Alphabet Murders

A pretty 10-year-old, Carmen lived with her grandparents in Brown Street, off West Main Street, in the Bull’s Head Area of southwest Rochester.

She disappeared after leaving a drugstore in a mall at the intersection of Genesee Street and West Main Street, near the building with the bull’s head sculpture that gave the district its name. 

Her grandfather usually accompanied her as far as the corner of Brown and West Main Street when she ran errands for the family. He would wait on the corner and the two would walk home together when Carmen finished her shopping. On the day of her disappearance, Carmen went to the drugstore alone.

When the pharmacist told Carmen the prescription would take about half an hour to fill on account of the paperwork required, Carmen rushed out of the shop, saying she had to go. Carmen’s strange remark has led to speculation her killer was waiting for her outside the drugstore.

On Nov. 18, 1971, two days after she disappeared, two teenage boys, Mark Allen and James Gillen, were out cycling when they turned off Griffin Road into Stearns Road, a remote rural road in Churchville. They spotted something leaning against a rock in a ditch. At first they thought it was a doll someone had discarded. Only after viewing the object for some seconds did they realise it was the body of a young, semi-nude girl.

The medical examiner determined Carmen had been strangled and sexually assaulted, and that she had been dead about two days. She had extensive fingernail marks on her neck and much of her body.

Once word of her murder spread, dozens of drivers came forward to report a strange incident on Interstate 490 about a mile east of Riga. On the afternoon of Carmen’s disappearance, the motorists saw a young girl, naked from the waist down, running along the side of the road. Someone was reversing a vehicle in her direction along the shoulder of the road. 

Most of the motorists were travelling at speed when they passed the girl, and several reported being unsure of what to make of the bizarre incident. In any event, none stopped; and the incident wasn’t reported to the police at the time.

Discarded clothing found near the scene belonged to Carmen, so there is little doubt the motorists saw Carmen and her abductor.

“I know they feel horrible (they didn’t stop) and they were courageous enough to come forward after the fact,” said former Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Patrick Crough when interviewed by the local newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, in 2009.

The police conducted extensive investigations in Churchville and in Rochester. “Everybody (in the Bull’s Head neighborhood) knew her,” said Vito D’Ambrosio, another retired Rochester police detective. “We were going door-to-door and everybody knew her.”

Ten days into the investigation, there was an unexpected development when a message was found scrawled on the men’s room door on the sixth floor of a building at 228 East Main Street. At the time the premises were occupied by a department store, Sibley Lindsay & Curr. The message read: ‘I killed a ten year old girl.  Who will be next?’ 

The Gannett Rochester Newspapers, the owners of the Democrat and Chronicle, offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. The Citizens for a Decent Community (CDC) erected billboards throughout Rochester and added to the reward.