GRAVEYARD: Cops search Oak Beach yesterday as an ambulance (above) waits. (News 12 Long Island)
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The skeletal remains of four people — one believed to be that of a prostitute who vanished in May — have been found off a Long Island beach, and a police source told The Post that cops are now looking into the disappearance of other hookers.
Detectives, apparently fearing a Jack the Ripper is on the loose, are scrambling to investigate other reports of missing women in the area, according to The Post’s source.
The first body — found on Saturday in thick underbrush about 10 feet north of Ocean Parkway at Oak Beach — could be that of Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old prostitute, the source said. The other three bodies were discovered yesterday.
One was that of a woman. The genders of the other two could not immediately be determined because of their state of decomposition. The four bodies were “spread over a quarter mile, about 500 feet from each other,” a source said.
“They’ve been there at least one month.”
Two of the corpses found yesterday were wrapped in burlap sacks.
Police believe that the same person or team of people are behind the slayings, the source said.
The first grisly discovery was made by Officer John Mallia and his dog, Blue, who were on a training exercise in the area.
That stretch of beach was chosen specifically because of Gilbert’s still-open missing-persons file.
Gilbert and a man she was traveling with were known to be heading to Fire Island, which is just across a narrow inlet from Oak Beach, before she disappeared.
She was going there to link up with someone she’d met on Craigslist, the source said.
“That makes sense, because I heard the last place she went to was on Long Island, and it had to be pretty far away because she had a driver,” a pal of hers said last night at her Bronx home. Police stressed that the body has not been positively identified as Gilbert’s.
Forensic experts will have to identify all the bodies using dental records or DNA evidence.
Cops are continuing to search the area — just east of Jones Beach — for more evidence and, possibly, more bodies. The search was suspended last night because of darkness and was to resume today.
Gilbert’s last known address was in Jersey City.
In 2007, she was busted in Upper Saddle River, NJ, with three other women in a prostitution sting, records show.
She was charged with engaging in prostitution.
An officer said at the time she been working as a call girl and traveled to her assignations by car.