DETECTIVES INVESTIGATING the discovery of eight bodies along a beach on Long Island are working on the presumption that as many as four separate killers may have been involved.
Suffolk County district attorney Thomas Spota said the eight deaths appeared to divide into four seemingly unrelated groups. His disclosure raises the prospect that a stretch of secluded shoreline has been used as a dumping ground for human remains.
Mr Spota said many of the victims had yet to be identified and the precise nature of their killing was not yet known. “But what we do know for certain and what is now very clear is that the area in and around Gilgo beach has been used to discard human remains for some period of time,” he said.
“As distasteful and disturbing as that is, there is no evidence that all these remains are those of a single killer.”
Four bodies found in December wrapped in hessian were those of women in their 20s who had worked as prostitutes and picked up clients through Craigslist.
Police are convinced all four were the victims of a serial killer, but can find no evidence the murders were related in any way to the other cases. The other four bodies or parts of bodies were discovered about a mile away last month. Police believe these fall under three separate groups.
Two of the four remains were the head and hands of women. One of the victims has been identified as Jessica Taylor (20) who worked as a prostitute in Washington and New York; the other is being referred to as “Jane Doe no 6”. Detectives have matched the parts to torsos found in 2000 and 2003 respectively in Manorville, about 45 miles east of Gilgo beach.
The nature of their dismemberment and the proximity of the remains in two locations suggests to police these killings were related. They have reopened two other cold cases, dating from 1997 and 2007, in which a similar form of dismemberment took place, on the assumption another serial killer might have been at work.
The third, potentially separate, discovery was of an Asian man, referred to as “John Doe no 8”, who met a “violent” death. His body was found close to that of the dismembered women, but there is no evidence to connect them.
The fourth body was a toddler, aged 18-24 months, probably a girl, wrapped in a blanket. The body displayed no signs of trauma and police have not yet declared it a murder case. Detectives have been struck by the difference in technique of the disposal of the child and the women.
“It does not make sense to us that the person would go to such great lengths to prevent Jane Doe no 6 from being identified, then lay the body of a related toddler so close by. There is no evidence at all of any attempt to conceal the identity of the child,” Mr Spota said.
– (Guardian service)