Cops who feared a serial killer has turned a Long Island beach into a dumping ground Tuesday called in the FBI for help.
The New York City medical examiner is also helping Suffolk County police identify the four decomposing corpses a cadaver dog discovered in Oak Beach, L.I.
Cops were looking for clues to the fate of prostitute Shannon Gilbert when they discovered the remains on Saturday and Monday.
An early analysis suggests none is Gilbert - who vanished in May after a sex romp in a gated community in Oak Beach.
"Preliminarily, it doesn't look like it is her," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer told the Daily News yesterday.
The bodies - at least two are women - were found on a narrow island off Long Island's South Shore, between Gilgo Beach and Cedar Beach.
Officer John Mallia and his dog Blue were walking along the shoulder of Ocean Parkway on Saturday when the pooch's tail suddenly perked up.
"At that point, I saw the skeletal remains of the body," Mallia said.
He and Blue were called in for followup searches Monday, and they found the other three bodies within a quarter mile of the first - about 50 feet apart.
Dormer said police are operating on the assumption the victims were slain by a single murderer who drove to the area and dumped the bodies in the roadside brush.
"We could have a serial killer," he said. "I don't think it's a coincidence that four bodies ended up in this area."
He would not say if there was any sign of trauma or confirm a report that two of the bodies were wrapped in burlap.
"It does look like the bodies were there for some time," Dormer said.
"You can tell from the physical evidence that it's possible they were there for a year, a year and a half, two years."
He declined to say whether cops were trying to link the bodies to any missing-persons cases beyond Gilbert's.
The tattooed 24-year-old, who lived in Jersey City, was last seen by her pimp running frantically out of a john's pad inside the gates of the Oak Island Beach Association, a private community.
Oak Beach resident Gustav Coletti, 75, said Gilbert was crazed and clearly high when she pounded on his door, begging for help.
"She was just screaming at the top of her lungs and banging on the door," he told The News.
"When I opened the door, she almost fell into the house. I said, 'What is the matter?' She just looked at me and started screaming.
"She said, 'Help me! Help me!' She didn't say anything about people trying to hurt her," Coletti said, adding that she ran off when he offered to call police.
Dormer said cops interviewed the john and the pimp in May. Gilbert used craigslist to find escort work - as did a Maine woman who went missing in Hauppauge during the summer.
Maine cops investigating the disappearance of Megan Waterman, 22, have spoken with Suffolk police about the Oak Beach bodies.
Atlantic City prosecutors said they have spoken with cops about similarities between the Long Island cases and four dead prostitutes found dead behind the Black Horse Pike motel four years ago.
Cops said they asked the FBI to get involved because of the likelihood the case could cross state lines.
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