerpt at this point.  “In the Rochester Daily Record dated July 3rd, 1974, a month prior to the Lions Park incident, a Theodore F. Given Senior was listed as living at 60 Parcels Ave. A location about 200 yards as the crow flies from the Maenza home on Webster Crescent, Given’s home was kitty corner on parcels from the Jungle Trader pet shop at parcels in Webster Ave. On April 2nd, 1973, the morning before Wanda Walkowicz 's disappearance that very pet shop was written up in the morning paper as the city's largest supplier of baby bunnies during the weeks before Easter and adult bunnies to meat companies later in the year. The proprietor at the pet shop was the double initial Joseph Jorgen. Our witness to the Michelle Maenza's abduction, the classmate that had come forward, said that she remembered the pet shop at the corner of Parcels and Webster. She didn't remember the name of it, but it was an exotic place near Carl's convenience store. She went in there once with her family and found out that the guy who ran the place was the brother of sister Rita Jorgen, one of the teachers at Corpus Christi, the school where Michelle Maenza had attended the year before she switched to school 33. Given Junior later admitted that he was living with his dad on parcels, sleeping on his couch at the time of Michelle's murder, and claimed he had been questioned by police in the day after Michelle's murder because he drove a car that resembled the suspect 's car. Not that anyone publicly noticed, but he also greatly resembled the sketch of the man seen with Michelle Maenza eight months earlier”.  After Givin Junior's arrest, they did conduct a background check which revealed that he had been incarcerated at the time of Carmen's murder but had been released prior to Wanda's murder and was still free at the time of Michele's murder. He had a long history of criminal activity. One of the girls from the Lions Park incident would testify in court at Given’s preliminary hearing but did not identify him as a man who had abducted her. However, the sheriff's Chief of Detectives, William Mahoney testified that he had heard Given confess to the crimes soon after his arrest. Public defenders at this time who were representing Given stated that he appeared to be badly battered when they first met with Given, making them wonder the conditions surrounding the confession. Given had told them that he was badly beaten and almost castrated by Chief Mahoney, which Mahoney denied. The FBI would ultimately investigate charges of potential police brutality in this case. On August 14th, 1974, Public Defender Peter Yellen filed a writ of habeas corpus in Monroe County for Given’s release. The writ argued that Given had been illegally detained because of a coerced confession and also noted the lack of identification by the victim. The judge in the case would ultimately decide that Given had been legally detained, but he could not rule out the concern of police brutality. On August 30th, Given would be indicted on two counts of kidnapping and one count of rape. He would serve ten years of a 7 1/2-to-15-year sentence and then would return to Monroe County. The police were cleared in 1976 of all counts of police brutality charges. 

[Amanda] On April 11th, 1976, Rochester would be rocked again by the murder of another young girl with double initials, 6-year-old Michelle “Shelley” McMurray, when her strangled body was found in the grass outside the building where she lived. She had been abducted from her home while her mother left to go get cigarettes. She had been raped and had multiple scratches on the front and back of her neck. She also had bruises and abrasions on her face and on her back. There were differences in this case compared to the previous three, including the age difference, the method of strangulation and the fact that she had been abducted from her home and wasn't moved to an area with the same initial as her initials. So, police looked into this murder separate from the previous three to ensure that they did not get tunnel vision. Police were aware that there was one more potential pattern, though, and that was the month that the murder occurred in. Carmen Colon, and Michelle Maenza were murdered in November. Wanda Walkowicz had been murdered in April, as had Shelley. Shelley's case, unfortunately, despite multiple people being interrogated, would go cold until 2001. This is when the son, Joseph Dominic, of one of the original investigators, Joe Dominic, began looking into the case again and narrowed in on one person of interest who had been interrogated at the time of the murder. This was James Pressler, the Superintendent of the apartment complex where Michelle McMurray lived with her mother. Dominic began putting together a case against him which would come together in 2007 when they were able to obtain DNA from a discarded cigarette butt which was a match to DNA obtained from Shelley's autopsy. After 31 years, they were able to find justice for Shelley. This DNA, however, would not be connected back to the other double initials cases. 

[Amanda] Another suspect looked at for the double initials murder was Kenneth Bianchi, who was born on May 22nd, 1951 and lived in Monroe County from 1971 to 1973. You may know this name as he is one of the Hillside Stranglers, a killer of 10 girls and women from around Los Angeles, California, from 1977 to 1978, and then two more in Washington state before being arrested in 1979. Bianchi lived in the suburbs of Dutch Town and then later, Gates. His mother became pregnant with him at 17 and she was an alcoholic and a sex worker, so he was put up for adoption and adopted by the Bianchi’s. He was described by his adoptive mother as being a compulsive liar as well as having anger management issues and petite mall syndrome, which is a seizure disorder where you kind of stare off into space for a few minutes. He may have developed a brain injury when he was five, as one day he fell off a jungle gym onto his face. He had issues with urinary dribbling as a child and was treated when he was eight at a psychiatric center in Rochester. Bianchi attended Monroe Community College to learn how to be a police officer and had applied at Monroe County Sheriff's Office twice but was rejected both times. He worked as a security guard at multiple Rochester department stores and also worked as an ambulance driver. He moved abruptly out of the New York State area out West when he was 25. When he got to Los Angeles, he teamed up with his older cousin Angelo Buono, and they began the Hillside Strangler murders. He was first mentioned as a potential suspect in the double initials case in 1979. He was never looked at in the initial investigation. The Hillside Strangler victims started appearing in California in October of 1977 and included 19-year-old Yolanda Washington, 15 year old Judith Lynn Miller, 21 year old Elissa Teresa Kastin, 19 year old Jill Barcomb, 28 year old Jane Evelyn King, 12 year old Dolores Cepeda, 14 year old Sonja Johnson, 20 year old Kristina Weckler, 18 year old Lauren Wagner, 17 year old Kimberly Martin, 20 year old Cindy Lee Hudspeth. After Cindy Lee's murder, the cousins had a falling out when Bianchi mentioned to Buono that he had been chatting with police about the murders and Buono threatened to kill him. Bianchi was obsessed with becoming a police officer and had befriended a lot of the local Los Angeles police officers by chatting them up at local bars. Bianchi then moved to Washington, where he completed two more murders on his own. Those of 22-year-old Karen Mandick and 27 year old Diane Wilder. None of the dozen victims from the Hillside Strangler case had double initials. At trial for the Hillside Strangler case, Bianchi would plead guilty due to insanity and stated that he had a split personality and that his other personality, Stephen Walker, was the real killer. He was examined and determined to not suffer from a split personality but was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and as a sexual sadist. Investigators in the double initial case began to look at Bianchi in 1981 as a serious suspect and even compared his wrist prints to the one lifted from Michelle Maenza’s body at autopsy, but they were not able to determine if there was a match. Bianchi would be cleared of Wanda Walkowicz's murder when they compared his DNA to the sample taken from her autopsy, and they were not a match. Unfortunately, because they didn't have DNA from Carmen and Michelle's murder, they were not able to test those. And they could not rule him out for Carmen's murder because, interestingly, he drove a car similar to the one seen on the Western Expressway that had been reversing towards her as she ran away. He had also previously stated that he moved to the West Coast, as he had been questioned regarding his car sometime between 1971 and 1973. Bianchi is still serving two life sentences in Washington state Penitentiary in Walla Walla and adamantly denies having anything to do with the Rochester double initials case. 

[Amanda] There were a couple other suspects that would be rolled out before another high-profile suspect would make his way into the headlines. One who had lived in the Rochester area and then moved to California. One who killed street women with double initial names. And one of those victims in California was also named Carmen Colon. Was this a connection? This suspect was Joseph Nazo, another name that you may be familiar with. Nazo was born in New York State on January 7th, 1934. His father abandoned the family when Nazo was young. His mother died shortly afterwards. He joined the Air Force in 1953 but was discharged after being charged with sexual impropriety. He was charged with second degree assault and attempted rape of a 21-year-old woman in Monroe County in 1958. He was arrested again in 1960 for rape but not sentenced to any time as the victim refused to appear in court. He would marry in 1962 and have a son and moved with his family to California in 1969 before divorcing his wife in 1980 On January 10th, 1977 Marion County Sheriff's Office would receive a call from a man reporting a body, and the man that called never identified himself. A deputy responded to the location, which was a rural area near Fairbanks, California, where a body was found that was later identified as Roxene Roggasch. On August 13th, 1978, a California Highway Patrol officer would also find a body of 22 year old Carmen Colon on Carmichael 's Scenic Drive while responding to a call about a cow shooting. There would be several more victims before Naso’s move from California to Reno, Nevada. In 1995, Nazo would be arrested for stealing panties from a shop in South Lake Tahoe and placed on probation. He moved back to California in 1997 and lived in Sacramento until 2004, when a bleached skull would be found near Tahoe National Forest which triggered Nazo to move back to Reno, Nevada. His biggest trouble with the law during all this time frame was due to theft and because he was had been arrested and was on parole, parole officer could make unannounced visits and searches of Nazo’s home at their discretion. On April 13th, 2010, during one of these visits, the parole officer saw a single round of a 380-caliber bullet. When the officer patted down Nazo, he found a second bullet in a clipping for an advertisement for a gun, which was a violation of Nazo 's probation prompting further search of his home then they found approximately 10,000 pieces of evidence, including multiple photographs of women. And these women were in bondage, some appeared to be unconscious, some were blue and even possibly deceased. They also found a list of 10 with locations, which was later compared to lists of unsolved homicides, and they found some matches. Some of these matches had double initials and were linked back to Carmen Colon and Roxene Roggasch. Nazo was arrested and many in the Rochester area, including Guillermina Colon felt that he was a killer in the Rochester double initials case, even though he had moved out of the area prior to the murders, Nazo still had ties to the Rochester area and would come back to visit family. On April 12th, 2011, Marion County authorities released a detailed timeline for Joseph Nazo and there was nothing in that timeline that discounted him as the Rochester double initial suspect. They would eventually compare his DNA to the DNA from the Rochester case and found that that was not a match, but police would not entirely rule him out on this alone and felt at the very least, he was a copycat of the Rochester double initials murderer. 

[Amanda] On February 18th, 1991, police in Rochester would get a domestic disturbance call. When they responded, they found that Miguel Colon, the uncle and stepfather of Carmen Colon had shot Guillermina Colon, Carmen's mother in the neck, arm, and hand, as well as Guillermina's younger brother Juan Melendez in the chest. Miguel begged for the responding officer, Clarence Fitch, to shoot him, after Fitch refused, Miguel put his own gun to his head and shot himself. Guillermina was taken to Rochester General Hospital; Juan was taken to Strong Memorial, and both would fully recover. Investigators would interview the Colon family again, asking if Miguel had ever admitted to any of them that he had killed Carmen. The family has maintained their belief in his innocence though some investigators still believe that he is the main suspect in Carmen's murder. 

[Amanda] In 2001, the Discovery Channel would broadcast a 45-minute episode looking at the double initials case. Retired FBI agent Roy Hazelwood and his team looked at each of the murders to develop a new profile for the killers to try to help solve the case. Hazelwood felt that the killer moved the bodies to remove himself from the victims. He fed them to show that he cared for them. Hazelwood would end up releasing 2 profiles as he feels like Carmen's murder was committed by one killer and that there was a separate killer for Wanda and Michelle's due to the differences in the methods of killing. Hazelwood believed that Carmen's killer knew her, was 25 to 30 years old at the time of the murder, had lower intelligence and may have suffered from alcohol abuse with an explosive temper. Strangulation was done in Carmen's case, with the hands from the front, and manual strangulation is far more personal. Hazelwood felt that Carmen's murder took place out of anger. There were also differences in that she was left half naked; her skull had been fractured and she had many scratches on her body that appeared to have been done with someone's fingernails. Wanda and Michelle's murder were completed with ligatures from behind, some felt with a garrot. Hazelwood describes this as a functional type of murder, that the killer felt that they needed to be killed so that they couldn't be linked back to him. He described the killer as having an average intelligence, likely with previous arrests for a lesser sexual abuse crimes like obscene phone calls, peeping or exhibition. He said the killer felt a form of respect for the victims because he allowed Wanda and Michelle to redress before leaving them and this was to leave them with their dignity intact. Ray Hazelwood doesn't feel that the initials have anything to do with these cases and that these were merely victims of opportunity. One of the other things mentioned in the video was that someone had been cleaning off Wanda's grave and that her grave had been cared for before the family would arrive. It had been cleaned off and flowers had been left. And this happened for approximately 15 years after her murder. I've linked the Discovery Channel episode, which is available on YouTube, in the blog post for this episode. In April of 2022, Alexis Ortiz, a resident of Rochester came forward releasing a viral TikTok, claiming that her grandfather may have been the infamous double initial killer, according to an article in The Canal Side Chronicles. I was able to find the TikTok video and in the video, Alexa states that her aunt was friends with Wanda and that her aunt and grandfather may have been the last people to see her on the day that she died. Her grandfather was on the suspect list early on because he involved himself in the investigation and was allegedly going around town telling people that the body found was Wanda before this had been released. Police did end up collecting DNA from her oldest aunt in an attempt to look into this lead. And June 5th, 2022. Alexis again posted on TikTok stating that her grandfather had been ruled out as the double initial killer based on the DNA results. I've linked the TikTok videos in my blog post to this episode as well, and this, unfortunately is where the cases stand today, still unsolved. To wrap up, I'm gonna quote the now retired Wayne County Sheriff Richard Pisciotti, one of the investigators in the Michelle Maenza case from a 2009 article in the Democrat and Chronicle by Gary Craig. And he said, “these kids have never really been put to rest and until there's closure to this case, these kids will never really be put to rest”. If you have any information on the abductions and murders of Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz or Michelle Maenza from the 1970s in Rochester, New York, please call New York State Police Troop E Major Crimes Unit at 585-398-4100. For our next episode, we're heading back downstate to New York City to cover some dark history with coverage of Central Park. Please don't forget that you can follow our New York Dark Side Facebook page or connect with me on Twitter and Instagram @NYDarksidePod. You can send me an e-mail at nydarksidepodcast@gmail.com. And if you have any suggestions on cases or places that you would like to see covered in an episode, send me an e-mail or reach out to me on social media. I'd love to hear from you. I hope you keep listening and most of all, I hope you stay curi