Morgan Absher

Case linkage analysis, though, isn't perfect.

According to a study published in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, killers' behavior can change over time for many reasons.

So it's always difficult to say for certain if two murders are connected without that forensic evidence.

But in this case, it was extra complicated.

For one, the bodies appeared in two different states, Teresa in Missouri and Elisa in Illinois.

Which, again, meant that those two departments were going to have to really coordinate and share all of that info that they had to make solving these cases easier or even possible.

And at this point, police were still pretty confident that the first four murders in 2000 were not connected to Teresa or Elisa.

All of the women did have similar profiles in both sets of murders.

Black sex workers in their mid-30s who suffered with substance abuse disorders.

But Elisa and Teresa both worked in Beta, Missouri, not East St.

Louis, Illinois, like the others.

And they were found one at a time while the other four victims were found in pairs, two and two.

Three of the other four women were found in garbage bags.

Teresa and Elisa were not.

The four bodies found in 2000 were also discovered near a railroad overpass in East St.

Louis called Black Bridge.

Also, Teresa and Elisa were both found in roadside ditches, appeared to have been strangled.

Like, they had a very similar MO.

So police were confident that they were not connected.

They actually thought they're dealing with something even scarier, which is a new second serial killer in the area.