Real-Life Dexter Killing N.Y. Hookers

A serial killer targeting Craigslist prostitutes has such a sophisticated understanding of investigation techniques that police now suspect the killer may work within a law enforcement agency. The killer — responsible for at least four bodies that turned up on Long Island — made a series of calls to taunt the victims’ families, always from a disposable cellphone in a highly-trafficked public place. In each case, he kept the phone call to less than three minutes to prevent police from pinpointing his location.

A series of taunting phone calls made to the teenage sister of one of the victims… were made from in or around some of the most crowded locations in New York City, including Madison Square Garden and Times Square…

The locations, detectives say, were probably chosen because they allowed the caller to blend into crowds, so that if investigators pinpointed his location from the cellphone’s signal, they would be unable to pick him out of the crowd using any nearby surveillance cameras, one of the people said.

This fact, as well as the killer’s use of disposable cellphones to contact the four victims who have been identified — women in their 20s who advertised their services on Craigslist — suggested to some investigators that the killer was well versed in criminal investigative techniques, gleaned either through personal experience or in some other way, and could even be in law enforcement himself. [NYT via Gizmodo]

Those are only the details the NYPD was willing to release; apparently, there are other aspects to the killer that reflect a “CSI”-like expertise. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is reason #23,742 why “Craigslist hooker” is an ill-advised career -path.