Massachusetts authorities are investigating the death of a woman found unresponsive off a bike path in Springfield on Tuesday.
Springfield Police Department spokesperson Ryan Walsh said officers responded to reports of an unresponsive person near a bike path at the 1500 block of Hall of Fame Avenue.
Upon arrival, officers discovered a woman who was pronounced dead shortly after.
“The SPD Homicide Unit under the direction Captain Trent Duda is conducting an unattended death investigation in conjunction with the @HampdenDA Murder Unit, pending an autopsy by the Medical Examiner,” Walsh said.
The woman’s death comes amid rumors circulating online about a possible New England serial killer following the deaths of seven and now eight people, mostly women, between March and April in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. As of Wednesday, authorities have not announced any kind of connection between the eight victims’ deaths.
Walsh told Fox News Digital that the woman’s cause of death will be determined by a medical examiner, and added that “internet rumors are just that.”
The rumors began circulating on a Facebook group called “New England Serial Killer,” which has since changed its name due to Facebook rules and regulations. Over the last two months, human remains have been located in New Haven, Norwalk, Groton and Killingly, Connecticut; Foster, Rhode Island; and Framingham, Plymouth and now Springfield, Massachusetts. Some social media users say these discoveries of human remains — particularly, female remains — across the three neighboring states may indicate a serial killer.
But Connecticut State Police told Fox News Digital last week that “there is no information at this time suggesting any connection to similar remains discoveries, and there is also no known threat to the public at this time,” regarding the deaths in Connecticut.
Peter Valentin, chair of the Forensic Science Department at the University of New Haven’s Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, told Fox News Digital the fact that police responded to reports of an unresponsive person “is strongly suggestive of someone who did not have any post-mortem artifacts that would negate the need to check for vital signs needed to make a pronouncement.”
“If someone is in full rigor mortis, there is no need to try to find a pulse because the presence of rigor mortis means they are unequivocally dead. So this is a very recent death, unlike the others that are being attributed to the [New England serial killer,” Valentin said.
While some of the remains found across the three New England states over the last two months were intact bodies that have been identified, others were degraded to the point that it will take time for authorities to identify who the victims were. In other words, while the remains were located over the span of two months, that does not indicate the victims died around the same time.
Valentin noted that Springfield police have not yet determined whether the woman’s death was a homicide.
“I am curious about what was recovered around the body,” he said. “There might have been paraphernalia suggestive of activity that is deemphasizing homicide (perhaps incorrectly) to the investigators because that article is quite tepid. It is filled with very cautious language (surely taken right from police press releases), which might be intentional to not feed into what is now turning into intense scrutiny over every suspicious death in New England.”
At least four of the victims in these eight cases — two in Connecticut, one in Rhode Island and now one in Massachusetts — have been identified as women. Police also believe the victim found in Killingly, Connecticut, was a woman in her 40s to 60s, though her identity has not been confirmed.
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The New England Serial Killer Facebook group, which now has 65,300 members, has garnered more than 15,000 new members this month, as MassLive.com first reported.
Searches for “New England serial killer” on Google spiked around April 7, according to data from the search engine.