A short trail of clues to past killings

WILLIAM MURPHY

August 23, 2006

The potential link between the murder police say Evan Marshall committed and two old homicides was obvious - all three victims were female and had been decapitated.

But there the link ends, for now. Nassau police have huge amounts of forensic evidence from the scene of the killing last week in Glen Cove, but very little evidence from the earlier homicides in November 2000 and July 2003 in Suffolk.

In those two cases, the bodies were found in the woods off the Long Island Expressway near Manorville weeks after the deaths. Neither was identified immediately, so detectives had no friends or relatives to interview, no doors on which to knock.

The body found in 2000 was that of a white or Hispanic woman, no taller than 5 feet 5 inches and less than 125 pounds. The body was naked, cut into parts and put in bags.

The second body, found in 2003, was identified as Jessica Taylor, 20, of Washington, D.C. The body was nude, decapitated and had its hands removed.

While the gender of the victims and the beheadings created the obvious link to the latest homicide, there are more. Two other unidentified bodies were also found in the woods in the same general area of Suffolk County where the women were found, and in the same three-year time span. Those two were males.