Police: No search for bodies Saturday

Investigators will not on Saturday resume their search of a remote barrier island where the bodies of four women were discovered days ago, after an intense two-day search and re-canvassing involving more than a dozen cadaver dogs and a police helicopter turned up no sign of more human remains, police said.

Suffolk police on Friday voiced confidence that a lengthy stretch of underbrush and marsh around Ocean Parkway had been thoroughly canvassed. It wasn't clear whether any additional evidence searches would take place Sunday or next week. Authorities said the bodies, all wrapped in burlap and dumped in a secluded spot along the parkway between Gilgo and Cedar beaches, was most likely the work of a serial killer.

On Thursday, officials determined that none of the remains were those of Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old prostitute from Jersey City, N.J., who disappeared in May after meeting a client in nearby Oak Beach. A Suffolk canine unit seven days ago turned up one set of remains several feet from the road, and it seemed most likely that the remains would be hers. A follow-up search on Monday, however, turned up three additional bodies nearby that were also badly decomposed.

After re-interviewing Gilbert's last client and searching his home this week, authorities completed a comparison of Gilbert's medical records with the remains. On Thursday, police ruled her out as being any of the victims. The revelation that Gilbert was not among the bodies was a setback for investigators and threw into doubt another theory that a second body could prove to be another missing prostitute, Megan Waterman, 22, of Scarborough, Maine. Waterman vanished June 6 and was last seen leaving a Hauppauge hotel with a man. Police have collected DNA from the Waterman family, though results of a DNA comparison were not expected for weeks.

Police said both women had advertised as escorts on Craigslist and had traveled with men to Suffolk County to meet clients.