The homeless people who live under the bridges along the creek say they believe someone is pushing unconscious or helpless drinkers in the water. Chief Standing Elk says the killers are racist skinheads and that the creek people have banded together to chase some of them away. However, the rumours reported to police include accusations that the “creek people” are being killed by a fellow homeless man, members of a Satanic cult and a big white man on a bicycle. One report even accused a police officer.
Homeless people and others complain that the police are doing little to investigate the deaths because most of the victims are Native Americans. The two men who lead the task force investigating the deaths say they have asked themselves whether they would do anything differently if the dead men had been affluent whites. Chief Sheriff’s Deputy De Glassgow says he believes the investigation is being conducted the same as if all the victims had been white. A $4,000 reward has been offered.
Rochester, N.Y.’s Alphabet Murders
Between 1971 and 1973 a serial murderer terrorized Rochester, New York. He raped and murdered three Rochester girls, before dumping their bodies in nearby towns. These were dubbed “The Alphabet Murders” because, in each case, the victim’s first and last name and the town where their body was found began with the same letter.
The killings began when 11-year-old Carmen Colon disappeared on 16 November 1971. Her body was found 12 miles away in Churchville two days later. Her uncle Miguel was suspected of killing her and remained a suspect until he committed suicide in 1991.
Then about 5.15 p.m. on 2 April 1973, 11-year-old Wanda Walkowicz left her Avenue D home to get a few items for her mother at a delicatessen in Conkey Avenue. She reached the store, bought the groceries and was last seen heading home. She did not make it.
When she did not return promptly, her family and neighbours began searching the streets for her, and when they could not find her, they called the police. At 10.15 a.m. the following day, a New York State Trooper on patrol found Wanda Walkowicz’s body at a rest area off of State Route 104 in Webster, New York, seven miles from Rochester.
“Wanda was a tomboy,” said her sister Rita, who was ten at the time. “She loved to play baseball and ride bikes. She had lots of friends.”
After the murder, the Walkowiczes lived for another five years in the same Avenue D home.
“I was scared to go outside,” said Rita, “but we still had to go to the store and things.”
The final victim was 10-year-old Michelle Maenza, who went missing on 26 November 1973. Her body was found in 15 miles away Macedon two days later. Each girl showed evidence of being raped before death.
Other connections were made. Curiously, C, M and W are the third, 13th and 23rd letters of the alphabet, but no obvious inference can be drawn from that. All three victims were from poor Roman Catholic families in Rochester and were reportedly in trouble at school. This sparked speculation that the three homicides were committed by some sort of counsellor who had access to all three girls. It did not pan out. However, there was another suspect in town that the time. This was serial killer Ken Bianchi who later came to fame as one of the Hillside Stranglers who terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s.
Kenneth Alessio Bianchi was born in Rochester on 22 May 1951. His mother was a 17-year-old alcoholic prostitute who gave him up for adoption at birth. He became the only child of the Bianchi couple. His adoptive father worked for the American Brake-Shoe Factory. His adoptive mother’s sister was the mother of Angelo Buono, his accomplice in the Hillside Stranglings, who was also born in Rochester.
When he was three, his mother took him to hospital because he could not sleep and wet the bed. A doctor noted: “Mother needs help.”
At five, he lapsed into trances, daydreaming with his eyes rolled back, and he was known at school for his inattentiveness. He idolized the Arthurian comic-strip hero Prince Valiant, but did not emulate his idol and become a compulsive liar in early childhood. He was also quick to anger and threw temper tantrums. His mother consulted a doctor again. He was diagnosed with petit mal epilepsy, but the doctor thought he would grow out of it. However the symptoms did not subside. At the age of eight he was treated at a psychiatric centre for mental problems. At nine, due to his inability to control his bladder, his mother forced him to wear sanitary napkins and he was taken to the DePaul Psychiatric Clinic to be treated for “involuntary urination, tics, absenteeism, and behaviour problems”. There he underwent the minor procedures for the urination problem, but his behavioural problems continued. At 11, he was moved from two schools because he could not get along with his teachers. His mother felt the teachers made him nervous, but his IQ was 116 and his teachers thought he was working well below his capacity and he was falling behind in his school work. He was lazy, inattentive and prone to temper tantrums at school and at home.
At 12, he pulled down a six-year-old girl girl’s panties and, at 13, showed no emotion when his adoptive father died. Sent to a high school outside of Rochester, he suddenly changed. He became a clean-cut all-American boy, respectful of elders and dates. But afterwards he joined a motorcycle gang and he got a tattoo that read: “Satan’s Own M. C.” He married briefly at 18 but dated other women throughout the marriage.
At 19, he enrolled at Monroe Community College to be trained to become a police officer. The following year he remarried but his wife left him after eight months. At 20, he wrote to a girlfriend, claiming he had killed a local man. She dismissed this as part of his incessant macho posturing. This was when the Alphabet Murders started.
The following year, his application to join the sheriff’s office was turned down. And by 1973, he was certain police suspected him of the Alphabet Murders. At that time he was working as a security guard and over the next four years he was frequently charged with theft by his employers. He proposed to his childhood sweetheart, but she turned him down because he did not have a steady job. So in January 1976, Bianchi pulled up sticks and moved to Los Angeles, teaming up with his adopted cousin, Angelo Buono, in an amateur white-slave racket.
Born at Rochester in October 1934, Buono came from a broken home. At five, he was transported across the country by his mother. By 14, he was stealing cars and displaying a precocious obsession with sodomy. Sentenced for auto theft in 1950, he escaped from the California Youth Authority and was recaptured in December 1951. Buono hero-worshipped “Red Light” rapist Caryl Chessman, who achieved fame for his literary output on death row. His books became bestsellers. Noted writers, including Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Norman Mailer and Robert Frost, wrote to the governor appealing for clemency and Chessman became a major figure in the campaign to abolish the death penalty that was gaining ground at the time. Nevertheless he went to the gas chamber in San Quentin on 2 May 1960 and died the very moment a fresh stay of execution arrived.
Despite his simian appearance, Buono attracted scores of women. He fathered several children, violently abusing several wives and girlfriends along the way. He also worked as a pimp, recruiting a “harem” of prostitutes through rape and torture.
The sadistic Buono introduced Bianchi to perverse sex and even encouraged Bianchi to sleep with one of his son’s girlfriends. Things seem to be looking up for Bianchi when he took a job with the California Land Title Company and his mother sent him enough money to buy a 1972 Cadillac. He moved out of Buono’s home into his own apartment briefly before he moved in with Kelli Boyd, a girlfriend he met at work, though Bianchi already exhibited a violent temper. He lost his job after marijuana was found in his desk.
In 1977, his applications to join the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Police Reserves and the nearby Glendale Police Department were rejected. After that he bought a fake psychology degree and credentials and rented an office space from a legitimate psychologist, but he did not get much business. Then he faked cancer as an excuse for not working. Meanwhile Kelli became pregnant. Bianchi proposed. She turned him down but they continued to live together.
Bianchi then decided to go into the prostitution racket with Buono. They bought a list of Johns from Deborah Noble and her friend 19-year-old Yolanda Washington, a part-time waitress and prostitute who worked on Sunset Boulevard. The list turned out to be fake and Yolanda disappeared on 17 October 1977. Her naked body was found on a hillside near Universal City several days later. A cloth was tied around her neck and she had died of strangulation. The post mortem showed she had sex with two men before she died, but as she was a prostitute this was not considered significant.
