New York police are investigating whether a ‘love triangle’ is at the center of the gruesome discovery of numerous body parts in a Long Island park.
Several arrests were made Tuesday, days after the find, following a search on a home in Amityville, around a 15-minute drive from where the body parts were discovered.
Children stumbled onto the limbs on their way to school, and found a total of six body parts including a head, legs and an arm belonging to one woman, and two tattoed arms belonging to a man.
Sources told NBC New York that a love triangle is being investigated in connection to the body parts, although details of this connection remain unclear.
State police told the outlet they were also investigating a separate address in Bethpage State Park, around 15 miles from the park where the body parts were found, in connection with the case.
Several arrests were made Tuesday, days after the find, following a search on a home in Amityville, around a 15-minute drive from where the body parts were discovered
State police told the outlet they were also investigating a separate address in Bethpage State Park, around 15 miles from the park where the body parts were found, in connection with the case
Cops raided this house in Long Island on Tuesday
The body parts were found in different locations in Southards Pond Park in Babylon, not far from where the Gilgo Beach murders took place between 1996 and 2011.
The original gruesome discovery was found by a group of children on Thursday on their way to school.
Multiple arrests were made Tuesday after investigators served a warrant in a home in nearby Amityville, reports Newsday.
The head, legs and one arm belong to a woman, while the other two arms belong to man while officers have also located another piece of the woman’s leg.
Det. Lt. Kevin Beyrer of the Suffolk police refused to comment on whether or not authorities believe that the feared MS-13 prison gang, known for dismembering their victims, could behind the discovery.
MS-13 members plagued Long Island for years but have gone quiet in the region since 2017.
The man’s arms had tattoos, the woman’s did not. Officials are hoping to use the body art to determine his identity.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine described the incident as ‘isolated’ during a press conference on Monday, reports News12 Long Island.
‘We are going to keep you safe and this didn’t really happen at that park – I believe this was an isolated incident where people chose a park to put the bodies, not where it occurred – and I think anyone that is looking at that will tell you that, so it did not occur in the park,’ Romaine said.
He added that he felt ‘very good’ about how the investigation was progressing. It’s not clear if other agencies are involved in the search.
One resident, who returned to the park on Saturday morning, Tom Stroppel, told Newsday that he didn’t suspect a local was to blame.
‘It’s a beautiful place, beautiful neighborhood. Somebody must have came from another town and dumped over here.’
Stroppel explained that he was there on Thursday around the time that the discovery was made.
‘It felt weird. When I walked in, there was nobody here, except the people I see every day. And then on the way out, I see cop cars. I said: ‘Holy cow!.’
Beyrer told the media on Friday that one of the teens, a high school student, alerted her father just before 9am, who went to the park, confirmed it was an arm and then called the police.
A subsequent search of the area saw a police dog recover a human leg around a mile way in the same park at 1:30pm, close to an elementary school. A right arm was then found after night fall around 20 feet into a wooded area.
‘There’s a mound of leaves. We don’t know what’s going to be under the mound. Once we clear the mound we may find the remainder of the body or we may not,’ Beyrer said.
Officials at nearby schools held students inside as the investigation unfolded.
‘It is a little disturbing because the school is right here so I was kind of worried,’ local parent Salma Lakhaney told ABC New York.
Another local told the station that she no longer walks her dog in the park in question.
‘There’s definitely a bad vibe right here. Like the last two weeks for sure. I stopped walking here by myself because there’s just weirdos,’ she said.
‘That it is terrible and very scary to hear something like that happen so close to home,’ Babylon local Josephine Roche told Newsday.
‘I think we are safe. There is a good police presence and I think that it wasn’t necessarily related to this area. I told my kids, ‘Lock the doors, always, in any area.’
The area is also close to where accused killer Rex Heuermann prowled for victims over a 15 years period.
The area is also close to where accused killer Rex Heuermann, shown here in February, prowled for victims over a 15 years period
Earlier this month, Heuermann was formally charged in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, months after having been labeled the prime suspect in her death when he was arrested in July with the deaths of three other women.
In addition, gang violence had been a problem in some Long Island communities for more than a decade, but local police and the FBI began pouring resources into a crackdown sparked by the killings of high school students Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, in 2016.
The most active violent gang has been the feared MS-13.
The murders in Brentwood, about 30 miles east of New York City, shook parents and local officials and cast a spotlight on the deepening problem of gang violence in the suburbs.
Police also began discovering the bodies of other young people — mostly Hispanic — who had vanished months earlier, but whose disappearances had initially gone unmarked by civic leaders and the news media.
Some parents of the missing complained that police hadn’t done enough to search for their missing children earlier.
Anyone with information in the case is asked to contact the Suffolk County Police Department at 631-852-6392 or call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-220-Tips.