4 deaths, few answers in Police seeking suspects, clues in unsolved cases By Carol Ritter Democrat and Chronicle Baby Adam, found Feb. 20, 1984. Baby Doe, found July 25, 1984. Michael Towers, 21, found April 27, 1985. Kristin O'Connell, 20, found Aug. 16, 1985. Four deaths. Four apparent homicides. All unsolved. "I used to say, half in jest and half in truth, that we don't have any crime . . .," said Seneca Falls Police Chief Ferdinand L. Nicandri. "You can't say that anymore." Four unresolved homicides at one time is a record for Seneca County, according to local people with long careers in law enforcement. "I don't remember it ever happening here before in my 28 years as a police officer," Nicandri said. In this quiet rural area, where hamlets and villages blend gently into the rolling fields of the Finger Lakes region, murder is a crime that usually seemed to happen somewhere else until recently. Until the body of 18-year-old Auburn college student Julie Monson was found in the town of Tyre in April 1983, homicides In Seneca County had been very rare. Discovery of Monson's body came more than four years after Waterloo resident Gregory P. Cerino, 58, was shot to death in a Junius gravel pit. Another Waterloo man, Bruce Barto, was found guilty of the murder in a . 1980 trial. Seneca Two homicides were recorded by police agencies in Seneca County last year. There have been two more so far this year. Seneca County Sheriff Thomas J. Cleere, a veteran of more than 25 years in law enforcement in the county, said he could not draw any conclusions from the increase in apparent homicides in the past two years. "It's hard to explain. There's no common bond between them," he said. "But I know that the people in Ovid are shook up now, thinking a killer is running around loose." In the Monson case, a former boyfriend has been charged and is awaiting trial for murder and related crirhesV TURN TO PAGE 5B