A Nightmare As Simple as A-B-C

She'd arrived a few minutes late, after the red carpet entourage had already swept inside the theater, with the local television crews in tow.

Michelle Walkowicz was a bundle of nerves. Her sister had insisted she show up to the Pittsford Cinema and register the family's protest of the latest media attempt to recapture the horror and fear that framed their youngest years.

So Michelle had driven her truck to Pittsford Plaza, where the stars and director of "Alphabet Killer" had turned out for its premier. The independent, modern-day murder thriller is based loosely on the deaths of Michelle's sister, Wanda Walkowicz (right side of picture) and two other Rochester girls, Carmen Colon and Michelle Maenza.

http://www.alphabetkiller.com/

All three little girls were nearly the same age in the early 1970's when they were abducted from their neighborhoods, sexually attacked and strangled. Each girl's first and last name began with the same letter. Police later found their bodies in towns with that same letter: Carmen, killed first, in Churchville, Wanda, in Webster and later, Michelle, in Macedon, Wayne County.

The Double Initial Murders, as they came to be known, changed Rochester. Fear was palpable across the community Authorities considered it at one time to be the work of a serial predator.

The case has never gone cold.

Investigators from the State Police, Rochester Police Department and both the Monroe and Wayne County Sheriff's Offices receive tips all the time. Most dry up quickly. Some don't. The hottest lead followed was the exhumation of the remains of a young Rochester firefighter. He was considered a suspect at the time of the killings. DNA tests proved he could not be linked to the girls killings.

That lead came in 2006 at the same time that the makers of "Alphabet Killer" were wrapping up filming.


And still the leads come in. The most recent came in on Election Day, someone who believed they knew something about Michelle Maenza's disappearance. The Wayne County Sheriff's Office is following up.

Another involved a woman who told police she believed her late father killed all three girls. DNA tests from the family led to a dead end. But a new twist in that lead keeps it alive.

Michelle Walkowicz needs to know. Who was it? And was it one person, as was first thought when the killings were terrorizing her hometown. Or, as others have deducted, were they coincidental killings committed by separate people.


Her family, and the family of Carmen Colon remain in Rochester, occasionaly receiving updates from investigators fielding leads. The updates come less frequently.

But the movie brings it all back for Michelle. Even if the names and the time period aren't the same. She and her sister remain angry at the portrayal of their family in an A&E program on the killings. They're angry the film will do worse.