The hurdles police face in solving the Kensington strangulations are also the factors that make prostitutes such inviting and frequent targets for serial killers, experts say.
"The reason they're easy targets . . . is because they're a hard-to-reach population. Homeless, the same kind of thing," said Jon Shane, a retired Newark, N.J., police captain and an associate professor of criminal justice at John Jay College. "They're essentially underground."
Often, he said, people in those circumstances have no employment, no driver's licenses, nothing to tether them to "normal society."
If they're known among their peers, it's usually by a street moniker, and the relationships are superficial.
"No one is looking for them," Shane said, "and they're not looking for anyone."
Rocks, who is not involved with the Kensington cases, investigated the so-called Frankford slasher, who killed as many as nine women in that neighborhood, just north of Kensington, in the late 1980s.
A suspect was identified, but he died before any charges could be brought.
"It seems like we get these every so often," Rocks said of the deaths of prostitutes.
The most famous recent cases were the strangulations of four Atlantic City prostitutes whose bodies were found dumped in a marshy area outside town in 2006. That case remains unsolved.
This week, police in New York were investigating the discovery of four women's bodies along the southern shore of Long Island.
The first Kensington victim - 21-year-old Elaine Goldberg - was found strangled on Nov. 3 in a lot on Ruth Street. On Nov. 13, 35-year-old Nicole Piacentini was discovered blocks away at an abandoned building.
