FBI send in surveillance planes to help in hunt for serial killer hunt

Police divers search for human remains in the waters off a popular beach highway on Long Island, New York, as the search widened for a serial killer.

• FBI to supply hi-tech surveillance equipment
• Ten sets of remains found on Long Island
• Only four sets have been identified

THE FBI will supply high-tech surveillance aircraft to authorities investigating a possible serial killer on New York's Long Island, police say.
The announcement comes after the discovery of 10 sets of human remains in recent months near a highway leading to a popular state park.
County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said today that federal investigators will supply both helicopters and aeroplanes equipped with special cameras that will scour more than 20 kilometres of the Ocean Parkway along a remote barrier island south of Long Island in search of additional victims.
An FBI spokesman said the flights would begin on Saturday.
The parkway, which leads to popular Jones Beach State Park, is surrounded by a tangle of underbrush and evergreens that have proved difficult to manoeuvre on foot for cadaver dogs and officers.
Volunteer firefighters with aerial ladders and even mounted police units have been brought in to assist with the search. Today, police divers searched the waters north of the parkway for possible victims.
It was in that thicket that police found the first four sets of remains in December. At least some of the remains were dumped just metres from the highway; others were found 27 metres or more into the underbrush.
Six more sets of remains have been found in recent weeks, including two on Tuesday.
Commissioner Dormer said investigators have tentatively ruled out any ties between the Long Island case and the 2006 killing of four women who worked as prostitutes in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
"The indications we have right now is that there is no connection," he said at a briefing, where he declined to offer specific details about the investigation.
He said he was awaiting the results of forensic testing, including that of anthropological experts from the New York City Medical Examiner's office, before discussing the identities or cause of deaths of the most recent sets of remains.
While authorities have identified only four of those found - all women in their 20s who worked as escorts booking clients on the internet - the remaining six also were found on the north side of the highway within several kms of each other. Detectives said it appears some had been dead for a long time.
Commissioner Dormer said investigators were not ruling out the possibility that more than one person may be responsible for leaving the remains along the highway, which features long stretches with no street lights.
Police happened upon the first set of four remains while searching for a missing New Jersey prostitute last seen in a nearby community nearly a year ago. She has yet to be found.
State police, who assisted a local police search near Jones Beach on Tuesday, said troopers and crime scene investigators would return to the Ocean Parkway tomorrow to again search for more possible remains.