|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Police Probing Possible MS-13 Involvement in Gruesome Finds of Body Parts in LI Park
By: Ellen Cans
Another disconcerting discovery was made in the Long Island park where kids had spotted other body parts last week.
As reported by the NY Post, police found two severed heads in Suffolk County’s Southards Park in Babylon, just hours after other body parts were found nearby. Police are currently probing whether the notorious MS-13 gang is responsible for the gruesome finds, sources said on Friday.
One of the heads, as well as a right arm and leg, found at the park are believed to belong to the same female victim, while the other head and two arms appear to be from a second male victim, per the Post. The man’s left arm had its fingertips severed, which “could mean the victim has a record and [that the perpetrators] don’t want him identified [through prints] because [that] could lead investigators to his killer,’’ a police source said.
“These were brutal, vicious murders. MS 13 has been known to hack up bodies with machetes,” the source said, explaining why the police are trying to link the finds to the ruthless Central American-based gang. “The bodies were also found near where the gang has committed other crimes,” the source added. “The medical examiner will determine how and what they were cut up with.”
Per the Post, the first part of the probe will be to identify the bodies, because this will help figure out more about the crimes, sources said. The male victim’s arm had a large tattoo and police are hoping this can help identify him, being that many law-enforcement agencies keep records of suspects’ tattoos.
Police first were called to the park on Thursday, after a girl walking to school with a group of friends along Siegal Boulevard on the east side of the park at roughly 8:40 a.m had found the first body part, police sources said. She saw the man’s dismembered left arm in the bushes and had called her father. The dad had alerted the police, and authorities began searching the area. In the ensuing search, a police dog first spotted the right arm belonging to the woman “about 20 feet further into the woods from where the left arm [was found], almost in a direct line,” Suffolk County Detective Lt. Kevin Beyrer told reporters on Thursday evening.
None of the body parts seem to have been inside the park for long, police officials said Friday. “Preliminarily, it appears it’s a matter of a small amount of days, if not hours,” Beyrer said. Police said the search of the park is complete.
MS-13 was an immediate suspect for two reasons—first it has its stronghold on Long Island, and second it is infamous for savage slayings and dismemberments.
Per the Post, in May 2023, one of the MS-13 gang members had pleaded guilty to slicing and stabbing a rival gang member with knives and then dismembering the unfortunate corpse with a machete in a park in Greenlawn, also in Suffolk. A few years prior, a 22-year-old suspected snitch was reportedly hacked to death and similarly dismembered by the gang using a machete, with the body parts being found in Uniondale in Nassau County, LI.
