If these four women all worked for the same employer I bet that connection would be prominently mentioned like the obvious prostitution connection is buried in the article. -sam
One of Four Women’s Bodies Identified in N.J.
http:// http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/nyreg ... ref=slogin
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J., Nov. 21 — None of them were wearing shoes or socks. Each was discovered face down in several inches of water, head tilted slightly to the east. At least one had been strangled.
Aside from those chilling details, the authorities here said on Tuesday that they did not know how the bodies of four unidentified women ended up in a drainage ditch behind a row of squalid motels in the shadow of Atlantic City’s glittering lights.
A day after the bodies were found on terrain about the length of a football field behind a seedy stretch of Route 40 known as the Black Horse Pike, investigators said they were working on their two most pressing tasks: identifying the women — all four white and two believed to be in their 20s — and finding a killer.
Here in Egg Harbor Township — a working-class section of Atlantic County just a mile distant but a world removed from the opulence of Atlantic City — a measure of fear and uncertainty took hold as the authorities worked a quadruple homicide with several odd facts.
The Atlantic County prosecutor, Jeffrey S. Blitz, said last night that three autopsies had been performed so far, and that two of the deaths had been classified as homicides.
Mr. Blitz said that one woman, identified by fingerprints and photographs as Kim Raffo, 35, about 5 feet 6 inches tall and 140 pounds, was wearing Capri-style pants and a Hard Rock Cafe tank top and was known to have been living in an Atlantic City rooming house.
Mr. Blitz said she died of ligature strangulation and had been dead for “a matter of days.”
A news release from the prosecutor’s office, quoting the Atlantic County medical examiner, Dr. Hydow Park, said that results of the second autopsy gave the cause of death as “asphyxia by unspecified means.”
That victim, thought to be in her 20s, was about 5 feet 8 inches tall and about 120 pounds, had a butterfly tattoo on the small of her back, and was wearing blue jeans, a red hooded sweatshirt and a black bra. Mr. Blitz said she had been in the water for up to a week.
The third woman, wearing Capri-style blue jeans and a long-sleeved brown zippered jacket, was about 5 feet 7 inches tall and 140 to 150 pounds.
She is thought to have been in her 30s and to have been in the water for at least two weeks.
The fourth woman, about 5 feet tall and 160 pounds, was wearing a denim miniskirt, a bra and a mesh blouse. She is to be autopsied Wednesday morning.
Ms. Raffo’s father, Robert, reached at his home in New York, said his daughter was “a loving kid” who married young, had two children, and was “very close to her younger sister.”
A brother-in-law, from his home in Miramar, Fla., said that after Ms. Raffo and her husband separated about six years ago, she went to Atlantic City with a boyfriend and got involved with drugs and prostitution. Later, she worked for her ex-husband’s construction business on Long Island.
Her current boyfriend, Charles Coles, said Ms. Raffo had returned to Atlantic City in September and worked as a prostitute.
“It hurt her and broke her down,” he said. “She was trying to get her life together to get her kids back.”
Mr. Blitz declined to say whether investigators thought the women had been killed elsewhere and dumped in the marshy area between the pike and the Atlantic City Expressway. Nor would he say if the deaths seemed the work of a serial killer.
“We will opine about that after the post-mortem examinations are completed,” he said.
Mr. Blitz acknowledged that the bodies were in different stages of decomposition, which could indicate that the women were not placed in the ditch at the same time.
The first and second bodies discovered were 148 feet apart; the third body was 90 feet from the second, and the fourth was 83 feet from the third, the news release said.
Mr. Blitz said, “Some of the decomposition is in the face because of the way they were in the water.”
Mr. Blitz did note one unusual detail about the way the women were found.
“They were laying in the drainage ditch with head facing east, down,” he said. “Whether that’s a coincidence or not, it is what it is.”
The first body was discovered by two women walking behind the Golden Key Motel on Monday about 3 p.m. Egg Harbor officers who came to the scene discovered the other bodies.
The area where the women were found is strewn with trash. On Tuesday, the litter behind the Golden Key near the spot where the first body was found included an empty vodka bottle, a pair of black Jockey undershorts, a used condom wrapper and a battered copy of the James Patterson novel “Beach Road.”
“This is the worst place to live,” said Yasmin Olan, 28, who stays at the motel with her son while her husband works at the Atlantic City Hilton. “There is a lot of prostitution that comes in and out of here, plus all the drugs.”
Ms. Olan then pointed to bloodstains outside her bathroom window, which she said had been there for three days, and a hole that had been cut in her window screen about a week earlier when someone tried to steal a TV dinner on the windowsill.
Larry Huggup, 23, who has lived at the Golden Key for three months, said that on Monday afternoon he heard four or five loud pops, but did not investigate because he thought it was a car backfiring.
Jiniece Hamlett, 25, a cocktail waitress who lives with Mr. Huggup, said she was afraid the killings were related to a recent incident in which she was approached by a man driving a gray Plymouth van.
Ms. Hamlett, who leaves for work around 3 a.m., said she noticed the man in the van driving up and down the Black Horse Pike for weeks.
She said he often stopped to leer at women, including her, and had left only after Mr. Huggup came to her side.
Mr. Blitz said that investigators were keeping a range of options open as they worked on identifying the women.