Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Are cops close to finding the Long Island Serial Killer?

Episode Date: February 8, 2018

The search for the Long Island Serial Killer, who investigators believe killed 10 people and left their bodies along a beach highway starting in 2010, is heating up. Nancy Grace assembled an all-star panel of experts on the case, including Robert Kolker, author of the New York Times bestselling book Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Murder Mystery. Nancy's guests also include criminal profiler Pat Brown, Cold Case Research Institute director Sheryl McCollum, and CrimeOnline.com reporter Ellen Killoran. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. We could have a serial killer. We've all heard of the Gilgo Beach serial killer, also known as the Long Island serial killer. As of right now, still no arrest, but, a seemingly happy married father of two, is convicted of murdering two women, and he is currently being eyed in a third. Does this unlock the mystery of the ten dead bodies found discarded, hidden, along the ocean, along a pathway, the ocean highway.

I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. We have an all-star lineup today to break it down and put it back together again. Pat Brown, criminal profiler. Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. Bob Kolker from New York Magazine and author of Lost Girls. You can find that on Amazon.com.

And Ellen Killoran, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. Everyone, thank you for being with us. Bob Kolker, starting with you. Nobody even knew about the bodies buried along the beach there near Gilgo Beach. Nobody knew it. And by the time they were found, many of them were skeletonized. How did the case break open? Lots of the victims had been missing for years, and the police weren't even actively searching for them. What happened was one woman disappeared about three miles from where the bodies started to be found. This one woman was named Shannon Gilbert, and she was an escort who advertised on Craigslist and Backpage.

She disappeared screaming one night in a tiny secluded beach community on the south shore of Long Island. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Bob Kolker, you're awesome. Bob Kolker joining me from New York Magazine, author of Lost Girls. But it's like I'm drinking from a fire hydrant. You're giving it to me fast and furious. I can't take it all in.

Hold on. So this woman, Shannon, was at a home. And it's a beautiful area right there on the beach. And she spotted running from the home, screaming at the top of her lungs. The first place I would look is, who's in the home? What is she running from? And she calls 911, right? That's right, she does.

And her call gets bounced around to different jurisdictions and never even gets connected to her disappearance for weeks or even months. Wait a minute. I did not know that detail, Bob Kolker. Cheryl McCollum, you and I have worked cases together on the streets. That kills me. That just kills me. The woman is screaming, they're trying to kill me running for her life and they what transfer it

reminds me of the home alone movie when the mom is calling from paris this must be home alone too and i'm trying to get the cops to go check on the home and they go wrong wrong department and he just knocks on the wall and says, pick up line two. And it just goes round and round and round. This girl is running for her life. Shannon Gilbert running for her life. And they transfer her, Cheryl McCollum. For 23 minutes.

She's on with 911. For 23 minutes. Nancy, the issue is she had like a disposable type phone. It wasn't connected to a person or an address they were desperately trying to find where she was at and could not until a neighbor made a call after she knocked on his door this is what we know about the disappearance of shannon gilbert and bob colker you're the expert but sometime after midnight on May 1, Shannon Gilbert made her way to a job, unwittingly driving right past bones of the Long Island serial killers victims hidden in the brush.

She had no idea at the time, but the events that happened in the next few hours would go on to link her to four dead women. To Bob Kolker, reporter with the New York Magazine, author of Lost Girls on Amazon.com. So she runs from the home screaming, screaming. Take a listen to what her sister Cherie Gilbert tells 48 Hours. Sometimes I dream at night of Shannon being dead. Other nights I dream that she's alive and she's doing well and we find her and I'm like, Shannon, where were you? My sister was lost and running along the road. She was in fear of her life that night. That was it. She just disappeared into the night.

Two days passed before Cherie learned her sister was actually missing when Shannon's boyfriend called to say she had never come home. Listen. Immediately I started to panic. I knew that when he called me it was something serious. I could kind of hear the fear in his voice. That's from 48 Hours to Bob Kolker. What happened then?

Well, the family didn't know what to do. They went to the police and tried to file a missing persons report, and they were told that they had to file it back in Shannon's hometown, which was in Jersey City, miles and miles away across state lines. They went and did that. And this is the other great outrage of this case. It took forever, you know, weeks, perhaps even months for that missing persons case in Jersey City to make its way back to Suffolk County in Long Island. And then it took Suffolk County a long time to connect it to that 911 tape. And they only started to take Shannon's disappearance seriously by around August. Really, it was May

when she disappeared and August when the police start looking for her. But then the most amazing thing happened, Nancy. A cop and a cadavered sniffing dog go looking for Shannon. A good training exercise for the dog, a woman who's been gone missing for so long, perhaps she's deceased. They can't find her anywhere until finally in December, months and months after Shannon disappeared, the cop and the cadaver dog find a set of bones along Ocean Parkway, just three miles away from where Shannon disappeared. It's a woman. She's petite, like Shannon, but it isn't Shannon. And within two days, they find three more bodies just about a tenth of a mile apart from each other, evenly spaced, clearly planned out,

clearly the work of a premeditated killer. None of these women are Shannon Gilbert. From there, the entire New York media world explodes. The national media world explodes. There's a serial killer in New York City. Some of these women have been disappeared for three or four years. Nobody knows who he is. The police don't have leads. It's like they've inherited four cold cases. Five of you include Shannon. And months go by and there are no suspects, no people of interest. You know, it's amazing to me, Bob Kolker with New York Magazine, that with all these bodies, they can't get any DNA. To Pat Brown, criminal profiler, many of the bodies had already been skeletonized. That shows how long they've been out there. But there are many signs that let me know this is in fact the work of one

person. Many of the women dismembered so they would fit into burlap bags. They all appear to be Caucasian females. One of them is white biracial. One body found is a toddler girl who DNA matches up to one of the dead women. The toddler girl was killed too. One of them turned out to be an Asian male dressed as a Caucasian woman. So you've got a guy, I believe one guy, focusing on Caucasian women, petite, all dismembered, all dismembered to fit into burlap bags, evenly discarded, disposed, like Bob Colker just told us, about a tenth of a mile apart. What does that tell you? You're the criminal profiler. Pat Brown. Well, I'm in agreement with you, Nancy, that we're looking at most likely one serial killer because it would be a little odd that another serial killer also found this great dumping ground.

And what does happen with serial killers who dispose of bodies and places that they think won't be found is if they find a good place, nobody's discovered that body. Why look for another place where you could get caught or the body could be discovered? Why not just keep using that same stretch of road? And that's clearly in my mind what he did and was very successful at it. If it hadn't been for the peculiar moment of Shannon Gilbert going missing, I think it's just a bizarre coincidence. The 911 call was never released, right, Ellen? So we can't listen to it. With me, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Ellen Killoran. The 911 call and the transcript is something that everyone reported on this case has tried to get and they will not release it.

It is confirmed that she did say in the call, someone's trying to kill me or they're trying to kill me, something like that to kill me something like that but authorities have not released the audio or any transcripts of the call so we don't know what else was said but as a matter of fact the former suffolk county chief of detectives dominic varone listened to the call and spoke for the first time on network tv to our friend at 48 Hours, Aaron Moriarty. Listen to what he tells Aaron. She's saying, there's someone after me. There's someone after me.

It's a girl who clearly believes she's in harm's way. Does she say who she's afraid of? She just says, they're trying to kill me. Chifaron says two male voices are recognizable in the background, Shannon's driver and the man who hired her, Joseph Brewer. As Brewer is heard trying to get her to leave his house, Verone says... He either approaches her or touches her and you hear her scream out. But police couldn't respond to the call because Shannon couldn't say where she was.

The complaint operator is asking, well, where are you? And she just kind of ignores that where are you question and keeps saying, someone's after me. So unwittingly to Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, this woman, Shannon Gilbert's disappearance touches off the discovery of one of the most prolific serial killers in our nation's history. No question. They believed the first body was Shannon. And when it came back not to be her, and then they found a second body and a third body, at that point they knew they had something massive on their hands. Nancy, this crime scene is huge. These victims are all about 500 yards apart. The terrain is rough. There's water,

there's boulders, there's sand, there's wind. It's difficult to walk to it. It's difficult to process it. The killer picked a great dumping ground. Well, you know what? There's been a lot of attack on the police. Bob Kolker with me from New York Magazine, author of Lost Girls, which is awesome. It's on Amazon.com. Bob, but when you see the terrain and at first you think there's 10 bodies out there and police, what did they have to stumble over them as they're taking a walk, eating a donut? No, it's not like that at all. I think it's wrong to attack cops in this way because it's just like Cheryl said, that terrain, they're huge boulders. It's not like, you know, a sunny beach like you would see on a Jamaican beach where it's a beautiful white sand and there's nothing but sand as far as the eye can see.

It's not like that at all. There's crashing waves. The rocks are out in the water. And everyone also attacked them for not realizing about Shannon's 911 call. It was 23 minutes like Cheryl told us. But her call was transferred to the New York State Police. She couldn't tell them where she was. She was out in the dunes running for her life. It took nearly a month for cops to connect her call, her 911 call, to the missing persons report

her family filed in New Jersey. Do I have that right, Bob? Am I portraying it correctly? Yes, that's exactly right. The only thing I would add, Nancy, is that you really couldn't come up with a better place to dispose of a body. We're not just talking about a lot of bramble and boulders the way that you said. We're talking about a 15-mile- long stretch of highway with very, very few exits with very, very little on either side. It is completely straight. So in the middle of the night, you could pull over with your car onto the shoulder and you would know if someone was coming for more than a minute to get back in your car and leave so that you wouldn't arouse suspicion. It's really, what makes it even more amazing, Nancy, is that it is right near New York City. So you've got a megalopolis of 11 million people, and it's a very accessible stretch of highway that is also deserted. So you've got a megalopolis of 11 million people,

and it's a very accessible stretch of highway that is also deserted. So the suspect field is enormous. If I could just talk to the person that was responsible for my sister's death, I would just say, you know, you had no right to take an innocent person's life. To continue giving it my all, being a mom of two, and investigating the major crimes across our country, like the Long Island serial killer, you know how I do it? One of the ways? Super Beats. And this is why. Circulation is crucial to energy and stamina circulation gets oxygen and nutrients throughout your body so you can exercise longer do more every single day but what can you do to promote that

healthy circulation drink super beats super beats promotes your body's own natural ability for healthy circulation increased energy energy, stamina all day long into the evening. And only super beets made from beets grown to exacting standards, then concentrated down into super food crystals. I mix it with water and ice and sip it throughout If you want to improve your circulation and your energy, call 800-516-0683 or go to nancysbeats.com. N-A-N-C-Y-S-B-E-E-T-S. With your first order, get another 30-day supply of Super Beats for free, plus indicator strips to see how Super Be working for you plus free shipping 800-516-0683 or go to nancy'sbeats.com today online super beats thanks for the energy i need it you know i'm thinking right now of these ladies and they're so casually discussed, like they're disposable of being,

of advertising on Craigslist. Let me tell you about one of these ladies. Lynn Bartolome's daughter was Melissa. She had been missing for a little over a year, and she and her fiancé were up watching CNN, and they started televising where the bodies were found. She, Lynn and her fiance didn't say a word. They looked at each other and they both started crying. They both knew without saying a word that it was Melissa. And to Cheryl McCollum, it's really uncanny. I don't know if that happens to other people, but it happened to me. When my fiance was murdered, I had just come out of a statistics exam. I was walking a long way across campus to my job, which was in the library. And I stopped midway, no cell phones then, and picked up a pay phone to call the library and tell them that I was 10 minutes away that my test ran long.

And they said, call Keith's sister. I knew right then that Keith was dead. I've heard it over and over and over. Have you ever heard that, Cheryl? Oh, of course, Nancy. And here's the sad thing. I've heard it over and over and over. Have you ever heard that, Cheryl? Oh, of course, Nancy. And here's the sad thing. The families knew a lot more than they probably shared with a ton of people.

And one thing they knew is they knew what their loved one was doing for a living. And that is another thing that law enforcement didn't take seriously because these women were involved with prostitution. Listen to what her sister tells 48 Hours. Do you think the fact that your sister was an escort influenced the investigation? Listen to what her sister tells 48 Hours. You know, they're just, oh, missing prostitutes. My sister had other dreams. You know, she wanted to be a singer, an actress. She was pursuing that, and she was also going to school to be a writer. Cheryl McCollum, weigh in. I learned a valuable lesson from you, you know, 30 years ago, and that is regardless of what they do for a living,

they don't deserve to be murdered or left for dead. You and I had a case where a woman was left for dead. She was a prostitute out on FIB. And tons of people were encouraging you during the trial to lead with, she's a mother of two. She was, you know, raised in the church in Fairburn and all that. And you thanked everybody for their input. And you walked straight in that courtroom and you looked right at that jury. And the first thing out of your mouth was, Jane Doe was a hooker. Let's get it out of the way.

And then you went in to who she was. She was more than that. She was more than that. You're more than a talk show host. You're more than an attorney. You than that you're more than a talk show host you're more than an attorney you're a mother you're a sister you're a daughter we all have layers to who we are and if you make them human then it just might lead you to their killer well another thing to pat brown criminal profile are we and i do it too but I try to correct it immediately. We are looking for a killer. And so one way to catch a serial killer is you analyze the victims. And that is one thing they all had in common. They were advertising on Craigslist.

Cheryl is right too. I mean, we have all, me, number one, I'm first in the line, have done plenty of things I'm ashamed of. I wish I hadn't done. I look back and I hate, I cringe. As the twins say, it's so cringey. But I don't want these women to be defined by the fact that for a period of time in their life they were hookers. But that is what unites them in our search for the killer, Pat Brown. Yes. What we have to look at with victims is that their practices, for example, prostitution,

drug use, dating online, all these things can get them into trouble, can make them victims. But in the police defense, the problem they have is that they get many, many calls about people who've gone missing, and they've gone missing on their own most of the time. So the problem is, how do they differentiate between who's gone missing willingly as an adult and who has gone missing because they are a victim of a serial killer? That certainly was not the case of these 10 victims, female victims, helpless to fight back. And right now we're talking about victim Bartolome. Here's her sister Amanda talking to our friends at ABC's GMA.

Listen to what her sister says. Very scary. My heart would stop and just didn't even know what to do mostly. Did he say that he had killed your sister on the phone? Yeah. It was very frustrating. It broke my heart. Did he say that he had killed your sister on the phone? Yeah. It was very frustrating. It broke my heart. Now, what's so shocking to Bob Kolker?

That's Amanda. That's Bartolome's little sister. She was a teen girl. That's not the end of her story. About the phone calls. The phone calls apparently the killer made to her, not from Long Island, but from the Madison Square Gardens area. Let's talk about that, Bob Coker, because that phone call tells me a lot. For instance, that he knew how to evade being traced on a cell phone.

Yeah, he didn't talk for long on the cell phone. And that, I mean, you could say that means that he knows what he's doing. And it could be that he just watches a lot of crime procedurals. But at any rate, the thing that really sticks with me here is that Melissa disappeared in July of 2009 and her remains weren't found along Ocean Parkway for another year and a half. And just a couple days, maybe a week or so after she disappears, her little sister Amanda gets these amazingly horrifying phone calls from someone who quite clearly is the killer. And it takes two or three phone calls even for the police to take that seriously. There's a pattern in this case, not just of victimology and saying, well, these women lead risky lives, but of not taking their disappearances seriously at all. Melissa was gone for 18 months, and I don't think anyone really was aggressively searching for her,

even after the killer called her sister. The same with Maureen Brainerd Barnes. She disappeared in July of 2007. Her family couldn't even get her name on the list of missing persons on NamUs, the national registry. She was gone for three and a half years before her remains were found. There is victimology, and then there is not caring what happens to people, certain people who go missing because of what they do for a living. And I think sometimes law enforcement crosses the line. He didn't just call Bartolome's little sister one time. He kept calling her from her dead sister's cell phone. Cheryl McCollum, he calls,

and a lot has been made about his familiarity with police techniques. And Bob Coker's right. Whether you learn them at police school or you learn them watching CSI or Dexter or whatever it is you're watching, you learn them. You know you can't stay on a call about two minutes or over because not only can they ping your general area, they can ping you right down to the square block you're on. So he goes to Madison Square Gardens, where even if they pinged him, he would be lost in thousands of people. All right?

And what he says, Cheryl, he says says do you know what I did to your sister I killed Melissa he knows her name he knows her name then he goes on with a lot of misogynistic slurs on her he calls her a whore and this and that and details everything he did very explicitly to her little sister and he leaves one of the conversations with a threat that he knows where Amanda lives and that he might just decide to come after her. Now, what does it say about a serial killer? He's not out just for the killing. He's terrorizing the victim's family. Oh, he's loving it. He's getting off on it. He's terrorizing the victim's family. He's loving it. He's getting off on it. He's smarter than the police. They don't know who he is. He can call anybody he wants to call.

But here's the good news. She heard his voice. She heard his cadence. She heard his accent. He basically confessed to her. He also spoke explicitly about what he did to her. So perhaps now she has information the police didn't have. So again, this is very helpful for the police to identify the race of this person, maybe the general area they grew up, and even maybe she can identify the voice if she ever hears it again. Well, the reality is this phone call was made. The cell phone call was traced to the Madison Square Gardens area in, you know, downtown New York.

And that was the end of the trail. Then there's Megan Waterman. Megan was last seen in a Holiday Inn Express on Long Island. Now, interestingly, Bob Kolker, as you well know, it's the same Holiday Inn where Amber Costello was to meet someone a few weeks before she died. She didn't go, but Megan did go. She was just 22 years old with a four-year-old little girl, and by all accounts, was a great mom. So now you've got a local Holiday Inn connected to two women. What about that, Bob? And they're also connected because those disappearances happened pretty close to one another just a few months before the bodies were found.

Megan disappeared at the beginning of the summer and Amber disappeared at the end of the summer and then the bodies were found in the winter. So you've got someone who is developing a pattern, developing a set of things that he likes to do that he thinks won't get him into trouble. That's a hotel that has a lot of suspected crime activity. And so maybe he thought that he was safe, particularly if he didn't show up on any cameras. And that's the interesting thing about Megan's disappearance is that she's seen leaving the hotel, but you don't see where she's going. And so it's assumed that he's meeting her a short walk away from the hotel so that he doesn't get seen anywhere.

That's also the same way that he met Amber was, I'll meet you a short walk away from your house. He doesn't want to be seen. Wow. So think about it, Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. This guy knows how to beat a surveillance camera, beat a cell phone direct ping, and beat

giving away his IP address. Because, you know, he finds these women on Craigslist and contacts them to meet him, but he knows how to hide his internet provider address. That's, you know, I would have to think long and hard if I wanted to be the IP address, Cheryl McCollum. No question. High intelligence is very common. They study their crimes, Nancy. They know what they're doing. And as they go on and on year after year, they get better at it. As technology changes, they keep up. This isn't anything new. Everything you've mentioned, he can learn off the internet. A police press conference says it all. On behalf of the Suffolk County Police Department,

I want to convey to the loved ones and the family of all the victims that we are dedicated to do everything we can. On behalf of the Suffolk County Police Department, I want to convey to the loved ones and the family of all the victims that we are dedicated to do everything we can to solve this case. I've invited the FBI to work in close collaboration with the Suffolk County Police Department in investigating these murders.

You know, there are no suspects at this time. Collectively, we want to bring to justice this animal. Our investigation indicates that each of the victims had been posting ads on computer websites for various escort and other services prior to their disappearance and death. What activities these victims may have engaged in prior to their murders does not matter.

They were young women whose lives were cut tragically short. The issue of one killer, two killers, three killers for the 10 remains that have been found has been discussed. And I've been asked about the theory that it's one serial killer. The facts of the case indicate one person. The public, including the media, should realize that this investigation is not an episode of CSI or criminal minds that is going to be solved in a one-hour period. The investigation is multifaceted,-jurisdictional, and most

likely is going to take a very long period of time to complete. Three months after finding the bodies of Melissa, Amber, and Megan Emmerine, police now begin to find more bodies and body parts along what was once a beautiful untouched beach playground. Six new sets of dead bodies in all. Pat Brown, criminal profiler. Now we're finding body parts. They aren't neatly contained in burlap bags. Was that on purpose or did they just somehow end up getting out of the burlap bags through maybe animal activity? Well, I do believe he dismembered them. And this is a great piece of this is a great piece of evidence and a great clue, along with the fact that all the women were in such a one location along the Long Island and also that a local hotel was used. That will tell

the police this guy is very, very local. He knows the area. He knows everything about the area. And he has a place to bring these women and actually do something to them, like dismember them. So he's not just grabbing them off the street and going into a bush with them. He actually has a home, a home that is local. And that really narrows the suspect list down a whole lot. So 10 bodies, eight of them strangled or suffocated. None of them turn out to be Shannon Gilbert. Remember, she's the young girl in her 20s whose disappearance sparked the entire investigation. The one who ran screaming from that home.

Now, 10 bodies. At this point, she's now been missing 10 months. Her parents, her family, distraught. The search for Shannon leads police back to the last place she was seen, that gated community at Oak Beach, just three miles from the dumping ground. It led them to three different men, the man who hired Shannon, the man who drove her there, and a doctor who seemingly put himself right in the middle of the investigation. Who's the doctor Bob Kolker? Joining me from New York Magazine and author of Lost Girls on Amazon. One of the last places Shannon was seen or the last was outside of the home of a woman named Barbara Brennan, who was one of two different neighbors who called 911 that evening. She also happened to be right around

the corner from Dr. Peter Hackett's house. Dr. Hackett is a prominent Oak Beach citizen. He was well known to everyone as sort of the local big shot. He would monitor the police radio and let people know what was going on around there. And then he inserts himself into the case within days of Shannon's disappearance. He offers help to Shannon's boyfriend when Shannon's boyfriend comes back to see what happened to her. And then he calls Shannon's mother Mary.

And it's what he says to Mary that really is kind of mind-blowing. He doesn't properly identify himself. He says that he runs a home for wayward girls. He says, according to Mary. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I haven't heard that phrase used. I mean, didn't they use that phrase back in the 1800s, a home for wayward girls? Who would say that? Yeah, well, he's kind of a dramatic guy, Dr. Hackett. And according to Mary, in this call, he goes further. He says that he even saw Shannon that night and tried to help her and that he was wondering if she got back home safely and then suggest that

maybe he she should get to a rehab sometime somewhere. And how did he get the mother's phone number to call her? It seems as if he got it from from Shannon's boyfriend when Shannon's boyfriend came to the house. But the crazy thing about these calls, aside from what Mary says he said, is that he denies it. He denies it for months and months and months that he ever made these calls. Mary tells the police, this guy called me. You know, he says, I never did it. He tells the media he didn't do it until finally he changes his story and acknowledges that he did call her. And so the question becomes, why? Why say these things to her? And then why lie about it? And the only conclusion that I've come to in my book, Lost Girls, is that he and other

neighbors know a lot more about what happened to Shannon that night than they're letting on. Everybody says, oh, she was screaming outside Barbara Brennan's house, and then that's the last we heard of her. I don't believe that's true. Someone like Peter Hackett, who wants to know what's going on all the time in his community, he would have been outside that house like a shot. But he's been denying that he saw her that night. He's been denying that he said that to Mary. That's very odd, Bob, because he calls the mom, according to her, and says, I saw your daughter.

Did she make it home okay? I'm really worried about her. Her daughter at that point had not been seen or heard from. And the mom's going crazy and she's got this doctor calling her about her daughter. But then when police go to speak to him, he goes, no, no, no, that never happened. Well, former chief of detectives, Dominic Verone says Dr. Hackett is not a suspect in Shannon's death. The calls to the family are very strange, but he is not a suspect. Now, where does that leave me now?

To Cheryl McCollum, Cold Case Research's director, was Shannon's body ever found? Yes, her body was found. And at first they thought it might be due to hypothermia. And we've had one expert say that he believed that she was strangled. But again, interestingly enough, she was found where all the other bodies were found. Now, Ellen Killorn with me, CrimeOnline.com reporter. Authorities believe that she may have been, this is yet another victim that launched the investigation her disappearance anyway running through the dunes and the rocks wildly it was at night she couldn't see

and that she fell into the water and inhaled water and died her family says no way she was murdered ellen that's right uh shannon when sh was found, she was in a marshy area that directly surrounded the Oak Beach community where she had gone to meet with Joseph Brewer. Her body was found in that marsh. Her clothes were found elsewhere. She had been there. Her clothes were found elsewhere? To Cheryl McCollum of the Cold Case Research Institute, she's running through rocks and brush and swamp,

but yet she had taken her shoes off and her pants? That doesn't sound like an accidental drowning to me. Nancy, I think the 911 call is going to be key if we could hear it. If she in fact says they are trying to kill me, that means she believes it's more than one person. She didn't say he. She didn't say him. She said they. And if she didn't trust the driver or the man whose house she was at or the man's house that she knocked on the door perhaps begging begging so she didn't feel safe and when she saw the headlights of the car coming she dashed out again and that person pursued her so to me again i find it really hard to believe that she ran for cover

on the very beat that a serial killer is using for dumping grass. You know, I watch all these movies with serial killers and they're like, that couldn't have happened, but it really does happen. For years, this thicket along a beautiful beach highway on Long Island kept a terrible, terrible secret. As drivers went by, they had no idea they were passing the skeletal remains of mostly young women that had been there, dismembered and placed in burlap bags. And now a bizarre twist in the story. A Long Island carpenter, a married guy with two children, has just been sentenced to consecutive 25 to life sentences for beating two women to death all the way back in 93 and 94. His name, John Bittroff. It's amazing to me that he had this facade of being married with children, but he beat two women dead. To Bob Kolker, New York Magazine author of Lost Girls on Amazon, who is this guy?

This is a guy who's essentially been living a lie for decades. He committed these murders years before most of the women disappeared who are the remains that were found in this case. But not so much before that it couldn't be linked. He lived way out in the eastern part of Long Island near a set of pine barrens where some other murder victims have been found in the past and a few of those have been just partial remains and the other remains have been found along the past, and a few of those have been just partial remains, and the other remains have been found along Ocean Parkway, where, you know, Shannon Gilbert's disappearance was. And so, you know, it could be just more than a coincidence, obviously, that he is someone who

has done this before and was living alive for decades and perhaps was continuing to kill all that time. What's frustrating is that he hasn't been charged with any of those other murders. And it's been a very long time. And so we have to wonder what the police have in the way of evidence. But again, circumstantially speaking, you have someone who knows what he's doing, knows how to do it, knows how to lie about it, knows where the Pine Barrens are. You know, he's an attractive suspect, at least in the popular imagination. Now, this guy, the Long Island carpenter John Bittroff, arrested in 2014 in an unrelated investigation on the deaths of

two prostitutes left in wooded areas in eastern Long Island. The bodies were nude. It was Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee. They were just nine miles apart. The same stretch of area as the Long Island serial killers. Now, this is what else we know about Bittroff. Pat Brown, apparently, he was a prolific hunter and loved to show off gutting the

animals after he killed them, eating one of their hearts, reportedly, raw during the hunting trip. Yeah, John Bittroff, I mean, he is my number one suspect. We have a guy here who sounds very psychopathic, very sadistic, and he likes to dismember things. He's in the local area, has a home. He's got everything that would connect him to these cases. And he has the real good connections to the two they've already charged him with. But as to why he hasn't been charged with others, I think the problem is the police have to have enough evidence to do that. Even if they believe it's him circumstantially, they don't want to just go charging willy-nilly without being able to say exactly we have the links. And that's the proper thing to do.

What more do we know about this guy to Ellen Kaloran, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter? What can you tell me about John Brothed? We know that he's someone who's capable of extreme brutality and extreme violence, but also capable of keeping up a facade of being a normal, functional person. That he was functioning in society for years and years and years after the women that he killed before he was arrested and convicted for those murders. So it does seem possible to me that he's someone who's capable of doing much more than that if you can carry on a normal life and go undetected while knowing in the back of your mind that you have committed these brutal violent crimes who's to say you're going to stop it too when asked by the associated press about Bischoff's possible connection to the Long Island

serial killer case which as we know by now, 10 other victims. Quote, the prosecutor says, there are remains of the victims at Gilgo Beach that may be attributed to the handiwork of Bittroff and that investigation is ongoing. Another tidbit, Cheryl McCollum from the Cold Case Research Institute that we learn is that one of Bittroff's dead victims was best friends with one of the 10 Gilgo Beach victims. Now, what's the likelihood of that being a coincidence? Well, you know, I don't believe in coincidences, Nancy. I think any connection is a firm step toward linkage to other things that are going to be similar. I think it's real important, and Pat can even follow up,

that for people to understand, killers can change and alter their MO. So, for example, with Ted Bundy, we saw him kill people with a metal rod, wrangle people, and then snatch a 12-year-old girl straight off the road in broad daylight. So they don't appear to be the same killer on paper, but once you start connecting other signatures and similarities, you'll be surprised. And here is Bischoff, the avid huntsman, living in a large home in Manorville with his wife and two children arrested years after the first victims were found, thanks to DNA.

As it turned out, his brother, Timothy, was in prison for contempt of court, and the brother, Timothy, was required to give a DNA sample. That is when a, quote, hit popped up on the state database under familial DNA, which is now allowed in New York, tying a male relative of the brother to cold case murders. That's what familial DNA is. When you get a hit that shows you that DNA on the crime scene matches somebody in the killer's family, not necessarily the killer, but a relative, and then you go from there. You start from there. Now, to you, Bob Kolker, New York Magazine author of Lost Girls, are you convinced Bittroff is the Long Island serial killer? Well, you know, you would like to think that with so many victims, even if some of them are old and skeletonized, there would be at least some forensic evidence that they could use, you know, to match DNA the same way they did with Colleen and Rita.

But that doesn't seem to be the case because if they had it, he would have been charged by now. I think the most they can do is say that they're looking closely at him. And that to me suggests that they don't have the goods yet. But that doesn't mean they won't. I mean, Long Island and other places are filled with stories of cases I've covered where the prime suspect has walked among us and everyone knows they're a suspect and the police don't appear to be doing anything. And then one day they've, it turns out they've been, um, you know, making a case all along and building their case. And then when they're ready, they, they go for it. So maybe that'll happen in bit Ross case. Uh, it's interesting what, um, your guest said about coincidences. There are so many coincidences in this case. If Shannon Gilbert hadn't been,

you know, a missing person so close to these other bodies, we wouldn't even know there was a Long Island serial killer. And if she wasn't a victim, too, then the fact that her disappearance happened is even more coincidental. It's astonishing that that so many different turns of fate have really created a case that still is so very unsolved. So very unsolved. Ten victims, their skeletonized bodies found littering the beach, hidden away for years. My concern, are there more as of yet undiscovered? Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.

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