Case 354: The Gilgo Beach Serial Killings (Part 1/2)

For early access and date-free episodes, check out our Patreon, Apple Premium, and Spotify subscription memberships. Our episodes deal with serious and often-distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. In the middle of the afternoon on Saturday, December 11, 2010, 59-year-old officer John Mallier made his way to Ocean Parkway, a 15-and-a-half-mile, four-lane highway that stretches along Long Island in the state of New York. Initially designed to be a pleasure drive, due to its sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and southwest of Bay, the highway provides access to the area's beaches and barrier islands that run parallel to the South Shore. But officer Mallier wasn't there for recreational purposes. A young woman had gone missing in the nearby neighborhood of Oak Beach more than six months earlier, and a no trace of her had been found. A month after she first went missing, the Suffolk County Police Department's missing person's bureau asked officer Mallier a 31-year veteran of the force to search for the woman with his partner, a seven-year-old German shepherd named Blue. Officer Mallier had trained Blue as a pup, teaching him to be a cadaver dog. Missing person's cases often served as ideal training exercises for cadaver dogs, who were taught to identify the scent of human remains and to notify their handlers of their discovery. Officer Mallier and Blue had searched Oak Beach together throughout the summer months of 2010, focusing mainly on the southern side of Ocean Parkway. It hadn't been an easy task, parts of the terrain were thorny with brambles. Blue had sustained scratches while searching the overgrown area, parts of which were too dense for him to enter. There was poison ivy growing there as well, which gave Officer Mallier a rash. The two persisted despite the unpleasant conditions and the fact that their searches hadn't yielded any results. Sometimes they even went looking outside of office hours, with Officer Mallier using his own time to search with Blue. By December, the heat of the summer months had given way to the cold of winter, which made for easier search conditions. Some of the thick overgrowth had thinned out, making previously hard to reach areas more accessible. On Saturday December 11, the top temperature was just 6 degrees Celsius, or 43 degrees Fahrenheit, and by the afternoon, the skies were sunny and clear. Yet, the scene felt remote and desolate due to the distinct lack of people. It was a marshy area not conducive to walking, and the heavy vegetation provided a kind of barrier from the highway, concealing the passing traffic. Officer Mallier and Blue first scoured the southern side of Ocean Parkway, searching the Oak Beach area where the woman had gone missing. Finding nothing there, they crossed over to the northern side of the Parkway. Thick shrubs, brush, trees and marshland ran between the road and the water. They headed west for around three miles, sticking close to the Parkway's shoulder due to the thick brush. Blue's nose was glued to the ground as he sniffed, then his tail suddenly started wagging. He pushed his nose into the dirt and started digging. Leaning in to see what Blue had found, Officer Mallier saw a heavily disintegrated burlap sack. Inside it, was a human skeleton. Three and a half years earlier, in July 2007, a 25-year-old named Marine Brain Art Barnes had desperately needed money. She and her housemate were a couple of months behind on rent, and were facing a vision if they couldn't provide it within a few days, before a scheduled court date on Tuesday, July 10. Marine was a dreamer and the oldest of three siblings. Born Marine View, she'd grown up in Groton, Connecticut, an industrial port town about two and a half hours east of New York City. Her mother had worked constantly to provide for her family, and Maureen's father hadn't been especially involved in his children's lives. Consequently, the people Maureen was closest to were her sister Missy and her brother Will, the three of them born to tight knit trio. As a teenager, Maureen was a voracious reader and a poet who wrote rap songs. She fantasized about making a big with her songwriting and becoming a star. Maureen had notebooks filled with all her song lyrics and poetry. In 1998, when she was 16 years old, she found out she was pregnant and left school to have a baby, a daughter named Caitlyn. Maureen married her boyfriend, Jason Brain Art Barnes, and took his last name. The young couple had moved in with the Jason's grandparents, but their marriage ended amicably within a few years. Caitlyn lived with the Jason due to better schooling options in the village where he was living, and Maureen moved in with her siblings. Tragedy struck in June 2003 when Maureen's father died on her 21st birthday, drowning in an accident. Maureen encountered further hardships after beginning a romantic relationship with a man named Steve, who didn't want to spend time with any of Maureen's family or friends and separated her from her siblings. Maureen and Steve's relationship was strained from early on and money was always a struggle. Maureen worked a variety of jobs and found working casinos as a blackjack dealer under slot attendant, but she hadn't given up on her dreams. She made use of the new social networking site MySpace, which launched in 2003 to share her songs and connect with other aspiring rappers. While scrolling the site, she noticed advertisements for modeling, which led her to a website called modelmayham.com. There, she discovered that she could submit pictures of her own for potential bookers to pursue. Hoping this might lead to the breakthrough she was hoping for, Maureen created a portfolio of photographs. Maureen was petite at four foot eleven and about 105 pounds or 48 kilos. She had bright blue eyes and chestnut brown hair that she wore with the sweeping side part. Almost as soon as she submitted her portfolio, Maureen started receiving emails from apparent modeling agencies inviting her to work with them. She quickly discovered that these offers were for nude modeling and even escort work, and they offered a lot of money. Realising that this would be a way to provide for herself and her daughter, Maureen looked into the possibility of sex work. If she signed up with one of the agencies reaching out to her, then she would have to give them a cut of whatever she made. But if she worked independently, then she could keep all of the profits. The online classified's platform Craigslist featured ads from women who worked for themselves and could determine when, how much, and where they worked. Maureen began advertising as well using the alias of Marie. She was aware of the dangers sex work could pose and how it might cause her to interact with dangerous men. In July 2005, she shared the anxieties troubling her on her myspace page, writing, "Having serial killer dreams again, love is hemorrhaging in my head, fading away with every beat. Maybe all it takes to keep alive is smoking it to death." That same year, Maureen discovered she was pregnant with her second child, a son this time, to her boyfriend Steve. She ceased sex work and returned to working in casinos, but when her relationship with Steve ended in 2006, Maureen and her infant son Aiden were facing financial hardship. She began working in telemarketing where she became close friends with a colleague named Sarah Carns, but the pay was very low. Maureen applied for other jobs without any luck. To supplement her income, she returned to Westcourt work. She would travel to New York City which was roughly two and a half hours. from her apartment in Norwich, a Connecticut city close to her hometown of Groton. There was more money and more clients there, as well as anonymity. The size of the metropolis made it far less likely that she'd be booked by someone she knew. Maureen would stay in a hotel room while in New York, and clients would visit her there. She always took someone with her for safety. In one time, that person became her friend Sarah Khan's, who began performing sex work as well. While Maureen was working, her sister Missy looked after her children if they weren't with their respective fathers. In early July of 2007, the now 25-year-old Maureen was in desperate need of cash. She was behind on rant and facing eviction. With the court date scheduled for Tuesday, July 10, she needed to come up with the money before then to secure her home. She and Sarah decided to travel to New York City for the weekend of July 7-8, and stayed a motel in Times Square, with the hopes of making enough to back pay the rent. But business was slow. Maureen had a contact who she paid to manipulate the Craigslist ads in order to ensure hers stayed at the top of the page. This usually ensured a steady stream of clients. When she got into an argument with him, however, he began flagging her and Sarah's profiles. By the morning of Monday, July 9, Maureen still didn't have enough money. She decided to stay one more night, and hopefully she'd be able to make what she needed. But Sarah was ready to go back to Connecticut and didn't think Maureen should stay by herself. It went against to their rules to work solo. She tried to convince Maureen to go back with her, but Maureen was determined to stay. At around 11.30am, Sarah left Maureen in the hotel room they shared to drive home with two friends. They hadn't even left the west side highway in Manhattan when Sarah received a call from Maureen. Exhausted, Sarah ignored the call and called up on the car's back seat for a nap. When Sarah was back in Connecticut that night, she spoke to an acquaintance who'd received a call from Maureen, saying she'd been robbed by some guys who'd taken $5,000 from her. Baffled how Maureen had even made that much in such a short window of time, Sarah tried calling her. There was no answer. But Maureen's sister, Missy, did hear from her that night. Maureen called at 11.30pm and chatted with Missy, not saying anything about being robbed or urgently needing cash. She instead told Missy that she was calling from the busy transit hub of Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan and asked if Missy's husband Chris could pick her up. Missy explained that it was too late. Missy had to work early the next morning and couldn't make the 5 hour round trip, so Maureen agreed to take the train home instead. The next day, Missy called Maureen, but she didn't answer her phone. Missy wasn't overly concerned, figuring Maureen might be sleeping off a big weekend or had run out of phone credit. She wasn't aware that Maureen was doing court that day and to thus didn't hear anything when Maureen failed to appear. The following day of Wednesday, July 11, Missy's brother Will called to say he'd been trying to contact Maureen, but her phone went straight to voicemail. By Thursday, July 12, Missy and Will were officially worried. It wasn't like their sister to go days with our contact and she would never abandon her two children. They reported Maureen missing to the Norwich Police Department, but when the officers learned that Maureen was a sex worker, they quickly lost interest. They told the siblings that Maureen was probably just trying to make the money she needed and would reappear when she was ready. With no help from the authorities, Missy and Will began looking for Maureen themselves. Will and Missy's husband Chris travelled to the motel where Maureen had been staying in Times Square. The staff cleaned to have no recollection of Maureen, but their record showed she'd checked out on Tuesday, July 10, the day after she'd called from Penn Station trying to get home. Missy logged into Maureen's email using the password Maureen had given her, but there were no leads there. There was a brief spark of hope when the police notified them that Maureen's food stamp card had been used in Norwich. Their hope vanished when they discovered that a friend of Maureen's had used the card. According to this friend, Maureen had given the card to them along with everything else she owned. Her apartment had been entirely empty of all her possessions. As the weeks went on, Haley started to take Maureen's disappearance more seriously. They obtained her cell phone records which revealed that on Friday, July 6, three days before she went missing, Maureen had been contacted by a burner phone, a prepaid mobile phone designed for short term use and anonymity. Over the next four days, there were 16 interactions between this number and Maureen's. At 11.56pm on the last day, Monday, July 9, Maureen's phone pinged a cell tower in Midtown Manhattan near the 59th Street Bridge. That was its last activity for several days. It activated again on Thursday, July 12, three days after she was last heard from. Two outbound calls were made from the device to check her voicemail. These calls have been made near the Long Island Expressway that connects Manhattan with Long Island in Ilandia, a village in Suffolk County. Missy found out about these developments months after her sister's disappearance after a detective took pity on her due to Missy's constant calls for information. He also mentioned that one of the last individuals to contact Maureen on Craigslist was a New York police officer who'd subsequently been cleared of any involvement. Missy was also told that after Maureen's phone had pinged in Long Island, searches had been conducted there using cadaver dogs and helicopters. Nothing was found. Missy couldn't understand how her sister or her phone could have ended up in Long Island, which was 40 miles east of Manhattan. As far as Missy knew, Maureen never worked there or did out calls, which involved leaving her own space to visit a client in their home. That went against her rules. Missy wasn't Maureen's only loved one who received concerning information that didn't seem quite right. On Monday, July 23, exactly two weeks after Maureen disappeared, her friend Sarah received a phone call at around 6.30pm. The call as number was blocked and Sarah usually ignored blocked calls. Maureen had warned her that those could be from police officers conducting an undercover sting. But for some reason, Sarah answered this one. She was greeted by a male voice who said, "Hi, I saw you're at on Craigslist. Do you know Mauree?" Mauree was Maureen's alias. Immediately alert, Sarah asked the man what Mauree looked like. The man accurately described Maureen, saying she was short with shoulder length brown hair and had a tattoo on her right arm. "Yeah, that's my friend," Sarah replied. "Where is she? She's been missing in Connecticut for the past two weeks." "Oh, she's fine," the man reassured her. She's at a whorehouse in Queens. This made no sense to Sarah. She knew that Maureen only wanted to work independently and wouldn't be at a brothel in New York City. She asked the man if he could call back with the address, unblocked so his number would be visible and she could share it with the police. He said he would and Sarah waited to hear back from him. But he never called again. Two years later, in early July of 2009, a 24-year-old woman named Melissa Bartholomey was looking forward to seeing her little sister Amanda again. Amanda was 9 years younger than Melissa and lived with their mother Lynn in Buffalo, New York. Melissa had grown up in Buffalo where she'd graduated from high school with straight A's and then worked in a pizzeria for a little while. In 2004, she enrolled at a beauty school where she earned her cosmetology license. She then worked as a hairdresser at a couple of different Buffalo salons, but Melissa earned for more. She dreamed of opening her own salon and making enough money to buy her mother and sister anything they wanted. Confident, funny and bold, Melissa was the type of person courageous enough to take risks in pursuit of a new world. her goals. In 2006, Melissa relocated to the Bronx in New York City about a six-hour drive from Buffalo on the opposite side of the state. Melissa was excited about the better employment prospects in the bustling metropolis and had already met someone who'd offered her a hairdressing job. His name was Johnny Terry, but he went by the nickname Blaze. Lisa settled into her new city. Though a few months after moving, she told her mother that her job had fallen through because the salon closed down. Now she was working as a topless dancer at a nightclub instead. Lynn was a little shocked by this, as well as worried, but Melissa re-shored her she was safe and never worked alone. In reality, Melissa had started doing sex work shortly after her arrival in the city. New York was expansive and sex work provided a way to deal with some of the financial pressure. She'd also become romantically involved with Blaze, who acted as a pimp for a number of women in the city. He became Melissa's pimp as well. She would travel into Manhattan and head to Times Square to meet clients. Over the next few years, Melissa settled into her new city while making sure to visit her family when she could. Whenever she returned home, she brought plenty of gifts. She particularly doted on her little sister Amanda, whom she was very close to. When Amanda was preparing to start a new school year, Melissa sent her $500 to buy new clothes. In the summer of 2007, 13-year-old Amanda traveled to New York for the first time to stay with her big sister. Melissa had since broken up with her boyfriend and was living in a basement apartment with a number of stray cats she'd adopted. During the day, Melissa took her sister out on fun excursions, shopping together, or visiting the Bronx Zoo. At night, Melissa headed out to work and told her sister not to leave the apartment. She would call to check in on Amanda before she went to bed and came home after Amanda was sleeping. On Spring 2008, Amanda visited Melissa again. She noticed the Melissa using her laptop to post advertisements on Craigslist under the name Chloe. By this time, Melissa was finding almost all of her clients online, which felt safer than going to Times Square at night. Rather than working out of her home, Melissa did our calls to New York City, traveling via a car service to bars, restaurants, and hotels, mostly on Manhattan's west side. Amanda realized that her sister wasn't just the dancing at a nightclub. She was doing escort work. But she didn't know how to broach the topic with Melissa. Amanda didn't ask any questions, and nor did she mention the situation to her mother when she went back home. The latter half of 2008 was challenging for Melissa. On Friday, September 12, she was arrested for solicitation and went to court. Melissa pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five days' community service. Months later, in December, Melissa returned to Buffalo for Christmas. She was her usual, generous self, giving extravagant gifts and treating her mother and sister to massages at a spa, but she seemed unhappy. Lin's partner encouraged Melissa to move back to Buffalo, saying he knew someone who could get her a job at a cosmetology school. Melissa replied, "Not yet. I'm almost ready, though." Melissa went back to New York, and by July, she was keen for Amanda to visit again. Late at night on Thursday, July 9, 2009, she texted Amanda, encouraging her to come and see her. But a couple of days later, no one in Melissa's family could reach her. Calls went unanswered, as did text messages. Lin canceled Amanda's impending visit to her sister and began calling hospitals in New York City in case Melissa had been admitted after an accident. She wasn't the only one who was worried. Melissa's land lady lived in the residence above her basement apartment, and she grew concerned after hearing Melissa's pet cats crying and scratching at the door. Lin tried to file a missing person's report, but the police told her Melissa was an adult with no history of mental illness. She was entitled to take off for a few days without contacting her family. When Melissa's family retained an attorney, investigators were even more candid in their response, telling him that they wouldn't assign a detective for a sex worker in this situation. At 12.40pm on Friday, July 17, just over a week since Melissa's family last heard from her, Amanda's cell phone rang. She was excited to see her sister's name appear as the caller ID. Following the call, Amanda asked, "Malissa." "Oh, this isn't Melissa," came their reply. Instead of hearing her sister's voice, 15-year-old Amanda was met by what sounded like a middle-aged white male. He was relaxed and soft-spoken, asking in a monotone voice, "Have you figured out who this is?" No, Amanda replied, "Where's my sister?" The man did an answer, instead asking, "Are you going to be a whore like your sister now?" When Lynn took the phone from her young daughter and tried to speak to the man, he hung up. The next day, a missing person's report for Melissa was finally filed, though investigators didn't do anything with it. On Thursday, July 23, at 6.42 p.m., Amanda received another call from her sister's phone. She was met by the same cool-voiced man as the last time, who again berated her with verbal and sexual insults. He told Amanda that he had raped her sister. When the attorney retained by Lynn told the police about these calls, they began taking Melissa's case seriously. Looking into her final known actions, it was confirmed that on Friday, July 10, Melissa had gone to the bank and deposited $1,000 into her account. She also withdrew $100 before leaving. That afternoon, a neighbor saw her sitting on the curb outside her apartment. It looked like she was waiting for someone. That was the last time she was seen, but a couple of people heard from her after that. She texted a friend in the evening to say she was meeting a man and would be home the next morning. She also tried calling her on again off-again boyfriend Blaze, but he didn't answer. Police spoke to Blaze, who said that Melissa had started working independently, a decision that had caused some conflict between them. She told him she'd lined up a date for the night she went missing somewhere on Long Island and the client was paying $1,000. Blaze offered her a ride, but she declined. Cell phone records revealed that Melissa had some contact with a burner phone in the days leading up to her disappearance. The burner phone first reached out to Melissa's craigslist profile on Friday, July 3, one week earlier. It called her again three days later on Monday, July 6. On the night of Friday, July 10, Melissa had travelled into Manhattan, probably in a taxi. Hours later, at 1.43am on Saturday, July 11, her phone pinged a tower near Massa Piqua, a hamlet on the south shore of Long Island. It was used to check her own voicemail, as well as making the two calls to Amanda's phone. Investigators also arranged to trace any further calls Amanda received. On the evening of Wednesday, August 5, almost a month after Melissa went missing and two weeks after the last call, Amanda's phone lit up with Melissa's call her ID again. It was 6.50pm. Is this Melissa's little sister, the same male voice asked? I hear you're a half breed. This racist taunt appeared to reference Amanda's parentage. She and Melissa had different fathers. Melissa's father was white while Amanda's father was black. The call has remarked indicated that he knew what Amanda looked like, possibly from scrolling through photos on Melissa's phone. She hung up after a short exchange, only to call back multiple times over the next 20 minutes. He kept the call's brief, but investigators were able to trace the general location of Melissa's phone by checking which cell phone tower was at pinged. phone was on the wall. west side of Midtown Manhattan, connecting with towers at 4 Pan Plaza, 275 West 39th Street, 249 West 36th Street, and 408 West 34th Street. After these calls, detectives asked Amanda to try to draw the caller out if he phoned again. She should engage him in conversation and try to keep him on the line. It had to be Amanda as the caller had refused to talk when Lynn answered. He was clearly fixated on speaking to Melissa's 15-year-old sister. Amanda was distraught by the calls and sank into a depression. Not only was she being forced to listen to a man tell her about distressing things that he had done to her sister, Amanda then had to repeat those details to her mother and the detectives. She began staying home from school where she'd always been an exemplary student. Still, the calls gave her family hope. Perhaps the man was keeping Melissa hostage somewhere and would eventually reveal her whereabouts. She and Lynn waited anxiously for another call from Melissa's phone. There was nothing for almost two weeks. Then on Wednesday, August 19, it rang at 7.23 pm. In a calm, cool voice, the man told Amanda, "I'm going to watch her body rot." This call, like the others, was made from Midtown Manhattan. Exactly one week later, on Wednesday, August 26, Amanda's phone rang at 11.29 pm. This time, Amanda told him that she wanted to see her sister again. The man's response was devastating. "I killed Melissa," he said. He spoke of watching her body decompose, adding, "Maybe I'll come show you one day." With those words, Melissa's family lost all hope of ever seeing her alive again. That was the final call Amanda received. At the end of the month, a television news report about Melissa's case mentioned the harassing calls, and the unknown man never rang Amanda again. On Friday, June 4, 2010, 11 months after Melissa Bartholomey went missing, 22-year-old Meghan Waterman boarded a bus in her hometown of Portland, Maine, for a six-hour ride to the state of New York. She was hoping it was one of the last such trips she would have to make for a while. Meghan had had a difficult upbringing. Born on January 18, 1988, she was primarily raised by her grandmother after her mother's surrendered custody of Meghan and her brother Greg. The reasons behind this arrangement were fiercely disputed by the parties involved, but the end result was that Meghan had grown up with abandonment issues and at one point attempted suicide. She had a lighter side, however, she loved to make people laugh and like to play pranks. Her grandmother Muriel described her as "vavacious and fun, a strong will to go with many friends." As a teenager, Meghan began to rebel. She attended a school where many children came from affluent families, in stark contrast to Meghan's relatives who were living paycheck to paycheck. Meghan began struggling both socially and academically and started shoplifting. These infractions caught the attention of local police. She also struggled with substance use, which led to her being sent to juvenile rehab in 2005. 17-year-old Meghan stopped attending school and started working odd jobs instead. At the same age, she became pregnant to a man who was twice her age and worked as a DJ. In mid-2006, she gave birth to a girl who she named Liliana. She adored her baby, doting on her constantly and those around her marveled at how much calmer and happy Meghan was as a mother. Money was a struggle, though. Meghan received about $400 per month in government assistance and was working at two different sandwich shops, which both paid minimum wage. She worked hard to support her infant daughter but wasn't making enough to provide for Liliana in the way that she wanted. Meghan began working as an escort after becoming involved with some men that Portland police knew as the New York crew. These were a group of young men who traveled from Brooklyn to Portland to sell diluted drugs for an inflated price far beyond what they could make in New York City. They hung out at the city's nightclubs where Meghan met them. One of them groomed Meghan and trafficked her into sex work. She began making more money which allowed her to move into a nicer home. She told her grandparents she was working as a dancer and they babysat Liliana while she was out. This work led to Meghan taking drugs again and forming a relationship with a man one year her junior named Akeem Cruz who became her Pimp. Meghan was head over heels in love with Akeem, who came to her rescue after her previous Pimp a friend of his was abusive towards her. When Meghan's family members later discovered the truth about her life, they came to believe that the two men had deliberately orchestrated this scenario to make Akeem appear like Meghan's savior. Akeem promised to Meghan a future they would get married and she and Liliana would be provided for. By May of 2009, Akeem was taking the now 21-year-old Meghan on trips to Long Island which was close to where he had grown up in Brooklyn and where there were more clients to lure in. Meghan posted ads on Craigslist offering to do both in calls and out calls. She had some negative experiences from these encounters. On one occasion, she was arrested and charged with prostitution after an undercover officer responded to an ad and she was twice robbed by clients despite Akeem supposedly providing protection. Akeem was not the savior he'd presented himself as but an abuser. A friend of Meghan's once saw him beat her up, grabbing her by the hair and hitting her face into the side of a house. Sometimes he would threaten to burn all of Meghan's possessions, then comfort her with promises of a home together and a baby. In May of 2010, Akeem was arrested after the police raided a hotel room where he was staying and discovered drugs and weapons. He spent a couple of weeks in jail before being released because the police hadn't secured a search warrant. Meghan met him at the jail on Monday, May 31 and they planned another trip to Long Island in a few days' time. Meghan reassured her friends she wouldn't be making many more such trips. She just needed a little more money to fund a daycare for Liliana and a new home so that she and Akeem could have the baby they'd talked about. Then, she would no longer have to perform sex work. Akeem traveled down to New York first to stay with family in Brooklyn and Meghan caught a bus to Long Island a few days later on Friday, June 4, arriving in the afternoon. She checked into a holiday in Express Hotel in Horpog, a hamlet that sits roughly midway along the Long Island Expressway in Suffolk County. The Expressway was frequented by commuters who drove from their homes on Long Island to Manhattan for work and the hotel sat on a narrow service road adjacent to it. This made it an ideal spot to meet clients. On Saturday, June 5, Akeem joined Meghan by 8pm and the couple were captured on the hotel's CCTV leaving together. Half an hour later, Meghan returned alone. She called her grandmother Muriel at around 9.50pm and spoke briefly to her four-year-old daughter, Liliana. Meghan phoned Muriel again at around midnight and said she'd call again in the morning. After getting off the phone, Meghan posted a new ad on Craigslist. At 1.15am, she spoke to a came over the phone. 15 minutes later, the hotel's security camera filmed Meghan walking out of the lobby and out into the night. At around 11 o'clock the next morning of Sunday June 6, Meghan's grandmother Muriel received a phone call from a came. He was worried because he couldn't find Meghan. He'd been out drinking with some friends the previous night when he'd received a call from Meghan saying she was heading out to get something. When Akeem returned to her hotel room at 6 that morning, she was gone and her phone was going straight to voicemail. Meghan never turned off her phone. A king asked if Megan was with Muriel. She wasn't, and Muriel had no idea where she could be. A king told Muriel that they had to wait 48 hours to report her missing. The police wouldn't do anything until then. Two days passed by with no word from Megan. This was highly out of character, ordinarily she called multiple times a day to check in on Lilliana. On Tuesday, June 8, Megan Waterman was reported missing. Police searched Megan's hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express and found her clothes, makeup, and other personal belongings. It appeared that she'd intended to return. A witness who'd seen her leave the hotel said she'd appear to be walking down the service road to a nearby convenience store. Maybe she'd been going there to meet a king away from the hotel's video cameras. He wasn't considered a trustworthy witness. Megan's family were particularly suspicious of him, regarding him as a human trafficker with a violent streak who'd already harmed Megan's life. The area was also known to attract some unsavory characters, so perhaps Megan had run into somebody dangerous. Or maybe she'd been going to the convenience store to meet a client for an out call, someone who hadn't wanted to be seen at the hotel. Megan's phone wasn't among the items found in her hotel room, but police were able to obtain its records. They showed that a burner phone had contacted Megan on Saturday June 5, the day before she went missing. Megan's phone had contacted the burner phone at 1.31am, one minute after she was captured on CCTV leaving the hotel. The records also revealed that Megan's phone had travelled south-west out of Harpog, as though it and she were being driven away. Its last cell-tail ping was at 3.11am on Sunday June 6, in Massapequa Park, a village in Nassar County, roughly 23 miles from Harpog. Located on the south shore of Long Island, Massapequa Park was a family-friendly neighbourhood, popular with families and professionals who worked in New York City, but wanted to return to a quiet suburban home at the end of the day. There was no record of Megan's phone after that. At a loss to comprehend Megan's sudden disappearance, her family plastered missing persons posters across the area where she was last seen. They provided a detailed description of Megan. She was 5'5" tall and 145 pounds, with brown hair bleached blonde. No real leads resulted from the posters, but Megan's family reassured her 4-year-old daughter that they were doing everything they could to bring her mother home. Six months before Megan Waterman went missing, a 27-year-old woman named Amaline Costello left her home in Clearwater, Florida, for a fresh start north in the Long Island Hamlet of West Babylon. Her older sister, Kim, lived there, and Amber was in need of family and support after going through an increasingly difficult time. Life had always been hard for Amber. As a child, she lived in the city of Gastonia, North Carolina, with her sister Kim and parents, Margie and Elle. When Amber was 6 years old, she was sexually assaulted by a 26-year-old neighbour. Her mother, Margie, had walked in on the neighbour in bed with her young daughter and called the police, but no charges were ever laid and no arrest record exists, making it unclear how the crime was handled. Amber's father, Elle, would have later say he'd purchased a shotgun and threatened to blow the neighbour's brains out, but the police intervened before he could make a good on his threat. The abuse devastated the entire family, leading to Margie suffering a mental health crisis and being hospitalized. Everyone went on to struggle with substance use disorder. Amber was left with both emotional and physical scars. She later told people that she couldn't have children as a result of what had been done to her. Those who knew Amber described her as sweet and innocent, someone who would go out of her way to help others. When Amber was 13 and Kim was 19, their parents both became sick, making Kim, who was working as a waitress while attending college, the sole provider. Her job didn't earn her nearly enough money, and she was lowered into sex work by a friend several years her senior. Years later, Amber joined her sister at the same operation. Both sisters began using drugs and Amber became addicted to heroin. In 2006, after her mother died, Amber moved to Florida and rebuilt her life. She stopped using drugs, joined a church community and began working as a waitress. She also fell in love and in 2007, Amber married a man named Don Costello. She was the happiest she'd ever been. She became even happier when she and Don fostered a baby boy whom Amber adored. The couple hoped to adopt the baby, but the adoption fell through. In March 2009, Don and Amber's marriage fell apart and Amber's struggles resurfaced. She began shoplifting and started using drugs again. She also returned to sex work and became involved with some dangerous people. Seeking comfort, Amber would call her sister Kim, who had relocated to Long Island. Kim often handed the phone over to her on-and-off boyfriend, Dave Schaller, who was happy to chat to Kim's little sister. Realising that Amber needed help, Dave convinced Kim that they should bring her to Long Island and get her into rehab. Kim agreed, and in December 2009, Amber flew to New York and entered a 28-day drug treatment program. After she completed the program, she moved into Dave Schaller's home in West Babylon. She also brought a friend with her, a man named Bjorn Brodski, who went by the nickname Bear, whom she'd met in rehab. The trio became like a family, and Amber opened up to the two men. At one point, Amber told Dave and Bear that she was considering doing sex work. If she did, would they protect her? The two were reluctant to encourage Amber to pursue this line of work, but eventually agreed, hopeful that the money she made would allow Amber to build a new life. She began advertising on Craigslist and the website Back Page under the name's Carolina and Mia. In a nod to her North Carolina upbringing, she described herself as a southern bell and provided photos and a physical description. She was petite at five foot one and one hundred pounds with brown hair and green eyes. Her rules were that she would dance for clients, but they weren't allowed to touch her, and she would only do in calls at home. In order to stay safe, Amber and her housemates came up with secret codes. If Amber put on a particular song and meant she needed their help right away. Dave and Bear saw the clients' cars when they pulled up at their house and were struck by how many number plates bore logos that indicated they worked for Suffolk County. Some of Amber's clients were police officers, others worked with the District Attorney's office. Sometimes they asked if they were entitled to a discount because of their professions. Despite the fact that sex work as well as buying sex or offering to pay for sexual services is illegal in the state of New York. In order to prevent Amber from having to go further than she wanted to, Dave and Bear began engaging in what is known as a badger scam. They would hide in a rear bedroom as Amber welcomed in a client and secured payment. Then, before things progressed further, one of them climbed out of the window and walked around to the front door, feigning that they'd just arrived home. Then, they would barge in and pretend to be Amber's angry husband, threatening to shoot the client. The client would typically flee the premises, allowing Amber to keep his money without having to provide a service. Clients seemed like easy marks. They were unlikely to report this scam to the authorities, lest they be charged with solicitation. Those who were married with families were even less likely to raise the alarm. Over time, Amber and Bear began using heroin again. In June of 2010, Dave decided to try it as well. As their drug use escalated, the group's need for money increased. This led to to a loosening of the rules that Amber had enforced around her work. She began having sex with clients instead of just dancing for them. She also started making outcalls, allowing clients to pick her up and take her away from the property where Dave and Bear couldn't protect her. By August, the home's atmosphere had grown dark and more dangerous. The badger scam that had previously worked so well was now being avoided. Customers who were angry about being ripped off had posted about the encounters on online forums which had led to Amber receiving death threats on the prepaid phone she used for work. One client who'd fled from the house naked even filed a police report. Amber changed her number that continued inviting clients to the same house. It's called the police regularly upset about the obvious drug use sent Amber's clients frequenting the street. On one occasion, a client beat Amber and threw her out of his car after she refused to perform a particular sex act. Late at night on Wednesday, September 1, Amber was contacted by a prospective client who found her out on Backpage and she invited him to visit her home for an in-call. She arrived at the residence just after midnight. Amber let him in and took his money before Dave burst into the room to carry out the badger scam, something they rarely did anymore. He saw that the client was a large, middle-aged white male who looked to be in his mid-40s. He was between 6'4" and 6'6" with dark, bushy hair and big 1970s-style, overly glasses. The Dave, the man looked like an ogre. Dave played the part of an outraged husband telling him to get out. The huge, hulking man did as he was told while telling Dave he was just Amber's friend and adding, "Tell her I'll give her a call." Dave noticed the man's dark green SUV parked in the driveway outside. It was a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche. About an hour later, at 118am, Amber received a text message from the client stating, "That was not nice, so do I credit for next time." The client reached out to Amber again later that day of Thursday, September 2. He wanted to see her but didn't want to return to the house because of her boyfriend. He would pick her up at around 11 that night and bring her back home the next morning between 6 and 7. He would pay her $450 for two hours, or $1500 if she stayed overnight, but he wanted her to leave her phone at home. Tempted by the larger than usual amount he was offering, Amber agreed to his terms. At 1117pm, dressed in a pink hoodie and jeans, she left the house with Dave who escorted her to the home's letterbox. He gave her a hug, then Amber turned and walked down the block to meet the client at his car. Dave thought it was odd that the client hadn't pulled up out the front, but recalled that he'd told Amber he didn't want cars loitering outside of his house. Maybe that's why she'd arranged to meet him further down the street. Dave headed back to the house, glancing over his shoulder before going inside to see a dark coloured SUV pass by from the direction Amber had walked towards. Amber didn't return the next morning as promised, nor did she come back in the days that followed. She hadn't taken her phone with her. Over three days past, Dave called Amber's sister Kim, who was in to state in North Carolina to share his concern. Kim reassured him that Amber would reappear soon. When she didn't, Kim didn't know what to do. Amber was known to use drugs and Kim believed the police wouldn't take her disappearance seriously. Maybe Amber had just taken off somewhere else for a while. She decided not to report her sister missing. Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Case file to continue to deliver quality content. Four months before Amber Lingkosthelo went missing, a 24-year-old named Shannon Gilbert had been cruising around Manhattan in her friend Michael Pax Black Ford Explorer on the night of Friday, April 30, 2010. Shannon lived in Jersey City just across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan and would go to New York to perform escort work. Shannon's passion was for performing. She dreamed of becoming a singer or an actress and had entered escort work as a way to provide for herself in the meantime. She'd had a difficult upbringing, spending much of her child would in foster care separated from her three younger sisters due to an unstable home life. Shannon had returned to live with her family briefly when she was 14 but went back into foster care after an incident with her mother's boyfriend. Funny, warm and affectionate, Shannon was a brilliant student finishing high school two years ahead of most of her peers. But while she was book smart, her mother Marie said she wasn't street smart. She was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder at a young age. She initially worked for an escort agency until it went out of business. After that, she began working as a waitress. But she struggled to make ends meet on the much smaller income so she eventually went back to escorting and began working for herself by posting ads on Craigslist. This way she could keep all of the money she made and deal directly with clients. She'd met Michael about 8 months earlier through his work as a driver for various escort agencies. He kept Shannon on after she left hers, driving her to appointments with clients and waiting outside until she was done, acting as a kind of bodyguard, as well as a chauffeur. The night of Friday, April 30, was quiet, with very few responses to the Craigslist ad Shannon uploaded. That changed close to midnight when Shannon received a call from a man named Joe Brewer. A 46-year-old financial adviser who was in the process of separating from his wife, Joe lived in a small gated community called Oak Beach, located about 90 minutes east of Manhattan on Long Island. Joe wanted Shannon to come to his home for a couple of hours, which would justify the long trip out to his address. Shannon, who'd done call outs to Long Island before, agreed, and Michael drove her there via Ocean Parkway. Oak Beach sat on the eastern end of Jones Beach Island, a barrier beach off Long Island's south shore. It had no streetlights, making it exceptionally dark, and the roads and houses were framed by thick brambles and tall marsh grass. Full pack pulled up outside Joe Brewer's house on Fairway Drive at around 2am on Saturday, May 1. It was a double-story woodframe residence with a large patio that had water views. The secluded gated community was even quieter than usual at the late hour. Shannon headed inside with Joe, who was on the heavier side with thick, shaggy hair, while Michael waited in his Ford Explorer, playing poker on his phone to pass the time. After a little while, Joe and Shannon left briefly in Joe's car, presumably to purchase some drugs. They returned after about 15 minutes, going back inside the house. At about 4am, Shannon called Michael to tell him that Joe wanted to extend the date by another hour. The hour hadn't fully elapsed when Michael heard a knock on his car window at 4.51am. Looking over, he saw Joe Brewer, who asked, "Can you get her out? She won't leave." Michael wasn't surprised that the appointment had run long. He knew that Shannon would try to extend a visit to Long Island to make the trip worthwhile. But it was unusual for a client to speak to him. In fact, it had never happened before. Joe didn't seem upset, but he appeared a little impatient. Michael went inside with Joe, noticing as he stood inside the front door that the house was messy and cluttered with belongings. He couldn't see the floor and the dining table was covered with food and other items. Shannon was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, fully dressed. Michael spoke to Shannon from the front door, suggesting that they returned home. You guys are trying to kill me, she replied, looking and sounding scared. Michael tried to coax her out to no avail, prompting Joe to try wrapping his arms around her from behind. When Shannon screamed, Joe reacted by saying "fuck this" and leaving the room. Michael continued trying to lure Shannon out, but she crawled behind a couch, calling out that she'd find her own way home. Unsure what to do, Michael sat at the dining table and wondered if Shannon was pretending to be having some kind of drug-injuiced breakdown. When he realised she was speaking into her phone, providing details of her whereabouts. It sounded like she was talking to a 911 dispatcher, which didn't make sense. Michael knew that Escorts didn't phone the police. Worried for his own safety, he turned and rushed outside to his car. Shannon had called 911, telling the dispatcher, "There's somebody after me." She repeated the phrase four times while the dispatcher asked for details of where she was. Saying she didn't know the address, Shannon asked the dispatcher to trace her call, but the dispatcher said that wasn't possible. Sounding confused and nervous, Shannon said she was somewhere on Long Island and continued to beg for help. Michael could be heard in the background encouraging her to return to Manhattan, while Joe was over her telling Shannon that he would go upstairs and she had to leave. What are you going to do to me, Shannon asked several times? Are you going to kill me? The audio then picked up the sound of Shannon screaming and running away when Joe attempted to approach her again. She fled out the front door, ran down the patio stairs, and up the road into the darkness, while still connected to 911. At this point, Michael Pack had returned to his car and was wondering what to do when he saw Shannon run past. Four houses down the street just inside the entrance to the gated community. An elderly man named Gus Coletti was up at 5.22am, shaving in preparation for a long drive-up state when he heard heavy pounding at his door. Answering it, he saw Shannon Gilbert with her cell phone in her hand. She was screaming incoherently and Gus managed to hear her cry out the word "help". What's the matter? Is somebody after you, Gus asked? He invited Shannon to sit down on a chair in his home while calling 911. He told Shannon to relax and let her know that police were on their way. As soon as he mentioned the police, Shannon resumed screaming and took off running again, out the back into Gus's yard. She crouched down between a car and a boat Gus kept there, hiding. A moment later, Michael Pack's Ford Explorer drove towards the Coletti residence with its high beams on, slowing to a stop outside. Michael had come looking for Shannon. Gus headed over to speak to Michael about the bizarre situation that was unfolding. While Michael was distracted speaking to Gus, Shannon bolted once more. This time, she ran towards a side street called Anchway, which flanked an enormous uninhabitable marsh area spanning 49 acres. She knocked on a door there, but received no answer, so continued along to a street named The Bayou, where she found another home. Shannon pounded on the front door. The resident, a woman named Barbara Brannon, looked outside, but didn't answer. Barbara lived alone and was scared by the screaming woman who was shouting about men trying to kill her. She saw Shannon on her cell phone and called out to her. Shannon didn't reply. Barbara called 911, making yet another report about a destroyed woman in the area. By the time she hung up the phone, Shannon was gone. Meanwhile, Michael Pack continued looking around for Shannon. Not seeing where she had gone, he headed up to the community's entrance gate and looked for her along the access road that led back to Ocean Parkway. Not seeing Shannon anywhere, he finally left the area. Police arrived at the scene at 5.40am that found no trace of Shannon. Realising her driver was no longer around, they assumed the pair must have left together. When Shannon didn't return home the next day, her boyfriend Alex Diaz began to worry. He tried calling her but her phone didn't even ring, suggesting it had been turned off for its battery had died. Tracking down Michael Pack's number, Alex phoned him and was angry to learn that Michael had left without Shannon. Michael explained how strangely Shannon had been acting, which made Alex even more concerned. The description of Shannon's behaviour didn't sound like anything Alex had witnessed from her before. The two men called various hospitals and police stations in the vicinity of where Shannon was last seen, but none had any record of her. Finally, Alex decided to reach out to Joe Brewer, the client who'd booked Shannon. Joe claimed that he tried to grab on to Shannon and calm her down inside his home, but she'd panicked and taken off terrified. Alex couldn't understand what would cause Shannon to panic all of a sudden after spending several hours with Joe. He decided to drive up to Oak Beach to take a look around. Joe Brewer agreed to meet Alex and the two spoke by the community's gate. Joe invited Alex to take a look inside his house, but Alex didn't feel safe doing so. He convinced Joe to accompany him to a local Suffolk County Police Station to file a report. Joe was doubtful that the police would take the disappearance of an escort seriously, but agreed. When they went to the station, Alex noticed how the police officers laughed and to joked around with the Joe, like they already knew him. They didn't take Alex's concern seriously, laughing and smirking as he explained why he was worried. Check your house, maybe she's there now, they said. They also told Alex that he had to file a missing person's report in Jersey City, where Shannon lived, not in Suffolk County. A missing person's report for Shannon Gilbert was filed in Jersey City, but Alex and Shannon's other loved ones knew the key laying Oak Beach. Alex drove back to Oak Beach to Dornock and looked for Shannon, and Shannon's mother-marie and her sisters later did the same. An individual Alex spoke to was a doctor named Peter Hackett, who lived near Barbara Brennan, the last person to have seen Shannon. Dr. Hackett was a trusted member of the community and something of an Oak Beach representative. He asked Alex questions about Shannon and to diligently talk notes, telling Alex he'd get in touch with the Suffolk County Police Department about the case. He encouraged Alex to go home and relax while he got the ball rolling, but Dr. Hackett never reached out to the police. Instead he called Marie Shannon's mother after obtaining her number from Alex. Dr. Hackett told Marie he ran a home for wayward girls out of his Oak Beach residents. He said he'd seen Shannon the night before. She was incoherent, so he'd taken her home to rehabilitate her and the next day a driver came to pick her up. Dr. Hackett asked Marie if Shannon had made it home all right. Dr. Hackett would elated the night making the call, although phone records would prove him wrong. It was unclear why he had inserted himself into the investigation in this way, or why he'd not contacted the police as he'd promised, though he was known to be one who would make grandiose claims about himself and sometimes make up stories. There were also rumors about Joe Brewer, who Shannon's loved ones were suspicious of. Shannon had never panicked or freaked out while with a client before, so they believed Joe must have done something to upset her. Although Joe had been a financial advisor, he was currently unemployed and living off family money. There were rumors that he hosted wild drug-fueled parties at his home with sex workers and other guests. Despite the concern of those closest to Shannon, the authorities didn't seem worried. There were no news reports about Shannon's disappearance or massive searches of the area. Suffolk County police would later attribute their slow response to the failure to connect Shannon's panicked night mom one call with those of Gus Coletti and Barbara Brennan. The latter two had both phoned from their respective home's landlines, which directed their calls to Suffolk County police. Because Shannon had called from her cell phone, she'd been asked where she was calling from. Having unsure of her location, she'd guessed Jones Beach, a nearby state park that was under the jurisdiction of state police. There were lots of science referencing Jones Beach on the way to Oak Beach, so the name had likely stuck in Shannon's mind. And because Shannon hadn't provided her name on the call, the call wasn't tired to Shannon Gilbert until her missing person's investigation filtered down from Jersey City. However, even when this link was made, it didn't spur on the Suffolk County police department to launch a more thorough investigation. Shannon Gilbert's disappearance was treated as a missing person's case rather than a potential crime. The one thing that the police department did do was refer the case to their canine unit. Missing person's cases were considered a good training opportunities for the county's search dogs and their handlers. That was how Officer John Malia and his German Shepherd Blue came to be involved in Shannon's case. Officer Malia took Blue out along Ocean Parkway throughout the summer of 2010, searching the brambles and grass for Shannon. The enormous marsh area near where Shannon had last been seen alive was never thoroughly searched due to being deemed a hazardous environment. Investigators would later say the resources required for such an undertaking couldn't be justified when Shannon's disappearance was such a mystery. So instead, canine officers focused on the Ocean Parkway area. On Saturday, December 11, seven months after Shannon went missing, Officer Malia and Blue set out again, this time focusing on the northern side of the roadway. It was at this bleak and isolated location along the shoulder of the parkway where Blue uncovered a badly disintegrated burlap sack containing human remains. The body found by Blue and his handler Officer Malia had decomposed to such an extent that only a skeleton remained, but it was expected to be Shannon Gilbert. Investigators told the media that they believed they'd found Shannon's remains and to notify Shannon's mother Marie as well, while Marie was still processing this devastating development, she received another call from Suffolk County Investigators with an update. The body wasn't Shannon after all. Shannon Gilbert had been given a titanium plate in her jaw after her boyfriend Alex Diaz severely assaulted her. These remains had no such feature. Blue had found another unidentified woman. Homicide investigators cordoned off the area and returned two days later to do an evidence search in the immediate vicinity of the body. Officer Malia also returned with Blue. While Blue still sat in Officer Malia's car, the police officer began looking around the dense scrub by himself. It was a cold and windy winter's day, but Officer Malia barely noticed the weather as he scoured the area. About 500 feet from where the body had been found, he stumbled across something significant. It was another burlap sack. Inside the sack were more female remains. By the afternoon, a total of three more bodies had been recovered along the edge of Ocean Parkway next to Gilgo Beach, bringing the tally to four. Police officers marked each of their recovery sites with orange flags. All of their remains were skeletal and three were wrapped in burlap. The four victims were all found in similar positions and were bound with either belts, camouflage burlap straps or duct tape. They appeared to have been deliberately placed at an equal distance apart from one another, and intervals of roughly 500 feet or 150 metres. All were between 22 and 33 feet or roughly 6 to 10 metres from the edge of Ocean Parkway. It looked as though whoever had left them there had to likely pulled up on the shoulder of the roadway, taken the remains from their vehicle and carried them a little way into the brush, then tossed or placed them on the ground. The FBI was caught into assist with the recovery of the remains, but the environment made for poor preservation of evidence. The site was exposed to wind, sun and salt water, which caused forensic evidence to deteriorate. Investigators found little evidence aside from the remains themselves. Once reporters caught wind of the grizzly discoveries after hearing them broadcast over police ganners, they flocked to the area and congregated in a nearby parking lot. Trucks from local TV and radio stations were joined by those from cable networks. The police were tight-lipped, but the identity of Shannon Gilbert's client got out, prompting journalists to confront Joe Brewer with questions. The police had searched his home and car and found nothing. Joe also claimed that he'd passed the polygraph, which was later confirmed by investigators. Shannon's driver, Michael Pack, was also subjected to a polygraph test and passed. Both police and the press were convinced that one of the four bodies must be Shannon Gilbert, but the remains would have to be identified through missing persons reports in DNA. Police began scarring hundreds of reports relating to local women who had gone missing before soon realizing that their victims were likely not local at all. They suspected that all four women had been escorts brought to Long Island by their killer. As soon as Missy Can, the younger sister of Missing 25-year-old Marine Brain Art Barnes, saw the news stories about four bodies being found on Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach, she knew her sister had to be one of them. Missy hadn't heard from Marine in almost three and a half years since she called on the night of Monday July 9, 2007, seeking a lift from New York City's Pan Station. Missy had thought about Marine constantly, worrying that she'd been abducted and trafficked. So brother Will was equally worried, though his concern manifested in anger and despair. On Friday August 14, 2009, more than two years after Marine went missing, Will was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident when he was just 24 years old. After Marine didn't show up for his funeral, Missy knew that her sister was gone forever too. It would be another 16 months until Missy discovered how. The news about the women at Gilgo Beach immediately struck a chord. Three days after Marine was last heard from, her cell phone had activated and was used to make two calls to her own voice mail. These calls had pinged cell towers in Suffolk County near the Long Island Expressway, about 27 miles from Gilgo Beach. Missy had never been able to understand how her sister's phone could have gotten to Long Island as she'd never been known to work there. Missy submitted her DNA to be compared to the four victims. A result finally came in late January 2011, almost two months after the bodies were found. Marine was one of them. She had been bound with three leather belts around her legs and ankles. One of the belts was embossed with somebody's initials at one end. Depending on which way you looked at it, the initials were either H.M. or W.H. A second belt had been cut off at the end where similar embossed initials might have been. Lin Bartholomey hadn't seen her 24-year-old daughter Melissa in almost 18 months. After Melissa went missing in July 2009, her family had been tormented by phone calls made from Melissa's own cell phone. The caller seemed fixated on Melissa's 15-year-old sister Amanda and had claimed that he'd killed Melissa and was watching her body decompose. Police had traced the general vicinity that the calls had come from but weren't able to identify the caller. The final call had been placed on Wednesday, August 26, 2009. Sixteen months later, Lin was at work at her fiancé's diner in Buffalo, New York, when she saw a television news report about four bodies having been found on a beach in Long Island. four victims were believed to have been sex workers. The news caused Lynn to immediately burst into tears. She would later find out that her daughter Melissa was the first victim to have been found and her discovery led to the other three being recovered as well. 22-year-old Meghan Waterman had gone missing one month after Shannon Gilbert in early June of 2010 and her name was linked to the Gilgo case very quickly. On Tuesday, December 14, the day after the body count had risen to four, Meghan's name was floated as a missing person who'd last been seen in the surrounding area. Meghan had left the holiday in express in Hoppog about 17 miles from Gilgo Beach at 1.15 a.m. on Sunday, June 6, and hadn't been seen or heard from since. Investigators reached out to Meghan Waterman's mother, Lorraine, to alert her that her daughter might have been found. They obtained Lorraine's DNA for a comparison. The match was confirmed on January 20, 2011, the day after what would have been Meghan's 23rd birthday. The remaining victim wasn't Shannon Gilbert, as many had expected. It was a woman who'd gone missing four months after Shannon in September 2010, just three months before the bodies were found. 27-year-old Amber Ling Costello had never been reported missing after she vanished during an appointment with a client. Her sister Kim hadn't wanted to get in trouble with the authorities and had told herself that Amber had likely just taken off somewhere new. By December 2010, Kim was living in North Carolina and heard about the Gilgo Beach discoveries from a friend who saw it on the news. Kim in turn reached out to Suffolk County Police and arranged to send them a swab of her DNA. The following month, the fourth and most recent victim was confirmed to be Amber Ling Costello. Sprawling 118 miles eastward from New York Harbor, Long Island has a number of different faces. The New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens are part of the islands before it gives way to the more sprawling Nasa County, a densely populated area characterized by suburban sprawl. Not as bustling as the city, but still relatively fast paced, Nasa County is popular with commuters and young fans who want the proximity to New York while not sacrificing as much space. Suffolk County makes up the rest of the island and is more than three times the size of Nasa County at 912 square miles. Its police department is one of the largest and wealthiest local police agencies in the United States. That wealth is primarily due to the neighborhoods that sit at its easternmost tip, Montorque and the Hamptons, a collection of highly affluent seaside communities popular with celebrities and wealthy New Yorkers who typically retreat there for the hot summer months. Oaken to Gilgo beaches have a very different feel and tone. Located more to the Nasa round of the county, they're quieter, more isolated and lack the ostentatious wealth on display in the holiday maker neighborhood. For many people traveling to or from Long Island, their places to pass by rather than stop at. Now, with the news that multiple bodies had been found at these locations, they suddenly became a national headline. The discovery of four women disposed of in near identical ways, carefully spaced apart on the same stretch of roadway led to immediate speculation that Long Island had an active and undeniable serial killer. Richard Dorma, the then Suffolk County Chief of Police, acknowledged that it seemed likely a single person had disposed of all four women, stating at a press conference, "I don't think it's a coincidence that four bodies ended up in this area." That's a good direction to go, that they were all dumped here by the same person who were persons. When asked the outright if he believed there was a serial killer frequenting the area, Dorma wouldn't go that far, but conceded police were looking into the possibility. Serial killers weren't a foreign concept for Long Islanders. From 1989 through to 1993, a Long Island resident named Joel Rifkin, an unemployed gardener, had murdered at least nine women and was suspected of killing eight more. Aged in his early 30s, Rifkin had targeted sex workers, murdering and dismembering several of them in his family's home in the Hamlet of East Meadow, Nassar County. Also during the early to mid-90s, a 42-year-old postal worker named Robert Schulman murdered five sex workers. He typically took them back to his apartment in Hicksville, another Nassar County hamlet, where he'd beaten dismembered them before disposing of their remains in neighboring cities, or in one case, on the shoulder of a busy road. Both of these men had long since been court and convicted, with Robert Schulman dying of natural causes in 2006. The region had been shocked by their brutal crimes, but there had been more focus on the fact that the perpetrators had appeared to be ordinary suburban men. Although there was sympathy for the victims, the fact that they had been marginalized women, whose lives involved sex work, substance use, homelessness, and other instabilities, meant that most long islanders felt somewhat removed from the crimes. Now, more than a decade and a half later, it appeared that another serial killer was living among them and targeting similarly vulnerable victims. On Monday, January 24, 2011, the Suffolk County Police Chief Richard Dorma and District Attorney Thomas Spotar held a press conference to announce the names of the four victims. Spotar also sought to reassure the local community, stating, "To the residents of Suffolk County, the chief and I say to them that the victims of these homicides were engaged in a high-risk business, and at these homicides appeared a was to be directly related to that business." While some members of the community were comforted by this message, the victim's loved ones felt it was nothing short of dehumanizing victim blaming. Although the authorities wouldn't publicly state that we're dealing with the serial killer, privately, they knew that they were. The identification of the victims made it clear that their murderer had a type. All four were petite white women in their early-to-mid-twenties who lived in various nearby states but traveled to New York for work. All posted advertisements on Craigslist and other online sites. Moreover, when they looked at the dates of when the four victims had gone missing, it was clear that the perpetrator had started operating more frequently. There had been a two-year gap between the disappearance of Melissa Bartholomey and Marine Brain Art Barnes. Then Megan Waterman had been murdered 11 months later, before Amber Lingkostello was killed three months after her. Investigators hadn't ruled out the possibility that Shannon Gilbert was a victim too, who was yet to be discovered. Police chief Richard Dorma set up an investigative task force to tackle the case, which was overseen by three supervisors. The team had 12 detectives who said about interviewing those who knew the victims. They interviewed Amber Lingkostello's housemate, Dave Schaller, who told them about the yoga-like man who'd had an appointment with Amber and to drove a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche. Efforts were made to locate the Avalanche fire records from New York's Department of Motor Vehicles, but nothing was found. Other members of the team included experts in cell phone technology and computer forensics. Chief Dorma also requested support from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. In February 2011, a team of FBI agents visited the sites where the bodies had been found, examined what little available evidence there was, and built a cursory profile of the killer. He was most likely a white male aged between mid-20s and mid-40s. He was married, or had a girlfriend, was well-educated, employed, and financially stable. He owned an expensive car or truck and had lived on or near Ocean Parkway. The dumpster site he'd used wasn't something he'd randomly stumbled across. He was familiar with the area. While he likely lived in Long Island, the data retrieved from his victims' phones and the burnous cells he'd used to communicate with them suggested that he worked in Midtown Manhattan as many Long Island residents did. The taunting phone calls he'd made to a friend of marine Brainer Barnes and Melissa Batholomy's sister indicated he took sadistic pleasure in the suffering his crimes created and wanted to exert dominance over his victims even after death. Some investigators speculated that he might be a current or former member of law enforcement because he kept every call under three minutes, not providing enough time for his exact location to be pinpointed. He'd also made them from busy areas such as Times Square where it would be harder for authorities to identify him in crowded footage from surveillance cameras. Police had continued to search the Oaken to Gilgobach areas until late December 2010 when Snowfall impeded them. They would return in a few months after the snow had thawed but before the dense foliage grew back. The search recommenced at the end of March. Police officers and dogs were focused on a seven and a half mile stretch of brush along the parkway on either side of where the previous bodies were found. Nothing was located on the first day but on the second a police officer noticed something as he drove slowly east along Ocean Parkway. He was scanning an area of sand dunes about a mile from the original crime scene. It had already been searched by cadaver dogs but the officer noticed something by the side of the road. It was a partial set of badly decomposed human remains. A skull, hands and a forearm were recovered but the rest of the body was missing. The lack of the titanium plate in the jaw quickly revealed that the officer hadn't found Shannon Gilbert but yet another victim. She would ultimately be identified as Jessica Taylor, a 20 year old who was groomed and trafficked into sex work before being murdered almost eight years earlier. Originally from upstate New York, Jessica was living in Manhattan when she went missing on Monday, July 21, 2003. At the time Jessica went missing, she'd been working near the Port Authority bus terminal on West 41st Street in Midtown, Manhattan. She'd presumably been picked up by her killer and later driven 70 miles to Manaville. Surely before she'd gone missing, she called her mother and made plans to visit her in Pekipsi a few days later for her birthday. When she never arrived, Jessica's mother notified law enforcement. Five days after Jessica went missing, a woman had been walking her dog in the Suffolk County hamlet of Manaville about 45 miles east of Gilgo Beach. She was heading down a small paved road just north of an overpass for the Long Island Expressway when she discovered Jessica's naked body. She was lying on a plastic sheet on a pile of sticks and scrap wood in some tall grass. Her hands and head had been removed and her killer had mutilated her breasts. He'd also tried to remove a tattoo Jessica had, presumably to prevent her identification. But medical examiners were able to reconstruct the tattoo, which led to Jessica being identified. Investigators spoke to a witness who'd been in the wooded area roughly 13 hours before Jessica was found and had seen a dark coloured Chevrolet pickup truck backed up near where Jessica was left. Jessica's cousin would later tell the Long Island press that Jessica had been loved, describing her as a true force. She had a huge heart and she's incredibly loved and missed. She was an inspiration and somebody that I looked up to. She also had a feisty streak and would stand up for herself when necessary. Five days after Jessica Taylor's skull, hands and forearm were located near Gilgo Beach, more dismembered body parts were found about a mile and a half further east. A head, a right leg from the mid-carf down and two hands were recovered along Ocean Parkway and labelled Jane Doe #6. Like Jessica Taylor, the rest of this victim's body had already been found many years earlier and in the same wooded area of Manaville. On Sunday, November 19, 2000, a hunter's dog found a female body wrapped in garbage bags near the intersection of Halsey Manor Road and Mill Road in Manaville. The location was near a local access road and adjacent to power lines. The victim had ligature marks, her breasts had been mutilated and several foreign human hairs had been found on her body, including one near the victim's left wrist. Unlike Jessica Taylor, however, this victim had remained unidentified. The similar manners of disposal led investigators to believe that the murders of Jane Doe #6 and Jessica Taylor were definitely connected. Both had been dismembered with a hand-powered saw before being dumped in the same locations. But for the investigators working the Gilgo Beach case in 2011, it was less clear whether these two crimes were related to the first four victims found along Ocean Parkway. About 150 feet or 45 metres east of where Jane Doe #6's had leg and hands were found, searches found more remains belonging to the youngest victim yet. Wraped in a blanket and placed the deep in a thicket of bramble with the skeletal remains of a child estimated to be between one and four years old. Unlike all of the other victims so far, who were white, she was African-American. She wore gold hoop earrings and a gold chain necklace. Investigators would name her Baby Doe. On the same day, the skeletal remains of one more person were found close to where the original four victims had been recovered. This victim was Asian, most likely Han Chinese. Estimated to be between 17 and 23 years of age, and about five feet six inches tall, Asian Doe had X-Y chromosomes, indicating that they were biologically male. But they were dressed in women's clothes, suggesting that Asian Doe had been a trans woman. Damage to the skull indicated that this victim had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head. It was estimated that they'd been murdered between five and ten years prior to their discovery. Investigators duped at this unknown victim, Asian Doe. The body count had risen to eight. It would increase again just one week later on Monday, April 11. Roughly eight miles west of where Baby Doe had been found, and six and a half miles west of the Gilgo Beach remains. More dismembered body parts were recovered in a plastic bag dumped near Jones Beach State Park in Nassau County. Inside the bag was a set of skeletal arms and legs. On the arms were two gold colored bracelets in a similar fashion to the gold jewelry found on Baby Doe, and like Baby Doe, she was African-American. This victim was dubbed a Jane Doe number three, and ultimately found to be Baby Doe's mother. DNA would later link Jane Doe number three to a human torso found almost 20 years earlier on Saturday June 28, 1997. A group of people hiking in Hempstead Lake Park, about 20 miles north west of Gilgo Beach, found a large green-plastic container that flies were buzzing around. Inside the container was a pillowcase, a red towel, and a black garbage bag. Inside the bag was a human torso belonging to an African-American woman who was missing her arms, legs, and head. She had a tattoo of a peach on her left breast, prompting investigators to name her "peaches" until they could make a positive identification. They released a photo of the tattoo hoping it would prompt someone who knew her to come forward, but no credible leads ever resulted. Also recovered in Nasa County on the same day as Jane Doe number three, almost exactly between Jones Beach State Park and Gilgo Beach, was a woman's skull and several teeth sniffed out by a cadaver dog. DNA testing would link these remains to a pair of severed legs with red painted toenails that had been found in April of 1996 in a garbage bag on Fire Island, a popular barrier island 16 miles east of Gilgo Beach. That victim had been known for almost a decade and a half as fire island Jane Doe and remained unidentified. By mid-April of 2011, investigators in Long Island were confronting the fact that they suddenly had a tent murder victims found along the same stretch of roadway, some of whom had been identified while others hadn't. And debates raged as to whether the tent victims had all been murdered by the same person, or whether there were multiple killers using the same region as their dumpside. Initially, investigators suspected that they were dealing with multiple murderers. There seemed to be so many discrepancies between the first four victims who were found, Melissa Bartholome, Marine Brain Art Barnes, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, who would come to be dubbed the Gilgo Four, and the six victims found after them. For starters, the Gilgo Four had gone missing in a fairly tight three-year timeline. All had been left intact, bound and evenly spaced out from one another. All but one was wrapped in burlap. All had been sex workers who used online advertisements to meet clients and all were contacted by a killer who made use of burner phones. They had similar appearances and ages being short women in their 20s with petite builds. In contrast to the Gilgo Four, the other six victims included several individuals of different ethnicities, ages and gender identities. Four of them had been dismembered, with much of their remains having been scattered elsewhere. This signature was inconsistent with the more recent burlap wrapped of victims. But as the months dragged on and some of the initially unidentified remains were linked to earlier murders of other sex workers, investigators changed their minds. By late November 2011, Suffolk County Police Chief Richard Dorma was telling media outlets that his team now believed a single person was behind all 10 murders, a lone serial killer native to Long Island who had honed and evolved his disposal method over time. He'd started out picking up women in person during the 1990s before switching to meeting them over the internet when technology advanced. In an interview with NBC New York, Dorma stated, "The common denominators that we have now indicate that it's possibly one killer. We've had the same dumping ground, sex workers, young women, even though there were the Asian male and the toddler, but we think they were connected to the sex trade in some way." Dorma explained that the toddler might have been the child of an escort who accompanied her mother to a job, and perhaps the Asian victim was a trans sex worker. These common denominators indicate we have the one person committing these crimes, he said. One of Suffolk County's chief detectives sought to reassure Long Island residents that despite the fact there was a serial killer in their midst, there was some consolation that the killer wasn't targeting just anybody. He's not selecting citizens at large, he's selecting from a pool. For the families and loved ones of the women killed, this message was more of an insult than a consolation. Meanwhile, the woman whose disappearance had led to the revelation of a serial killer was still missing. Shannon Gilbert's mother Marie continued advocating loudly for her daughter throughout 2011. Conspiracy theories about Shannon's case were cropping up online. Some people thought that the police might be involved due to their delayed investigation and reluctance to release the audio from Shannon's 911 call. Others started pointing the finger at Dr. Peter Hackett, the Oak Beach spokesperson who had inserted himself into Alex Diaz's investigation, promising to call the police, but failing to follow through and calling Shannon's mother with a strange story about taking Shannon into his home for wayward girls. Aside from Shannon's mother, Dr. Hackett hadn't made this claim to anyone else, nor said that he'd seen Shannon at all. Some Oak Beach residents pointed to the lack of security footage from the night Shannon went missing. CCTV cameras at the gated community's entrance should have captured some of Shannon's movements that night, including which direction she might have run after leaving Barbara Brennan's house. Reports from these cameras were uploaded to a hard drive and stored there for one month, but police didn't inquire about the cameras until eight months after Shannon went missing, by which time the footage had been scrubbed. Those who suspected Dr. Hackett of being involved in Shannon's disappearance thought he might have erased it, but others who knew the doctor said he was just a great guy whose one weakness was making up stories for attention. They believed he'd tried to big-note himself by calling Shannon's mother, not realizing the severity of the situation or the scrutiny that would follow. Police publicly dismissed the notion that Dr. Hackett could be a suspect. Although police chief Richard Dorma believed all of the recently discovered victims were linked, he was adamant that Shannon was not. As a driver had taken her to Long Island, her case didn't fit with the pattern. In late November of 2011, Dorma told the media that it seemed likely Shannon wasn't even a victim at all, perhaps she just had an accident. This assertion angered Shannon's family, who remained convinced she had met with foul play. The huge publicity around the case, due to its association with what had become known as the Long Island serial killer, meant that the pressure to find Shannon didn't stop. In early December 2011, the one-year anniversary of the discovery of the bodies on Gilgo Beach was fast approaching, and the search for Shannon resumed. This time, police were finally going to focus their efforts on the 49 acres of marsh, which lay next to where Shannon had last been seen. The swampy marsh had been deemed too difficult to search because of the way it was filled with brackish, cold water, and thick vegetation. In the summer, it was home to mosquitoes, ticks, and thick poison ivy. Pipes beneath Oak Beach were supposed to drain the marsh after heavy rain, but were typically too clogged and damaged to do so. Researchers that had hit Long Island throughout 2011 had damaged Ocean Parkway, requiring significant repairs and reconstruction. These fixes resulted in the marsh's water levels lowering significantly, making it easier to search. On Tuesday, December 6, 2011, the police used an amphibious heavy-duty rotary mower to cut through the marsh, opening up accessible paths. And officers followed behind on foot, cutting at reeds taller than they were with weed whackers, while dogs and their handlers brought up the rear. It was hard work with some officers becoming stuck in waste-deep water. The search paid off. Searchers found Shannon's purse with her ID inside, as well as her phone, shoes, and her jeans, which were torn. A week later, early on the morning of Tuesday, December 13, police found a partially decomposed body on the far side of the marsh, about a quarter of a mile or 400 metres from where Shannon's belongings were found. The body was wearing a black jacket, but no pants, and had a metal plate in the jaw. The police had finally found Shannon Gilbert. People of police Richard Dormass speculated that Shannon had become disoriented after running into the thick bramble while it was still dark. She'd lost some of her possessions in her destroyed state, and her jeans were torn off by the rough vegetation. Or perhaps, Shannon had removed them after suffering from hypothermia, which sometimes results in a paradoxical undressing where an individual feels overheated, despite freezing to death. Then she succumbed to hypothermia or accidentally drowned. But Shannon's family refused to believe this, citing Shannon's fear of water. To them, it made no sense that she could have willingly entered the marsh. They believed she had been put there by somebody else. Several weeks after Shannon Gilbert's body was found, Suffolk County chief of police Richard Dormass retired, after having held the position for eight years. The departure of Richard Dormass marked the end of some public disputes about the Long Island serial killer case that had been making headlines ever since the bodies were discovered. While Dormass had repeatedly stated that he believed a single individual was responsible for all the murders uncovered along Ocean Parkway, the county's district attorney Thomas Spota vehemently disagreed. Days after Dorma posited the single killer theory, Spota held his own press conference in which he asserted that it was more likely multiple people, perhaps as many as three, had used the same isolated stretch of beach and road as a dumping ground. This argument went back and forth between the two men for the better part of 2011. One former Suffolk County police officer later told journalists and author Robert Colca that Spota had been incensed by Dorma's single killer announcement because he believed it would cause the community to panic. At the beginning of 2012, a new police chief was appointed by the Suffolk County Executive. He chose a man in his late 40s by the name of Jim Burke after receiving a couple of recommendations for him, including one from DA Thomas Spota. Burke had been a Suffolk County narcotics detective before going to Thomas Spota's office to work as head of investigations for 10 years. Being promoted from a DA's officer to the chief of police was essentially a four rank jump for Burke. He now held the top position in one of the largest best paid and wealthiest local police agencies in the United States and was responsible for overseeing the notorious Long Island serial killer case. Almost immediately, the Suffolk County Police Department changed its entire approach to the investigation. It ceased collaborating with neighboring NASA County and blocked the FBI's work on the case. Federal agents who had been in the process of analysing cell phone data related to the case were suddenly told that their work wasn't relevant to the investigation and it was sent away. These were instructed not to share information with the FBI and told to notify their supervisors if they were contacted by outside law enforcement agencies. Former Suffolk County detective Rob Trotter alleged that Burke refused to pursue subpoenas for cell tower records in an attempt to identify the burnafones used to contact victims, stating that it would be too invasive. For reasons unknown, it appeared that the man newly in charge of solving the Long Island serial killer case was doing everything possible to thwart the investigation. To be continued next week. [BLANK_AUDIO]