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Joseph Naso: The 'Double Initial Killer' Exposed by His Own Diary

  • Jun 16
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jun 25

Joseph Naso hid in plain sight for decades — a freelance photographer, Little League coach and father of two whose respectable exterior concealed a serial killer. When police finally searched his home, they found a meticulous record of his own crimes. Because each of his confirmed victims had a first and last name beginning with the same letter, he became known as the “Double Initial Killer.”

This article examines Naso's victims, the chance search that exposed him, his trial, and the eerie echo his crimes carried from another set of unsolved murders.

Joseph Naso: The 'Double Initial Killer' Exposed by His Own Diary

Key Facts at a Glance

  • Full name: Joseph Naso

  • Born: 7 January 1934, Rochester, New York

  • Known as: The Double Initial Killer; the Alphabet Killer

  • Convicted of: Four first-degree murders (1977–1994)

  • Arrested: 2011, after a 2010 probation search in Reno, Nevada

  • Sentence: Death (2013)

The Photographer's Double Life

Naso worked for years as a commercial and freelance photographer and presented himself as an unremarkable family man. That cover, combined with a transient lifestyle that took him between New York, California and Nevada, let him operate across jurisdictions for decades without being linked to the deaths of the women he targeted.

The Double-Initial Victims

Naso was convicted of murdering four women in California, each with the alliterative initials that gave the case its name:

  • Roxene Roggasch (1977)

  • Carmen Colon (1978)

  • Pamela Parsons (1993)

  • Tracy Tafoya (1994)

Prosecutors described a sexual predator who lured vulnerable women, drugged them, strangled them and photographed them, before dumping their bodies in rural areas of Northern California.

The Probation Search That Exposed Him

Naso's downfall was almost accidental. In 2010, while he was on probation for a theft conviction, authorities searched his Reno home and uncovered a trove of incriminating material: a handwritten journal cataloguing assaults going back decades, a cryptic “List of 10” that prosecutors argued enumerated victims, and thousands of photographs of women posed as if unconscious or dead. He was arrested in 2011.

Trial and Death Sentence, 2013

Representing himself with advisory counsel, Naso went on trial in Marin County in 2013. He claimed the evidence had been planted and the case was politically motivated, but in August 2013 a jury convicted him of four counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances. He was sentenced to death — at 79, reportedly the oldest person sentenced to death in California.

The material seized from Naso painted a portrait of a predator who treated his crimes as a project. Alongside the journal and the list, investigators found mannequins dressed in lingerie and staged photographs in which living victims were posed in disturbing, lifeless attitudes — imagery Naso reportedly regarded as a form of “art.” Prosecutors argued this documentation was effectively a confession in his own hand, and some who later spoke with him in prison have claimed his true victim count is far higher than four.

The Rochester Echo

One detail haunted investigators. Naso was born in Rochester, New York, where in the 1970s three young girls were murdered in a still-unsolved case also known as the “Double Initial” or “Alphabet” murders — victims who likewise had matching initials, one of them even sharing the name Carmen Colon. Naso was never charged in those cases, and authorities have long suspected him of additional killings beyond the four for which he was convicted.

Suspected of Far More

The four murders that sent Naso to death row may be only part of his story. Among the material seized from his home was a handwritten “list of ten” — coded references to locations, several of which matched no identified victim and fuelled fears that other bodies were never found. Investigators in New York also weighed whether Naso, who was born and raised in Rochester, could be connected to that city's unsolved 1970s “Alphabet” murders, which shared his victims' eerie double-initial pattern, though he was never charged in those cases. Representing himself and showing no remorse, Naso offered no answers, leaving the full extent of his crimes an open question.

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