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.
On Tuesday, days after the discovery, several arrests were made following a search of a home in Amityville, about a 15-minute drive from where the body parts were discovered.
Children stumbled upon the limbs on their way to school and found a total of six body parts, including a head, legs and arm of a woman, and two tattooed arms of a man.
Sources said NBC New York that a love triangle is being explored in connection with the body parts, although the details of this connection remain unclear.
State police told the outlet that they were also investigating a separate address in Bethpage State Park, about 15 miles from the park where the body parts were found, in connection with the case.
On Tuesday, days after the discovery, several arrests were made following a search of a home in Amityville, about a 15-minute drive from where the body parts were discovered.
State police told the outlet that they were also investigating a separate address in Bethpage State Park, about 15 miles from the park where the body parts were found, in connection with the case.
Police raided this Long Island home on Tuesday
The body parts were found at several 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 their way to school on Thursday.
Multiple arrests were made Tuesday after investigators served an arrest warrant at a home in nearby Amityville, reports said Newsday.
The head, legs and one arm belong to a woman, while the other two arms belong to a man, while officers also found a piece of the woman’s leg.
Det. Lt. Kevin Beyrer of the Suffolk Police Department declined to comment on whether or not authorities believe the feared MS-13 prison gang, known for dismembering their victims, could be behind the discovery.
MS-13 members have plagued Long Island for years, but since 2017 the region has gone quiet.
Beyrer did say it is believed the body parts were not exposed to the elements for long before they were found.
The man’s arms had tattoos, the woman’s did not. Officials hope to use the body art to determine his identity.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine described the incident as “isolated” during a news conference Monday, reports said News12 Long Island.
“We’re going to protect you and this didn’t actually happen in that park – I believe this was an isolated incident where people chose a park to put the bodies, not where it happened – and I think anyone who went there looks I’ll tell you that, so it didn’t happen in the park,’ Romaine said.
He added that he had a “very good” feeling about the progress of the investigation. It is not clear whether other agencies are also involved in the search.
This is what a resident who returned to the park on Saturday morning, Tom Stroppel, said Newsday that he did not suspect a local resident was to blame.
‘It’s a beautiful place, beautiful neighborhood. Someone must have come from another town and dumped them here.”
Stroppel explained that he was there on Thursday around the time the discovery was made.
‘It felt strange. When I walked in, there was no one there except the people I see every day. And then, on the way out, I see police cars. I said, ‘Holy cow!’
Beyrer told media on Friday that one of the teens, a high school student, alerted her father just before 9 a.m., who went to the park, confirmed it was an arm and then called police.
In a subsequent search of the area, a police dog recovered a human leg about a mile away in the same park, near an elementary school, at 1:30 p.m. A right arm was subsequently found after falling approximately six meters in a wooded area overnight.
“There’s a lot of leaves. We don’t know what will lie under the hill. Once we clear the mound, we might find the rest of the body, or we might not,” Beyrer said.
Officials from nearby schools kept students inside as the investigation continued.
“It’s a little disturbing because the school is here, so I was a little concerned,” local parent Salma Lakhaney told ABC New York.
Another local resident told the station that she no longer walks her dog in the park in question.
‘There is definitely a bad atmosphere here. Like the past two weeks for sure. “I don’t walk here alone anymore because there are only crazy people,” she said.
“That it is terrible and very frightening to hear something like this happening so close to home,” said Josephine Roche, a local resident of Babylon Newsday.
‘I think we’re safe. There is a good police presence and I don’t think this was necessarily related to this area. I told my children, ‘Always lock the doors wherever you are.’
The area is also close to where accused murderer Rex Heuermann spent 15 years looking for victims.
The area is also close to where accused murderer Rex Heuermann, pictured here in February, spent 15 years looking for victims.
Earlier this month, Heuermann was formally charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, months after he was identified as the prime suspect in her death when he was arrested in July in the deaths of three other women.
In addition, gang violence had been a problem in some communities on Long Island for more than a decade, but local police and the FBI began pouring resources into a crackdown sparked by the murders of high school students Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16. , in 2016.
The most active violent gang is the dreaded MS-13.
The killings in Brentwood, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of New York City, shocked parents and local officials and shined 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 disappeared months earlier, but whose disappearances had initially gone unnoticed by civic leaders and the news media.
Some parents of the missing complained that police had not done enough to search for their missing children sooner.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Suffolk County Police Department at 631-852-6392 or call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-220-Tips.