The case of a missing young woman working as an escort on Long Island, New York, on May 1, 2010, will lead police to the discovery of multiple bodies of other young women, and over a decade later to a man they believe is a serial killer.

It all started when a woman named Shannon Gilbert called 911 in the early morning hours of May 1st, 2010.

Shannon was panicked, telling the operator that someone

was after her. But then she disappeared by the time police arrived. In December of 2010, an officer

was searching for Shannon, or her remains on Long Island's Gilgo Beach. He didn't find Shannon,

but he did find the body of Melissa Barthelome, who went

missing in July of 2009. Days later, three more missing women's bodies were found. The four

women's remains will become known as the Gilgo Four. Searches of Gilgo Beach and the surrounding

area continued into the spring of 2011. Six more bodies are found, none of them,

Shannon Gilbert. One of the victims was just a toddler. Discerbingly, some of these victims'

partial remains had already been found before, one as early as 1996. Whoever had killed them

had also chopped them up. Investigators continued to search for more victims and for the man

who had killed them for over a decade. Who was the Long Island serial killer? The hunt for him would be

hindered by corruption within Suffolk County's police department and by a killer who was very careful

and had taken great lengths to never be caught. But as advances in DNA analysis continued

to be made, as digital footprints got harder and harder to hide, it became very, very difficult

for a serial killer to get away with the kinds of crimes that so many had gotten away with

for so long in the past. A new task force was formed in early 2022, and they made more progress

in less than two months

than all the other investigators had made in over a decade, in multiple decades, really.

About six weeks later, these investigators identified their main suspect, a man who has now

been linked to seven of the murders and counting. His trial has yet to begin. This story is not

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