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?
