Shannan Gilbert's death led to the search for the Gilgo Beach killer. 16 years later, questions remain.
Shannan Gilbert's death led to the search for the Gilgo Beach killer. 16 years later, questions remain...
The last time anyone saw her alive, Shannan Gilbert was running frantically from house to house in the dark of night through the quiet seaside community of Oak Beach 16 years ago, screaming for help.
“These people are trying to kill me,” she told a 911 operator on the last known call she made.
That's how the search started for Gilbert, a sex worker from New Jersey who advertised on Craigslist. More than a year later, investigators looking for her led to the discovery of 10 sets of human remains in nearby Gilgo Beach, triggering a serial killer investigation that frustrated investigators for more than a decade. Her name became instantly associated with the grisly crimes.
But even after Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann admitted in a packed courtroom last month to strangling eight women to death, Gilbert's death remains one the most stubborn unanswered question in the Gilgo Beach saga. It is a 16-year-old loose thread in a serial killer case that reshaped Long Island, toppled police leaders, haunted victims’ families and ultimately ended with Heuermann admitting to eight killings. Gilbert’s disappearance set the investigation in motion. Yet even after authorities say they solved the killings that made Gilgo infamous, they still cannot definitively explain what happened to the woman whose desperate cries for help led police there in the first place.
"If you look at it Shannan Gilbert kind of paved the way for the Gilgo Four and the other six to be found," Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said after Heuermann's guilty plea on April 8.
Gilbert’s late mother, Mari Gilbert, told Newsday in 2015 that although she was dissatisfied with the police investigation, she had realized her daughter played a vital role in uncovering a serial killer on Long Island.
"I was very angry as any parent should be, but as time went by I kind of realized that maybe that was her destiny, to help other families," Mari Gilbert said following her daughter’s funeral.
John Ray, the lawyer who represents Gilbert's estate, believes she was murdered and wants authorities to reopen the investigation even after officials determined she died an "accidental" death. He said he believes Heuermann may be involved in Gilbert's disappearance and death.
Heuermann’s attorney Michael J. Brown has said that his client had nothing to do with Gilbert’s death.
"I don't have a slam dunk case that this is the truth, and this is the way it goes," Ray said about the possibility that Gilbert may have been the victim of foul play. "I'm saying this is one scenario that has to be much more investigated than it was and we need some fresh eyes and minds who are not corrupted by the police disposition that 'Oh, Shannan died by accident.' "
Police initially theorized that Gilbert may have been high on drugs in a paranoid state and ran into a marsh and drowned.
The Suffolk County medical examiner conducted an autopsy on Gilbert and ruled the cause and manner of her death were "undetermined."
A 2015 autopsy conducted by Dr. Michael Baden, the former New York City chief medical examiner, concluded the "autopsy findings are consistent with homicidal strangulation." Baden also noted that Gilbert’s face was found upright, which is inconsistent with drowning.
The report said there was no evidence that Gilbert died of natural disease or a drug overdose, or by drowning. But Baden concluded there was insufficient information to determine a definite cause of death, Newsday reported at the time.
Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and criminal justice adjunct professor who has long followed the Gilgo probe, said while he doesn’t believe Heuermann had anything to do with Gilbert’s death — noting it would have necessitated him taking actions outside of his meticulous modus operandi — he thinks investigators should continue probing for answers.
"Just because I don't believe that Rex has anything to do with it, that doesn't mean that there wasn't foul play at work," he said.
The 911 calls
Shannan Maria Gilbert, one of four sisters who had spent part of her childhood in the upstate village of Ellenville and dreamed of a career in show business, was last seen alive on May 1, 2010.
The Jersey City, New Jersey, resident had traveled by car to Long Island for a client appointment in the small seaside community of Oak Beach along Ocean Parkway.
Her body was found in a swampy marsh more than a year after her disappearance. She was 23 years old.
Gilbert, who advertised her services as a sex worker on Craigslist, traveled with her driver, Michael Pak, to meet a client, Joseph Brewer. Pak waited outside during the date, police said.
Brewer later told police Gilbert started acting irrationally and called 911 from inside his home as he and Pak urged her to leave.
Gilbert, in a 23-minute 911 call she made at 4:51 a.m. that was released by police in 2022, told the 911 operator, "There's somebody after me" and "These people are trying to kill me," before fleeing on foot to the homes of two neighbors, who also called 911.
Police found her belongings, including her purse, cellphone and tattered jeans, just north of a trench. Police have said Gilbert likely became disoriented in the thick marshland, where her body was found on Dec. 13, 2011.
In January 2012, Suffolk Det. Vincent Stephan wrote a letter to the editor at Newsday, pushing back on the narrative put out publicly by Gilbert’s family that the police had not investigated her case thoroughly and shared his views on the 911 call.
"The 911 operator tried several times to get Gilbert's location,” Stephan wrote. “At one point, she mentioned she was near Jones Beach. Gilbert never said she was at Oak Beach. It is hard to respond to a call when the person calling doesn't know where he or she is."
Stephan, who was then a 17-year veteran who had worked on the Gilgo case in the first three months, said Gilbert was known to be paranoid.
“During the investigation, I interviewed an individual who drove Gilbert to her 'dates' in the past,” Stephan wrote. “He said she would leave houses and apartments in the same fashion as she did in Oak Beach. He described her as being a paranoid person and at times acting irrationally.”
'Wasn't exactly textbook'
Former Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison, in his memoir, "The Commissioner: From Street Cop to Top Cop and the Inside Story of the Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer," published earlier this month, explained how he came to the decision to release the recording of Gilbert’s 911 call in 2022.
Harrison said the chief of homicide, Det. Lt. Kevin Beyrer, who Harrison described as having encyclopedic knowledge of the case without notes, “told me there was potential liability for the State Police, who were technically responsible for that stretch of Ocean Parkway. Their response to the original 911 call wasn’t exactly textbook."
Harrison, in the book, said state police didn’t search for Gilbert as aggressively or as quickly "as they should have."
After Harrison listened to the call himself, he concluded, according to his book: “From my experience, Shannan sounded like someone who might have been either high or intoxicated and in full panic mode. The call didn’t tell us who — if anyone — was chasing her. But it did give the public something they deserved: the truth of her final moments."
Tierney, in a recent interview, defended the police investigation into Gilbert's disappearance and death, also saying investigators found no evidence connecting Heuermann to Gilbert.
"There's absolutely no evidence that Heuermann was involved in her case at all," Tierney said.
The district attorney has also said there is no need to reopen the case or investigation into the case.
Dumping ground for victims
Heuermann, a Massapequa Park architect, was arrested in July 2023 in connection with three of the four sets of remains first found near Gilgo Beach: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Connecticut; Melissa Barthelemy, 24, of the Bronx; Megan Waterman, 22, of Scarborough, Maine, and a Long Island woman, Amber Lynn Costello, 27, of North Babylon.
He was ultimately charged with seven killings, including that of Jessica Taylor, 20, of Poughkeepsie; Valerie Mack, 24, of Philadelphia, and Sandra Costilla, 28, of Queens. He pleaded guilty to those seven murders, which were committed over 17 years beginning in 1993, while also admitting to an eighth killing, of Karen Vergata, 34, a Glen Head native living in Manhattan at the time of her 1996 disappearance.
The victims' remains were found along more than 8 miles of Ocean Parkway and linked to other body parts in Davis Park on Fire Island, and in Manorville. While the dumping ground for victims was on the north side of the parkway, Gilbert’s remains, notably, were located on the south side.
Mari Gilbert was tragically killed by another of her daughters, Sarra Gilbert, in 2016, in upstate Ulster County. She was convicted of second-degree murder in the fatal stabbing and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
A pending lawsuit
Last year, a Suffolk judge ruled that Gilbert's estate can move forward with a lawsuit against an Oak Beach doctor she allegedly encountered on the last night she was seen alive near Ocean Parkway.
After fleeting Brewer's home, Gilbert knocked on several doors seeking help, including that of Oak Beach resident Dr. Charles Hackett, according to court records and witness accounts.
State Supreme Court Justice Frank Tinari denied a request by Hackett, who has since moved to Florida, to dismiss the 2012 lawsuit, ruling that conflicting accounts of Hackett’s alleged interaction and possible treatment of Gilbert in May 2010 raise issues that should be tried at trial.
"We didn't say Hackett murdered her," Ray said. "We said that he's responsible for her death, and that's because he said to various people that he had Shannan in his house, he medicated her, she left, promised to return, didn't return and he was worried."
Mari Gilbert was tragically killed by another of her daughters, Sarra Gilbert, in 2016, in upstate Ulster County. Other Gilgo mothers who treated Mari Gilbert as members of their families have also died without knowing what happened to Shannan. Some feel the question deserves resolution.
"This is what I refer to as one of the conspiracies of Gilgo,” Giacalone said. “It's never going to go away until it's addressed properly. Other than just well, she drowned and that's it. ... There are a lot of people, including myself, that believe that the case needs a deeper dive."