The bludgeoned corpse of Lisa Parisi, 24, was unidentified for more than a day before her fingerprints were matched with an arrest in July for allegedly attacking her boyfriend with a knife.

The discovery has shocked the village overlooking the Long Island sound, where the police force are more accustomed to handing out speeding tickets.

"Everyone here, we leave our front doors unlocked during the day," Larissa Klug told Associated Press. "We're scared. We're just scared."

Sands Point, which is home to some of the most exclusive and expensive houses in the US, has been home to members of the Vanderbilt, Guggenheim and Hearst dynasties over the years. Fitzgerald used the area as an inspiration for the fictional home of The Great Gatsby's Daisy Buchanan.

Parisi's roots in the working class Long Island town of South Shore 50 miles away could not have been further from the exclusive enclave otherwise known as the Gold Coast.

Even as her body was identified through fingerprints family members contacted police after they recognised the tattoo of a smiling flower that she shares with her three elder siblings.

Police say Parisi had been beaten over the head with a blunt instrument. She was arrested in July for allegedly stabbing her boyfriend Edgar Sanchez several times. Mr Sanchez's whereabouts have yet to be established.