More than one killer is responsible for the remains of up to 10 bodies at a remote stretch of Long Island beach, a prosecutor said today while identifying one of the bodies. Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said police had identified a head, hands, and forearm found in April as belonging to Jessica Taylor, whose headless, handless torso was found in Manorville, in eastern Long Island, in 2003.

Another set of hands, a head, and a right foot, have been matched to another unidentified body found in Manorville in 2000, police said, suggesting those two deaths might be linked, "but they are not the work of the killer of the four women found in December," reported Newsday's Will Van Sant. Those four bodies--all of prostitutes that had gone missing--first gave rise to fears of a serial killer when they were found grouped together and wrapped in burlap.

The bodies of a man and an infant were also discovered in April but the man, an Asian in his late 20s, was killed in a "radically different" manner than the women and police don't think his death is related to the others. 

"It is clear that the area in and around Gilgo Beach has been used to discard human remains for some period of time," Spota said in a statement. "As distasteful and disturbing as that is, there is no evidence that all of these remains are the work of a single killer."

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Adam Martin