Small Ohio town is the focus of FBI probe after strange deaths and disappearances

The FBI is now helping to investigate a string of disappearances and murders that have taken place in a small Ohio town over the past 13 months.

Six women have vanished in the town of Chillicothe since May of last year and four of those have been found dead, authorities said. The women who disappeared were mostly in their 20s and 30s and were mothers. One victim was a grandmother with her third grandchild on the way, authorities said.

Lt. Mike Preston of the Ross County Sheriff’s Office would not say that he believes this is the work of a sole serial killer, but that is the theory supported by many of the relatives of the women.

"We've got too many women missing in our community and it's time to get some answers," Sheriff George Lavender said at a press briefing on Monday.

Tameka Lynch, a 30-year-old married mother of three, was the second woman to go missing in the area when she vanished in mid-May, 2014.

“I felt that after the first three women went missing a year ago, it had to be someone they all know and trust to even go with them, and it has to be more than one person -- my daughter was not a small person,” Angela Robinson, Lynch's mother, said.

Most of the six women had a known history of drug use, with at least three having had an addiction to heroin, family members told ABC News. Friends have reported that some of the women were known prostitutes, and while some relatives were unable to confirm that their daughters and nieces were involved in prostitution, Robinson said she thinks that the association kept police from doing more earlier.

“I don’t think they were worried because they were just saying ‘these are just women who are strung out on drugs, or doing whatever,’” Robinson said.

The first to disappear was Charlotte Trego, and she has not been seen since, authorities said.

“I last spoke with Charlotte on May 3, 2014,” her mother Yvonne Boggs told ABC News, “and she told me, 'Mom, I’m ready to come home and get clean.'"

Tameka Lynch. Lynch disappeared the same day as Trego, and it has since been revealed that the two women knew each other. Unlike Trego, however, Lynch’s body was found three weeks later on May 24 in Paint Creek, which runs just outside Chillicothe.

Robinson said that police have told her that it was clear Lynch had died before being put in the water, which Robinson said proves her death was not an accident.

“She was scared to death of water. She wouldn’t go swimming, and she was scared of the woods,” Robinson said.

“She would do anything for anybody. ... That was her biggest downfall,” she said of her daughter.

There are a host of others found dead and or missing.

ABC News