At least seven human remains found across Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts between March and April warrant “review and investigation,” according to Pennsylvania-based criminal defense attorney and former Lawrence County District Attorney Matthew Mangino.
Over the last two months, human remains have been located in New Haven, Norwalk, Groton and Killingly, Connecticut; Foster, Rhode Island; and Framingham and Plymouth, Massachusetts.
It is unclear at this point if the deaths of these seven victims are related in any way, and Connecticut State Police told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that “there is no information at this time suggesting any connection to similar remains discoveries, and there is also no known threat to the public at this time,” regarding the deaths in Connecticut.
Internet sleuths who are part of a private Facebook page with tens of thousands of members, however, have prompted speculation about a lone-wolf perpetrator.
“Whether it’s coincidental or not, I think it merits review and investigation, at least,” Mangino told Fox News Digital. “Collaboration between the different jurisdictions to determine whether or not there is some threat out there to individuals — that may be going on as we speak. We don’t know that, but I think it does merit that kind of scrutiny.”
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Part of that investigation, Mangino said, should include looking for any kind of “patterns” between the respective deaths or crime scenes.
“These different jurisdictions need to get together and compare notes and reports. You can initially see if there are any similarities between these deaths,” Mangino said. “Were these homicides? I mean, we may find that these are natural deaths or … it could be a suicide, it could be accidental. So, the number one issue is: is there enough to determine the cause and manner of death?”
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Sometimes a serial killer may have a process of “staging” bodies or targeting specific victims who share certain physical features or backgrounds.
“It certainly merits investigation and review.”
Brian Higgins, adjunct faculty member at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former chief of police and director of public safety in Bergen County, New Jersey, noted that three of the victims in these seven cases have been identified as women. Police also believe the victim found in Killingly was a woman in her 40s to 60s.
“Well, you have the remains of seven people — that doesn’t mean necessarily all seven are [victims] of a serial killer,” Higgins said. “It could be, later on, you know, two or three victims. But it brought attention to these deaths, and that’s a positive way to look at that.”
The relatives of Michele Romano, the victim found in Rhode Island last month, have said her death was not related to a serial killer in a post on the Facebook page “Justice for Michele Romano.”
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“In light of the recent comments being made, we know that Michele’s passing is in no way related to any type of serial killer,” the family wrote. “We have complete faith in the Rhode Island State Police and our Private Investigator that the person responsible will be brought to justice sooner rather than later!”
Fox News Digital reached out to Rhode Island State Police.
Higgins said while seven discoveries of remains in a geographically close region over two months is “unusual,” “just because they’re discovered in a short amount of time doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re connected in a timeline as far as death.”
While the remains were located over the span of two months, that does not indicate the victims died around the same time. The remains discovered in Massachusetts, for example, were several months old, according to police.
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Higgins and Mangino pointed to social media as both a tool and a hindrance for police looking into these different cases.
“True crime is the hottest thing on television, on podcasts and social media,” Mangino said. “Certainly, there are times when these amateur sleuths can be helpful to law enforcement, but what it does is it creates a lot of…tension. At times it can make things difficult for investigators who are trying to remain open-minded and not create some sort of tunnel vision where, all of a sudden, there’s concern in the community and panic because people believe there’s a serial killer, and they’re calling law enforcement on neighbors because they think they are acting suspicious.”
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Higgins similarly said that social media “is considered in law enforcement as a two-edged sword.”
“In some respect … it could point law enforcement to other similarities or in a direction they wouldn’t normally have gone. Somebody, just one person as part of this group, might raise an issue that will be that one thread that connects us,” Higgins said. “The other side, of course, is it’s fueling all this attention on this, and it may negatively impact the law enforcement officers … because now you’ve almost tainted a witness pool. People have this slant already that this is a serial killer, and these people were all killed by homicide. So it can interfere.”
The New England Serial Killer Facebook group, which has 57,000 members, garnered more than 10,000 new members last week and over the weekend, as MassLive.com first reported.
Searches for “New England serial killer” on Google spiked around April 7, according to data from the search engine.
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