Original article posted Feb. 10, 2010

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTVA CBS 11 News) - For months it dominated the headlines: Vulnerable women targeted, cut up, and thrown out to sea.

Many people in Anchorage thought a serial killer was on the loose.

In the nearly seven years since, the person responsible for the brutal murder of Desiree Lekanoff and Michelle Rothe has gotten away with it, and probably still roams free today.

It was an eerily quiet mid-January day on Beluga Point.

No one is out climbing on the rocks or walking along the coastline.

But in the summer of 2003, it was a completely different scene.

On June 18, 2003, two children playing along Turnagain arm made a gruesome discovery. A severely decomposed torso had washed ashore.

No arms. No legs. No head.

Many people thought it was the body of Bethany Corriera, who had been missing for about a month.

But Sgt. Slawomir Markiewicz, the head of the Homicide Unit at the Anchorage Police Department, said it looked like the torso had been in the water for longer than a month.

“Eventually we found out that torso was Desiree Lekanoff,” Markiewicz said.

That ID came over a year after her torso washed ashore. In that time, another grisly find.

“About three months later, on Sept. 6, a father and son were walking along Turnagain Arm, in Oceanview, found another torso,” Markiewicz said.

This latest torso was identified as Anchorage resident Michelle Rothe. She was in a similar state: No legs and no head.

Rothe had gone missing in June, which was about the same time Lekanoff's body was discovered.

“There was a strong possibility the cases were related,” Markiewicz said. “And that's how we have viewed them since then.”

Two dismembered torsos were found within 12 miles of each other in just a matter of months. The lack of clues caused fear and concern in the community. Police said at the time they weren't ruling out the possibility of a serial killer.

Desiree Lekanoff had gone missing sometime in the winter of 2001. One of the last people who may have seen her was a former boyfriend.