Lost Girls (33 page)

Missy had been holding her tongue for a while about Mari: her volatility, her vanity, her need to fight everyone who threatened to pull attention away from her. Now she was unburdening herself. She made a crack about Mari’s “groupies” on Facebook, winding Mari up, feeding her ego, egging her on. She called them all “yes-men” and suggested that any dissent ended with being punished—banishment from the group. “We have to walk around eggshells around her, too,” Missy said, “which is kind of bullshit. Me and Lorraine have been avoiding her. She changes her theories more than anyone. I just try to be as supportive as I can be and go on my way. ’Cause Mari’s the type of person who, if you disagree with her, she starts blasting you to everyone.”

She was fed up. “Six days after Shannan is found, she gets this lawyer and goes on TV? I was talking to Lorraine, and she said, ‘Sorry, but she does not act like a grieving mother.’ When my mom found out, my mom talked to nobody. I felt the same way. I guess everyone’s different, but I know I would have waited for my daughter’s autopsy before saying anything. And then she switches and said she thinks Shannan is part of the serial-killer case? I think she just wants attention for Shannan. That’s so sad. I’d rather just know it was an accident.”

Her voice had flattened as she spoke. She was so immersed in every detail of the case that stoicism had set in. For Missy, all the questions that obsessed other people about Shannan’s disappearance were not quite so mysterious. Of course Shannan died accidentally, she said. Of course she wasn’t connected to the others. “I definitely
don’t
think Shannan got murdered by the same serial killer,” she said. After repeating some of Dormer’s arguments—none of the other girls had drivers; they didn’t have anyone with them—she added one more: the time line of the murders. Shannan went missing after Maureen and Melissa but before Megan and Amber. If the killer got Shannan, too, Missy said, “she would have got placed in the same place, in burlap bags.” The theory that the killer changed up his pattern for Shannan—pressured by her attention-getting dash through Oak Beach—didn’t hold water with her.

The thickness of the brush, she suggested, could be why Shannan took off her jeans—“because they were weighing her down,” she said. “You’d be surprised what a person would do to survive.” Besides, she added, “I don’t think anyone could put her body where it was.”

Missy didn’t necessarily agree there was a police screwup in Shannan’s case. The 911 call had jurisdictional problems; things like that just happen. “I’m sorry, but I think this is ridiculous. They couldn’t search that area because it was engulfed with water at that time. They couldn’t bring dogs in. I think they did the best that they could, given the situation. They treated Shannan as their own separate case, which was good. And then they worked on the serial-killer case. But when they found these girls, they didn’t just forget about Shannan. They just kept looking.”

If Shannan’s death had been an accident or a crazy coincidence, Missy thought the serial killer was a john who was a regular to all four of the girls. “I think that he knew them, gave them trust,” she said. “Amber was very experienced in that field, and she obviously knew this person very well. She let her guard down.”

What upset Missy more than anything was the disagreement between Dormer and Spota. “It makes you wonder how close they are to catching this guy if they don’t know if it’s one or more killers.” The only certainty, she said, was that the first four girls to be found were connected. Until someone could prove to Missy that Shannan was connected, too, she said, she’d believe the police and not Mari.

As a new year began, the disagreement created a schism—Mari and her Facebook followers in one camp, Missy and Lorraine in another. Missy started planning Stunts 4 Justice, a stunt-bike show, in collaboration with the old motorcycle club of her late brother, Will, to raise money for the Crimestoppers reward for the case. She scrambled to get local DJs to attend. She wanted to raise five thousand dollars. As soon as it was announced, Mari made it known that she was hurt that only the four girls’ names were being mentioned in the publicity, not Shannan’s.

Missy didn’t know how to respond. “I really feel like crying,” she said. “My sister got murdered. I’m just trying to do one positive thing, and I hear it’s wrong. How is it wrong? Just because Shannan was found, I can’t jump up and say the killer did this, too. It’s not like I can change things because someone’s acting like a child and kicking and screaming. It’s too much drama.”

On Facebook, Lorraine showed off a photo of her latest tattoo: four interlocking hearts, each a different color, each with an initial inside—
M, M, M,
and
A.
There was no
S
. When Mari said she was angry about this, too, Lorraine responded dryly that when Shannan’s death was proved a murder, she would add the
S
.

On January 14, Mari and Sherre returned to Oak Beach for another press conference. No one from any of the other families attended. “It’s been a very hard eighteen months,” Mari said. “Half the battle is over. We still have another battle ahead of us. Our worst battle, our strongest battle. But we’re not gonna give up, we’re gonna have faith and gonna pursue this, no matter how long it takes and no matter what it takes. To find out the truth about what happened to Shannan and to bring the killer to justice and everyone who is involved.”

Mari pulled out a piece of paper. “I’d like to read this on behalf of our family and I.” She looked down. “ ‘We are not close to accepting the loss of our daughter and our sister Shannan. We don’t know if we will ever fully be well inside. How hollow we feel, lonely, sad, confused, and bitter. There will never be closure because there will be an emptiness inside. And the thought of Shannan never coming home for birthdays, holidays or births or just because, is more pain than anyone can imagine unless you’ve lost a child yourself.’ ”

A tall white cross—over twice the height of the crosses for the other four girls—had been placed in the spot in the marsh where Shannan was found. Sherre put some red flowers around the base. Mari added yellow ones. In front of the grave, they both broke down as the photographers snapped away. Mari didn’t get up for the longest time. In front of a lit candle protected from the wind by glass, Mari sobbed loudly. A few days later, she posted to Facebook a photo of herself kneeling there, wailing. The caption read:
THE DAY MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER
.

THE JOHN

When Joe Brewer answers the phone, one of the first things he does is ask for money. “I mean, you can write your story,” he says, “but nobody can write it like I can, because I lived it. And it’s even more sensational than anybody’s saying. That’s why I’ve kept my mouth shut for this long.”

I tell him I don’t pay for interviews. Joe keeps talking anyway, for close to a half hour, his voice overrun with laughter. In fact, the more Joe talks, the more his laugh is all that I hear, coloring everything he says, a roiling, rolling, life’s-a-party laugh that he means to sound coy and knowing and smooth but more often seems bafflingly out of tune with the subject he is trying hard not to discuss.

“I think it would be important for you to meet me and get a feel for the kind of guy I am,” he says. “Like, I’m a huge,
huge,
extreme liberal. You know, I couldn’t hurt, I couldn’t kill, a fuckin’ small mammal. The whole of who I am is so disproportionate to people’s perspective of me, it’s hysterical to me. So why don’t you meet me and see who I am as a person.”

That would be great, I say.

He talks right past me. “Yeah, what kind of human being I am and how much compassion I have for the entire human race. And any living individual.” Then he second-guesses himself playfully. “I
guess
I would kill a mouse if I had a mouse in my house. So I can’t say I wouldn’t kill
any
mammal.” He laughs. “But it’s insane that I was shown as a serial killer!” He laughs again. “I don’t mean to disappoint you. It’s funny.”

He is still living at his mother’s house in West Islip. The Oak Beach place was on the market for $439,000, then reduced to $399,999, then pulled off and relisted for $375,000. Joe says he is staying in West Islip for now. “At first I thought I had to relocate. But people who knew me and knew me in this town, it’s like, the one thing people who grew up in this town, the first thing people said, is of all the people, I’d be the
last
person on anybody’s list who would ever be suspect of anything!”

Another laugh.

“Not that I was suspected! The police, I was never a suspect. I’m sure there was a brief time in the beginning where I was a person of interest, of course. But as soon as I ran to them and made it clear to them I had nothing to do with any of this.”

As soon as he says that, he corrects himself. He says he does know something special about the case. “Dude, there’s something you don’t know, something really big. I do have some big chits on that, but I’ve got to hold them back. You want to know the truth, I mean, honestly, everybody would say the same things I was saying, even if they were guilty. But there’s a lot out there I know, I don’t want to say this because a lot of them are my friends, but at the end of this, the police are going to have a lot of pie on their face.”

When I ask why Shannan called the police that night, he laughs his biggest laugh so far.

“I’m sorry to laugh,” he says. “That was, like, the easiest—you know, it’s so funny—sometimes the most obvious answer is the most easiest one to figure out. And, like, that is the question I get more than any, and that is the most easy to figure out.” He pauses. “No, I’m sorry, I’m gonna take that back. The easiest one is I must have scared her, I must have threatened her, you know, obviously, that’s number one choice. But that is far from—I was ready to help her. And you know what, dude? If they ever release that 911 call, I know my voice is in the background. And I know I’m the only voice of reason, and I know the police know that. I would never harm a
soul
. If you actually read through, you can put it together why she ran crazy into the night. You know, the answer’s there. Yeah, I know everybody wants a bad guy, they want a villain, and they want me to be the villain. It’s not that sensational, buddy, it’s not what happened.”

The first thing I think of is Joe’s transvestite story—that he wouldn’t pay her because he thought she was a man. That was hardly the most obvious explanation, though it was pretty sensational. It was also ludicrous. So I decide not to bring it up. Then there is the question of the drifter reported as being at Joe’s house that night. Though the police would continue to say that Brewer was alone with Shannan, a few months after my talk with Joe, the drifter would finally surface, self-publishing a memoir under the pen name “W.”
Confessions of the Oak Beach Drifter
does not deliver on the promise of its title. The author, a West Islip native, confesses to a life of burglary, drugs, assault, rape, and one shooting. What he doesn’t offer is any insight into Shannan’s death, just a few swipes at Joe for liking rough sex with prostitutes (something the author doesn’t seem exactly against) and for, he believes, telling the
Post
about him as a way to divert suspicion from himself. As a houseguest of Joe’s not long before that night with Shannan, the drifter, in the book’s sole accusation, recalls “one particular night I was awakened by a woman screaming, ‘No! Please stop! Please, don’t do that!’ and that was followed by a loud thud. And then there was silence.” But he also says that his memoir is partly fictionalized, and he offers no date for the incident in question, and he allows that his drug and alcohol problem “was at an all-time high” during his stay on the Fairway and that he “had quite a few blackout nights.” All in all, the drifter’s account is a wash for Joe.

I tell Joe that it sounds like he’s saying Shannan had a bad reaction to a drug that night.

For the first time, Joe is less playful. “No, I’m not saying that.”

Then I’m not following you, I say. What is the obvious explanation?

“No, I’m not saying that at
all,
” he repeats. “I did not say that at
all
.”

I apologize.

Joe chuckles. All is forgiven. He seems to be thinking over whether to say something.

“I mean, it would be shocking to you,” he says. He laughs again. “Well. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. First of all, Shannan was a nice girl. I spoke with Shannan. I met Shannan. I knew who Shannan was as a person. And she was a sweet—And you know, she had a rough life, I’m sure. I think there are some people who choose that profession. Some people are kind of forced into it because they have a family or lost their job. And some people are kind of thrown into it, and I’ve got a feeling that Shannan was one of those who was thrown into it.”

He is not-so-subtly turning the focus away from himself and toward Shannan’s family.

“And I’ve got a lot of compassion for that. She took care of a lot of people, you know? She supported her mother. She supported her family. They knew what she did. You know? That’s why she needed the rent money for her mom. You know? I feel bad for that situation. There was a very poor, sick girl, and people want to point at me for blame, and that’s not how it was.”

Joe won’t answer the question of why Shannan called 911, at least not directly. The real story, he says, is that he was trying to help her that night. “I was the only one trying to help her till the very last moment,” he says. “Until even
after
when I knew she was gone, I was reaching out. And I was
nobody
. I was just some guy, she was in my house that night, I don’t know what to call it, I wasn’t a person of interest, I had no connection to her, I was nobody. It’s a strange thing. But, uh, why she left my house? That is the million-dollar question. To be in a rage and fearful of her life?”

He’s back to teasing it out, playing up the drama. “Well, that answer will come. I have that answer.”

A pause.

“Well, to be honest, I
don’t
have it a hundred percent.”

Another laugh.

“But basically, based on what I heard, I have more pieces to the puzzle than anybody. And I think my theory is pretty good.”

I don’t want to misrepresent you, I say.

At this, he laughs very hard. “What’s gonna happen? Another pile of sand is gonna go on my face?
That’s
gonna make me do something at this point? I know who I am. I don’t need anybody, I don’t need to plead to anybody who I am. I answer to one person. I’m not really Catholic, I’m more agnostic, but I believe in God, I believe in morals, I believe in yin-yang and karma. I’m a huge—Well, maybe this happened for a reason. I’m in tune with myself. I don’t need the money, let me tell you. Any money I make, I’d donate some to some kind of charity for some girls who are stuck on the streets. And I’d put it away in a college fund for my daughter. Money isn’t my motive. I wouldn’t want a five-hundred-thousand-dollar contract movie deal, because that would probably break my family apart even more. But my story will come out.”

He starts to beg off. “Ask about me. I’m a pretty well-known guy in town. I’ve been lifting people when they’re down my entire life. So, I mean, it’s just, it’s such an odd time. It is so—What is this a test? What, you know? Maybe it was given to me because I could handle it, ’cause I wouldn’t crack. And these girls needed to be found, and maybe some higher power up there—not that I believe in that stuff, necessarily—but maybe Shannan had a purpose, and I had a purpose, and she was on a path to destruction, and I, you know, I could handle this kind of thing. I don’t know. I don’t know what made these two asteroids hit in the sky, but this is a
straaange
fuckin’—this is a strange event. It is.”

Joe decides he’s said enough. “God, talk about a trillion-to-one shot. But I went through a lot, dude. I mean, my life is—I won’t say
destroyed,
because I won’t let them beat me. It actually made me a better person. How’s that? There’s a quote for you. So if I had to do it all over again, I’d probably let it happen again, because it’s probably made my life better.”

A pause.

“Except for the fact that any girl had to suffer,” he says. “But anyway.”