No IDs of 3 Gilgo Beach bodies yet

Suffolk police said Friday that they did not expect to release the identities of three of four women whose remains were discovered in Gilgo Beach last month.

A Fox 5 report Friday morning said police had identified the remaining three bodies. A police department spokeswoman said the department had no comment on the case or on the report.

On Wednesday morning, detectives informed the family of Megan Waterman, 22, that she was among the skeletons found off a barrier beach road in the town of Babylon on Dec. 11 and 13.

Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said then that investigators are confident they know who the other three women are, but would not release their names until they have been confirmed through a DNA match.

Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota said forensic experts have gathered genetic, medical, and personal information from the families of the women believed to be the other three, and that the matching DNA process could be complete within days.

Waterman, a prostitute who advertised her services on Craigslist, was last seen leaving a Hauppauge hotel on June 6. She had traveled to Long Island with a boyfriend who acted as her pimp, Akeem Cruz, 21, of East New York, Brooklyn, police said.

The similarities of the four remains - all women, all wrapped in burlap and believed to have been left separately over a lengthy period of time - quickly led police to the theory that they were slain by a serial killer. Dormer has since tried to back away from his assertion, saying that all investigative avenues are being explored.

The revelation that Waterman was among the remains came as a surprise because police had linked her to the Gilgo Beach remains through another missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, 24.

Gilbert, of Jersey City, also worked as a prostitute and was last known alive last May in Oak Beach, a short distance from Gilgo Beach, after meeting a client there but then running away in an agitated state, police said. She was later proved not to be among the bodies, throwing the case's connection to Waterman into doubt. Gilbert remains missing.

"We're very close to identifying the other three bodies," said Police Commissioner Richard Dormer on Wednesday. Police declined to say what links, if any, they are pursuing among the women.

With Sophia Chang