Forgotten Reports about Long Island Human Remains Found

A badly decomposed body washed up on Tobay Beach in Massapequa yesterday, Nassau police said.

The body, which was found at 11:30 a.m. on the bay side, is that of a man about 45, police said. Police are not sure how long the body was in the water.

Click to expand...

The partial remains of a body washed up on a beach in Amagansett yesterday, East Hampton Town police said.

The remains were found on a stretch of beach along Marine Boulevard about 1:10 p.m. after police received a call, said police dispatcher Michael Seitz...

Click to expand...

Police are investigating the discovery of two severed legs on the shores of Fire Island this weekend.

The legs, protruding from a black plastic gargage bag, were found Saturday at about 5:30 p.m. by two seasonal residents walking along Blue Point Beach, about a mile west of Davis Park on the bay side of the island, said Det. Sgt. Kevin Cronin of the Suffolk County Police Homicide Squad.

The toenails of one foot were painted red, and both legs belonged to the same woman, Cronin said. A preliminary examination also revealed that both legs have scars that police hope will help in identifying the victim.

Cronin said the right leg had 3 1/2 -inch scar on rear calf and L-shaped scar on the shin. The left leg had a 3 1/2 -inch scar on the inner side.

Cronin, who visited the remote beach yesterday afternoon looking for more clues, would not say how much of the legs had been severed.

The legs were discovered by Robert Ragona, of Valley Stream, and his brother, Andrew, of Southbury, Ct., who own a house on Fire Island.

News of the find surprised and shocked the mostly seasonal residents of the tiny hamlet, tucked amid wooded dunes across Patchogue Bay.

"It's a real quiet spot, about the quietest spot you could find," said longtime resident Armond Siegel, who was opening his summer house about 150 yards from where the legs were found. "You've got a lot of sick people running around this world, unfortunately.

Click to expand...

Severed human legs were found washed up in two locations on the North Shore over the past two days, including on a private beach belonging to Cablevision Systems Corp. chief James Dolan, and police believe they may match a headless torso found across Long Island Sound.

Det. Sgt. Robert Holland of the Village of Mamaroneck Police Department, where officers are still trying to identify the remains discovered there on March 3, said his department was in contact yesterday with Suffolk and Nassau police.

"Based on certain physical similarities ... we feel strongly that these legs came from our victim," Holland said.

Lloyd Harbor police said yesterday that a fisherman found a human leg at 7 p.m. Tuesday on the shore in Lloyd Harbor and notified authorities.

A second leg was discovered yesterday at about 8:50 a.m., reportedly by a caretaker, at Dolan's Cove Neck estate, Nassau police said.

Lloyd Harbor Lt. Dennis Dooley said a fisherman discovered a right leg on the west side of a narrow strip of ground off West Neck Road.

A Nassau police source said a left leg contained in a plastic garbage bag was discovered at the Dolan compound, although a Nassau police spokesman would not confirm that. The beach near the end of a private driveway off Cove Neck Road borders Oyster Bay Harbor.

"The condition of the leg found in the bag indicates to us that it could be a possible homicide," said Det. Sgt. Richard Laursen of Nassau's Homicide Squad.

A report by the Westchester County medical examiner said the torso was of a Hispanic or light-skinned African-American woman between 35 and 50 years old. The torso, with a tattoo of two red cherries above the right breast, was in a suitcase found by two people walking on a public shore, and showed several stab wounds.

The Suffolk and Nassau medical examiner's offices will perform DNA and other forensic tests on the limbs and compare them with the findings of the Westchester medical examiner, Holland said.

Both Lloyd Harbor and Nassau police said the conditions of the legs prevented easy identification. "It looked like it had been in the water a little while," Dooley said...

Click to expand...

Seaslug44 said:

You are all very welcome.

Doing some more research today. Found this article while researching the severed head that was found around the same time as JT's remains were found (see Manorville Butcher discussion).

SOURCE: Unsolved LI Homicides of 2003: [NASSAU AND SUFFOLK Edition]
Samuel Bruchey and Zachary R. Dowdy. Newsday [Long Island, N.Y] 28 Jan 2004: A04.

Click to expand...

Seaslug44 said:

These are the other severed legs that were found on the North Shore!

SOURCE: Clues to a mystery, Police believe pair of severed legs washed up on North Shore belong to torso found earlier in Westchester: [NASSAU AND SUFFOLK Edition]
Strickler, Andrew; Staff writers John Valenti and Michael Frazier contributed to this story.. Newsday [Long Island, N.Y] 29 Mar 2007: A06.

Click to expand...

Just K said:

So, from the above, we learn that "Cherries" was stabbed multiple times and that her legs may have been washed up on the other side of the island from where her torso, in a suitcase, was found.

Click to expand...

A duck hunter yesterday discovered the body of a man who Suffolk County police said had been murdered, apparently by a blow to the head from a blunt instrument. Det. Sgt. William Pepper of the Homicide Squad said the victim had a wallet and personal papers, but his identity was withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The hunter discovered the clothed body of the elderly man beneath a tarpaulin about 11 a.m. in an open brushy area in Oak Beach about 90 feet north of Ocean Parkway and one mile west of Oak Island.

Pepper said police believe the victim was killed elsewhere and his body dumped in the field. He said the body was partially decomposed and appeared to have been dead for about a month. No weapon was found. Police said the victim had a watch and the wallet but no money was found on the body.

Click to expand...

Photo by Stephen Castagneto-Unidentified Body Found-Police remove the body of a Rockville Centre man found beaten to death yesterday off Ocean Parkway, near the Oak Beach Inn. Paul V. LaMariana, 49, an unemployed hairdresser, was last seen Friday. A motive for the killing was not immediately determined, police said...

Click to expand...

Four people were charged yesterday with luring a Rockville Centre man to a house, clubbing him with a wrench, choking him with electrical cord, and while he was still alive stuffing him in plastic bags, then dumping his body on the side of the road in Oak Beach.

As the bludgeoning took place, the 15-year-old son of one suspect was told by his mother to watch and later told to help carry the body out to her car, police said. The teen was not charged and will likely be called as a witness against the suspects, including his mother.

Police said the four decided to kill Paul Vincent Lamariana, 49, because he had allegedly harassed and threatened one of the suspects, Kathryn Kralovich, and her 8-year-old daughter over a period of several months. Police said that Kralovich, 35, a methadone user, had met Lamariana in February while they were enrolled in a drug treatment clinic at the Nassau County Medical Center, and that the two developed an antagonistic relationship.

"They perceived the victim was threatening and abusive to Kathryn and her daughter," said Lt. John Gierasch, head of the Suffolk Homicide Squad. The exact nature of the alleged harassment was not clear, but Gierasch said it involved alleged threats, by phone and in person, to assault Kralovich and her daughter. Gierasch said that there was no evidence he ever carried out any threats and that Kralovich never reported him to the police.

"There is no substantial abuse that we can discern," Gierasch said.

Assistant District Attorney James Scarmozzino explained the murder motive this way: "They had enough of this guy."

"It's a bizarre one," Scarmozzino said.

The four suspects were charged with second-degree murder. They are Kralovich, 2312 Sixth St., East Meadow, who according to her legal aid attorney has taken methadone daily for the past 12 years; Susan O'Connell, 35, of 407 Deer Road, Ronkonkoma, a house cleaner accused of driving Lamariana to the house and whose son allegedly watched the murder; Maurice Mathie, 21, of 63 Otis Road, Islip Terrace, who officials say clubbed and choked the victim; and Andrew Nappi, 23, of 2259 Union Blvd., Bay Shore, who allegedly helped the other three hog-tie Lamariana with electrical wire.

The four were arraigned yesterday in First District Court in Hauppauge before Judge Gerard D'Emilio, who ordered all but O'Connell held at the Suffolk County Jail without bail. O'Connell was held on $250,000 bail. All are scheduled to return to court Tuesday for felony hearings.

Adrian DiLuzio, attorney for Nappi, said in court that his client was the least involved of all the suspects and may have been only a witness.

Mathie was not represented by an attorney at his arraignment, and Legal Aid Attorney Marlaine Cragg said the two women would plead innocent.

Suffolk detectives began to track the four hours after two road workers found Lamariana's body in a wooded area off Ocean Parkway Tuesday. After identifying the victim through his fingerprints, on file because he was once convicted of selling drugs, detectives spoke to his mother, with whom he lived. She told police her son, an unemployed hairdresser, had been a friend of Kralovich's since they met in February.

The mother said that since her son disappeared, Kralovich had been by several times to say he was in New York City and wanted her to know he would not be coming home, Gierasch said. After questioning Kralovich and arresting her early Wednesday, police were led to O'Connell and the two others. The three were arrested later Wednesday.

O'Connell and Mathie gave videotaped statements to police and the other two suspects gave written statements. All four admitted some involvement in events surrounding the murder, authorities said.

This, according to Gierasch and Scarmozzino, is what occurred:

Last weekend, Lamariana went to Kralovich's house on several occasions, harassing her and threatening to assault her. On Sunday, Lamariana continued his threats while O'Connell, Mathie and Nappi were there. The four decided they had had enough and would kill Lamariana.

After Lamariana left the house, O'Connell telephoned him and persuaded him to return. She drove her car to pick him up. When Lamariana arrived, Mathie was standing on a loveseat behind a curtain by the side of the door holding a wrench.

As Lamariana walked through the front door, Mathie slammed him on the back of the head, knocking him to the ground.

The four then bound his hands and ankles together with electrical wire. And Nappi was quoted as telling the victim: "You're not going to live. You're going to die." Mathie then wrapped a piece of wire around his neck three times and yanked it.

Then the four - aided by the 15-year-old - shoved two plastic bags over Lamariana , wrapped him in a piece of all-weather carpet that they then tied together with more wire, and carried him to the trunk of O'Connell's car and drove to Oak Beach...

Click to expand...

The badly decomposed body of a man with his arms and legs bound was found floating in the Bellmore Channel yesterday, Nassau police said.

Initial autopsy results will be available today from the county Medical Examiner's office and will likely identify the man's ethnicity, approximate age and a possible cause and date of death, said Nassau Homicide Det. Sgt. Herb Daub.

Daub said police have begun examining missing persons records for people reported missing under suspicious circumstances, and the results from the autopsy will help narrow the search. "At this point in time, we have no idea who this person is," Daub said.

The body was found by a boater shortly before noon west of the Goose Neck Bridge, which connects Wantagh Parkway to Jones Beach...

Click to expand...

In the end, Suffolk police say, the Lindenhurst man accused ofaccidentally killing his friend, decapitating the corpse, and tossingthe severed head into the Great South Bay to conceal its identity was undone by details: He forgot to remove the victim's wallet before abandoning the body.

Suffolk homicide detectives said yesterday that James Michael Lynn, 24, of 100 E. Lido Promenade, told them that he severed the head of Thomas Palmese, 25, whose last known address was 10 Bayview Pl., to thwart identification.

The head was found yesterday morning when divers pulled it out of the bay just off West Islip marina, a town dock. It was in a bag, weighted with a barbell weight, police said. A leather jacket with a large hole in the front was also found, they said.

Police said that Lynn's lawyer, Louis Agreso, gave police the location after they appealed on behalf of Palmese's family. Police said Lynn had refused to give the location. Det. Mike Carmody of the homicide squad said, "He told us it was in a safe place and it would never be found."

Lynn, charged with second-degree manslaughter, was held yesterday in $100,000 bail. He is accused of accidentally shooting Palmese with a shotgun during an alleged drug deal in East Farmingdale. Palmese's body was found Tuesday morning on the shore of Captree Island, near the Robert Moses Causeway.

A wallet containing identification was found in Palmese's pocket. The victim had a criminal record, and a fingerprint check confirmed his identity.

Police said the car that Lynn admitted using to transport the body was set on fire Monday morning, hours after Palmese died. Arson squad detectives are investigating whether Lynn set the fire, they said.

The car was unregistered and bore a dealer plate which had been reported stolen, police said. It couldn't be traced to Lynn, but the car was known in the neighborhood to belong to Lynn. If the car had not burned, triggering the arson squad investigation, homicide detectives said they might not have linked it to their investigation.

Carmody said Lynn and Palmese met two other men at a gas station on Route 110, across from Republic Airport, to transact a drug deal in Lynn's car. He said that Lynn and Palmese tried to rob the other two men, but it was not clear if they succeeded. He said the four men got out of the car, and Lynn hit one in the back with a shotgun, which went off, killing Palmese. Lynn loaded the body in the car and drove off, Carmody said.

Police said it was unclear where the decapitation took place, and what was used.

At first, Carmody said, Lynn told them that he thought the killing might be the work of some motorcyclists and might involve a pending attempted-murder trial at which Lynn is supposed to testify. But during the investigation an anonymous caller told police that he had seen a shooting and gave the location. A patron of a bar in the vicinity furnished the car description and license number. It was then that Lynn's story started to unravel. "We found inconsistencies," Carmody said.

Carmody said that Lynn admitted the shooting but said it was an accident. "He explained to us that it was a drug deal that had turned sour."...

Click to expand...

Police yesterday were investigating possible links between the killing of a Manhattan man whose severed head and arms were discovered in Rockland County, and the murder of a Massachusetts executive whose dismembered body was dumped in New Jersey.

Both Michael Sakara Jr., 56, whose head and arms were found Saturday in Haverstraw, N.Y., and Thomas Mulcahy, 57, whose dismembered body was found last July in seven garbage bags along two New Jersey highways, were last seen in lower Manhattan bars.

"They're checking for possible links between the two cases," said a law-enforcement source, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used.

Friends and neighbors of Sakara, who lived at 771 West End Ave., said he was gay, and had lived alone since a male roommate moved out seven months ago. Mulcahy, who was married with four children, was visiting New York for a sales conference and was last seen in bars in lower Manhattan on the night of July 8, 1992, two days before his body parts were found in New Jersey.

Investigators have settled on no motive in Sakara's slaying, and have uncovered no evidence to suggest he was killed because he was gay, but one source said it is a possible motive detectives are pursuing.

Haverstraw Police Chief John Reilly said a hot-dog vendor found Sakara's two arms in one garbage bag and his head in another trash can at about 8:30 a.m. at a scenic overlook on Route 9W in the Rockland County village.

"He could have been killed anywhere," said Reilly, who added that police throughout the area searched all the rest stops along the roadway and checked "every can and Dumpster from the George Washington Bridge to Bear Mountain," but have been unable to find the rest of Sakara's body.

Rockland County medical examiner Fred Zugibe said Sakara, a typesetter at the New York Law Journal, died after he was savagely attacked with a cleaver or hatchet and a blunt instrument.

Sources said investigators from Rockland County District Attorney Kenneth Gribetz' office and the Haverstraw police met with New Jersey State Police investigators yesterday to compare notes on the slayings of Sakara and Mulcahy, a sales executive with Bull HN Information Systems, in Billerica, Mass.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence project said his office offered to assist police investigate the two killings.

Sakara's briefcase, with his wallet and identification inside, was found near where his body was discovered. Although Gribetz said investigators do not believe that robbery was the motive, neither he nor Reilly would say whether cash or credit cards were found.

Neighbors and acquaintances, who described Sakara as a dignified, intelligent man who read self-help books and enjoyed singing at a Greenwich Village piano bar, were shocked at his death. "Any sort of kinkiness, that was not Michael," said an employee of the Five Oaks bar, where Sakara was seen on the night he disappeared.

Gribetz said detectives from his office and the Haverstraw police were focusing their investigation on New York City, where the Youngstown, Ohio, native lived, worked and socialized...

Click to expand...

The puzzling murder case emerged last year in scenic settings, piece by grisly piece.

First, two torsos were found in the New Jersey woodlands. Then a woman's leg washed up at a Brooklyn bay, as did a man's severed head and leg on a nearby beach.

Authorities matched up the body parts and identified them as those of Fakhat Askerov, 36, and his girlfriend, Larisa Jakovleva, 28. But 10 months later, the motive and circumstances of the mutilation remain a mystery.

This week, police finally identified the victims' former roommates as potential suspects. The pair - Anatoliy Valenko, 24, and Vladimir Balachov, 25 - disappeared last year before they could be questioned.

Investigators received a tip that Valenko caught a flight to California around the time of the slayings and think he may be in either Los Angeles or Sacramento. Balachov is still assumed to be in the New York area.

"We want to at least have a talk with them to find out what they know or don't know," said Sgt. Nick Vreeland, a police spokesman.

Little is known about the background of any of the four recent immigrants, except that they moved in a transient world of cheap housing and low-wage jobs, said Det. James McCafferty of the Brooklyn South Homicide Squad.

Askerov was from Russia, his girlfriend from Latvia. Balachov is Russian as well. Valenko is from the Ukraine.

Before the killings, they shared a one-bedroom apartment in Midwood, Brooklyn. Makeshift walls had been put up to create two extra bedrooms the size of walk-in closets.

Authorities believe the victims were inside the apartment Nov. 11 when they were stabbed to death during a dispute, then carved up for disposal. On Nov. 14, a man was spotted dragging two suitcases into the South Mountain Reservation in Essex County, N.J. He drove away in a light blue Chevy Blazer with no license plates.

A woman hiking in the same area about three hours later came across the luggage. Police were called. Inside the bags they found torsos wrapped in plastic garbage bags.

While New Jersey detectives pondered the shocking discovery, Brooklyn residents began making their own. A woman walking her dog along Dead Horse Bay on Nov. 16 found the woman's leg. The next day, another person came across the man's body parts in the sand on Plum Beach.

Police made a quick connection. However, identifying the victims proved difficult. No one reported them missing.

Detectives resorted to having an artist sketch the man's head. The sketch was circulated in a Russian community in Essex County, where someone recognized him as a one-time patient of a local dentist.

Dental records confirmed the victim was Askerov. Other witnesses identified his girlfriend as Jakovleva.

By the time investigators pinned down the victims' address, several weeks had passed. The two roommates were gone, with new tenants occupying their space.

Baffled investigators at first approached the case as a possible Russian mob or drug-related hit. The missing men also were considered potential victims before police gathered information indicating they were alive...

Click to expand...

Queens man who was recently released from custody despite a history of domestic violence was arraigned yesterday afternoon on charges he brutally hacked his wife and her two children to death with a hatchet in their Astoria home.

His wrists heavily bandaged from a purported suicide attempt and restrained with plastic handcuffs, Richard Lyle Timmons, appeared at Queens Criminal Court charged with first degree and second degree murder, said a spokeswoman for the Queens District Attorney's office.

In State Supreme Court yesterday, Assistant District Attorney Bill Nolan, read from a statement Timmons gave to the police at the time of his arrest Sunday night in which he recalled arguing with his wife over another man and then swinging an ax at her. The next thing Timmons said he remembered was the police entering his apartment, Nolan said as he continued reading from the statement.

Police called to Timmons' apartment in Ravenswood Houses late Sunday night found bloody carnage with the decapitated bodies of Timmons' wife, Annita Stewart Timmons, 33, and the couple's 7-year-old son, Aaron. Annita Timmons' body was found lying near that of her older son in the apartment's dining room while her severed head was found in the bedroom, law enforcement sources said yesterday.

Annita Timmons' other son by a previous relationship, Sharron, 14, also was found partially decapitated, police said.

Click to expand...

A man whose severed head was found in a plastic bag on a Rockaway beach on April 18 has been identified as a pizza-delivery man who was to testify against the former convict charged with robbing him, police sources said yesterday.

Police said the head of Kelly Marcelus, 39, of Canarsie was found in a plastic bag on the beach last week. A short time later his body was found in a car parked in an abandoned garage in Edgemere.

Marcelus was to testify against David Trumpet, 32. Trumpet is charged with beating and robbing Marcelus on May 1 of last year. His trial in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn was adjourned Tuesday for two weeks. Yesterday, Judge Debra Dowling raised his bail to $750,000 from $50,000.

Police said Marcelus, a father of two who had worked as a Domino's Pizza delivery man on weekends in addition to his full-time factory job, disappeared on April 15 while taking care of his 3-year-old son.

Marcelus' sister, Marie Marcelus, said he was scheduled to meet with prosecutors from the Brooklyn district attorney's office on April 17 to discuss the trial.

But on April 15 he disappeared, leaving his son alone at home, Marie Marcelus said. The family called police but were told that Marcelus might have left on his own, which the family doubted.

"My brother wouldn't spend one day without calling my mother to find out how my mother was doing, because my mother is a diabetic and she has high blood pressure," Marie Marcelus said.

Theresa General, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn district attorney, said her office is investigating Marcelus' disappearance but would not comment further.

Marcelus was to testify that he delivered a pizza to Trumpet's East Flatbush home last May, court and police sources said.

Trumpet paid for the pizza and Marcelus left, sources said. A short time later, Domino's called Marcelus and told him Trumpet had complained that the wrong pizza had been delivered. Marcelus went back with another pizza, gave it to Trumpet and left again, sources said.

Again Trumpet called and complained he had received the wrong pizza. When Marcelus returned again, Trumpet allegedly demanded his money back, put a gun under Marcelus' chin and began beating him.

He then grabbed Marcelus' wallet, sources said. Marcelus fled the house, police were called, and Trumpet was arrested and charged with robbery, assault and weapons possession.

Marie Marcelus said her brother, who worked full time in a door factory, quit the job at Domino's the next day.

Because of the Trumpet trial, Marcelus' family immediately speculated about his disappearance.

"Everybody loved him," Marie Marcelus said yesterday. " ... The only trouble he ever had was when he was delivering pizza last year. I don't see how it could be related to anything else."

On April 18, a fisherman found a head inside a plastic bag on the beach near Beach 37th Street. Hours later, police found a headless body in a stripped-down car, which was in a burnt-out garage within a couple hundred yards of the beach...

Click to expand...

A human head was found inside a plastic bag among bushes in a well-kept Brooklyn community garden, authorities said.

The macabre find was made at 6 p.m. Saturday by a young girl, police said. An acrid odor had lingered in the historic Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood for days, neighbors said.

The girl alerted a woman who was doing work at the garden, at the corner of Stuyvesant Avenue and McDonough Street, police said. The woman then ran to a neighbor, who called police.

Investigators were looking into whether the remains belonged to a torso found Tuesday in a private sanitation transfer station in Williamsburg...

Click to expand...