In the fall of 2006, the dark streets of Atlantic City away from the glitzy casinos turned into a hunting ground for a serial killer the media nicknamed the “Eastbound Strangler.”
On November 20, 2006, two women walking behind a motel spotted the body of Kim Raffo in a drainage ditch near Atlantic City’s border. Hours later, law enforcement found three more female victims in the same ditch: Barbara Breidor, Molly Dilts and Tracy Ann Roberts.
Authorities determined that over the span of five weeks, the four deceased women had been dumped by their murderer, one by one, alongside Black Horse Pike in nearby Egg Harbor Townshop.
The victims were sex workers who likely met the serial killer in Atlantic City’s red-light district, says John Kelly, founder of S.T.A.L.K. (System To Apprehend Lethal Killers), a New Jersey-based criminal profiling firm. Kelly’s organization assisted law enforcement agencies in Atlantic City and Egg Harborduring the early stages of the investigation, he tells A&E True Crime.
Police officials believe whoever murdered Raffo, Breidor, Dilts and Roberts lured them away from Atlantic City to Egg Harbor, where they were killed and disposed of, Kelly says. Autopsies showed that two of the women died from asphyxiation. But the amount of time the bodies of the four women remained undiscovered hindered the homicide investigation, Kelly says. Medical examiners were unable to determine a cause of death for Dilts and Breidor because their bodies were so decomposed. They had been dead the longest.
Roberts had been asphyxiated, possibly by strangulation or other means. Detectives were only able to confirm that Raffo, who is believed to be the last victim to die, was strangled.
All four women were fully clothed except for their feet. They had been placed about 320 feet apart in the water, Kelly says.
“The killer positioned his victims with their arms stretched out and their heads pointed east, toward Atlantic City,” Kelly says. “That’s why some people call it the ‘Eastbound Strangler’ case. He anchored the bodies to the side of a ditch using their feet. He tried his best for as long as he could to keep them from being seen.”
The dumping location had another benefit for the serial killer. “[He] really covered his tracks by putting [the bodies] in the canal,” Kelly says. “They eventually would have been found, but they were in the water long enough for very little evidence to be collected.”
The Eastbound Strangler case remains cold. For nearly two decades, police probes into a small list of persons of interest fizzled. Investigators have not received any concrete leads despite S.T.A.L.K. offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the killer, Kelly says.
Police officials in Atlantic City and Egg Harbor would not agree to interviews about the Eastbound Strangler case without permission from Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds. In an email to A&E True Crime, Reynolds declined, noting his office wasn’t currently doing any interviews on the case.
Victims of Atlantic City’s Sex Worker Scene
Driven by drug addiction, the four victims were fixtures in Atlantic City’s sex worker community.
Breidor had been a casino cocktail waitress and helped manage her mom’s clothing store, The Star-Ledger reported.
Roberts had sought help for her addiction from her mother and then changed her mind days before she was killed. Raffo also struggled with drug addiction in the early 2000s. After briefly sobering up and reuniting with her husband in New York, Raffo had returned to Atlantic City in the fall of 2006.
Dilts, the fourth victim identified by police, had moved to Atlantic City from Black Lick, Pennsylvania, six weeks before her murder. Dilts had never been arrested for prostitution, but was doing sex work and knew one of the other victims, Breidor, the New York Times reported.
Weeks after the bodies were discovered, investigative journalist and Atlantic City native M. William Phelps spent days talking to sex workers who knew the victims. He later wrote a book about the unsolved murders titled “The Eastbound Strangler.”
“None of [the area’s sex workers] seemed too afraid that a serial killer was on the loose and might pick them up,” Phelps tells A&E True Crime. “A majority of serial killers focus on sex workers because they are easy to approach and easy to get inside a vehicle. And if they go missing, they are not reported right away, if ever at all.”
No Clear-Cut Suspect
Investigators followed up on tips about possible suspects who were with some of the victims prior to their deaths. They also looked into the possibility that the Eastbound Strangler case was connected to another serial killer, Kelly says.
Between 2007 and 2010, four women were murdered in Long Island. Their bodies were disposed of in desolate areas along Long Island’s Gilgo Beach. The unidentified killer in those cases was dubbed the Long Island Serial Killer or the Gilgo Beach Killer.
In July 2023, homicide detectives arrested and charged former New York architect Rex Heuermann with four of the Gilgo Beach murders after linking him to the victims through DNA evidence. However, New York law enforcement authorities and Reynolds, the Atlantic County Prosecutor, could never link Heuermann to the Eastbound Strangler case.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is currently awaiting trial.
In a media statement over the summer, Reynolds said investigators from Atlantic City met with their New York counterparts to “compare timelines, dates, methodologies, etc. of both cases” and “there does not seem to be a connection.”
“All the initial suspects have been ruled out,” Kelly says. “We believe it had to be someone who knew Atlantic City. The Gilgo Beach Killer would have needed to travel more than 150 miles from Long Island to Atlantic City.”
Phelps believes the Eastbound Strangler case is solvable if police officials would go back and conduct new interviews with the sex workers he met after the four victims were discovered, he says. He theorizes the suspect may be someone who was trafficking the victims.
“What you have is a group of women murdered because their killer no longer has any use for them,” Phelps speculates. “Who would that be? The person who oversees them. Generally speaking, that is the most logical answer.”
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