In 1971, there began in Rochester, N.Y., a series of hideous murders, cases that offered the starkest of contrast between good and evil: perfectly innocent victims, perfectly evil predators. The three victims were little girls, each named with the same first and last initial. Each, the legend said, had been dumped in a town that also began with that letter. The victims had all been last seen in an urban setting and their lifeless bodies were found raped and carelessly dumped along a rural roadside, strangled by ligature. Local girls with alliterative names were on high alert and told to be vigilant. The little ones didn’t quite get it, but they sensed it, something in their mother’s tighter grip on their little hand, or the way mom never relaxed when they were out of doors. The older ones looked at maps and guessed where their own lifeless bodies would be discovered in a ditch. No one wondered why the initials were important, what it all meant. They understood one thing: it was terrifying. NIGHTMARE IN ROCHESTER: The Double-Initial Murders-Michael Benson