LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — Police in Long Island, N.Y., were offering a $25,000 reward Thursday for any information that could lead to the killer, or killers, who used the scrub brush along a series of secluded beaches as a dumping ground for multiple bodies, the Long Island Press reported.
The reward is the largest in Suffolk County’s history — the usual reward for tips is no more than $5,000.
“We are hoping this will give someone incentive to come forward,” Nick Amarr, president of the Suffolk Crime Stoppers board, told the newspaper.
Police have received more than 1,000 tips throughout their investigation into the discovery of 10 sets of human remains found along a portion of Ocean Parkway on the southern coast of Long Island.
The investigation was sparked when the remains of four dead women — all missing escorts that advertised their services on Craigslist — were originally found in the roadside brush in December. Suffolk County Police later found four more sets of remains in the spring while the final two remains were found in Nassau County shortly after, according to the report.
The victims include female prostitutes, an Asian male, and an infant girl approximately 18 to 24 months old.
Police suspected the remains were not all discarded by the same killer, but that the secluded beach region less than 50 miles outside New York City could have been used as a dumping ground by two or more killers, the New York Post reported.
“The area in and around Gilgo Beach has been used to discard human remains for some period of time,” Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said in May. “As distasteful and as disturbing as that is, there is no evidence that all of these remains are the work of a single killer.”
The four prostitutes found in December were believed to be strangled by the same killer, according to police, while the remains of two other women, similarly slain and dismembered, were suspected to be discarded by a different killer.
The unidentified male and infant were not believed to be connected to any of the other cases.