Police use DNA to connect strangling victims

BY MIDWEEK, when DNA results from a third Kensington strangulation victim come back, police expect to know if Philadelphia has a serial killer on its streets. For now, cops and experts say they see disturbing similarities in three recent strangulations and three other chokings.

The FBI defines serial murder as "the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events," and federal law defines serial killing as "a series of three or more killings . . . having common characteristics," according to the FBI's website.

Police have linked the strangulations of Elaine Goldberg on Nov. 3 and Nicole Piacentini on Nov. 13 to the same perpetrator through DNA evidence. Authorities are awaiting DNA results from Casey Mahoney, 27, of East Stroudsburg, Pa., who was found strangled Wednesday.

All three bodies were found partially clothed and sexually assaulted in abandoned Kensington lots. Piacentini and Mahoney were positioned facedown, police said.

"Obviously, we have two," Lt. Ray Evers, police spokesman, said yesterday. "If the third victim's DNA matches, and everything is leading to that because everything else is matching - the motive, victim, posing, how it's done - then by pure definition we have an issue on our hands."

Three other women since early October claim to have survived being assaulted and choked into unconsciousness in Kensington.

James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University and author of six books on murder, including his most recent, Extreme Killing, said serial killing tends to be about power, control and sexual domination. The act of murder, for a serial killer, is intimate, he said.

Fox said the so-called Kensington Strangler fits the profile of a serial killer, partly because it's more typical for a serial killer to carry out the crime with his own hands than with a gun.

"Guns are not very common because guns distance them from their victim," Fox told the Daily News yesterday. "If the purpose is to eliminate, then a gun is the best means, but if the purpose is to feel the victim's last breath leave their throat, then it's critical you have contact."

Strangulation was the method used by Philadelphia serial killer Harrison "Marty" Graham, who was convicted in 1988 of strangling seven women and hiding their bodies in his North Philly apartment. Graham is serving a life sentence at a state prison in Coal Township, Northumberland County.