Although Shannan Gilbert went missing after most of the other victims, it was her frantic call to 911 right before her disappearance that was the precipitating event that led to the eventual arrest of the alleged Long Island Serial Killer. 

Gilbert, 23, was working as an escort on the night she disappeared, and had traveled to Long Island with her driver, Michael Pak, to meet with Joseph Brewer, a client who lived in the area. At some point after leaving Brewer’s house, Gilbert attempted to ask for assistance from two neighbors before vanishing into the night. Though she had told the 911 dispatcher that she believed someone was after her, police initially told her mother, Mari Gilbert, that she would likely turn up again soon. “I will continue to fight nonstop until I bring my girl home, where she belongs,” Mari told the press. After months of pressure from the missing woman’s family and friends, the Suffolk County police finally began to search the area where Gilbert had last been seen — and instead found the bodies of four other women (who came to be known as the Gilgo Four) located in close proximity to each other.

Increased pressure from the Gilbert family led to the police finally discovering her body and belongings on Dec. 13, 2011. The authorities could not confirm that Gilbert’s death was not a murder, but a second examination by a forensic pathologist found cause to disagree with that conclusion, citing marks consistent with homicide by strangulation.

Not long before Maureen Brainard-Barnes went missing, the 25-year-old Norwich, Connecticut resident had been threatened with eviction by her landlord. Because of her shaky housing situation, Brainard-Barnes was at risk of losing custody of her child — a fear that weighed on her mind as she traveled to New York City on July 9, 2007, where she worked as an escort.

According to friend and fellow escort Sara Karnes, who’s interviewed in Gone Girls, Brainard-Barnes was hoping to make $3,000 on the day she disappeared so that she could temporarily stave off her financial issues. When Karnes decided to call it a night, Brainard-Barnes insisted on staying in the city in order to continue seeking out clients. At some point, she called her sister from Penn Station and asked for a ride from NYC, but since it couldn’t be arranged, decided to take the train back to Connecticut instead. From that point on, her loved ones lost contact with her, but two weeks later, Karnes received a call from a blocked number. The unknown caller described the missing woman and claimed to have seen her in Queens, but never called back. “I started losing faith when more of her kid’s birthdays passed, more Christmases passed,” Karnes says. On Dec. 13, 2010, Brainard-Barnes’ remains were among the first to be discovered along Ocean Parkway in Long Island.

Nearly two years to the day after Maureen Brainard-Barnes disappeared, 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy vanished after mentioning that she was headed out to see a client in Long Island. Originally from Buffalo, New York, Barthelemy was living in the Bronx when she went missing. Her sister recalls that after graduating from cosmetology school, she left town in search of work opportunities: “She wanted to get a job at a nice salon.” In the days following her initial disappearance, her then-teenage sister, Amanda Funderburg, began to receive taunting phone calls from an unidentified man. Though the police were unable to figure out who was making the phone calls, they did trace them back to midtown Manhattan. Like the other victims that make up the Gilgo Four, Barthelemy’s body was found more than a year later in December 2010, bound and wrapped in burlap. Because of the proximity and similarities between each crime scene, the authorities believed that a single killer was responsible for the four murders.

Megan Waterman, 22, was born and raised in Maine. Her early years were marked by a tumultuous family life and teenage run-ins with the law. She eventually turned to sex work as a means of supporting her young daughter. A devoted mother, her family quickly noticed when she went missing on June 6, 2010 because her frequent phone check-ins with her daughter had come to an abrupt halt. Surveillance footage from the Holiday Inn Express on Long Island where Waterman was staying reveal that she was last seen leaving the hotel around 1:15 a.m., presumably to meet with a client. Her remains were eventually found along Ocean Parkway along with the rest of the Gilgo Four. “Megan was loved by a lot of people,” says her aunt, Elizabeth Meserve. “And this affected a lot of lives.”

Amber Costello was living with friends in West Babylon, Long Island when she went missing in September 2010. In the documentary, her friend remembers her as “quirky,” “goofy,” and generous: “[She would] give you the shirt off her back.” Her roommates, Dave Schaller and Bear Brodsky, were aware of her escort work, and on one occasion, had stepped in to protect her from a client when she called for help. On Sept. 2, 2010, the last night she was seen alive, Costello left home without her purse or cell phone in order to meet with a man who promised her a much higher fee than she was accustomed to if she stayed with him for 24 hours. 

After she disappeared, Schaller and Brodsky gave the police a detailed description of the man they had previously ejected from the house, suspecting that he might be involved. In the immediate aftermath of her disappearance, the police didn’t pursue this lead, but years later, the men’s description of the client and his car led directly to the arrest of Rex Heuermann.

Thanks to the relentless efforts of Shannan Gilbert’s family  to find their loved one, the Suffolk County police agreed to continue searching for her in the spring of 2011. Among the victims’ remains that turned up as a result of this new search were that of a woman named Jessica Taylor, who went missing from New York City on July 21, 2003. Taylor, who was 20 years old at the time of her disappearance, was a sex worker who typically frequented the area of midtown Manhattan. 

Taylor’s partial remains were found in Manorville (near Rex Heuermann’s home) in July 2003 by a local woman who happened upon them while walking her dog. During the March 2011 search of Gilgo Beach, however, the police found additional body parts that were ultimately determined to belong to Taylor.

For many years, Valerie Mack could only be identified as Jane Doe No. 6, but with the help of advancements in forensic DNA testing, we now know that the 24-year-old woman spent time in New Jersey and Philadelphia and had been arrested several times for prostitution-related offenses. 

Like Jessica Taylor, Mack’s partial remains were found at two separate times and in two separate places: Manorville in 2000, and along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in 2011.

On April 4, 2011, the remains of a biologically male person wearing women’s clothing were found at Gilgo Beach. Investigators were able to determine that this person was of Asian descent, likely Han Chinese, and had been dead for five to 10 years before being discovered.

The skeleton of a female toddler adorned with a gold necklace and earrings was found on April 4, 2011. Though another set of found remains was eventually determined to be the child’s mother, their identities remained unknown until April 23, 2025, when authorities revealed that they had determined that Dykes and her mother, Tanya Denise Jackson, were the previously unknown pair.

For decades, Tanya Denise Jackson was known as Jane Doe No. 3, or “Peaches,” due to a tattoo of a heart-shaped peach that was found on her left breast. Jackson’s dismembered torso was found in 1997 at Hempstead Lake State Park, but more of her remains were then discovered in 2011 near Jones Beach State Park. Investigators knew that she was an African American woman, as well as the mother of the deceased child whose remains were found a few miles away, but it wasn’t until April 23, 2025 that they announced that they had learned her identity.

Though information about Jackson’s life remains limited at this time, reports indicate that she was born in Alabama and eventually moved to New York. From 1993 to 1995, she served in the U.S. Army. Her military service is part of the reason why her family did not initially report Jackson missing — they were used to not seeing or hearing from her because of her job.

Though she went missing in 1996 and her partial remains were found in April 2011, Karen Vergata remained unidentified (known as “Jane Doe No. 7”)  until October 2022. She was 34 years old at the time of her disappearance, and lived in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen. Vergata’s family last heard from her on Valentine’s Day 1996, and some of her remains were discovered later that year on Fire Island. Fifteen years later, during the Suffolk County police’s second search for Shannan Gilbert, more of Vergata’s remains turned up near Gilgo Beach.

Sandra Costilla was a New Yorker by way of Trinidad and Tobago. She went missing in November 1993 and was found later that month by hunters in a wooded area of Southampton, Long Island. For a time, convicted murderer John Bittrolff was suspected of killing Costilla, but once Rex Heuermann was arrested and investigators learned more about his patterns, they charged Heuermann with her murder.