How journalists and a Netflix film kept the focus on the Gilgo Beach victims over a decade

Watch The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper: The Gilgo Beach Killer Sunday at 8 p.m. ET

CNN
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Amid the search for Shannan Gilbert, who went missing in May 2010, police on Long Island’s South Shore discovered the bodies of four other women wrapped in camouflaged burlap just off Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach in December 2010.

The similarities indicated their deaths were the work of a serial killer. Further remains were found the following spring, and the body of Gilbert, who was in her mid-20s, was found in December 2011 along a trail of death up and down the beachfront parkway.

And, then, the case of the “Gilgo Four” went cold. It would be nearly a decade until the police gave a significant update on their investigation.

In the intervening years, though, the story did not go away. A bestselling nonfiction book, an adapted Netflix film and a collection of true-crime documentaries and reporting dug further into the plight of the victims and took a critical view of the police investigation.

Combined, those works kept up public awareness of the case and, whether explicitly or not, heightened pressure on investigators. For example, police released photos of a black leather belt embossed with the letters “WH” or “HM” found at one crime scene on January 16, 2020 – the same day Netflix released the trailer for a film on the killings.

In February 2022, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison formed a multiagency task force, including state police and the FBI, to again investigate the case. That effort led directly to last week’s shocking arrest of a local 59-year-old architect on murder charges.

And in an apt twist, one of the people most engaged in the news about the killings was the suspect himself.

According to a bail application from prosecutors, a burner email account connected to the suspect, Rex Heuermann, made over 200 searches between March 2022 and June 2023 related to serial killers and the Gilgo Beach killings in particular.

“The (burner) Email Account was also used to search for a number of podcasts and/or documentaries regarding this investigation, as well as repeatedly viewing hundreds of images depicting the murdered victims and members of their immediate families,” prosecutors wrote in the document. “Significantly, Defendant Heuermann also searched for and viewed articles concerning the very Task Force that was investigating him.”

Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Lynn Costello. He is also suspected of killing Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

“It’s simply a stunning development,” Robert Kolker, the author of the 2013 book “Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery,” which closely examined the case, told CNN International’s Rosemary Church on Sunday.

“I think what people who are unfamiliar with this case might need to understand is that it’s been 12 years, not just without any promising leads, but with no declared persons of interest, no suspects, no arrests and barely a peep from the police or the authorities, except perhaps, identifying another victim or releasing a small piece of evidence for information,” Kolker said.

“There’s been practically nothing and now suddenly to have this, a suspect who’s been hiding in plain sight the entire time, a suspect with 92 gun permits, it’s simply stunning.”

Kolker was one of a number of journalists who dug into the case with a focus on the women and their families. The story was also covered in reporting in “People Magazine Investigates,” A&E’s “The Killing Season,” Rolling Stone’s Ellen Killoran, and by Erin Moriarty of “48 Hours.”

Kolker’s book was one of the most in-depth looks at the case and was named a New York Times notable book and one of Slate’s best nonfiction books of the past 25 years.

He told CNN on Sunday that he decided to write the book because of its deeper lessons about society. In his reporting, he found that the women’s disappearances in the years prior to 2010 were overlooked and not taken seriously by authorities or the public because they were sex workers.

“It really is a textbook case in why women like this get overlooked and why serial killers target women like this because they know they’ll be overlooked,” he said. “It was a tragedy back then and it’s really quite a positive development that things have changed a little bit now.”

“‘Lost Girls’ is a social issues book as much as it is a crime story, and mostly it’s a book about families and about people who become vulnerable and why they become vulnerable,” Kolker added.

The book was in 2020 turned into a film for Netflix also titled “Lost Girls.” Directed by the acclaimed documentarian Liz Garbus, the film starred Amy Ryan as Shannan Gilbert’s mother, Mari, who desperately tried to press police to take her daughter’s disappearance seriously.

Mari Gilbert, who died in 2016, had accused police of botching the investigation, as CNN covered at the time.

Authorities believe the death of Gilbert may have been accidental and not related to the “Gilgo Four” killings.

In an interview with the Long Island Press, Garbus said she hoped the film would bring more attention to the case. She likened her work to the 2018 true-crime book “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” about the search for the Golden State Killer, who was then arrested months later.

“I hope just like the Golden State Killer was recently found, that renewed public interest can help push this case forward and there will be justice for these grieving families,” she said.

In a statement Tuesday, Garbus praised the police task force for the arrest, even as she noted how long it took.

“I always had confidence this perp could be found, with the right energy and determination from law enforcement,” she said. “The families have waited too long for this day, and they have had to scream and fight for justice for their loved ones and for their stories to be treated with dignity by the media.”

In a phone call Thursday, Kolker praised the film as well as the work of other journalists who covered the victims’ perspectives.

“I just was glad to be able to play the part I did,” he said. “I think that the movie adaptation preserved those themes and amplified them far more than any book, so it’s been heartening to see that point of view has been out there all along.”

Despite the media attention, the Gilgo Beach case continued to remain unsolved for over a decade after the women’s bodies were found.

A major corruption scandal within Suffolk County law enforcement did not help the matter.

In 2015, Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke was arrested and accused of beating a man who allegedly broke into his vehicle in 2012 and stole a bag that contained sex toys and porn, and then conspiring to block the FBI investigation into his actions, according to court records.

Burke ultimately pleaded guilty to a civil rights violation and conspiracy to obstruct justice and was sentenced to 46 months in prison, the records show.

Notably, a day after he was arrested, the Suffolk County police deputy commissioner announced that the FBI would join the investigation into the Gilgo Beach murders.

In addition, former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota and former chief of investigations at the DA’s office Christopher McPartland were convicted in 2019 of conspiracy, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and being accessories after-the-fact related to the same incident. They were each sentenced to five years in prison in 2021.

With new leadership in charge, Harrison, the Suffolk County police commissioner, announced in early 2022 the new interagency task force to again try to solve the killings.

According to the prosecution’s bail application, in just two months the group made a “significant” discovery that led them to focus on Heuermann. The ensuing investigation consisted of over 300 subpoenas, search warrants and other legal processes, including cell phone locations, prosecutors stated.

In announcing Heuermann’s arrest last week, Harrison defended the police investigation against the criticism by the media.

“Since the discovery of the first victim, there has been a lot of scrutiny and criticism regarding how this investigation was handled,” he said. “I will tell you this, the investigators were never discouraged. They continued and uncovered evidence and followed leads. They never stopped working and will continue to work tirelessly until we bring justice to all the families involved.”

For his part, Kolker said he’s noticed a difference in how police approached the case over the last few years.

“Certainly at last week’s press conference – watching Rodney Harrison give a hug to every single family member on the stage, and watching (Suffolk County District Attorney) Ray Tierney say such nice things about the families – these are things that simply wouldn’t have happened back in 2011,” he said.

“If ‘Lost Girls’ the book and ‘Lost Girls’ the movie played a role in that, then I’m certainly happy about that, but certainly nothing we did (was) by ourselves. There were people making those arguments all along.”