Egg Harbor Township killings not connected to Gilgo Beach slayings, Atlantic County prosecutor says
Authorities from Atlantic County and Suffolk County, N.Y. met to determine a connection between the murders, but were unable to establish one.
There appears to be no connection between the 2006 slayings of four sex workers in Egg Harbor Township, Atlantic County and the Gilgo Beach killings for which suspect Rex Heuermann was arrested last month, the Atlantic County Prosecutors Office said Tuesday.
Authorities from Atlantic County and Suffolk County, N.Y., met to determine a connection between the deaths, but were unable to establish one, prosecutor William Reynolds of Atlantic County said in a statement.
“The 2006 case remains an open joint investigation between ACPO and the Egg Harbor Township Police Department, with continued assistance from our local, state and federal partners,” Reynolds said. “Authorities will continue to follow all leads until the perpetrator of those crimes is brought to justice.”
The Egg Harbor Township cases continue to be investigated, he added. In November 2006, the bodies of four women — Barbara Breidor, 42; Kim Raffo, 35; Tracy Ann Roberts, 23; and Molly Jean Dilts, 20 — were discovered in a water-filled drainage ditch behind the Golden Key Motel on the Black Horse Pike in Egg Harbor Township.
The women’s bodies were found shoeless, positioned face-down with their heads pointing east toward Atlantic City. The bodies had been in the water for varying amounts of time ranging from one week to a month, The Inquirer reported in 2006.
Two of the bodies were so badly decomposed that authorities were not able to determine a cause of death. Another two were determined to have been strangled, autopsy reports indicated. Three of the women had drugs in their systems.
Egg Harbor Township purchased the Golden Key Motel for $465,000 in the mid-2010s with money from a $3 million grant from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. It was later demolished.
In the years following the killings, speculation that the killings were connected to the high-profile slayings in Gilgo Beach, Long Island, ran rampant. Authorities never officially linked the cases.
That speculation resurfaced following the arrest of Heuermann last month. Heurmann, 59, is charged in the killings of sex workers Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, and Melissa Barthelemy. Their bodies were discovered in an area of Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011 alongside a number of other partial remains.
Reynolds’ statement came after that arrest, with the prosecutor saying that he wanted to address “any connection, or lack thereof,” between the cases after “numerous inquiries and speculation from the media over the past several weeks.”
Heuermann is also suspected in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who initially went missing in 2007. Her body was later found within a quarter-mile of the remains of Costello, Waterman, and Barthelemy, and, together, the women are known as the Gilgo Four.
Heuermann was arrested last month after police were able to connect him with a pickup truck one witness claimed to have seen when one of the victims disappeared in 2010. Authorities later matched Heuermann’s DNA — recovered from a pizza crust in a box that he tossed in a Manhattan trash can — to genetic material recovered from the bodies.
He has since pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include first- and second-degree murder.
The Atlantic County Prosecutors Office said it would not publicly comment further on the Egg Harbor Township killings “in order to minimize the possibility of controlled information getting out” and jeopardizing the investigation. Authorities ask that anyone with further information contact the office at 609-909-7800.