Investigators cautiously refused to speculate on possible connections in the deaths of five women, strangled in Manhattan and Brooklyn between March and August 1982, but spokesmen for NYPD told the press that a link in the series of crimes was "not discounted." Evidence in at least one of the cases reportedly pointed toward multiple killers, but police declined to specify their reasons for believing that at least one death was unrelated to the others. The series of murders -- if series it was -- began with the strangulation of Sheryl Guida, 22, found at Coney Island on March 18. Rita Nixon, a 21-year-old visitor from Portsmouth, Virginia, was strangled and dumped behind a school in Chinatown, on July 15. Gloria DeLeon, 31, of Bergen County, New Jersey, was the third victim, her lifeless body discarded in Manhattan. Patricia Shea, a 40-year-old physician's assistant from Queens, was discovered in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, July 26. The fifth victim, a "Jane Doe," was found floating in the Narrows, off Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, on August 3; she had been beaten, raped , and strangled with an electric cord, still wrapped around her neck. To date, no solid leads have been discovered in these crimes, no suspects brought to trial. The murderer is still at large.