Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon Tyner marked the anniversary of four women being found dead in a ditch in Egg Harbor Township with a call for information.
“Somebody knows something about this case,” Tyner said.
Tuesday marked 12 years since Kim Raffo, Molly Dilts, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Roberts were found dead, their bodies lined up in a ditch of the Black Horse Pike, just before a now-razed motel in the township’s West Atlantic City section.
“As an original supervisory member of the investigative team assigned to this case, I can confirm that these victims are not forgotten,” said Raymond Davis, now the township’s chief of police. “All member agencies involved in this investigation — local, county, state and federal — remain diligent in our pursuit of the person or persons responsible. We urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement.”
The four women were all barefoot, killed at different times and placed there facedown. All had worked in Atlantic City’s sex industry.
Dilts, 20, had come to the resort from Black Lick, Pa., not long before she was killed. She was the first to die and had been dead as long as six weeks, an autopsy determined.
Raffo, 35, left her husband and two children in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and came to Atlantic City, where she fed a drug problem. She would have been a grandmother now.
She was the first found as two women walked behind the Golden Key Motel. An autopsy determined she was the last killed.
She had been strangled.
Roberts, 23, of Bear, Delaware, had been asphyxiated.
Dilts and Breidor, 42, of Ventnor, were so decomposed, the cause of death could not be positively determined.
One of the original investigators from the case told BreakingAC in 2016 that he believed the case would be solved.
“It only takes that one piece of evidence to put the puzzle together,” said Dennis McKelvey, a retired Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office captain who led the Major Crimes Unit when the dump site was found Nov. 20, 2006.
“At the end of the day, Kim Raffo, Molly Dilts, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Roberts were someone’s mother, daughter, sister and wife,” Tyner said. “And I shudder to characterize them as four prostitutes whose bodies were found because it’s not about that. Instead, I say these were four women who were found dead in West Atlantic City on Nov. 20, 2006. They will not be forgotten.”
The investigation continues daily, he said.
“These horrific crimes have not been forgotten by all of the law enforcement agencies in Atlantic County,” Atlantic City Deputy Chief James Sarkos said. “And the Atlantic City Police Department is committed to continuously working with our law enforcement partners to bring the perpetrator or perpetrators of these crimes to justice and help bring some much needed closure to the families.”
