F.D. helps in grisly search

As Long Islanders have anxiously watched the body count of a possible serial killer climb, the Baldwin Fire Department has quietly done its part in the search for evidence. The hunt for human remains on Jones Beach Island crossed the border from Suffolk into Nassau County on April 11, and BFD equipment was used to scan areas where bodies might have been concealed.

“The Nassau County Police Department and the Bureau of Special Operations requested our help in searching the Jones Beach area,” Fire Chief Kevin Smith said of his department’s involvement with the investigation. “The whole second battalion, including Long Beach, Oceanside, Freeport and Baldwin, sent ladder trucks to aid in the search.”

The local equipment was employed to enable officers to scan areas of thick underbrush that would have been difficult to explore on foot, Smith explained. “The trucks’ tower ladders, which can extend up to 100 feet, allowed officers to search areas they wouldn’t have been able to walk through,” he said.

Smith added that trucks were sent in morning and afternoon shifts, and members of the team employing them made some sobering discoveries: a human skull and a plastic bag filled with human remains. The bag was found about a mile east of the Jones Beach water tower, and the skull some 90 feet from the roadside in a sandy area.

Although it has yet to be determined if the new remains can be linked to the bodies of four prostitutes found near Gilgo Beach in December, as well as other remains that have turned up in the ongoing investigation, the grisly discovery in the area of Jones Beach has led to stepped-up police activity on the Nassau County end of the island. Last week, and over the weekend, there were helicopters in the air, divers in the water and foot patrols clearing brush along Ocean Parkway with chainsaws in search of additional evidence.

Asked if the most recently discovered remains could be linked to the bodies found earlier near the Suffolk County stretch of the parkway, Detective Lt. Kevin Smith, a spokesman for the Nassau County Police Department, said, “It bears investigating.”

“We have eight sets [of remains] out in Suffolk County already,” Smith added. “We have two more now. It’s all been very startling.”

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