Y'all, please forgive me for not posting a link earlier. I am now at a computer where I have the ability to do so. Good to know that my memory still works well and I will continue to employ the method of deliberate memorization. I could take notes but when the hard drive crashes, the notes go "poof"! At least, the notes remain in the hard drive of my mind until I die...or get Alzheimer's.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sicko_call_from_slay_gal_cell_5COah6gj6Xkk2gT4KgekcI
When a call came in from her sibling's cellphone days after she went missing, Amanda Barthelemy didn't know what to think.
"Is this Melissa's little sister?" a man asked.
"Yes," replied the 16-year-old girl.
"Do you know what your sister is doing?" he said. "She's a *advertiser censored*."
The call, police believe, was made by a sadistic serial killer who abducted and strangled Melissa Barthelemy, an aspiring hair stylist, sometime after she left her Bronx apartment on July 10, 2009.
But not before extracting a secret from the 24-year-old victim, who moved to New York from Buffalo in 2007.
Melissa had not told her mother she was turning tricks to pay her bills, though she'd been booking clients on Craigslist and meeting johns for sex for more than a year.
She lied and said she was an exotic dancer. Only Amanda got the truth.
"No one else knew," said their mom, Lynn Barthelemy.
It was the first real clue about the twisted psyche of a predator who stalked and choked to death at least eight prostitutes in the last five years, and possibly murdered four others.
That's the body count after cops this week linked the murder of Melissa Barthelemy and three other prostitutes found near Gilgo Beach in Suffolk County in December to four dead sex workers left in a ditch near Atlantic City in 2006, sources told The Post. All died from strangulation, their corpses stashed before being dumped.
"It's the same guy," said one law-enforcement source.
A third cluster of four bodies discovered a few miles from Gilgo Beach last week has fueled speculation that a Long Island serial killer used the sandy south shore as his burial ground.
There are conflicting reports about a possible suspect. Suffolk officials said they don't have one, but a police source familiar with the investigation said cops are focusing on a man who lives in the county. They've been watching him for days, the source said.
And they're re-examining every bit of evidence in the cases, including that first call to Amanda, which was followed by a half-dozen more during the next six weeks.
The killer always phoned in the evenings, spoke briefly and in a low voice -- and only to Amanda. He calmly spewed taunts and allegations. He sent text messages.
"He wouldn't talk to anybody but her," said Lynn Barthelemy, who documented the barrage in a journal she gave police. "One time I answered, and he hung up as soon as he heard my voice."
Cops began to triangulate the phone, pinpointing the caller's location to Times Square, Madison Square Garden and Massapequa, a short drive from Gilgo Beach. They showed Melissa's picture around at strip clubs. Did her murderer work in Midtown and commute from Long Island?
