RedHanded - Episode 313 - The Gilgo Beach Killings - Part 1

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

In 2010, Shannan Gilbert made a series of frantic 911 calls as she ran through the streets of Oak Beach, Long Island, screaming: “They’re trying to kill me”.Then she vanished. A few months later a body was found near where Shannan, vanished - but it wasn’t her. And neither were the next 9 sets of human remains they found along Ocean Parkway. Now, over a decade later, with the arrest of Rex Heuermann - the police believe they’ve found the elusive Long Island Serial Killer.But the questions still stand; Why did it take so long to catch him - and was this the work of a lone serial killer, or multiple men using the same dumping ground?To vote for us at the British Podcast Awards, click here: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingTo nominate a challenge, as well as a case for the bonus episode if we win gold, click here: https://forms.gle/BG7suAW7a4sUPZxr8See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM,

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I'm Saruti I'm Hannah and welcome to Red Handed where we are going to dive into quite a large case today but before we do that we have a very quick request for everybody. I know that since last

summer, when we were making this exact same request, we have had a lot of newbies join the fold. Our numbers have grown quite considerably. Thank you very much for listening. And so maybe you don't know what we're about to talk about. It's the British Podcast Awards. It certainly is. So just to fill everybody in on the history of the situation, obviously, British podcasting is a It certainly is. typically tends to be dominated by the BBC and all of the other categories by the BBC and by celebrities. Yeah. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. They can do what they want. But there is very slim chance of two people like us who started this podcast in our bedrooms or locked in a cupboard under some stairs with a 10 pound microphone to ever win. So the one category we have won for the past two years has been down to nobody else,

nobody on the judging panel, nobody else taking part in the awards other than all of you beautiful listeners, because it is the most important award of all, the listener's choice. And that means it was voted for by you and we won gold for two years in a row. The first year we won, we decided that we would do something crazy. I think Hannah's exact words were, if we win, I will get a tattoo of a listener's name on my body. Yeah, I think I said face, but I quickly retracted it. You did say face. You did say face. And then, unbelievably, we won. And Hannah did follow through. She didn't get a tattoo on her face, but she did get a tattoo of a listener on her body.

And then, the following year, we thought, we can't repeat this but we did unbelievably we won and again we offered you guys the choice of a bonus episode of your choice if we won and also some other crazy thing you wanted us to do and you made us jump out of a fucking plane yeah i still haven't recovered yeah you can go you can go watch the video of that horrifying experience which actually i didn't mind too much i wouldn't do it again but it was fine on youtube this year third year we would love to go for a hat trick because it really did the last two years we've won make people in the industry make people in britain make people across the world take notice of what we were doing here at red handed which isn't exactly the flavor that, you know, the corporate podcasting

industrial complex seems to like. Because yes, there is already such a thing. And we would just love to win again. This year, the competition does seem to be a bit more stiff. We're up against, in the listener's choice, quite a lot of celebrity fronted podcasts, including a podcast who have won, I think, five Christmas number ones ones so they are big and they have a big fan base that is quite enthusiastic so we don't know if we're gonna win again but we would absolutely love it if we could so please please please if you wouldn't mind take two seconds to head on over to britishpodcastawards.com slash vote and vote for red-handed then go to your emails and please verify that vote you do not have to be british

you guys always ask and we encourage your diligence and your conscientiousness but you do not have to be british we do and we are i promise you so go vote for us if you wouldn't mind and then go please find the google link which will be in the episode description to vote for the episode you would like as your bonus episode the month that we win if we win which you will get as an extra special treat and also whatever crazy thing you would like us to do this year which i believe the number one is currently spending the night in a haunted house yes and i know for a fact that in the production office, there have been a lot of research calls being made to which haunted houses you can actually stay in. I believe one of them is the Rams Inn.

That sounds terrifying. I've watched a Ghost Adventures about that. So they do let you stay in there. So that might, I think it's up in Yorkshire, somewhere, Cumbria, maybe. So the wheels are a-turning. So, and of course we will film it because we don't do scary things

without getting some content out of it. So if you want that to happen, just go to britishpodcastawards.com forward slash vote. We'd love a hat trick. It's the only way we can stick it to the map. Exactly. So yes, we would love it if you could do that for us. And yeah, just pause this podcast right now.

Go do it, come back and then settle in for what is going to be a very unsettling few hours with us. Yes, somewhat of a red-handed tradition now is that we will get wind of a true crime case that everybody is talking about and then we'll stay up really late for two weeks getting it all together and that is what we have done again this time for you. Everybody is talking about it and by the time you've got to the end of this episode and the next one, you'll know more about it than anybody else. And you can bore everyone to death at the pub.

Absolutely, because that is exactly what I have been doing while I have spent the last month researching this episode. And I am ecstatic that for once I get to talk about it with legitimate reason for the next four hours. Because we're doing a double record and you guys can hear it over the course of the next two weeks. So let's get into it. On the 13th of July, 2023, so just a few weeks ago, a 59-year-old man named Rex Huriman was arrested outside of his Midtown

Manhattan architectural practice by a swarm of plain-clothed NYPD officers. He was taken into custody and charged with the murders of three women, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Their bodies were found on a quarter-mile stretch of Gilgo Beach on Long Island, New York, 13 years ago. In the months that followed that discovery, police uncovered the remains and partial remains of a total of 11 people scattered along Ocean Parkway, a desolate highway that runs down the southern shoreline of Long Island, including Gilgo Beach.

In the decades since the remains were found, the case of the Gilgo Beach killings, or the Long Island Serial Killer, or LISC to those in the know, has become an obsession for the true crime community. And it's easy to see why. Because however you cut it, this is the unbelievable story of a modern American serial killer. We all said it would never happen, but it's happening right now. Police corruption beyond belief is there as well,

and the eventual meticulous detective work that finally led to last month's crucial arrest. And as soon as this arrest was announced, we wanted to get this story out for you guys as quickly as possible. We've been doing it more and more recently with cases like Delphi, with cases like Alec Murdoch, but there's been so much to wrap our heads around that we wanted to do it right, not just fast. Because this arrest, like in the Delphi case, was in and of itself a total shock, since we have gone years with next to nothing coming out about this investigation. And while the evidence against Huriman is very

compelling, it's probably as close to a slam dunk as it's possible to get. But it is hard to get away from the fact that his arrest has still left so many questions unanswered. Questions like this. Why did it take so long to catch this man? What conspiracies lay at the heart of the Suffolk County Police Department? Are these victims Heuermann's only ones? Is he really the only killer involved? And how, after all this time, a decade, and all the theories and missed opportunities, did the police finally land this arrest? Now, if you don't know what the hell we're talking about, because you do not know this case,

don't worry. We are going to go through quite literally everything. And since this is an enormous saga spanning decades, stretching over county lines with at least 11 victims and very possibly more than one killer, this is going to have to be a two-parter. So let's get started. On the 1st of May 2010, three 911 calls were made by a 24-year-old woman named Shannon Gilbert.

These calls lasted a total of 22 minutes and in them you can hear a distressed Shannon repeatedly claiming, someone's after me. Shannon, who was an aspiring actress originally from New Jersey, was working as an escort and that night she had gone all the way from Manhattan to the upmarket gated community of Oak Beach on Long Island for a job. Shannon had been involved in sex work for a while. She knew the risks. Most people do. So she'd taken a man named Michael Pack with her.

Pack has been incorrectly labelled as Shannon's pimp by a lot of media outlets. He wasn't. Shannon didn't have a pimp. She found her Johns through Craigslist and Backpage. She paid Pack to be her driver and act as her protector. And the very fact that she took Pack with her that night, and the fact that she was willing to go all the way out to Long Island, signalled that this was no ordinary job. There must have been the promise of a big payout. But something went wrong. And at 4.51am, Shannon called 911. Somebody asked me. Where are you, ma'am? I don't know. Are you driving right now?

I'm inside a house. What house? I don't know. You can't tell me where I am. No, I can't. What's your callback number you're calling from? Somebody's asking me. Please.

Are you in Suffolk County or Nassau County? I'm in Long Island. Where on Long Island are you? Okay, we're supposed to. We're supposed to. No. We're supposed to are you? No. No. No.

No, stop. No. Where on Long Island are you? In Suffolk County? Nassau County? County, you on the line? Stop. Please.

Stop it, please. Please stop. Please. You should have gone. No, time to go. Please. Please gone. No, time to go. Please. Please. Come on, let's go.

Come on, roll back. Come on, roll back. Come on, roll back. Come on, roll back. No, please. Why? What are you going to do? What are you going to do to me?

Are you going to kill me? I'm in the middle of nowhere. Please, stop. No, stop it, please. Hello? Hello? Please. Yeah, it basically just goes on like that for ages.

But the two men you can hear are Joseph Brewer and Michael Pack. And basically all they keep saying again and again is, what's wrong with you? Please just leave. Please leave. And Michael Pack keeps trying to get into the car, but she keeps saying, somebody's after me, somebody's after me, somebody's after me. So Shannon had fled the home of her client, Joseph Brewer, and was seen running down the street on Oak Beach. Shannon banged on doors, begging neighbours for help.

One of these neighbours was Gus Coletti. On the 911 call, you can hear Shannon shouting at Gus, help me, help me, help me. shannon gus says that she then ran from his house and hid under a boat in his front yard at this point gus says he saw an asian man obviously michael pack driving a black suv who seemed to be looking for Shannon. When asked later by police if Gus thought Shannon was scared of this man, he just said she was scared of someone. Shannon then bolted from under the boat, and the car took off after her.

At 5.21am, Gus called 911. one. And Shannon continued to run, banging on the doors of other residents. But by the time police arrived at 5.41am, there was no sign of shannon gilbert anywhere and she was never seen alive again and you can hear in the call like she is all sorts of fucked up like she's slurring like nobody's business yeah and we are going to talk more about shannon gilbert and these calls later but yeah there's no denying in those calls that she's not totally okay. Not just scared, but something else is going on. fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

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and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. Shannon's family naturally were beside themselves and they kept the pressure on the police to find her but nothing much seemed to be done then on the 10th of december 2010 an off-duty police officer decided to take his cadaver dog blue out to gilgo beach for a training exercise out of your blues who do you think would be the best cadaver dog? My blue.

Big blue. I didn't want to lead the witness. Big blue for sure. But this is proof. Blues are top dogs. Big blue, actually, he's a fucking big Alsatian, is out there with this officer. Bigger blue.

So he takes bigger blue out onto Gilgo Beach for a training exercise. That day, the officer and bigger Blue found the body of a woman. Sure that it was Shannon Gilbert, the officer called it in. But much to everyone's surprise, it wasn't Shannon Gilbert. And neither were the next nine sets of human remains uncovered by authorities along that very strip of shoreline over the next five months. It's just like a can of worms. They open it up, they start looking and just body after body after body starts appearing. And one thing I do want to make clear because people hear beach,

especially Gilgo Beach, and they think Long Island, New York, it's hardly like a rural place. Like how could these bodies have laid there for that long and nobody knew they were there? Well, Gilgo Beach and the stretch of shoreline that is off Ocean Parkway. So Ocean Parkway is the highway, kind of dips off the main road. No streetlights along that strip of highway or shoreline. And the beach is like marshy. It's rough. it's desolate there is no reason anyone would go there for like you know a little swim it's not it's not a nice place it's very very

rough wild terrain and as you'll find out by how long some of these bodies were there nobody was going there one by one seven of the ten victims found on Gilgo Beach were identified. To this day, we still don't know who three of them are. If we had recorded this five days ago, we would be saying six out of ten had been identified. So this case is moving quickly. By the time you listen to this, it may be out of date again. And, you know, we'll just come back to it and do updates whenever it's relevant. So bear with us. So like we said we now know who seven of the victims were but three of them we do not. What we do know however is that all of these remains and all of these bodies had

been periodically dumped off the road Ocean Parkway over the course of 15 years, from 1996 to 2010. But how could we possibly know this if we don't even know who all of the victims are? I hear you scream. How, for instance, could we know how long the unidentified victims have even been missing if we don't know who they are? Well, hold on to your hats. We know it was over at least 15 years because of a nasty twist in this story. But put a pin in that for now. We will come back to it. First, let's go through the victims. The bodies of 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy, 22-year-old Megan Waterman,

27-year-old Amber Lynn Costello, and 25-year-old Maureen Brainard Barnes were all found in December 2010. So pretty much as soon as Blue, bigger Blue, finds Melissa Bartholomew, she's the first body to be found, the other three are found in quick succession. And these four women were all wrapped in burlap, bound with either duct tape or belts, and they were buried almost perfectly, equally spaced out, 500 foot apart, on the same stretch of Gilgo Beach. All four of the women were also sex workers. They all used Craigslist or Backpage to advertise themselves.

They were all petite, under five foot, and no more than 100 pounds. All of them had green or hazel eyes, and they had all vanished in the summer months. Maureen was the first one to go missing in 2007, with the other three all last seen in the summer of 2009. Their similarities in life and death, and the proximity of their remains in a cluster, led to Melissa, Megan, Amber and Maureen being given the name the Gilgo Beach Four and it seemed obvious that they had all been victims of one serial killer because there are more than three. Yes though I believe the FBI

have changed the rule now I think it's only two and I think some people were like well why would they do that and it's interesting it's because serial killing isn't technically serial killer isn't technically like a type of criminal it's a type of behavior so if somebody has killed two people in two separate events and they're doing things like keeping trophies they're doing things like planning the next attack and they're in their calling off period it does seem redundant to not call them a serial killer that's true so i believe some of the rules have changed on that but yeah absolutely i think everything you just spelled out it would be beyond belief to think that these women were not all the victim of one killer of one man so then the police continue to search that area off ocean parkway and the following spring so in 2011 the

partial remains of two more women were found 20 year oldyear-old Jessica Taylor and 24-year-old Valerie Mack. One of Jessica's arms, her hands and her skull were found just under a mile up the shore from where the Gilgo Beach 4 had been discovered. So again like Gilgo Beach is like one part of this massive stretch off Ocean Parkway so I know what I'm about to describe to people like in terms of miles distances apart, like it's confusing. Please go look at our social media. And we have put up a very comprehensive map of what we're about to explain because it is important. So yes, partial remains of Jessica, her arms, her hands, her skull found just under a mile up the shore from where the Gilgo Beach fall were. And then about another mile and a half further up the coast, authorities found Valerie Mack's right foot, hands and head.

Jessica and Valerie were not physically dissimilar to the Gilgo Beach Four. They're both young, they're both in their early 20s, they're both white, like it could fit a pattern. They were both also sex workers and their remains are turned up on the same stretch of shoreline. What's a mile to a mile and a half, like, away from these bodies? It's still very, very close. But we do have to point out that there was one major difference.

The remains of Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack were not in pieces due to decomposition. Both of these women had been dismembered. And the reason they were both identified so quickly, despite police only having their partial heavily decomposed remains to work with, was because both Valerie and Jessica's torsos had been found years before in the early 2000s. So they've already got their DNA on file. And those torsos had been found 45 miles away from Gilgo, in a place called Manorville, another area of Long Island. Valerie had last been seen in the summer of 2000, Jessica the summer of 2003. Both of their torsos had been found wrapped in plastic in the pine forests of Manorville, within weeks of them disappearing. So at this point, in mid-2011, the body count sat at six, but we are not even close

to nearly almost being done. On the 4th of April, the same day they found Valerie Mack's partial remains, authorities also discovered the body of an unidentified female toddler between the ages of 16 and 24 months. And because they had no idea who this baby was, they called it Baby Doe. Oh, this case is bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak. If you just go Google images of Gilgo Beach or Off Ocean Parkway, it is bleak and desolate as this fucking case is. It is grubby. There is a fucking baby out there. It is absolutely miserable and to this day, we don't know who Baby Toe is. And then we have an unidentified Asian male victim whose body was found dressed in women's clothes. Investigators guessed that this man

could be anywhere between 19 and 35. Then, seven days later, on the 11th of April 2011, near Jones Beach State Park, another set of partial remains, this time belonging to a black female, were discovered. These remains were less than four miles down the coast from Gilgo Beach. And just like Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor, this woman's torso had also been found years before in 1997. Her torso had been stuffed into a black plastic bag and dumped in a bin. Not in Manorville this time, but 11 miles away from where her partial remains were found, in a place called Hempstead Lake Park. Authorities didn't know who this victim was, so they named her Peaches, due to a tattoo of a distinctive heart-shaped peach with a bite out of it on her left breast.

And unbelievably, Peaches was also identified as being the biological mother of Baby Doe. So fucking grim. Yeah. And the other thing that is so grim about this is, so Peaches' torso is found in Hempstead Lake Park, which is not near the shoreline. It's like inland. Her arm and like some jewellery and like partial remains are found four miles down the road from Gilgo Beach. But again, on that same shoreline off Ocean Parkway. Baby Doe is about miles away from her so whoever did this didn't even have the fucking decency and I say this in the most like irrelevant way because like

they're both dead at this point and this person has killed them but moved the baby away from her and dumped the body miles away up the coast. Like, none of it makes any sense. And there's no way, I can't see any way in which that baby's body moved on its own. Somebody dumped them separately. And it's just like the final insult in death, it feels like. It does feel like that. So yeah, it's a lot. And try not to feel too terrible about it, because we're not done still. There's more to come. We've got one more victim to discuss with you. On the same day investigators found Peaches, they also discovered a skull near Tobey Beach, almost exactly halfway between where Peaches' partial remains had been found and the Gilgo Beach four bodies had been buried. And it was at this point a retired homicide detective had

contacted the task force and told them about a pair of severed legs, wrapped in plastic, that had washed ashore on Fire Island back in 1996. And fortunately, these legs were still in a freezer at the medical examiner's office. And when they were compared, the skull and the legs were a match. And just a couple of weeks ago,

27 years after Fire Island Jane Doe's legs were first discovered, the police were able to identify her. Yeah, I had to go through the script, Control F Fire Island Jane Doe, replaced with her actual name, because this is unbelievable. This literally happened like, I don't know, a few days ago. So, Fire Island Jane Doe was actually 34-year-old Karen Vergata, a sex worker who was living in Manhattan. She called her dad on his birthday, Valentine's Day 1996, and then she vanished. But like we said, to this day, Peaches, Baby Doe and Asian Male have still not been identified. And it would be 18 months after Shannon Gilbert vanished, after making those 911 calls, and almost a year to the day after the first body was found on Gilgo Beach, that the police finally found Shannon's body. Shannon's

remains were found out on the marshes near where she was last seen on Oak Beach. And again, guys, I totally get it. What I'm saying might be hard to keep track of, and I know that we've just pummeled you with a lot of information, but it is very important. And essentially what you need to know is that all of the remains discovered between 2010 and 2011 were found in basically a straight line on this shore just off Ocean Parkway. So from Peaches at one end of the line, to Karen Vergata's skull, the Gilgo Beach Four, Asian male, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Baby Doe, and finally at the end of the line, the location on Oak Beach where Shannon Gilbert was found.

It's all one line. The only deviations from this near straight line are the locations of where Peach's, Valerie's and Jessica's torsos were found years before the rest of their remains. And this line along the shoreway is maybe four miles from one end to the other. And like I said, we've posted a comprehensive map on our socials marking all of this. So go check it out. It will definitely help make things a little bit more clear if you are confused. So now, by 2012, Suffolk County Police had 11 bodies on their hands. Nine women, one man, one baby, all found on the same stretch of shoreline. I'd be panicking. You would, wouldn't you? That's not what happens.

On the face of it, it obviously appears that all of these bodies are connected. They have to be. But whether or not all of these victims are linked is one of the most enduring mysteries surrounding this infamous case. Some people were convinced that all of the victims, and possibly countless more, which we will get to in next week's episode, are all linked to one prolific serial killer. While others say that the Gilgo Beach Four are definitely the work of just one killer,

but that the MO, victim types, and disposal methods of the rest just don't fit the same pattern. And therefore, the South Shore of Long Island must have been a dumping ground for multiple killers. And I can see that argument. Yes, honestly, I can argue this both ways and I flip-flopped again and again whilst researching this case and rewritten this bit of the script multiple times but ultimately I have landed on the fact that I think it's just too early to definitively say one way or another. I just don't think we have enough information to say that and I think while people

will be like, come on, it just makes sense that it's one killer because of like Occam's razor or whatever, like four miles of one bit of speech, like multiple bodies dumped there, like how could you think it's anything else? I don't know. I think trying to force a conclusion at this stage could either leave a killer on the street or allow one to walk away from court a free man. But it is interesting to theorise, so let's give it a go. Like we mentioned earlier, the Gilgo Beach Four all fit a very specific pattern. Their appearance, the way they met their Johns using things like Craigslist and Backpage, the time of year they vanished they all went missing in the summer months, they were all wrapped in burlap, the bindings and the way their bodies were disposed of, it all matches. It even turned out that some

of the Gilgo Beach Four's loved ones had received taunting phone calls from a man with a Long Island accent, using the victim's own phones. I know, we're going to get to it. It's horrible. So, the victimology, the MO, the signature, and the dump site all point clearly to the Gilgo Beach Four being the work of one serial killer. That is, in my mind, irrefutable. One person did those four killings. Then, when you look at Peaches, Karen, Vergata, Valerie Mack, and Jessica Taylor, the latter three we know were also sex workers, obviously. We haven't identified Peaches, so we don't know.

And could fit the physical preference type of the Gilgo Beach 4 killer. Peaches, though, we don't know if she was a sex worker. And, crucially, she was black. But, more importantly, all four of them were dismembered and their torsos, or legs in the case of Karen Vergata, were left, wrapped in plastic, totally out in the open. And their remains were spread between places like Manorville, Hempstead Park and Ocean Parkway. The killer of the Gilgo Beach Four, on the other hand, hid his victims. He covered them in camouflage burlap and laid them out neatly in a row.

One set of behaviour points to a killer trying carefully not to have his victims found. The other set seems to point to someone much less concerned with discovery. And just, you know, to refute anybody who's like, well, how can you say dismemberment and scattering body parts is not somebody concerned with discovery? The only reason I say that is because the Gilgo Beach Four were not discovered for a very long time. And even when they were discovered by Blue and the officer who was with him, whose name I don't actually know. Irrelevant. Irrelevant.

They were discovered purely by chance. They had laid there, like Amber Costello had only been missing for a while, but the first victims, they had been there for a very long time. The torsos that were found in manorville they were just found by a dog walker so they were very much not buried or if you'd gone to the effort to dump them in the woods why wouldn't you bury them it's almost like they were like i'll dump them in the woods but i'm okay if somebody finds them i don't know i don't know and you could argue with me on that it's just how it seems to me so what we're saying is that you can group the gilgo beach four together they were clearly killed by one man the long island serial killer or lisk let's let's It's just how it seems to me. So, what we're saying is that you can group the Gilgo Beach Four together.

They were clearly killed by one man, the Long Island serial killer or Lisk. Let's all agree on that. Then, you could group Peaches, Karen Vergata, Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor together and say they may have been murdered by another killer. Let's call him, as some are, the Manorville Butcher. That leaves the three outliers, Baby Doe, Asian Male, and Shannon Gilbert. None of them were dismembered, like those we're attributing to the Manorville Butcher in this particular theory.

None of them were covered in plastic or burlap, and none of them were bound, like the Gilgo Beach Fort. But I think it stands to reason to say that whoever killed Peaches also killed her child. It doesn't make any sense that somebody else killed the baby and then dumped the baby in the exact same place. So if we're saying there are two killers in this particular theory, then that would mean the Manorville butcher also killed Peaches' baby, Baby Doe. Now, we don't actually know how Baby Doe died.

All we pretty much know is that her body had been wrapped in a blanket. Now Asian male's cause of death was a savage beating. And he is interesting because he's the only man out there for a start. And he's also died in a completely different way. You will see a lot of reports out there saying that the Gilgo Beach Four were strangled to death. I haven't seen conclusive evidence of that. So I don't know. I don't know on that front. But Asian male was definitely beaten to death. And if I had to group him with one set or the other, I would put Asian male with the Gilgo Beach Four and say that he was probably also killed by Lisk. And this is, I grant you, it's speculation. The only reason I'm saying that is purely due to the proximity of his body to Gilgo Beach 4.

He was found right next to the Gilgo Beach 4 cluster. Again, is it a coincidence that another killer killed him and then dumped his body right next to four other bodies? Possibly. But let's go with this theory. The other reason that this theory might fit, and I say this is a big might in fucking italics, is because search terms found on Rex Huriman, so the man who's been arrested for being lisk, search terms found on

his computer did include Asian male twink tied up porn. But again, Asian male wasn't tied up. It's one search term that we've been made privy to. Is it enough? I don't know. It's definitely not a smoking gun, but it could fit. And as for why he, if Rex Urim and Islisk beat Asian male to death, and why he didn't bind him or kill him in the way that he killed the other victims, and you know, didn't like bind him and bury him in burlap, etc. It could be because he's a man, and he doesn't fit with the other victims. But I would say that there is enough about the manner of his death and where he's found that I agree with you. It makes much more sense to link him with the Gilgo Beach Four than it does with the others.

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Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Some have also speculated that it could be that the only reason that Asian male was beaten to death was that Lisk only discovered that he was a male after they became intimate and then killed him in outrage. Maybe. But we also know that he searched Asian male twinks. So yeah, it kind of is like it's one or the other. So I don't know. Or it's

neither. Yeah. And you know, could it be Rage It himself for homosexual desire, some sort of rabid internalised homophobia? It's possible. But everything is possible. Everything happens. The only niggle we could find about Lisk having killed Asian male is that Lisk was very methodical. He carefully laid out the Gilgo Beach Four. That strip of shoreline was probably like a little trophy garden for him. Somewhere, he likely drove up and down all the time to relive what he had done. It does seem odd that he'd bury four victims who all fit a certain type in a very neat line, and then dump a totally different kill right alongside them.

It irks my mild levels of OCD that I'm just like, why would you lay out four 500 feet perfectly spaced apart, and then just randomly dump one more body that doesn't fit the pattern like right next to them I don't know maybe this is such a leap but let's hear it I'm reading Dan Schreiber's book right yeah and in it he talks about there's a zen concept of the rough corner right so in every zen garden there will be one corner that you leave completely to the elements and it acts as a balance for the neatness of everything else how interesting so maybe and look let's just leap all over the fucking place if we're going for this rex herman is an architect

they are people who are thinking about space who are thinking about balance who are thinking about composition i don't know we are jumping all over the fucking place yeah but go and read dan's book it's great it's called the theory of everything else but you know this is all we can do at this stage because this is all of the information we have so you know why not but questions questions questions so we've gone through all the victims now except except for the last outlier, Shannon Gilbert. Much to the fury of her family, Shannon's death was ruled accidental. The Suffolk County Police claimed that she had run out onto the marshes, drunk high and paranoid, and drowned. How they concluded that Shannon had drowned when they only had her skeletal remains,

given that they found her 18 months after she went missing, is beyond me. They haven't got her lungs to check. Like, how could they know? How could they know? And a private autopsy carried out later at the request of the family found that Shannon had a damaged hyoid bone.

Now, this could be indicative of strangulation. Again, without the soft tissue there to be able to see bruising, etc., it is not definitive, but it could be indicative of strangulation. Again, without the soft tissue there to be able to see bruising etc, it is not definitive but it could be indicative. And many people point to the fact that Shannon was also partially undressed and that her clothes were strewn around the marshes, a sign of foul play perhaps. Although we can also believe that Shannon was running from someone, she was genuinely terrified for her life. And because she was probably high or having an episode of some sort,

she was able to run barefoot onto the marshes. Like if you see these marshes, if you see video of people going out onto the marshes to see where Shannon died, there is a documentary which you can watch. It was up on Channel 4, but they've taken it down, but it is on Amazon Prime now called The Killing Season. It's the people who made Cropsey. But yeah, go watch it. up on channel 4 but they've taken it down but it is on amazon prime now called the killing season it's the people who made cropsy ah but yeah go watch it it is very good they're jumping around all over the place too but yeah they go out into the marshes and you look at the floor of the marshes like of the ground of the marshes and it's like there is no way anyone who

wasn't terrified and or high could put barefoot onto that ground. And look, we don't know for sure if she was high. As Saru said, we only have skeletal remains, but she doesn't sound 100% lucid in those 911 calls. Shannon did also have a history of mental health challenges and drug abuse. So perhaps she'd been given drugs. She was overwhelmed and she ran away. And maybe while she was out on the marshes hiding she started to get hypothermia which could explain the removal of her clothes because of paradoxical undressing but in reality we just don't know how shannon died some say whether she was murdered or not shannon despite being the reason for the list case ever coming to light is not connected at all

because yeah shannon is the lynchpin in this. If she never went missing, if she didn't call 911, if they didn't know where she had been when she vanished, that officer and Bigger Blue would never have been on that beach doing that exercise.

So interesting. They thought they were looking for Shannon and they thought they found her, but they uncovered this. So I don't know. While I personally don't think that Shannon was killed by Lisk or the Manorville Butcher, if we continue with the theory that there are two killers, I do think that Shannon

could still be connected. But we'll come back to that later. For now, let's run with this idea that there are multiple killers. How likely could this really be? Well, we already know at least one other serial killer of sex workers who was active in the area at the same time. His name is John Bittroff. He was a married carpenter and father convicted in 2014 for the murders of two women, Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee. And he was suspect number one in the death of a third woman called Sandra Costilla. These murders took place between 1993 and 1994. And guess where John Bittroff lived?

Disneyland Paris. No, Manorville. Yeah, man. You couldn't make this up. And, like, they caught him, and like I said, they only convicted him of the murders of two women. He was absolutely suspected in the murder of Sandra, and God knows how many other fucking women.

And also, do I need to remind everybody who else was a fucking serial killer in Long Island? Mr. Bloody Joel Rifkin. And he was caught in 1993. So again, the timeline isn't a million miles off. So we already know that there are multiple serial killers active in the area. And Long Island is not a huge place.

No. And the idea of a shared dump site between multiple killers is also not ridiculous it's happened before the case of the killing fields in texas where since the 1970s dozens of bodies have been discovered on an overgrown field by a stretch of highway in league city and these have been attributed to multiple different killers also like there are so many places if you just google top places where bodies get dumped i mean i'm currently listening to the prosecutors fucking 10 part episodes i wear up to now on the case of adnan saeed leakin park

yeah bodies get dumped there because people know if you want to dump a body that's where you go dump them and i also knew that no matter how much he says he didn't so yeah i think like the idea that killers dump their bodies in the same place is not particularly like a rarity and like it worked they were there for fucking ages exactly and also i think we have to look at the sheer prevalence of serial killers because that also points to the fact that there could easily have been multiple killers. We've already named at least two and now throw in Rex Huriman if he's guilty. There were at least three active overlapping in Long Island at the same time. But let's look at the prevalence of serial killers according to the FBI. They estimate that there are currently 25 to 50 serial killers active in the US at any one time.

That's horrifying. And I suspect that that is a gross underestimate. Whether we'll get to like, you know, another killer like a Gacy or a Bundy or something who are racking up into the 20s, 30s kill count like that, I don't know. But multiple serial killing is not that uncommon. Now, the FBI will also say that, you know, that's around 1% of overall homicides are serial cases. So yes, that does make it look like it is very rare. But it is conservatively believed that 4% of female homicides in the US are serial in nature.

So that is quite interesting and quite terrifying. And that percentage of victims who are victimized by serial killers only increases when you talk about those victims being sex workers. So again, if you're finding sex worker after sex worker after sex worker on this stretch of shoreline, could to one killer could point to multiple like nothing here is definitive on top of this i found a report on murderdata.com which actually the url will make you laugh it made me laugh it still makes me laugh but it is actually they're doing great work and basically they've plotted all of the unsolved female homicides in the areas surrounding new york nassau county and Suffolk County in Long

Island. So basically the two counties that sort of span this particular case and also thrown in New York, because we know where Rex Herriman worked, and found that the cluster of murders similar to the Gilgo murders stretches far wider and encompasses far more victims than the 11 victims on the beach. So of course there could have been multiple killers in the area. Though we do have to say that none of this is definitive and all of these 11 victims could very much be the work of one killer and for a lot of people that just makes more sense than there being two maybe more people involved. If you consider the evidence in a linear fashion,

you could even explain away the big difference of dismemberment. Let's look at who was dismembered. It was early victims like Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Karen Vergata and Peaches. They were cut up and their bodies were scattered. Bits of them were wrapped in plastic. Later victims, like the Gilgo Beach Four, were all intact and covered in burlap, which actually promotes decomposition, unlike plastic. So it could easily be the same killer who first tried harder to cover his tracks

when disposing of victims, and then evolved with experience. And it also could be that as the years passed, and the partial remains he dumped in Manorville were easily found, but those by the Shore and ocean parkway weren't. The killer may have decided all of the effort of dismembering his victims' bodies just wasn't worth it. And this is the thing, again, I know we're talking out of both sides of our mouth because we're like, hey, maybe dismembering the bodies and spreading them around Long Island makes it harder for them to be discovered, but he also leaves them in very open places and doesn't bury

them, which makes it easier for them to be discovered. So which is it? Like I get that. It's not clear. I think all we can say is if you look at them in a linear fashion as you mentioned the change in MO could be linked to the passage of time and his evolution as a serial killer. But then again typically organized killers go from more organized to less organized as they devolve. So as time goes on and as they kill more people, they typically get more sloppy over time. So it would be unusual that a killer went from scattered body parts out in the open to bound, neatly laid out, burlapped victims. Because maybe he thought chopping them up and spreading them around all over the place would make it harder for him to be discovered but when they start to be found maybe he's like oh this is a terrible plan let me not go through the effort of chopping

them up let me just bury them in one place and wrap them in burlap i don't know so you could say that the bound neatly laid out burlapped victims is him becoming more careful and more organized over time but that's not typical that's not what you typically see with serial killers and as for the different types of victim from white to black and one man and one child again this doesn't necessarily disprove the single killer theory while a serial killer may have a preference and in this case it would be for petite white women there is nothing to say that serial killers won't deviate from that preference. Look at Dennis Rader, Richard Ramirez or Gary Ridgway. So for now, let's park the single killer or multiple killer question

and get back to the investigation. Which you can't see, but I'm putting in massive fucking air quotes. Because the very last thing that the Suffolk County Police Department was doing at the time was investigating. And now we're going to introduce our favourite character in this story. A few days after Shannon Gilbert's body was discovered, a new chief of police was placed in charge. His name is James Jimmy Burke.

He started off by declaring that Shannon's death was an accident, and then basically just proceeded to cover everything up. Those 911 calls that Shannon made that we played you at the top of the episode, they weren't released by the police until 2022. The police department just spent years claiming that in the calls, Shannon didn't sound distressed. Which, it's opposites day, apparently. And the department stood by these statements even

after those three harrowing calls were made public. But that is just the tip of the dirty, dirty, poo-coloured iceberg. Form officers from Suffolk County described the regime there, under Burke, as a system of paranoia and fear, akin to the KGB during the Cold War. And one, Peter Fiorillo, said this, Every place has corruption, but on a scale from 1 to 10, it's an 11. And I think that's not even telling you enough about how fucked up the SCPD were at this point. So the FBI obviously, naturally tried to get involved with the Liss case. Eleven bodies is serious business. And expert profilers from the BAU came to Suffolk County

to assist the department. But Jimmy Burke and Tom Spoter, the then DA who had inserted himself right into the middle of the investigation for some reason, blocked the FBI at every turn. There are stories that they wouldn't even let the FBI read any of the reports. Apparently, Spoter and Burke would sit in a room with the FBI saying, we'll just read you what we think you need to know. But why? Why would a police chief and DA, up to their eyes and dead bodies, not want the help of this elite team from the FBI. I think nothing would prick my ears up more than I'm just going to show you some of it. Yeah, they're literally like, you can sit over there and I will read you what I think is important. Like, of course everyone was screaming cover up.

What the fuck is going on? But the question is why? Why were they doing this? Why was Spoter and Burke doing this? Who would not want a case like this cleared? Like, the pressure, the fucking stress of 11 bodies. People in Long Island were terrified because there is a killer, at least one killer, on the loose. Why would you say no to the resources of the federal government? And I only actually thought about this and discovered this during the research of this case because serial killer hunting,

if we want to call it that, in America has changed drastically since 9-11. Interesting. Because up until 9-11, the BAU, the FBI, they were very concerned with serial killers. That was like one of their main things that they did. The BAU was almost known as

the elite serial killer catching team. But after 9-11, resources and priorities shifted. And the FBI have since then been a lot more focused on terrorists than serial killers. That is interesting. So resources, funding, time, priorities, everything has been shifted away from that. And it kind of makes sense because we have like a lot of very public terrorist attacks happening in the US and in Europe. Serial killers have been on the decline despite, you know, the statistics we gave you earlier, which I hope doesn't scare you because yes, it is only 1% of killings that are linked to serial killers, unless you're a woman, in which case it's four. But do you know what I mean? It's like they have had to look at spending their time on other things, like anti-terrorism. So in that case, when the FBI like, even this, warrants us looking at this serial killer, why would you turn them down?

Enter major suspicions of a cover-up. And pretty soon, graffiti started to appear all over Long Island, pointing the finger at Chief Jimmy Burke himself being Lisk. And you might be saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, come on, it can't really be the Chief of Police. And in any other case, we would agree with you, but not this time, Delilah. Kinda, but yeah. And while we now have Rex Huriman in custody With a solid case against him We don't think Burke is lisk But he is about as dirty as a cop can get

And how he came to be chief of police Given that during his career He'd been picking up sex workers while on duty In his cop car Without even securing his gun Which actually went missing During one of his little trysts All of that is

pretty shocking. They must have a real recruitment problem on Long Island. This whole story is beyond fucked up. Burke had also been in a sexual relationship with a woman named Laurita Rickenbacker. Who I had to put her name in. Laurita Rickenbacker. Yeah, I can't even... Love it. ...place where that would remotely come from. Long Island. And Loretta Rickenbacker, with her name, was a convicted sex worker and drug dealer,

and Burke himself had arrested her multiple times. So, you know, just keeping everything above board. Yeah, the separation of church and state is... Anyway, it was strongly suspected that Burke was using his authority to shake down street dealers and taking the contraband to enjoy with Rickenbacker. And when all of this came out, Burke wasn't even demoted. He just lost a few days of holiday and then was eventually promoted to the top cop on the force.

Over 2,500 other officers, making it the 11th largest police force in the United States at the time. That is outrageous. There is no end to how outraged you are all going to be. We are all going to collectively be over the next 10 minutes. Because this whole thing, it is unbelievable. Because Burke ran things at SCPD like a mob boss. From his wild sex addiction, drug addiction, extortion, illegal wiretapping,

drunk driving, corruption, and so much more. It is bonkers. So no, I personally wouldn't put murder past Jimmy Burke. In fact, Burke isn't just a passing character in this story who we wanted to like tell you about because you know it's interesting and a bit saucy no no no i read an entire 450 page book all about him by journalist gus garcia roberts called jimmy the king and i would definitely recommend it and i think i've forgotten who the review's from, but the review at the top of the front cover says, if Martin Scorsese wrote a film about corrupt cops,

this is that story. It is so unbelievable that it reads like a film script. Wow. Because how Burke handled this particular case of Lisk, how he ever came to be chief, how he survived for so long at the top, and all the depraved shit he was up to, is a crazy story in and of itself, and absolutely, very importantly, relevant to the Lisk case. So let's start with the stolen duffel bag,

and how it was the beginning of the end for Jimmy the King. In December 2012, so after all 11 bodies had been discovered off Ocean Parkway and the whole of Long Island knew that there was a serial killer quite literally on the loose, a 26-year-old heroin addict called Christopher Loeb stole a bag from a car. He opened it up, hoping for something he could sell.

But he found handcuffs, mace, and a gun. So it looked like this duffel bag belonged to a cop. But there were also some more colourful items in said bag, including butt plugs, sex toys, pornography and several child sexual abuse images. Loeb maintains to this day that in the bag were DVDs on which he saw sex workers being tortured. Was it real? Was it roleplay porn? Did this material even ever exist? We don't know and we'll never know because Loeb, terrified of what to do with the bag and its contents,

hid it at his poor mum's house. Yeah and Loeb like if you listen to unraveled there are interviews in there with lobe talking about this and again like how much of what he's saying is true how much isn't it's hard to know we'll never know like you say but he basically says imagine finding a bag i think there were also some outlets that said there was even a badge in there so he knew which carpet was finding all of that and then finding what he says he finds, like torture images, child sexual abuse material. And he's like, where do I go hand this in? He knows this is wrong.

This is fucked up. I want to report this. But if you know it's the chief of police's bag, well, you're just going to walk into the police station and tell them they're going to fucking arrest you. Yeah, right. So he doesn't know what to do with it, is what he says. However, within days, the cops had found him anyway. And what was essentially a SWAT team blasted through his mum's house

and they arrested Loeb for taking the bag. Even Chief Jimmy Burke was there, which was highly unusual, given at this point it was just a simple case of bag theft. Yeah. And obviously the reason we'll never know what was in there is because they take the bag. Yeah. And they're not very diligent with documenting what's inside. So the chief even led on the interrogation of Christopher Loeb when it became clear that the bag was of course his. Now according to Loeb, when he called Burke a paedophile in this interview, Burke exploded and beat the shit out of him while he was handcuffed to the table.

And according to Loeb, Burke even got other cops at the station to take turns beating him, with Burke referring to them as his palace guards. That is gross. This man is fucking on one. Burke was out of control. Now, Loeb claims that one of these police officers while he was beating him even told him he was going to rape his mother and Burke threatened to murder Loeb with a hot shot which is a fatal overdose of heroin that could be made to look like an accident. Now after this incident

Loeb basically tries telling everyone what happened to him but the media just claimed that Burke was a bit of a perv, but harmless. I'm yet to meet a harmless pervert. I mean, yeah, they're just like, oh, you know, he just had a bit of pornography in his bag. But we're just going to ignore everything else that you're saying and just say he's a bit colourful, but like, whatever. And the police establishment looked very much the other way. It was only years later, in February 2016, after a massive FBI probe, and the probe only started because some cops within SCPD finally had had enough of Burke and started speaking out about what he was doing and also what he had done to Christopher Loeb. And after this, basically, Burke

at last did have to admit that he had violated Christopher Loeb's civil rights, you know, by beating the shit out of him while he was handcuffed to a table, and also admitted to knowingly conspiring to conceal evidence of it. And after this, he was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. Woof. Yeah. I mean, I don't like him, but that would be horrible. And I'm shocked that it happened. Yeah, me too. So just a little reminder, in case you're lost in this timeline, the chief of police was jailed during the time that Suffolk County police should have been investigating a serial killer and why they've got 11 bodies on their hands. And it only got worse because it didn't end with Burke. In 2019, the Suffolk County District Attorney who we met earlier, Tom Spoter,

and former Anti-Corruption Bureau Chief Christopher McPartland were both sentenced to five years for helping cover up for Burke. They were convicted of witness tampering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy and they are still in prison to this day. But why, why, why, why would a DA risk his career and let's face it, his life, to protect a chief of police as reckless and as out of control as Jimmy Burke? Well, to understand that, we all need to take a little trip down memory lane. Let's hold hands, no one get lost. On the 21st of April 1979, there was a 13-year-old boy called John Pius Jr. and he was

found dead in the woods behind Dogwood Elementary School in Smithtown, New York. He'd been suffocated by six rocks that had been stuffed down his throat. The investigation was a botched one. Police barely looked for any clues or questions the boy's parents or his neighbours, who had allegedly been sexually abusing little John. Even back then, Suffolk County cops had a reputation. At that time, the department had a 97% confession rate for murder suspects. A number far, far, far, far higher than any other homicide squad in the country. Basically, the only way they closed any of their cases was with a confession. They didn't do any investigating.

They were just like, we'll pick him, get him in, and you can guess how they got their confessions. This number was so high that, of course, allegations of duress and torture used to extract confessions seemed hard to ignore. Examples include a man who claimed that he was beaten with a slab of concrete and another who said cops held his penis over a paper shredder while they questioned him. That is deranged. They were deranged and this shows you how far back they were deranged. So of course they weren't fucking investigating Lisk because they had no suspects to fucking torture. It is insane. But the cops from SCPD, they weren't even trying to cover this shit up.

They were proud of their tactics and of their records. Apparently they'd even walk around when they were off duty wearing t-shirts that said 97% on them. I'm unwell. They're unwell. They're fucking sick in the head. It is like a little sociopathic thiefdom. Jesus.

That just went from generation to generation to generation. So SCPD always knew that they could get a confession. Nobody was watching them. Nobody was checking their tactics. All they needed was some suspects. And nothing was different with the case of John Pius. And eventually these cops pointed their dirty little fingers at four local high school kids. Michael Quarantano, Peter Quarantano, Thomas Ryan and Robert Bresnik. The prosecutor assigned to the case was none other than a young, ambitious, but already very corrupt Tom Spoter.

He knew that the evidence against the boys was weak. All he had was the clearly coerced confession of a minor who had been barred from seeing his parents or a lawyer. All Spoter really needed was a witness. And bingo, one materialised. He was a 14-year-old local school kid too. It was James Jimmy Burke. It's unbelievable. It's so fucked up. So yeah, Tom Spoter is a lot older than Jimmy Burke. So he's 14 and Jimmy Burke is like in his 30s at this point. And it was already known that at the

tender age of 14, James Jimmy Burke was already a minor drug dealer and quite a major thief. Burke testified saying that the boys had admitted to the murder, so Spoter got his conviction, and he and Burke began a twisted relationship that would last for decades. By 21, Burke had joined the police force, and with Spoter backing him, he made very quick work of climbing the ranks. Spoter was corrupt, sure, but Burke was depraved. And we're not sure if Spoter knew just how dangerous Burke would become, in general, or to him specifically, or if he thought that he would always be able to handle him. He's much older than him, remember. Either way, both of them were sent down, and accusations that the Suffolk County

police were not taking the Lisk murders seriously was laid out for all to see. And this is the thing. I really think that Tom Spoter thought, here's this kid. He's helped me out once. How else can I use him? I'll put him in a position of power, like chief of police,

and then the two of us will run this whole fucking show. And I've got something on him because he owes me for getting him in this position. And Burke's got something on Spoter because he knows that he most likely lied yeah when he testified in that trial for John Pius's murder so they kind of have this really twisted fucked up relationship but I don't think Spoter knows that he has let a snake into his corrupt little gang. But the question is, was Burke covering it all up? So we're talking now about the Lisk case, because he was involved in the murders himself as some claim, or was he doing it because he and Spoter were up to all sorts and they just didn't want the FBI anywhere near their precinct? Probably the latter. But there is another interesting plot

twist to this case. Remember Shannon Gilbert and how she'd gone to Oak Beach the night she died? Well Oak Beach is a notoriously secretive community full of wealthy and incredibly well-connected people. In the Unraveled podcast they even talk about the guy who had like developed that whole gated community, built the bridges and the underpasses so low that even buses couldn't come down them because he didn't want the poor people coming down there so it is a very very exclusive little community where everybody looks after each other because nobody wants the house of cards to come falling down and the wild sex parties thrown and attended by many of the residents of Oak Beach involved drink, drugs and sex workers. And it was incredibly common knowledge. And countless high profile

people have been linked with attending these sticky soirees, including Jimmy Burke. And if you listen to the 911 calls made by Shannon the night she disappeared, she keeps saying, they are after me. And it doesn't seem like Joseph Brewer, the man whose house she was at, or Michael Pack, both of whom can be heard on the call trying to get Shannon to leave, are who she's scared of. Because even when they are there, you can hear them on the other end of the phone. Shannon keeps saying, they are trying to get me. Yeah, like, wouldn't you just say, they're here? Her demeanour doesn't change when you can hear

Joseph Brewer and Michael Pack's voices. She still makes it sound like she's scared of somebody else she's trying to get away from. And I know some people point to the fact of why does she keep running away from Michael Pack? Maybe he was who she was scared of. Because Gus Coletti says that he saw an Asian man and that she hid under the boat and then ran away from him. I do think that points more to Shannon Gilbert having some sort of episode or drug related episode. Because Michael Pack, it doesn't really fit the model of like him being the killer. He goes back the next day with Shannon's boyfriend, Alex, to go look for her. Why would you do that? If you killed her? Like it doesn't really fit for me.

So did Shannon go to this party, get dosed with drugs and then get freaked out by some man or men there who she was afraid of? We're not saying it's Jimmy Burke but it could be. And if you regularly have drug-fuelled sex parties with sex workers that most of the people there don't give a shit about, is it beyond belief that at least one girl has died out there? And if you have high-profile people, and cops in attendance at these sex parties, were they cleaning up and dumping the remains? This theory could even explain Baby Doe.

Because if you listen to the podcast series Unraveled, there are interviews with the girls who worked that particular area, and one particular quote will stick with you. Here it is. It took a part of you every time. They always wanted more and more. Even suggesting involving children. And that's, of course, about these sex parties

that were going on at Oak Beach all the time. And sure, it is just speculation. But Shannon did die. And she died out there. This is the thing. It's obviously is just speculation. But Shannon did die. And she died out there. This is the thing. It's obviously rampant speculation. But the fact is, very high profile people were known to go to these sex parties.

And are they the kind of people to give a shit if a sex worker gets murdered at one of these parties? Probably not. And when you have an open door policy for probably anybody can come to these, as long as you've got the right credentials, who's doing any vetting on who is a sadist and who's got, know fucked up tendencies of what they're going to end up doing there there's also drugs involved are you telling me like it's beyond belief that one girl has died out there and if they have the cops are there to fucking clean it up i know i sound like a conspiracy theorist no but it also sounds very root of evil though it does doesn't it it really really does which if you haven't listened to it, what are you doing?

I know. We haven't shut up about it for about four years. But yeah, it's that very decadent vibe of these high society people who get essentially the less dead in to do whatever they want. Yeah, and somebody cleans up after them because everybody's lives and reputations and livelihoods are tied to this secret not being outed. So anyway, let's get

back to shannon so like we said about the drugs her maybe having some sort of mental break running out there there is a person of interest who came to light in the aftermath who might make you consider whether shannon took the drugs by choice or not because obviously one of the big questions is well did she just take the drugs because she hated what she was about to have to do i don't know but this person is certainly very very suspicious because two days after shannon made those 911 calls but before her mom mari knew that she was missing someone called mari and asked her if she knew where her daughter was it turned out that this call was made by a doctor from Oak Beach, Dr. Peter Hackett.

He was Joseph Brewer's neighbour. Joseph Brewer was obviously the client who had paid for Shannon to come there that night. And Dr. Hackett is a fucking weird guy. There's like one scene of him being questioned by like the media, and he pretends to have a heart attack. He's so weird weird i can't even tell you so hackett when he phones shannon's mom mari told her that he ran a halfway home for wayward girls and that shannon had come there a couple of days before he said he gave her some medication

and that she freaked out and ran off hackett then vehemently denied ever speaking to Mari until his telephone record showed that he definitely definitely did call her. Mari began pursuing a legal case against Dr. Peter Hackett saying he had offered to help Shannon possibly when he had seen her either running from house to house being scared or he was at the party himself and he had given her these drugs and then she had you know had some sort of negative reaction to them and he had just tossed her out and it was his negligence that had led to Shannon's death. Now as we all know a civil case has a much lower bar that needs to be met than a criminal case so Mari was sort of doing the best she could to get some justice for her daughter because because fucking Burke isn't doing anything.

But Mari Gilbert died before the case could be settled. And this is just yet another jaw-dropping tragedy linked to this nightmare, never-ending, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak case. Because Mari Gilbert was stabbed to death by her other daughter and Shannon's sister, Sarah. Sarah was not very well. She'd been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and hospitalised several times. But her addiction to ecstasy made it hard for Sarah to recover. And the discovery of Shannon's remains absolutely played a role in pushing Sarah even further over the edge.

In February 2016, she drowned the family dog in the bath at her mum's house. After this, her son Hayden was taken away from her and she blamed her mum Mari for that. And on the 23rd of July 2016, after asking Mari if she was an evil god, Sarah stabbed her own mum 227 times. The civil case against Dr Hackett died with Mari. The police also cleared Hackett, Pack and Brewer using polygraph tests. And Shannon's case, just like the other ten murders, went cold, due in no small part to Burke and all of the bullshit going on at SCPD. The Gilgo case was then taken over twice before a new task force took charge

in February last year, 2022. And within just five weeks, they had done more than had ever been done in the previous 13 years. But blue balls for you, I'm afraid. You have to wait until next week to hear all about how they finally got to the arrest of Rex Herriman. And you'll know all about it because you'll be back here next week. Same time, same place for part two. Woof. I'm exhausted. It is so much, guys. I know it's so much.

And we've given you so many little like side tangents of this case. But it's got to be done because this is a much, guys. I know it's so much. And we've given you so many little like side tangents of this case, but it's got to be done because this is a whopper. So yeah, like Hannah said, we'll be back next week to talk to you about the most recent update in this case. Of course, the arrest of Rex Huriman. We're talking about how they tracked him down, this new task force, how they arrested him, all of the stuff they found in his house. It is mental. So come back, join us for that. And we will see you then and remember go vote for us britishpodcastawards.com slash vote and then verify your vote and we will be eternally grateful and probably doing something terrifying like sleeping in a haunted house

so vote or else and we'll see you next week for the next part goodbye I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go.

A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is Season 2 of Finding, and this time if all goes to plan, we'll

be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts,

Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.