Lost Girls' true story is more confusing, disturbing, and troubling than the movie shows
Lost Girls tells the story of the disappearance of a young woman named Shannan Gilbert. The scope of the film is, understandably, narrow – the story is about Shannan's mom and her fight for justice.
But the true story goes far beyond just Shannan (as the movie does go into, albeit not in-depth) and is the subject of plenty of debate. The killer has yet to be identified, let alone apprehended.
Two events kickstarted the investigation into dozens of missing young woman, all of whom were sex workers, in Long Island, USA.
In May 2010, Mari Gilbert (played by Amy Ryan in the Lost Girls movie) would not let the police disregard the disappearance of her daughter, also a sex worker.
Seven months later, in December 2010, a cop was on a training exercise with his dog when he discovered the remains of a body, nearly disintegrated in a burlap sack. From there, a search began and within two days three more bodies were discovered.
These women were Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthélemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello. They were all missing sex workers who had advertised on Craigslist, a public classified-ad style website like GumTree.
Four more women were discovered in March and April of 2011, and five days later another set of partial human remains was found, along with a separate skull. This brought the total number of victims to ten, none of whom was Shannan Gilbert.
But the murders didn't start in the 2000s. In September 2011, the police revealed that one of the sets of remains found in April matched two dismembered legs found in 1996 in a garbage bag that had washed up on Fire Island, New York. Soon after, they announced that they believed one killer was responsible for the ten murders.
A month later, Shannan Gilbert's body was found. However, in May 2012 her cause of death was ruled "death by misadventure" or "inconclusive." The Suffolk County medical examiners believed that in a drug-induced panic she ran into the marsh and drowned.
As you'd expect, Mari filed a lawsuit against the Suffolk County Police Department six months later. By September 2014 an independent autopsy was conducted by Dr Michael Baden.
He found damage to her hyoid bone, which suggested she may have been strangled. He also reported that, as is uncommon for drowning victims, her body was found face-up. Despite these findings, her death is still officially classified as accidental.
Four years after Gilbert's body was found, in October of 2016, Police Commissioner James Burke resigned and was subsequently indicted on charges of police brutality and of attempting to obstruct justice by covering it up. (He was eventually sentenced to 46 months in prison for civil rights violations and conspiracy.)
A 1995 Internal Affairs investigation concluded that he "engaged in a personal, sexual relationship" with "a convicted felon known to be actively engaged in criminal conduct including the possession and sale of illegal drugs, prostitution and larceny," and "engaged in sexual acts in police vehicles while on duty and in uniform".
He was never mentioned in the film – nor was he ever a suspect for the murders, incidentally – and is replaced on screen by the fictional Commissioner Doman (played by Gabriel Byrne) who is at least slightly sympathetic to Mari's fight. The FBI doesn't even get a whisper of a mention in the film, either.
Five of the original ten confirmed victims are still unidentified, and six other murdered women may or may not be victims of the same killer (this includes Shannan Gilbert).
The suspects as identified by the Suffolk police number twice as many as represented in the film. In Lost Girls, the first person branded a suspect is Joseph Brewer, a resident of Oak Beach and the last person to have seen Shannan alive. Despite the reports of Gilbert's panic as she fled Brewer's house, the police found no evidence and cleared him quickly.
As portrayed in the film, the other suspect in the film was Dr Peter Hackett who called Mari only two days after her daughter's disappearance. He lived in the same neighbourhood as Brewer, and reportedly ran a home for 'wayward girls'.
However, many people believe that his charity was really a ruse to attract vulnerable women. Three days after his first call, he phoned Mari again, but he later denied ever calling her. He also denies ever having met Shannan. He subsequently denied to the author of the book Lost Girls that he had any involvement in the case.
According to Mari, the phone records show that he did, in fact, call Mari, and police sources later told reporters that he had a history of inserting himself into major events – in particular, a plane crash in 1996 when he exaggerated his role in the investigation to the local media.
It's important to note, though, that if Hackett was involved, there were a lot of people who needed to keep quiet about it – in particular, his wife and children who were home at the time of Shannan's disappearance. Despite his strange behaviour, police eventually ruled Hackett out as a suspect in the deaths of the 10-16 women, Shannan included.
Another suspect in the murders was actually convicted of two murders, unrelated to the suspected victims of the Long Island Serial Killer. John Bittrolff was linked by DNA to the bodies of two sex workers, Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee. He was convicted in May 2017 and is currently serving two consecutive 25-year sentences.
The prosecutor in Bittrolff's case claimed that Bittrolff was probably also responsible for the 10-16 victims of the Long Island Serial Killer due to the similarities at the crime scenes. Bittrollf's lawyer denied this was the case.
Bittrollf lived three miles from where the torsos of LISK victims Jessica Taylor and Jane Doe No. 6 were recovered, and Rita was reportedly best friends with Melissa Barthelemy, one of the Gilgo Beach victims (via Pix 11).
The Gilbert family story didn't end with the police report on her death. In a cruel twist of fate, Mari's youngest daughter Sarra suffered from schizophrenia and was in a prolonged violent episode (it is important to note that most people with mental illnesses aren't violent and are more likely to harm themselves than others).
The Gilbert family attorney told CBS Local: "'Mari was invited to Sarra’s home and in the living room, she was knifed to death,' Ray said. Ray said Sarra Gilbert is schizophrenic, has been in and out of mental hospitals, and turned violent in recent months."
He also told People: "Sarra was hospitalized several times. Over the past couple of days, she began to hear voices. She called her mother and said come over. … And she stabbed her to death." The movie claims that Mari intervened in a psychotic break and sustained the fatal wounds in the process, framing it as an accident rather than an attack, but Sarra was charged with second-degree murder, not manslaughter.
It's perhaps an understatement to say that the true story behind the murdered women on Long Island is more confusing than the film makes it out to be. In the ten years since the first victim was discovered, we know little more than we did then.
But we do know the names of some of the people whose lives were taken:
Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthélemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Jessica Taylor, Tina Foglia, Natasha Jugo, Tanya Rush, Jane Doe No. 6, John Doe, Baby Doe and her mother Jane Doe No. 3 (Peaches), Jane Doe No. 7 (Fire Island Jane Doe), Jane Doe "Cherries", Jane Doe, and Shannan Gilbert.
Lost Girls is available on Netflix from March 13
Digital Spy now has a newsletter – sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox.
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Instagram and Twitter accounts.
You Might Also Like
