Mexican Murderer/Rapist of 10 White Women Captured

[War Eagle]

PHOTOS OF WHITE WOMEN AND MEXICAN at LINK

Altemio Sanchez

DNA Led Police to Altemio Sanchez
(January 15, 2007) - - It appears advances in science helped police solve the Bike Path Rapist case. Authorities say Altemio Sanchez's attacks left a DNA trail that finally led to an arrest.
Reaction from Clarence Community
(Clarence, NY, January 15, 2007) - - Police believe the last known victim of the Bike Path Rapist was Clarence mother of four Joan Diver.
Reaction from Victims and Families
(January 15, 2007) - - At least seven reported victims of the Bike Path Rapist survived his attack, and now with word of an arrest, those victims and their families are reacting to the news. News 4's Alysha Palumbo reports.
Reaction from Cheektowaga Neighbors
(Cheektowaga, NY, January 15, 2007) - - Imagine learning you may have been living next to the Bike Path Rapist for years. That's the reality for neighbors of suspect Altemio Sanchez.
Police Identify Suspect in Bike Path Rapes & Killings
(January 15, 2007) - - Police say this man, Altemio Sanchez of Cheektowaga, is the Bike Path Rapist. Investigators say he's responsible for raping and murdering women in Western New York for decades.
High-Tech Forensics Play Key Role
(January 15, 2007) - - High-tech forensics are playing a key role in cracking the bike path rapist case. News 4's George Richert has more on the science behind the investigation.
Bike Path Rapist Timeline of Events
(January 15, 2007) - - Until his capture Monday, police had been chasing the bike path rapist and killer for more than two decades. News 4's George Richert takes a look back at the timeline of events.
Bike Path Rapist Investigation
(January 15, 2007) - - The investigation into the bike path rapist began to heat up months ago after it was learned he struck again last September. This time, police say he killed Clarence mother of four Joan Diver.

(January 15, 2007) - - It appears advances in science helped police solve the Bike Path Rapist case. Authorities say Altemio Sanchez's attacks left a DNA trail that finally led to an arrest. News 4's Michele McClintick looks back at the serial attacks over the past two decades.

He's been under police surveillance for ten days, and over the weekend, authorities reportedly followed the suspect to Sole Restaurant in Williamsville to get the final, critical piece of DNA evidence. Manager George Kotsis told us what police did, as the suspect finished his meal.

Kotsis said, "We saved the plates, they took them, and that was the end of that."

Officials say it is the DNA taken from that tableware that came back with a 100 percent match with the DNA found following three killings and several attacks since 1986.

Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark said, "DNA evidence sealed the deal."

It all started in 1986 when a woman was attacked at Delaware park.

The next month, it was a 17-year-old student on a path in Hamburg.

Two years later, a 16-year-old was attacked on a path in Riverside.

The next year, in May of 1989, a 15-year-old student was attacked on the same path.

Three months later, in August of 1989, a 14-year-old was attacked on the bike path in Amherst.

In May of 1990, a woman was jogging on the Ellicott Creek bike path and was attacked from behind.

In each case, a ligature or rope was wrapped around the victim's neck.

A few months later, in a highly-publicized case, 22-year-old UB student Linda Yalem was attacked and killed on the Ellicott Creek bike path.

In November of 1992, Majane Mazur's body was left along the railroad tracks on Exchange Street in Buffalo.

Both of these women were raped and then strangled.

Two years later, in October of 1994, a 14-year-old girl was attacked on Military Road.

Then, 12 years later, in Clarence, detectives say 45-year-old Clarence mother Joan Diver was murdered on the bike path in Newstead. Authorities say she died of ligature strangulation.

Now, it will be up to the prosecution to use the DNA to build its case against Altemio Sanchez.

 

[Dragasès]

Great find.

Another primitive zapped by the lightning of white man's magic.

 

[The Bobster]

I used to live in this area. This spic would not blend into upper-class Clarence. Neither would he blend into Polish working-class Cheektowaga.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/nyregion/18bike.html?ref=nyregion

The Suspect in 3 Murders and 8 Rapes Blended In

By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID STABA
Published: January 18, 2007

BUFFALO, Jan. 17 — The man sitting at table 35, a booth in the back of the restaurant, made the same impression on Rebecca Klauk last Saturday that he had left on countless other people who encountered him over the years: respectable but wholly unremarkable. He just blended in.

Altemio Sanchez being escorted to his arraignment in Buffalo. Officials say he is responsible for three murders and at least eight rapes.

Short and bald, he wore a sensible plaid shirt and had good posture, Ms. Klauk noticed. At one point, he started rearranging the tableware in front of him — somewhat compulsively, she thought. But Ms. Klauk, the manager of the restaurant, a Latin American spot called Sole, was trying not to stare.

Three undercover detectives were at the bar watching the man, Altemio Sanchez, who the authorities suspect is the so-called Bike Park Rapist, responsible for three murders and at least eight rapes in the Buffalo area since 1981. One of the detectives showed Ms. Klauk his badge and instructed her not to touch anything on the table Mr. Sanchez shared with a woman who matched the description of his wife, Kathleen.

But the empty plates could not just sit there, so a busboy cleared them, leaving Mr. Sanchez’s water glass and two others as the couple departed Sole about 6:15 p.m. And they left a good tip.

For decades, Mr. Sanchez had led an outwardly ordinary life, raising children he bragged about, playing golf and working steadily as a machinist at a factory on the outskirts of town. But officials say Mr. Sanchez, 48, was also the reason Ms. Klauk’s father and other parents in this area had for years warned their daughters not to walk forested paths alone.

Prosecutors are expected to bring charges to a grand jury on Thursday in the 1990 rape and strangulation of Linda Yalem, a sophomore at the State University at Buffalo, who was jogging on a bike path just off campus. In 1996, Mr. Sanchez was among the 1,548 people who entered the Linda Yalem Memorial Run, an annual 3.1-mile race that the police regularly videotaped for clues.

He has already been arraigned on murder charges in the slaying of Majane Mazur, a 32-year-old prostitute found strangled in a field near some railroad tracks in 1992, and prosecutors contend that he also killed Joan Diver, a nurse and a mother of four, on Sept. 29, the 16th anniversary of Ms. Yalem’s death. DNA samples taken from Ms. Diver’s car match Mr. Sanchez’s DNA, the authorities said, but prosecutors are not expected to present that case to the grand jury immediately.

In addition, the authorities say Mr. Sanchez raped at least eight other women between 1981 and 1994. DNA evidence links him to five of those attacks, they say.

Mr. Sanchez’s lawyer, Andrew C. LoTempio, has said he is not guilty of any of the allegations, and suggested he would seek a change of venue out of concern his client could not get a fair trial in Erie County.

“There is no history of violence in his house,” Mr. LoTempio said. “If this guy fits the profile, then so does everybody’s uncle.”

To his neighbors in suburban Cheektowaga, a five-minute drive from Sole, the restaurant where he left his DNA on a glass after that fateful dinner on Saturday, Mr. Sanchez was friendly and thoughtful, offering his generator after a storm, or help installing heated gutters. He worked at the same job for 23 years, and seemed obsessive only about his gardening. As ordinary as they come.

The Bike Path Rapist often attacked in the morning, as his victims jogged or strolled outdoors. He often prepared a spot in advance to commit the crime, perhaps leaving a roll of duct tape there, to tape eyes shut. He attacked women from behind, strangling them with electrical wire or drapery cord, leaving two long marks on their necks.

There are only glimpses of the moments where these two characters, the outward Mr. Sanchez and the killer sketched by the police, might have intersected, like the two times Mr. Sanchez was arrested for soliciting a prostitute, in 1999 and 1991. Twice more, he eluded capture by detectives on his trail: in 1990, the police questioned Mr. Sanchez and took his fingerprints after a co-worker reported him lurking on a bike path, and in 1981, officers interviewed his uncle after a rape victim thought she spotted her attacker in the uncle’s car at a shopping mall. (The uncle failed to tell the police his nephew had borrowed the car until this month.)

“I still have this little hope in my heart that this all was his evil twin,” said Joyce Heath, a neighbor and friend of Mr. Sanchez.

Altemio Sanchez was born on Jan. 19, 1958, in San Sebastian, in Puerto Rico’s northwest corner, according to his aunt, Margarita Torres. His mother, Lucy, had four children, two boys and two girls, and when Mr. Sanchez was 2, the family moved to the United States mainland. Mr. Sanchez did not know his father, his lawyer said, and grew up for a time with his mother, who died several years ago, and an elderly stepfather. He lived in Florida and around Buffalo.

“He was a nice kid, a serious kid,” said Ms. Torres. “A quiet kid.”

Mr. Sanchez was 23 at the time of what prosecutors contend was his first attack, the 1981 rape, a crime they have not charged him with in part because the statute of limitations long since expired. Two years later, Mr. Sanchez started a job he held until his arrest on Monday, at a brass factory north of downtown Buffalo. Mr. Sanchez mostly worked the off-shifts: 3:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., or midnight to 7:30 a.m., most recently as a machine operator, moving the sheets of copper alloy that the plant produces.

“I was not aware of any performance issues in the time he worked here,” said Jack B. Alonge, the factory’s director of human resources. “Everyone here was shocked.”

His lawyer said that Mr. Sanchez met his wife, who now works for a marketing company, at Buffalo State College. The year his wife graduated, 1991, Mr. Sanchez was arrested after trying to solicit an undercover police officer in a prostitution sting.

“Are you looking for some action?” Mr. Sanchez, who was driving a white 1988 Pontiac, asked the officer, according to court records. He offered her $25 for intercourse, using a coarser word, and ended up paying a $75 fine instead.

By then, the Sanchezes and their two young sons had moved to the two-story Cape Cod on Allendale Street in Cheektowaga, a house he lovingly cared for, impressing his neighbors. The children went to good schools; Mr. Sanchez coached their basketball team.

Everyone brought a dish to the Sanchez summer garden parties, a mix of the couples’ work friends and neighbors, said Nadine Donohue, who has lived on the street for 28 years with her husband, Jerry. “The scary part is, he’s the nicest person you’d ever want to meet,” Jerry Donohue said. “This is what’s so upsetting. He never made any sexual remarks about a woman, never swore. You’d go to his parties and have a beer or two with him.”

By the time Mr. Sanchez sat down at Sole on Saturday about 5 p.m., the police had been watching him for days, said the Erie County sheriff, Timothy B. Howard.

The surveillance started because of a lucky confluence of events. At almost the same time that investigators determined that DNA from the Bike Path Rapist most likely belonged to a Hispanic man, an F.B.I. profiler said the suspect probably solicited prostitutes. Another investigator, reviewing old cases, happened upon Mr. Sanchez’s uncle and the episode with the car.

All of which led the police to knock on the Sanchezes’ door last week, on the pretense of recovering an unlicensed gun in hopes of obtaining a sample of his DNA. Mr. Sanchez had lost his gun license because of his prostitution arrest, but never turned in the weapon; the police took the .22-caliber pistol from his closet last week, but were unable to retrieve DNA. So they kept trailing him.

After Mr. Sanchez left Sole, the detectives moved quickly — so quickly, in fact, that Ms. Klauk, who left the restaurant for a few minutes, did not see them gather the glasses and other utensils before following Mr. Sanchez to a bookstore and taking his coffee cup from there as evidence.

The DNA results came back Sunday night, and Mr. Sanchez was arrested the next morning as he drove home from work.

Ms. Yalem, 22, was from California, and was found in thick brush off the Ellicott Creek bicycle path. Ms. Diver, trained as a nurse, frequently traveled back to Utah, where her family has a cabin in the woods. A family picking wildflowers stumbled upon Ms. Mazur, who was originally from South Carolina. Christine Mazur was 5 when her crack-addicted mother was killed. Now 19, she lives in South Carolina and is studying to be a teacher.

“He can’t ruin anybody else’s life now,” Ms. Mazur said of Mr. Sanchez’s arrest. “I never had anybody here for my prom, or my first date, or any of the other things your mother should be there for.”

 

[Johnny99]

http://www.buffalonews.com/101/story/77008.html PLEADS GUILTY TO THREE BIKE PATH MURDERS
By Mike Beebe - News Staff Reporter
Updated: 05/16/07 12:47 PM

Faced with overwhelming DNA evidence against him and a desire not to put his wife, family and his victims through a lengthy trial, Altemio C. Sanchez pleaded guilty this morning to three murders in the Bike Path killings and rapes.

Sanchez, handcuffed and leg-shackled, openly wept as he admitted in State Supreme Court that he killed Linda Yalem in 1990, Majane Mazur in 1992 and Joan Diver on Sept. 29, 2006.

The surprise pleas came after Sanchez and his lawyer, Andrew C. LoTempio, reviewed all the DNA evidence against the 49-year-old Cheektowaga resident and rejected a possible insanity defense.

Supreme Court Justice Christopher Burns asked Sanchez how he killed the victims.


"I strangled her," Sanchez responded in each case, barely able to speak because he was weeping.

As Sanchez told the judge how he strangled Yalem, a University at Buffalo student, while attempting to rape her on the Ellicott Creek trailway, Sanchez's wife, Kathleen, tightly holding hands with her brother, burst into tears. White wife? She must be proud.

She later had her attorney read a statement expressing sorrow for her husband's victims.

Sanchez pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree murder. Two of the counts were for Yalem, both for her murder and the fact she was raped during the murder.

Steven Diver, a University at Buffalo professor, leaned forward in his seat as Sanchez described how he killed Diver's wife.

"I strangled her," a barely audible Sanchez said.

Did you intend to cause her death? Burns asked him.

"Yes," came the reply.

Sanchez pleaded guilty even
after Burns warned him he faces a possible 75 years to life in prison. He will be sentenced Aug. 2.

Sanchez, a Buffalo factory worker who lives in Cheektowaga, had maintained his innocence since his Jan. 15 arrest.

Today's court session originally was intended to hear possible motions in the case, including LoTempio's attempt to have a change of venue because of the pretrial publicity in the case.

Afterward, outside the courtroom, LoTempio said Sanchez's decision to plead guilty came 10 days to two weeks ago.

The defense lawyer said he had reviewed all the DNA evidence with Sanchez, had started discussing other rapes that prosecutors felt Sanchez had committed and intended to use at trial, when Sanchez told him he wanted to plead guilty.

LoTempio said he had discussed an insanity plea but Sanchez decided against it, the attorney said, after realizing the details of his crimes would be described in court.

Sanchez asked LoTempio to tell his wife of the decision, the
lawyer said.

"No, you have to tell your wife," LoTempio said he replied.

LoTempio refused to discuss Sanchez's psychiatric history in depth, but said he developed a deep-seated animosity toward women early in life, after his father left his mother, and his mother began seeing other men.

The defense lawyer also said Sanchez had uncontrollable impulses that he acted on, comparing him to an alcoholic or drug addict who cannot control an addiction. Gee thats too bad. Deputy District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III told Burns that, had the case gone to trial, DNA evidence would have been used in all three murders, even though the DNA evidence in the Diver case was found from Sanchez's sweat drops in her car.

In that case, Sedita said, prosecutors also would show that Sanchez had purchased the ligatures he used to strangle Diver.

Sedita also said that no promises of any kind as far as sentencing had been made to Sanchez.

Sanchez wa
s arrested a day and a half after he left his DNA on a glass he drank from in an Amherst restaurant, authorities said.

His arrest not only capped a 15-year investigation, but led to the release of another man, Anthony Capozzi, who was imprisoned for two rapes in 1984 that authorities now say Sanchez committed.

LoTempio said that Sanchez was aware of Capozzi's recent release from prison, but said it played no role in today's guilty pleas.

The break in the case leading to Sanchez's arrest came when task investigators took another look at an April 14, 1981, rape of a 21-year-old Buffalo State College student in Delaware Park.

This case caught their eye, largely because three days after the attack, the victim spotted a man resembling her attacker at the Boulevard Mall in Amherst. She followed the man, saw him leave the scene in a white vehicle, jotted down the license plate number and called police. Authorities tracked down the vehicle, which was registered to Sanchez's uncle, Wilf
redo Sanchez Caraballo, then a resident of Buffalo's West Side.

Caraballo at the time told police the car, lacking insurance, hadn't been used in a long time. Police took photos of the uncle and the car, which were shown to the victim. Law enforcement sources say she recognized the car but not the man.

Detectives tracked down the uncle, now living in North Carolina, and reinterviewed him. This time, he provided a different version of the story he had told detectives almost 26 years ago.

He admitted that his nephew had borrowed the car to go to the Amherst mall with his girlfriend, now Sanchez's wife, a task force official said.

Armed with Sanchez's name as a suspect in the 1981 rape, investigators kept the Allendale Road resident under tight surveillance for days.

Detectives noticed Sanchez had a pistol permit that had been revoked after he was arrested for patronizing a prostitute in 1991.

Investigators seized the gun, hopeful that it would yield the DNA that wou
ld tie Sanchez to the rapes and killings, and continued tracking him.

Their break came when Sanchez dined at Sole, an upscale restaurant in the Walker Center in Amherst, with his wife.

The officers asked that the couple's table not be cleaned after they left, but the manager replied that that would leave the restaurant looking unkempt. The staff agreed to leave the glassware untouched; as soon as the couple left, the officers swooped down on the table and got the glasses.

Those glasses, law enforcement sources said, yielded the DNA that led to Sanchez's arrest. Sanchez was stopped on a Buffalo street and taken in for questioning before being arrested.

His DNA matched that found at earlier rapes and killings, and later was a match to a sample found in the vehicle Joan Diver was driving the day she was killed.

 

[Bocephus]

From CourtTV.com, 8/14/07:
New York's 'Bike Path Killer' sentenced to (only) 75 years in prison

A man who terrorized (white women in) western New York for 16 years and was known as the 'Bike Path Killer' was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison Tuesday for the murders of three women.

A judge told ("hardworking, earnest immigrant") Altemio Sanchez that, although he admitted to the murders, he had shown no remorse for killing Linda Yalem, Majane Mazur and Joan Diver.

Hardworking, earnest immigrant, Altemio Sanchez (left), doing the jobs no white man will do:

"This sentence reflects your unspeakable cruelty in committing these horrible murders," New York State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns told Sanchez during the sentencing in Buffalo. "You showed no mercy and you deserve none."

Before the sentence was delivered, Sanchez, 49, addressed the court, apologizing to his victims' families and acknowledging that he could do nothing to bring back their relatives.

"Whatever sentence I get today I deserve," Sanchez said. "I will pay for this for the rest of my life (with lifetime free room and board, full comprehensive lifetime medical benefits, and protection status from the Latino prison gangs.)"

Defense Andrew LoTempio told the court that his client was not the calculated killer prosecutors say he was, but instead, a man who led most of his life as a loving man.

"This is not some deep-seated, well thought out, well planned out crime," LoTempio said. "This is somebody who's missing a switch in his head, found locations, sat in the locations with a string and a piece of dowel and jumped women. There's nothing more to it."

"Just wait for the white women to walk by, and whap 'em. Nothing more, nothing less. What's the big deal?"

(Complete article at link)

--------------------

P.S.: Besides War Eagle's citation of the white victims' photos, a different series of photos can also be found on America's Most Wanted website.

 

[Arheel's Uncle]

Apparently Committed Suicide on September 22, 2023

Source: Bike Path Killer Altemio Sanchez dies by apparent suicide

For nearly 30 years, Sanchez preyed on girls and women across Erie County, often finding his victims on bike paths or along train tracks, earning him the moniker of the "Bike Path Rapist" and "Bike Path Killer."

buffalonews.com

Altemio Sanchez - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There is a 42 minute documentary here

The punks that run youtube removed it, supposedly on copyright claims.


Lead Detective Delano's book, $1.50 used