ATLANTIC CITY - Denise Hill can't shake her memory of River Man.

The acknowledged prostitute, who lives and works in this seaside gambling resort, was entertaining a client - a shoe fetishist - in November 2006 when the man blurted out a confession.

He had killed people, he told Hill as the two partied on crack. He had killed women.

Hill's john called himself "River Man," an apparent reference to a similarly named Seattle-area killer who strangled dozens of women - mostly prostitutes - in the 1980s and '90s and is now serving a life sentence.

The next day, during Thanksgiving week, the bodies of four "working girls" were found barefoot in a shallow ravine behind the Golden Key Motel, on the Black Horse Pike in the West Atlantic City section of Egg Harbor Township - a strip notorious for prostitution and drugs.

As the details of the crime scene emerged, all Hill could think of was River Man.

Three years after the Nov. 20, 2006, discovery, the killings of Kim Raffo, Molly Jean Dilts, Barbara Breidor, and Tracy Ann Roberts remain unsolved.

Atlantic County Prosecutor Theodore F.L. Housel said last year that investigators had spent 175,000 hours attempting to solve the crimes. This year, he has said little except to confirm that the case is active and that he recently assigned additional investigators, an update he provided in a written statement.

The lack of information concerns many, including Hill, who feels that authorities never seriously considered her tip about River Man.

The victims "seem to be forgotten," said Bill Southrey, president of the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, where two of the women sought help. "Collectively, I think society doesn't really give a hoot."

After the deaths, Southrey recalled last week, "people were fearful, for sure."

At first, it appeared there had been only one killing. Two women were walking a trash-strewn dirt path when they spotted Raffo, 35. But when investigators traversed the swampy area, adjacent to the Atlantic City Expressway, they found Dilts, 20, Breidor, 42, and Roberts, 23.

Raffo and Roberts had been strangled, authorities said. The other bodies were too decomposed for a cause of death to be determined.

The victims were dressed, except for their shoes. Each was positioned with her head pointing toward the Atlantic City skyline, two miles east. All but one had a high concentration of drugs in their systems, autopsies showed.

Though it appears the slayings were carried out by a serial killer, the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office said last year that it had not ruled out the possibility of multiple suspects.

The deaths saddened homeless advocates, who said the women had been struggling to turn their lives around.

Raffo, a New York native and former PTA mom with two children, had become a hooker to feed her drug habit, relatives said. Breidor, who attended Pennsylvania State University with aspirations of a law career, had a 9-year-old daughter. Both visited the rescue mission, said Debbi Giacomoni, its director of women's ministries.

Raffo was "really seeking help and change," recalled Giacomoni, who said that the two stood out because they referred to their families and others who loved them. "It was just so tragic that something like that would happen at that moment."

Sister Jean Webster runs the soup kitchen at Victory Presbyterian Deliverance Church, where the women ate.

"They were nice girls, very respectful, regardless of what they did," Webster said.