Year later, prostitute killings a mystery

A year ago this week, police found the bodies of four Atlantic City prostitutes floating in a drainage ditch behind a seedy motel on the Black Horse Pike just outside the city.

During the last 12 months, the case, which attracted international attention, has taken several strange twists.

But today it remains what it was on the night the bodies were discovered - an unsolved murder mystery.

For a time, a local handyman was considered a prime suspect, but last month investigators appeared to back away from that theory.

An admitted prostitute, repeating a story she told nearly a year ago, said in a recent telephone interview from state prison that she had been with one of the victims three days before her body was found, and that they had "partied" at local motels with the man who may have been the murderer.

She said she had identified the man from photos investigators showed her.

A lawyer for the handyman said last month that the same man had called him from the Atlantic County Jail - where he is serving time for an unrelated crime - and "confessed" to the killings.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office, as it has from day one, has declined to provide any details about the investigation or potential suspects in the probe.

That silence has fueled a groundswell of gossip and rumor that ebbs and flows along Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, where the victims once plied their trade and where, on any given night, dozens of hookers look for "dates."

The murders have had little impact on the vice trade in the city, law enforcement sources said.

Caution is weighed against economics, one retired vice squad investigator said in the aftermath of the killings, and economics usually comes out on top.

"They were victims of their lifestyle," said Jim Hutchins, a retired Atlantic City police vice squad captain. "They do anything, they go anywhere, for crack."

Hutchins criticized the Prosecutor's Office in an interview this year, saying it had failed to involve Atlantic City police in the investigation the night the bodies were discovered.

Valuable time and possible street sources were lost, he said, in the three days before his office was asked to assist.

Now, he and other veteran investigators believe, the case has gone cold.

In a statement Friday, however, Atlantic City Prosecutor Theodore F.L. Housel, who succeeded Jeffrey Blitz this year, said: "I believe we are making good progress in this investigation, and we will continue to make progress."

Housel insisted that "this is not, and should not, be considered a so-called cold case."

Like his predecessor, Housel said his office did not comment on specifics, but added that "we have received considerable information from women who were associated with the victims in this case, and I personally want to encourage others who may have something to offer . . . to come forward."

One of those woman is believed to be Pamela Covelli, 34, an admitted prostitute who is serving a three-year sentence for credit-card fraud in a state prison.

Covelli, in an interview last month, repeated allegations she made in December about a man she and victim Kim Raffo, 35, had partied with the week before Raffo turned up dead.

Covelli, whose story could not be confirmed, said she had identified a suspect for investigators, describing him as a white man about 6-feet tall with greasy, dark hair and a beard.

She said that the man had said his name was John, but that investigators identified him as Bill.

The man was flush with cash and cocaine when he invited her and Raffo to a Pacific Avenue motel, Covelli said. They later partied at a motel on the White Horse Pike, she added.

Covelli said the man had offered drugs to her and Raffo and had said he wanted to see them naked, but didn't want to have sex.

She had a strange feeling about the customer and left after partying for a time with him, Raffo and two other men, Covelli said.

She said that she last saw Raffo on Nov. 17 at the Golden Key Motel on the Black Horse Pike, that they were supposed to meet at a bar later that night but that Raffo never showed up.

Three days later, Raffo's body was discovered in a drainage ditch behind the Golden Key along with the bodies of Molly Dilts, 20, Barbara Breidor, 42, and Tracy Roberts, 23.

All the women were shoeless. Their heads were pointed east toward Atlantic City. They had been in the water for varying degrees of time.

Two of the bodies were so badly decomposed that a cause of death could not be determined. The two victims who had been in the water for the least time had been strangled, according to autopsy reports.

Three of the four victims had significant amounts of drugs in their systems.

Covelli, in a recent telephone interview, said she was still willing to cooperate with authorities who, she believed, had ignored her story when another suspect surfaced.

For a time, Terry Oleson, 35, a handyman from Salem County who was living in and working part time at the Golden Key Motel, was, in investigative parlance, a "person of interest" to detectives.

Oleson's lawyer, James Leonard, has confirmed that fact, but he and Oleson have insisted investigators were wrong.

Oleson was arrested in Salem County in April on charges that he videotaped his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter naked in the bathroom of his Alloway Township home.

He was held for 51/2 months while investigators worked the case and tried to match his DNA to evidence tied to the hooker murders.

Leonard said his client had not been involved and was not concerned about a DNA match.

Prosecutors have not disclosed the results of the DNA test, and last month Oleson was released from the Salem County Jail under an agreement worked out by Leonard in which Oleson pleaded guilty to an invasion-of-privacy charge in the videotaping case.

He is scheduled to be sentenced this month and faces a maximum of 364 days in the county jail. He will receive credit for time already spent behind bars, which exceeds 160 days.

Leonard, an Atlantic City criminal-defense attorney, said he had also provided the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office with taped phone conversations he had with a man who appeared to "confess" to the killings.

That man contacted Leonard and said he "had some things he wanted to get off his chest," the lawyer said.

Leonard said he and an investigator had met with the man at the Atlantic County Jail. The lawyer said he had provided details of that conversation and subsequent taped telephone conversation with him to the Prosecutor's Office.

Leonard said the conversations indicated that the man - the same individual Covelli has identified for investigators - claims to have knowledge of the murders and said he knew Oleson was not guilty.

But the judge in Oleson's videotaping case said in court that investigators had "discounted that confession."