Metro

Child’s body found in Long Island serial killer’s graveyard

GRIM: A child or infant was among the bodies recently unearthed in the Long Island dumping grounds (above) of a suspected serial killer. The remains of Maureen Brainard, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello (left to right) were found there last December. (ap)

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One of the four sets of remains recently found on a remote Long Island beach belongs to a baby or a child — not a grown woman, a law-enforcement source told The Post.

“One doesn’t match the others. It’s a young person, possibly as young as an infant, or a child,” said the source, who is familiar with the investigation.

“If that’s the case, then that wouldn’t fit the pattern,” the source added, suggesting that the victim may not be related to the other murders, believed to be the work of a serial killer.

The remains are among eight sets found to date in the vicinity of Oak and Gilgo beaches off Ocean Parkway.

Four of the sets — all Craigslist hookers who disappeared after meeting a john for sex — were found near each other in December. The discovery of the other four — including the child’s — several miles away was revealed last week. Found within a half-mile of each other, they have yet to be identified.

The Post source noted that concern by cash-strapped Suffolk County officials over their cops’ overtime had hampered patrols in the beach area — where the bodies were dumped — for months and has now even affected the probe.

In early 2009, the source said, patrolling jurisdiction over the beach was taken away from the Marine Bureau, which had cops stationed at the beaches, and given to the First Precinct in West Babylon, up to a 40-minute drive away.

That duty was only handed back to the Marine Bureau at the end of 2010, when the first bodies were discovered, he said.

The source added that no searches for more possible bodies have been scheduled on weekends since the corpses were discovered, also out of concern for overtime costs.

The cops today will restart their search from last week in Nassau County, scouring the waterfront off Ocean Parkway on their side of the county line west of where the others were found.

Investigators believe that the Long Island slays are linked to the serial killings of four prostitutes in Atlantic City in 2006 because of similarities in the cases.

“It’s the same guy,” a source told The Post, as reported in yesterday’s paper.

Another source has told The Post that they’ve even identified a suspect — a contention Suffolk cops have publicly denied.

The four found in December on Long Island were strangled, as were the four found in Atlantic City in 2006. In both cases, the bodies were dumped near water and close by one another along desolate stretches of highway.

larry.celona@nypost.com