Joseph Naso was born on January 7, 1934, in Rochester, New York. After serving in the United States Air Force during the 1950s, he married his first wife. The marriage lasted eighteen years, and even after their divorce, Naso frequently visited his ex-wife, who resided in the San Francisco Bay Area. The couple had a son who developed schizophrenia, and in his later years, Naso dedicated himself to caring for him.

In the 1970s, Naso attended various colleges in San Francisco and lived in the Mission District. By the 1980s, he had moved to Piedmont, California. From 1999 to 2003, he resided in Sacramento before finally settling in Reno, Nevada, in 2004. He was arrested there in 2011. Naso worked as a freelance photographer and had a history of petty crimes, including shoplifting, which he continued into his mid-seventies. Due to his eccentric behavior, his acquaintances dubbed him Crazy Joe.

Eighteen-year-old Roxene Ashby Roggasch was found deceased on January 10, 1977, her body discarded near Fairfax, California. She had been strangled. The police estimated her death occurred less than a day prior to the discovery. While authorities suspected that Roggasch may have been involved in sex work, her family denied these claims.

On August 13, 1978, 22-year-old Carmen Lorraine Colon was discovered along the Carquinez Scenic Highway, a road between Crockett and Port Costa, approximately thirty miles from where Roggasch's body was found. A Highway Patrol officer, responding to reports of a cattle shooting, stumbled upon Colon's decomposing nude body.

In January 1981, the body of 56-year-old Sharileea Patton washed ashore near the Naval Net Depot in Tiburon, California. At the time, Patton was a Bay Area resident searching for employment. She had lived in a residence managed by Naso, who had also photographed her. Despite being the prime suspect, Naso eluded charges for the next thirty years due to his evasive responses to investigators. Sara Dylan, a Bob Dylan fan who was originally named Renee Shapiro before changing her name to match that of the singer's ex-wife, vanished on her way to a Dylan concert at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco in May 1992. She was later found murdered in or near Nevada County, California.

The body of Pamela Ruth Parsons, a 38-year-old waitress, was found in Yuba County, California, in 1993. Parsons worked near Cooper Avenue in Yuba City, where Naso resided at the time. The following year, on August 14, 1994, 31-year-old Tracy Lynn Tafoya was discovered dead, also in Yuba County. She had been drugged, raped, and strangled, with her body left near Marysville Cemetery. It was estimated that a week passed before her body was found.

On January 24, 1983, a gardener found a headless and partially decomposed female body in Foss Creek behind Simi Winery in Healdsburg, California. The head was later located during a search. Despite exhuming her remains for DNA extraction on April 28, 2011, she remains unidentified and is known only as the Sonoma County Jane Doe. Authorities investigated potential links between this victim and Naso after discovering his "rape diary," which mentioned a "girl in Healdsburg."

Naso was arrested by Nevada parole and probation authorities in April 2010. During a search of his home, they found a handwritten diary listing ten unnamed women with geographical locations. The diary detailed how Naso stalked, sexually assaulted, and photographed his victims in sexual poses alongside mannequin parts. On April 11, 2011, Naso was charged with the murders of Roggasch, Colon, Parsons, and Tafoya, all of whom were listed as prostitutes by the police. Evidence later introduced by prosecutors Dori Ahana and Rosemary Sloat also identified Patton and Dylan as victims. Naso was convicted of the murders by a Marin County jury on August 20, 2013, and sentenced to death on November 22, 2013. He was also considered a person of interest in the Rochester Alphabet murders due to the double initials of his victims, but DNA evidence from the Californian victims did not match the DNA found on a Rochester victim, ruling him out of that case.