Investigators on Long Island discovered the remains of three more people on a barrier beach on Monday, bringing the number of remains found nearby to eight since the police began searching for a missing prostitute late last year.

The grim discoveries began in December, when the police found the bodies of four female prostitutes near one another close to a highway on Gilgo Beach in Suffolk County, leading the police to believe that a serial killer had dumped them there.

After a search throughout the winter, complete with dogs trained to sniff out cadavers, the police turned up a fifth set of remains last Tuesday near Oak Beach, about a mile east of where the first four bodies were found.

The authorities have not yet identified the fifth set of remains, and would not speculate about the identities of the three discovered Monday, in the brush off the north side of Ocean Parkway between Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach. It was not clear how long the remains had been there or if there was any connection between the most recent discoveries and the first four.