Yaphank, New York - The four women whose bodies were dumped along a desolate beachfront strip on Long Island were all prostitutes who booked their clients online and were probably slain by a serial killer, authorities said on Monday.
Investigators did not identify a suspect, or say how the women were killed, but were looking into what clients they might have met shortly before they disappeared. One of the women was reported missing nearly 3½ years ago; another was seen as recently as September 2010.
“Their deaths are a direct result of their business as prostitutes,” district attorney Thomas Spota told reporters. “I sincerely hope that people who are engaged in a similar business as these four young women would come forward. They certainly must have some information.”
Police had wavered over whether a serial killer was involved; police commissioner Richard Dormer initially suggested that scenario when the bodies were found in December 2010 but detectives later became tight-lipped about a cause.
But on Monday, Spota said that “the actual cause of deaths appear to be substantially similar” and that “it appears the same person or persons are responsible.”
Spota and Dormer refused to say how the women died. In December, they had described the remains as skeletal.
The women identified on Monday were Maureen Brainard-Barnes, of Connecticut, Melissa Barthelemy, of New York state, and Amber Lynn Costello, of Long Island. Brainard-Barnes was last seen in Manhattan on July 9, 2007; Barthelemy reportedly was living in the Bronx when she disappeared on July 12, 2009, police said.
Brainard-Barnes was 25 when she disappeared; Barthelemy was 24 and Costello was 27.
The fourth woman, Megan Waterman, a 22-year-old Craigslist escort from Maine, was last seen in June 2010 at a Holiday Inn Express on Long Island. Waterman disappeared after traveling to New York on Memorial Day weekend with Akeem Cruz, a 21-year-old man described as her boyfriend. Cruz is now serving a 20-month sentence in Maine for drug trafficking.
A woman matching Costello's name, birth date and appearance failed to appear in February in a Florida court on theft charges and was briefly jailed there twice in 2009 for shoplifting. She was last seen in North Babylon on September 2.
Police found the first body in mid-December just steps from a 24km stretch of beachfront highway that leads to the popular Jones Beach State Park. The other three women were found two days later during a follow-up investigation.
The victims “were probably in that location for some period of time,” Spota said. But investigators believe they were killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped along the beach highway.
Calls and messages left for family members of Costello, Brainard-Barnes and Bethelemy were not immediately returned on Monday. Nobody answered the door at the address listed for Barthelemy and a man with the Costello surname in North Babylon said he had no relation to the dead woman.
Police were looking for another missing Craigslist escort when they happened upon the bodies near the beach. They have since said that the person they were originally looking for, a woman from New Jersey, was not among the dead. Authorities said on Monday that case was still under investigation.
“What activities these victims may have engaged in prior to their murders does not matter,” Dormer said on Monday. “They were young women whose lives were cut tragically short.”
The case has some similarities to a 2006 New Jersey case, in which four prostitutes' bodies were found in a drainage ditch just outside Atlantic City and about a mile from the beach. Those killings remain unsolved.
Atlantic County prosecutor's office spokesperson Madelaine Vitale said on Monday that her office had been in contact with Suffolk County investigators from the early stages of their investigation, but she would not comment directly on the news from Long Island. New York law enforcement authorities also declined to comment on any possible connection.
The highway sits on a narrow strip of land that divides the Great South Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. The four-lane parkway runs through the middle, connecting Jones Beach with several state and town-run beaches to its east. - Sapa-AP