Two slayings in Niagara Falls, New York, that investigators
Tuesday called "shocking to the conscience" have police wondering
whether they have a sadistic serial killer on their hands.
The crimes
occurred nearly three years apart, but the circumstances are as similar as they
are gruesome: two women, similar in appearance and related to one another
through marriage, found dismembered.
The first was
30-year-old Loretta Gates, whose remains were found in areas of the city in
September 2012, according to CNN affiliate WKBW. And then last month, the
headless, limbless torso of 46-year-old Terri Lynn Bills -- a woman "was
like an aunt to Gates," according to WKBW -- was found in an abandoned home.
"You can't
overlook that the two homicides share a lot of similarities," Niagara
Falls Police Capt. Kelly Rizzo said Tuesday. "It is hard not to make that
connection." But he cautioned the crimes could have been committed by two
individuals.
Stymied by a
lack of breaks in the case (bones discovered Monday on the shores of Lake
Ontario turned out not to be human) and frustrated by erroneous leads conjured
up and repeated on social media ("social media makes crime investigation
incredibly difficult," lamented Rizzo), nearly 100 investigators went door
to door in targeted areas Tuesday in "the largest mission of its kind in
the history of Niagara Falls."
"We got a
lot of good information," Rizzo said of the canvassing, which was assisted
by investigators from the FBI, New York State Police, the Niagara County
district attorney's office and U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security.
"We are
definitely closer to figuring out who did it based on the information we got
(today)," Rizzo said.
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