General Note: As you read through the many pages that make up these reports you get the clear impression that the first three killings were handled very quickly with a minimum of effort. It was not until the fourth victim, the girl who was sexually molested post mortem, that the department put any real resources into the investigation. You are free to draw your own conclusions from that.

Summary

Five victims have been discovered in New York. Each was in an underground shaft, tunnel or passageway. Each appears to have been killed elsewhere – no signs of blood at the scene. The bodies seem simply to be dumped in a convenient dark place. There are no signs of any activity in the areas where the bodies were found. They are not arranged in a particular way, they look to have been offloaded like a sack of potatoes.

The victims range in age and sex and race. Each has had the top of his/her skull removed and the brains removed. The wounds are identical, and extremely unsettling. At first the investigators thought a saw had been used. They could see that the cuts were very clean, but they did not take much time to examine them microscopically. In addition the older bodies had been somewhat damaged by the actions of rodents and rot, which made the exact nature of the wounds difficult to see at a glance. On closer investigation, the skulls have been cut through with something so sharp that the investigators have no idea what it is. They can see at a microscopic level that it did not leave the splintered edges a saw would have, or the seared edged of a laser cut. It is cut cleanly at a perfect plane throughout the bone.

Andrew Searle, one of the younger medical examiners made a side bar note: "This is like Luke Skywalker sliced them with a light saber or a mono-filament blade. "

Nor does the oddness end there. The brains have been removed with surgical precision and exactness – to the extent that 7.3 centimeters exactly of all of the major nerve bundles have been cut clean and the entire organ lifted out along with the eyes. Searle notes that to do this as cleanly as it looked, the killer had to slice the eyes to expel the liquid and pull the collapsed organs back inside the skull pan.

"This took some time," Searle notes. "It was very messy and we have some evidence to indicate the victims may have been alive during the process. Each victim was paralyzed by an exotic protein/enzyme that has not yet been identified. We have extracted enough to do experiments on rats. It seems to paralyze them by locking all their joints into a bone crushing tension. It’s probably pretty painful to start, but it shows no sign of any lessening of nerve endings. They would have felt their skulls being opened and their brains being pulled out.

They would have had a few minutes to think about it before the oxygen level dropped and the brain died. And they did know about it to judge from their faces, contorted with violent emotions, mouths wide. These victims probably screamed bloody murder as this was done to them. There are no signs of gags or bonds of any kind."

The reports go on to note that each shares in common a stab wound on the back of the neck. The poison was injected here with a sharp jab. The injection device was not a syringe, but wider. More like a spike or thorn.

In each case the cutting away of the skull and the very delicate removal of the brain itself seem to have been performed in an identical manner. The puncture wounds are similar in each instance, but vary in position -- though always in the back of the neck or upper shoulders. It looks more like a wound of opportunity than a wound delivered at leisure -- a sudden, unexpected strike from behind.

Efforts are currently underway to identify the toxin. Samples have been sent to the FBI even before it became a Federal case. They have good labs. So does the city.

NOTE: As Investigators read through these dry reports, the more imaginative of them will understand the horror of the victim's last moments: paralyzed, with some crazed psycho cutting their skulls open to pull out their brains -- and they were aware of it until the last dregs of consciousness ebbed out of their minds. Anyone with an INT of 12 or higher should make a SAN roll and risk losing 1D3 SAN. No penalty if roll is made -- it is New York, after all.

The sixth victim has just been discovered in New Jersey. The forensic teams don't have much as yet, but they do have teams on site gathering information and the body is being examined right now. At first blush, this certainly looks like a victim of the Subway Killer. The skull has been cut away with something very sharp and the brain removed with painstaking exactitude --just as in the cases already discovered in New York.

As with the other victims found in New York, there is good evidence that the killing was not done at the point the body was found. Unlike the other bodies, however, there are indications that this body was moved after its initial dumping. Another key difference is that there are large pieces of this body missing, both arms and most of one leg. Initial reports from the New Jersey State Police, not yet confirmed by the FBI investigators, indicate that the body showed signs of having been chewed on by something fairly large -- a dog or even a bear, perhaps.

The body itself was found across the Hudson River in a sewer outlet not far from the Jersey end of the Holland Tunnel. The body was found trapped in the end of a sewer pipe out fall has been examined as best as can be expected in the time since -- about a day and a half since it got to the lab.

It's clear that the body had been in the water for several days. The pathologist, Dr. Mason, has has a package of photos which he gives to the investigators. They show the body as it was recovered from several different angles and during the process of recovery. As the debris is removed it becomes clear that this body is much more badly damaged than those of previous victims. Not only has the top of the head been removed but an arm and a leg have also gone and there is considerable damage to the rest of the body with great tears in the flesh exposing the bones beneath. One close up photo shows the ribs clearly and even the untrained eye can see that something has bitten through flesh and into the bone beneath. Something fairly big.

"We estimate that he had been dead six days before he went into the water," adds Dr. Mason, "He got washed into the sewer outlet from the access tunnels under the Holland Tunnel. My best guess is that he was in the water another four, maybe five days."

He turns to more photos made during the autopsy and with a microscope.

"The cause of death, as with your other cases, was the removal of the brain. He was alive when the skull was cut open, by something much shaper than a knife and yet not a saw. He'd been dead about three days before they started to eat him."

He laughs at the investigator's expression.

"Oh, yes. It was them. Three of them. We've found three sets of teeth imprints, each as distinct as fingerprints." He shows the photos of the teeth marks with notations in grease pencil all over them.

"They didn't slice off bits, they bit them off and chewed on his bones as well. Over a period of at least two days. And there's something quite disturbing about the tooth marks. This set," he holds up one photo, "belonged to a young person, a woman, we think. These, " he holds up other photos, "are very different. The teeth themselves seem basically human, though larger and probably longer and sharper as well. But the placement in the jaw is not human. Whoever chewed on this guy had a muzzle more like a dog's than a person's face. But the teeth are clearly human."

He shakes his head and sucks his cheeks in.

"I rather think this is an elaborate hoax. But I've got to tell you, it was done by someone who knew every tiny detail about how modern dental identification works. It matches perfectly with the image of a woman and two dog-like things with human teeth chewing on some dead guy in the tunnels. But that's not possible, so we've got to find another angle."