This is another good article from the time they had found multiple bodies but still had not found Shannan.
Investigators returned to a gated community in Oak Beach, a couple of miles from where a total of eight bodies have been found since December.
www.nytimes.com
It began as a simple search for a missing prostitute named Shannan Gilbert, who had disappeared in May, and has evolved into a grisly murder mystery. The remains of eight people have now been discovered on a several-mile stretch of the Long Island shore, and the search will continue on Wednesday — for clues, evidence and, her family fears, perhaps the body of Ms. Gilbert.
Investigators determined on Tuesday that none of the eight victims was Ms. Gilbert, the 24-year-old prostitute from Jersey City whose disappearance sparked the initial search near Ocean Parkway and Gilgo Beach.
In nearly four months, the remains of four female prostitutes and four unidentified people have been found decomposing on the same remote stretch of brush and grassy dunes, heightening residents’ fears that a serial killer is in their midst and fueling an investigation that has intensified with each grim discovery.
A police dog and its handler found the first body on a Saturday in December. Three other bodies were discovered two days later. Months would pass before the police found another body last Tuesday, about one mile east from where the others turned up. On Monday, the body count climbed yet again: the remains of three other people were found.
Meanwhile, Ms. Gilbert is still missing. The police dog and Suffolk County officer who discovered the first body in December had been on a training exercise in the area in connection with the disappearance of Ms. Gilbert, who vanished nearby.
At her home in Ellenville, N.Y., Mari Gilbert, the mother of Shannan Gilbert, sought solace in the notion that even though her daughter had not been found, her disappearance made it possible for others to have been discovered.
“If it wasn’t for my daughter, these bodies never would have been found,” she said. “Everyone has their destiny, maybe this was hers. I’m still hoping she comes home.”
On Tuesday, investigators focused their attention not only on the brush and grassy dunes where the bodies were found, but also on Oak Beach, a residential area a couple miles away. In the morning, a busload of investigators entered the gated community, known as the Oak Island Beach Association. Investigators have returned numerous times to the gated community since last year: It is where Ms. Gilbert was last seen.
Ms. Gilbert had been visiting a seaside home in the Oak Beach area in the early morning hours of May 1. Gus Coletti, 76, was one of the last people to see her alive. He was at home, shaving, shortly before 5 a.m.
“I hear somebody screaming and bang-bang on the door,” he said. “I opened the door, and she stood right there. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ And she kept saying ‘Help me.’ ”
When he dialed 911, she ran. “She took off, and that was the last I saw her,” he said.
The wave of grim discoveries — the third serial-killer murders involving prostitutes on Long Island in more than 20 years — has shocked residents, and reshaped life in what are typically tranquil beach communities. Mr. Coletti’s wife, Laura Coletti, said on Tuesday that she often walked along a service road on the south side of Ocean Parkway, but no longer. Her husband said the discovery of three new bodies has made his elderly neighbors nervous. “They call and they say, ‘Gus, are you watching out for us?’ ” he said.
Mr. Coletti, the former president of the association, said property values have plummeted in the area since December. Homes used to sell for $1 million, but now the prices are closer to $600,000, he said. “They’d have open houses, and 10 to 12 people would come and look,” he said. “Now, nobody’s coming at all.”
The bodies of the four prostitutes discovered in December were deposited aboveground and spread over a quarter-mile. Each one had been placed roughly 500 feet from the next, and each one lay about 50 feet from the north side of Ocean Parkway. Investigators said that although they were placed there at different times, the four women were all in their 20s and that they had all advertised for clients on Craigslist.
Dominick Varrone, chief of detectives in the Suffolk County police, said that it was too early to ascertain much from the new remains; he noted that three of the four newly discovered bodies “were of a considerable distance from the original four.”
The police said more human remains were found on a Long Island beach, where a presumed serial killer has left other bodies.
He said that the police still believe that the first four victims were “the work of a serial killer,” but that it was too soon to determine if any of the latest victims were connected to the earlier murders.
He also added that it seemed that the four latest victims had been left there at least as long as the earlier victims, who had been reported missing between July 2007 and September 2010.
In recent days and months, police recruits and cadaver-sniffing dogs have combed through the brush for clues or more remains. Divers have searched a nearby inlet. Forensic anthropologists from the New York City medical examiner’s office have assisted in the case. On Tuesday, several investigators searched for evidence in dense thickets near Ocean Parkway, roughly three miles east of where the three bodies were found on Monday.
The investigators, wearing gardening gloves and boots, used shovels and tree clippers to break through the thick brush and poison ivy close to the roadway. Some have discovered ticks on their bodies, said Stuart Cameron, a deputy inspector in the Suffolk police. “They’re getting scratched up,” he said. “None of them are complaining.”
The entire area the police are now searching is roughly seven miles, from the Robert Moses Causeway to the Nassau County line.
“It is disturbing,” said Chief Varrone. “Most of these crimes have occurred some time ago. We have not found anything recent; that is a little bit of a consolation, and with each set of human remains that we find, as investigators, we are optimistic or hopeful that some or most of them will provide valuable clues, valuable pieces of the puzzle that will help us resolve this case.”
www.crimewatchers.net
