EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J. – The husband of a slain prostitute found near Atlantic City sat in front of a cross Saturday as he cried and prayed for his late wife, whose body was found here less then a week ago.
At a makeshift memorial service outside the Golden Key Motel, Kim Raffo's family and friends described her as a tormented woman who left her husband and kids for a life of drugs and prostitution.
"She deserved a better life," Hugh Auslander, 42, of Brooklyn, N.Y., said of his wife, whose body was found along with those of three other women behind a strip of seedy motels in this city last Monday.
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.
"She was trying to get her life together, but she couldn't get away," said John Pesce, 46, of Ventnor, a friend of Raffo.
Officials late Friday identified a second woman whose body was found in a ditch as Tracy Ann Roberts, 23, and are working to identify the remaining two women.
Certain similarities in the women and the situation in which they were found has led some to wonder if a serial killer is to blame. Three of the four were blonde. All were barefoot, and their bodies were arranged face-down with their heads pointing east toward the Atlantic City casinos.
Roberts, whose last known address was in Atlantic City, died from asphyxia, prosecutor Jeffrey S. Blitz said Friday. But he added it was still not clear how she was killed.
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