The Long Island Serial Killer

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     So here we are again. Dipping into the world of true crime. Unsolved true crime, our favorite! Today we are looking at a decades long unsolved case.  Many women have gone missing, their bodies turning up around Long Island. No one is sure who's doing it or why. There are many theories as to the identity including a doctor and a dirty chief of police. We’re going to discuss all of this on tonight's episode. We are talking of course about the Long Island Serial Killer. Also referred to as The Gilgo Beach Killer or the Craigslist Ripper, The LISK is an unidentified individual allegedly responsible for the murder of  between 10 and 17 women – and one man – and the subsequent dumping of their bodies along the Ocean Parkway over a period of nearly 20 years.

 

    On May 1st 2010, Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker went to a clients house for a meet up. It wouldn't be long before things went awry and Shannan went missing. Sometime after she arrived to her appointment, she ran from the house and took off screaming. She ran to another house on the street and banged on the dorr. The man who lived there looked outside and saw Shannan hysterical  on the porch. Shannan was screaming and the man was having trouble understanding her aside from her asking for help. The man was very confused and said he would call the police for her. As he said this and turned to walk to his phone, Shannan began screaming again and took off down the street. That is the last time anyone would see Shannan alive. While Shannans body would not be found for a year, the search for her would turn up something incredible, the evidence of a serial killer operating for possibly decades in the Long Island area.

 

   In December of 2010, police officer John Mallia and his canine companion, a german shepherd named Blue, were searching for  Shannans body on their own time in the dunes of Ocean Parkway on the South Shore of Long Island. Mallia and Blue came across a body. The body was not Shannans but it was a body that started a search for a serial killer. They found the skeletal remains of a woman stuffed into a worn burlap sack. The horrifying discovery led to a police search of the Ocean Parkway  between the towns of Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach in Suffolk County and the area of Jones Beach State Park in Nassau County. Two days later three more bodies,all female, were found dumped among the dunes. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer was quoted by news media as saying: “Four bodies found in the same location pretty much speaks for itself. It's more than a coincidence. We could have a serial killer." 

 

The four bodies would all be identified as women who used craigslist as a means to get work as escorts. Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Connecticut, was an escort who advertised her services online. Maureen was last seen on July 9, 2007, saying that she planned "to spend the day in New York City." She was never seen again. Maureen worked as a paid escort via Craigslist to pay the mortgage on her house. She had been out of the sex industry for seven months, but she returned to the work in order to pay her bills after receiving an eviction notice.  Shortly after her disappearance, a friend of Maureen's, Sara Karnes, received a call from a man on an unfamiliar number. The man claimed that he had just seen Maureen and that she was alive and staying at a “whorehouse in Queens”. He refused to identify himself and could not tell Karnes the location of the house. He told Karnes he would call back and give her the address, but never called again. Karnes said that the man had no discernible New York or Boston accent.

 

Melissa Barthélemy, 24, of Erie County, New York, went missing on July 10, 2009. She had been living in the Bronx and working as an escort through Craigslist. On the night she went missing, she met with a client, deposited $900 in her bank account, and attempted to call an old boyfriend, but did not get through. Beginning one week later, and lasting for five weeks, her teenage sister, Amanda, received a series of "vulgar, mocking and insulting" calls from a man, who may have been the killer using Melissa's cell phone. The caller asked if Amanda "was a whore like her sister." The calls became increasingly disturbing, and eventually culminated in the caller telling Amanda that Melissa was dead, and that he was going to "watch her rot." Wow...that's pretty fucked up. Police traced some of the calls to Madison Square Garden, midtown Manhattan, and Massapequa, but were unable to determine who was making the calls. Melissa's mother noted that there were "a lot of calls to Manorville" from Melissa's phone around the time of her disappearance. That detail comes into play with one of the suspects.

 

Megan Waterman, 22, of South Portland, Maine, went missing on June 6, 2010, after placing advertisements on Craigslist as an escort. The day before, she had told her 20-year-old boyfriend that she was going out and would call him later. At the time of her disappearance, she was staying at a motel in Hauppauge, New York, 15 miles northeast of Gilgo Beach.

 

Amber Lynn Costello, 27, of North Babylon, New York, a town ten miles north of Gilgo Beach, was a prostitute and heroin user who went missing on September 2, 2010. That night she reportedly went to meet a stranger who had called her several times and offered $1,500 for her services

 

After these four bodies were found, police widened the scope of their search. As they did this more and more gruesome things were found. In late March and early April  of 2011, four...yes four more bodies were found. One body was found about a mile east of where the first four were located, and three more on the north side of the highway several miles further down. What differed about these four was that none of their remains were encased in burlap, as the initial four had been. And again, Shannan Gilbert, whose disappearance had initially sparked the search of the area, was not among them. Suffolk County Police expanded their search into Nassau County in an effort to find more potential bodies.

 

Of these four new bodies only one has been identified. That is the body of Jessica taylor. Jessica was 20 years old and also worked as a prostitute. She went missing in July of 2003. When they found her body it was missing its head and hands. They would later be found at ...you guessed it...Gilgo Beach.  Another female body was found and named Jane Doe 6. She was found dismembered. Next body found was identified as a young asian male. They dubbed him simply John Doe He had died from blunt force trauma. The fourth body is not thought to be related to the LISK for one main reason. It was a child. A toddler between the ages 16 and 24 months and dubbed “Baby Doe,” had been found wrapped in a blanket and showed no visible signs of trauma. Suffolk officials have not ruled the baby’s death a homicide, and speculate that it was unrelated to the alleged victims of the Long Island Serial Killer, as it obviously did not fit with their established modus operandi in any discernible way. 

 

On April 11, the search in Nassau County intensified, and soon afterward a set of partial remains were uncovered – bones found by a police dog – as well as a separate skull from yet another possible victim; this brought the body count linked to the alleged Long Island Serial Killer to ten. On April 22, police found two human teeth while hacking through thick brush alongside Ocean Parkway with machetes and chainsaws; officials had reported previously that the dense vegetation in the area was making their search difficult.

These partial remains have never been identified, except as "Jane Doe No. 3," and "Jane Doe No. 7." The remains of "Jane Doe No. 3" were discovered in a plastic bag near Jones Beach State Park; DNA analysis indicates her to be the mother of "Baby Doe."

DNA also linked "Jane Doe No. 7," whose skull and several teeth were recovered at Tobay Beach, to a set of severed legs found in a garbage bag on Fire Island in April, 1996. On September 20, 2011, police released composite sketches of “Jane Doe No. 6” and “John Doe” in addition to photographs of matching jewelry worn by both "Jane Doe No. 3" and “Baby Doe” in hopes of identifying the victims.

In December 2016, authorities linked the DNA of "Jane Doe No. 3" to the unidentified torso of a woman found in Hempstead Lake Park in 1997. The victim had been dubbed "Peaches" under the Hempstead Lake Park investigation, so named for a tattoo on the woman's chest. According to a recent Long Island Press report, investigators said that "Peaches'' was a black woman between the ages of 20 and 30. Her torso was discovered by a hiker who found it stuffed in a plaastic bag inside a green Rubbermaid container on June 28, 1997. Because no head has been found to match "Jane Doe No. 3" or "Peaches," police have not been able to release a composite sketch of what she may have looked like.

 

At this point, authorities began to speculate that the alleged killer was someone familiar with law enforcement techniques, as the phone of one victim was used to call the deceased’s sister several times; however, the calls were too short in duration to be traced, and the locations used – such as Manhattan’s Penn Station – were too highly trafficked for anyone in particular to stand out. Several other bodies discovered in other areas of Long Island have been speculated to be the work of the Long Island Serial Killer and are being considered by authorities, although without any hard evidence linking them, the connections are considered speculation, and nothing more.  The bodies found are as follows: 

 

• On June 28, 1997, the dismembered torso of an unidentified young African-American female was found at Hempstead Lake State Park.
   

• On March 3, 2007, a suitcase containing the dismembered torso of an unidentified Hispanic or African-American washed up on a beach in Mamaroneck.
   

• Tanya Rush, 39, of Brooklyn, whose dismembered body was discovered in a suitcase on the side of the Southern State Parkway in Bellmore, NY. It is theorized that these last two are at least related two each other due to the suitcase disposal tactic.
   

• The remains of an Asian woman between the ages of 20 and 30 years old were found in a sandy area on Sheep Lane in Lattingtown.
   

• On March 16, 2013, 31-year-old Natasha Jugo disappeared after leaving her home in Queens; on June 24, 2013, her body washed up on Gilgo Beach

Shannan Gilbert's body was eventually found. She was found in a marsh about a half of a mile from the client's house that she disappeared from. Investigators maintain there was no foul play in Shannan’s case. They say she got caught up in the muddy brush and bramble of the marsh and drowned, per NBC.They speculate that she accidentally wandered into the swamp in a drug induced panic and got caught up and drowned. Her family however thought this was a bunch of fucking malarky. Mari, her mother, and the Gilbert family's estate lawyer, John Ray, believed Shannan was killed. Her purse and cell phone were found a few days earlier, just a quarter mile from where she was found dead, per Oxygen. Police won’t budge on the drowning theory, but after the police-ordered autopsy, the medical examiner ruled her cause of death inconclusive.  Her mom Shannan’s death was linked to the 10 other murders based on the independent examination conducted by former New York City medical examiner Michael Baden, MD. Dr. Baden said there was no evidence indicating Shannan drowned, succumbed to the elements, or overdosed—the theories Suffolk Country authorities were pushing, per NBC. One piece of evidence that could settle these conflicting theories could be the recordings of Shannan's 911 call, during which she reportedly told the operator, "They are trying to kill me," according to Former Suffolk County Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone. In an interview with 48 Hours, he recalled, "She's saying, 'There's someone after me; there's someone after me.' It's a girl who clearly believes...she's in harm's way." Shannan’s last client, Joseph Brewer, and neighbors in Oak Beach made additional calls to the police that evening as well, according to Oxygen. The Gilberts lawyer eventually was able to listen to the tapes and says they are a valuable resource in the case. The police as of now from what we can find have still not made the tapes public and the family’s lawyer is barred from discussing what was said on the tapes. In a shocking turn of events, Mari Gilbert was murdered in 2016. Mari was stabbed to death by her other daughter and Shannan’s younger sister, Sarra, in July of 2016. Sarra, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2017 after pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. 

Ok so there's the rundown of the victims they attribute to the killer and some other possible victims. We know what you’re asking yourselves. “Hey guys, I know that the case is not solved but they do have some suspects right?  There's gotta be someone right?” Well there are a couple suspects and theories and we’d be happy to run through some for you. 

So there are four main suspects we're going to talk about here as they are the four that most people seem to gravitate towards. Whether the cases against them are be strong or not, there the best anyone has right now.

First up we have Dr. Peter Hackett. Hackett became linked to the case of Shannan Gilbert after he called her mother, Mari Gilbert, after Shannan's disappearance. Hackett was once a “big shot” in his private Oak Beach neighborhood—but after that phone call, Hackett found himself linked to the unsolved Long Island murder mystery.

 

Hackett — the former head of the Suffolk County Emergency Medical Services — had become an integral part of the private, secluded Oak Beach community by the time Gilbert, a Craigslist sex worker, disappeared in May 2010 after meeting a client in the community. 

“He was sort of the local big shot in Oak Beach,” Robert Kolker, the author of “Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery” said in an interview. “He raised a family there, was their emergency services guy, their security guy. Anytime there was anything going on he was helpful.”

When Hackett called Mari, Shannans mother,  a few days later, she claimed the doctor told her he had interacted with Shannan the night she died. Hackett, who police have said is not a suspect, initially denied ever making the call, but later admitted to calling the Gilbert family after phone records showed he had placed two different calls in the days that followed her disappearance. In two letters to “48 Hours” in 2011 he denied ever seeing Shannan that night but said he had called the family to be “supportive” after getting Mari’s number from Shannan’s boyfriend and driver when the pair came to the neighborhood to look for Shannan in the days after she disappeared.

“During my conversations with them they asked that I call the family,” he wrote. Hackett denied any contact with Shannan and denied providing any medical treatment. Hackett said in his response to “48 Hours” that he had been at home sleeping with his wife the night Shannan disappeared. 

“There’s no proof that he even saw her that night, but he did call Mari,” one person close to the case has said during an interview.

Police have said that they do not consider Hackett a suspect in the killings, according to The Long Island Press. However, Shannan’s family, who has maintained the woman's death was not an accident, believes the doctor may have had something to do with the woman's death and filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Hackett in 2012. 

The lawsuit alleged Hackett took Shannan into his home in the early morning hours on the day she disappeared and gave her drugs. Due to the “control exercised” by Hackett, Shannan’s family believes she “experienced pain, suffering, anguish, agony, and knowledge and fear of her imminent death,” according to the lawsuit.

 

“Upon information and belief, on or about May 1, 2010, at Defendant Hackett’s aforesaid address, Defendant Hackett induced, coerced, overreached, and persuaded Shannan Gilbert to enter his aforesaid premises and to accept the aforesaid treatment and medications he provided and administered to her,” the lawsuit said.

Hackett’s attorney, James O'Rourke, has denied Hackett had anything to do with Shannan’s death and called the allegations against him contained in the lawsuit “categorically false.” 

So there's that weirdo…

Next up we have a one James Bissett. Bissett was one of the suspects of the case because he was the main supplier of “burlap” in the region of Long Island and the killer used burlap to strangle women whose remains were found in the area during the investigation. And they were also found stuffed inside burlap sacks. However, Bissett could not be interrogated as he took his own life while in his car at Mattituck park right after Shannans body was discovered. Sounds pretty shady to us. 

Next up we have John Bittrolf. He's a pretty good candidate on the surface. 

John Bittrolff is a convicted murderer and a suspect in the Long Island Serial Killer case. In July 2014, he was charged with the murders of Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee. He is also a suspect in the murder of a third woman, Sandra Costilla. Bittrolff became a suspect in the unsolved murders after his brother, Timothy Bittrolff, was partially matched to DNA found on the bodies in 2013. Timothy Bittrolff submitted the sample after violating an unrelated order of protection, in 2013.

On July 5, 2017, Bittrolff was found guilty of Tangredi and McNamee's murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences on September 12, 2017. He is imprisoned at Downstate Correctional Facility.

 

 

After Bittrolff's sentence, the case's prosecutor announced that Bittrolff was also a suspect in at least one of the 10 murders attributed to the unidentified Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) in New York's Suffolk and Nassau counties. Suffolk County District Attorney's office prosecutor Robert Biancavilla released a statement noting that Bittrolf was likely responsible for the deaths of other women, and that "There are remains of the victims at Gilgo that may be attributed to the handiwork of Mr. Bittrolff, and that investigation is continuing". Bittrolff was a carpenter who lived in Manorville, where the torsos of official LISK victims Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack were recovered. The remains were discovered roughly three miles away from Bittrolff's home. He was also a hunter who seemed to enjoy killing and mutilating animals, and reportedly once "cut out the heart of a deer he had just shot and ate it raw in the woods". Another link between Bittrolff and the Long Island Serial Killer case became apparent when it was revealed that the grown daughter of Rita Tangredi, one of the women that Bittrolff was convicted of killing, was reportedly "best friends" with Melissa Barthelemy, who was one of the first LISK victims discovered strangled and wrapped in burlap at Gilgo Beach. Barthelemy's mother also reported that Melissa "had a lot of calls to Manorville from her phone" at the time.

This guy seems as good of a suspect as any. 

The fourth guy on our list is James Burke. Burke was a police officer when the investigation started and was elected as chief of police in 2001. From then, the investigations into the Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) apparently started getting murky. After all, James Burke refused to let the FBI examine the killings. As per the New York Post, an agent believes the reason for this was the Chief’s already fraying relationship with the Bureau for having assaulted Christopher Loeb. At that time, Christopher, an admitted heroin addict, had broken into James’ department-issued SUV to steal his duffle bag. When the Smithtown native was brought into custody, he was tied to the floor and violently beaten by James. In a podcast, Christopher claimed that the bag contained sex toys, pornography, and what seemed to be snuff films that could link James to the LISK.  

In 2016, James Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to depriving a person of civil rights and conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice in connection to the Christopher Loeb case. That same year, an escort also came out to pose allegations against him. She said that in 2011, she partied with James at an unknown Oak Beach home, where they engaged in “rough sex.” According to her, there were various drugs at the place, and she saw James use cocaine on a few occasions. These claims are significant as it puts James in the same area where a possible LISK victim disappeared.In 2015, before James Burke was sentenced to severe 46 months along with three years of supervised release, he resigned from his post. Plus, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons records, he was released from behind bars in 2019. As far as we know, James is now following his relief requirements by regularly meeting with his probation officer and providing them with his monthly income and expense statements. Along with that, as he hasn’t faulted, we assume that he is also cooperating with the authorities when required. James has not made any public statements or appearances since his discharge. But a source told Newsday that he “has not decided on any plans… but to take several months to relax… with boating in the summertime… and stay out of the limelight.” Even though James’ reputation has taken a hit, especially with Vice calling him a “sex-obsessed narcissist” and a “middle-aged bachelor with a vulgar disregard for social niceties,” the facts remain that there is no concrete evidence that ties him to the serial killings. He's another that seems like a pretty good candidate. 

In 2020 investigators released information on another piece of evidence. Police from Suffolk County released a photograph of a black leather belt with the letters WH or HM imprinted on it. The leather belt, which was found at a crime scene, police believe is linked to the murder investigation. The initials written on the belt likely belong to the perpetrator. The police commissioner said that the belt was found “at the initial stage of the investigation” along Ocean Parkway on Long Island. 

So there you have it. A somewhat truncated tale of the LISK. There's a ton of info out on this subject. There's a Netflix documentary, a bunch of Podcast series, and a couple books. We got information from about 15 different articles online. While most of the information is consistent from article to article we did notice there are some discrepancies in a few of them so we tried to make sure the info we put in the episode was the most consistent throughout. And Also Logan Is “cute” says Moody...

 

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