Re: A related murder? Doubtful, but you never know...
No ID yet in Barnegat slaying case; Robbery motive ruled out
Published in the Asbury Park Press 11/16/99
By CAROL GORGA WILLIAMS
and ALLISON GARVEY
Staff Writers
TOMS RIVER -- Authorities are still trying to learn who was shot to death and dumped in Barnegat this weekend, so they can jump start the search for his killer. So yesterday, they distributed a sketch of the victim to the news media, hoping he'll be recognized.
Ocean County Prosecutor E. David Millard said it seems clear that the man, who authorities believe is of Turkish descent, was killed somewhere else, leaving very little forensic evidence locally to go on.
Meanwhile, representatives from the Monmouth County prosecutor's office will meet today with their Ocean County counterparts to see if there is anything to connect the killing with the still-unsolved slayings last month of two Colts Neck stock promoters, Albert Alain Chalem and Maier S. Lehmann. No evidence has been uncovered so far linking the crimes, prosecutors from both offices said, other than the fact that all three victims were shot numerous times.
The two men were found shot to death Oct. 25 in the $1.1 million Colts Neck home Chalem shared with his girlfriend, Kimberly Scarola. The killer or killers have not been found and investigations by federal, state and county law enforcement officials have focused on the Chalem and Lehmann's complex business relationships.
The man whose body was found Saturday morning in the woods at West Bay Avenue and Lighthouse Drive in Barnegat was believed to have been in his 30s. He was 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighed 180 pounds. He was white, either of Turkish or Eastern European descent.
He was shot "multiple times," in the head and back, Millard said.
Millard said "obvious drag marks" on the body confirm the man was killed elsewhere and dragged before being dumped. He was found about 10 feet into the woods just west of Garden State Parkway Exit 67, which is off the parkway's southbound lanes.
Millard said the victim was found fully clothed, lying face up.
Authorities have put the time at death at either late Friday or early Saturday. So far, they haven't been able to identify the kind of vehicle used.
"Obviously, they wanted the access of the parkway," Millard said.
Investigators are reaching out to communities with large Turkish populations, such as Paterson and Queens. They also have been in touch with the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., where they learned that most of the clothing worn by the victim was manufactured in Turkey.
Those items include a dark pinstriped suit of a European design; the stripes on the suit are gray and burgundy. The man was wearing a black turtleneck and alligator-style loafers, Millard said.
The manufacturer of the loafers is Inci, which Millard described as "upscale." In an inside pocket of the suit jacket, there was the name of T. Bayram. The last name is common in Turkey, Millard said, and its presence is not enough to convince authorities that Bayram was definitely the dead man's name. It is likely the name was added to identify the suit during cleaning.
Inside one leg of the pants, there are several hand-stitched letters or symbols: "TC55." They appear to be followed by either a slash or a hyphen and possibly the numbers 2 and 7, Millard said.
There was no wallet to help in identifying the victim, but he was wearing "a fairly substantial" gold chain around his neck. Its presence means robbery "doesn't appear to be a motive," Millard said. The chain had a small hanging reproduction of either a sword or a scimitar, a curved sword used primarily by Arabs and Turks.
The vacant land that abuts the wooded area is located at a high-traffic intersection where some people leave vehicles that are for sale, so passers-by will notice them. A man who came to the site for such a sale happened to look down a wooded trail and noticed the body at about 10 a.m. Saturday, Millard said.
The man who found the body, William Shackleton of Fourth Street in Barnegat, said the location "is the unofficial Barnegat used-car supermarket."
Barnegat Mayor Dolores Coulter said that area has long been the "bane of the township's existence." Ironically, township police -- whose headquarters is less than a half-mile from that inter-section -- routinely give warnings to and ticket people who park cars for sale there.
"We've been trying to keep that area clear forever and are watching that area often," she said.
If the killer had chosen a more remote area farther down Lighthouse Drive, he or she might have been caught on township surveillance cameras set up in secret locations to nab people dumping construction debris or trash in the woods off that road.
"I doubt they knew that there might be video cameras stuck out there in the woods, but it's a shame we couldn't help out with getting them on video," Coulter said.
Laura Merker, who lives about 100 feet away from where the body was found, said she's hoping the news that the man probably was not killed here will alleviate some of the fear felt by her children, ages 2, 10, and 14.
"This is such a quiet little hick town that it was hard to hear something like this happened," Merker said. "We were kind of hoping what they were saying about him not being killed here was true. Maybe now the kids will go back to sleeping in their own beds."
Anyone who may have information about the case is being asked to con-tact Sgt. Thomas Hayes of the prose-cutor's Major Crimes Unit at (732) 929-2027 or Barnegat Detective Vaughn Johnson at (609) 698-5000.
Carol Gorga Williams: (732) 557-5732 or at carolg@app.com. Alli-son Garvey: (609) 597-7000, Ext. 15, or at agarvey@app.com.
Staff writer Coleen Dee Berry contributed to this story.
Published on November 16, 1999
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