A suspected serial killer who may be New York’s infamous “Double Initial†murderer kept a gruesome rape diary and posed photos of dead prostitutes. Click below to read the rest of the story.
A lead investigator revealed the damaging diary during a preliminary hearing for 78-year-old Joseph Naso — the Reno, Nevada, man charged with killing four northern California prostitutes with matching first and last initials in the 1970s and 1990s.
“Girl in north Buffalo woods. She was real pretty. Had to knock her out first,†read one alleged entry in Naso’s journal.
The diary — found in his house during a probation search tied to a larceny conviction — is filled with similar twisted entries and references to rape, Nevada Department of Public Safety Det. Richard Brown said.
Naso, who is acting as his own lawyer, scoffed as Marin County prosecutor Dori Ahana and Brown detailed dozens of sexual and violent photographs of women seized from his home.
“Who is paying for all of this entertainment?” he asked, raising an objection.
“This is my private work, my photography. The women have been violated. What happens in a home is sacred and private,†he said, according to The Associated Press. “The whole thing is disgusting, and I don’t see the relevance at all.â€
Some photographs reportedly showed women unconscious or appearing dead, including two prostitutes Naso is charged with killing: Pamela Parsons and Tracy Tafoya.
Authorities said they found a “List of 10†in Naso’s possession that included the scrawled descriptions of 10 women.
Four of the women are thought to be the victims behind his four murder charges: Roxene Roggasch, 18, in 1977; Carmen Colon, 22, in 1978; Parsons, 38, in 1993; and Tafoya, 31, in 1994.
The six other women referred to on the list have not yet been identified.
Naso also kept news clippings covering the slaying of Parsons and Tafoya, authorities said, and had a calendar that placed him in the same city as Parsons on the day she vanished.
Naso was arrested last April and quickly became a person of interest in the 1970s strangulations of three young upstate New York girls who had alliterative initials, an investigator told the Daily News.
In one striking similarity, a 10-year-old girl abducted, sexually assaulted and strangled in the first Rochester-area “Double Initial†spree had the exact same name as one of Naso’s alleged California victims — Carmen Colon.
Naso also once lived in the Rochester area and traveled there as a freelance photographer in the early 1970s, authorities said.
Officials have said there’s no hard evidence tying Naso to the Rochester case, and one attempt to match him with DNA taken from one of the New York victims didn’t work.
“You have no idea the man hours that have gone into this,†a New York State Police source told the Daily News last year.
