Killing Grounds: The Gilgo Beach Murders (2026) s01e01 Episode Script
Part One
[opening theme music plays]
[woman 1]
If you want to understand Picasso,
you have to study his art.
If you want to understand a serial killer,
you study the crime.
[male reporter] Four
unidentified bodies
[female reporter] Long Island police
literally stumbled onto the crime scene.
[man] What was going on
out on Long Island?
[male reporter] Ten sets of remains
have been discovered
[woman 2] It was this burial ground
for all these people.
[woman 3] They're laying out in the open.
Why weren't they noticed?
[male reporter] The killer has apparently
targeted prostitutes.
[woman 1] The police didn't investigate
because they were sex workers.
That's fucking infuriating.
[woman 1] They kept the FBI
out of this investigation.
[woman 2] Was this a cover up?
What are they hiding?
[man] We realized that we needed to act.
DNA evidence was obtained.
We identified the suspect.
Get him within your sights, but
don't blow the investigation.
[woman 1] He was keeping very close tabs
on law enforcement.
[man] His internet searches
contained torture porn,
rape
[woman] I sized him up
totally wrong.
[female reporter] This is the house
that police have been swarming.
[woman 1] This guy was hunting victims
for sport.
[woman 2] These women were tortured.
[man] This was beyond
your worst nightmare.
[man 2] You're talking about a cold case
that extends back 30 years.
[woman 2] How many bodies
are we gonna see here?
[woman 3] Catch this guy for us, please.
[dramatic music playing]
[woman 2] Long Island is an actual island
about 30 miles east of greater Manhattan.
[woman 1] Long Island
is a true melting pot
of people from all walks of life.
A lot of firefighters, teachers, cops.
Upper middle class to working class.
Safe.
Here and there you'd hear something,
you know, but not too bad.
We have the Baldwin brothers, the actors,
they're from this town.
So is Jerry Seinfield.
A lot of people are from Massapequa.
[woman 2] Long Island seems like a place
where nothing goes wrong.
But behind closed doors,
it's not always as it appears to be.
[tense music playing]
[woman 1] The Long Island serial killer
is one of the most prolific
unsolved serial killer cases
in modern US history.
I was in the FBI 11 years.
I've always looked
at the victims in this case
and thought, that could've been my niece.
That could've been my best friend.
That could've been my cousin.
That could've been my sister.
How would I want that murder
to be investigated?
During the height of this investigation,
certain circles within law enforcement
were dismissive.
All victims deserve
to have equal protection under law.
And you don't not investigate something
because someone is involved with sex work.
They all have names.
They all have families.
They all have people that miss them.
I think a lot of people
are inclined to look away,
but this impacts every member of society.
Don't look away from it.
The problems with this case
go back to the beginning of it.
And this case really starts
with missing women.
[male reporter] The search is on
this morning for a missing woman
A young mother from Scarborough
had been missing since last June.
[female reporter] A 23-year-old woman
missing since May 2010.
[male reporter]
She vanished without a trace.
[female reporter] She visited New York
and hasn't been seen since.
[woman 2] Every year, hundreds of women
and girls go missing
in New York and on Long Island.
[female reporter] It's a desperate
search for a missing woman,
who hasn't been seen now
for almost a week.
Long Island reporter, Kristen Thorne,
with the latest.
Sade, Marie Kuhnla spent 17 years
working as a public defender.
My name is Kristin Thorne.
I was a reporter for 13 years
with ABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News
in New York.
Police are now in this area of Freeport
that they have searched before
I investigate cold case disappearances.
The female jogger, 30 years old,
her family called police
when she didn't return home.
If you're a juvenile in this country
and you disappear,
there is a lot to help find you.
If you're 65 and older,
we have something called a silver alert.
So, there's an alert that goes out.
But if you're in that 18 to 64 range
and you disappear,
good luck.
[tense music continues playing]
Law enforcement is overloaded with cases,
so a missing woman is not always going
to make it to the top of the pile.
[woman 3] When Melissa first went missing,
my favorite shows were, like,
CSI, Criminal Minds
What is the chance
of this happening to us?
I mean, we're just normal,
laid-back family. Close-knit.
I mean, how could this happen to us?
[somber music playing]
Melissa was pretty shy,
but she loved people.
She loved her family.
She would like to put twist ties
in Grandma's hair,
pretend that she was
putting rollers in there.
Melissa's plan was to move
to New York City and open her own salon.
She always told me,
"I wanna get my career going.
I wanna enjoy life a little bit."
She was working hard
and she deserved the whole world.
And then, she went missing.
[woman 4] Before Megan went missing,
I was seeing her every day.
She was a problem child.
If you came on to her, face to face,
one of you two are going down,
and it's not gonna be her.
But she was kind.
If you needed anything,
she wouldn't hesitate in the least
to give it to you.
She would give the last penny
in her pocket.
Have you ever gone roller skating?
And you wear white
and how it changes the color?
She would just get out on that floor
and do whatever she wanted.
She was a free girl.
Megan was on temporary aid
for needy families.
They were only giving her $400 a month
for her and Lilliana.
She tried getting jobs,
but it didn't work out.
[tense music playing]
I found out that Megan
was placing ads on Craigslist,
through her brother's ex-girlfriend.
She's like, "Yeah, on the escort section."
I'm like, "What?" I'm like, "No way."
I just went through, like,
300 pages of photos, of females,
and Megan is in there.
We had no clue.
Craigslist was a place
for a lot of things in 2010.
Including personal services,
as well as sexual services.
And in many ways it was safer
because women could screen their clients
and then decide
if they wanted to meet with them.
[Lorraine] We all tried talking to Megan,
trying to get her out of it,
but she needed money.
So she could stay where she was living.
The last time anybody saw Megan was 2010.
She took a bus down to New York to work.
She disappeared
into thin air.
I called Suffolk County Police Department.
They searched the hotel.
And as far as I know,
that's the only time they looked for her.
[tense music continues playing]
[Lynn] We contacted the 43rd Precinct,
said, "You know,
my daughter lives in the Bronx,
we haven't heard from her."
And she's like, "Ma'am,
is she mentally retarded?
Is she on any type of psych meds?"
No, no, no.
"Well, then she's not missing.
She's where she wants to be."
It was so discouraging.
They're just not doing their job.
[somber music playing]
[Kristin] For years, these families knew
that their loved ones were missing.
And no matter how many times
they went to the police department
to try to get them to take this seriously,
they didn't.
[female reporter] Melissa was last seen
leaving her apartment in the Bronx
on July 12th.
Her family is looking for help.
If anybody has seen my daughter,
please contact us.
What do you think
happened to your daughter?
[woman] I don't know
if somebody had grabbed her
while she was walking to the store,
or what,
but I know she is definitely missing.
[Kristin] With a lot of missing persons,
it's not always clear
to the family or friends
where exactly their loved one disappeared.
But with Shannan Gilbert,
it's a completely different story.
[tense music playing]
[woman] When I heard
my sister was missing,
I knew something sinister happened.
[somber music playing]
Shannan was doing this for a few years
to pay her college tuition.
She was so smart and talented.
And she was so realistic, so relatable.
I could tell her anything.
Her voice was very beautiful.
We had this thing, Sunday Funday,
every weekend.
We all got together.
So much fun. So much laughter.
Food. It was the best times.
We all thought we were The Spice Girls.
Our favorite girl band
was The Spice Girls.
She loved music. She loved it.
You know how you're, like,
so scared to tell your mom things,
with Shannan it's, like,
having, like, your mom and your sister.
It was great.
One day, her boyfriend notified my mother
that she went to see a client
and was never seen after that.
[tense music playing]
[man] I met Shannan Gilbert,
working for this escort agency.
I got a job as a driver.
May 1st, Shannan texted me,
she said, "Can you pick me up
at 32nd and Broadway?"
She would take the PATH train there
from New Jersey.
So I said, "Yeah, sure."
Somebody spoke to her
about coming out to Long Island.
It was a long drive.
About an hour from the city.
We got there around, like, 1:00 AM.
When they went up to the house,
I took a nap.
And around five AM,
the guy came out to my car.
And he said that she won't leave.
I said, "What?"
I went into his house.
I said, "What's wrong?"
And she said, "They're trying to kill me."
So I said, "Who's trying to kill you?"
She just got up, right up, and ran.
She went past the car
towards thickets of bushes.
I called her and texted her,
she didn't pick up.
[Stevie] Within 24 hours,
my mother reported her missing.
We were told that
this was just a case of a runaway.
That's not something my sister would do.
This is not like her.
This is not who she is.
This is not her character.
We all knew something happened.
[Kristin] The crazy thing is,
Shannan's driver could pinpoint
exactly where she went missing.
And yet, that area remained
largely untouched by law enforcement.
Then, in December of 2010,
seven months after Shannan disappeared,
total fluke.
An officer for the Suffolk County
Police Department decided,
you know, I'm gonna go take my K-9
to go practice down at Gilgo Beach.
I'm gonna go out to Gilgo. I'm gonna look
for that, uh, Shannan Gilbert woman.
Look what happened.
[tense music playing]
[female reporter] We're following
some breaking news right now.
A body has been found in Oak Beach.
[male reporter] Authorities made the find
as they investigated
a missing person's report,
looking for a 24-year-old woman
from Jersey City.
[man] On May 1st of this year,
Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old female,
went missing.
We had no leads as to where she went.
In a continuation of that investigation,
the missing persons unit
responded to the area
where this young lady went missing,
with his dog, Blue.
Here's Blue.
[man] Blue's a cadaver dog.
[barking]
We started our search,
he, uh, started sampling the air
and he started indicating to a spot
off the shoulder of the, uh, parkway.
At that point,
I saw the skeletal remains of a body.
[female reporter] Bombshell tonight.
An off-duty cop, walking his dog
on a beautiful, remote, isolated beach,
stumbles upon a woman's dead body.
[Lynn] One night,
we're sitting on the couch,
watching Nancy Grace,
and all of a sudden,
they discovered a body in Long Island.
They said that they had found a female,
approximately 24 to 26 years old.
Four foot nine.
We just started crying.
We knew it was her.
[dramatic music plays and dies down]
I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable.
It was so close to the road.
How could nobody see this?
They were searching more
that day, they didn't find anybody.
Two days later,
Suffolk County contacted me
to tell me
that they found three more bodies.
[female reporter] Oak Beach, tonight,
looking more like a gruesome cemetery.
The remains of three more people
were found stuffed in these brushes.
[Kristin] Typically,
when you have a homicide,
it's one person
with a particular set of circumstances.
When we realized,
the reporters, the media,
that there were four bodies
that seemed to be killed
in a consistent way,
all buried in the same area
It was just unbelievable.
I had never seen anything like it
in all my years of reporting.
And we knew
that we had a huge story on our hands.
The media dubbed them "The Gilgo Four."
[tense music playing]
[Adrienne] The Gilgo Four were found
along Ocean Parkway.
They were spaced equally apart.
And three of the four victims were found
to have been wrapped
using a specific type of burlap,
typically used by duck hunters.
They were disposed of
in a very distinct and similar manner.
It wasn't a burial site,
it was where their bodies were
strategically disposed of.
Unless you've been there,
it's hard to explain.
Ocean Parkway is a desolate highway.
There's no street lights.
It's completely dark.
You can have considerable time
if you're trying to commit a crime,
like disposing of a body.
I personally pulled over and timed it.
At night time,
you might not see headlights
for 30 seconds,
or you could not see headlights
for eight minutes.
There are no housing structures nearby.
There's no businesses.
He walked maybe 25 paces,
dumped the body,
got in his vehicle and left.
The investigators found hairs
that did not belong to the victims.
And it did not match any profile
within law enforcement DNA databases.
They belonged to an unidentified male
of Caucasian descent.
The totality of the evidence linked
the Gilgo Four together very cleanly
and clearly and logically,
from an investigative standpoint.
[male reporter] Shannan Gilbert
is the suspected sex worker
whose disappearance
police were investigating
when they stumbled on four bodies.
But Gilbert was not among them.
She remains missing.
Suffolk County Police find themselves now
on the trail of a possible serial killer.
[Adrienne] One of the things
that stood out to me
was that all of the victims
were petite in nature.
He has this distinct type.
I think he was picking those victims
because they were small in stature
and easier to control
because of their size.
[female reporter] Tonight,
Suffolk County Sheriffs say
they think one of the bodies could be that
of 22-year-old Megan Waterman
from Scarborough.
When you're done, take it out
and just put it back away.
-Okay?
-Okay.
[female reporter] Scarborough Police
asked Lorraine Ela for a swab sample
to see if her DNA will match
one of the bodies.
[Lorraine] Probably a month after,
Detective Higgin shows up at my house
to tell me that it was Megan.
I was pretty much like, "Okay,
what is my next step? What do I do?"
And he was like, "Well,
I'm really sorry about your loss."
He's like, "Here's my card.
Here's this gentleman's card."
And they left.
They turned around and walked away.
[scoffs]
Yeah. [sighs]
[man] Good afternoon.
We are here today to announce
that all four women,
whose remains were discovered
in Gilgo Beach last month,
have been positively identified.
The victims are
Megan Waterman of Scarborough, Maine.
[somber music playing]
Melissa Barthelemy of the Bronx.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes
of Norwich, Connecticut.
And Amber Lynn Costello of North Avalon.
[music ends]
[man] I still like it out there.
Fishing. I've been doing it
for a long time here.
It's something different.
Especially after all that shit happened.
Amber was funny.
She was, like, ridiculous.
You know what I mean?
Like, four foot ten, you know, 100 pounds,
just like a little firecracker.
You know what I mean?
She was just like any other
20-something-year-old girl.
Talked about getting married, you know.
Talked about, you know,
holding down a real job.
She loved animals.
That was her thing.
She wanted to be a veterinarian.
She was looking into schools and stuff.
Amber would've done something.
She had a really good moral compass,
but the second her sister came around,
it just, you know,
the compass started spinning.
It was her sister
that got her into all that shit.
They were doing calls together.
These guys that would come
for this kind of stuff, man,
y-you'd be surprised how many of them
are, like, cops, lawyers.
I'd swear to shit,
90% of the people were married men.
The first week of September 2010,
she's like, I got a call, you know,
the guy wants to, to possibly do 24 hours.
And then, she disappeared.
Of course, you know, it fucks you up.
Because, you know,
it's your friend that's gone.
[man] All of those women
were engaged in prostitution
and solicited business over the internet.
And these homicides appear to us
to be directly related to that business.
[woman] Maureen was fearless.
Brave is an understatement.
She was always like that.
I met Maureen when we were working
as telemarketers.
She was in the cubicle across from me
and we just clicked.
Maureen was the most lively person.
You know, she always
had something funny to say.
She knew when to have fun
and she knew when to work her ass off.
She was a single mom
and she was trying hard.
When she was fired, I think,
maybe two or three weeks after me,
she needed to make that money real quick.
And she said, "Hey, Sarah,
you like to fuck random people.
Why don't you get paid for it?"
[tense music playing]
First, what we would do, is we'd type in
"manhattan.craigslist.org."
We'd go to "erotic services" and then,
it would make you put in a title.
Like, "Hi, I'm Lacey,
I'm 100% independent."
You're a rent-a-girlfriend.
Everybody seems to think
that it's gonna be like Pretty Woman
and you have to dress like her. Okay?
No, you have to dress like her
after she meets Richard Gere.
It's more about companionship
than it is about the sex.
One of the most important things
she always told me,
she said, "Follow your instincts.
If it doesn't feel right, don't do it."
[somber music playing]
When Maureen went missing,
we were staying in Midtown Manhattan.
But I left. I went back to Connecticut.
Later on that night,
I kept calling her phone,
calling her phone, calling her phone.
We would work in pairs to keep us safe.
But she had eviction court the next day.
She had less than 24 hours
to get some fucking kind of money up
so that they didn't lose
their frickin' house.
And that's why she went alone.
She wouldn't have done it any other time.
I have really bad survivor's guilt
because I really feel, like
she'd be alive had I stayed.
I know that for a fact.
[Lynn] Melissa was in New York
for probably two and a half years.
And I didn't find out what she was doing
until they found her body
and they found out
that they were sex workers.
We were really close with Melissa.
We spoke constantly.
It's just mind-boggling.
I just don't understand
how I missed all this stuff.
How I didn't know what she was doing.
[male reporter] Here on Oak Beach,
they don't seem overly concerned
since the killer has apparently
targeted prostitutes.
I think that it was very comforting
when we found out
that he was targeting
a specific group of women
from a specific website.
So that it made it something
that was removed from us.
[Lynn] In the beginning,
the media wasn't very nice.
They called our girls
prostitutes and whores.
[reporter 1] Bodies of four
young prostitutes in December
[reporter 2]
Another Craigslist prostitute
[reporter 3] An online escort
[reporter 4] Prostitutes who advertised
their services on Craigslist
[Lynn] People would see something on TV
and, basically, they would say
that they deserved it.
There was some of the attitude
that they put themselves in that position.
And that was obvious
from public statements
that some of the most senior people
investigating this murder were saying.
Their deaths are a direct result
of their business as prostitutes.
We're easy targets because
we are considered bottom of the barrel.
Nobody gives a shit about us.
We cannot report crimes to cops
because it's not legal.
Today, sex work has become
more de-stigmatized.
With sites like OnlyFans
becoming mainstream,
it's become a more accepted line of work.
But in 2010, that wasn't the case.
[Adrienne] At one point,
one of the senior investigators
made a comment to a reporter
about the victims being greedy
and wanting money.
When I read that,
I remember getting sick to my stomach.
Because I just thought to myself,
"What have you done to find this guy?
And what are you doing telling a reporter
that this victim was greedy
and that's why
she was involved in that type of work?"
It's utter fucking bullshit.
Any more questions?
One more. One more, please.
[reporter] Should people be scared?
Oh, no, I don't think-- No.
I-I don't want anybody to think that,
uh, we have a Jack the Ripper
running around Suffolk County
with blood dripping from a knife.
It's not that type of situation.
And so, I would say to people,
go about your business
Suffolk County is one
of the safest counties
anywhere in the United States.
[Kristin] Just three months
after the Gilgo Four are discovered,
another bombshell drops.
[tense music playing]
I get a call,
more bodies have been found in Gilgo,
we need you guys to go out there.
[tense music playing]
And so we'd leave New York City
to go out to Long Island.
[Kristin] Police vehicle
was driving by this Ocean Parkway highway
and something caught his eye.
Last time they were here
was actually back in January,
just a couple weeks after Suffolk Police
found the remains of four women.
The winter weather prevented searching,
so they came out here again.
[man] Officers discovered
what appeared to be another human remain.
It was discovered, also,
on the north side of Ocean Parkway.
[reporter] Helicopters,
cadaver dogs, machetes.
The macabre search for fresh evidence
in Shannan Gilbert's disappearance
continued today,
in a case that only grows grizzlier
with each gruesome discovery.
[reporter 2] Police found a human skull
yesterday. This time by divers.
They are being examined tonight
by medical experts.
[Kristin] Over the course of a few weeks,
police found partial skeletal remains
several miles east
of where the Gilgo Four were found.
Investigators unearthed
four more bodies
on that same strip of beach
[male reporter]
One more body, that's right.
The body count just keeps on rising
and the grizzly mystery just deepens.
[Kristin] Ocean Parkway
is a mass burial ground.
I mean, this is, like, crazy.
[male observer] It's just a little bit
unsettling, you know,
that you never know
what could be down the street.
It's very scary.
And it makes it much more creepy
to come here by yourself.
[female observer] I keep a cellphone
in one pocket,
and when I have to take a shotgun,
I'm outta here.
At that time, the fever pitch
from the public interest,
the public outcry, and the media
got really, really high.
Because you have a crime scene
with at least ten bodies
and Shannan Gilbert has not been found.
[Kristin] So far, police have already
discovered the remains of ten people.
They made it very clear
that they do not know if these remains
are connected to the four other women,
uh, that you saw there.
So, still a lot of mystery around this.
Police are holding this news conference
at 11 o'clock this morning.
We're live at Gilgo Beach.
Kristin Thorne. CBS2 News.
Uh, where's Bob
[music ends]
They're set?
Today, we're going to discuss some details
regarding the remains discovered
by the Suffolk County Police Department.
And what is now very clear
is that the area in and around Gilgo Beach
has been used to discard human remains
for some period of time.
[somber music playing]
Displayed on the maps are the locations
where the remains were found.
[Adrienne] Six other victims.
Five were female.
One was male.
And one of them is a toddler.
Four of the six were dismembered.
Typically, perpetrators dismember victims
in order to frustrate
and confuse investigators.
Because, presumptively,
if law enforcement knew
who that person was,
they would be able to, fairly easily,
link the victim back to the perpetrator.
The crime scene itself
is two and a half miles long.
It spans two different jurisdictions.
That's huge.
So, investigating the Gilgo Four,
that's where they honed in.
Because, quite frankly,
that was the easiest and most logical path
for investigators to follow.
[Thomas] I would not term it
as a serial killer.
There are no similarities,
and I wanna emphasize this,
there are no similarities at all
to the four Gilgo homicides.
There is no evidence
that all these remains
are that of a single killer.
[tense music playing]
[Kristin] The difference between the way
the Gilgo Four were found
and the other bodies
beg the question,
was this the work of one individual
or was there more than one serial killer
on Long Island?
The public should realize
that this investigation is not
an episode of CSI or Criminal Minds
that is going to be solved
in a one-hour period.
The investigation, most likely,
is going to take
a very long period of time.
[music ends]
[Lynn] On numerous occasions
I asked the police
what was going on with the case.
And they said, "Just believe me,
we're really working on it.
It's the only thing that we're working on.
We'll never stop working."
That's, basically, all they told us.
[tense music playing]
A few months later, the coroner told me
that Melissa's body wasn't whole.
They found another part of her body,
her arm.
I said, "Well,
how could you have missed that?"
They had told me that, maybe,
a crab or some type of animal
had dragged off a part of her body
and they had missed it.
They asked me what I wanted to do with it
and I said, "Well, what do you mean
what do I want to do with it?"
I want to put her whole body together.
I mean, it's just-- It's unbelievable.
I really wasn't good with the stress
that was going on in my life at that time.
I wanted to find the other families.
[somber music playing]
[Lorraine] I didn't know about Lynn
until she started
looking for me on Facebook.
[Lynn] I set up the group so we could
contact each other and keep in touch.
[Lorraine] We'd shoot a message
and then we just talked quite a bit.
[Lynn] The special bond,
we know we can talk to each other.
'Cause we know
what each other was feeling.
[Lorraine] Lynn became my best friend,
my sister.
She wanted me to go
spend a week at her house,
so I took a week's vacation.
Our friendship will never end.
Then we were just one big ha--
somewhat happy family.
[music ends]
We want just a little bit of closure.
Not all of us have been to the sites.
[sighs] It's tough.
It's taken just about
everything I have to be here.
This was supposed to be
a final goodbye to all the girls,
but with Shannan Gilbert still missing,
family members say they will continue
to return to this site
as long as it takes.
My name is Mari Gilbert.
My daughter is Shannan.
She is out there.
She is missing.
And our family and our friends,
we're gonna find her.
And we're gonna find out
who hurt Shannan and all the others.
[Stevie] In this situation,
I think you just kinda listen
to what your heart tells you.
And my mother definitely knew
that Shannan wasn't with us anymore.
It was tough,
but it only made her stronger.
There's a part of me
that did not want to move forward.
But we needed answers.
[tense music playing]
[Mari] I'm hoping that
the more the people see this,
the more the people hear this,
that they're gonna know
we're not gonna forget.
Regardless how long it takes,
if it takes the rest of our lives,
we're gonna find where my daughter is
and we're gonna find out
who did this to the other girls.
[Lynn] When we went to see the sites,
we were pulled down the side of the road
and the police, basically, told us
that we had to leave.
[tense music playing]
A detective from Suffolk County told us
that he did not want us
talking to the media.
Because the media was trouble
and they always get everything twisted.
[reporter] Are there any updates
in the investigation that you know of?
[Mari] Nothing. Homicide detectives
will not tell us anything.
They should be contacting us.
Not leaving us hanging,
like they're doing.
Yeah.
All they tell us is, when we catch him,
you'll be the first to know.
[Kristin] Early on, the families
were stonewalled by law enforcement.
These cases were not moving
as fast as they should've been.
The families needed to find a way
to get law enforcement to listen to them.
And for Shannan's family,
that resulted in finding John Ray.
You can say what you want about John Ray,
but he is a good lawyer.
[interviewer] Do you wanna sit Yeah.
-Come up closer? Yeah.
-[interviewer] Tiny bit.
[interviewer] It's an amazing room.
I mean, I didn't need a set designer.
I'm a lawyer.
I've been a lawyer since 1983.
I work seven days a week.
I do everything. I litigate.
I'm not afraid
of the big firms or the government.
As a renegade against the system.
[somber music playing]
Mari Gilbert contacted me
through Steve Barcelo,
photographer slash reporter
for The New York Daily News.
He said, "Look,
can you help me with this lady
that's involved in that Long Island
serial killer case?"
She had no money.
You know, but
what was wrong here, was that
the police didn't do anything.
So I was asked to step in.
And that's what I did.
Um Step up here next to me,
so you can be close.
The media comes when I call
a press conference, as a rule,
because they know me.
Whenever you're ready, tell me,
we'll get cracking.
That was my value.
Are we on?
Okay.
We're here today
at the site of these terrible crimes,
because the Suffolk County
Police Department
is grossly derelict in its duty.
The Commissioner of Police
in Suffolk County
has acted like The Pink Panther.
I called him Inspector Clouseau.
And I brought a big board
that we had made up,
you know, some facts and figures.
They may investigate serial killings
in violation of the laws of the state
I guess I would, you know,
using my, um,
I don't know, Irish talents,
and that highly insulted them.
We say step up to the plate, do your job.
If it doesn't happen, we will launch
a lawsuit for that to occur.
[Kristin] I think the police department
got annoyed with him.
John Ray fought the Suffolk County
Police Department.
And that's when they finally resumed
looking for Shannan.
[tense music playing]
[male reporter] Tonight,
Suffolk County Police confirmed
that they were, again,
searching for any evidence
of missing New Jersey woman,
Shannan Gilbert.
[Richard] Today, during the search,
they found a cellphone,
which they believe
may belong to Shannan Gilbert.
[female reporter] It's looking like
the missing New Jersey prostitute
is buried in the boggy marsh.
Her jeans and pocketbook
discovered yesterday.
A year and a half
after Shannan disappeared,
her body was finally found.
Less than a mile
from where she disappeared.
And several miles east
of where the Gilgo Four were found.
The body was found, approximately,
one quarter mile northeast
of where her personal belongings
were located.
[Stevie] When Shannan was found,
our world just stopped.
As much as we tried to pick up the pieces,
it was impossible.
It absolutely broke our family.
[tense music playing]
[Stevie] I feel robbed of my youth.
Because I was so stuck on the tragedy.
I wasn't able to move forward
and focus on a career
when I was in a very dark place
for a very long time.
It's a sick,
horrible sick world that we live in.
[man] What's running through your mind?
It's evil.
See-- this place is evil.
[male reporter] Why weren't
the reeds cut down a year ago?
Why didn't you bring in
all this equipment a year ago?
Well, it wasn't--
We didn't think it was necessary
and, also, that area was full of water.
[female reporter] Investigators weren't
able to go through there to search.
How could Shannan Gilbert
walk half a mile?
It was very tough.
Uh, when you get a chance
to look at that area,
you will wonder how anybody
could walk through that area.
There's no way anybody
would've wandered into the marsh.
That is a lie.
Then you have her clothing.
How did her jeans come off?
A third of a mile away
from where her body is found.
With her pocketbook.
The Commissioner of Police said,
well, they're bramble bushes.
Running through the marsh,
they pulled her jeans off.
It's absurd.
[female reporter] Investigators believe
Gilbert got tangled in brush
and drowned in the marshy area.
That she was not murdered by,
what cops believe,
is the serial killer that dumped
the ten other sets of remains
at Gilgo Beach.
[John] They even claimed she drowned.
Are you serious?
Shannan was found face up
in very shallow water.
Only inches deep.
She couldn't have drowned.
And so then, when that was discovered,
the police immediately changed their story
and said a different reason that she died.
Natural causes.
What natural causes?
They didn't say.
I mean, it was ridiculous.
[male reporter] You don't believe
it was an accident at this point?
No. No.
I can't accept
that she died of natural causes.
There's no way.
Especially,
when other women had been found
in the same, exact spot.
All of the same age. All into sex work.
There's a pattern.
Anybody with a brain can see
that there's a pattern going on.
And then,
a few days after Shannan was found,
a new police chief came in. James Burke.
It's gonna be a very good time
to be a Suffolk County citizen.
And it's gonna be a very bad time
to be a criminal in Suffolk County.
[John] And the case was shut down.
You couldn't get anywhere.
You couldn't talk to police.
You couldn't get anything from them.
[tense music playing]
Burke, with the help
of the district attorney at the time,
told Nassau County Police Department
to step out of the case.
New York State Police
were told to step down.
They also told the FBI
to step down, get out of the case.
It's a local case.
It's a case that is led
by Suffolk County Police Department.
The FBI can assist,
but the FBI assists
at the behest of the local agency.
There has to be a federal crime
attached to it
for the FBI to take over
the investigation.
[Lorraine] When I was told that Suffolk
County wouldn't let the FBI in on this,
I thought it's too much for them
to handle for themselves.
They need more people in there.
Why won't they let them in to help?
[Kristin] You don't tell the FBI no.
You probably should be bringing in
the agencies from anywhere
that is willing to assist.
[John] Suffolk County
Police Department's hierarchy
wanted to put to bed
the entire saga of all these dead bodies.
[man] We know she called 911.
What we heard was someone who seemed
disoriented, confused.
She did not seem rational.
She didn't act appropriately
and she ran off,
aimlessly, into this marshy area.
[John] We know, for sure,
that Shannan Gilbert called 911.
And then she disappears.
Allegedly, never to be seen again
by anyone.
What was on the 911 tape?
The police refused to give it to me.
For me to find out what was on that tape,
I had to sue the police department.
The detective sergeant who was in charge,
he said, "John Ray will get that tape
over my dead body."
No, I don't think so.
After years of litigation, I won.
We got the tape.
[Kristin] How can you hear that 911 call
and not send out
your entire police department
to look for this person?
[John] She was being hunted.
[Kristin] Will this reveal something
about the killer?
[Shannan screaming] No! No!
Stop!
[dramatic music plays]
[woman 1]
If you want to understand Picasso,
you have to study his art.
If you want to understand a serial killer,
you study the crime.
[male reporter] Four
unidentified bodies
[female reporter] Long Island police
literally stumbled onto the crime scene.
[man] What was going on
out on Long Island?
[male reporter] Ten sets of remains
have been discovered
[woman 2] It was this burial ground
for all these people.
[woman 3] They're laying out in the open.
Why weren't they noticed?
[male reporter] The killer has apparently
targeted prostitutes.
[woman 1] The police didn't investigate
because they were sex workers.
That's fucking infuriating.
[woman 1] They kept the FBI
out of this investigation.
[woman 2] Was this a cover up?
What are they hiding?
[man] We realized that we needed to act.
DNA evidence was obtained.
We identified the suspect.
Get him within your sights, but
don't blow the investigation.
[woman 1] He was keeping very close tabs
on law enforcement.
[man] His internet searches
contained torture porn,
rape
[woman] I sized him up
totally wrong.
[female reporter] This is the house
that police have been swarming.
[woman 1] This guy was hunting victims
for sport.
[woman 2] These women were tortured.
[man] This was beyond
your worst nightmare.
[man 2] You're talking about a cold case
that extends back 30 years.
[woman 2] How many bodies
are we gonna see here?
[woman 3] Catch this guy for us, please.
[dramatic music playing]
[woman 2] Long Island is an actual island
about 30 miles east of greater Manhattan.
[woman 1] Long Island
is a true melting pot
of people from all walks of life.
A lot of firefighters, teachers, cops.
Upper middle class to working class.
Safe.
Here and there you'd hear something,
you know, but not too bad.
We have the Baldwin brothers, the actors,
they're from this town.
So is Jerry Seinfield.
A lot of people are from Massapequa.
[woman 2] Long Island seems like a place
where nothing goes wrong.
But behind closed doors,
it's not always as it appears to be.
[tense music playing]
[woman 1] The Long Island serial killer
is one of the most prolific
unsolved serial killer cases
in modern US history.
I was in the FBI 11 years.
I've always looked
at the victims in this case
and thought, that could've been my niece.
That could've been my best friend.
That could've been my cousin.
That could've been my sister.
How would I want that murder
to be investigated?
During the height of this investigation,
certain circles within law enforcement
were dismissive.
All victims deserve
to have equal protection under law.
And you don't not investigate something
because someone is involved with sex work.
They all have names.
They all have families.
They all have people that miss them.
I think a lot of people
are inclined to look away,
but this impacts every member of society.
Don't look away from it.
The problems with this case
go back to the beginning of it.
And this case really starts
with missing women.
[male reporter] The search is on
this morning for a missing woman
A young mother from Scarborough
had been missing since last June.
[female reporter] A 23-year-old woman
missing since May 2010.
[male reporter]
She vanished without a trace.
[female reporter] She visited New York
and hasn't been seen since.
[woman 2] Every year, hundreds of women
and girls go missing
in New York and on Long Island.
[female reporter] It's a desperate
search for a missing woman,
who hasn't been seen now
for almost a week.
Long Island reporter, Kristen Thorne,
with the latest.
Sade, Marie Kuhnla spent 17 years
working as a public defender.
My name is Kristin Thorne.
I was a reporter for 13 years
with ABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News
in New York.
Police are now in this area of Freeport
that they have searched before
I investigate cold case disappearances.
The female jogger, 30 years old,
her family called police
when she didn't return home.
If you're a juvenile in this country
and you disappear,
there is a lot to help find you.
If you're 65 and older,
we have something called a silver alert.
So, there's an alert that goes out.
But if you're in that 18 to 64 range
and you disappear,
good luck.
[tense music continues playing]
Law enforcement is overloaded with cases,
so a missing woman is not always going
to make it to the top of the pile.
[woman 3] When Melissa first went missing,
my favorite shows were, like,
CSI, Criminal Minds
What is the chance
of this happening to us?
I mean, we're just normal,
laid-back family. Close-knit.
I mean, how could this happen to us?
[somber music playing]
Melissa was pretty shy,
but she loved people.
She loved her family.
She would like to put twist ties
in Grandma's hair,
pretend that she was
putting rollers in there.
Melissa's plan was to move
to New York City and open her own salon.
She always told me,
"I wanna get my career going.
I wanna enjoy life a little bit."
She was working hard
and she deserved the whole world.
And then, she went missing.
[woman 4] Before Megan went missing,
I was seeing her every day.
She was a problem child.
If you came on to her, face to face,
one of you two are going down,
and it's not gonna be her.
But she was kind.
If you needed anything,
she wouldn't hesitate in the least
to give it to you.
She would give the last penny
in her pocket.
Have you ever gone roller skating?
And you wear white
and how it changes the color?
She would just get out on that floor
and do whatever she wanted.
She was a free girl.
Megan was on temporary aid
for needy families.
They were only giving her $400 a month
for her and Lilliana.
She tried getting jobs,
but it didn't work out.
[tense music playing]
I found out that Megan
was placing ads on Craigslist,
through her brother's ex-girlfriend.
She's like, "Yeah, on the escort section."
I'm like, "What?" I'm like, "No way."
I just went through, like,
300 pages of photos, of females,
and Megan is in there.
We had no clue.
Craigslist was a place
for a lot of things in 2010.
Including personal services,
as well as sexual services.
And in many ways it was safer
because women could screen their clients
and then decide
if they wanted to meet with them.
[Lorraine] We all tried talking to Megan,
trying to get her out of it,
but she needed money.
So she could stay where she was living.
The last time anybody saw Megan was 2010.
She took a bus down to New York to work.
She disappeared
into thin air.
I called Suffolk County Police Department.
They searched the hotel.
And as far as I know,
that's the only time they looked for her.
[tense music continues playing]
[Lynn] We contacted the 43rd Precinct,
said, "You know,
my daughter lives in the Bronx,
we haven't heard from her."
And she's like, "Ma'am,
is she mentally retarded?
Is she on any type of psych meds?"
No, no, no.
"Well, then she's not missing.
She's where she wants to be."
It was so discouraging.
They're just not doing their job.
[somber music playing]
[Kristin] For years, these families knew
that their loved ones were missing.
And no matter how many times
they went to the police department
to try to get them to take this seriously,
they didn't.
[female reporter] Melissa was last seen
leaving her apartment in the Bronx
on July 12th.
Her family is looking for help.
If anybody has seen my daughter,
please contact us.
What do you think
happened to your daughter?
[woman] I don't know
if somebody had grabbed her
while she was walking to the store,
or what,
but I know she is definitely missing.
[Kristin] With a lot of missing persons,
it's not always clear
to the family or friends
where exactly their loved one disappeared.
But with Shannan Gilbert,
it's a completely different story.
[tense music playing]
[woman] When I heard
my sister was missing,
I knew something sinister happened.
[somber music playing]
Shannan was doing this for a few years
to pay her college tuition.
She was so smart and talented.
And she was so realistic, so relatable.
I could tell her anything.
Her voice was very beautiful.
We had this thing, Sunday Funday,
every weekend.
We all got together.
So much fun. So much laughter.
Food. It was the best times.
We all thought we were The Spice Girls.
Our favorite girl band
was The Spice Girls.
She loved music. She loved it.
You know how you're, like,
so scared to tell your mom things,
with Shannan it's, like,
having, like, your mom and your sister.
It was great.
One day, her boyfriend notified my mother
that she went to see a client
and was never seen after that.
[tense music playing]
[man] I met Shannan Gilbert,
working for this escort agency.
I got a job as a driver.
May 1st, Shannan texted me,
she said, "Can you pick me up
at 32nd and Broadway?"
She would take the PATH train there
from New Jersey.
So I said, "Yeah, sure."
Somebody spoke to her
about coming out to Long Island.
It was a long drive.
About an hour from the city.
We got there around, like, 1:00 AM.
When they went up to the house,
I took a nap.
And around five AM,
the guy came out to my car.
And he said that she won't leave.
I said, "What?"
I went into his house.
I said, "What's wrong?"
And she said, "They're trying to kill me."
So I said, "Who's trying to kill you?"
She just got up, right up, and ran.
She went past the car
towards thickets of bushes.
I called her and texted her,
she didn't pick up.
[Stevie] Within 24 hours,
my mother reported her missing.
We were told that
this was just a case of a runaway.
That's not something my sister would do.
This is not like her.
This is not who she is.
This is not her character.
We all knew something happened.
[Kristin] The crazy thing is,
Shannan's driver could pinpoint
exactly where she went missing.
And yet, that area remained
largely untouched by law enforcement.
Then, in December of 2010,
seven months after Shannan disappeared,
total fluke.
An officer for the Suffolk County
Police Department decided,
you know, I'm gonna go take my K-9
to go practice down at Gilgo Beach.
I'm gonna go out to Gilgo. I'm gonna look
for that, uh, Shannan Gilbert woman.
Look what happened.
[tense music playing]
[female reporter] We're following
some breaking news right now.
A body has been found in Oak Beach.
[male reporter] Authorities made the find
as they investigated
a missing person's report,
looking for a 24-year-old woman
from Jersey City.
[man] On May 1st of this year,
Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old female,
went missing.
We had no leads as to where she went.
In a continuation of that investigation,
the missing persons unit
responded to the area
where this young lady went missing,
with his dog, Blue.
Here's Blue.
[man] Blue's a cadaver dog.
[barking]
We started our search,
he, uh, started sampling the air
and he started indicating to a spot
off the shoulder of the, uh, parkway.
At that point,
I saw the skeletal remains of a body.
[female reporter] Bombshell tonight.
An off-duty cop, walking his dog
on a beautiful, remote, isolated beach,
stumbles upon a woman's dead body.
[Lynn] One night,
we're sitting on the couch,
watching Nancy Grace,
and all of a sudden,
they discovered a body in Long Island.
They said that they had found a female,
approximately 24 to 26 years old.
Four foot nine.
We just started crying.
We knew it was her.
[dramatic music plays and dies down]
I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable.
It was so close to the road.
How could nobody see this?
They were searching more
that day, they didn't find anybody.
Two days later,
Suffolk County contacted me
to tell me
that they found three more bodies.
[female reporter] Oak Beach, tonight,
looking more like a gruesome cemetery.
The remains of three more people
were found stuffed in these brushes.
[Kristin] Typically,
when you have a homicide,
it's one person
with a particular set of circumstances.
When we realized,
the reporters, the media,
that there were four bodies
that seemed to be killed
in a consistent way,
all buried in the same area
It was just unbelievable.
I had never seen anything like it
in all my years of reporting.
And we knew
that we had a huge story on our hands.
The media dubbed them "The Gilgo Four."
[tense music playing]
[Adrienne] The Gilgo Four were found
along Ocean Parkway.
They were spaced equally apart.
And three of the four victims were found
to have been wrapped
using a specific type of burlap,
typically used by duck hunters.
They were disposed of
in a very distinct and similar manner.
It wasn't a burial site,
it was where their bodies were
strategically disposed of.
Unless you've been there,
it's hard to explain.
Ocean Parkway is a desolate highway.
There's no street lights.
It's completely dark.
You can have considerable time
if you're trying to commit a crime,
like disposing of a body.
I personally pulled over and timed it.
At night time,
you might not see headlights
for 30 seconds,
or you could not see headlights
for eight minutes.
There are no housing structures nearby.
There's no businesses.
He walked maybe 25 paces,
dumped the body,
got in his vehicle and left.
The investigators found hairs
that did not belong to the victims.
And it did not match any profile
within law enforcement DNA databases.
They belonged to an unidentified male
of Caucasian descent.
The totality of the evidence linked
the Gilgo Four together very cleanly
and clearly and logically,
from an investigative standpoint.
[male reporter] Shannan Gilbert
is the suspected sex worker
whose disappearance
police were investigating
when they stumbled on four bodies.
But Gilbert was not among them.
She remains missing.
Suffolk County Police find themselves now
on the trail of a possible serial killer.
[Adrienne] One of the things
that stood out to me
was that all of the victims
were petite in nature.
He has this distinct type.
I think he was picking those victims
because they were small in stature
and easier to control
because of their size.
[female reporter] Tonight,
Suffolk County Sheriffs say
they think one of the bodies could be that
of 22-year-old Megan Waterman
from Scarborough.
When you're done, take it out
and just put it back away.
-Okay?
-Okay.
[female reporter] Scarborough Police
asked Lorraine Ela for a swab sample
to see if her DNA will match
one of the bodies.
[Lorraine] Probably a month after,
Detective Higgin shows up at my house
to tell me that it was Megan.
I was pretty much like, "Okay,
what is my next step? What do I do?"
And he was like, "Well,
I'm really sorry about your loss."
He's like, "Here's my card.
Here's this gentleman's card."
And they left.
They turned around and walked away.
[scoffs]
Yeah. [sighs]
[man] Good afternoon.
We are here today to announce
that all four women,
whose remains were discovered
in Gilgo Beach last month,
have been positively identified.
The victims are
Megan Waterman of Scarborough, Maine.
[somber music playing]
Melissa Barthelemy of the Bronx.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes
of Norwich, Connecticut.
And Amber Lynn Costello of North Avalon.
[music ends]
[man] I still like it out there.
Fishing. I've been doing it
for a long time here.
It's something different.
Especially after all that shit happened.
Amber was funny.
She was, like, ridiculous.
You know what I mean?
Like, four foot ten, you know, 100 pounds,
just like a little firecracker.
You know what I mean?
She was just like any other
20-something-year-old girl.
Talked about getting married, you know.
Talked about, you know,
holding down a real job.
She loved animals.
That was her thing.
She wanted to be a veterinarian.
She was looking into schools and stuff.
Amber would've done something.
She had a really good moral compass,
but the second her sister came around,
it just, you know,
the compass started spinning.
It was her sister
that got her into all that shit.
They were doing calls together.
These guys that would come
for this kind of stuff, man,
y-you'd be surprised how many of them
are, like, cops, lawyers.
I'd swear to shit,
90% of the people were married men.
The first week of September 2010,
she's like, I got a call, you know,
the guy wants to, to possibly do 24 hours.
And then, she disappeared.
Of course, you know, it fucks you up.
Because, you know,
it's your friend that's gone.
[man] All of those women
were engaged in prostitution
and solicited business over the internet.
And these homicides appear to us
to be directly related to that business.
[woman] Maureen was fearless.
Brave is an understatement.
She was always like that.
I met Maureen when we were working
as telemarketers.
She was in the cubicle across from me
and we just clicked.
Maureen was the most lively person.
You know, she always
had something funny to say.
She knew when to have fun
and she knew when to work her ass off.
She was a single mom
and she was trying hard.
When she was fired, I think,
maybe two or three weeks after me,
she needed to make that money real quick.
And she said, "Hey, Sarah,
you like to fuck random people.
Why don't you get paid for it?"
[tense music playing]
First, what we would do, is we'd type in
"manhattan.craigslist.org."
We'd go to "erotic services" and then,
it would make you put in a title.
Like, "Hi, I'm Lacey,
I'm 100% independent."
You're a rent-a-girlfriend.
Everybody seems to think
that it's gonna be like Pretty Woman
and you have to dress like her. Okay?
No, you have to dress like her
after she meets Richard Gere.
It's more about companionship
than it is about the sex.
One of the most important things
she always told me,
she said, "Follow your instincts.
If it doesn't feel right, don't do it."
[somber music playing]
When Maureen went missing,
we were staying in Midtown Manhattan.
But I left. I went back to Connecticut.
Later on that night,
I kept calling her phone,
calling her phone, calling her phone.
We would work in pairs to keep us safe.
But she had eviction court the next day.
She had less than 24 hours
to get some fucking kind of money up
so that they didn't lose
their frickin' house.
And that's why she went alone.
She wouldn't have done it any other time.
I have really bad survivor's guilt
because I really feel, like
she'd be alive had I stayed.
I know that for a fact.
[Lynn] Melissa was in New York
for probably two and a half years.
And I didn't find out what she was doing
until they found her body
and they found out
that they were sex workers.
We were really close with Melissa.
We spoke constantly.
It's just mind-boggling.
I just don't understand
how I missed all this stuff.
How I didn't know what she was doing.
[male reporter] Here on Oak Beach,
they don't seem overly concerned
since the killer has apparently
targeted prostitutes.
I think that it was very comforting
when we found out
that he was targeting
a specific group of women
from a specific website.
So that it made it something
that was removed from us.
[Lynn] In the beginning,
the media wasn't very nice.
They called our girls
prostitutes and whores.
[reporter 1] Bodies of four
young prostitutes in December
[reporter 2]
Another Craigslist prostitute
[reporter 3] An online escort
[reporter 4] Prostitutes who advertised
their services on Craigslist
[Lynn] People would see something on TV
and, basically, they would say
that they deserved it.
There was some of the attitude
that they put themselves in that position.
And that was obvious
from public statements
that some of the most senior people
investigating this murder were saying.
Their deaths are a direct result
of their business as prostitutes.
We're easy targets because
we are considered bottom of the barrel.
Nobody gives a shit about us.
We cannot report crimes to cops
because it's not legal.
Today, sex work has become
more de-stigmatized.
With sites like OnlyFans
becoming mainstream,
it's become a more accepted line of work.
But in 2010, that wasn't the case.
[Adrienne] At one point,
one of the senior investigators
made a comment to a reporter
about the victims being greedy
and wanting money.
When I read that,
I remember getting sick to my stomach.
Because I just thought to myself,
"What have you done to find this guy?
And what are you doing telling a reporter
that this victim was greedy
and that's why
she was involved in that type of work?"
It's utter fucking bullshit.
Any more questions?
One more. One more, please.
[reporter] Should people be scared?
Oh, no, I don't think-- No.
I-I don't want anybody to think that,
uh, we have a Jack the Ripper
running around Suffolk County
with blood dripping from a knife.
It's not that type of situation.
And so, I would say to people,
go about your business
Suffolk County is one
of the safest counties
anywhere in the United States.
[Kristin] Just three months
after the Gilgo Four are discovered,
another bombshell drops.
[tense music playing]
I get a call,
more bodies have been found in Gilgo,
we need you guys to go out there.
[tense music playing]
And so we'd leave New York City
to go out to Long Island.
[Kristin] Police vehicle
was driving by this Ocean Parkway highway
and something caught his eye.
Last time they were here
was actually back in January,
just a couple weeks after Suffolk Police
found the remains of four women.
The winter weather prevented searching,
so they came out here again.
[man] Officers discovered
what appeared to be another human remain.
It was discovered, also,
on the north side of Ocean Parkway.
[reporter] Helicopters,
cadaver dogs, machetes.
The macabre search for fresh evidence
in Shannan Gilbert's disappearance
continued today,
in a case that only grows grizzlier
with each gruesome discovery.
[reporter 2] Police found a human skull
yesterday. This time by divers.
They are being examined tonight
by medical experts.
[Kristin] Over the course of a few weeks,
police found partial skeletal remains
several miles east
of where the Gilgo Four were found.
Investigators unearthed
four more bodies
on that same strip of beach
[male reporter]
One more body, that's right.
The body count just keeps on rising
and the grizzly mystery just deepens.
[Kristin] Ocean Parkway
is a mass burial ground.
I mean, this is, like, crazy.
[male observer] It's just a little bit
unsettling, you know,
that you never know
what could be down the street.
It's very scary.
And it makes it much more creepy
to come here by yourself.
[female observer] I keep a cellphone
in one pocket,
and when I have to take a shotgun,
I'm outta here.
At that time, the fever pitch
from the public interest,
the public outcry, and the media
got really, really high.
Because you have a crime scene
with at least ten bodies
and Shannan Gilbert has not been found.
[Kristin] So far, police have already
discovered the remains of ten people.
They made it very clear
that they do not know if these remains
are connected to the four other women,
uh, that you saw there.
So, still a lot of mystery around this.
Police are holding this news conference
at 11 o'clock this morning.
We're live at Gilgo Beach.
Kristin Thorne. CBS2 News.
Uh, where's Bob
[music ends]
They're set?
Today, we're going to discuss some details
regarding the remains discovered
by the Suffolk County Police Department.
And what is now very clear
is that the area in and around Gilgo Beach
has been used to discard human remains
for some period of time.
[somber music playing]
Displayed on the maps are the locations
where the remains were found.
[Adrienne] Six other victims.
Five were female.
One was male.
And one of them is a toddler.
Four of the six were dismembered.
Typically, perpetrators dismember victims
in order to frustrate
and confuse investigators.
Because, presumptively,
if law enforcement knew
who that person was,
they would be able to, fairly easily,
link the victim back to the perpetrator.
The crime scene itself
is two and a half miles long.
It spans two different jurisdictions.
That's huge.
So, investigating the Gilgo Four,
that's where they honed in.
Because, quite frankly,
that was the easiest and most logical path
for investigators to follow.
[Thomas] I would not term it
as a serial killer.
There are no similarities,
and I wanna emphasize this,
there are no similarities at all
to the four Gilgo homicides.
There is no evidence
that all these remains
are that of a single killer.
[tense music playing]
[Kristin] The difference between the way
the Gilgo Four were found
and the other bodies
beg the question,
was this the work of one individual
or was there more than one serial killer
on Long Island?
The public should realize
that this investigation is not
an episode of CSI or Criminal Minds
that is going to be solved
in a one-hour period.
The investigation, most likely,
is going to take
a very long period of time.
[music ends]
[Lynn] On numerous occasions
I asked the police
what was going on with the case.
And they said, "Just believe me,
we're really working on it.
It's the only thing that we're working on.
We'll never stop working."
That's, basically, all they told us.
[tense music playing]
A few months later, the coroner told me
that Melissa's body wasn't whole.
They found another part of her body,
her arm.
I said, "Well,
how could you have missed that?"
They had told me that, maybe,
a crab or some type of animal
had dragged off a part of her body
and they had missed it.
They asked me what I wanted to do with it
and I said, "Well, what do you mean
what do I want to do with it?"
I want to put her whole body together.
I mean, it's just-- It's unbelievable.
I really wasn't good with the stress
that was going on in my life at that time.
I wanted to find the other families.
[somber music playing]
[Lorraine] I didn't know about Lynn
until she started
looking for me on Facebook.
[Lynn] I set up the group so we could
contact each other and keep in touch.
[Lorraine] We'd shoot a message
and then we just talked quite a bit.
[Lynn] The special bond,
we know we can talk to each other.
'Cause we know
what each other was feeling.
[Lorraine] Lynn became my best friend,
my sister.
She wanted me to go
spend a week at her house,
so I took a week's vacation.
Our friendship will never end.
Then we were just one big ha--
somewhat happy family.
[music ends]
We want just a little bit of closure.
Not all of us have been to the sites.
[sighs] It's tough.
It's taken just about
everything I have to be here.
This was supposed to be
a final goodbye to all the girls,
but with Shannan Gilbert still missing,
family members say they will continue
to return to this site
as long as it takes.
My name is Mari Gilbert.
My daughter is Shannan.
She is out there.
She is missing.
And our family and our friends,
we're gonna find her.
And we're gonna find out
who hurt Shannan and all the others.
[Stevie] In this situation,
I think you just kinda listen
to what your heart tells you.
And my mother definitely knew
that Shannan wasn't with us anymore.
It was tough,
but it only made her stronger.
There's a part of me
that did not want to move forward.
But we needed answers.
[tense music playing]
[Mari] I'm hoping that
the more the people see this,
the more the people hear this,
that they're gonna know
we're not gonna forget.
Regardless how long it takes,
if it takes the rest of our lives,
we're gonna find where my daughter is
and we're gonna find out
who did this to the other girls.
[Lynn] When we went to see the sites,
we were pulled down the side of the road
and the police, basically, told us
that we had to leave.
[tense music playing]
A detective from Suffolk County told us
that he did not want us
talking to the media.
Because the media was trouble
and they always get everything twisted.
[reporter] Are there any updates
in the investigation that you know of?
[Mari] Nothing. Homicide detectives
will not tell us anything.
They should be contacting us.
Not leaving us hanging,
like they're doing.
Yeah.
All they tell us is, when we catch him,
you'll be the first to know.
[Kristin] Early on, the families
were stonewalled by law enforcement.
These cases were not moving
as fast as they should've been.
The families needed to find a way
to get law enforcement to listen to them.
And for Shannan's family,
that resulted in finding John Ray.
You can say what you want about John Ray,
but he is a good lawyer.
[interviewer] Do you wanna sit Yeah.
-Come up closer? Yeah.
-[interviewer] Tiny bit.
[interviewer] It's an amazing room.
I mean, I didn't need a set designer.
I'm a lawyer.
I've been a lawyer since 1983.
I work seven days a week.
I do everything. I litigate.
I'm not afraid
of the big firms or the government.
As a renegade against the system.
[somber music playing]
Mari Gilbert contacted me
through Steve Barcelo,
photographer slash reporter
for The New York Daily News.
He said, "Look,
can you help me with this lady
that's involved in that Long Island
serial killer case?"
She had no money.
You know, but
what was wrong here, was that
the police didn't do anything.
So I was asked to step in.
And that's what I did.
Um Step up here next to me,
so you can be close.
The media comes when I call
a press conference, as a rule,
because they know me.
Whenever you're ready, tell me,
we'll get cracking.
That was my value.
Are we on?
Okay.
We're here today
at the site of these terrible crimes,
because the Suffolk County
Police Department
is grossly derelict in its duty.
The Commissioner of Police
in Suffolk County
has acted like The Pink Panther.
I called him Inspector Clouseau.
And I brought a big board
that we had made up,
you know, some facts and figures.
They may investigate serial killings
in violation of the laws of the state
I guess I would, you know,
using my, um,
I don't know, Irish talents,
and that highly insulted them.
We say step up to the plate, do your job.
If it doesn't happen, we will launch
a lawsuit for that to occur.
[Kristin] I think the police department
got annoyed with him.
John Ray fought the Suffolk County
Police Department.
And that's when they finally resumed
looking for Shannan.
[tense music playing]
[male reporter] Tonight,
Suffolk County Police confirmed
that they were, again,
searching for any evidence
of missing New Jersey woman,
Shannan Gilbert.
[Richard] Today, during the search,
they found a cellphone,
which they believe
may belong to Shannan Gilbert.
[female reporter] It's looking like
the missing New Jersey prostitute
is buried in the boggy marsh.
Her jeans and pocketbook
discovered yesterday.
A year and a half
after Shannan disappeared,
her body was finally found.
Less than a mile
from where she disappeared.
And several miles east
of where the Gilgo Four were found.
The body was found, approximately,
one quarter mile northeast
of where her personal belongings
were located.
[Stevie] When Shannan was found,
our world just stopped.
As much as we tried to pick up the pieces,
it was impossible.
It absolutely broke our family.
[tense music playing]
[Stevie] I feel robbed of my youth.
Because I was so stuck on the tragedy.
I wasn't able to move forward
and focus on a career
when I was in a very dark place
for a very long time.
It's a sick,
horrible sick world that we live in.
[man] What's running through your mind?
It's evil.
See-- this place is evil.
[male reporter] Why weren't
the reeds cut down a year ago?
Why didn't you bring in
all this equipment a year ago?
Well, it wasn't--
We didn't think it was necessary
and, also, that area was full of water.
[female reporter] Investigators weren't
able to go through there to search.
How could Shannan Gilbert
walk half a mile?
It was very tough.
Uh, when you get a chance
to look at that area,
you will wonder how anybody
could walk through that area.
There's no way anybody
would've wandered into the marsh.
That is a lie.
Then you have her clothing.
How did her jeans come off?
A third of a mile away
from where her body is found.
With her pocketbook.
The Commissioner of Police said,
well, they're bramble bushes.
Running through the marsh,
they pulled her jeans off.
It's absurd.
[female reporter] Investigators believe
Gilbert got tangled in brush
and drowned in the marshy area.
That she was not murdered by,
what cops believe,
is the serial killer that dumped
the ten other sets of remains
at Gilgo Beach.
[John] They even claimed she drowned.
Are you serious?
Shannan was found face up
in very shallow water.
Only inches deep.
She couldn't have drowned.
And so then, when that was discovered,
the police immediately changed their story
and said a different reason that she died.
Natural causes.
What natural causes?
They didn't say.
I mean, it was ridiculous.
[male reporter] You don't believe
it was an accident at this point?
No. No.
I can't accept
that she died of natural causes.
There's no way.
Especially,
when other women had been found
in the same, exact spot.
All of the same age. All into sex work.
There's a pattern.
Anybody with a brain can see
that there's a pattern going on.
And then,
a few days after Shannan was found,
a new police chief came in. James Burke.
It's gonna be a very good time
to be a Suffolk County citizen.
And it's gonna be a very bad time
to be a criminal in Suffolk County.
[John] And the case was shut down.
You couldn't get anywhere.
You couldn't talk to police.
You couldn't get anything from them.
[tense music playing]
Burke, with the help
of the district attorney at the time,
told Nassau County Police Department
to step out of the case.
New York State Police
were told to step down.
They also told the FBI
to step down, get out of the case.
It's a local case.
It's a case that is led
by Suffolk County Police Department.
The FBI can assist,
but the FBI assists
at the behest of the local agency.
There has to be a federal crime
attached to it
for the FBI to take over
the investigation.
[Lorraine] When I was told that Suffolk
County wouldn't let the FBI in on this,
I thought it's too much for them
to handle for themselves.
They need more people in there.
Why won't they let them in to help?
[Kristin] You don't tell the FBI no.
You probably should be bringing in
the agencies from anywhere
that is willing to assist.
[John] Suffolk County
Police Department's hierarchy
wanted to put to bed
the entire saga of all these dead bodies.
[man] We know she called 911.
What we heard was someone who seemed
disoriented, confused.
She did not seem rational.
She didn't act appropriately
and she ran off,
aimlessly, into this marshy area.
[John] We know, for sure,
that Shannan Gilbert called 911.
And then she disappears.
Allegedly, never to be seen again
by anyone.
What was on the 911 tape?
The police refused to give it to me.
For me to find out what was on that tape,
I had to sue the police department.
The detective sergeant who was in charge,
he said, "John Ray will get that tape
over my dead body."
No, I don't think so.
After years of litigation, I won.
We got the tape.
[Kristin] How can you hear that 911 call
and not send out
your entire police department
to look for this person?
[John] She was being hunted.
[Kristin] Will this reveal something
about the killer?
[Shannan screaming] No! No!
Stop!
[dramatic music plays]