D.C. Investigates 20 Deaths Since 1985

Since 1985, the bodies of at least 20 women--primarily prostitutes, transients and drug addicts--have been found nude or partly clothed in schoolyards and woods throughout the District of Columbia. None of the cases has been closed with an arrest.

Now police have assembled a team of detectives to determine if the slayings are the work of a single killer. They are preparing to turn over forensic evidence to the FBI in hopes that science labs can turn up something concrete from the string of deaths.

“We don’t know how all of them died, who all of them were, if [the deaths] are all connected somehow,” said an investigator on the case. “We don’t even know if all of them were murdered. But there were too many similarities to not look at them together.”

Police refused to release many details of the cases--including the identities of all the victims--citing the pending investigation. But detectives said the probe was launched almost on a fluke, after homicide Capt. William Hennessy overheard detectives swapping grisly stories in a squad room.

“We were talking about the bodies that were popping up in the woods and behind the schools,” one investigator said.

In the past decade the bodies of at least 20 women have been found.