RENO, NV - In April of 2010, a probation officer was making a routine unannounced visit on a frail, elderly parolee when he quickly called for backup.
Once inside of Joseph Naso's home, the probation officer realized he walked into a serial killer's secret lair, according to Oxygen.
"I've been to some pretty nasty crime scenes, but Joe's house was more emotionally disturbing than most cases I've ever seen," Yuba County Sheriff Wendell Anderson said in the first episode of Oxygen's multi-part documentary special, Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer.
Upon further investigation, authorities discovered female mannequins dressed in lingerie and in full hair and makeup hanging from their necks with pantyhose.
They found boarded-up windows, two rooms that locked from the outside, and "thousands of photographs" of 250 different women, either dead or seemingly unconscious, bound and posed in lingerie.
"It was described to me by one of the detectives as something out of Silence of the Lambs," Vanity Fair journalist Rachel Dodes said in Death Row Confidential. While walking through the home, investigators also uncovered "the list of 10." a handwritten catalog of names of alleged victims and locations, allegedly scrawled by Naso, who was once a professional photographer.
They included "Girl near Healdsburg" or "Girl on Mt. Tam."
Investigators didn't understand the full gravity of the list until they went to Naso's safe deposit box and discovered a news clipping about missing woman Pamela Parsons pasted onto a piece of cardboard. On the back of the cardboard, Naso had affixed his own photo of a woman, who appeared to be dead, draped across a couch in lingerie.
Not long after Parsons disappeared in September of 1993, she was found dead in an orchard in a remote area of Linda, California. Those details matched up with number nine on Naso's list, "Girl from Linda."
Authorities realized that Naso's list of women was actually a kill list. "Within a few days, we went from a routine probation check that happens multiple times daily in every city, county, in the United States to, 'Holy crap, we've got a serial killer,'" said Rick Brown, a sergeant in the Major Crimes Unit of the Nevada Department of Public Safety.
For years, Naso had masqueraded as an unassuming family man and popular photographer, keeping his disturbing double life a secret, until he landed himself on probation for stealing women's lingerie, leading to the moments when his probation officer knocked on his door.
Naso was later dubbed the "Alphabet Killer" for his penchant for killing victims with first and last names that began with the same letter. He was convicted in 2013 at the age of 79 for the murders of four women, including Parson, Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colon, and Tracy Tafoya.
Investigators were able to identify two additional women from Naso's list, but the remaining four remained a mystery for years until cold case investigator Ken Mains got some help from an unconventional source.
Mains, a retired FBI agent turned cold case investigator, got a letter in June of 2022 from William Noguera, an inmate on death row at San Quentin Prison in Marin County, California.
Noguera claimed he'd spent hours talking to the notoriously tight-lipped Naso in the prison yard about his disturbing crimes, and would return to his cell and write down everything he could recall about the conversations.
"I have not gone to law enforcement with this information because I cannot substantiate the evidence I've gathered. For that, I need a professional investigator," Norguera wrote to Mains. "In short, I need you to put the puzzle together." He said that Naso also allegedly confessed behind bars to killing 26 women and told him that this list of 10 was just "his favorites."
Naso's job as a photographer not only gave him a sense of "power," but also provided him with the perfect cover to lure unsuspecting women into his trap. "He could get people's compliance because people lived to have their photograph taken," Mains said.
Once inside of Joseph Naso's home, the probation officer realized he walked into a serial killer's secret lair, according to Oxygen.
"I've been to some pretty nasty crime scenes, but Joe's house was more emotionally disturbing than most cases I've ever seen," Yuba County Sheriff Wendell Anderson said in the first episode of Oxygen's multi-part documentary special, Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer.
Upon further investigation, authorities discovered female mannequins dressed in lingerie and in full hair and makeup hanging from their necks with pantyhose.
They found boarded-up windows, two rooms that locked from the outside, and "thousands of photographs" of 250 different women, either dead or seemingly unconscious, bound and posed in lingerie.
"It was described to me by one of the detectives as something out of Silence of the Lambs," Vanity Fair journalist Rachel Dodes said in Death Row Confidential. While walking through the home, investigators also uncovered "the list of 10." a handwritten catalog of names of alleged victims and locations, allegedly scrawled by Naso, who was once a professional photographer.
They included "Girl near Healdsburg" or "Girl on Mt. Tam."
Investigators didn't understand the full gravity of the list until they went to Naso's safe deposit box and discovered a news clipping about missing woman Pamela Parsons pasted onto a piece of cardboard. On the back of the cardboard, Naso had affixed his own photo of a woman, who appeared to be dead, draped across a couch in lingerie.
Not long after Parsons disappeared in September of 1993, she was found dead in an orchard in a remote area of Linda, California. Those details matched up with number nine on Naso's list, "Girl from Linda."
Authorities realized that Naso's list of women was actually a kill list. "Within a few days, we went from a routine probation check that happens multiple times daily in every city, county, in the United States to, 'Holy crap, we've got a serial killer,'" said Rick Brown, a sergeant in the Major Crimes Unit of the Nevada Department of Public Safety.
For years, Naso had masqueraded as an unassuming family man and popular photographer, keeping his disturbing double life a secret, until he landed himself on probation for stealing women's lingerie, leading to the moments when his probation officer knocked on his door.
Naso was later dubbed the "Alphabet Killer" for his penchant for killing victims with first and last names that began with the same letter. He was convicted in 2013 at the age of 79 for the murders of four women, including Parson, Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colon, and Tracy Tafoya.
Investigators were able to identify two additional women from Naso's list, but the remaining four remained a mystery for years until cold case investigator Ken Mains got some help from an unconventional source.
Mains, a retired FBI agent turned cold case investigator, got a letter in June of 2022 from William Noguera, an inmate on death row at San Quentin Prison in Marin County, California.
Noguera claimed he'd spent hours talking to the notoriously tight-lipped Naso in the prison yard about his disturbing crimes, and would return to his cell and write down everything he could recall about the conversations.
"I have not gone to law enforcement with this information because I cannot substantiate the evidence I've gathered. For that, I need a professional investigator," Norguera wrote to Mains. "In short, I need you to put the puzzle together." He said that Naso also allegedly confessed behind bars to killing 26 women and told him that this list of 10 was just "his favorites."
Naso's job as a photographer not only gave him a sense of "power," but also provided him with the perfect cover to lure unsuspecting women into his trap. "He could get people's compliance because people lived to have their photograph taken," Mains said.
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