3 Charges, 11 Bodies: Families Hope for Answers in Gilgo Beach Case
The police later determined that they did not belong to Ms. Gilbert, but to Melissa Barthelemy, a 24-year-old woman from the Bronx who had worked as a prostitute until she disappeared in July 2009. When the police returned two days later, they found the remains of three other women — Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman and Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
All four were petite, in their 20s and had worked as prostitutes. They were all also found bound at the feet or ankles and wrapped in burlap along a stretch of sand about a quarter mile long.
Seven other bodies would be found in the months that followed, including Ms. Gilbert, four other women, a man who was never identified and a 2-year-old girl. The bodies, two of which were only partial remains, had not been bound and wrapped as those in the first group were.
Numerous killers have sometimes disposed of bodies in a single location — parts of Brooklyn and New Jersey swamps, said Fred Klein, a lawyer and the former Nassau County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the serial killer Joel Rifkin. But that dumping, he said, has generally been the work of an organized crime group or gang.
“The unusual part would be for random people to be using the same location,” said Mr. Klein, who is now an assistant law professor at Hofstra University. “It almost stretches the imagination to believe more than one different person, completely dissociated with each other, just coincidentally happened to dump dead sex workers in the same location.”
Source: The New York Times
