Serial killer sentenced to death for 4 murders. Then cellmate tricks him

Joseph Naso, known as the Alphabet Killer, was found guilty in 2013 for killing four women whose first and last names started with the same letter. The victims were Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colon, Pamela Parsons, and Tracy Tafoya, killed between the 1970s and 1990s. At 79, Naso became the oldest person in California history to get the death penalty. He said he was innocent throughout his trial, where he stood up for himself in court, telling the jury he was “not the monster that killed these women.”

As per the Independent, when police arrested him in 2009, they found scary evidence at Naso’s California home. This included photos of dead bodies, a detailed list about the murders, and a journal describing rape and torture of other young women. The former photographer and Little League coach also kept a handwritten diary listing 10 women with places where they were found. Even with all this proof against him, Naso kept saying he had killed no one.

But another death row prisoner named William Noguera says Naso told him a much darker story. Noguera was part of a program to help elderly prisoners at San Quentin State Prison and spent over 10 years getting close to Naso. According to Noguera, when he brought up the list of 10 victims, Naso started laughing and said, “They got it all wrong. Yeah, I killed them women, yes. But those aren’t my top, those aren’t my list of 10. Those are my top 10.” Noguera says Naso told him the real number was 26 women.

What made him decide to help investigators?

Noguera never told Naso what he was really doing. “Naso never knew exactly what I was doing. He often said I asked a lot of questions, but he never imagined I was there, next to him, offering protection, friendship with one goal in mind. And that was to bury him,” Noguera said. He wanted to get justice for the victims, including Charlotte Cook, Pamela Lambson, and Lynn Ruth Connes.

Over the years, Noguera wrote down more than 300 pages of notes from his talks with Naso. He recorded dates, places, details about the victims, and where bodies were left. He later contacted retired FBI investigator Ken Mains with all this information. Mains checked the details against secret case information and talked to San Quentin staff. “When that checked out, I knew Bill was credible,” Mains said, calling it “the biggest evidence dump I’ve ever had at one moment.”

Evidence found at Naso’s home might back up the claim of 26 victims. Investigators found a coin collection with 26 gold coins, which Noguera thinks are trophies for each woman Naso killed. The new details appear in the Oxygen documentary Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer, which came out in September 2024. If you like true crime documentaries that look deep into criminal investigations, this series gives good insights into unsolved cases.

Working together, Mains and Noguera have connected Naso to several cold cases. This includes Charlotte Cook, who went missing in 1974, and Lynn Ruth Connes, who disappeared in Berkeley in 1976 after setting up a meeting with a photographer. Police are now looking at whether to reopen cold cases based on what Naso allegedly told Noguera. If found guilty of all 26 murders, Naso would be among the most deadly serial killers in history, a scary fact that puts him next to some of the worst criminals ever known. The 91-year-old is still locked up at California Health Care Facility in Stockton and has not said anything official about the extra murders.