Long Island Gilgo Beach Butcher claims EIGHT victims.

Forty miles east of New York City, a serial-killer dumping ground is being searched by police.

On Monday, Suffolk County investigators - utilizing helicopters and cadaver dogs - found more three sets of remains, bringing the total dead to eight.  More remains are likely to be found.

The investigation into the killings began in the early hours of  May 1, 2010, as police searched the Long Island beachfront area for missing craigslist prostitute Shannan Gilbert.  Gilbert, 24, of Jersey City, visited client Joseph Brewer of Oak Beach, Long Island,  before bolting from the house in a drug-fueled panic and banging on neighbors' doors for assistance.

Gus Coletti, 76, was one of the last people to see Gilbert alive. He was at home, shaving, shortly before 5 AM. "I hear somebody screaming and bang-bang on the door," he said. "I opened the door, and she stood  right there. I said, 'What's the matter?' And she kept saying 'Help me.' " When he dialed 911, she ran. "She took off, and that was the last I saw her," he said. Coletti claimed that an unidentified man in an SUV drove by a few moments later looking for Gilbert. Neither Gilbert nor the SUV driver have been seen since.

In December, as police searched for Gilbert in the Ocean Parkway area of Gilgo Beach, they made the gruesome discovery of four victims, none of them Gilbert.  All of the bodies belonged to women in their twenties who worked as Craigslist prostitutes. Each body had been wrapped in burlap and was severely decomposed. The bodies  were deposited aboveground and spread over a quarter-mile. Each one had been placed roughly 500 feet from the next, and each one lay about 50 feet from the north side of Ocean Parkway.

Joseph Brewer - Facebook

After the bodies were found, police raided the home and seized the car of Gilbert's last client Brewer, who incidentally is the father of an eight-year-old daughter.  Brewer has not been named a suspect and has not been arrested. He proclaimed his innocence after the December discovery and said, "There are still four girls who are missing.  I have compassion for them. And now I feel for Shannan's family. They have no answers, they have no closure."

On Tuesday, March 29, 2011, another set of remains was found about a mile east from where the first four victims were located.  And then on Monday,  April 4, among the four-foot-tall beach grass and scrub pines, three more sets of remains were located using cadaver dogs, police cadets, volunteer firefighters, and investigators from the area.

Yesterday, investigators focused their attention not only on the brush and grassy dunes where the bodies were found, but also on Oak Beach, a residential area a couple miles away. In the morning, a busload of investigators entered the gated community, known as the Oak Island Beach Association. Investigators have returned numerous times to the gated community since last year.  Police have been searching mostly north of  Oceanfront Parkway, but have fanned the search out to include the beach on the south side of the highway.  The westbound lanes of the Parkway remain closed.

Dominick Varrone, chief of detectives in the Suffolk County police, said that it was too early to ascertain much from the new remains; he noted that three of the four newly discovered bodies “were of a considerable distance from the original four.” He said that the police still believe that the first four victims were “the work of a serial killer,” but that it was too soon to determine if any of the latest victims were connected to the earlier murders. He also added that it seemed that the four latest victims had been left there at least as long as the earlier victims, who had been reported missing between July 2007 and September 2010.

As of this writing, eight bodies have been found within a seven-mile search zone from the Robert Moses Causeway west to the Nassau County line.  Police are calling the deaths homicides but have yet to release the most recently found victims' identities, except to say that Shannan Gilbert is not among them. Searchers will be expanding the search area today.


Upon learning that her daughter was not among the bodies discovered this week, Mari Gilbert said, "If it wasn't for my daughter, these bodies never would have been found. Everyone has their destiny, maybe this was hers. I'm still hoping she comes home."

Criminal profiler Casey Jordan believes that the Gilgo beach serial killer is a power freak who is driven by hedonistic lust.  The Gilgo Beach area is convenient and familiar to the killer, who may be taking advantage of the constant salt spray and winds to rush decomposition of the cadavers.

In December, upon the discovery of the initial four victims, Dormer said, "I don't want anyone to think that we have a Jack the Ripper running around Suffolk County with blood dripping from a knife."


Identities of victims found in December 2010:


Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, from Connecticut
Last seen on July 9, 2007 in Manhattan

Melissa Barthelemy, 24, from upstate New York
Last seen on July 12, 2009 in the Bronx

Amber Lynn Costello, 27, of North Babylon
Last seen in North Babylon on September 2, 2010

Megan Waterman, 22, from Maine
Last seen in Hauppauge on June 6, 2010

And police are still searching for:

Shannan Gilbert, 24, from New Jersey
Last seen in Oak Beach May, 2010