By LEONARD GRAY

Managing Editor

BAYOU GAUCHE — When the body of Alonzo Hogan was discovered Saturday morning, lying on a canal bank, it raised the spectre of a possible serial killer to regional law enforcement agencies.

“It just fits,” Maj. Sam Zinna, of the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office, said Sunday.

Zinna has been part of a serial murderer task force, established on April 25, to share information regarding 18 homicides over an area including Kenner, Jefferson, St. Charles, Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes.

Hogan, 34, of Raceland, was apparently dumped at the location where he was found at 6:43 a.m., after having been strangled elsewhere.

This was very similar to the case of Anoka Jones on Oct. 13, 2002, Zinna said.

Series One, as Zinna called them, were a set of nine homicides of a similar nature from 1997 to late 1999. All had been strangled or suffocated and dumped in remote areas, usually shoeless.

Series Two, from January 2000 to the present, range across Lafourche and Terrebonne, with most from Houma.

Despite all this, detectives are not yet fully convinced of a serial murderer operating in the area. However, evidence is leaning in that direction, Zinna indicated. “It’s just like the rest,” he said, linking the Hogan death with the others. “It raised a red flag to everybody.”

The regional law enforcement agencies gathered on April 25 at the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office in Baton Rouge to agree to share information on the unsolved homicides.