Police: Skeletal remains found in Manorville woods believed to be human

(Updated: 9:23 am) Skeletal remains believed to be human have been found in a remote wooded location in Manorville.

A male jogger running with his dog made the discovery off North Street, west of Wading River Road Friday evening and called Suffolk County Police at about 6:30 p.m., according to a police spokeswoman.

The remains were covered by debris, and judging by the growth of vegetation around the remains police estimate they have been there at least five years, according to the spokeswoman. An anthropologist has been called in to help evaluate the scene, she said. Police believe the remains to be human, she said.

Police secured the area overnight. Homicide detectives and the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office are investigating this morning. Police will then determine whether any additional searching is necessary.

Human bodies and body parts have been found wooded areas not far from the scene being investigated today.

The dismembered bodies of two women were found near Halsey-Manor Road in Manorville in 2000 and 2003.

One of the women was identified through DNA as Jessica Taylor, 20, whose torso, without at head, hands and forearm, was found near the LIE in Manorville on July 26, 2003. The other woman remains unidentified. Some of Taylor’s body parts were found by police search teams along Ocean Parkway in Babylon on March 29, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota. On April 4 in the same area, police found the head, right foot and hands from the unidentified female victim, known as Jane Doe No. 6, whose torso was found in Manorville in November 2000.

The women’s body parts were discovered last year as police investigated the Gilgo Beach crime scene, where the remains of eight women, a man and a female toddler have been found along a 2.6-mile stretch of oceanfront beach straddling the Nassau-Suffolk border.

Of those women, the five who have been identified worked as prostitutes, police said.

Police first discovered the remains in the Gilgo Beach area in December 2010, as they searched for another prostitute who had disappeared in May 2010. Police said Sahnnon Gilbert, 24, of Jersey City, was last in Oak Beach.

Two unidentified male bodies were also found in the woods near Halsey-Manor Road in 2000 and 2003, but police don’t know if there was any connection between those deaths and the two women.

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