When authorities first stepped inside Joseph Naso’s Nevada home near Reno, they quickly realized they had stumbled onto something far darker than a routine probation check.
The residence, belonging to a man who had long hidden behind the mask of a quiet photographer and family man, looked more like a horror set than a suburban home. Female mannequins hung from pantyhose around their necks, dressed in lingerie and carefully made up with wigs and makeup. Windows were boarded shut, and two rooms were found with locks on the outside, as if designed to keep someone trapped within.
But the most disturbing discovery was a staggering collection of photographs — thousands of images depicting as many as 250 women, many bound, unconscious, or posed in lingerie. Some appeared lifeless. To investigators, the sight was deeply unsettling.
“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 recalled in Oxygen’s documentary Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer.
One detective compared the scene to something straight out of Silence of the Lambs, a chilling reflection of the secret world Naso had created within his home.
As investigators combed through the house, they uncovered a handwritten list that would prove crucial to understanding Naso’s crimes. Simply titled “the list of 10,” it cataloged descriptions of women and locations — “Girl near Healdsburg,” “Girl on Mt. Tam,” and “Girl from Linda.” At first, its significance wasn’t clear. But in a safe deposit box, police found a clipping about missing woman Pamela Parsons, taped to cardboard, with one of Naso’s photos of a seemingly dead woman on the back.
The horrifying connection was made: Naso’s list was a kill list. Parsons had vanished in 1993 and was later discovered dead in an orchard in Linda, California — eerily aligning with entry number nine, “Girl from Linda.”
“Within just a few days, we went from a routine probation check … to, ‘Holy crap, we’ve got a serial killer,’” recalled Rick Brown, a sergeant with Nevada’s Major Crimes Unit.
Naso, once respected in his community as a talented photographer, had long concealed his deviant urges. His secret life only began unraveling after he was placed on probation for stealing women’s lingerie, which prompted the probation officer’s visit that led to the grim discovery.
Dubbed the “Alphabet Killer,” Naso was convicted in 2013 at age 79 for the murders of four women whose first and last names shared the same initial: Pamela Parsons, Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colon, and Tracy Tafoya. Prosecutors presented his kill list and extensive photo collection as damning evidence of his sadistic double life.
Some of the other entries on his list puzzled investigators for years. Cold case specialist Ken Mains revisited the files for Oxygen’s Death Row Confidential and sought to identify victims long left unknown.
One entry, “Girl from Miami Near Down Peninsula,” appeared unsolvable — until Mains connected it to Charlotte Cook, a 19-year-old last seen in Oakland near a road named Miami Court. Her body had been discovered at the bottom of a cliff in Daly City, once known as the “down peninsula.” She had been strangled with a robe belt, consistent with Naso’s method. Daly City Police agreed the evidence strongly supported her identification as Naso’s victim.
Another entry, “Girl on Mt. Tam,” has led investigators toward a promising lead in the disappearance of Gail Marie Dahl, also known as Gail Gardner. Though not yet confirmed, the details suggest Naso’s kill list may still hold unsolved answers.
What began as a probation check for stolen lingerie opened the door to one of California and Nevada’s most shocking serial killer cases. Behind the boarded-up windows and mannequins, Joseph Naso had created his own hidden chamber of horrors, chillingly reminiscent of fiction — but tragically all too real.
