New York Serial Killer Probably Didn't Hit New Jersey

Police said on Wednesday that the bodies of four prostitutes found around Atlantic City, New Jersey back in 2006 do not seem to have anything to do with the eight bodies (and maybe ninth and tenth sets of remains) found on Long Island, near Gilgo and Jones Beach, since late 2010. Thought to be the work of a serial killer, four of the latest bodies have been identified as belonging to women who worked as prostitutes on Craigslist and were all found near Ocean Parkway in Suffolk County. The other bodies and remains have yet to be identified, and may not even be connected to the first four.

The New York Times reports:

But on Wednesday, the Suffolk County police commissioner, Richard Dormer, said there seemed, at this time, to be no connection with the bodies found in Atlantic City. Mr. Dormer said there were "items connected with the two cases" that indicated the same killer was not involved, but he declined to elaborate.

There have been no links established between the four bodies discovered in Suffolk in December and the four sets of remains found more recently, which have not yet been identified. Increasing differences are emerging that set the two groups apart, officials have said.

Evidence that may separate the two sets of bodies includes the burlap sacks, which held the first four bodies, but not the rest, and the fact that some remains are thought to belong to a child, which complicates the question of motive. The F.B.I. is now assisting on the case as searches of the area continue.

Elsewhere in the Times today is a story about Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, and its shady history in the 1990s:

Pelham Bay Park used to be a dumping ground for dead bodies. Throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, there have been numerous others: the swamps of the Meadowlands in New Jersey; the shallow marshes off Fountain Avenue at the Brooklyn-Queens border. And now there is another, in the brush off Ocean Parkway on the Long Island shore, where the police have found as many as 10 sets of human remains -- four of whom have been identified as those of prostitutes -- as they hunt a serial killer.

Maybe this state is as scary as Midwesterners think it is.

[NYT, NYT]

[jcoscarelli@villagevoice.com / @joecoscarelli]