© Robert Tong, Associated PressAccused serial killer Joseph Naso rubs his eyes as the prosecution makes its opening statement in Marin Superior Court on Monday, June 17, 2013. On Tuesday, Naso was found guilty of first-degree murder in the slayings of four Northern California women in the 1970s and 1990s.
The verdict in a San Rafael courtroom followed two months of often lurid testimony in which prosecutors recounted how the discovery of a "rape journal" and other obsessive writings by Naso cracked the cold cases.
Naso, acting as his own lawyer, countered that he wasn't the "monster" authorities described.
The jury spent less than a day deliberating before finding Naso, 79, guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, along with the special circumstance of committing multiple killings. The same jury will convene for a death penalty hearing starting Sept. 4, after which they must decide whether Naso should be executed or sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Marin County prosecutors will be asking a jury to impose the death penalty for the first time since 1990. If executed, Naso would be the oldest person ever put to death in California.
Authorities believe Naso may have committed other killings, but they charged him with leaving four bodies along roads in Marin, Contra Costa and Yuba counties. The onetime photographer acknowledged that he hired prostitutes and photographed them in sexual positions, and admitted that he wrote in journals that he raped women. But he said he did not kill anyone.
Mistrial denied
After Tuesday's verdict was read, Naso asked Superior Court Judge Andrew Sweet to declare a mistrial. Sweet denied the request.
Larry Roggasch, whose sister Roxene Roggasch was killed by Naso, said outside court that the verdict was a long time coming but did little to assuage his grief.
"I was hoping I'd feel better," he said, "but right now I don't."
Naso was dubbed the Alphabet Killer because of a pattern among the victims: In each case, their first and last names started with the same letter. He was convicted of killing Roggasch, 18, in 1977; Carmen Colon, 22, in 1978; Pamela Parsons, 38, in 1993; and Tracy Tafoya, 31, in 1994.
Roggasch's body was found near Lagunitas (Marin County) and Colon was found near Port Costa (Contra Costa County), while Parsons and Tafoya were both found in Yuba County.
He was arrested after a 2010 search of his home near Reno turned up photos of Parsons, along with pictures of other women who appeared to have been posed as if they were dead. Naso maintained the photos were examples of his art and that his written references to "rape" were innocent.
"That's just the way I refer to making out or having great sex," Naso said at one point.
His courtroom arguments were often long and rambling. But Tuesday, as he wore a beige sports jacket, white shirt and striped tie, he appeared emotionless before he was taken back into custody without bail.
Declined to discuss
Jurors declined to discuss the case, as did prosecutors, because the penalty phase of the trial is pending.
In front of the jury, the prosecution portrayed Naso as a serial killer with little regard for women. A crime scene photograph shown to the jury portrayed one of his victims' half-naked body in Marin County with panty hose stuffed down her throat and wrapped around her neck - drawing gasps from those in the courtroom.
Naso lived at several Bay Area addresses during the '70s and '80s, and some people who knew him now feel lucky to be alive.
New York residents Margaret Prisco and her husband, Thaddeus Iorizzo, said an investigator told them that the man they knew as Crazy Joe during their year living in a San Francisco apartment in the early 1980s had filled three notebooks with descriptions of how he wished to torment Prisco, who was then 23 years old.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter