Long Island serial killer taunted family: report
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The suspected serial killer believed to have dumped slain prostitutes along a lonely New York beach taunted the sister of one victim and confessed to the murder, a report said on Friday.
The family of Melissa Barthelemy, a 24-year-old prostitute, began getting calls from her cell phone shortly after she disappeared in July 2009, the New York Times reported.
In a total of seven calls an unidentified man taunted Barthelemy's teenage sister Amanda asking, "Do you think you'll ever see her again?" Then, the report quoted an unnamed source as saying, the caller admitted to killing Melissa after sex.
Earlier this week Amanda Barthelemy said in an ABC television interview that the caller used 'taunting and angry words'.
"Why was I chosen, why was I taunted?" she asked. "Very scary. My heart would stop and I just didn't know what to do. I'm scared of my own protection. I have to be worried about, is that going to happen to me one day?"
Ten sets of human remains have been discovered so far in scrub next to a road along Long Island's southern shore, about an hour from New York City.
The creepy phone calls appear to be one of the few leads in a growing investigation that the FBI joined this week with aerial surveillance equipment sent to scour for new remains or evidence.
"The Aviation Bureau has identified a significant number of items that are not natural to that area," Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter said on Thursday, CBS reported.
Police believe a serial killer is at large but say that some of the bodies may have been dumped by another murderer, since the remains appear to have been in the area for significantly different lengths of time. Four of the bodies have been identified as young former prostitutes.
An infamous serial killer serving life in prison after confessing to 17 murders in the 1980s and '90s said none of the bones belonged to his victims.
"I have nothing to do with those bodies," Joel Rifkin told the daily Newsday in an interview published on Friday. Since Rifkin was active in Long Island, speculation has been rife that at least some of the bones found recently may stretch back to his spree.
The mass murderer told Newsday that he suspected the current culprit could be a local who would stand out if he were seen carrying the kind of burlap bags found with some of the remains.
"My guess is it would be someone like a landscaper, contractor or a fisherman," Rifkin said.
He noted that prostitutes were an easy target for serial killers.
"That's their job... to get into a stranger's car," he said.
The slew of human remains has been uncovered as the unintended result of a search for a prostitute named Shannan Gilbert who vanished in Long Island last year.
She has yet to be found.
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