Police May Clear Cut Thick Brush Before Spring Growth to Ease Search


The serial killer who dumped his victim's bodies in the thick brush along several miles of New York's breathtaking beachfront may have dismembered several of them, law enforcement authorities have told ABC News.

The grisly twist was the latest revelation as police continued to uncover the murderous path carved along Long Island beaches by at least one killer.

Investigators have determined that bones found Monday were human, bringing the body count to nine and possibly 10 victims. It's still not clear whether a skull found alone Monday was part of victim number 9 or would be victim number 10.

The bodies were strung out over a 3.5 mile stretch of beach with five of the bodies spaced out about 500 feet apart, police said.

The fatal crash that took the life of a mother and her three children is being ruled a suicide by City of Newburgh investigators.

An unidentified woman drove her vehicle into the Hudson River early Tuesday evening drowning herself and three children. Police have not released the names of the victims but have confirmed there were 2 boys ages 5 and 2 and an 11 month old infant girl.

A fourth child was able to escape the vehicle and made a frantic call for help. He told the Newburgh Fire Department that his mother had driven into the river with 3 of her children. City of Newburgh Police and Fire Departments responded to the call but it was too late.

The vehicle was recovered from the river near the boat launch in Gull Harbor next to Gully's with all 4 occupants still inside.

The names of the victims have not been released as an ongoing investigation into a domestic violence call made shortly before the incident is being followed up.

One Newburgh City Firemen said, "This is the worst call I've been on in 12 years."

Eight months after BP PLC capped the well that spewed 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, dolphins are washing ashore in east Louisiana with oil from that spill on their bodies - most recently two weeks ago, a federal stranding coordinator said Thursday.

Blair Mase, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service, said oil may not have had anything to do with the animals' deaths. The causes have not been determined, she said.

"We're still seeing dolphins wash ashore with evidence of oil," she said. She said 15 dolphins with some oil on them have been found since last April, when the Deepwater Horizon well blew wild, and eight of them bore oil from that well. One of those eight was found two weeks ago, she said in a teleconference Thursday.

Could two of the nails used to crucify Jesus have been discovered in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem?

And could they have mysteriously disappeared for 20 years, only to turn up by chance in a Tel Aviv laboratory?

That is the premise of the new documentary film The Nails of the Cross by veteran investigator Simcha Jacobovici, which even before its release has prompted debate in the Holy Land.

The film follows three years of research during which Jacobovici presents his assertions -- some based on empirical data, others requiring much imagination and a leap of faith.

He hails the find as historic, but most experts and scholars contacted by Reuters dismissed his case as far-fetched, some calling it a publicity stunt.

Many ancient relics, including other nails supposedly traced back to the crucifixion, have been presented over the centuries as having a connection to Jesus. Many were deemed phony, while others were embraced as holy.

Jacobovici, who sparked debate with a previous film that claimed to reveal the lost tomb of Jesus, says this find differs from others because of its historical and archaeological context.

New York - Oil tumbled more than 3 percent Tuesday after Goldman Sachs warned investors that crude is due for a "substantial pullback."

Goldman analyst David Greely noted that global supplies remain "adequate" even though the rebellion in Libya shut down production there. Before fighting broke out in February, Libya exported about 1.5 million barrels per day2 percent of global demand - mostly to Europe.

Fears of tightening global supplies have helped push oil prices 33 percent higher since the middle of February.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery gave up $3.71, or 3.4 percent, to $106.22 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, shedding nearly two weeks of price increases. At one point it dropped to $105.60. In London, Brent crude lost $3.47, or 2.8 percent, at $119.95 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Mark Zuckerberg won a legal battle against former Harvard classmates who accuse him of stealing their idea for Facebook, but the feud made famous on the silver screen is not over yet.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss must accept a cash and stock settlement with Facebook that had been valued at $65 million, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday. Meanwhile, a New York man filed an amended lawsuit against Zuckerberg on Monday, citing a 2003 email in which Zuckerberg discusses an urgent need to launch his site before "a couple of upperclassmen" could launch theirs, an apparent reference to the Winklevoss twins.

The Winklevoss brothers argued their settlement with Facebook was unfair because the company hid information from them during talks. But the twins were sophisticated negotiators aided by a team of lawyers, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.

"At some point, litigation must come to an end," Kozinski wrote. "That point has now been reached."

An attorney for the brothers, Jerome Falk Jr., said on Monday his clients would seek a rehearing before a larger, "en banc" group of 9th Circuit judges.

A man believed to be a suspect in the explosion outside a Santa Monica synagogue has been arrested near Cleveland, authorities said Monday.

A man thought to Ron Hirsch, 60, was taken into custody Monday evening in suburban Cleveland Heights after a concerned citizen who came into contact with him called police, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in Los Angeles.

She said the FBI was working with local authorities to confirm the man's identity and had no immediate details of the arrest.

"It's believed to be him but, just as in any arrest scenario, a formal identification must be made," Eimiller said.

A rabbi in the Cleveland area told ABC News that another rabbi who spotted Hirsch at a Cleveland Heights synagogue called police.

"A fellow in our community spotted him in the schul on Taylor Road in Cleveland Heights," said Rabbi Sruly Wolf. "The rabbi who spotted him called the Cleveland Heights police, who immediately responded and called the FBI."

Investigators believed Hirsch boarded a New York-bound Greyhound bus after Thursday's blast near Chabad House Lubavitch of Santa Monica.

Cops scouring a Long Island beach-turned-graveyard found another set of grisly remains yesterday -- a human skull and torso that were at least a mile apart and might belong to the same body.

"It could be number nine, or it could be number 10, we don't know yet," a source told The Post, in regard to the increasing body count, which could be the work of a serial killer.

A State Police officer with a cadaver dog found the torso at 11:30 a.m. in Nassau County, five to six miles west of where eight other decomposed bodies have been found in Suffolk County since December, said State Police Capt. James Dewar.

Four hours later, a Nassau cop found bones in the JFK Bird and Wildlife Sanctuary at least a mile east of the torso.

"It appears to be a skull," Nassau Detective Lt. Kevin Smith said of the second find. "It's all been very startling. We have a lot of work to do."

The bones were taken to the Nassau County Medical Examiner's Office.

The latest grim discoveries came as roughly 125 Nassau and state cops teamed up to widen the search for missing New Jersey call girl Shannan Gilbert, 24, last seen screaming for help as she ran from the gated community at Oak Beach after meeting a john for sex.

An explosion believed to have been caused by a bomb ripped through a subway station next to the office of Belarus' authoritarian president Monday evening, killing at least 11 people, wounding more than 100 and worsening an already tense political situation there.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, in Minsk, the Belarus capital, but witnesses described being hit by a wave of shrapnel that they said was contained in a bomb. Several victims' limbs were torn off by the blast's force, paramedics said.

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko indicated that he believed that the explosion was terrorism. Prosecutors said an inquiry was focusing on a bomb. The station, in Minsk's center, is very close to major government offices, including Mr. Lukashenko's, as well as to his official residence.

Investigators and witnesses said the blast occurred on a platform just as passengers were leaving a train in the Oktyabrskaya station about 6 p.m., at the height of the evening rush. Witnesses reported that just after the explosion, smoke poured from the station's exits, as bodies were carried out on stretchers.

While Muslim separatists from southern Russia have carried out suicide bombings in Moscow's subway system, including one last year, they have never done so in Minsk. Belarus, a former Soviet republic with a population of 10 million, does not have a Muslim insurgency, and Mr. Lukashenko, who has tightly controlled the country since 1994, has portrayed himself as a stabilizing force.

But Belarus has faced political turmoil since Mr. Lukashenko's re-election in December, which rivals denounced as rigged. When opposition parties conducted a major protest on election night, the security services -- still called the KGB in Belarus -- responded with a far-reaching crackdown, sending riot police to break it up violently and arresting hundreds of people. Several presidential candidates were detained for weeks.

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers - those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential - and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the "Texas Miracle," is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.