Breakthrough in Long Island serial killings shines light on unsolved sex-worker murders: ‘It was like nobody cared’

International media flocked to the seaside gambling resort. More than 100 detectives and prosecutors were assigned to investigate. Casino guests worried about safety, and the victims’ fellow sex workers began carrying hidden knives.

The case of the “Eastbound Strangler” — so named for the direction the victims’ heads were facing — remains unsolved.

The arrest last month of a man charged with killing three women whose remains were found on a Long Island beach in 2010 breathed fresh life into another long-dormant case with obvious parallels; the Gilgo Beach serial killings involve a total of 11 victims, most of whom were young, female sex workers.

Weeks after charging a Long Island architect Rex Heuermann in the Gilgo Beach murders, prosecutors said at a brief court hearing Tuesday that they began providing his lawyer with evidence — at least 8 terabytes of material that including autopsy findings, DNA reports and crime scene photos. Heuermann did not speak at the hearing.

The recent breakthrough in that case highlights a painful truth: Similar cases — like the one in Atlantic City — remain open.

Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds said Tuesday that detectives from his office met recently with detectives from Suffolk County, New York, and compared information on the two sets of homicides. “There does not seem to be a connection between the suspect in the Gilgo Beach case and the Atlantic County homicides from 2006,” he said.

The FBI would not say how many killings of sex workers in the U.S. remain unsolved. Media accounts and statements from authorities show a trail of open cases, from nine women whose bodies were found along highways in Massachusetts, to 11 found dead in New Mexico, and eight more found amid the crawfish farms and swamps of southern Louisiana. The killings of other sex workers in Chicago, New Haven, Connecticut and Ohio, among other places, also remain mysteries.

From the days of London’s Jack The Ripper in the 1880s, serial killers, particularly those preying on sex workers, have often gotten away with it, in part because their victims were easy targets on the margins of society.

Two women were out for an afternoon walk near Atlantic City in November 2006 when they found a body in a ditch. They called police, who quickly found three others nearby.

The $15-a-night motel in Egg Harbor Township behind which the four bodies were found is long gone. It was torn down in an attempt to clear a seedy area known for crime, drugs and disturbances — and the murders of Barbara Breidor, 42, Molly Jean Dilts, 20, Kim Raffo, 35, and Tracy Ann Roberts, 23.

Because it is near the ocean, like Gilgo Beach, the location prompted much speculation by amateur detectives about a single killer, but some other online sleuths pointed out that oceanside areas are often the remotest locations after hours on the East Coast.

Gone in New Jersey are the four small wooden crosses someone erected on the site, along with the folded-up paper note bearing a Biblical quote promising justice that someone left there on one of the anniversaries of the discovery of the bodies.

For families left behind, each new day without word in the case of their loved one brings fresh pain.

“I kind of lost hope that anyone was even searching for the killer anymore,” said Joyce Roberts, whose daughter Tracy Ann was one of the four Atlantic City-area victims. “The first six months, the prosecutor did get on the phone with me and told me they were working on it.

“Then it just fell off the radar,” she said. “It was like nobody cared anymore.”

That is a sentiment echoed by Phoenix Calida, a former sex worker from Chicago who now advocates for them through the Sex Workers Outreach Project.

“Police departments often refer to it as an ‘NHI’ case: No humans involved,” she said. “You feel like the only way you’ll be remembered is when they catch the serial killer who killed you, and then they’ll make five movies about him and no one will remember your name.”

Massachusetts State Police are investigating “nine unsolved homicides possibly committed by the same person,” said David Procopio, an agency spokesperson. He said two additional missing persons cases may be homicides related to the other nine.

Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said the New Mexico cases remain actively investigated. The 11 victims were all involved in drugs and prostitution, police said; two victims were just 15.

Despite the decadelong efforts of a task force, Louisiana has at least eight unsolved apparent homicide cases involving sex workers between the ages of 17 and 30.  

Prosecutors investigating the Gilgo Beach cases have been in touch with multiple law enforcement agencies, but District Attorney Ray Tierney would not say which ones.

Reynolds said the four cases in Atlantic City remain active.  

Calida said women involved the sex trade are frequently robbed by people who know they’re carrying cash, and are sometimes coerced into sexual activity by police in return for not being arrested.

She said an attacker “knows you can’t or won’t report it. You’re an easy target and they know it.”

Three of her friends who were also sex workers in Chicago turned up dead.

“You see someone, you become friends with them and then one day they’re suddenly just not there,” she said. “We’d all go out asking around and looking for them, and then a few days later a body would be found. There’s always this specific fear that it’s a serial killer. Sometimes we never even get a body back to bury. And we wonder: Will law enforcement take it seriously because it’s ‘just another sex worker?’”