Experts say remains found on Long Island beach likely the work of one killer, not two

BY Matthew Lysiak and John Lauinger
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS May 11, 2011

Long Island authorities suggested two killers are murdering hookers and dumping them on the same beach - but some experts think one monster is responsible.

"I wouldn't be so quick to be talking about multiple killers," said Vernon Geberth, a retired NYPD detective who has written textbooks on homicide investigations.

"The probability of having two serial killers using the same dumping ground is very, very remote - to the point where I don't buy into it."

N.G. Berrill, a forensic psychologist, agreed - but cautioned it's possible. "That coincidence, in and of itself, would be remarkable," he said.

Suffolk County investigators said this week that four craigslist hookers found on Gilgo Beach were killed by the same person, who dumped their intact, burlap-wrapped bodies.

They noted that two other women found nearby - one of them identified as a prostitute - were dismembered years before the craigslist women went missing. Their body parts were left in two locations: near Gilgo and in Manorville.

Two more bodies - a baby girl and an Asian man - have been found, along with two sets of bones. They have not been linked to the hooker cases.

Geberth said two methods of disposing of the women didn't mean two killers.

"I am looking at a serial killer who has basically progressed," he said. "He has become more effective at disposing of the bodies. He doesn't have to go through all the work of decapitating his victims."

Berrill, executive director of the consulting group New York Forensic, said the killer may have tried and abandoned dismemberment.

"If it doesn't satisfy them or it doesn't turn them on, then they may return to a more typical way of murdering these people and getting rid of these bodies," he said.

But Barbara Kirwin, a clinical and forensic psychologist, thinks there are two killers.

"We are not talking about a person as much as we are talking about a place," said Kirwin. "That desolate stretch of Gilgo Beach is a haunted graveyard, and what holds it all together is that it is an unpatrolled, completely private and deserted place where you can dump a body."