Police search Wednesday for body that convicted murderer Gregory Wynder (below) claims to have buried in Queens yard.Armed with shovels and a serial killer's confession, NYPD detectives dug up a Queens yard Wednesday, searching for the remains of his third alleged victim.
Gregory Wynder, 56, is already doing life in prison for the September 2001 strangling of a woman in her Harlem apartment.
But while Wynder sat in prison, he wrote letters to prosecutors hinting he was responsible for killing two more women, both slain in the South Jamaica home of his girlfriend, Simona Smith.
"That would make it a Norman Bates house," a police source said.
One of Wynder's letters wound up in the hands of Queens detectives, who believe Wynder was writing more than jailhouse fiction.
Detectives and forensic experts from the city medical examiner's office descended on the rear yard of 105-23 170th St. on Wednesday, searching for remains.
That's where Wynder said he dumped, in the 1990s, the brutalized body of Jackie Torres, a homeless woman with whom he had run shoplifting scams, sources said.
Wynder confessed to beating her to death when he thought she had kept some of the loot.
Investigators think she was buried under concrete laid for a new house next-door to Smith's but fear the corpse may have been moved during its construction five years ago.
Hours of digging Wednesday unearthed five bags of evidence - women's pointed shoes, stockings, torn fabric and a jacket - but no bones.
"I knew he was weird, a con man who manipulated women," said Celestine Smith, 47, who said Wynder was a boyfriend of her mother, Simona Smith, 65, and a tenant in their 170th St. home in the 1990s.
She said they kicked him out because he threatened her then-12-year-old son, who heard sounds of violence coming from Wynder's room.
"John used to say, 'I swear to God he killed somebody in the house,' " Smith recalled. "He heard screams like he was beating some girl up. The next morning, [Wynder] was mopping up blood. He said it was Kool-Aid."
Wynder is in prison without hope of parole for the 2001 beating and strangulation of Jenetta Scott Goodman.
"He blames his temper for the death, but he is a violent guy who seems to get off on the killing," a source said.
Goodman's daughter, Tammi 32, said she's still struggling to cope with her mother's death.
"You don't know how many times I've dialed my mom's number by mistake, especially during Thanksgiving dinner."
As police grilled him about Torres' death, Wynder confessed to yet another killing - Aja Grant, a 17-year-old runaway he met at a Queens strip club in the late '90s.
He said he brought Grant to the house while Smith was hospitalized.
He said he stabbed Grant to death when she got loud after Wynder flushed her drugs down the toilet, sources said. He was afraid Grant would wake Smith's grandson, sleeping in another room.
Wynder told cops he wrapped Grant's body in plastic and dumped it down the block. The teen's body was later identified but, until now, not her killer.
"She was very restless, very ambitious," said Grant's brother, Addison. "Once they thought they found the killer, my parents got closure, but it is always on their mind."
Police believe Wynder killed Grant first, then Torres, then Goodman.
