The small city of Chillicothe now appears to be the scene of a string of deadly crimes. Source: Supplied

Last Saturday, her body was found in a drainage pipe, tied up with duct tape and wrapped in a white blanket.

The 26-year-old is the sixth woman to go missing in the small city of Chillicothe, Ohio, in just over a year. There are alarming similarities in their stories.

Most were drug addicts, and many worked as prostitutes to fund their habits — some were even friends. Four of them have now been found dead, dumped in creeks or streams near the town. The discovery of Tiffany’s body appears to confirm the belief that a serial killer is on the loose.

Charlotte Trego, 27, was the first to vanish. She was last seen my her mother on May 3 last year. The mother of two had become hooked on painkillers and graduated to heroin, the Colombus Dispatch reported.

Tiffany Sayre‘s body was found last weekend. Source: Supplied

Her friend Tameka Lynch disappeared the same day. Source: Supplied

Charlotte Trego was first to vanish. Source: Supplied

The police response gives a clue to how this spate of disappearances have gone largely unremarked for so long. “The cop said, ‘Women like your daughter take off because they don’t want to be bothered,’” Charlotte’s mother, Yvonne Boggs, told The Huffington Post.

“It was like they looked into it up to a certain point and then quit looking.”

This was especially strange because on the very same day, her friend Tameka Lynch, 30, went missing.

Tameka was also using drugs, after being diagnosed with lupus and losing her home. Just like Tiffany, the mother of three worked as a prostitute and went missing at around midnight.

Tameka was found just three weeks after her disappearance, when a kayaker spotted her body on a sandbar in Paint Creek outside town. The coroner’s office said she had died of a multiple-drug overdose.

On November 3, 2014, 37-year-old Wanda Lemons became the third to vanish out of thin air. Just two months after the mother of five disappeared, the body of 20-year-old Shasta Himelrick was found in the Scioto River just out of town, the Chillicothe Gazette reported. She too had battled with addiction, but had been doing better since she found out she was pregnant a month earlier, friends said.

Shasta Himelrick was found in a river in January. Source: Facebook

Wanda Lemons disappeared last November. Source: Facebook

Many believe cases in nearby towns, such as that of Megan Lancaster, are connected. Source: Facebook

She was last seen on a gas station’s CCTV after leaving her grandmother’s house. Hours later, her abandoned car was found on a bridge south of town, with open doors, an empty tank and a flat battery. Her body turned up eight days later. The coroner ruled her death a suicide, but Himelrick’s friends are convinced it was murder, The Washington Post reported.

Much like the others, mother of two Tiffany disappeared when she was out working to fund her habit.

Her death has made the terrible pattern undeniable. The FBI is now assisting with the investigation into the six women, with the possibility of expanding it to three more women missing from nearby Portsmouth and Columbus.

Many believe these cases are linked, including the 2013 disappearance of 26-year-old Megan Lancaster, mother of a nine-year-old boy, from Portsmouth, just south of Chillicothe.

While Tiffany’s family were searching for her, the body of another woman, Timberly Clayton, was found in a ditch near another creek, shot in the head three times.

“These girls all knew the same people,” Megan’s sister-in-law, Kadie Lancaster, told The Huffington Post. “I think it’s possible these and other cases, as far off as Michigan, are all connected.”

As the story has become world news, locals are certain a serial killer is running amok in the poverty-stricken city.

Townsfolk in the blighted Chillicothe, population 23,000, last month marched for the women, whose faces have become a familiar sight on social media and on telegraph poles around the city.

They can only hope the perpetrator is found before another dead woman washes up in a creek.