When somebody is delivering pain that far exceeds what is necessary to kill the person, they’re getting pleasured based on the pain in and of itself. 'This offender is every woman’s worst nightmare. The signs of torture on each women, particularly to their breasts, seriously alarmed investigators. 'To say it was another killer likely would have defied the laws of probability.' “The term 'similarities' is really a strong understatement,” Swiski said. They identified the victim as Catherine DiMauro, a 31-year-old divorced mom of two who was known to hitchhike and frequent establishments along Route 40. 'We observed cylindrical blows to the head, there was evidence she had been bound at the wrists and ankles.' Det. Jim Hedrick with the New Castle County Police Department told producers. 'We noticed there was mutilation in the breast area. When police arrived, they realized the case bore similarities to the Ellis murder. Police had little to go on, and the case went nowhere - until June 29, 1988.Įmployees at a construction site Route 40 found a naked young woman dead along a dirt road. She was used to hitchhiking, though, and her family believed that's how she met her killer. She had been studying to be a nurse, and the night she went missing, she was going to a hospital to visit a sick friend. She had been turning over a new leaf, however, her family said. Using photos of her tattoos, police were eventually able to identify the victim as Shirley Ellis, a sex worker who frequented the area. They did learn, though, she had been killed by a blow to the head. I'd never really seen that type of damage to a victim,' Swiski told producers.Īn autopsy revealed no signs of sexual assault, surprising investigators. 'We were seeing evidence of torture where one of the nipples of her breast was mutilated. Most disturbing, though, was what had happened to her chest. There were ligature marks on her and a bloody wound on her head. They found a young woman dead with her pants pulled down and her bra cut open to expose her breasts.

The couple called 911 and police arrived on the scene. He says, 'Oh, somebody threw a mannequin out there,'' Joseph A. Swiski, a Newark, Delaware detective told 'Mark Of A Serial Killer,' airing Monday, April 12 through Friday, April 16 at 8/7c on Oxygen as part of Serial Killer Week, a special nine-night event. 'It was actually a body.' Their plans were halted when they saw something strange in the road. 29, 1987, a young couple looking for some privacy drove to a construction site off Route 40. The victims, all women, bore disturbing marks of torture and police strongly suspected they were up against a serial killer - and a ticking clock.

In the late 1980s in Delaware, a string of bodies started piling up off Route 40.

Family pictures of serial killers