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Cops Closing In On New York Serial Strangler

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YONKERS, NY – Yonkers cops say they are close to nabbing a serial strangler who raped and murdered three young women – including two hookers from the Bronx – in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Dogged detective work spanning a decade has identified a suspect in the slayings, The Journal News of Westchester reported.

Police declined to give a description of the man or say when an arrest would be made, though they said in a statement that “significant developments” are expected.

Homicide investigators have long been stumped by the murders of the three women found bound, raped and strangled in Yonkers between Feb. 1989 and May 1996.

The murders were all tied by DNA evidence to the same killer. Four detectives interviewed thousands of witnesses before the cold case squad got the job in 2000.

Detective John Geiss picked up the killer’s trail and took his investigation up and down the East Coast, reportedly interviewing more than 50 people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and Virginia, Georgia and Florida.

In 2004, police developed a sketch of the suspect based on the recollection of a clerk at the motel where one woman was slain.

He recalled the creep acted like a “macho man.”

The first victim, Maria Ramos, 26, of the Bronx, was found on a Yonkers street Feb. 7, 1989, naked and facing the sky with her hands tied behind her back – a pattern that would be repeated.

Roughly two years later, Tawanda Hodges, 28, also of the Bronx, was found below a bridge.

Kimberly Moore, 30, of upstate Greenburgh, was found dead in a Yonkers hotel room on May 24, 1996.