Lost Girls (37 page)

The frustration with the Gilgo Beach case has tempted all the family members of the victims to target the Web itself as the reason for their loss—a coconspirator, along with the killer. They have argued that anyone running sex ads is doing nothing less than enabling a haven for the trafficking of helpless women. “Most of them get conned and lured into this lifestyle and can’t find a way out,” Missy has said.

But that, like everything about the issue, was a matter of debate. The mistake may be thinking everyone works as an escort for the same reasons. Not all of them are minors, and not all of them have been trafficked. Shannan, Maureen, Megan, Melissa, and Amber were over twenty-one. They were more or less working alone and of their own volition. Despite what some family members said after the fact, they were not lured or overtly pressured. Some would say this makes them complicit in their fate—in other words, they brought this on themselves by doing something so dangerous. But to suggest they had it coming because they put themselves in a risky situation is disingenuous; no one walks through life thinking they’re going to be killed. To blame the girls alone would be just as easy as blaming Craigslist or Backpage alone. To place responsibility on any family member—a mother like Mari, or a sister like Kim—means at least partially acquitting the girls themselves. To suggest that someone should have stopped them is to believe that they could have been stopped.

The issue of blame itself, in the end, may be a trap. They weren’t angels. They weren’t devils. One was the aimless dreamer of her family until the pressures of adult responsibility became impossible to ignore. Another was both adored and feared by all factions of her warring family, but she placed her hope for the future in the hands of her boyfriend. A third was raised by an older sister, also an escort, whom she worshipped and, at times, tried to free herself from. Another wanted to be a success, and coming home from New York anything less than that would have meant admitting defeat. Another was a self-made woman using her money to win a place back in her family. But to their loved ones, some part of each of the girls remains elusive.

There is an impulse now to have a reason. It’s as strong an impulse—maybe stronger—as wanting to know who killed them.

After a while, Missy came around to the broader view. She worried that even if Backpage shut its page down, escorting would move further underground, making it even harder to track missing women. “These girls need to be looked at as human beings,” she said. Right or wrong, Missy said, escorting needs to be brought in from the shadows. “They need to be protected as if they were any other profession. But since these sites are not regulated, they enable the rapists and killers.”

All the activity might lead to nothing, though it gave Missy something to work for, a reason to keep going. But as summer turned to fall, Missy pulled away from Facebook. Some of her new friends, even Lorraine, would get angry at her for not donating the Stunts 4 Justice money to Crimestoppers right away. All the new bonds Missy had forged, all the friendships, were being tested. Lorraine started planning the next Oak Beach vigil without her. When the day of the next vigil arrived, Missy didn’t come. Only ten people met up in the Oak Beach parking lot on a clear, cold Saturday in December 2012, two years after police found the first bodies and a year after they finally found Shannan. Nearly a hundred people had swarmed the parking lot a year earlier. For a little while, it seemed like Lorraine might be the only family member to make it. Then Kim arrived with a surprise: She was seven months pregnant with her seventh child, due on Amber’s birthday in February. The ceremony was brief, a ritual designed for a catharsis that never seems to arrive. At the end, the group released heart-shaped lanterns and watched them float high in the air, away from the water and back toward the parkway.

The one thing Missy and Mari agreed on was that as bad as not knowing was, knowing was worse. No matter whom they reached out to, part of them remained alone. “I’m starting to forget little things about her,” Missy said. “And my brother, too. Not who they are or what they stood for but the little things, like who their favorite teachers were. I’m starting to forget. It’s horrible.”

Whenever she thought of them, Missy would try to write down what she remembered. Will getting a patch for his motorcycle club. Maureen and Will and Missy sitting in a field as little kids, and Maureen, with her Barbie doll, picking a buttercup and holding it under Will’s chin. The sad song Maureen was singing over and over with Missy and Will a few days before she disappeared, “4am” by a band called Our Lady Peace:

And if I don’t make it / Know that I loved you all along.

Just before the start of spring, Missy was taking her kids to a park and saw a little boy playing with his dad. It took a second before she realized that the boy was Maureen’s son. She hadn’t seen Aidan in almost five years. She finally got the chance, that day, to talk to his dad, Steve, and they all went out for ice cream. Missy couldn’t remember the last time she felt so happy.

Less than two weeks later, she was outside the ShopRite when she spotted Steve and Aidan again, walking into T. J. Maxx. She thought of going in after them and orchestrating another chance meeting, but then she thought better of it. She didn’t want to seem like a stalker. She came away thinking that God puts you in places for a reason.

MAPS

CHRONOLOGY

— April 20, 1996

Two female legs, wrapped in a plastic bag, are discovered on Fire Island west of Davis Park Beach.

— December 19, 2000

The first of two human torsos is discovered by hikers in the Long Island Pine Barrens in Manorville, off of Halsey Manor Road.

— July 26, 2003

The second human torso is discovered in the Pine Barrens, not far from the first. The remains are identified as Jessica Taylor, a twenty-year-old escort from Washington, D.C., last seen days earlier at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

— July 9, 2007

Maureen Brainard-Barnes is last seen in her room at the Super 8 Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Her last known call that night is to her sister, Missy, during which she says she is at Penn Station.

— July 12, 2009

Melissa Barthelemy is last seen outside her apartment in the Bronx. In the next month, her sister, Amanda, will receive seven phone calls from a man claiming to be her killer.

— May 1, 2010

Shannan Gilbert disappears at sunrise after being seen running out of Joe Brewer’s house in Oak Beach, Long Island. Neighbors Gus Coletti and Barbara Brennan are among the last to see her, in the vicinity of Anchor Way.

— June 5, 2010

Megan Waterman disappears from the Hauppauge Holiday Inn Express, last seen heading toward a nearby convenience store on foot.

— September 2, 2010

Amber Lynn Costello leaves her home in North Babylon to meet a client, never to be seen alive again.

— December 11, 2010

Police discover a full skeleton, wrapped in burlap, in the bramble beside Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach, three miles from Oak Beach. The remains are later identified as Melissa Barthelemy.

— December 13, 2010

Near where Melissa was found, police find three more sets of remains, also skeletons wrapped in burlap, later identified as Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and Amber Lynn Costello.

— January 25, 2011

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer and Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota publicly acknowledge that the police are looking for a serial killer.

— March 29, 2011

Police find a skull, hands, and forearm, later verified to be additional remains of Jessica Taylor, the woman whose torso was found in Manorville in 2003. These remains are also found along Ocean Parkway, three quarters of a mile east of where the first four bodies were discovered.

— April 4, 2011

Three more sets of remains are found along Ocean Parkway: an unidentified Asian male dressed in women’s clothing; the skull, hands, and foot of the first Manorville Jane Doe; and an unidentified girl between sixteen and thirty-two months old.

— April 11, 2011

Police uncover two more sets of remains in two separate locations. The first discovery, female bones and jewelry found near the Jones Beach water tower, is later suggested by DNA to be the likely mother of the girl found eight days earlier along Ocean Parkway. The second, a skull discovered west of Tobay Beach in Nassau County, is later determined to be that of the Jane Doe torso found in 1996 on Fire Island.

— April 12, 2011

The first news reports air about Mari Gilbert’s claim that she spoke with Oak Beach resident Dr. Peter Hackett in the days after her daughter Shannan’s disappearance. Hackett and his wife deny that the conversations took place.

— May 9, 2011

In light of the six latest discoveries, Spota revises his theory of the case, announcing “There is no evidence that all of these remains are the work of a single killer.”

— June 14, 2011

Family members hold the first of several vigils at Oak Beach.

— July 12, 2011

Peter Hackett tells CBS News he indeed spoke with Mari Gilbert on the phone days after Shannan disappeared.

— November 29, 2011

Dormer revises the case theory yet again, announcing he believes a single serial killer is to blame for all ten victims, and that Shannan’s disappearance is a separate case, perhaps not even a murder.

— November 30, 2011

The Suffolk County police announce they will reopen the search for Shannan along Ocean Parkway.

— December 6, 2011

On day two of the new search, the police move from Ocean Parkway to Oak Beach. That same day, they find Shannan’s pocketbook, ID, cell phone, jeans, and shoes in a marsh, steps from where she was last seen on Anchor Way.

— December 13, 2011

Shannan’s remains are found on the far side of the Oak Beach marsh, a quarter mile from her belongings. Before an autopsy is performed, Dormer refers to her death as an accident.

— December 15, 2011

Spota decries Dormer’s single-killer theory. The same day, County Executive–elect Steve Bellone names Dormer’s replacement as police commissioner, effective January 1.

— December 20, 2011

Mari Gilbert and her attorney publicly call for the FBI to take over the case.

— January 3, 2012

Suffolk County Interim Commissioner Edward Webber announces “There’s no fixed theories at the moment” about the Gilbert case or any of the Ocean Parkway cases.

— May 1, 2012

Shannan’s autopsy results are shared with her family. The cause of death is “undetermined.”

— November 15, 2012

Shannan’s family files a wrongful death lawsuit against Peter Hackett.

LIST OF CHARACTERS

Maureen Brainard-Barnes

(disappeared 2007) (working name: Marie) (from Norwich, CT)

      •    Mother: Marie Ducharme

      •    Father: Bob Senecal

      •    Younger sister: Missy

      •    Younger brother: Will (died 2009)

      •    Daughter: Caitlin

      •    Son: Aidan

      •    Friend: Jay DuBrule

      •    Friend: Sara Karnes (working name: Lacey or Monroe)

Melissa Barthelemy

(disappeared 2009) (working name: Chloe) (from Buffalo, NY)

      •    Mother: Lynn Barthelemy

      •    Mother’s boyfriend: Jeff Martina

      •    Grandmother: Linda

      •    Grandfather: Elmer

      •    Aunt: Dawn

      •    Younger half-sister: Amanda

      •    Boyfriend: Jordan

      •    Friend: Kritzia (working name: Mariah)

      •    Boyfriend/pimp: John Terry (working name: Blaze)

Shannan Gilbert

(disappeared 2010) (working names: Sabrina, Madison, Angelina) (from Ellenville, NY)

      •    Mother: Mari Gilbert

      •    Younger sister: Sherre

      •    Younger sister: Sarra

      •    Younger sister: Stevie

      •    Boyfriend/former driver: Alex Diaz

      •    Driver: Michael Pak

Megan Waterman

(disappeared 2010) (working names: Lexi, Jasmine, Tiffany) (from South Portland, ME)

      •    Mother: Lorraine Waterman

      •    Father: Greg Gove

      •    Mother’s boyfriend: Bill

      •    Older brother: Greg

      •    Grandmother: Muriel

      •    Aunt: Liz Meserve

      •    Daughter: Liliana

      •    Boyfriend/drug dealer: Akeem Cruz (working name: Vybe)

      •    Friend: Nicci Haycock

      •    Police officer: Doug Weed

      •    Pimp: Banks

Amber Overstreet Costello

(disappeared 2010) (working name: Carolina) (from Wilmington, NC)

      •    Mother: Margie (died 2005)

      •    Father: Al

      •    Sister: Kim (working names: Mia or Italia)

      •    Friend: Melissa Wright

      •    Owner of Coed Confidential: Teresa

      •    First ex-husband: Michael Wilhelm

      •    Second ex-husband: Don Costello

      •    Chaperone/roommate: Dave Schaller

      •    Chaperone/roommate: Björn Brodsky (Bear)