Oak Beach Bodies Update: Sister of Slain Prostitute Received Call From Man Calling Victim a "Whore," Say L.I. Officials

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) The sister of Melissa Barthelemy, one of four prostitutes whose bodies were found scattered on a deserted beach in Long Island, N.Y, received a jeering call just days after her disappearance from a man located in midtown Manhattan, officials said Wednesday.

PICTURES: Megan Waterman

Barthelemy was reportedly last seen in the Bronx on July 12, 2009. A few days after she vanished, her sister received calls from Bartholemy's cell phone from a man who allegedly called Barthelemy a "whore."

New York City police eventually tracked the cell phone signal to midtown Manhattan and searched the areas near Pennsylvania Station and the Port Authority bus terminal, but the signal went dead, an official said.

Investigators also discovered that a call made to Barthelemy's voicemail the day she was last seen alive came from Massapequa, a Long Island town about 20 miles from where her was found. 

On Monday, Suffolk County officials identified Barthelemy's body, along with Maureen Brainard-Barnes of Norwich, Conn. and Amber Lynn Costello, of North Babylon, on Long Island. All three women were believed to be prostitutes.

Authorities had previously identified another of the victims as Megan Waterman, a 22-year-old Craigslist escort from Scarborough, Maine, who disappeared June 6.

Investigators returned to their initial theory that a serial killer was likely behind the deaths, but have yet to identify a suspect or say how the women were killed. They were looking into clients they might have met shortly before they disappeared.

"What activities these victims may have engaged in prior to their murders does not matter," Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said Monday. "They were young women whose lives were cut tragically short."

A psychic hired by Barthelemy's family to help in the search for her predicted she would be found in a shallow grave, overlooking the ocean and near a sign with the letter G, according to a law enforcement official.

The bodies were discovered in mid-December in an area known as Gilgo Beach, about 40 miles from the Bronx.

Brainard-Barnes was 25 when last seen in Manhattan on July 9, 2007. She had left Connecticut for New York that day and never returned, according to several missing-person Web sites.

Barthelemy was 24 when she disappeared July 12, 2009, and Costello was 27 when last seen Sept. 2, 2010. A woman matching Costello's name, birth date and appearance failed to appear in February in court in Pinellas County, Florida, on theft charges and was briefly jailed there twice in 2009 for shoplifting.

Waterman was last seen at a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge on Long Island. She disappeared after traveling to New York on Memorial Day weekend with Akeem Cruz, a 21-year-old Brooklyn man described as her boyfriend. Cruz is now serving a 20-month sentence at the Maine Correctional Center for drug trafficking.