Did their names play a part in their deaths at the hands of a serial killer?

A Nevada man was charged Wednesday in Marin County with the slayings of four women from 1977 to 1994 in Northern California.

The victims: Carmen Colon, Pamela Parsons, Roxene Roggasch and Tracy Tafoya had little in common except the alliteration of their names. That has cold-case investigators concerned that 77-year-old Joseph Naso may be responsible for other killings during his travels across the country as a professional photographer.

Evidence found last year by Nevada investigators at Naso's home in Reno and forensics tied him to the California slayings, authorities said.

"We think there are others out there we haven't discovered yet," said Chris Perry, acting director of the Nevada Department of Public Safety.

Naso's alleged slaying streak mirrors one in upstate New York, where three young girls lost their lives in the "Double Initial Murders" of a unknown killer four decades ago. One of those New York victims was also named Carmen Colon. "We expected the calls the moment the arrest became public," said Allan M. Dombroski, a senior investigator with the New York State Police.

Naso visited the Rochester area in 1960s and early 1970s and traveled back and forth to the West, Dombroski said. Investigators in New York have worked with a California-Nevada task force since January to determine whether Naso is connected to the crimes. The New York victims, whose bodies were dumped in Rochester, were raped and strangled.

But there are also reasons to doubt a connection. The victims in New York were children, while those in California were women. Also, a DNA sample in the New York slayings did not match Naso, Dombroski said. Still, investigators have not ruled out Naso as the Rochester killer.

Even without the New York connection, investigators who spent years painstakingly gathering information on the cold cases said they fear Naso, a New York state native, may be responsible for more slayings.

"When you are talking about a person who has killed more than once, this doesn't stop," Perry said.

Naso was arrested in South Lake Tahoe late Monday. He has been serving time in the El Dorado County Jail for a probation violation involving guns and ammunition. He was on probation in connection with a grocery store theft in 2009. It was a random search of his Reno home that alerted investigators in April 2010, authorities said.