On April 14, 1981, a 21-year-old Buffalo State College student was raped in Delaware Park. Three days later, while shopping in Amherst at the Boulevard Mall, she noticed a man that she believed to be her attacker. She followed him to his car and wrote down the license plate number.
Police linked the blue Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight to Wilfredo Sanchez Caraballo of Buffalo. When detectives interviewed him, Caraballo explained that his vehicle was uninsured, and hadn’t been driven recently. Police took pictures of the vehicle and Caraballo back to the 21-year-old victim. She recognized the car, but not Caraballo.
Twenty-five years later, Carballo finally told police the truth. His nephew, Altemio Sanchez, had borrowed the Oldsmobile that day to take his girlfriend to the mall. The revelation, along with other police work, led to Sanchez’s arrest in a story that played out like a TV drama; CSI Buffalo.
In the years since Caraballo covered up for his nephew, Sanchez married his girlfriend, settled down in Cheektowaga, and raised two sons. He earned a reputation as a model citizen. But secretly, police say, Sanchez assembled a gruesome resumé as the “Bike Path Rapist,” attacking ten women and murdering three, including UB sophmore Linda Yalem and Joan Diver, wife of UB chemistry professor Steven Diver.
The Bike Path Rapist eluded police despite appearing on nationally televised crime shows, Unsolved Mysteries and America’s Most Wanted. Last week Sanchez’s alleged string of rapes and murders ended with a “CSI” twist—a dramatic scene that seemed written for television.
The Campus That Nearly Forgot
The first murder linked to the Bike Path Rapist was the slaying of Linda Yalem on September 29, 1990. That Saturday, reportedly around 12:15 P.M., Yalem left her Richmond dorm for a 15 mile run along the Ellicott Creek Bike Path in preparation for the New York Marathon. She was expected to be back for dinner around 6 P.M.; Yalem never made it back to Richmond.
Linda Yalem’s rape and murder left the UB community in shock. “What hits you the hardest is, she was one of us,” said Johnny Mendez, a junior media major who lived in the Richmond dormitory with Yalem. “She’s our age. It could have happened to us,” he told The Buffalo News days after the murder.
For students attending UB during the time of Yalem’s murder, the situation was startlingly real. Students living in the dorms were scared and thought about transferring back home. Frats donated safety whistles and everyone promoted bike path safety. Unfortunately, things changed.
It is unusual for a serial rapist to be dormant for 12 years, especially when he is believed to have committed nine attacks in eight years. People became more comfortable and to UB students, Linda Yalem became someone who died when they were kids and now has a memorial run in her name. Buffalo slowly relaxed.
In 2003, the undergraduate Student Association, led by George Pape, even withdrew its $5,000 donation towards the race over a miscommunication that led them to believe the Yalem family did not even support the race. By the time this past fall semester rolled around, 12 years after the rapist was last heard from, it seemed to be the last thing on the UB community’s mind.
“I was the stupid girl that was riding by herself on the bike path,” says Martha Clark, a junior biochemistry major who has often spent her free time exercising on the bike path. “I’ve done the [Linda Yalem Memorial Run] before. I didn’t even know what the run was for. I never even heard of the Bike Path Rapist before this year.” Clark moved to Buffalo from Indiana seven years ago.
The UB community received a sudden jolt this past semester. On Friday, September 29, 2006 Joan Diver, wife of UB chemistry professor Steven Diver, went missing after she went for an afternoon jog on a Clarence bicycle path, 16 years to the day after Yalem was raped and murdered on her own afternoon run.
Despite the date correlation, Police were reluctant to make any connections to the serial rapist as they were unable to find Diver’s body. That’s when a community search was put into action. More then 200 volunteers joined Steven Diver and his fellow UB chemistry professor Huw Davies.
“A lot of people felt like they wanted to do something,” Davies told The Buffalo News, who estimated that about 150 people were involved in the search and another 100 began distributing fliers with the missing woman’s picture. “We were told [by law enforcement officials] they could not stop us from [searching], but they recommended strongly against it,” Davies said.
Once Diver’s body was found it was only a matter of time before it became linked to the Bike Path Rapist. She was beaten and strangled to death, but there was no evidence of a sexual attack, nor was the DNA of the Bike Path Rapist on the victim. However, she did have ligature marks around her neck from strangulation that were similar to the rapist’s previous victims. It was not until police received a warrant to search Joan Diver’s vehicle that they found DNA from his sweat on the steering wheel of her SUV.
The announcement that the Bike Path Rapist was back came as a shock to all, but more importantly it stirred up concerns around UB’s campuses. Campus safety began posting signs warning students of the recent attack and advising them to be especially wary around bike paths. Even America’s Most Wanted made an appearance on UB’s campus interviewing female students on their concerns with the issue.
“I honestly did not ride for a while,” Clark explains after hearing about the Diver murder and learning of the Bike Path Rapist. For Clark, a UB Cycling Club member, her pastime was put on hold. “I wouldn’t go on any bike paths. I would stick to riding on the main roads. I did ride on the [Ellicott Creek Bike Path] once after [the Diver Murder], but only because I was with someone else.” Even though the alleged Bike Path Rapist is arrested, Clark feels that he might have instilled changes in her life for a while. “I would like to say that I will never ride on a bike path alone again. I might later on, but I’m not comfortable with doing that now.”
Jane Fischer, Director of SBI Health Education and Human Services, which offers the services of the Anti Rape Task Force, encourages students not to get comfortable. “We hope that everyone will continue to use our services for years to come. We encourage students to use common sense and practice good safety,” Fischer stated.
The ARTF continued to operate as usual despite the attacks on the bike path. “The only thing that changed was the increased awareness of us and our services,” Fisher replied when questioned about possible changes made in the wake of the Diver murder. “We offer safety walks and our shuttle service. Anything dealing with the [Ellicott Creek] bike path is really under the jurisdiction of the police.”
12 Years of Silence?
“It’s important to remember we don’t know that there haven’t been additional crimes between 1994 and 2006,” Erie County Sheriff Timothy B. Howard told The Buffalo News.
Experts believe that there are several reasons why there may not have been any cases against the Bike Path Rapist spanning the years between the rape of a 14-year-old Riverside girl in 1994 and Diver’s murder this past September. Profilers believed that he was either arrested for another crime or moved out of the area. Or perhaps the rapist patiently waited for the 16 year anniversary of Linda Yalem’s murder to attack again. On a more chilling note, it is possible that some of his victims have not come forward to reveal other attacks, or that there is just not sufficient evidence to link him to more crimes.
It has often taken years to connect some of the rapist’s crimes back to him. It was not until a few weeks ago that he was linked to the rape of a Buffalo State student in 1981. Also, it was not until 2004 that there was enough DNA evidence found to link him to the murder of Majane Mazur.
Majane Mazur, 32, wife and mother of one, was murdered in 1992. Her body was found on November 22, lying in a field by Exchange Street. The autopsy report shows she died of asphyxiation, the same cause of Yalem’s death. The case was not immediately linked to the Bike Path Rapist because it did not fit his usual M.O. She was picked up at night, not a college student chosen on a bike path or a walk home during the afternoon. It just did not seem to fit the pattern before the DNA match. Or did it?
Altemio Sanchez was arrested in 1991, a year before Mazur’s murder, for patronizing a prostitute. A similarity had appeared. The alleged Bike Path Rapist may have used prostitutes, an easily obtainable prey, as his fix.
“Maybe they have a killer in common. Or maybe all that the victims had in common was a way of life that made them prey,” wrote Buffalo News columnist Don Esmonde, speculating Sanchez might be linked to a series of murdered prostitutes in the Niagara Falls, Ontario area. There have been five in the past ten years, coinciding with the Bike Path Rapist’s decade of silence.
CSI: Buffalo
The local authorities needed three chances to nab the alleged rapist. They nearly recognized Altemio Sanchez as the Bike Path Rapist on two separate occasions. The first was the sighting of the 1975 blue Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight that his supposed first victim recognized in 1981. The police were led to Sanchez’s uncle, Caraballo, where he lied to protect his nephew. “Many innocent people end up in jail,” Caraballo reportedly said of his reason for lying. And after the victim failed to recognize Caraballo as her attacker, the police left him alone.
Investigators’ second missed opportunity came shortly after Linda Yalem’s murder. A coworker of Sanchez’s tipped police that he remembered seeing Sanchez around the Ellicott Creek Bike Path around the time of the crime. Police pursued this lead, asking Sanchez if he had been in the area and taking his fingerprints. He told police he was near the bike path because his wife was taking classes at UB. Police later found out his wife was taking classes at Buffalo State, not UB. However, the fingerprints did not match the ones on the water bottle laying next to Yalem, so they disregarded Sanchez as a suspect.
It was not until the Diver case that authorities began to reinvestigate past leads, hoping to get a break with a little more leg work. When Caraballo changed his story, telling officers that Sanchez borrowed the car on that day in 1981, authorities began to watch his every move. They followed Sanchez for the ten days before his arrest this past Monday.
According to The Buffalo News, detectives noticed that Sanchez had his pistol permit revoked after his 1991 arrest for patronizing a prostitute. Hoping to recover his DNA, the police showed up at his door three days into their surveillance to retrieve the pistol they suspected he never properly disposed off. There was no DNA on the gun, however.
The big break came Saturday, January 13, in Solé, an upscale Mexican restaurant on Main Street in Williamsville. Undercover detectives followed him to the restaurant and sat at the bar. They discreetly asked for a manager, who agreed to leave Sanchez’s silverware and water glass behind so his DNA could be gathered.
The arrest came early Sunday morning after the DNA results came back from the lab. Altemio Sanchez was a direct match to the DNA left behind at the Bike Path Rapist crime scenes. Authorities arrested him after his shift ended at Luvata Buffalo, formerly known as American Brass, on Military Road.
“He was driving around” and he did not seem as if he was headed back to his Cheektowaga home, Buffalo Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson told The Buffalo News. “He may have known that he was being followed.”
The arrest of Altemio Sanchez, the alleged Bike Path Rapist, has been decades in the making. For the families of the murder victims, there is some closure in the knowledge that, if Sanchez is indeed guilty, justice will be served. Because of the statute of limitations, however, no rape case older then five years can be prosecuted.
“If I knew he did something like this, I would have reported it. If I knew he was doing all this raping, I would have reported it,” Caraballo reportedly said of his nephew. “That’s bad. I got three daughters myself and grandkids, and I don’t want anything to happen to them.”
