There something sick going on in Atlantic City, or shall we say something sicker than usual, which is really saying something. The Inquirer and Daily News have been reporting — and we’ve been echoing — what the cops won’t say: a monster lurks in A.C. And no, we are not just talking about Gamblor. Though authorities refuse to label him as such, a serial killer has wasted four street walkers, dumping their bodies in a drainage ditch in the briny swamplands nearby, all within a stone’s throw of each other, all facing East, towards Atlantic City. Fox News, no stranger to baseless hysteria, has even suggested a connection the hooker-snuffing crimes of the Ipswich Ripper, currently at large near London. So props to Managing Editor Brian Hickey for putting his own boots on the ground in the AC sex trade — and this time it’s actually for work. (KIDDING! We kid because we love, Brian, but consider yourself paid back, bitch, for printing the CC list on my woefully inept email blasts). The bottom line of the piece is that these murders matter if for no other reason than a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. As for the question of when is a serial killer not a serial killer? Let us answer that with a question of our own: If four prostitutes turned up dead in the same drainage ditch and facing the same direction in a town that did not have billions of easily-spooked tourist dollars at stake and was NOT secretly lorded over by an obscenely-powerful gaming lobby — a town like, say, our home town, Allentown — do you know how long it would take authorities to label the crimes serial killings? A hot minute if the cops in Allentown have any integrity. Still, cover art-wise, CP’s Twin Peaksian swamp shot dazzles less than PW’s charming Charlie Brown-esque mother-son-chalkboard tableau to illustrate Kia Gregory‘s thumbsucker on the roots of and remedies for the city’s truancy epidemic. Bonus points for the PW logo in the inimitable chalkdust font.
WINNER: PW