New York police search for more bodies on Long Island beach

Police have returned to an overgrown stretch of land off Long Island a day after three more bodies were found, taking the number of victims of a suspected serial killer in the New York city area to eight.

It is a huge crime scene – several square miles of windswept sand dunes and thick undergrowth – that has been scoured several times by police searchers, but more bodies keep turning up.

All of the corpses identified so far are young, white women who worked as prostitutes, and police believe they are dealing with a serial killer, or killers.

The victims found their clients on Craig's List or other similar websites and police believe some of them, perhaps all, were killed elsewhere and then dumped on Oak Island, a narrow barrier island an hour's drive from Manhattan.

The grisly harvest of bodies has come in several batches.

In December, police began to search for a missing prostitute, Shannan Gilbert, 24. She had fled a client's beachside house early one morning in May, screaming for help then disappearing into the dunes. They never found her. The client was cleared from being a suspect after police searched his home and vehicle.

While looking for Gilbert, they found four bodies hidden in and around Gilgo Beach. All were wrapped in hessian sacks and appeared to have been deposited during the past three years. None were Gilbert.

More than three months later and with no one caught for the crimes, police have made yet more grim findings. At the end of last month and about a mile from the original dumping ground, a policeman passing Oak Beach in his patrol car noticed an object. It turned out to be yet another body of a young woman.

Immediately a mini-army of police and firefighters, helicopters and dog handling teams, sealed off the huge area with police tape, scouring the tick-infested scrub. They later found three more bodies.

The authorities are working 12-hour days, searching the area again and again.

None of the new bodies has yet been officially identified, but police are working on the assumption that they fit the pattern of the earlier victims.

Investigators are appealing for information from people involved in the local sex trade. "They certainly must have some information. Anything that they may deem to be significant or even insiginificant may be significant to us," said Thomas Spota, the Suffolk County district attorney.

Forensic experts are trying to identify the latest remains and see if they include Gilbert. Her disappearance might harbour key clues. She was last seen running from a client's house and shouting: "They're trying to kill me."

She banged on a neighbour's door but ran off before the police were called. Police spoke to her later on her mobile phone but she was disorientated and told them she was on a different beach. She was never heard of or seen again.

The victims identified so far are Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25; Melissa Barthelmy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27.

Police insist that they have devoted huge resources and they continue to appeal to the public not to be prejudiced by the fact that at least some of the victims so far have been sex workers.

"What activities these victims may have engaged in prior to their murder does not matter. They were young women whose lives were cut tragically short," said Richard Dormer, Suffolk County's police commissioner.