There is a particular cruelty in the detail that gave these crimes their name. Three girls, killed in three separate incidents over two years in upstate New York, each bore first and last names beginning with the same letter — and each body was discarded near a community whose name started with that same letter. Whether this was deliberate design or terrible coincidence, investigators have never been able to say with certainty. What they can say is that three children are dead, no one has ever been convicted, and the families of Carmen Colón, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza have spent more than half a century without an answer.

Three Girls, Three Crimes

The first victim was Carmen Colón, ten years old, who disappeared on November 16, 1971, while running an errand in Rochester. At least one witness reported seeing her riding in a car on a highway, partially undressed and apparently trying to escape through a window — a sighting that was reported to police but led nowhere. Her body was found in Churchville, a community beginning with “C,” the same initial as her name. She had been strangled. On April 2, 1973, eleven-year-old Wanda Walkowicz disappeared from the east side of Rochester after stopping at a delicatessen. She was found two days later near Webster, New York — “W,” matching her initials — having been sexually assaulted and strangled. The third victim, Michelle Maenza, also eleven, went missing on November 26, 1973, and was found near Macedon — “M” — having suffered the same fate. The New York State Police have noted that the three cases were grouped by the press and have never been officially connected as the work of a single perpetrator, though investigators have long treated them as likely linked.

The Suspect Who Was Never Charged

Among the names that surfaced during the original investigation was Dennis Termini, a Rochester firefighter in his mid-twenties who was known to police as a serial rapist — the “Garage Rapist” — having committed at least fourteen sexual assaults on teenage girls and young women between 1971 and 1973. He drove a beige vehicle consistent with witness descriptions from the abduction scenes. Termini was shot and killed by police in 1973 during an attempted rape, dying before investigators could build a formal case against him. His death closed off the most promising avenue of inquiry, and because he could neither be charged nor exonerate himself, his guilt or innocence remains a matter of conjecture rather than fact.

Other Persons of Interest

The name Kenneth Bianchi also emerged. Later convicted as one of the “Hillside Stranglers” responsible for murders in California and Washington state, Bianchi had lived in Rochester during the period of the Alphabet Murders and worked as an ice cream vendor, a job that provided ready access to children. No physical evidence has ever linked him to the Rochester crimes, and he has denied involvement. In 2023, a Newsweek investigation reported on a man who had served time for rape in connection with one of the victims’ families and had since been released — a detail that added another unresolved thread to an already knotted case. Psychologist and criminologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland has written extensively on the case’s pattern of ligature strangulation, noting that the method shows a preference suggesting not impulsivity but control.

The DNA Evidence

DNA evidence has offered the most concrete hope of resolution in recent years, but the picture is incomplete. Biological material recovered from two of the three victims was degraded or destroyed before modern genetic analysis became available. DNA from the third victim, Wanda Walkowicz, has survived and undergone reexamination. As of 2025, investigators have confirmed that no submitted suspect profile has matched the genetic material on record. Forensic genealogy — the technique of building a family tree from crime scene DNA to identify unknown contributors — has not yet produced a match, though law enforcement has not publicly confirmed whether this approach has been attempted in the Walkowicz case.

Why This Case Still Matters

The Alphabet Murders are among the oldest active cold cases in New York State. Their persistence in public consciousness reflects both the horror of the crimes and the enduring frustration of cases in which evidence points toward culpability without quite reaching proof. The families of Carmen, Wanda, and Michelle have all experienced the peculiar grief of losing a child to violence and then watching as the legal system fails to name the person responsible. Rochester, a city that has grappled with its own complicated history, has never fully moved past these three crimes — they surface in journalism, in academic criminology, in documentary films, and in the periodic statements of state police officials who confirm that the case file remains open.

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Somewhere in the aging DNA profile of a man who may have died before modern forensic science could find him — or who may still be alive — lies the answer that three families have been waiting over fifty years to hear: so if the technology that cracked the Golden State Killer eventually reaches into those degraded samples from a Rochester winter half a century ago, will it finally give these three girls a name?