Every Town - The Alphabet Murders: Rochester’s Eerie Triple Tragedy

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Between 1971 and 1973, three young girls here were abducted, murdered and left out in the open for their bodies to be found. And these weren’t girls picked at random, they were targeted for the simple reason that each of them had matching first and last name initials - C.C., W.W., and M.M. 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://youtu.be/sAxeJgDXUck 👁 Check out our movie AN ANGRY BOY for FREE! ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvtlOlODQ8g&t=5238s⁠ ⁠https://tubitv.com/movies/100029672/an-angry-boy⁠ International & Other Ways To Watch: ⁠https://www.anangryboy.com/⁠ 💀 MERCH: ⁠https://scary-mysteries.teemill.com/⁠ 💀 Free 7 Day Trail on Exclusive Episodes, Podcasts & Perks! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries⁠   🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT⁠ 👁 X: ⁠https://x.com/ScaryMysteries1⁠ 👁Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg⁠ 👁 TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald⁠ 👁Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial⁠ 👁 X: ⁠https://x.com/ScaryMysteries1⁠   🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at ⁠[e-mail]⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you ready to dive into the unknown? Join me, Peyton Moreland, on Into the Dark, the true crime podcast from Ono Media with a hint of horror and mystery. Each week, I dive into a different case, breaking down the facts and pondering the age-old question, why do people do what they do? Now, sometimes the answer isn't so clear, and that's why I'll also explore conspiracy theories, hauntings, and all things spooky. From the Green River Killer to the Mothman incident, we will unravel all of the questions that keep us up at night. So don't miss out. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform.

New episodes drop every Wednesday. Into the dark, where true crime meets the eerie unknown. Every town has a dark side. The city of Rochester, New York, for most of you out there, is just a random place in America. I mean, if you're not from the area, chances are this town never cross. your mind and that's understandable. However, after today's episode, I'm almost positive. You'll never forget it, even if you wish you could.

Because between 1971 and 73, three young girls here were abducted. Each victim was around the same age, 10 or 11 years old. They were all abducted from Rochester, sexually assaulted and strangled. Their bodies dumped in or near a town that started... And these girls weren't picked at random. They were targeted for the simple reason that each of them had matching first and last name initials, CC, WW, and MM. On top of that, each of their bodies was discovered in a town that shared the same first letter,

Churchville, Webster, and Massadon. The press called them the alphabet murders, but just as fast as they came, they stopped. No matter how hard the authorities worked to crack the case, to this day, It still remains unsolved. Hey guys, it's Andrew, and welcome back to another episode of Everytown. Thanks for tuning in. And today we're covering, without a doubt, one of the strangest and most tragic unsolved cases in New York State history.

And if you're a regular listener, then you know we tackle a lot of strange and messed up stories here, though this one hits on another level. It's a story that blends eerie coincidence and seems to come from a fictional source of inspiration. Only the real life story is far more violent and brutal than any book or film could be. This is the story of the alphabet murders and our three young lives were taken up in Rochester. Nestled in upstate New York, sitting just underneath Lake Ontario is the city of Rochester. And nowadays it has a population around 200,000, but back in the early 1970s when our story takes place, the town was more booming by almost 100,000 more people.

There were manufacturing jobs of plenty, thanks to companies like Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lom. It was a place that proudly held on to its blue-collar backbone. And families lived in modest homes in tight-knit neighborhoods, where parents worked, the assembly lines, and kids played hopscotch on the sidewalks or ice-skated across frozen ponds in the winter. The crime rate was low, and the community was strong, and the rhythm of life felt predictable, even safe.

And this was a time well before the fear of stranger danger had fully set in. The children walked to school alone, and ran errands for their grandparents, waved to familiar faces at corner stores, and spent hours outside into the streetlights flickered on. Rochester might not have been flashy, but it was stable, or at least it seemed. that way. But somebody sinister was about to change all that because one of those familiar faces in the community, maybe the mailman, a teacher, or one of those assembly line workers was harboring some seriously dark thoughts. They knew the city well, how to move about undetected, and they knew the kids in those neighborhoods, their routines, and most importantly,

their names. They would soon make those thoughts of reality, strike down upon this town with a rage and a flash, and then just poof up and vanish, leaving the entire community forever changed. It was November 16th of 1971, a Wednesday when the killer decided to finally strike. And 10-year-old Carmen Collin, with the initial CC, was headed out to town on a quick errand to her grandmother. He was picking up a prescription from Jack's pharmacy in the Bullshead neighborhood, just a short walk from her home in Southwest Rock. It was cold that day, but clear, and Carmen had done this kind of errand before. She was mature for her age, independent, strong-willed, so normally it wouldn't be a problem.

But this day, it was anything but normal. Around 4.30 in the afternoon on November 16th, she left the house to run an errand for her grandfather. She walked just about two blocks to what was then Jack's drugstore on West Main Street to pick up a prescription. About an hour after she left the house, the pharmacist and owner, Jack Corbin called Carmen's grandmother to check in on the girl. Again, this was a sign of the times and how close-knit everyone was here. Jack had seen the girl in the store and told her to just wait for a moment while he filled the prescription, at which point she told him she needed to leave, so she did. She seemed in a hurry.

He thought she'd come back, but she didn't. He never picked up that medicine, and he didn't know what had happened. Well, neither did her grandmother, and the girl hadn't come home. As it turns out, the next time anyone saw her, she was running, panicked down the shoulder of Interstate 490. She was half clothed. She didn't have pants on. She just had a shirt on. And her arm, she was flailing her arm. It was a dark-colored vehicle reversing towards her, and people said it was a dark-colored vehicle. dark Ford Pinto. Some witnesses said she was struggling with a man inside that car.

Others thought it looked like a family dispute happening, and so nobody intervened. It wouldn't come forward until word spread about the missing girl, and Carmen was officially reported missing by 8 p.m. that night. And two days later, a couple of teenagers out for a hunt came across her body in a ditch off a remote road in Churchville, about 15 miles west of where she'd last been seen. This wasn't a random place, as the authorities would come to find out. Maybe the exact spot was random, but Churchville starts with a sea, just like Carmen's initials. The area where she was found was secluded, woods on one side, farmland on the other. An officer at the scene letter told a reporter that it was the kind of place no child should ever be.

And Carmen had been stripped of her coat. There were signs she'd fought back. She had scratches on her body and had ultimately been manually strangled. When the news spread around, the city wasn't just stunned. They were outraged. This type of thing doesn't happen here. And the fact that so many people drove right on by and didn't help her was quite frankly shameful. Rochester was determined to find out who did this.

They erected five huge billboards all along major highways in the area, with Carmen's face placed on. on them. They offered a cash reward for information that led to an arrest, but it was also a warning to everyone who saw them, a reminder to not let this happen again. And they didn't. And people stayed vigilant for some time, but eventually they got comfortable again and let their guard down. Close to a year and a half later, just as life in Rochester was beginning to settle again, Just as parents started letting their kids ride bikes and run errands like before, well, the killer struck again.

This time it was early spring, April 2nd of 1973. An 11-year-old Wanda Walkowitz, initials, Watt, was doing what she always did, helping out. And she was responsible and thoughtful, the kind of kid who looked out for her younger siblings. Around 5.30 p.m., Wanda. Waukowitz had gone to the hillside delicatessen to pick up some groceries for her mother. It was just three blocks from her home on Avenue D. Bill Van Orden, a clerk at the deli, was one of the last people to see Wanda alive. She packed the bag herself, paid, and started the short walk back to her house on Avenue D and Conkey Avenue, which is on the north side of town. And this was

at around 5.15 p.m. Within a few hours, her mother Joyce had reached out to police who weren't going to have a repeat of what happened to Carmen. They responded quickly, and every officer available began retracing her route and moving outward from there. And flyers were quickly printed. Man through the night and into the next morning, residents searched alleyways in vacant lots, covering every inch of the neighborhood and beyond. The next day, what everyone feared became a reality when an officer found Wanda's body at the base of a hill, off a service road and Webster, about seven miles from where she'd last been seen. The body was found at the Bay Bridge rest area on Route 104 near the Arandicoit Bay Bridge.

Now the position of her body in relation to that road made it appear like she had just been tossed out of a car and then rolled on down the embankment. She had been essayed and also strangled, likely in the car, only this time it appeared to be with a ligature, and likely a belt. Wanda Walkowitz. and Webster. Another double initial, another town that started with the same letter, another child. Officially, police didn't link the cases just yet, but Rochester residents didn't need a

press conference. The similarities were too bizarre to ignore, and someone was out there after their kids. By late 1973, parents in Rochester were already tense. Two murdered girls, no arrests, and growing on eagles. ease. The teens were making jokes if their friends had the same first and last name initial. For parents of children with them, though, they felt fear. Still, though, it wasn't a certainty that this was all actually happening.

I mean, it's just too bizarre. For those who saw it as a coincidence, they felt a little less stressed, but soon, the breaking point would come for everyone. And when it did, it was impossible to deny the facts staring everyone right in the face. that this killer wasn't just a sick son of a gun, and he was playing games, and that was all part of the fun. On November 26th of 73, just after Thanksgiving, the time to be thankful for everything, 11-year-old Michelle Menza, initials M.M., failed to come home from school. Her mom, Caroline, knew right away something was wrong. Michelle was responsible, and she didn't just disappear.

Michelle's classmates spotted her after school. She was on Webster Avenue in Ackerman Street, near the North Goodman Street Shopping Plaza. Her mother had lost her purse there a couple days prior, and Michelle was planning on looking for her mom's purse. But she wouldn't make it there. Roughly ten minutes later, a witness saw something strange. A young girl matching Michelle's description

was in the passenger seat of a speeding beige or tan vehicle, barreling down Ackerman Street. The witness couldn't be sure what was happening, but they remembered one thing. The girl inside it was crying. That same evening, around 5.30 p.m., another sighting. A man was seen standing beside a beige or tan car with a flat tire along Route 350 in Wallworth. Another siding, this time on Route 350 in Walworth. He described the individual as holding the girl by the wrist, anything as well as the

the trunk being open. The suspect and vehicle description were exactly the same. Do you believe that was Michelle? I believe so. Two days later, Michelle was found dead, less than a mile away. She was lying face down in a ditch off a quiet rural road in Macedon, 15 miles from Rochester. She was fully clothed, but what had been done to her was brutal. She had been beaten, then strangled from behind with what investigators believe was a

thin rope or a cord. But the crime scene revealed more than just violence. And clutched in one of Michelle's hands were leaves, leaves that matched the very ground she was lying on, suggesting she had died right there in the spot. A white cat hares were also found on her clothing, hairs that didn't match any pet in her home. And then there was the stomach contents, hamburger and onions. And she'd eaten roughly an hour before she was killed. And it lined up with other witness reports of a man with dark hair in his mid-30s, six feet tall roughly, seen with a girl who looked like Michelle at a fast food restaurant in Penfield around 4.30 p.m. And again, later that evening along Route 350 when that passing motorist had stopped for help.

It was clear now, and this was no random crime. Michelle Menza and Macedon M.M.M. Someone had watched this girl and followed her, And whoever did it had done this before. Rochester was in full panic mode. By the time Michelle's body was found, parents were literally pulling their children from schools. And kids were no longer allowed to walk to the corner store or wait for the bus or do anything alone. Hardware stores couldn't keep dead bolts in stock. Self-defense classes were organized at churches and community centers.

And everywhere, at dinner tables, and beauty salons over police scanners, people asked the same question. Who was the killer? And theories began flying, and some people thought that a satanic cult of some kind was involved, a group of people with a ritualistic motive. But the eyewitness testimonies and evidence didn't support that. This was more of a knee-jerk reaction to the whole situation. The idea of one person being capable of such acts was more terrifying than if it were a group.

Multiple people meant more chances of being caught. One psychopath out there is frankly more terrifying. This wasn't random either. These girls were followed, watched, chosen. That kind of coordination. Picking children with specific initials, abducting them undetected and dumping them in matching towns, Suggest someone who knew the area well. Maybe even knew the families and the victims.

This was no guy passing through town on a whim, pulled up at a motel while he plotted and schemed over a couple of years. Now, he lived right there in Rochester and probably had his whole life. He had access to a vehicle. He may have been seen before as a friendly face around neighborhoods, a delivery driver, a utility worker perhaps. He may have been charming or invisible. One thing's certain, he was smart, calculated, and deeply disturbed.

Because only a twisted mind could turn murder into a pattern. Only a predator with patients could design crimes that mocked investigators while devastating families. He was likely a loner, not in the sense that he had no friends necessarily, though that's very possible. But more that he lived alone when the... family to tie him down or keep him distracted from the task at hand. A person who spent nights fantasizing about his kills and having the world around him finally take notice of what he was capable of, all while staying one step ahead. He probably sat in a dark apartment at night watching movies or reading books in his

favorite chair. And apparently, one he was really into was either the 1965 British film aptly titled The Alphabet Murders, or the book who was adapted from. So check this out. This movie aired in the U.S. on several channels, and there was some hype behind it because it was based on the very popular Agatha Christie novel called the ABC Murders. In the story, there is a killer that chooses his victims based on matching initials

and murdered them in alphabetically relevant locations. So in it, you have Alice Asher killed in Andover, so AAA. Then Betty Barnard killed on a beach in Bexhill, triple B's, and Carmichael Clark in Churchton, so you get the idea. In the film and book, the pattern is crucial, and that exact logic seemed to be playing out in real life here in Rochester. Carmen Collin and Churchville, Wanda Walkowitz and Webster, Michelle Manza and and Macedon. So then,

had someone decided to bring this fiction to life. This idea is particularly scary because of what it implied that the murders weren't impulsive in any sort of way. They were scripted and planned, like a twisted performance. The killer had to search for girls

with the same double initials and then find a town nearby to match. And maybe he looked up, Jennifer Jenkins, for example, but because there's no town within a 40-mile radius of Rochester that starts with Jay while she was spared, and she'll never know just how close she actually came. The Rochester PD worked with the FBI and state police and looked into this angle of the book and the real killer. Together, they also compiled psychological profiles, interviewed more than 800 suspects and conducted polygraph tests.

They tried to look at every angle, and some authority figures weren't convinced that, for one, these girls were killed because of their initials, they thought that this was a coincidence. And they claim for a killer to base their victim on such an arbitrary thing is rare. That certainly is, but not impossible. Another thing is they aren't sure this was the work of one person, particularly the case of Carmen Collin, whom they believe was actually killed by her uncle. If you recall, witnesses who saw her on the road that day where that car was reversed, Persing, saw a black car.

Carmen's uncle, Miguel, had recently bought something similar. In the other cases, we have a tan or beige car. Miguel was a troubled guy with a criminal record. Just a few days after his niece was found dead, he hightailed it over to Puerto Rico and never looked back. He reportedly had scratch marks on his face, and he cleaned his car thoroughly before leaving. A years later, Miguel died in a murder,

a living situation. Even with those red flags, no direct evidence tied him to Carmen's murder. And since he was out of the country for the other two, he's not a suspect in those. Another very interesting suspect was a guy named Dennis Termini, a 25-year-old local firefighter and serial assaulter of women. He had attacked multiple young ladies in the area and bore physical resemblance to descriptions from witnesses. When I say multiple, we're talking a minimum of 14, according to the records.

When police closed in on him, Termini decided to exit this earth on his own terms in 1974. An examination of his vehicle did reveal white cat fur on the upholstery. A white cat hares were found on Michelle's clothing. In 2007, his body was exhumed to obtain DNA, which was compared to what was found on Walkowitz's body, and they were not a match. Unfortunately, no DNA was found on Carmen or Michelle. Then there was Kenneth Bianchi,

who would later become infamous as one half of the hillside stranglers. Kenneth Bianchi also grew up in Rochester. He's known as the Hillside Strangler for a string of murders in California. A duo responsible for the deaths of at least 10 women in Los Angeles. But before his California killing spree, Bianchi lived in, of all places, Rochester. He drove an ice cream truck there, giving him access to young children. He was manipulative, charming, and very violent. Bianchi's victims in L.A. were usually in their teens or early 20s,

and he had no clear alibi for the time the Rochester murders. Still, though, investigators could never pin the alphabet murders on him. Despite exhaustive work throughout several decades, the investigation has unfortunately produced no arrests. The case, as of right now, is ice cold. By 1974, the media had moved on from the sensational story, and with no new victims, it slowly faded away from the spotlight. Michelle's parents moved out of state and wanted his mother stopped answering phone calls from reporters, and Carmen's surviving relatives refused to speak publicly for dead. decades. In 2001, police revisited the case using modern DNA testing, but degradation and

lost samples made it impossible to build a viable profile. And so, to this day, the alphabet murders remain unsolved. And three children, three towns, three sets of initials, and a killer, who for all we know got away clean. It's now been over 50 years in the streets where those girls walked have changed. The corner stores are gone and some roads have been renamed. But for those who were there, who remember the panic, the news, and the funerals, they'll never forget. This wasn't just a fictional murder mystery. This was real life. Twisted crimes that are hard to comprehend. And it's a deep wound in many, especially to those in the city of Rochester. And for some, they'll never fully heal. That's going to do it for this week's episode of Everytown. If you want more content

like this, check the links in the description. Full podcast episodes, exclusive videos, and our feature-length movie and Angry Boy is streaming now. Thanks for being here. Remember to come back next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.