'Angels' of a devil: Women slain in Atlantic City, Long Island show up on Facebook

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THE WOMEN will always be linked by their macabre deaths, their hard lives leading them to society's fringe, where a killer or killers waited.

But the eight identified online call girls and prostitutes whose bodies were found in Atlantic City and Long Island - their murders remain unsolved - share another bizarre connection: They have all been reborn on Facebook.

"I didn't know you but I feel a strong connection to you. You are an Angel," someone posing as Kim Raffo recently posted on a Facebook memorial page.

Raffo's body was found Nov. 20, 2006, along with three other slain women in a marshy area behind the Golden Key Motel, on the Black Horse Pike just outside Atlantic City. The Facebook profile created for her is sparse, with no picture and little personal information. She does, however, have three friends: the other prostitutes murdered near Atlantic City.

Raffo's husband, Hugh Auslander, said that he recently became aware of the fake profiles and talked with police about them.

"Everybody's all creeped out by this," Auslander said yesterday.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office declined to comment about the profiles. Police in Suffolk County on Long Island did not return numerous requests for comment. Messages sent to the Facebook profiles were not returned.

Authorities last week discounted links between the two high-profile investigations, but in someone's twisted mind, the killing sprees have become intimately related. Facebook pages have been created for all eight women, along with missing New Jersey native Shannan Gilbert.

The strangest connections are among the Atlantic City victims. All four profiles are "friends" with one another on Facebook. One of them, Molly Jean Dilts, is also friends with Amber Lynn Costello, a Long Island call girl who was found in a shallow grave on Gilgo Beach in December. The Costello profile's only friends are Dilts and a profile named "Jane Doee."

In total, 10 bodies have been discovered in shallow graves on Long Island in recent months, but only four have been identified. Gilbert, an online call girl from Jersey City, was last reported seen alive on Long Island in May.

The four Atlantic City Facebook profiles' lone communication came via comments on a memorial page dedicated to another high-profile murder victim with local ties: Anne Marie Fahey. Wilmington lawyer Thomas Capano murdered Fahey, his former lover, in 1996 and dumped her body off the coast of New Jersey. The profiles for the Atlantic City women left several messages on a Fahey memorial page, calling her an "angel."

"We are all angels," the Tracy Roberts profile posted on Jan. 29. The Molly Jean Dilts profile then made the suggestion that "we were all killed by the Capano's."

"We are still waiting for justice. We were found in November 2006 in Mays Landing, NJ," the posting read.

Immediately beneath Dilts' comment, a blank Facebook profile with the name "Colleen Marie" said the following:

"They should also be looking at them in connection with 4 . . . girls found in Babylon NY. If something happens to me it is because I knew what they did back then and I know what did to you girls. I think I'm next."

Last week, after speculation that the same killer was responsible for the women found slain near Atlantic City and on Long Island, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer discounted the connections at a news conference.

Former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole also believes there are two killers at work. She sees the Atlantic City killer as a man with poor interpersonal and verbal skills who preyed on women desperate for money. The Long Island killer could be more sophisticated, she said, someone who uses Craigslist to lure women and who goes to great lengths to hide their remains.

"This guy doesn't want to get caught," she said of the Long Island killer.

Not everyone sees the murders as the work of two killers. In Atlantic County, one source familiar with the investigation thinks that one killer could have murdered all eight women - and may be getting better with every kill.

The first murder victim in Atlantic City, Molly Jean Dilts, was the newest to the area, but Raffo, the last victim, was a veteran, the source said.

"You could see the progression. You could see him getting more confident," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The killer, the source suggested, may have left the area after the bodies were discovered behind the Golden Key Motel in 2006 and settled near Long Island. Prostitutes there began disappearing in 2007.

"The similarities are glaring. I still can't conceive you have two serial killers committing the same murders in so close an area," the source said. "It has to be the same person. He's just getting better."

As for the fake Facebook profiles, O'Toole thinks they could just be a misguided person with bad judgment, someone fascinated with murder cases. She doesn't think it's the murderer, though.

"Quite honestly, they could care less about their victims. They do not talk about the victims as angels," O'Toole said. "They have a stunning lack of empathy."

The woman who created the Anne Marie Fahey Memorial Facebook page claims she's from Australia and told the Daily News that she didn't create the fake Facebook profiles for the dead prostitutes or know who did. Friends and family members of other victims were unaware of the profiles when asked by the Daily News.

Auslander, who said that he and Raffo had stayed on Long Island before she was murdered, said that police asked him if he was behind the fake Facebook profiles.

"I wouldn't be calling police if I created them," he said.

Dilts' father, Vern, raises Molly Jean's son in western Pennsylvania and said that he doesn't keep track of the case like Auslander or get on computers too often. He did say that his daughter had a boyfriend in New York.

"I guess somehow it could all be connected," he said. "No one ever tells us anything, though. We're all in the dark."

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