BUFFALO, NY (WKBW) — Survivors and family members of the victims of the notorious ‘Bike Path Killer’ and the Western New York Community learning Altemio Sanchez is dead.
The New York State Department of Corrections says Sanchez died on Friday at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital where he was taken. He was most recently serving a 75-year life prison term at Wende Correctional Facility in Alden.
“This man's pure evil and hatred,” stated Maki Becker, Buffalo News Reporter, co-author “The Bike Path Killer.”
Sanchez confessed to killing Majane Mazur, 32, Linda Yalem, 22, and Joan Diver, 45 after DNA linked him to the murders and he was arrested.
For reporters, like myself, who attended a January 2007 news conference on the day of his capture, the promise from law enforcement was bike path killer Sanchez would never see the outside of a jail cell again. That promise was kept — as the Cheektowaga killer died last Friday at the age of 65 in what law enforcement was an apparent suicide.
“All of Erie County can rest a little easier today because the monster that has been known as the bike path rapist has been taken into custody,” declared Sheriff Howard, Erie County Sheriff in 2007, at a news briefing.
Now there is reaction to the killer’s own death.
“What I keep thinking is he can't hurt anybody else now. He was serving 75 years and parole was not anytime soon,” reflects Becker.
Buffalo News Reporter Becker co-authored a book with former Buffalo News Reporter Michael Beebe called “The Bike Path Killer.”
Along with admitting to the murders of Diver, Yalem, and Mazur, but also admitted to committing more than a dozen rapes.
“He rapped many, many young women and there are probably still others that they haven't been able to connect. And he attacked women of all ages — were as young as 14 — imagine living through that,” Becker noted.
In September of 2006, they found the body of Diver along this Clarence-Newstead Bike Path, and a couple of months later investigators were able to link DNA similarities of the death of University at Buffalo student Yalem in 1990.
“What was very weird about that was it was on September 29th which was the anniversary of the Linda Yalem murder and so people at first didn't know what to make of it, and then it took a few weeks and once the DNA came back — it was this ‘oh my God’”, recalled Becker.
I did reach out to Diver's husband, Steven Diver, who works at UB, and he declined an interview for our story.
Becker says many of his attacks occurred in parks, going after walkers or joggers.
“He would prey after them. He didn't know them. They were all strangers to him. He went to different parks — Delaware Park was one place he went to a lot,” Becker explained.
That led to Anthony Capozzi of Buffalo being wrongly convicted of a Delaware Park rape more than 20 years before Sanchez was captured because Capozzi looked like Sanchez. But Capozzi was exonerated in April of 2007 and released from prison.
Becker tells me she spoke to a rape survivor and the daughter of Mazur, who was only five when her mother was murdered, for their reaction to Sanchez’s death.
"But they had so much forgiveness for him because they had to in order to go on with their lives,” remarked Becker.
