A prosecutor says 51-year-old John Bittrolff (pictured), who was convicted of killing two prostitutes in the 1990s, may be responsible for at least one of the 10 unsolved killings of people along a Long Island beach highway
A prosecutor says a carpenter convicted of killing two prostitutes in the 1990s may be responsible for at least one of the 10 unsolved killings of people along a Long Island beach highway.
Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla made the stunning revelation on Tuesday following the sentencing of 51-year-old John Bittrolff.
Bittrolff, from Manorville, New York, received 50 years-to-life in prison for beating to death 31-year-old Rita Tangredi and 20-year-old Colleen McNamee.
Long Island police officers are still investigating the unsolved killings of 10 victims of an apparent serial killer or killers.
The 10 bodies were found within a couple of miles of one another, and several of the victims have been identified as prostitutes. Until Tuesday, no suspects had been identified in any of the deaths.
The prosecutor says remains of some victims found along Gilgo Beach ‘may be attributed to the handiwork of Mr Bittrolff.’
No one has been charged in the deaths since 2010.
Bittrolff (pictured in July 2014), from Manorville, New York, received 50 years-to-life in prison for beating to death 31-year-old Rita Tangredi and 20-year-old Colleen McNamee on Tuesday
The 10 bodies were found with a couple of miles of one another, and several of the victims have been identified as prostitutes. Until Tuesday, no suspects had been identified in any of the deaths. The prosecutor says remains of some victims found along Gilgo Beach ‘may be attributed to the handiwork of Mr Bittrolff’
The naked bodies of Tangredi and McMamee were found nine miles apart in late 1993 and early 1994, respectively.
Both women had been strangled and suffered severe head injuries. Testimony during the trial revealed the women were drug addicts and prostitutes.
‘Bittrolff picked these women because they were vulnerable,’ the prosecutor said. ‘He picked them because he thought no one cared about them. But there were people who cared about these girls.’
The killings remained unsolved for two decades until Bittrolff’s 2014 arrest after homicide detectives linked evidence found on the women’s remains to his DNA. The women’s bodies were found about 35 miles from the Gilgo Beach site.
The trail that police said led to Bittrolff began with a DNA sample submitted by his brother, Timothy Bittrolff, following his misdemeanor conviction for violating an order of protection in 2013.
State police investigators determined the sample was a partial match to DNA left on the two dead women.
Although his brother was eliminated as a murder suspect, police obtained a DNA sample from John Bittrolff’s garbage left outside his Manorville home and later arrested him in the killings.
His attorney said during the trial that evidence that Bittrolff had sex with the women was not enough to prove he was the killer.
Biancavilla said this was the first conviction in a homicide case in New York state involving ‘partial match’ DNA.
The naked bodies of Tangredi (left) and McMamee (right) were found nine miles apart in late 1993 and early 1994, respectively. Both women had been strangled and suffered severe head injuries. DNA on the women’s remains eventually led to Bittrolff’s arrest in 2014
A K-9 officer and his cadaver dog were on a training mission searching for a missing prostitute in December 2010 when they happened upon what would become, by spring of the following year, 10 sets of human remains – eight women, one man and one toddler.
The remains of an 11th woman, the missing prostitute who sparked the initial search, were found about a year later just miles from where the other 10 were discovered.
The remains were found strewn along several miles of thicket adjacent to Ocean Parkway, east of Jones Beach.
Some of the remains found along the parkway were linked to the partial remains of a woman whose body was found in Manorville, about 40 miles away.