The rumor likely began on TikTok, reports Rolling Stone. Now there's a Facebook group with 60,000 members and growing, amplifying the notion that a serial killer is stalking New England. However, exasperated-sounding police departments across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut are trying to debunk the rumors, which began after eight bodies or sets of human remains were found between March and April in the three states, per Fox News. Authorities say no evidence links the deaths, not all of which are confirmed homicides. They've even made arrests in some of the cases that would seem to dispute the notion of a link, but the rumors persist.
In Narragansett, Rhode Island, police received so many tips about bodies buried at a local beach that they searched the site with cadaver dogs. And found nothing. "It seemed pretty obvious that this was kind of a nothing thing, but I never want to be the person that didn't do something," Det. Sgt. Brent Kuzman tells Fox about the search. Police now think the beach rumors stemmed from someone posting a bogus confession on the aforementioned Facebook group.
"It looked like someone was trying to get a rise," says Kuzman. "I mean, he referenced Rick Rolling the group, he referenced this being prose. One of his poems actually spelled out the word 'hoax' if you spelled out the first letter of the paragraphs." Connecticut police in New Haven and Groton similarly debunked online rumors regarding local deaths, per CT Insider. In New Haven, for example, no signs of foul play turned up in the autopsy of one supposed victim. In Groton, police arrested a suspect in the murder of a woman there, but there is "no information that links our incident to anything that took place in the state or outside," says Police Chief David Burton.
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