BABYLON, N.Y. — A Scarborough, Maine, detective was obtaining DNA samples today from Megan Waterman’s family to send to New York for possible identification.
“There’s definitely a possibility, but we’re on hold at this point,” Scarborough Police Chief Robert Moulton said of the possibilty that one of the victims is Waterman.
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Waterman, of Scarborough, advertised her escort services on Craigslist and was last seen in June at a Hauppauge, N.Y., hotel where she went with her boyfriend. The hotel is about 15 miles from the remote beach where the bodies of four women have been found. None of the bodies has been identified.
The FBI is offering its resources to assist New York homicide investigators chasing a possible serial killer after four women’s bodies were found dumped alongside a remote beach highway.
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said in a brief statement that investigators from his department met with officials from the FBI’s New York office today. The agents offered any assistance they could provide, but an FBI spokesman said it was not immediately clear what services Long Island police would require. Dormer had previously said the FBI could be helpful in identifying the victims.
Suffolk police discovered the first body on Saturday and the other three on Monday while following up on a missing persons report for the New Jersey woman. The woman, identified by Jersey City, N.J., police as Shannon Gilbert, had arranged to meet a client on May 1 on nearby Fire Island, about three miles from where the bodies were discovered.
The four bodies were systematically dumped, perhaps over a period of 18 months or longer, along a desolate, wind-swept stretch of highway east of Jones Beach State Park on Long Island’s south shore, police said. Because the bodies were each located just off the highway and within a quarter mile of each other, police suspect the deaths are connected.
Police today were not searching along the highway, about 45 miles east of Manhattan, but a spokeswoman said it was likely investigators would return there in the coming days.
1:18 p.m.
PORTLAND — The mother of a Maine woman who worked as a Craigslist escort and went missing from a hotel on New York’s Long Island says police have told her that her daughter might be one of four bodies found dumped along a beach.
Twenty-two-year-old Megan Waterman, of Scarborough, was last seen in June in Hauppauge, N.Y., where she went with her boyfriend.
Waterman’s mother, Lorraine Ela, told The Associated Press that a Scarborough detective told her he was “leaning toward one of the four victims being Megan, but he’s not 100 percent guaranteed.”
Police in New York are considering the possibility that a serial killer may have dumped the four bodies along a quarter-mile stretch of road not far from Long Island’s Jones Beach. The site is about 15 miles from where her daughter went missing.
10:16 a.m.
BABYLON, N.Y — Police investigating a possible serial killer have determined that four decomposed bodies found recently along a remote New York beach are all women.
Suffolk County police haven’t indicated whether they think one of the bodies might be Megan Waterman, 22, of Scarborough, Maine, who was last seen on the weekend of June 5 at the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge, N.Y., but authorities have not ruled it out.
The four bodies were systematically dumped, perhaps over a period of 18 months or longer, along a desolate, wind-swept stretch of highway that on sunny summer days transports thousands to the white sands of Jones Beach, police said.
Homicide detectives on a freezing December day were scrambling to learn the identities of the victims. The first of the decomposed corpses was found Saturday by an officer and his cadaver dog. Three more, all scattered within a quarter-mile, were found two days later.
Police believe the four were killed elsewhere and then brought to the site, 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 State Park with several state and town-run beaches to its east.
Now, authorities want to apprehend a possible serial killer.
“We’re looking at that – that we could have a serial killer,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer told reporters at a briefing before officers and the cadaver dog resumed searching for possibly more victims. “I don’t think its a coincidence that four bodies ended up in this area.”
Tuesday’s search on a highway about 45 miles east of New York City ended without any additional discoveries, but police intend to press on with an investigation. Suffolk County police were expected to meet with the FBI today.
Police found the decomposed remains just feet from the roadway during an ongoing search for a missing prostitute last known to be headed to nearby Fire Island.
Dormer said the search of the vast, remote area could take days or longer.
The discovery drew comparisons to a 4-year-old New Jersey case in which four prostitutes’ bodies were found in a drainage ditch in Egg Harbor Township, just outside Atlantic City and about a mile from the beach. Those killings remain unsolved.
Atlantic County Prosecutor Theodore Housel said Tuesday that Atlantic County detectives were still investigating the bodies found in November 2006 and had spoken with authorities in New York about their case.
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