Four days later, hunters found a second body just inside the tree line on the south side of the expressway between exits 68 and 69. That body was male, intact and clothed. Crushed neck bones were ''not accidental,'' Lieutenant Fitzpatrick said. The victim had been dead for about three weeks, was white or Hispanic, 20 to 30 years old, about 5-foot-6 and 130 to 150 pounds, and had black hair, he said.

On July 26, 2003, a woman walking her dog, again near Halsey Manor Road and the expressway, found a second female body -- also white or Hispanic, no taller than 5-foot-5 and under 125 pounds -- an estimated week after she died. She was between 20 and 30 years old. Unlike the first female body, this one was left in the open, on a paved access road to a sump. But like the first female, this victim was nude, decapitated and had her hands chopped off. Detectives later released photos of part of a wing tattoo near her right kidney and a purple and silver decal on one of her toenails.

On Nov. 10, mushroom pickers found the body of a male, intact but in an advanced stage of decomposition. Like the first male, this one was also dumped just south of the expressway, but 11 miles east of the first. The victim was Caucasian, 35 to 50 years old, about 5-foot-6 and had died up to four months earlier.

Throwing cold water on the serial killer theory, Lieutenant Fitzpatrick said the two female victims were similar only in that their heads and hands were removed, not enough to link them. The only connection between the two males was that both were found south of the expressway, hardly significant since they were far apart, he added.

The expressway creates ''easy access'' for anyone looking to dump a body, he said, and the Manorville stretch is the first densely wooded area along the expressway east of the city. ''All of that is more indicative of someone driving out here, dumping the body quickly and leaving,'' he said. ''It's entirely possible that none of the victims was killed in Suffolk.''

Sandy Brown, owner of a video shop in the King Kullen shopping center on Route 111, said the police have furnished too few details to put residents' minds at ease. ''I think they're just being dumped here, not killed here,'' Ms. Brown said. ''I don't believe there's a deranged serial killer living around here, but you never know.''

She said some of her customers, particularly newcomers to the rapidly developing area, are panicked. She said that many who live near the shopping center, a popular stop for travelers to or from the Hamptons, have stopped their children from walking through the woods to reach the shops there.