Gilgo Beach Murders Committed by One Killer, Police Say
Suffolk County police revealed Tuesday that they believe one serial killer is responsible for the murders of 10 people whose bodies were found on Long Island's Gilgo Beach.
Police found sets of remains dumped along Ocean Parkway between December 2010 and April 2011 that belonged to eight women, a female toddler and a young, Asian man.
Medical examiners were able to identify five of the eight women found, and police later discovered the women were working as prostitutes by posting ads on Craiglist.com.
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Investigators have not been able to identify the toddler nor the man. However, the man was found wearing women's clothing, leading investigators to believe that the rest of victims were somehow connected to the sex industry.
The toddler's mother is believed to be among of the sets of remains.
"The common denominators that we have now indicate that it’s possibly one killer," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said in a phone interview with WNBC. "We’ve had the same dumping ground, sex workers, young women - even though there were the Asian male and the toddler - but we think they were connected to the sex trade in some way. And these common denominators indicate we have one person committing these crimes."
Police initially thought the murders were committed by at least three killers because some of the victims' remains were found outside of Gilgo Beach.
Body parts from the site were matched to the skeletons of two women that were found in Manorville, N.Y. two years prior. In addition, police found that DNA from two severed legs found on the shores of Davis Park in 1996 matched the DNA from the remains of one of the unidentified victims.
Investigators believe the murders were committed over a 15-year period, at least.
However, despite pointing to one killer, police have concluded the evidence also fits the pattern of a serial killer, since a specific demographic seems to have been targeted and the bodies were generally found in the same area.
Investigators believe the killer is from Long Island.
"The person has got to be comfortable with the locations," Dormer told NBC New York, citing the long distances between Manorville and Gilgo Beach, and from Davis Park to Gilgo Beach. "That's a huge distance, so somebody has to be familiar with the Long Island area and comfortable with that area."
