Strike 3: DNA confirms another Kensington Strangler attack

THE FIEND WHOM much of the city calls the Kensington Strangler can now be known by another name: serial killer.

Police officials announced last night that DNA evidence has definitively linked the strangler to the murders and sexual assaults of three women, all of whom have been found partially nude in desolate Kensington lots in the past month.

Earlier in the day, many of those same officials announced a $37,000 reward for information that leads to the capture and conviction of the cold-blooded killer, whose specter continues to haunt much of the area.

Homicide Capt. James Clark said detectives had just learned that DNA evidence found on Casey Mahoney, 27, whose body was found facedown last Wednesday in a wooded lot at Front and Tusculum streets, matched genetic material found on the two other murder victims.

"As a result of this being the third murder in a short period of time in the same area with the same type of victims," Clark said, "we do at this time consider this to be a serial murderer."

The news came as little surprise to anyone who has been following the ever-worsening story of the Strangler, who is also a suspect in three attacks on women who were choked and sexually assaulted in Kensington since October.

Two of those victims helped police create a composite sketch of their attacker.

Investigators also found surveillance footage that shows the man who choked and beat a woman in an alley on Dec. 6; the man in the video appears to closely resemble the sketch.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey acknowledged that there could be other Strangler victims hidden in weeded lots or abandoned houses that police don't know about yet.

A task force of investigators from several units has been "doing everything they can to bring this predator to justice," Clark said.

But despite it all - the surveillance footage, the sketches, the intense focus on anything suspicious that happens on Kensington Avenue - they've had nothing to show for it.

With that in mind, Ramsey, Mayor Nutter and other brass gathered earlier in the day at Cumberland and Jasper streets - where the strangler's second victim, Nicole Piacentini, was found on Nov. 13 - to announce a dramatic increase in the reward, from $3,000 to $37,000.

John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5, said $7,000 of that money - $5,000 from the FOP and $2,000 from Councilman Frank DiCicco - would be paid just for the suspect's arrest.

"If the DNA matches, you can be paid by Christmas," he said.