Earlier this week, human remains were found not far from Taylor Swift‘s holiday house in New England.
Cops told PEOPLE that what looked like human bones showed up in the wealthy neighborhood of Watch Hill, Rhode Island.
People in the area are on edge, especially since there have already been twelve sets of remains found in different towns across New England.
Police showed up first thing in the morning
Around 9:30 in the morning on Wednesday, May 14, officers got to Everett Avenue, where they found what they think was part of a leg bone.
The Westerly Police Department said, “Investigators are awaiting official confirmation of the identity of the remains. No foul play is suspected at this time.”
They reported finding what they believed to be a human leg bone.
There’ve been other cases across New England
This latest find is just one of many. In the past few months, remains have been discovered in a bunch of towns in the area.
That includes places in Connecticut like New Haven, Norwalk, Groton, Killingly, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
Police say the cases aren’t connected and not all are suspicious
A lot of people are talking about a possible serial killer, but police are saying that’s not what’s going on.
Some of the deaths aren’t even being treated as suspicious.
After a woman named Meggan Meredith was found dead in Springfield, the district attorney said, “Unverified claims can compromise active investigations… At this time, there is no indication that these incidents are connected to each other or are part of a larger public safety threat.”
Online groups think something bigger might be going on
Even though police are saying otherwise, tons of people online aren’t buying it.
There are Facebook groups and threads full of folks trying to link the cases and come up with theories.
A look at when and where the bodies were found
Back on March 6, a scuba team pulled a woman named Paige Fannon from the Norwalk River. That same day, a hunter in Plymouth found a human skull in the woods.
A couple weeks later, in Groton, police found a woman’s body in a suitcase near a cemetery. She was believed to be somewhere between 40 and 60 years old.
That week, on March 21, cops in New Haven found Denise Leary’s body in the woods behind a house. It was already badly decomposed.
Just a few days later, on March 25, Michele Romano’s body was found in Rhode Island, off Plainfield Pike.
Then in April, more remains showed up. On April 9 and 10, parts of a man were found in Killingly. More remains were discovered in Massachusetts not long after.
On April 21, a boater found unidentified remains in Rhode Island’s Seekonk River.
The very next day, Meggan Meredith was found off a bike path in Springfield. She later died, and that one is being treated as a homicide.
Two days after that, two men were found dead in some woods near a Walmart in Salem, Massachusetts.
Cops are shutting down the serial killer rumors
Police are saying there’s no serial killer behind all this. And they think all the wild guessing is making things worse.
After the latest discovery in Westerly, Chief Paul Gingerella told Fox News Digital, “As far as I’m concerned, as far as right now, this has nothing to do with any serial killer [or] any New England murderer.”
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Another law official, District Attorney Anthony Gulluni, told MetroWest that spreading rumors could actually mess up real investigations.
He said, “While online conversations around these incidents continue to grow, we urge the public to be mindful of the role that social media can play in spreading fear or misinformation.”
“Unverified claims can compromise active investigations and contribute to a sense of chaos that does not reflect the full picture.”
A criminologist explains what real serial killer patterns look like
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said most serial killers go after certain types of victims.
“Most serial killers have some commonality in their victims. Usually it’s the sex, race, age or physical features of the victims. That’s not always true, of course, but they tend to have a particular preference for the victim type. But in these cases there are so many dissimilarities.”
He also pointed out that usually killers use the same dump site.
“There’s no pattern to the dump sites,” said Fox. “A lot of serial killers will have a particular dump site where they dispose of their bodies. So when police do find evidence from a serial killer, they tend to find multiple bodies because the killer feels comfortable about disposing of bodies in that location.”
Most serial killers don’t travel around this much
Fox explained that most serial killers stay in one familiar place.
“More than 70% of serial killers kill in one locale, typically around their home or workplace or somewhere where they know the roads and the escape patterns.”
He added, “It’s much safer for them to kill in a place where they know the terrain. Plus they tend to have jobs and families, which means they kill part time — literally, they have some free time to kill. And in general they can’t spend weeks and months traveling around finding victims.”