Stalking Innocence: The Rochester Alphabet Murders

5/21/2025

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Between 1971 and 1973 three young girls were taken, raped and killed. It was theorized the murderer specifically chose them based on their names so that their first name and surname started with the same letter, and the girls' bodies were dumped in parks that started with the same letter as their name.

Carmen Colon was taken on November 16, 1971

Their names were: Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz and Michelle Maenza. Colón was found in Churchville, Walkowicz in Webster, and Maenza in Macedon — inspiring the moniker "The Alphabet Murders" or "Double-Digit Murders".

The three girls had other similarities, they were all 10 or 11 years old, had recent problems at school such as bullying and poor academic performance, and came from poor Roman Catholic families with absentee or dead fathers. All three mothers were on welfare. The three disappeared in the early afternoon on days when it rained. Each girl was thrown or carried from a car to where the body would later be found. All three were viewed as lonely outcasts by their peers.

Carmen Colon's neighborhood c.1970s

Carmen Colon was taken on November 16, 1971 when she was returning home from an errand. She went to Jax Drug Store to make a purchase for her grandmother, but left since the prescription had not been filled. She was seen getting into a car parked close to the pharmacy.

Less than hour after Carmen left the pharmacy, over a 100 motorists driving along Interstate 490 saw a child, naked from the waist down, running from what appeared to be a dark colored Ford Pinto which was reversing in pursuit of her. Despite the child waving her arms, no one stopped and one of the witnesses saw her being led back to the vehicle.

Where Carmen Colon's body was discovered

By 8 p.m. that night Carmen was reported missing. She did not live with her mother, but with her paternal grandparents, Felix and Candida Colon.

Two days later two teenagers found her partially nude body in a gully close to I-490, and close to the village of Churchville, about 12 miles from where she was last seen alive. Her coat was 300 feet from her body, and a few days later her pants were found close to the service road where she had been seen trying to escape from the man in the Pinto.

The autopsy found she had been raped, her body was extensively scratched by fingernails, and her skull and one of her vertebrae were broken. She had been strangled to death.

Where Carmen Colon's bod was found c.1970

A reward of $6,000 was offered for the arrest and conviction of the murderer.

In 1972, five large billboards were erected along expressways in Rochester. The advertising company who owned them, allowed the sign headlined with "Do You Know Who Killed Carmen Colon?" to be displayed for free.

In the months prior to Carmen Colón's abduction and murder, her grandparents had noted her sleeping pattern had become frequently disturbed by recurring nightmares. These nightmares Colón experienced were often so violent the child would fall from her bed. Recurring nightmares is a classic symptom of the distress felt by victims of child sexual abuse.

Wanda Walkowicz was taken April 2, 1973

Seventeen months would pass before another girl was killed. This time it was Wanda Walkowicz, age 11. Like Carmen, she disappeared while returning home from an errand. She had gone to the delicatessen and was last seen on April 2, 1973. She was reported missing at 8 p.m. Fifty detectives immediately searched around her home, the delicatessen and the area around the Genesee River where she was known to play.

She was seen by neighborhood residents, and three classmates struggling with a large bag of groceries. Her father had died 5 years before from a heart attack, and she would frequently run errands for her mother.

Her body, fully clothed was found the next morning at the bottom of a hillside at the Bay Ridge rest stop on Route 104 in Webster by a New York State Trooper, while on patrol. This was about 7 miles from Rochester. It was deduced she had been thrown from a moving vehicle.

She was raped and strangled from behind by a ligature, possibly a belt. The girl had defensive wounds indicating she had fought back. She was redressed after she was dead, and semen and pubic hair was found on her body. White car fur was found on her clothes, even though the Walkowiczs did not own a pet with this color fur.

This time the reward for information was $10,000.

Detectives interview employees at store where Wanda Walkowicz was seen before disappearing c.1973

An eyewitness told police that as Wanda walked home he saw her standing next to the passenger door of a brown vehicle, while she talked to the driver. Another person who called the tip line said they had seen a red-haired girl that matched Wanda's description, being forced into a light-colored Dodge Dart on Conkey Avenue.

The police did not believe this case was related to Carmen Colon's murder. A local television network broadcast a reconstruction of the crime, but this failed to produce any useful leads.

Relatives who visited Wanda’s gravesite said that for 15 years, an unknown visitor had been cleaning her gravestone and placing flowers.

Michelle Maenza was killed 7 months after Wanda Walkowicz

Michelle Maenza, 11, was the next once abducted 7 months later on November 26, 1973. She failed to return home from school, and she was last seen at 3:20 p.m. as she walked from school to a shopping plaza to pick up a purse her mother had left inside a store earlier that day. Within 10 minutes, a witness saw Michelle sitting in the passenger seat of a beige vehicle speeding down Ackerman street, before turning onto Webster Avenue. The child was crying.

Two hours after Michelle was seen going to the plaza to pick up her mother’s purse a motorist saw a man standing by a large tan vehicle with a flat tire. This was at Route 350. He was holding a girl by the wrist. It was believed this was the abducted Michelle. When this motorist stopped to offer help the man "grabbed the girl and pushed her behind his back". He also obscured his license plate. He stared in a menacing manner, and the good Samaritan left.

Two days later, Michelle Maenza’s body was found lying face down in a ditch about 15 miles from Rochester. She was fully clothed and her autopsy found she had received extensive blunt force trauma to her body, then she was raped and strangled by a ligature, possibly a thin rope.

Like Wanda, white cat fur was found on her clothing. A partial palm print from her neck and traces of semen on her body and underwear, were taken by investigators. The semen samples found she was raped by one person.

Traces of a hamburger were found in her stomach eaten about an hour before she was killed. This corresponded to a report of a girl matching Michelle's description seen with a white man with dark hair, age about 25 to 35 at (6 ft., about 165 lbs.) at a fast food restaurant in Penfield.

Composite drawing of the man seen with Michelle Maenza

All three girls were buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, in Rochester, New York.

After Maenza's death the police released a composite drawing of the man seen with the child. By now authorities suspected all three murders were connected and the handiwork of one perpetrator. They had several suspects and leads, but they would not release any information to the press.

Six years passed before Rochester police gave the name of Kenneth Bianchi as a suspect. Bianchi was one of two men known as the Hillside Strangler. Ten women in California and two from Washington were murder by Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono. Bianchi was not indicted until 1979 for the murders.

Kenneth Bianchi was born and raised in Rochester. His mother was a 17-year-old alcoholic prostitute, who gave him up for adoption when he was 2 weeks old. The Bianchis adopted him and even as a young child he had serious behavior problems. When he was 12 years old he pulled down a 6-year-old girl's underwear.

Bianchi worked as an ice cream vendor near two of the murder scenes. He was 20 years old when Carmen Colon was killed. He moved to Los Angeles in 1976.

When the notoriety of the Hillside Strangler made the news was when authorities in Rochester, New York compared notes, and realized his car matched the description of a vehicle reported near the scene of one of the "alphabet murders".

Carmen Colon's grandparents holding her picture

Bianchi denies committing the murder of the three girls. He was sentenced to six terms of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Former FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood, said the palm print taken from Michelle Maenza’s body did not match Bianchi. He is eligible for parole in July, 2025.

His accomplice in the California murders, Angelo Buono Jr. died in 2002 while serving his life imprisonment sentence.

In later years it's been debated whether the Rochester victims were picked due to the double initials of their names. If this was true, it would require for the murderer to have stalked them for quite some time. Others believe that even though Wanda and Michelle were killed by the same perpetrator, Carmen was killed by someone different, possibly related to her. She was strangled by bare hands, instead of with ligatures like the other two girls.

Was there a killer who was inspired by the synchronicity of Carmen's murder, and decided to duplicate it, or was it just pure chance?

Justiniano Colon, Carmen's father after the case reactivated when an imprisoned murderer claimed he knew who killed the girls c.1995

Sexual homicide offenders prefer more intimate forms of killing their victims, such as strangulation (the preferred method), asphyxiation, and beating.

Miguel Colon, Carmen's paternal uncle was considered a strong suspect. When Guillermina Colon separated from Carmen's father, Justiniano Colon, she had formed a relationship with her brother-in-law.

Carmen usually walked to the pharmacy with her grandfather Felix Colon, however on the date of her abduction she pled with her grandparents to be allowed to go by herself.

Carmen's grandparents returned to Puerto Rico after her death and died there.

Weeks prior to her murder, Miguel Colon was known to have bought a car matching the vehicle seen by witnesses reversing up I-490.

Miguel Colon, Carmen Colon's uncle and a suspect in her murder, killed himself in 1991

When investigators searched Colon's car it was found the interior and exterior had been extensively cleaned, and the trunk was washed with a strong cleaning solution. The dealership where the car was bought from confirmed they had not washed the trunk with any detergent. A doll belonging to Carmen was also found in the vehicle, although family members said the girl frequently traveled in the car and may have left it behind. A friend of Miguel Colon told investigators that two days after Carmen's death, Miguel told him he planned to leave the country as he had "done something wrong in Rochester". He left to Puerto Rico 4 days after the discovery of the girl's body.

Investigators traveled to San Juan in 1972 to question him, however local newspapers tipped him off of their arrival, and he fled from authorities. He surrendered on March 26, and was extradited back to Rochester for more questioning.

He could not provide an alibi for his whereabouts when Carmen was killed, and no witnesses could come forward to corroborate his story. Since there was only circumstantial evidence as to his guilt he was not indicted for the murder.

On February 19, 1991 Miguel Colon, now 44 years old, shot and wounded his wife and brother-in-law before killing himself. It seemed that Carmen's mother Guillermina had married Miguel. He shot her in the neck and arm, and her brother Juan Melendez, 35, in the chest.

Police who responded to reports of shots fired confronted Miguel Colon when he stood in the doorway of his home. He pled with the officer to shoot him. He then turned the gun on himself.

The family all lived together in the same house located at 63 Radio St., and apparently the fight started when Miguel lashed out at his wife, and when her younger brother intervened he shot them both. An investigator with the local police said, "He was having a lot of financial difficulties and was very jealous."

If he was Carmen's killer, he took his secret to the grave.

Dennis Termini known as the Garage Rapist was exhumed for DNA but it did not match what was left at the crime scene

Dennis Termini, a 25-year-old firefighter and resident of Rochester was another suspect in the murders. He was known as the “Garage Rapist” who raped 14 young women between 1971 to 1973. He did own a beige vehicle and he lived at 159 Bock Street, close to where Michelle Maenza was last seen alive.

Five weeks after Michelle’s murder, Termini tried to abduct a teenage girl at gunpoint. She wouldn’t stop screaming and he fled the scene. He tried to abduct another girl, however this time police pursued him, and he committed suicide by shooting himself. A forensic examination of his car found traces of white cat fur. In 2007, his body was exhumed for a DNA sample.

Composite of Garage Rapist done in 1973, the police were hesitant to release thinking it would produce too many false leads

Termini’s DNA was compared to semen taken from Wanda’s body, and it confirmed he was not responsible for her death.

Some of the detectives involved in the case, believed he was not the Garage Rapist, since this perpetrator was known to mostly use a knife, and Termini had a gun. Victims described where their attacker had a strong body odor, and mostly used a knife but had also threatened with a gun and a broken bottle. The Garage Rapist would change his attire every time he committed a crime, and wore glasses.

Pains were taken not to publish Termini's photograph in the newspapers, which seems counter productive as perhaps an unnamed rape victim would have recognized him.

Theodore Given c.1974

There was one suspect who flew in under the radar. His name is Theodore F. Given Jr.

Don Tubman a retired cop who now works as a private detective believes Given is most likely the man who murdered Walkowicz and Maenza. He lived in the same neighborhood as the girls, and they might have even known him.

Tubman co-authored Nightmare in Rochester: The Double Initial Murders with Michael Benson. Benson maintaned a correspondence with Given who sent him "all sorts of material".

Given had a history of crime. In 1963, he was arraigned on burglary, larceny and malicious mischief charges. He and another teenager had escaped from Newark State School, and started to break into vacation cottages.

In 1966, he was indicted on 3rd degree burglary and petit larceny after he broke into a laundromat. He was sentenced to 5 years, set to expire on November 11, 1971. He was released and put on parole in 1968, but was returned to jail for violating his parole. He went back to prison from April 1971 to January 1972 when he was finally released. This exempted him from being the person who killed Carmen Colon, however he was out on the streets when Wanda and Michelle were taken.

In August, 1974 he was accused of kidnapping two 9-year-old girls and raping one of them. He was driving a gold-colored, 1965 Plymouth Valiant. This was similar to the car the girls described that picked them up in Lyons Park. Given then confessed to the crimes after his arrest, and a mental examination was ordered for him. He was found guilty and sent to prison, but by 1986 he was out and rearrested for six auto thefts.

In 1987, Given admitted to raping an 11-year-old. He pled guilty to 1st degree rape. He snuck into a house in September, 1986, with a bandana over his face and raped the child while she was in her bed. He was sentenced for up to 25 years but was held after his term was completed. He was detained under civil confinement in Westmoreland prison after courts decided he was a danger to the public.

Civil confinement is the formal legal process by which a person convicted of violent sexual offenses, may be kept in prison upon completion of their sentence, if a court believes them to be a threat to society.

In 2023, Given, 76, was released and returned to live in Rochester.

Rochester's murder map 1970-71

More than 50 years have passed since these children were killed.

The sole remaining physical evidence pertaining to the girls’ murders are the semen samples recovered from the body of Wanda Walkowicz. All physical evidence recovered from the bodies of Colón and Maenza and their respective crime scenes have been lost or destroyed.

Hopefully advances in DNA will solve this case using forensic evidence taken from Wanda Walkowicz’s body. And then one has to ask, were they all killed by the same person, or as some posit, Carmen Colon was killed by a different man?