The Bike Path Killer: Altemio Sanchez

The Bike Path Killer: Altemio Sanchez

For thirty-one years, a predator moved freely through the parks and recreational paths of Western New York, raping and murdering women with a methodical brutality that the surrounding institutions could not see, let alone stop. When Altemio Sanchez was finally arrested in January 2007, the investigation that caught him exposed not merely a serial killer but a catastrophic failure of forensic science, investigative organisation, and criminal justice, a failure measured in three murders, dozens of sexual assaults, and the wrongful imprisonment of two innocent people.

The Bike Path Killer reconstructs Sanchez's thirty-one-year criminal career in full, from the first assaults of 1975 through the murders of Linda Yalem, Majane Mazur, and Joan Diver, to the forensic breakthrough that finally named him. Drawing on court records, investigative files, and the forensic science that made his identification possible, Maurice Greyson examines the developmental origins of Sanchez's predatory psychology, the siloed law enforcement culture that allowed him to operate undetected, and the eyewitness misidentification that sent an innocent man to prison for twenty-two years while the real perpetrator coached Little League in Cheektowaga.

This is a book about evidence and memory, about the promises the justice system makes and the promises it breaks, and about the community of Western New York whose trust a man called Uncle Al systematically destroyed. It is also, ultimately, a book about the paths, still there, still running, still carrying everything that happened on them.