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A dynamic yet unexpected team embarked on a mission to expose the full extent of Joseph Naso’s crimes in Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer. This team included a former FBI investigator and cold case detective, along with an inmate who was previously on death row.
Investigator Ken Mains joined forces with William “Bill” Noguera, an inmate who had spent time with Naso at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center near San Francisco. Mains aimed to identify more potential victims of the California serial killer by leveraging insights from Noguera’s conversations with Naso.
Noguera dedicated many hours talking to Naso in the prison yard about his gruesome crimes. Afterward, he meticulously recorded every detail he could recall in the hopes of eventually aiding families in finding out what happened to their missing loved ones.
But to make any real progress in the case, Noguera needed help from an investigator on the outside — and that’s where Mains came in.
Throughout Death Row Confidential, the two worked diligently to identify potential victims and provide families with much-needed closure. But where does this leave Noguera today?
Why was William “Bill” Noguera on death row?
As a teenager, Noguera killed his girlfriend’s mother.
“I committed a terrible crime when I was 18 years old, no justification, no excuse, but I did it,” Noguera confessed to the show’s producers. “There’s nothing I can do to change that, but I can change the future.”
What happened to Bill Noguera?
In a surprising turn during the final episode of Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer, viewers discovered that Noguera had been released on parole after spending 42 years imprisoned, with much of that time on death row.
The development was made possible after a judge ruled in 2022 that Noguera’s murder conviction had been partially based on false testimony, and changed his sentence from death to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Death Row Confidential captured the moment Noguera told Mains he had been granted a meeting in front of the California Department of Corrections parole board.
“I’m shaking because this is something I’ve never expected,” Noguera said in a video call from prison.
Noguera got the chance to plead his case to a parole board on June 18, 2025 and was unanimously granted parole. He was released from prison just weeks later on July 2, 2025 and returned to his hometown in Southern California to be near his sister.
After Noguera briefly took some time to unwind after his release from prison, he and Mains were committed to get back to work to try to identify more of Naso’s potential victims.
“Now that Bill is out of prison, there’s no barriers anymore,” Mains said on Death Row Confidential. “It’s you know, cold case cop and the convict, it’s crazy. That combination right there, I think, is gonna put a hurt in a lot of cold cases.”
