The Long Island Serial Killer’ Is Still Ongoing

In a frantic 911 call on May 1, 2010, a terrified woman who was a sex worker, Shannan Gilbert, claimed someone was chasing her down, trying to kill her. But when the police arrived, Gilbert was nowhere to be found. The investigation to follow uncovered the bodies of many more missing women along Long Island’s Gilgo Beach, including Gilbert, victims of a serial killer who is alleged to be Rex Heuermann. The story is detailed in Netflix’s newest true-crime docuseries Gone Girls: The Long Island Killer, directed and produced by Liz Garbus, the director of 2020’s Lost Girls, a fictionalized retelling of the search for Gilbert. It’s a horrifying true story that hasn’t even come to an end in 2025.

“The Gilgo Four” Are the First Found in ‘Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer’

Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer begins with Gilbert’s panicked 911 call and subsequent disappearance, an event that would kick off an investigation that has been ongoing for 15 years. The search for Gilbert went on for months until remains were found by a police officer and his K-9 near Gilgo Beach in December 2010. The search, however, didn’t end that day. It actually just deepened the mystery significantly more, as it led to the discovery of the remains of four women, who would become collectively known as the “Gilgo Four.”

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A double homicide remained unsolved for years.

The four women, three of which were found wrapped in burlap, had striking similarities. All four were in their 20s, petite, under 5 foot, around 100 pounds, and all working as sex workers, something that would come to taint how the investigation unfolded. Maureen Brainard-Barnes, the first, went missing in July 2007 after meeting with a client who contacted her through a burner phone. The second, Melissa Barthelemy, a former hairdresser turned escort, went missing in July 2009. In the weeks following her disappearance, her 15-year-old sister began receiving calls from a man using Melissa’s cellphone, with the man telling her he had killed Melissa during one such call.

Megan Waterman, 22, was last seen on June 5, 2010, leaving a Holiday Inn Express. She, too, had been contacted by a burner phone prior to her disappearance, as did the final of the Gilgo Four, 27-year-old Amber Costello. Costello left her house to meet the client, a persistent man (who “looked like an ogre,” according to her roommate), who offered Costello $1,500 for the night, six times her rate, but with conditions: meet him in his car without her purse, or her cellphone.

Police Find Their Alleged Serial Killer in ‘Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer’

Before Gilbert was found in December 2011, six more sets of remains would be uncovered in the area: Jessica Taylor, a sex worker missing since 2003; Valerie Mack, also a sex worker, missing since 2000; an unknown toddler girl; an Asian male, also unknown, dressed in women’s clothing; Karen Vergata, another sex worker who disappeared in 1996; and another woman, nicknamed “Peaches” because of a tattoo on her torso who, chillingly, was also the mother of the unknown toddler.

The investigation stalled after the discoveries for years, for reasons that Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer turns a critical eye towards until a new task force was formed in February 2022. Six weeks later, a suspect was, at last, identified: Rex Heuermann. The fact that the new task force came up with a name in six weeks when the previous investigation found nothing for years is another damning indictment revealed in Garbus’ docuseries. Several clues in the original case files were never connected, including the testimony of Costello’s roommate, who described an “ogre-like” man with a Chevrolet Avalanche.

‘Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer’ Places Its Focus Where It Belongs

Garbus’ intent with Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer was to keep the women front and center, without giving the devil his due, as it were. Garbus intentionally keeps any speculations or insight into Heuermann aside, citing a quote from author Michelle McNamara in I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an account of the hunt for the Golden State Killer: “Murderers lose their power the moment we know them. We see their unkempt shirts, the uncertain fear tightening their faces as they’re led into a courtroom. You know their names now and it’s often just Dave.”

It’s a savvy decision, one that serves to have a deeper emotional impact by personalizing the victims, delving into their lives, their loves, and their families before coming down on the sins that allowed their disappearances to be dismissed by authorities for years. The most damning is the revelation that the initial investigation stalled largely due to the misogyny surrounding the police and Suffolk County government. The women were “just sex workers” who had fallen off the grid due to their occupation, in their eyes, and despite the striking similarities between the women – not only their work but their look – then-District Attorney Thomas Spota argued against the idea of a single killer, and promptly dismissed the FBI from the investigation.

In some ways, that shift away from focusing on Heuermann is out of necessity, given that his pre-trial has only just begun this week. In other words, Heuermann is innocent until proven guilty, and no amount of evidence – and there’s a chance that the vital DNA evidence may be dismissed altogether – changes that. And there’s a hint of divine justice to the docuseries’ release coming before a planned documentary on Peacock centered around Heuermann’s wife — one that would have netted her and the children $1 million had public outrage not kiboshed the payment — has hit airwaves.

Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer

Release Date

March 31, 2025

Network

Netflix

Directors

Liz Garbus