CORAM, N.Y. (AP/1010 WINS)  -- A college student and another man who vanished last month were shot in the head and dismembered by a killer who buried some of the remains in his parents' back yard, authorities said Friday.


Mona Rivera reports

The killer's girlfriend watched the execution in their Queens living room, accompanied him as he disposed of the body parts on Long Island and hid the murder weapons in her own parents' house, prosecutors said.

(Photo of police on the scene by 1010 WINS reporter Mona Rivera)

Darren Lynch, 28, was being held without bail after pleading not guilty to murder Friday in state court in Central Islip, prosecutors said. His girlfriend, 22-year-old Leah Reynolds, pleaded not guilty to hindering prosecution and was being held on $500,000 cash bail.

Lynch's lawyer did not immediately return a telephone call. Reynolds was represented by Suffolk County's Legal Aid Society, which has a policy of not commenting on ongoing cases. The couple's Queens telephone number is unlisted.

The suspects' families are not charged in the case.

Assistant District Attorney John Scott Prudenti declined to discuss a possible motive for the killings, but police had said they might revolve around drugs. Police said this was a drug deal that had gone wrong. The victims brokered a drug deal with Lynch involving phony cocaine that cost Lynch $20,000, 1010 WINS' Mona Rivera reported. A stockpile of cocaine, heroin and marijuana, a bulletproof vest and several firearms _ including an AK-47 assault rifle -- were found in Lynch's home, Suffolk County police said.

(Photo of police removing body parts from Kelly Antonova)

Victims Joseph Odierno and Jairo Santos were last seen July 16 at Long Island University's C.W. Post Campus in Old Brookville, where the 22-year-old Santos was a student, police said. Odierno was 35.

Prudenti said investigators determined the missing men had been seen with Lynch, but the prosecutor declined to say how they knew each other.

The prosecutor said Lynch confessed to the killings during a police interview Thursday and told detectives where to find the victims' remains: behind his parents' Coram home and in a drainage ditch around the corner.

A woman who answered the phone at the home Friday said the family declined to comment and hung up without identifying herself. The suspect's sister, Erin Lynch, 26, told Newsday the family was ``embarrassed and hurting.''

Reynolds stashed the guns above a closet in her former bedroom in her family's home in Holtsville, also on Long Island, Prudenti said. She identified them as the murder weapons, he said.

No telephone number could be found for her family's home.

Odierno's wife, Jessica, told Newsday she knew of no ties between her husband, Santos and the suspects.

``I don't even know who any of these people are,'' she said.

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