SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Sept. 18 (UPI) -- A 79-year-old photographer should receive a death sentence for killing four women years ago in the San Francisco area, a jury said Tuesday.
Jurors in Marin County who found Joseph Naso guilty of four counts of murder last month made their sentence recommendation after two more weeks of testimony and 5 hours of deliberations, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The alternative was a recommendation of life without parole.
Naso became known as the "Alphabet killer" because the four victims had first and last names beginning with the same letter. Roxene Roggasch, 18, was killed in 1977; Carmen Colon, 22, in 1978; Pamela Parsons, 38, in 1993; and Tracy Tafoya, 31, in 1994.
Evidence found at his home near Reno, Nev., included a journal that talked of raping women and photographs of women in sexual positions.
Prosecutors argued during the sentencing phase of the trial that Naso might have at least two more victims.
Naso, who was acting as his own lawyer, told the jury he is not a "monster." He said the women who posed for the photographs were models paid for their work and said when he talked about "rape" in his journal he was only talking about having good sex.
