Newsmaker

Selling sex a deadly game in N.J. city

(AP)
Updated: 2006-12-04 09:51

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - Selling sex on the streets of this gambling capital is a dangerous pursuit: Streetwalkers have been strangled, smothered, slashed and set ablaze.

This photo provided by the Atlantic County, N.J. Prosecutor's Office shows Molly Jean Dilts, 20, of Blairsville, Pa., about 42 miles east of Pittsburgh, in an undated photo released Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. Dilts' body was found along with those of three other women in a ditch behind a strip of seedy motels in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., on Monday, Nov. 20, 2006. Authorities have made no arrests in the case that has terrified many in this gambling community and left some people wondering whether the deaths are the work of a serial killer. [AP]

So far this year, six prostitutes are believed to have been killed in or near Atlantic City, a seventh survived after her throat was slashed. Countless others are believed to have been assaulted but chose not to report the crimes to police.

The latest worry for those who make their living in the sex trade is that a serial killer was to blame for the deaths of the four women, ranging in age from 20 to 42, whose bodies were found face-down in a ditch last month behind a string of seedy motels just outside the city.

"It's dangerous, but all you're focused on is that next dollar," said a prostitute known on the streets as Spazz, who is now looking for a gun or a knife to protect herself. "It kind of clouds your judgment. You're not focused on the situation you're getting into. That's the scariest part about it."

Authorities do not believe the four bodies found Nov. 20 just off the Black Horse Pike in neighboring Egg Harbor Township are related to the attacks on three prostitutes earlier this year along Georgia Avenue in Atlantic City. In each of the three earlier attacks, the prostitutes' throats were slashed; one survived.

Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz said the Atlantic City cases were sufficiently different from the Egg Harbor deaths to make authorities believe they were carried out by different attackers. He also resists speculation that the four ditch bodies were the work of a serial killer, noting that autopsies could not determine the cause of death for two of the women. No arrests have been made in any of this year's attacks in and near Atlantic City.