Suffolk County Police conduct a search today along a beachfront road where four bodies were found during a hunt for a missing New Jersey woman. (AP)
As the search for skeletal remains continues today off a Long Island beach, police are investigating whether the deaths came at the hands of a serial killer who dumped them out of a car, authorities said.
The theory that cops are looking into the disappearance of hookers comes after Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer confirmed this morning that two of the bodies are female.
‘JACK THE RIPPER’ IS ON THE LOOSE
“We are going to continue to search the area for the possibility of more bodies,” Dormer said of the grisly discoveries made in Oak Beach.
The Post reported that investigators are looking into a Jack the Ripper.
Dormer said police would use DNA, fingerprints and dental records in an effort to identify the bodies.
A cadaver dog was sniffing around the closed-off area this morning in a bid to locate more bodies.
“This is a desolate area here — it may be a dumping ground,” Dormer said.
He said the victims were not killed on the quarter-mile stretch of road along Ocean Parkway, where the bodies were found, and pleaded with the public for anyone to come forward if they saw anything suspicious in the area over the past year.
Of the overnight snowfall that fell in the area, Dormer said, “It’s going to make things difficult.”
Det. Lt. Gerard Pelkofski, head of Suffolk County’s homicide unit, said the killings were not part of any ritual.
“No. It’s not a ritual thing,” he told The Post.
The bodies — three of which were discovered in a section of thick underbrush on Monday just east of Jones Beach, two days after another set of skeletal remains was found nearby — were tossed from a car as long as a year and a half ago, Dormer said during a news conference.
The different levels of decomposition of the bodies denotes that the victims were dumped there at different times over the course of time, Dormer said.
The first body — found on Saturday in thick underbrush about 10 feet north of Ocean Parkway — could be that of Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old prostitute, sources said.
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.
Cops said Gilbert arranged through Craigslist to meet a client on Fire Island. Dormer said there was no indication yet that she was among the bodies found.
An officer said at the time she been working as a call girl and traveled to her assignations by car.
Gilbert’s sister, Sherrie, 23, said the family has been in contact with investigators, who said the woman made a frantic call to 911 and said she was trying to run away from someone just before disappearing last spring.
“It was the last call on her cell phone,” Sherrie Gilbert said of the May 1 emergency call. “It was 22 minutes long and the police didn’t show up for 45 minutes later.”
Cops would not allow family members to hear the call or read the transcript. They described the woman as “very incoherent. She just seemed very messed up at the time. Maybe she was drunk or something, I don’t really know. But I do know she feared for her life. She felt like her life was in danger. That’s why she was running away.”
On May 3, the woman’s mother filed a missing-persons report and police in New Jersey and Long Island were working together.
Police on Long Island told the family they also found numerous calls to the woman’s driver and have been in contact with him, though they wouldn’t give them the name.
Afterward, family members also went to Long Island to look for clues and distribute fliers seeking information about the woman’s disappearance.
Shannan was born in Pennsylvania and the family moved to New York state when she was 4. They lived most of their lives in upstate Ulster County, spending much of her teen years in and out of foster care. At 16, she was graduated from New Paltz High School.
She was a “very smart person. She wanted to act or sing. She had goals. And she just did this [prostitution] to make cash,” the sister said. “We’re just very devastated. We’re all grieving.”
Gilbert’s last known address was in Jersey City, where neighbor Marcus Estevez, 28, said he had to call the cops a number of times.
“There was always screaming coming from that apartment. One time the cops came and took away a guy. One time I went downstairs and she was passed out at the bottom of the stairs completely drunk. They were always screaming a lot. One time I heard her say ‘don’t hit me Alex, don’t Alex.'”
Alex was her live-in boyfriend at the time.
“She was always dressed up like an [exotic] dancer. She’d leave very late at night and come home early in the morning. Whatever she was doing, I didn’t like it but she was only here a couple of months,” said Estevez.
The rental agent who leased the apartment to Gilbert and her boyfriend said the boyfriend drove a BMW that Gilbert paid for.
“She was the one with the money. It seemed like he was tagging along. Maybe he was her bodyguard or her driver,” said Estevez. “She was a decent person. I suspected something, but it was none of my business. She seemed like a very sharp girl. She seemed like a very smart girl with a good heart. She knew her lifestyle was crazy. But what can you do?”
Detectives are also trying to determine whether or not one of the bodies is that of a 22-year-old Maine woman named Megan Waterman, according to a family rep.
She was last seen at a Suffolk County motel in June.
“It’s just an assumption. I can only tell you they have to do DNA testing,” said Cynthia Caron, president and founder of the group LostNMissing, an advocacy group for families of missing people based in New Hampshire.
Caron said she spoke with Maine investigators who are in contact with Long Island police. They said “the truth of the matter is ‘we don’t know. There’s no way we will know if it’s Megan until DNA is completed. That’s just the way it is.'”
Anyone with information on suspicious cars in the area over the past year can call the county’s CrimeStoppers at (800) 220-8477.