Documentary season has finally arrived on Netflix, as the streaming platform presents another original docuseries following the releases earlier this month, this time taking us to Long Island, USA. Gone Girls is a three-part documentary series that covers all the information that has been released to the public so far regarding the Gilgo Beach serial killings, which took place from around 1993 to 2011. Gone Girls successfully tells the story of a gruesome series of crimes, with a commendable empathetic presentation of the women who were not just murdered by the perpetrator but then also looked down upon by a corrupt police department.
How were the Gilgo Four found by the police?
Gone Girls begins by chronicling the events from May 2010, when a young woman named Shannan Gilbert was reported to have gone missing under mysterious circumstances at Long Island. A resident of Jersey City, Shannan had gone to the Manhattan area on the night of 30th April to meet with her friend and driver, Michael Pak, before going over to the house of a man named Joseph Brewer. Shannan Gilbert was working as an escort at the time, and Brewer had found her through her advertisements on Craigslist, after which he had asked her to drive down to his house in Oak Beach, Long Island. A few hours passed with Shannan spending time inside the client’s house, following which something odd happened around 5 am.
Michael Pak, who not just drove Shannan around but was also responsible for keeping her safe from the risks of her profession, was woken up by Brewer knocking on his car window and telling him that Shannan was refusing to leave his house. As Michael went to check on what was wrong, the woman kept saying that something was going to happen to her if she left, perhaps a bit hysterically. There came a point when Brewer wanted to push her out of his house, for which he grabbed her hand, and this made Shannan react even more strangely. The woman ran out and soon reached the house of a neighbor, knocked on his door, and asked for help. The neighbor understood that she was in some trouble and tried to calm her down while calling the police, but the mention of the police force made Shannan run out once again, this time into the marsh nearby. According to Michael, he made some attempts to find her but eventually gave up and went home, with this being the last time that Shannan Gilbert was ever seen alive.
Shannan’s mother, Mari, immediately reported her daughter’s disappearance to the police as soon as she learned of it, and she was very vocal about the fact that Shannan needed the help of the authorities and the community, which she should not be deprived of just because of her choices in life. It was upon Mari’s repeated insistence that the police department eventually agreed to go looking for Shannan about 8 long months later, in December of 2010. During this thorough search, the police did find the intact skeletal remains of a body that had been wrapped in burlap in the Gilgo Beach area in Long Island. While the police initially believed that the body belonged to the missing Shannan and had even informed Mari about the discovery, there was soon a new twist. The easiest way to identify Shannan was a titanium plate that she had in her jaw, but this skeleton did not have any such characteristic, making it clear that Shannan had not been found, after all.
The police returned to the same area to conduct an even more thorough search, and the findings of this search truly horrified the citizens of Long Island. Remains of three more dead bodies were found, all wrapped in burlap and clearly dumped in the desolate area where people hardly ever went. The four victims, all women, were quickly termed the Gilgo Beach Four by the media, and the police department used this name as well until they could identify them. Eventually, the Gilgo Beach Four were identified as Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes. All four young women had been working as escorts during the time they had gone missing, between 2007 and 2010, which let the police create a victim profile and start a full-fledged investigation.
While this investigation was closely supported by Mari Gilbert, who had by now been joined by the families of the other victims, her daughter still remained missing, and she had to push the police department to try and find her. 11 months after her disappearance, in March of 2011, the authorities conducted another search for Shannan, and once again, it led to some shocking discoveries. Six more bodies, or severed body parts in some of these cases, were found along the same beach on Long Island. Three of these new victims, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla, and Valerie Mack, were young women who had been working as escorts when they disappeared, with some of them having gone missing as early as 1993. Among these six was the body of another woman and a minor girl, who could not be identified, but it was evident that a dangerous serial killer was on the loose, targeting women who were already social outcasts.
What happened to Shannan Gilbert?
While Gone Girls focuses on the investigation of the serial killings, it does not forget the first victim, whose disappearance triggered the whole police search. Nineteen months after Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance, the police finally decided to search the marshlands in Oak Beach in December of 2011. Although the marsh was right beside where Shannan had gone missing and had reportedly even run into, the police had not searched the area earlier, apparently because doing so demanded a lot of manpower. It did not take long for the police to finally find the dead body of Shannan in the marsh, but no solid answer regarding the cause of death could ever be found. The police officially stated that Shannan had drowned in the marsh waters and lost her life due to hypothermia because of drowning and closed the case without suspecting any foul play.
This theory obviously did not sit well with Mari, who stressed the fact that her daughter was not wearing her pair of jeans during her death, which possibly suggested that someone had forced them off her. The official response to this was that Shannan must have pulled off her jeans herself because of a notable effect of hypothermia, in which people start to feel hot suddenly while their body temperature is actually dangerously falling. As a result, nothing more could be found about what exactly had happened to Shannan on the night of her disappearance, and what she had been so hysterical about. Both Joseph Brewer and Michael Pak were interrogated by the police, and the latter was spoken to by a journalist as well, and they assisted in the investigation as well. However, nothing more could be found about Shannan Gilbert, and the official reason for her death remains drowning, leading to hypothermia.
How did the investigation expose the corrupt nature of the Suffolk County PD?
While the police investigation into the serial killings began as early as 2011, there was no significant result to show for it, and this was largely due to the high-level corruption that was going on at the Suffolk County PD. At the time the dead bodies were found, the police department was headed by Commissioner Richard Dormer, who most notably seemed to clash against the District Attorney, Tom Spota, some time later. While Dormer was of the view that all the murders had been committed by one perpetrator, Spota publicly stated that he believed that the Gilgo Beach Four had been killed by one individual and the bodies found later were the acts of someone else. Soon after this public clash, Richard Dormer retired from his position, as per his prior plan, and he was replaced by a man named Jimmy Burke.
Although Jimmy Burke was the new police commissioner at Suffolk County PD, there were numerous rumors and unofficial reports against him, particularly with respect to illegal use of guns and sexual misconduct. A sex worker named Leanne even came forward to state that Burke had hired her services even after he became the commissioner and that he had even used derogatory terms against her. Various other internal reports made it clear that Jimmy Burke intentionally directed his department to ignore Shannan Gilbert and the other cases because he looked down upon escorts and viewed them as morally loose women who did not deserve any justice. Meanwhile, DA Tom Spota repeatedly protected Burke and supported him, to the extent that the two powerful men even prevented the FBI from carrying out an investigation into the matter.
Gone Girls reports that Spota and Burke had come to know each other in a very unusual manner, when a young Jimmy Burke had basically helped Tom Spota win a case by giving false testimony in his favor. Following this, Burke went on to join the police force in New York, while Spota continued winning cases based on false testimonies. Ultimately, the reports of corruption against these two individuals were investigated and they were brought down by the law. Jimmy Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison in 2016 for obstruction of justice and assault. Tom Spota was also eventually found guilty of obstruction of justice in 2021 and sentenced to five years in prison.
What led to the arrest of the real perpetrator?
One of the many signs of Spota and Burke’s intent to cover up the case and botch up the investigation was that they ignored a major lead that had been given to the police many years earlier. Amber Costello, who had been working as an escort before her disappearance, had been in close contact with two friends of hers, named Schaller and Bear, whom she had asked for help one night when a client was trying to force himself upon her. The two friends rushed to the spot and saw a man with a noticeably big build and a cold, evil intent in his eyes, who did leave the spot but also threatened Amber that he would come back for her. Schaller and Bear had not just seen the man but had also spotted his car, all of which they told to the police after Amber’s body was discovered and an investigation was launched.
However, the police had completely ignored this information at the time, and it was this very lead that was later explored, in 2023, by the Suffolk County PD under their new leadership. The FBI was also immediately brought into the matter for expert help. Based on the model of the car, a green Chevrolet Avalanche, and the suspect’s regular visits to Midtown Manhattan, from where multiple of the victims had disappeared, the perpetrator was finally identified. An architect named Rex Heuermann was the prime suspect, as he ran his architectural firm from Manhattan, and he was even spotted by the police buying credit for a burner phone. Very importantly, the geolocation history of this burner phone of his almost completely matched that of the burner phone that had been used by the perpetrator to contact some of the victims. Next, the detectives tailing Heuermann managed to collect pizza crust that he had dumped, meaning that it had his DNA remains, which could be matched with the samples that had been found on some of the dead bodies. The two samples completely matched, making it absolutely certain that Rex Heuermann was indeed the Long Island Serial Killer. The Suffolk County PD and the FBI did not waste any more time, and Rex Heuermann was ultimately arrested in July of 2023.
Where is the Long Island Serial Killer now?
Once Heuermann was arrested and his house was searched by the police twice, numerous clues were found that made his profile match with that of the perpetrator. There were numerous internet searches related to torture, while he had also been regularly checking up on the Gilgo Beach Four investigation. Perhaps what turned out to be the biggest proof of Heuermann’s crimes was a detailed plan that he had made back in 2000 to torture and kill women simply for his pleasure and emotional contentment. An evaluation into his past revealed that Rex Heuermann had grown up in a toxic household, where his overly strict father abused and humiliated him often as well as his mother, which the boy grew up watching.
It is suggested that Heuermann had developed an unnatural hatred and antipathy towards sex workers and escorts, because of which he targeted these women. Despite seemingly having some guilt or fear of getting caught initially, he grew more desperate and reckless with time, because of which he killed much more frequently in later years. As of 2025, the authorities have charged Heuermann with the murder of seven women, including the Gilgo Beach Four, but he has been denying the claims. The investigation is still ongoing, meaning that Gone Girls is unable to give us any concrete or certain ending regarding the matter. Heuermann is currently behind bars at Suffolk County in Long Island, where he is still awaiting trial.
Heuermann is a married man who killed his victims whenever his wife and children would go on vacations, although it is a bit hard to believe that they did not know that he was trapping some of the women and killing them at the very house where they lived. Gone Girls informs us in the end that strands of hair from Heuermann’s wife and daughter have also been found on one of the dead bodies. However, the authorities still believe that this DNA evidence was transferred onto the corpse through Heuermann and do not feel that the wife and daughter were involved in his crimes in any way. Whether there is any change to this in the near future remains to be seen, as the world now eagerly waits for the Long Island Serial Killer finally getting the punishment that he deserves. The suspect’s wife and children still live in the very same house and are waiting for the trial to take place so that they can finally make a decision and move on with their lives.
