OAK BEACH, N.Y. -- While investigators scour miles of desolate New York beachfront from the tops of fire trucks and map plans for officers to traverse a daunting morass of thicket on horseback in search of more victims, dozens of detectives are inspecting credit card receipts, telephone records, old traffic tickets and even applications for clamming licenses in the hunt for a possible serial killer.
Eight victims have now been found dumped just steps from Ocean Parkway, a highway leading to the popular Jones Beach State Park. The news has rattled nerves throughout Long Island; one mother snapped at a stranger outside a public library about fears for her safety and schoolteachers say they are sensing fear in the voices of their students.
"Whether they're prostitutes or not, we don't care about that in our community," said Jose Trinidad of Bay Shore, a community just north of the Robert Moses Bridge, about five miles from where the bodies were found. "We care that there's a murderer loose out there and he's killing human beings. He could kill somebody else."
Fifth-grade teacher Bridget Borland says the startling news has trickled down to her students.
"It's just concerning them," she said. "When they talk about it they joke, but they're really concerned. I hope this is the end, that there are no more bodies. It's sad for the families."
Investigators following up on the disappearance of a Jersey City, N.J., woman seen working as a Craigslist escort in the area last spring, happened upon the corpses of four women late last year. They were identified as missing prostitutes who also booked clients over the Internet. Four more bodies were found when officers returned to the area in the past two weeks; they have yet to be identified, even by gender. All eight were found within a three-mile radius on the north side of the parkway.
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