Just before dawn on May 1, 2010, Shannan Gilbert called 911 from a quiet stretch of Oak Beach, a private residential community on Long Island. She was 24 years old, working as an escort, and had just visited a client in the neighborhood. Her voice on the call was urgent. She told the dispatcher that someone was after her and that she needed help.
In the minutes that followed, Shannan knocked on several doors, yelling for someone to let her in. One resident saw her standing on the porch before she turned and ran toward the marshland nearby. That was the last time anyone saw her alive.
Her disappearance triggered a series of searches that would lead police to something far more disturbing than they had expected. Officers returned to the area that December with cadaver dogs. On December 11, just off the shoulder of Ocean Parkway, they found a skeleton wrapped in burlap. It belonged to a woman named Melissa Barthelemy. Over the next two days, they found three more bodies. All four women had worked as escorts and advertised on Craigslist. All had been placed within a few hundred feet of one another.
The case would eventually stretch across decades, reaching back to the early 1990s. What started as a missing person search had uncovered a long trail of victims hidden in the thick brush along the coast. The remains told a story of repeated violence, careful planning, and a killer who had stayed quiet for years.
The Women Found Along the Parkway
The women discovered near Gilgo Beach in December 2010 became known as the Gilgo Four. Their remains were found just steps from one another, laid out along a stretch of Ocean Parkway hidden by thick undergrowth and marsh. All had been missing for years. All had placed ads online and met clients through escort services.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes had been the first to vanish. She was 25 years old, a mother of two, and living in Norwich, Connecticut. On July 9, 2007, she traveled to Manhattan and told a friend she planned to meet a client that evening. She never returned. In the months that followed, a friend received a phone call from a man who claimed Maureen was staying at a house in Queens. He refused to give an address and never called again.
Melissa Barthelemy was the next to disappear. She was 24 years old and had been living in the Bronx. On July 12, 2009, she met a client, deposited money into her bank account, and tried calling an old boyfriend. After that, her phone went silent. A week later, her 15-year-old sister Amanda began receiving calls from someone using Melissa’s number. The caller taunted her, asked personal questions, and told her Melissa was dead. The police traced some of the calls to locations in Manhattan and Long Island, but they could not identify the caller.
Megan Waterman disappeared nearly a year later. She was 22 and from Scarborough, Maine. She had been staying at a motel in Hauppauge, New York. On the night of June 6, 2010, she told her boyfriend she was going out and would call him later. She never did. Her family reported her missing two days later when she failed to check on her daughter.
The fourth woman, Amber Lynn Costello, was last seen on September 2, 2010. She was 27 and living in West Babylon, just north of Gilgo Beach. A man had offered her $2,500 to meet that night. He had called several times. Her roommate later told police about the car he drove. It was a dark green Chevrolet Avalanche.
All four women were under five feet five inches tall and weighed around 100 pounds. They were petite, young, and had similar backgrounds. Their remains had been wrapped in burlap and placed close to one another. Police believed they had been killed elsewhere and brought to the site afterward. It was clear the bodies had been arranged, but the area was so overgrown that they had stayed hidden for years.
At first, police thought the four cases might be connected to Shannan Gilbert. But her body was not among them. That would come later. The discovery of these four women turned a missing person case into a homicide investigation that would widen with every search. And soon, more remains would appear along the same stretch of road.
More Bodies, More Questions
In the spring of 2011, police expanded their search along Ocean Parkway. They moved east, toward the Nassau County line. On March 29, they found more human remains. These included a skull, hands, and a forearm. They belonged to Jessica Taylor, a 20-year-old sex worker from Manhattan. Eight years earlier, in 2003, her torso had been found in Manorville, miles inland. The body had been placed on a pile of scrap wood, and her tattoo had been cut with a sharp object. The rest of her remained unidentified until now.
A few days later, on April 4, investigators found three more sets of remains. One belonged to Valerie Mack, who had vanished in 2000. She had used the name Melissa Taylor and worked as an escort while living in Philadelphia. Like Taylor, parts of Mack’s body had also been found in Manorville. Her torso had been wrapped in garbage bags and dumped in the woods. Her hands, foot, and head turned up more than a decade later, near Gilgo Beach.
Near those same remains, police found the body of a toddler. The child had been wrapped in a blanket and wore gold earrings and a necklace. There was no visible trauma. DNA testing showed she was the daughter of a woman whose torso had been discovered in a plastic bin back in 1997. That woman, later identified as Tanya Jackson, had a tattoo of a peach with a bite taken out of it. She had been given the nickname “Peaches” by investigators. Her remains were found near Jones Beach, more than ten miles from where her daughter had been buried.
The last victim found that day was listed as “Asian Doe.” The body was that of a young person between 17 and 23 years old, with male anatomy and dressed in women’s clothing. Forensic evidence pointed to East Asian ancestry. This person had died from blunt force trauma and had likely been dead for several years. A revised sketch, offering both male and female-presenting renderings, was released in 2024.
On April 11, police discovered two more sets of remains. One belonged to Karen Vergata, who had disappeared in 1996. Her severed legs had been found on Fire Island just months after she went missing. Fifteen years later, in 2011, her skull and teeth turned up at Tobay Beach. It took more than two decades to match the two findings. The other set of remains came from Tanya Jackson, linking her formally to the torso found in 1997 and confirming her as the mother of the toddler found earlier that month.
By the end of 2011, authorities had found the remains of at least eleven individuals. Most were women who had worked in the sex trade. Several had been dismembered. Some had been missing for years, and some had never been reported missing at all. The locations of the remains stretched from Manorville to the shoreline, covering dozens of miles.
Each new discovery suggested careful disposal and a killer who had operated for a long time without drawing attention. The pattern raised more questions than it answered. Investigators could not yet say how many people were responsible. The bodies had been left in different locations and found in different states. Some had been buried intact. Others had been scattered. One had a mutilated tattoo. Two were mother and child. Another may have been a transgender woman.
What united most of them was not how they had lived, but how easily their absences were overlooked. Some had no missing person report. Some had no family contact. It was only once the search for one woman began that the others were found. Shannan Gilbert remained the focus for many, but even as her body had yet to be located, the case had already grown far beyond her.
The Architect and the Avalanche
In July 2023, more than a decade after the first bodies were uncovered near Gilgo Beach, police arrested Rex Heuermann. He was a 59-year-old architect who lived in Massapequa Park, not far from the search area. He had worked in Manhattan for decades, commuting to the city each day. To his neighbors, he seemed quiet. He kept to himself. Investigators had been watching him for over a year before making an arrest.
What first drew their attention was a dark green Chevrolet Avalanche. A witness had mentioned the vehicle in connection with Amber Costello, one of the Gilgo Four. Heuermann owned a first-generation model that matched the description. Police examined phone records and online activity. They found that Heuermann had contacted at least three of the victims using burner phones. He had searched the internet for updates on the investigation. He had also looked up images of the victims and their families.
When detectives collected a pizza crust that Heuermann had thrown away, they found DNA that matched hairs discovered on the burlap wrapping one of the victims. Other hairs found near the bodies matched Heuermann’s wife. She and their children had been out of state during each suspected murder, which led investigators to believe she had no involvement.
Heuermann was first charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. In early 2024, he was also indicted for the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. Later that year, he was charged with killing Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla. Costilla had been found in 1993 in a wooded area nearly 60 miles from Gilgo Beach. Her case had not been linked to the others until DNA matched hair samples on her body with Heuermann’s.
In December 2024, prosecutors announced charges for the murder of Valerie Mack. The timeline of the case now reached back to the early 1990s. It included multiple counties, different disposal methods, and victims who had been scattered across both time and geography.
The investigation had faced many setbacks over the years. At one point, a former police chief had blocked the FBI from assisting. Forensic delays and lack of coordination between agencies slowed progress. But new technologies, especially genetic genealogy, helped confirm identities and link cases that once seemed unrelated.
For a long time, Shannan Gilbert’s case was seen as the thread that pulled everything else to the surface. Her body was found in 2011, face-up in the marshland near Oak Beach. Her cause of death remains disputed. One pathologist noted damage to her hyoid bone, which could suggest strangulation. Police maintain that she drowned while in a state of panic. Her family believed otherwise. Her mother, Mari Gilbert, fought for years to have her death investigated as a homicide. In a tragic turn, Mari was later killed by her younger daughter, who suffered from severe mental illness.
Even as charges mount against Heuermann, questions still remain. Several victims have not been officially connected to him. Others have yet to be identified. For decades, the coastlines of Long Island kept their silence. When they finally gave up the remains, they spoke not with clarity, but with layers. Each discovery was a beginning, not an answer.
