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The case may be cold, but the man in charge of the investigation says it isn’t being ignored.

Three years after the bodies of four women were found in a ditch near a string of seedy West Atlantic City motels, the Atlantic County prosecutor says his office still is dedicated to finding the killer. Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel said he has put new investigators on the case.

That’s a common practice, according to a retired FBI profiler, who said new eyes often can help heat up a cold case.

“New investigators on the case can look at things with a fresh set of eyes. With no preconceptions,” said Gregg McCrary, who worked serial killer cases during more than 25 years in the FBI. “They can maybe look at the same evidence and process it differently.”

While the previous investigators may have done a good job, they could be stymied by theories that over time have been assumed as facts, he said.

“A possibility has crystallized into a probability that has hardened into a fact,” McCrary said. “When someone new goes back they realize, ‘That’s not fact at all, that’s a possibility. What other possibilities are out there?’”

The main question, he said, is: “How do we know what we think we know?”

It is difficult to say what the investigators think they know.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office has released little information about the case. Even after taking DNA samples from a man June 8, 2007, then-Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz refused to call him a suspect or even a person of interest. Whether Terry Oleson’s DNA matched any evidence found on the women was never publicly released. But when a Salem County judge lowered Oleson’s bail in an unrelated invasion-of-privacy case, he indicated that the circumstances that kept the bail high had changed.

The case drew national attention in late 2006.

Two women were walking behind the Golden Key Motel in Egg Harbor Township on Nov. 20, 2006, when they discovered the body of Kim Raffo, 35. When police arrived, they found three more bodies: all in a line, all shoeless, each woman facedown and her head pointed toward Atlantic City, where all four had worked as prostitutes.

Raffo had been strangled about a week or so earlier; Tracy Ann Roberts, 23, asphyxiated a week before that; Barbara V. Breidor, 42, and Molly Jean Dilts, 20, had been in the watery ditch too long for the cause of death to be determined.

Dilts was the first to die, about a month before the discovery, the medical examiner determined. Since she left her home in Black Lick Township, Pa., on Oct. 4, it is assumed she didn’t last very long working the streets of Atlantic City.

Blitz, the county prosecutor at the time, released little information about the killings. The last announcement came in January 2007, when Blitz said toxicology reports showed Raffo, Breidor and Roberts had potentially lethal amounts of drugs in their systems. But each woman had a known addiction to what she had ingested. Dilts, who had a drinking problem, had only alcohol in her system, according to her report.

A prostitute addicted to drugs who regularly gets into cars with people she doesn’t know adds up to a lot of suspects and few reliable sources, McCrary said.

One admitted crack-addicted hooker insisted Oleson had confessed to her. Later, while Oleson was still in jail, she said she saw the man she thought was him.

“From the beginning, these cases are just fraught with peril,” McCrary said.

But, Housel insisted, the killer still is being sought.

“This agency has continued to aggressively pursue this homicide investigation,” he said in the statement his office released this week. This is proven, “by my recent assignment of additional personnel from my office” to the investigation. He would not comment beyond that.

But new people mixed with elapsed time could be what solves the case, McCrary said. He saw that happen on a case he worked in Buffalo, N.Y.

The Bike Path Killer had been raping and killing women for about 25 years. After a new task force reopened the case, they went back to a 1983 report from a victim who had escaped after being raped two years earlier. She spotted her attacker at the mall and gave police his car description. At the time, the car’s owner had an alibi and didn’t look like the suspect.

But when the task force came to the man again in late 2006, he admitted his nephew, Altemio Sanchez, had taken the car that day. In 2007, Sanchez pleaded guilty to three of the murders.

Contact Lynda Cohen:

609-272-7257

LCohen@pressofac.com

16 comments:

• sassyim (5) posts 8:01 am

  I feel strong that they need to look at who they already know. he had been interviewed and questioned and knows the motel and the Girls. I will bet on it. Serial murders don't stop and in fact they cant stop in most cases, so the person that did this is probably still doing it just in a different location. And as far as these women being hookers, that should not matter in the slightest NO one had a right to kill them and leave them like they did. These women had a disease just as if they had cancer or the such--addiction is a disease and it is not a choice they made. I guess none of you ever have felt like there was so way out and you were in such a depression and had your self esteem knocked down to zero that you can see these were just people that needed help and didn't get it or couldn't get it. they were still someone's mother/wife/sister/daughter/friend Good God have a heart. MURDER is MURDER and NO one had the right to take their life.

• itsthetruth (2) posts 4:24 am

  New investigators ? Come on, who you kidding

• SistahCallaway (33) posts 1:04 am

  I think it was that certain councilman who is very ill with more than some diabetes but more like the AIDS he contracted from Prostitutes before he became too sick to kill. The police no full well he was seen many nights with many prostitutes; male and female...how else was it so easy for him to be convinced to pick up that hoe from that sex tape????????????? He is a serial murderer confined to a wheelchair, poor fella!

• Madison (74) posts 11:42 am

  So, who are the 'new' investigators?

• moverightalong (195) posts 10:47 am

  I think it was someone in law enforcement who either contacted something or was not paid protection money! Many stories about pimp cops in larger cities, Philly, New york, Hartford to just mention a few. This is a different MO Blitz could have cared less, about what happened in WAC. Long before casinos that strip use to be a quickie spot for four forty screws ha ha.

• moverightalong (195) posts 10:47 am

  I think it was someone in law enforcement who either contacted something or was not paid protection money! Many stories about pimp cops in larger cities, Philly, New york, Hartford to just mention a few. This is a different MO Blitz could have cared less, about what happened in WAC. Long before casinos that strip use to be a quickie spot for four forty screws ha ha.

• moverightalong (195) posts 10:46 am

  I think it was someone in law enforcement who either contacted something or was not paid protection money! Many stories about pimp cops in larger cities, Philly, New york, Hartford to just mention a few. This is a different MO Blitz could have cared less, about what happened in WAC. Long before casinos that strip use to be a quickie spot for four forty screws ha ha.

• moverightalong (195) posts 10:46 am

  I think it was someone in law enforcement who either contacted something or was not paid protection money! Many stories about pimp cops in larger cities, Philly, New york, Hartford to just mention a few. This is a different MO Blitz could have cared less, about what happened in WAC. Long before casinos that strip use to be a quickie spot for four forty screws ha ha.

• moverightalong (195) posts 10:46 am

  I think it was someone in law enforcement who either contacted something or was not paid protection money! Many stories about pimp cops in larger cities, Philly, New york, Hartford to just mention a few. This is a different MO Blitz could have cared less, about what happened in WAC. Long before casinos that strip use to be a quickie spot for four forty screws ha ha.

• gchernya (40) posts 9:43 am

  Trumping on the graves of the dead women will not help any of it. Prostitutes only spread the aids to the people who use their services. They use drugs because drugs are available on the street. They becoming prostitutes, as society offers very little of positive development to people who are not overachievers, or have other weaknesses. When I’ve seen Roberts, I thought what a waste, such a beautiful young girl, and there no any good use to no man. I was still sentimental back then, but I already knew that the prostitutes are no good for nothing resembling normal. They are basically walking shell of a woman, devoid of any normal human emotion. This is making killing them even more sick. They already dead even if they keep walking.

• Up_To_Here (101) posts 9:32 am

  work4aliving, Doesn't anyone think perhaps a LE person is responsible for these killings. These girls were new to the area. All were white. They were most likely getting the "go home" rap from someone they thought was interested and concerned for their lives. They were dumped in an area frequented by police cars and only police and locals knew of that area. Just a thought to ponder. This killer did not leave the area. He/she is still here. More than one, doubt it. A man can certainly do this solo.

• gchernya (40) posts 9:08 am

  Serial killer my... People who done it is local, not out of town. The fact of dumping the bodies in the same area, and not so remote area proves a few things. There maybe more then one person who done it, and they did not have access to the car. One needs help to dispose of the body by hands. People who done it have one or more of this: Tight control and observation of the area – if not, how do you know about this place, and how do you know that is safe to dump third and forth body. We live in the technical age, and LE could have installed hidden camera to see who will show up with the next body, unless perpetrators had control and observation of the area, and able take a notice of the police activity; connection with law enforcement, however weak, so they know on time if police discovered the bodies. Serial killers have no urgency to dispose the bodies in the same place, unless it is convenient to them to do it – think recent Chicago story (by the way it was a drug house too, also run by one man). Think about it – if you caught with one body – it is one count of murder. But if there few more laying around – does not sound street smart. There are way more then four facts of disappearances of prostitutes in vicinity of Atlantic City, so there maybe more dumping grounds to be discovered.

• Advocate (89) posts 9:03 am

  Murder is not the answer..yes, there is a 'serial killer' out there some where, I hope this case will be solved to bring some kind of closure to the families of these women.

• smedlee (132) posts 8:50 am

  WHO PUT UP THE CROSSES THEIR PIMP'S ????? YOU WANT ME TO FEEL SORRY FOR DRUG ADDICTS WHO SPREAD AIDS AND OTHER DISEASES LIKE WATER WITHOUT ANY GUILT. MAYBE THEIR FAMILIES PUT UP THE CROSSES LONG AFTER THEY NEEDED THEM FOR SUPPORT AND NOW ARE LEFT WITH GUILT.

• gchernya (40) posts 8:40 am

  It would be sad if it was not so incompetent. If police in Atlantic City only stopped to provide cover to the Atlantic City drug underworld, those crimes would have never happen in the first place. The killing are most likely not sexual, even if they look like one. They most likely happen in the drug house, were prostitutes often lured to party – consume drugs – as they cannot light up crack pipe on the street. Two of the girls were out of town, and other two had only in and out relationship with Atlantic City, which means they did not have a steady place to smoke, and might go to the unfamiliar place. In those drug houses prostitutes often robed and assaulted, but they do not complain for the obvious reasons. People usually struggle if somebody trying to strangle them, unless they are at gun point, or under the influence of drugs. Atlantic City police for mysterious reasons never bothers drug houses. Institution of expedited eviction procedure for people who host a drug house would help tremendously. Mandatory notifying of family, work place and local police department for all out of town people found in the drug house would help to deter people from using it. Mandatory periodical drug test for all housing assistance (not welfare) recipients would have help too.

• Work4aliving (8) posts 8:14 am

  This was a seasoned serial killer that has left the area, once that is realized the case can move on

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