Manorville John Doe #3

Murder Inc. Exclusive: Manorville John Doe #3 was found bound around the head with duct tape like the Gilgo 4

On February 17, 2012 Matt Samuel was walking his dog Molly in the woods in Manorville and noticed a skull sticking out from under the leaves and detritus. Upon closer inspection, he discovered the skeletal remains of a human wrapped in a bed sheet, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag and bound with duct tape. The remains were eventually determined to belong to a male. A pair of white and green tube socks were discovered along with a pair of Eddie Bauer XL underwear. His estimated age range was 30-50 years old. The man had “Spondylolysis of 5th lumbar vertebral body” and a “healed fracture of the right fibula (lower extremity)”. According to the Suffolk County Police Department, the victim died of “homicidal violence”. This is the same cause of death given by police for the Long Island Serial Killer victims known as the Gilgo 4.

The man who made the discovery told Murder Inc. he believed the remains to have been there for about a decade. He also stated the skeletal remains were definitely wrapped in a bed sheet and bound with duct tape. Murder Inc. obtained a photo from the man who found the remains that appears to show duct tape wrapped around the lower part of the victim’s head. The Long Island Serial Killer victims Megan Waterman and Amber Costello found on Ocean Parkway in 2010 were also bound around the head with duct tape and wrapped in fabric (camouflage burlap).

This male was the third unidentified male found in the Long Island Serial Killer’s Manorville cluster site since 2000 when Valerie Mack’s torso was discovered by hunters in the woods near Halsey Manor Road on November 19, 2000. Her head, hands and right foot had been removed. She was bound and inside of a plastic garbage bag placed inside of other bags.

Four days later, on November 23, 2000, the body of a male was found by hunters in the Manorville woods off the Long Island Expressway approximately five miles west of Mack’s torso. The victim had been strangled and was found in his underwear. At the time, the Suffolk County Police Department stated outright that they were not investigating a connection between the cases. A 2002 article in the New Island Ear titled Jane and John Doe of Suffolk County reported “Fitzpatrick and the homicide department are not considering the possibility of a connection between the cases, including the chance of a serial killer roaming the South Shore.”

On July 26, 2003 the bound torso of Jessica Taylor, whose head and hands had been removed, was discovered on Halsey Manor Road in Manorville near where Valerie Mack’s torso had been found three years earlier. At the time, Suffolk County Police Department Homicide Detective Jack Fitzpatrick stated “the similarities are that these are two women with their hands and heads cut off who were dumped in the same geographic area. But that’s where the similarities end, and there are a lot of differences. I need to see something more before I can say it’s a serial killer.”

In July 2023, Mary Murphy reported for the first time in a story for PIX11 News that both Mack and Taylor were also bound in the same manner. Detective Lieutenant Fitzpatrick stated on record that Suffolk County Police Department detectives had looked into a possible connection to the torso of Peaches discovered at Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997 and ruled it out. Both Mack and Taylor’s body parts were later recovered 40 miles away from Manorville at the Long Island Serial Killer’s second known cluster dump site on Ocean Parkway, along with the skull of Karen Vergata (whose identity was exclusively revealed on Murder Inc. for the first time), the partial extremities of Peaches, Peaches’ child, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello and a male victim found wearing a dress known as “Asian Male”.

Three and a half months after Jessica Taylor’s murder, in November 2003, a mushroom hunter discovered human remains partially covered by leaves and brush in the woods of Manorville near the Long Island Expressway not far from where Mack and Taylor had been found. The mushroom hunter was initially afraid to tell police about the gruesome discovery. He went home without alerting anyone, but had recurring nightmares and approximately ten days later led police to the site. The remains were determined to belong to a male, who was estimated to have been killed 1 to 4 months prior, possibly placing his time of death around the same time as Jessica Taylor’s. He was described as a white or Hispanic male with brown hair, 5’6 tall and with a likely age of 33 to 55.

In 2020 Murder Inc. discovered and exclusively reported that the victim had been identified and the Suffolk County Police Department is keeping it a secret from the public. Inquiring from a reporter led SCPD to publicly admit they’d been secretly withholding the victim’s identity since 2015. The Suffolk County Police Department has refused to release Manorville John Doe #2’s identity to this day. Murder Inc. and attorney John Ray filed numerous Freedom of Information Law requests to obtain documents identifying the victim, which are not exempt from disclosure under the New York Freedom of Information Law. The Suffolk County Police Department illegally refused to comply with all of the Freedom of Information Law requests, thereby committing multiple civil rights violations.

After Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack’s body parts were discovered on Ocean Parkway in 2011, the Manorville male victims were never brought up in relation to the Long Island Serial Killer by the Suffolk County Police Department. Their hesitancy to acknowledge the Manorville male victims and their connection to the LISK case may be motivated by a fear that a serial killer with an even higher victim than the ten or 11 found on Ocean Parkway could potentially raise questions about the Suffolk County Police Department’s competency.

Manorville John Doe #3 was found in February 2012, one year after the Manorville Butcher victims Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack had been linked to the LISK murders on Ocean Parkway. But Suffolk County Police Department detective Jack Fitzpatrick stated on the record to Newsday “nothing at all indicates a connection to Gilgo”, despite the fact that the victim had been found near Mack and Taylor, was bound around the head with duct tape just like the Gilgo 4 victims on Ocean Parkway and was found wrapped in fabric and plastic garbage bags similarly to LISK victims.

The fact that Manorville John Doe #1 was found only four days after Valerie Mack in the same desolate wooded area strongly indicates their murders are connected. Because the male was strangled and in his underwear, it’s very likely there was a sexual nature to the homicide. The Suffolk County Police Department secretly withholding and then illegally refusing to release documents identifying Manorville John Doe #2 is also extremely suspicious and indicative of the fact that SCPD does not want the information about the male victims released to the public.

The similarities in the way Manorville John Doe #3 was bound with duct tape around the face, wrapped in fabric and plastic and found in the Long Island Serial Killer’s Manorville cluster dump site where Mack and Taylor and the two other Manorville John Does were discovered are extremely strong indicators of a connection to the Long Island Serial Killer. The fact that the victims have also apparently been extremely difficult for law enforcement to identify also shares a similarity with the victims targeted by LISK.

Extremely significant is the fact that the ten bodies found along Ocean Parkway were left in a cluster and the five victim found in Manorville were clustered in the same stretch of woods around the Long Island Expressway. Most important and revealing of all is that an unidentified male victim was found in 2011 at the LISK dump site along Ocean Parkway. This tells us that the Long Island Serial Killer murders male and female victims. All of these factors make it extremely unlikely that the three males found in Manorville are not linked to the Long Island Serial Killer.
A map of the Long Island Serial Killer’s Manorville cluster dump site including the locations of the bodies of Valerie Mack, Manorville John Doe #1, Jessica Taylor, Manorville John Doe #2 and Manorville John Doe #3. The victims were all dumped along a six mile stretch of the Manorville woods

November 19 2000 Valerie Mack Murder Manorville, NY

November 23 2000 Manorville John Doe #1 Murder Manorville, NY

The first Manorville John Doe was found strangled in the Manorville woods only four days after Valerie Mack and four miles west

2002 New Island Ear Article “Jane and John Doe of Suffolk County”

July 26 2003 Jessica Taylor Murder Manorville, NY








Jessica Taylor’s torso was discovered on Halsey Manor Road just south of where Mack was found in 2000

Manorville John Doe #2 Murder Manorville, NY




The second Manorville John Doe (identity withheld for 8 years by the Suffolk County Police Department) was discovered less than two miles east of Jessica Taylor

February 17 2012 Manorville John Doe #3 Murder Manorville, NY

Skeletal remains were found in Manorville Feb. 17, on North Street off Wading River Road near Cushman Murphy County Park. A man and his dog found those remains on woodland that’s part of the Upton Ecological and Research Reserve, a protected pine barrens overseen by Brookhaven National Laboratory. The bones were found 300 feet from North Street on the 530-acre tract, which is north of the Long Island Expressway, police said. They are believed to have been left at the scene at least five years ago, based on vegetation in the area.

Skeletal remains believed to be from a human were discovered by a man walking with his dog in Manorville Friday evening, Suffolk Police said.

The remains were found at about 3:30 p.m. in a wooded area off about 100 feet north of North Road, less than a mile west of Wading River Road. The site was not far from where the dismembered bodies of two women were found in 2000 and 2003.

The newly discovered remains, of which age and gender have not been determined, were surrounded by debris and vegetation, police said. Based on vegetation growth, the remains have likely been in the densely wooded area for about five years, police said.

Matt Samuel, 30, who discovered the body, said he was looking for shed deer antlers with his 13-year-old German short-haired pointer Molly in the woods yesterday when he decided to take a shortcut back home. The two were cutting through the woods when they both noticed something sticking out of the ground just off a trail near the road.

“I thought it was a rock at first, but it was kind of weird,” Mr. Samuel said. “Then I looked a little closer and saw where the plates fuse together so I knew it was a skull. It didn’t look like any animal skull I’d ever seen.”

Mr. Samuel, who lives about 400 yards from where the body was found, went home and called his brother, a police officer with the Village of Freeport, to take a look at what he found.

The remains, Mr. Samuel said, appeared to be wrapped in a bed sheet, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag, and tied with duct tape. Weeds and leaves had buried most of the remains.

“It looked pretty bush league, how they did it,” Mr. Samuel said. Police couldn’t confirm if the body had been wrapped or tied with duct tape.

The torso discovered in Manorville in 2003 belonged to Jessica Taylor, whose head, hands and feet were discovered last March near Gilgo Beach. The body parts found in 2000, belonging to an unidentified victim, also connect with remains found near Gilgo Beach.

At least two other male bodies have been found in Manorville in the past dozen years, but they have not been connected to the Gilgo case. Police said it is not yet clear if the remains discovered this week are related to the Gilgo Beach incidents.

Mr. Samuel said he has found dead pets dumped by their owners in the area because the road is so secluded. But he’s never found human remains before.

“If you’re going to get rid of your dirty laundry around here, this is the place you’re going to do it,” he said.

The third Manorville John Doe was discovered off North Street, like the first Manorville John Doe in 2000

Long Island Serial Killer suspect Rex Heuermann’s bail document states Megan Waterman and Amber Costello were  bound around the head with duct tape just like Manorville John Doe #3