Does Long Island Have a Serial Killer?

The saga of the Long Island serial killer begins in May 2010 with the story of Shannon Gilbert, a Craigslist escort who went to Oak Beach with her driver Michael Pak to party with Joseph Brewer and was never seen alive again. At some point during the visit, Shannon made a 23 minute 911 call where she sounded hysterical and screamed “they’re trying to kill me.” According to her driver, she became unhinged and ran from the house, knocking on neighbors’ doors and asking for help. When she received no offers, she was last seen running off toward the water.

On December 10, 2010, skeletal remains were found. All assumed they would be Gilbert’s but no. They were the remains of another Craigslist escort, Melissa Barthelemy, who had gone missing in July of 2009. The search continued for Gilbert and three additional remains were found at that time: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman, all escorts bt none were Gilbert.

Shannon was found a year later on December 13, 2011 along with six other bodies, taking the total found to 10: four on Ocean Parkway, one in Nassau County, a skull in Tobay Beach (matching legs had been found on Fire Island in1996), and a mother and child. The DNA of the mother was matched with a torso found in Nassau County in 1997. At this point the term “serial killer” was being used by both the police and the media.

The autopsy on Shannon proved to be inconclusive since all that was recovered was bones which led to two theories: one was that she was killed by the “Long Island Serial Killer” and the other was that she had wandered into the thick brush, got lost and confused, and ended up drowning.

Shannon’s family, though, was sure it was murder and honed in on one suspect, Dr. Peter Hackett, a local physician. Shannon’s mother claimed Hackett called her and said that he ran a home for wayward women and took Gilbert in the morning she disappeared. This call echoed the one that Melissa Barthelemy’s sister Amanda claimed to have received from a person who claimed he was holding her sister.  Dr. Hackett said this wasn’t true, but the phone records disagreed. Gilbert’s family sued him in 2012, claiming he encountered Gilbert as she ran off knocking on doors and gave her drugs, which killed her.

A litany of amateur sleuths was also convinced that Hackett was the Long Island Killer. It was alleged that he was fired by Suffolk County for misusing his work cell phone and claiming to be at work when he was not. He also was said to have embellished his role in the investigation of the crash of Flight 800. None of this makes him a killer, a bad employee, maybe, but not a killer.

Crime Watch Daily (newsmagazine) followed Hackett from a deposition and claimed he faked a heart attack, clutching his chest and falling to the ground. Since this alleged event, he has moved to Florida… wouldn’t you?

My feelings on the “Long Island Serial Killer” are that it is not a serial killer. What the recovery of these remains, often long after the death, proves is that this area of the Long Island shore is a perfect area for hiding bodies.  Finding so many bodies discarded in the same place would naturally lead one to think this was the work of one person, but perhaps not. Let’s look at the situation. That area is the perfect place to hide a body due to its thick thorny brambles. Also, most the victims were escorts, a common killer’s victims.

It would be nice to think there was only one person out there killing women, but not all these victims fit a nice neat profile. Not all were escort; one was a child. Some were found whole, others in pieces scattered all over the Island. We don’t want to think that the number of killers is high, but in the research for my book Who Killed Starr Faithfull and othermurderous tales of Long Island, I found that Long Island has many and varied killers both in the past and future and to think we are looking for just one killer is shor tsided and could be deadly.

 What do you think?