The coldblooded killer who hacked and burned the body of a 24-year-old Long Island woman has been tormenting her family with sick text messages — using the slain woman’s missing phone.
The mysterious texts — sent in the days after the body of Rebecca Koster was found dumped in a Connecticut field last Friday — were a cruel hoax, portrayed as a cry for help from the missing woman herself.
The first message came at 11:40 p.m. Sunday and gave the family false hope she might be rescued: “Dan has me tied up in a basement somewhere in Commack.”
The message prompted police to rush to a home where Koster’s boyfriend, Dan Mayor, 28, had been staying. He was the last person to see her before she vanished Friday. When cops got there, they found nothing.
Koster’s stepfather, Larry Ross, told The Post, “It was driving us crazy. We were elated that we might find her, and then we didn’t. These guys are just sick and twisted.”
The evil game didn’t end there.
On Monday, Koster’s mom, Barbara Ross, got another text from her daughter’s phone: “Don’t tell Dan, or he’ll kill me.”
Authorities believe the second text was sent from a parking lot near the Northern State Parkway in Happauge.
It renewed the family’s hope they would see her alive. But they didn’t know Koster’s burned body had already been found in a field in North Stonington, Conn.
It wasn’t until 4 p.m. Wednesday that cops determined the body was Koster’s, and notified her family.
The news left the young woman’s mom devastated.
“She’s my baby,” Barbara Ross said yesterday, as she looked at photos of her daughter near their Medford home, and broke down in tears.
She said the idea that someone had her daughter’s phone and was using it to taunt her made the loss even harder to bear.
“It was torture,” she said, choking back tears.
Koster was a home health aide who worked with the elderly and autistic children.
Her last known whereabouts were inside Butcher Boys Bar and Grill in Holbrook, where she was captured on a security video standing by a jukebox at 3:20 a.m. last Friday along with her boyfriend.
Larry Ross said he watched the video and said she looked as if she wanted to get out of the bar.
“Becky kept telling them, ‘I want to go home,’ ” Ross said. “On the video, you can see her waiting by the jukebox, waiting to go home.”
Sources said Mayor told Suffolk County cops he dropped her off at home that morning. But her family said she never returned home.
In addition to the texts, Koster’s phone also received a 17 minute call at 4 a.m. on the day she disappeared, according to records the stepfather had checked.
Her body was found when Connecticut authorities responded to a brush fire. Her family said police told them she had been cut before she was slain.
Larry Ross said he doesn’t know who could have his stepdaughter’s phone, or why he or they are trying to make her boyfriend look like a suspect with the series of messages. Mayor has not be named as a suspect nor charged with any crime.
“I went over to see Dan and I met him,” Larry Ross said. “Dan was crying. He told me, ‘I loved your daughter. I would never in a million years hurt your daughter.’
“I don’t know why they are trying to frame Dan. And why would Dan text us saying he did it?”
Anyone with information should contact Connecticut State Police at (860) 848-6500.