The murders of five women who led high-risk lifestyles over the past decade have prompted Niagara Regional Police to establish an investigative team to determine how the slayings were committed, but say they are not actively searching for a serial killer at this point.

During a press conference at NRP headquarters last week, Chief Wendy Southall said the regional force will delegate additional resources to shore up its elite major crime unit in the wake of police concluding the death of Cassey Joyce Cichocki, 22, of Niagara Falls -- who was involved in the region's prostitution industry -- was the result of foul play.

Cichocki's body was found in a brushy area in the north-east corner of the Falls on Jan. 24, more than a month after she disappeared from the city's downtown core. A 33-year old Niagara Falls man was charged with second-degree murder Monday in connection with the case.

Police have been tracking four other as-yet unsolved killings of women over the last decade. The slain women's bodies were dumped in various corners of the region.

The first case broke late in March of 1996 when the remains of Dawn Stewart, 32, of Niagara Falls, were found in a wooded area near Centre Street in Pelham. Stewart was a pregnant mother of two, involved in the sex trade.

Nadine Gurczenski's partially nude body was found on May 8, 1999 in a roadside ditch beside Victoria Avenue near 8th Avenue in rural Vineland. The cause of Gurczenski's demise was never released and it's believed she had lay beside the road for about a day.

Gurczenski, who emigrated to Toronto from Jamaica in 1992, was an exotic dancer and worked in Mississauga under the name 'Marilyn.' Grimsby Lincoln News -- which is part of the Niagara this Week family -- archives from 1999 show that a witness, who said he was driving home when he caught sight of some cyclists who had noticed her body, said Gurczenski was left lying face up in the trench and was dressed only in knee-high hose. No attempt had been made to cover her.

Police were able to piece together a description and composite drawing of a man who had been seen with Gurczenski on more than one occasion, just before she turned up dead.

About four years later on Aug. 9, 2003, police began probing the killing of Diane Christina DiMitri, 32, a native of Quebec who moved to the Niagara Region in 2001 in order to be closer to her family.

DiMitri was found in a ditch on the south-west side of the Darby and Grassybrook roads intersection in Welland, near the Falls city limits.

The major crime unit has said they believe DiMitri was transported to where she was discovered and the NRP has not concluded where the murder scene was.

And, on July 9, 2004 around 6:30 a.m. police were called to the parking lot of a Culp Street school in the Falls. There, they found the body of Margaret Jeanette Jugaru, 26, a mother who once dreamed of becoming a model but who got caught in a vicious prostitution vortex to support a drug habit that developed over the years.

Police have declined to comment on connections in the cases and have not said that a serial killer is at work in the Niagara Region, but Chief Southall said Thursday the NRP has not ruled out the possibility for good.

"At this point, the answer (whether there is a serial killer) is no," said Southall. "But we're deploying resources to determine if it is. We're not going to be saying so until we have the facts."

Insp. Brian Eckhardt, head of detective support for the NRP, said resources such as ViCLASS software and PowerCase -- a powerful police information network designed to track patterns in predatory criminal behaviour -- along with the sharing of resources with agencies in Hamilton and Halton, will be utilized by the 12-person investigative team. PowerCase originally went online on May 15, 2001 and was made available on a voluntary basis to police services throughout the province in June 2002. The NRP was among the first forces to implement the PowerCase technology.

"Certainly when it's classified as a whodunit, these cases are more difficult," said Eckhardt. "But those cases are solvable as well."

The anniversary of Jeanette Jugaru's death passed this summer. At that time, Jugaru's mother,

Peggy Hall told This Week she wanted it on the public record that her daughter was more than her profession.

Hall said her daughter was headed to New York City to begin fulfilling the terms of a modelling contract when she met a drug addict from the Garden City who drew her into an abyss of drugs.

"That's not the sum of who she was," Hall said, adding Jeanette grew up in a middle-class Niagara Falls home and loved swimming and riding her bike.

A hotline extension has been set up for anyone with information about the cases. Detectives can be reached at 905-688-4111, ext. 4431.

-- with files from Paul Forsyth and Katherine Nadeau