Police search for evidence in 8 serial killings on Long Island

By Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Suffolk County Police and police recruits search an area of beach Tuesday near where human remains were found in Babylon, New York.

EnlargeCloseBy Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Suffolk County Police and police recruits search an area of beach Tuesday near where human remains were found in Babylon, New York.

State troopers will join the search Monday on the Babylon, N.Y., barrier island where the remains of eight people have been discovered since December.

LA: Police look for links to 'Grim Sleeper' caseMISSING WOMAN: Not among beach victimsPolice say the victims are the work of a serial killer and were murdered elsewhere and dumped on the beach.

The oldest remains "have been there at least a couple of years" and the newest were of people reported missing last year, Nassau County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said.

Four of the victims have been identified by police as women who worked as prostitutes and advertised on Craigslist, the online classified ad site.

Prostitutes are common targets for serial sexual killers, because they are easily abducted and often not reported missing right away. The bodies of four women who had worked as escorts were dumped behind an Atlantic City motel in 2006, and four women, three of whom had been prostitutes, have been killed in Daytona Beach, Fla. Both cases remain unsolved.

Nonetheless, such cases are "very, very rare," says Louis Schlesinger, a forensic psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"Serial sexual murder has been going on since pre-modern times, in different cultures, in different countries, and there's no evidence at all that it's increasing."

Four sets of remains on Gilgo Beach were discovered in December, when police were searching for Shannan Gilbert, who was last seen in a nearby housing development. A fifth body was found March 29, and three other sets of remains were discovered Monday. Gilbert was not found, according to police.

When bodies have been dumped somewhere other than the murder site, there is little evidence to aid investigation, says James Alan Fox, author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder.

"These cases are extremely difficult to solve, one because of the lack of physical evidence, and two because of the lack of potential suspects," Fox says.

In most murder cases, the killer is someone the victim knows.

"In any state you'll find unsolved slayings of prostitutes," Fox says. "Unfortunately it's easy picking for criminals."

The New York City Medical Examiner's office is helping local police identify the most recently discovered remains. "No doubt about it, it's a difficult case. The type of occupation, they're meeting strangers, the connections are very flimsy. It does add to our burden," Dormer says.

Melissa Cann, whose older sister Maureen Brainard-Barnes was among the victims identified, said her sister was 25 and the mother of two. She had been missing since 2007 when her remains were identified. "Every time you think you could heal, everything opens back up," Cann says.

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