The FBI is supporting police in St. Louis in their investigation into a recent series of murders targeting sex workers.
Over the last two weeks, the bodies of a woman, a teen girl, and a man have been found.
Pam Abercrombie, 49, was discovered dead on a north St. Louis sidewalk on Sept. 16; Marney Haynes, 16, was found shot to death in St. Louis County on Sept. 13; and Casey Ross, 24, was found dead in a vacant lot on Sept. 19.
St. Louis police said in a Sept. 17 statement that “Sex workers have been targeted and have either been shot or shot at by unknown suspects.”
Tillonni Hamilton, Abercrombie’s cousin, said her relative was not a sex worker but a “hustler” who did odd jobs.
“We just want justice for my cousin and all the women that’s been murdered,” Hamilton told NBC affiliate KSDK in St. Louis.
The St. Louis chapter of Sex Workers Outreach Project tweeted in the past weeks that the city had seen “an escalating pattern of robberies, assaults, shootings, and murders targeting sex workers.”
“In our immediate orbit, this is something that a lot of folks are talking about and concerned about,” Indigo Hann, co-founder of a sex work advocacy program MO Ho Justice Coalition, told KSDK.
In a news conference last week, Major Shawn Dace of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said some evidence that the same attacker or attackers did the killings.
We’re able to tie these incidents together,” said Lt. Colonel Steve Sack of the St. Louis County Police Department.
More information could harm the investigation, according to authorities.
Dace refused to clarify if officials were on the lookout for a serial killer.
“Until we finalize the investigation, we don’t want to categorize it as that right now,” he said.
