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A newly formed task force will help investigators probe the deaths of four women whose bodies were found in a drainage ditch in Atlantic County.

County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz told The Press of Atlantic City that the task force includes FBI agents, state police and local investigators.

Their priority will be identifying the three unidentified victims and processing evidence gathered by the many investigators working on the case.

Blitz says the task force has hired an odontologist to take dental impressions of the three bodies that remain unidentified.

Several members of the task force are fielding phone calls and tracking various leads and tips, but Blitz says no arrests have been made so far.

A relative says the one woman identified in the case was "the mom of the year" before a streak of marital discord and drug abuse four years ago.

Maria Santos says her sister, 35-year-old Kim Raffo, was raised in Brooklyn and moved to Florida at 18. She later married her longtime boyfriend and, by the time she was 30, she was a longtime housewife, a PTA mom and a dedicated aunt.

But Raffo became bored with her life and briefly tried cooking school before having an affair with a man who gave her crack cocaine.

Raffo's husband then left her, taking their two children -- now 14 and 12 -- to New Jersey, where the children are now in foster care.

Raffo eventually was caught with drugs and arrested, then later returned to New Jersey. And despite efforts to locate her, Santos never heard from her sister again.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor's office said Wednesday that all 4 women found in a ditch there this week were homicide victims.

Investigators also said they couldn't determine the causes of death for two victims. Raffo was killed by ligature strangulation and another woman died from asphyxiation.

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Raffo last resided in a rooming house in Atlantic City, said Niedosik who had no further information on the victim.

Among other victims, one wore a red hooded sweat shirt over a black bra. Still another was clad in a short skirt. At least one of them appeared to be in her 20s, and at least two of them were murdered, strangled with a rope or a cord or otherwise asphyxiated, investigators said.

The first two victims' autopsies had them dead from a few days to as long as a week. An autopsy on the third and fourth victim concluded that they may have been in the water for at least two weeks. They were too badly decomposed to determine a cause of death.

A woman who works the streets in Atlantic City spoke to NBC 10 on the condition of anonymity and said investigators originally suspected she was one of the victims.

The woman claimed she is a prostitute and is scared to work the streets after the women were found dead behind a string of cheap Atlantic City motels.

"This may turn out to be four murders," said Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz.

Blitz said all four women were placed in the ditch, facing east.

He said that a ligature was used in the strangulation death. The woman strangled in the case had been in the ditch for several days.

All four women in the ditch were white, investigators said.

There are indications the women may have been placed in the ditch at different times, but investigators were waiting for examinations to be completed.

Also, the women in the ditch were not bound, officials said. The three others had been in the ditch longer that the first victim, based on evidence of decomposition.

Two of the women were in there 20s, investigators said.

Police are also reviewing missing persons cases in connection with the deaths.

The bodies of four women were discovered Monday behind a motel in the West Atlantic City section of Egg Harbor Township, according to the Atlantic County prosecutor's office.

The bodies behind the Golden Key Motel on the Black Horse Pike (Route 322) were some distance apart from one another lying in several inches of water, authorities said.

Two women walking along a dirt access road discovered one of the bodies around 3 p.m. Monday, but a police search by Egg Harbor Township authorities soon discovered the other three women's bodies nearby.

All of the remains were removed from the marshy scene by 9 p.m., but investigators remained on-site well into the evening.

The spot where the bodies were found was less than 200 yards from the Atlantic City Visitors Welcome Center just outside the city.