POLICE IN NEW York believe that two unconnected serial killers may be behind the discovery of 10 bodies along a stretch of beach in Long Island.

Officers searching a beach at Nassau County yesterday found more human remains on the beach, where four bodies were found in December, a fifth in March, and three more last week.

At least four of those eight bodies had been connected to the so-called ‘Craigslist killer’ – a man who had apparently hired call girls from the well-known classifieds website before apparently murdering them.

But the New York Post cites police sources as saying the latest body significantly pre-dates the other ones – with roots of nearby plants apparently having grown around the vertebrae and skull. A separate skull, found a mile and a half away, was later found to also be human.

If the report is accurate, the bodies would have had to be present for several years – meaning they could be connected to a more notorious killer who confessed to killing 17 prostitutes, and dumping their bodies on beaches in Long Island, in 1993.

Joel Rifkin is serving life sentences after being convicted of nine counts of murder, but the bodies of three of his victims were never found.

The Post also said that one of the sets of human remains found in the past few weeks belonged to a baby, or possibly a foetus – a theory which, if true, would also mean that body was unlikely to have been involved in the Craigslist deaths.

Fox News explains that the four bodies found in December were all wrapped in the same kind of bags – essentially confirming that those four deaths were linked – but that the four other more recent discoveries had not yet been conclusively connected to that killer.

Police told ABC News that some of the eight bodies may have been dismembered.