l.i. hooker slays match ‘handiwork’ of bludgeon beast from 1990s – da
suspect already doing 25 to life victim’s family expresses doubts
A CARPENTER sentenced to at least 50 years in prison in the bludgeoning deaths of two women 20 years ago may be tied to one or more of the unsolved murders of prostitutes killed along Long Island’s Gilgo Beach, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
John Bittrolff, 51, who received consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences for the two murders, may have even more blood on his hands.
Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla said the deaths of several victims found along Gilgo Beach “may be attributed to the handiwork of Mr. Bittrolff.”
No one has been charged in the deaths of at least 10 people along the beach highway since 2010.
Biancavilla said some aspects of the evidence found over the years at Gilgo Beach were similar to what has been attributed to Bittrolff’s crimes. He did not elaborate. The first of 10 sets of remains believed to be the work of one or more serial killers in the Gilgo Beach area was found in 2010.
The first four bodies were those of women in their 20s who worked as prostitutes and were found within a quarter-mile from each other.
The victims had been reported missing between 2007 and September 2010.
But a lawyer for the family of Gilgo Beach victim Shannan Gilbert said any connection between Bittrolff’s case and the beach murders is a stretch.
The lawyer, John Ray, said he has done a lot of research in his search for answers for the family, and said he found nothing tying Bittrolff to the other crimes.
“I think Biancavilla’s statement is wildly optimistic,” Ray said. “There’s just nowhere near enough evidence for that connection.”
“It enables the district attorney’s office to present to the public that they have found the killer and he’s in jail already.” Ray said. “It makes their job infinitely easier, and that’s just not the case.”
Bittrolff, a married father of two, was convicted in July of two counts of second-degree murder in the 1994 deaths of Rita Tangredi, 31, of East Patchogue, and Colleen McNamee, 20, of Holbrook.
Both women had been strangled and suffered severe head injuries, officials said.
Testimony during the trial revealed the women were drug addicts and prostitutes.
“Bittrolff picked these women because they were vulnerable,” Biancavilla said. “He picked them because he thought no one cared about them. But there were people who cared about these girls.”
The two murders remained unsolved for two decades until Suffolk homicide detectives were able to get a DNA sample from Bittrolff’s garbage that matched semen recovered from both bodies. Detectives had caught a break after Bittroff’s brother was arrested in an unrelated crime, and his DNA was a partial match with the killer.
A jury deliberated seven days before convicting Bittrolff.
Biancavilla said this was the first conviction in a homicide case in New York state involving “partial match” DNA.
Judge Richard Ambro, a defense attorney before he became a judge, said the pair of murders was “as brutal as anything I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in the criminal justice system.”
Biancavilla said that Bittrolff hated women and all living creatures.
He said Bittrolff, a hunter from Manorville, had once wrestled a pig to the ground and slit its throat.
Bittrolff also once cut out the heart of a deer he had just shot and ate it raw in the woods, Biancavilla said.
Suffolk County police declined to comment on any possible connection.
Long Island cops are still investigating the unsolved killings of 10 victims of an apparent serial killer or killers.
Until Tuesday, no suspects had been identified in any of the deaths.
Among the beach victims was Gilbert, 24, an escort from New Jersey who vanished in Oak Beach in 2010 after she met a client through Craigslist.
The search for her body led authorities to the remains of the other victims along a Long Island beach highway.
They included eight women, a man dressed as a woman and a toddler.
Gilbert’s body was found months later.
Police have not officially tied Gilbert’s death to the Gilgo murders, although her family maintained that she was one of the victims.
Her mother, Mari, 52, was among the more outspoken members of of a collection of victims’ family members who leaned on each other in the wake of the gruesome discoveries.
That was until Mari, herself, was stabbed to death last year with a 15-inch kitchen knife. allegedly by her daughter, Sarra — Shannan’s sister — in her Ulster County home.
Sarra was convicted of second-degree murder in April by a jury that did not believe her insanity defense.
Ray, who defended Sarra, in the murder trial, said her sister’s murder left her with mental issues.
Ray said the Gilgo case has left a lot of victims.
Even so, he said, there should be no shortcuts.
“I just don’t buy it,” Ray said of any ties between Bittrolff and Gilgo Beach.
“It creates severe anxiety and false hope. The truth is it just isn’t so. It encourages these poor people to think they could their misery to rest. But they can’t.”