YAPHANK, N.Y.

FBI offers high-tech aircraft in probe of serial slayings

The FBI will supply high-tech surveillance aircraft to authorities investigating serial killings on New York’s Long Island, a police official said Wednesday, after the discovery of 10 sets of human remains in recent months near a highway leading to the popular Jones Beach State Park.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said federal investigators will supply helicopters and airplanes equipped with special cameras that will scour more than 15 miles of the Ocean Parkway along a remote barrier island south of Long Island in search of additional victims. An FBI spokesman said the flights would begin on Friday.

The parkway is surrounded by a tangle of underbrush and evergreens that has proved difficult for cadaver dogs and officers. Volunteer firefighters with aerial ladders and even mounted police units have been brought in to assist with the search. On Wednesday, police divers searched the waters north of the parkway for possible victims.

It was in that thicket that police found the first four sets of remains in December, including those of Megan Waterman, 22, of Scarborough, Maine. Some of the remains were dumped just feet from the highway.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.

Suspect in cold-case killings silent in court appearance

A man accused in four California cold-case killings made his first appearance in court to face murder charges.

Joseph Naso arrived in the Marin County courtroom Wednesday in shackles and a red-striped shirt. The balding and bespectacled 77-year-old didn’t say anything, and the judge postponed his arraignment while the court determines who will be his defense attorney.

The women slain in the 1970s and 1990s all had alliterative first and last initials, and authorities are trying to determine whether that’s a coincidence or the pattern of a serial killer.

Investigators say a search of Naso’s home in Reno, Nev., turned up evidence linking him to bodies found across Northern California. Now detectives are looking into whether he could be tied to cold cases as far away as New York.

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.

First lady lauds sacrifice of U.S. military families

First lady Michelle Obama lauded military families for their sacrifices and joined the vice president’s wife and Martha Stewart on Wednesday for a lavish baby shower for pregnant military mothers, who excitedly opened gift boxes of blue and pink baby clothes, new diaper bags and other donated items.

“For all of you out there who might be spouses or moms or dads, I know that you’re doing it all,” the first lady told a pep rally of thousands of military members and base workers at Camp Lejeune before the baby shower. “Military families are so good at keeping everything together that it’s almost like you’re wearing camouflage, even though you’re not the ones on the battlefield.”

Later, at the party for about 40 mothers-to-be, the first lady and Jill Biden joined in saluting the women. Michelle Obama told them that she knows all too well the stress of running a household, juggling family finances, holding down a job and keeping up with child care duties. 

– From news service reports