NEW YORK - A forester working for New York City's parks department made a horrifying discovery last week, beside a huge pile of fallen trees destined for the wood chipper.
A dead man.
And with that discovery, add this to the huge list of troubles that Hurricane Sandy has brought to the neighborhoods of the city hit hardest: Wreckage from the storm seems to have created inviting spots for killers to dump bodies.
Hours after the discovery, in Forest Park in Queens, a second body was found on storm-ravaged Rockaway Beach. Workers cleaning up around O'Donohue Park heard a shriek from one of their own, standing over a dune near the shoreline. There, a man's elbow protruded from the cold sand.
There is no evidence the cases are related, but they appear to be the first victims discarded in the changing landscape that followed the storm's landfall -- places where people, especially the police, may not think to look.
On the beach, it was unclear how the man died. The medical examiner's office said the case was being investigated. But the man had been tied up and placed in a garbage bag, and there were signs of blunt trauma and bruises, police said.
The body carried no identification, and facial-recognition testing did not produce a match in city records.
Unauthorized vehicles are not allowed on the beach, something that may not have mattered to a killer during a blackout. But if the body was carried there, it was no small feat: from a boulevard, past a skateboard park and playground, over a boardwalk and several feet of sand to the dune.
