Bodies Search Again Shuts Ocean Parkway

Ocean Parkway is again closed in both directions until 5 p.m. today, from Robert Moses Causeway to Wantagh Parkway, as multiple law enforcement agencies expand into Nassau County the search for bodies related to the Gilgo beach serial killer investigation.

The four-mile search effort includes 50 New York State troopers, 50 state park police and 50 Nassau County officers from various units, including the mounted division, emergency services and the canine search division. Nassau police told Patch this morning it has not yet determined how long the search effort will take.

“No timeframe had been dictated as yet,” said a police spokeswoman.

A news service reported this morning that bones have been found, as well as clothing, and that police are requesting an anthropologist for identification purposes. Nassau police declined comment on the report, and officials at the scene have not yet confirmed or commented on the claim.

Police said that a medical examiner will be on hand to identify any remains that may be found.

The latest parkway search comes on the of an intensive one-week search conducted by Suffolk County Police that covered an area from Robert Moses Causeway and the Nassau County line. During that effort four more sets of human remains were discovered about a mile east of where four young women’s bodies were found in December 2010.

The Suffolk portion of the investigation began on Dec. 11, 2010, with the missing persons case of Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old New Jersey woman last seen in Oak Beach on May 1, 2010. Gilbert has not been among the eight bodies discovered so far in the 124-day investigation.

Suffolk police believe the victims are the work of a serial killer, and published reports have claimed the killings may be related to the murders of escorts in the Atlantic City area several years ago.

The first four women found in Gilgo Beach were killed elsewhere and dumped in the thick underbrush along Ocean Parkway at various times over a span of several years, according to police. The first four found were young, white females who police said worked as Craigslist escorts. The last four sets of remains have yet to be identified.