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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 5: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker BTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupaski for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 6: History and the authors that are written about them. One
Speaker 6: late evening in twenty ten, Shannon Gilbert, after running through
Speaker 6: the ocean front community of Oak Beach screaming for her life,
Speaker 6: went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance
Speaker 6: thought much about what had happened to the twenty four
Speaker 6: year old. She was a craigslist prostitute, had been who
Speaker 6: had been fleeing a scene of what no one could
Speaker 6: be sure. The Suffolk County Police, too, seemed to have
Speaker 6: paid little attention until seven months later, when an unexpected
Speaker 6: discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up
Speaker 6: four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap, but
Speaker 6: none of them Shannon's. There was Maureene Brainerd Barnes, last
Speaker 6: scene at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and
Speaker 6: Melissa barth Emily last seen in The Bronx in two
Speaker 6: thousand and nine. There was Magan Waterman, last scene leaving
Speaker 6: a hotel in Wapogue, Long Island just a month after
Speaker 6: Shannon's disappearance in twenty ten, and Amber ln Costello last
Speaker 6: seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months
Speaker 6: later that same year. Like shen and, all four women
Speaker 6: were petite and in their twenties. They all came from
Speaker 6: out of town to work as escorts, and they all
Speaker 6: advertised on Craigslist and its competitor backpage. Lost Girls is
Speaker 6: a portrait not just of five women, but of unsolved
Speaker 6: murder in an idyllic part of America, of the underside
Speaker 6: of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without
Speaker 6: admitting to ourselves that we keep them. The book that
Speaker 6: we're featuring this evening is Lost Girls and Unsolved American Mystery,
Speaker 6: with my special guests, journalist and author Robert Coker. Welcome
Speaker 6: to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 7: Robert Cocher I'm pleased to be on. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 7: you very much. Bob.
Speaker 6: A dedicated fan of the program and someone that suggested
Speaker 6: that I get in touch with you and ask you
Speaker 6: for an interview for this program. Her name is Susie.
Speaker 6: She has contacted me and I asked this question often,
Speaker 6: but she put in a little more eloquent terms. What
Speaker 6: are the how did you become how did you come
Speaker 6: to this story, Bob, and what are the circumstances that
Speaker 6: led to writing this book? Give us your background and
Speaker 6: how you came to be able to write this Lost Girls?
Speaker 7: Okay, Dan, thanks, I appreciate the question from from you
Speaker 7: and from Susie. I'm a writer for New York Magazine.
Speaker 7: I write feature stories and cover stories for the magazine
Speaker 7: that are you know that are based on reporting of
Speaker 7: news events and often their crime stories. And so when
Speaker 7: four unidentified bodies were discovered right all near each other
Speaker 7: and bound in burlap, right on a beach in Long Island,
Speaker 7: it was clearly a story that would be interesting to
Speaker 7: any reporter. Then the bodies were identified, and it was
Speaker 7: that they were Craigslist escorts. And the most interesting thing
Speaker 7: happened among a lot of people in the New York
Speaker 7: area interest in this case sort of deflated a little bit.
Speaker 7: It all kind of got a little quieter for some reason,
Speaker 7: because people said, oh, these women were prostesies, and that
Speaker 7: to me was the first time that something unusual was
Speaker 7: going on here. It became very clear as time went
Speaker 7: on that this happens a lot in serial killer cases,
Speaker 7: that serial killers actually rely on the idea that their
Speaker 7: victims will not be missed, and that even if they
Speaker 7: were discovered, that the public won't necessarily go on a
Speaker 7: crusade to find them, because as a society we stigmatize
Speaker 7: these women and decide somehow that they have it coming.
Speaker 7: Never mind that the Johns are also breaking the law,
Speaker 7: The pimps are breaking the law, the drivers are breaking
Speaker 7: the law. So then tis time went on became more complicated,
Speaker 7: and in Lost Girls, I cover all the ins and
Speaker 7: outs of the case. I as a reporter, got to
Speaker 7: know some of the family members of some of these women,
Speaker 7: and it became immediately clear that they defied expectations I
Speaker 7: had assumed, and I think a lot of other people
Speaker 7: had too, that these women didn't have families, that they
Speaker 7: didn't have people in their lives who cared about them
Speaker 7: that they were somehow lost to the world long before
Speaker 7: they actually disappeared and were murdered. And what I learned
Speaker 7: is that nothing could be further from the truth. These
Speaker 7: women had very close relationships with family members, stayed in
Speaker 7: constant touch, and were leading more or less semi functional
Speaker 7: lives for a very long time. And they are family
Speaker 7: members cared deeply when they went missing, and it was
Speaker 7: in many cases law enforcement that dropped the ball when
Speaker 7: they disappeared, because again, our society stigmatizes in this line
Speaker 7: of work. From there, it became clear that the women
Speaker 7: involved were doing something new in terms of prostitution. They
Speaker 7: were taking advantage of the Internet, and this allowed them
Speaker 7: to lead even more mainstream lives than previous generations and
Speaker 7: prostitutes have been able to do. They no longer have
Speaker 7: to go to a bad neighborhood. They can work out
Speaker 7: of their home. They don't need to work for a pimp.
Speaker 7: They can be their own boss, they can set their
Speaker 7: own hours. They can lead a kind of a compartmentalized life.
Speaker 7: Their prostitution life can be in a box. They can
Speaker 7: just do it a few days and months and then
Speaker 7: lead normal lives the rest of the time, and that
Speaker 7: meant that in many cases, these women were people who
Speaker 7: might never have become prostitutes ten or fifteen years ago,
Speaker 7: but the Internet made it easier for them. It lowered
Speaker 7: the barrier to entry, and it made them feel safer
Speaker 7: because they weren't walking the streets the way that you'd
Speaker 7: have to. And all of these factors were things that
Speaker 7: put them in harm's way. And I thought myself, after
Speaker 7: writing a magazine story about the case that brought the
Speaker 7: family members together, wouldn't it be great to write a
Speaker 7: book that made it clear to the public who these
Speaker 7: women really were, and to make them seem more than
Speaker 7: just cardboard characters or extras in a serial killer case.
Speaker 7: What if we could understand what it is exactly that
Speaker 7: makes women like this so vulnerable. It's not just that
Speaker 7: they chose to take this risk, it's that we chose
Speaker 7: to turn our backs on them. And what have I
Speaker 7: got to know their families better? And what have I
Speaker 7: got to know their communities better? And what if their
Speaker 7: lives were actually windows into a part of America that
Speaker 7: the media doesn't really talk about much. All these women
Speaker 7: came from struggling parts of America that the media doesn't
Speaker 7: talk about. Places where opportunities have been drying up and
Speaker 7: where the recession is still going strong. Places where a
Speaker 7: generation earlier there might have been jobs, but now the
Speaker 7: best jobs are at dunkin Donuts or at Walmart, and
Speaker 7: now the Internet, there's a temptation for some women to
Speaker 7: make more money in one night than their friends and
Speaker 7: neighbors are making in a week or two weeks working
Speaker 7: at the local gas station or convenience store. This is
Speaker 7: a part of America that I really think deserves attention,
Speaker 7: and so I thought Lost Girls could do that as well.
Speaker 7: But for your listeners, obviously, Lost Girls is also a
Speaker 7: murder mystery, and I go through the ins and outs
Speaker 7: of the case. I have exclusive interviews with people who
Speaker 7: are considered persons of interest in the case by the public.
Speaker 7: I speak with the police commissioner at the time and
Speaker 7: the chief of detectives at the time. There are exclusive
Speaker 7: interviews there as well, and with a John who's at
Speaker 7: the center of the case as well. So what I
Speaker 7: wanted to offer readers was a three hundred and sixty
Speaker 7: degree view of a murder mystery and also of a
Speaker 7: broader mystery of what it is in our society that
Speaker 7: makes women like this so vulnerable.
Speaker 6: Now, for our audience and of those that want to
Speaker 6: know about this book, let's talk about the catalyst for
Speaker 6: the discovery of these women and for the impetus for
Speaker 6: you to do this story as well as because unfortunately,
Speaker 6: these characters come only to light after their deceased. So
Speaker 6: let's go back to this evening in twenty ten with
Speaker 6: Shannon Gilbert and tell us first who Shannon Gilbert was.
Speaker 6: Tell us from the beginning who Shannon Gilbert was, and
Speaker 6: we can get to this faithful evening where she disappears.
Speaker 6: So take us back and tell us what you found
Speaker 6: out from all your research about who Shannon Gilbert was
Speaker 6: and how she was formed and some of the formulative
Speaker 6: years for her.
Speaker 7: Well, the initial reports of this case made it clear
Speaker 7: that Shannon Gilbert was working for herself, you know, posting
Speaker 7: ads on Craigslist. That she was living at the time
Speaker 7: in Jersey City News, which if your listeners aren't familiar,
Speaker 7: is very pretty far away from the area in Long
Speaker 7: Island where she disappeared, and that she was driven by
Speaker 7: a driver who shared some of the money that she
Speaker 7: would bring in as a prostitute, and the two of
Speaker 7: them were kind of in business together. And it also
Speaker 7: said that she had grown up in Ellenville, New York,
Speaker 7: which is upstate. It's sort of halfway between New York
Speaker 7: City and the state capitol, Albany. It saw in a
Speaker 7: in a kind of a more rural or not really suburban,
Speaker 7: more rural part of the state, and she, you know,
Speaker 7: obviously came to the New York area to make money.
Speaker 7: And then there were a couple of reports that said
Speaker 7: that perhaps that she had been prescribed antidepressants and you know,
Speaker 7: might have used substances. And that's really all anyone knew.
Speaker 7: But the mystery about Shannon in her life is exactly
Speaker 7: what her childhood like. Because it also became clear over
Speaker 7: time that she was I had a mother, and she
Speaker 7: had three sisters, and that the family all lived in Ellenville,
Speaker 7: but that Shannon didn't always live with the rest of
Speaker 7: her family. And what I had learned through my research
Speaker 7: and lost Girls was that through various family complications and
Speaker 7: difficulties that her mother was having, Shannon ended up living
Speaker 7: in foster care for almost her entire childhood, from the
Speaker 7: time she was seven years old going forward, she maybe
Speaker 7: only lived at home for about a year. Despite all this,
Speaker 7: she got excellent grades. She graduated high school from a
Speaker 7: very good high school, New Paul's High School, and just
Speaker 7: after just three years of high school education. She had
Speaker 7: an amazing singing voice. She performed for her friends and
Speaker 7: they loved listening to her singing. She was a buoyant, upbeat,
Speaker 7: joyful personality around her friends. There was no suggestion that
Speaker 7: this foster care situation was eating away at her. You know,
Speaker 7: there was none of the you know kind of trauma,
Speaker 7: that obvious trauma that the stereotype you might expect what
Speaker 7: happened in terms of someone deciding to become a prostitute.
Speaker 7: But she was a restless person with ambitions and in
Speaker 7: Lost Girls, as you get to know her better, you
Speaker 7: learn exactly what motivates her to go off to try
Speaker 7: to make a name for herself, and that is that,
Speaker 7: according to many of her friends and those who k
Speaker 7: who are best, she really wanted to re enter her
Speaker 7: family and be welcome back into her family and to
Speaker 7: have a position of power within her family. And making
Speaker 7: money from prostitution for a short period of time actually
Speaker 7: was helpful to her in this way. She was able
Speaker 7: to buy people presents and you know, swoop into town
Speaker 7: and treat everybody to, you know, whatever they wanted, because
Speaker 7: she had the money, and everyone was concerned learned about her.
Speaker 7: But of course nobody in this book thinks, you know,
Speaker 7: none of the characters in the book think that they're
Speaker 7: going to be murdered by a serial killer, and so,
Speaker 7: you know, not a lot was done to really stop her. Also,
Speaker 7: she was such a fiercely independent and energetic person that
Speaker 7: it was hard to imagine her putting herself in harm's
Speaker 7: way and not being able to defend herself. And in fact,
Speaker 7: in Lost Girls, her mother Mary points out, you know,
Speaker 7: she fought back. She ran screaming from this house in
Speaker 7: Oak Beach. We can talk more about the circumstances of
Speaker 7: her disappearance now or later in the program, but that
Speaker 7: Knight at Oak Beach has probed extensively in the book,
Speaker 7: from the point of view of her driver, from the
Speaker 7: point of view of her John, from a neighbor down
Speaker 7: the block, from the police, and then from several people
Speaker 7: who have researched the case independently on webs Less, which
Speaker 7: I'm sure your listeners know about, you know, one of
Speaker 7: the great major independent, you know, internet sites where people
Speaker 7: we'll talk to one another and share information and try
Speaker 7: and do their own saluting at home about a case.
Speaker 5: Interesting.
Speaker 7: So that's Shannon.
Speaker 6: Tell us about the disappearance of the events leading up
Speaker 6: to the disappearance. Actually, like you say, with the driver
Speaker 6: and the client's called and he's conted through, she's contacted
Speaker 6: through crazylists. Tell us about that.
Speaker 7: Well, it was the last night of April in twenty ten,
Speaker 7: and she had gone that night to a movie, a
Speaker 7: Freddy Krueger movie, I think, with her boyfriend Alex, who
Speaker 7: used to be a driver at an escort service back
Speaker 7: in the days when Shannon was working for an escort service.
Speaker 7: And after the movie ended at about ten pm, and
Speaker 7: she told her boyfriend that she had to work, and
Speaker 7: she said goodbye to him, and she hopped on the
Speaker 7: commuter train from Jersey City into Manhattan. She went into
Speaker 7: Manhattan and she went to a street corner and waited
Speaker 7: for her ride. For her driver. Her driver's name is
Speaker 7: Michael Pack and she had been working together several nights
Speaker 7: a week for at least eight or nine months. They
Speaker 7: were friendly and had a nice, you know, rapport going.
Speaker 7: And he came and picked her up at the place
Speaker 7: that they had determined and she got into the car
Speaker 7: and with a you know, with a little netbook and
Speaker 7: with her phone, she posted an ad and waited for
Speaker 7: a call. But it was a slow night, and she
Speaker 7: had one call several blocks away from where they had met.
Speaker 7: But there really was nothing else going on except a
Speaker 7: call coming out from Long Island, from way out in
Speaker 7: Long Islands, more than an hour's drive from mid Timp Manhattan,
Speaker 7: even that late at night, and that call came from
Speaker 7: a gentleman named Joe Brewer, who was the john at
Speaker 7: the house where she disappeared. They decided that, given that
Speaker 7: it was a two hour minimum, you know, for this appointment,
Speaker 7: that they would go out there, because in many cases
Speaker 7: you can take a two hour date and try and
Speaker 7: extend it into a three or even four hour date,
Speaker 7: which would end up paying for the whole night, and
Speaker 7: it wouldn't matter that they traveled so far. And so
Speaker 7: with that in mind, they decided to drive out there.
Speaker 7: They went out to Oak Beach, which is a secluded
Speaker 7: beach community in Long Island where on paper all the
Speaker 7: residents are millionaires because they have beach front property, but
Speaker 7: in fact it's a much more peculiar place than that.
Speaker 7: This isn't like East Hampton or West Hampton or one
Speaker 7: of these millionaires rose. It's filled with middle class and
Speaker 7: even some working class people who families have owned these
Speaker 7: houses and they've watched the values rise up. And it's
Speaker 7: secluded and far away from the rest of Long Island.
Speaker 7: You've got this metropolitan area of over ten million people
Speaker 7: all around, and yet Oak Beach is just seventy two homes,
Speaker 7: a twenty minute drive from the nearest convenience store, from
Speaker 7: the nearest gas station, from the nearest supermarket. If you
Speaker 7: want to court a milk, you've got to drive twenty
Speaker 7: minutes over a bridge into the rest of Long Island.
Speaker 7: So the only people who live here are people who
Speaker 7: are desperately holding on to homes because of their value,
Speaker 7: people who like to live remotely, who want to be
Speaker 7: off the beaten track, people who want to be a
Speaker 7: big fish in a small pond, or don't want to
Speaker 7: be hassled. And in this case, Joe Brewer enjoyed his
Speaker 7: house because it was a party pit for him and
Speaker 7: his friends. It was almost like a frat house for him.
Speaker 7: He was, you know, a father, but divorced, hadn't worked
Speaker 7: for a while, had a little money in his family
Speaker 7: and was basically hanging out and had hired prostitutes there
Speaker 7: in the past, and Shannon was just another one. So
Speaker 7: they show up. She goes in Michael Pack the driver
Speaker 7: waits outside for you know, an hour, maybe two, but
Speaker 7: early on she gets he gets a phone call from
Speaker 7: Shannon saying that she and the John are going to
Speaker 7: go out on a drive to run an errand. Michael
Speaker 7: Pack isn't sure exactly what that errand is for, but
Speaker 7: he assumes it's to go get drugs. They aren't gone
Speaker 7: more than ten or fifteen minutes, which means they didn't
Speaker 7: leave the general area of Oak Beach, right. They come
Speaker 7: back and Michael Pack keeps you know, hanging out in
Speaker 7: his car, playing poker on his cellphone, waiting for the
Speaker 7: date to keep going. At some point he gets another
Speaker 7: call from Shannon. This time Shannon is asking him to
Speaker 7: go off to the nearest pharmacy or a drug store
Speaker 7: and get some things that might help keep the the
Speaker 7: date going longer, things like playing cards and you know
Speaker 7: k why.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 7: Michael Pack looks on Google and sees that the nearest
Speaker 7: pharmacy is too far away to go, and he says
Speaker 7: it's too far away. I don't want to do it,
Speaker 7: and she makes a little stink and gets mad at
Speaker 7: him and then hangs up the phone. But then the
Speaker 7: date continues, and then suddenly, sometime between five and six
Speaker 7: in the morning, there's a tap on the car window
Speaker 7: of Michael Pack's car and it's Joe Brewer, and he
Speaker 7: puts down his window and Brewer says, she won't leave.
Speaker 7: This is very unusual for a john to be in
Speaker 7: contact with the driver. And what Brewer seemed to be
Speaker 7: telling Michael Pack was got We've got a problem. I
Speaker 7: want this date to end, and you know your girl
Speaker 7: isn't leaving the house. And so Michael Pack reluctantly gets
Speaker 7: out of the car and follows Brewer into the house.
Speaker 7: And what follows, at least according to Michael Pack, is
Speaker 7: a very peculiar chain of events where Shannon is refusing
Speaker 7: to leave, but is crouched behind a couch and trying
Speaker 7: to keep away from not just from Joe Brow but
Speaker 7: from Michael Pack. And slowly it becomes clear to Michael
Speaker 7: that Shannon is on the telephone with the police with
Speaker 7: nine one one, trying to say what's going on here
Speaker 7: and what she says, is they're trying to kill me.
Speaker 7: Michael Pack tries a couple things to try to convince
Speaker 7: Shannon to come with him. She refuses. Brewer tries to
Speaker 7: at one point to grab a hold of her to
Speaker 7: get her out of the house, and she screams and
Speaker 7: runs away. Brewer throws up his hands and walks out
Speaker 7: of the house. All these events, by the way, are
Speaker 7: according to Michael Pack, so it's his version of events.
Speaker 7: It's unclear this is exactly what happened, but this is
Speaker 7: based on his recollection. And so now no one knows
Speaker 7: what to do. And Michael Pack says, forget it, I'm
Speaker 7: out of here, and he leaves the house and sits
Speaker 7: in the car again. And that's when Shannon comes running
Speaker 7: out of the house, screaming, stumbling and running again into
Speaker 7: the darkness. Now I want to slow down even further
Speaker 7: and talk with your listeners about what a peculiar moment,
Speaker 7: says Shannon Gilbert has never been to Oak Beach before.
Speaker 7: She does no idea where she is or how she
Speaker 7: got there. She was driven there. She it's the middle
Speaker 7: of the night or actually dawn and will be breaking soon,
Speaker 7: but it's still very dark outside. She can't see a thing.
Speaker 7: The only soul she knows in this area is her driver,
Speaker 7: Michael Pack and yet she runs away from him into
Speaker 7: the darkness. And he is supposed to be her security detail.
Speaker 7: He is supposed to be the one who's guaranteeing that
Speaker 7: she gets out of there just fine. And yet she's
Speaker 7: not just running away from her John, she's running away
Speaker 7: from him. It is unclear exactly why she is so upset.
Speaker 7: Joe Brewer might have told the police more than he's
Speaker 7: told the public, but it's very clear that he must
Speaker 7: know something about why she is so upset. The police
Speaker 7: have tried to describe her behavior as a reaction to
Speaker 7: the drugs, a psychotic break, but that doesn't explain why
Speaker 7: she could be on the telephone, Why she would be
Speaker 7: on the telephone with nine one one for twenty three minutes.
Speaker 7: That is not a lot of people believe, that is
Speaker 7: not the work of an irrational person. Again, it's highly
Speaker 7: unusual for a prostitute to be calling the police anyway,
Speaker 7: because you know the police are only going to cause
Speaker 7: trouble for her, and so a lot of people believe,
Speaker 7: and based on my findings and lost Girls, I am
Speaker 7: highly persuaded to believe that Shannon had a very good
Speaker 7: reason to be calling the police, that there's an incomplete,
Speaker 7: missing piece of this story about what happened to her
Speaker 7: inside that house, and that she genuinely feared for her life,
Speaker 7: and that she for some reason didn't trust her driver either,
Speaker 7: and kept on going. She started to knock on doors
Speaker 7: in the neighborhood. The first person who sees her down
Speaker 7: the road a few doors down is Gus Colletti, an
Speaker 7: elderly man. He's up early because he and his wife
Speaker 7: are going to drive off for a day trip, so
Speaker 7: his lights on, which is probably why she came to
Speaker 7: the house. But he says that he's going to call
Speaker 7: the police when he sees her, and that just sense
Speaker 7: her shrieking and sending and screaming and running off again,
Speaker 7: so that that's sort of a false you know, that's
Speaker 7: a that's a dead end for her, and she keeps running.
Speaker 7: She knocks in a few more doors, and this time
Speaker 7: nobody comes out. Another neighbor calls nine to one one
Speaker 7: when they see her, but they don't come out and
Speaker 7: don't help her. And that is the last we know
Speaker 7: of what happened to Shannon, except that her body is
Speaker 7: found some time later.
Speaker 6: Is there sorry, is there any Is there any indication
Speaker 6: that there was What's the background of Joe Brewer.
Speaker 7: Joe Brewer is a sort of a you call him
Speaker 7: a playboy would be a bit of a stretch. He's
Speaker 7: a little too slovenly. He's the best image in my mind,
Speaker 7: you know, having seen him and heard him and talked
Speaker 7: with him now, is of Joey buttafuco. He's kind of
Speaker 7: a you know, of an oaf who laughs a lot
Speaker 7: and tries to act cool and isn't particularly a high
Speaker 7: class or charming guy. But is you know, very you know,
Speaker 7: has a high opinion of himself and likes to brag
Speaker 7: to people around him about what a lady's man he is,
Speaker 7: and he's not above hiring prostitutes to entertain his friends
Speaker 7: at parties.
Speaker 6: But in terms of any kind of criminal background, was there.
Speaker 7: No, No, there's no, There's no sense that he's had
Speaker 7: any sort of criminal background, except perhaps as a john.
Speaker 6: But not a hub about Michael Pack other than the
Speaker 6: rest related to the same industry that he's involved in.
Speaker 6: It was there any violence or anything to indicate whatsoever
Speaker 6: that he might be.
Speaker 7: He well, he is certainly kind of a sketchy guy.
Speaker 7: And there are two schools have thought about Michael Pack.
Speaker 7: One is that he's hiding a lot and is actually
Speaker 7: capable of terrible things. And the other school have thought
Speaker 7: about him is that he he's sort of a low
Speaker 7: level guy in terms of, you know, small time crime.
Speaker 7: He served sometime in a federal prison for misuse of
Speaker 7: a passport. What he was accused of doing and convicted
Speaker 7: of doing, was an immigration scandal, trying to he was
Speaker 7: flying out to be a the companion of someone who
Speaker 7: was being sneaked into the United States, and at customs
Speaker 7: he was stopped and it was clear that the two
Speaker 7: of them weren't really together, and he was arrested and
Speaker 7: did some time in a federal jail. But that's not
Speaker 7: violent crime, so it's unclear that he's ever had any
Speaker 7: experience in causing people harm.
Speaker 6: Now, one of the most amazing things is, of course
Speaker 6: the police responds here in police what they theorized happened
Speaker 6: or didn't happen? Tell us how the police proceed with
Speaker 6: this investigation.
Speaker 7: Well, the first indication that something's wrong is the nine
Speaker 7: to one one call. Right, she calls nine to one one.
Speaker 7: But what happens here is that she doesn't know where
Speaker 7: she is, and so the the operator, the Suffolk County
Speaker 7: operator for nine one one, Suffolk County is the county
Speaker 7: where Oak Beach is in quickly transfers her to the
Speaker 7: state nine to one one operator because she says something
Speaker 7: about Jones Beach. Now, for your listeners who don't understand
Speaker 7: the New York area, Jones Beach is an enormous state
Speaker 7: park that is a beautiful beach in Long Island, and
Speaker 7: that's very close to Oak Beach, and as far as
Speaker 7: major landmarks go, it's something that that someone like Shannon,
Speaker 7: who was unfamiliar with the area would be the only
Speaker 7: place around there that she knows about. So she's panicking.
Speaker 7: She's on the phone, and she says something about Jones Beach.
Speaker 7: The operator switches her over to this New York State operator.
Speaker 7: The New York State operator tries to get more information
Speaker 7: about where Shannon is, but never learns a thing, and
Speaker 7: so in a way, the nine to one to one call,
Speaker 7: even though it's twenty three minutes long, is something of
Speaker 7: a non starter. Now, we haven't heard every minute of
Speaker 7: that call because in New York State laws, they don't
Speaker 7: release nine one one tapes, particularly when they're you know,
Speaker 7: there's there are open cases going on, But as far
Speaker 7: as what the police have said about what's on the
Speaker 7: tape and what family members say they've been told by police,
Speaker 7: that's all there is. And so they don't even treat
Speaker 7: it as a missing person's case, and they certainly don't
Speaker 7: treat it as attempted murder. In fact, it sits there
Speaker 7: and that po least don't connect the dots between that
Speaker 7: car and the other nine to one one calls from
Speaker 7: Oak Beach for weeks, which seems a little outlandish in
Speaker 7: my opinion. I'm talking about two more nine to one
Speaker 7: one calls that were made, one by Gus Colletti, the neighbor,
Speaker 7: and another by another neighbor named Barbara Brennan. These were
Speaker 7: about a woman going screaming through Oak Beach about Shannon Gilbert.
Speaker 7: The police do respond to those calls. They do get
Speaker 7: there in a semi decent amount of time, something like
Speaker 7: less than twenty minutes after the second nine one one call,
Speaker 7: But by the time they get there, Shannon does not
Speaker 7: appear to be anywhere, and Michael Pack is gone as well.
Speaker 7: Michael Pack later told me that he threw up his
Speaker 7: hands after searching for a while and split. It doesn't
Speaker 7: seem like he actually spent that much time looking for her,
Speaker 7: to be honest, but that's what he says. And so
Speaker 7: the police come. But again, think about it. The police
Speaker 7: are not there to investigate an attack or an attempted murder,
Speaker 7: because no one's told them that she believes someone's trying
Speaker 7: to kill them, and they don't know about her own
Speaker 7: nine one one call. All they know is that a
Speaker 7: woman has been screaming in the running down the street
Speaker 7: and that now her and her companion, the driver, are gone.
Speaker 7: And so the police officer at that time kind of
Speaker 7: shrugs after spending some time there and says, oh, well,
Speaker 7: I guess they resolved whatever argument they were having. And
Speaker 7: he leaves again and he writes up the disappearance, but
Speaker 7: the incident, but it's not perceived as anything more than
Speaker 7: a curiosity, like a strange moment that happened at Oath Beach.
Speaker 7: So that's that's, you know, the morning of May one,
Speaker 7: twenty ten. It takes several weeks, perhaps even two months,
Speaker 7: before the missing person's report that Shannon Stanley filed in
Speaker 7: her hometown in Jersey City is actually connected to the
Speaker 7: events at Oak Beach and to the nine one one call,
Speaker 7: and by that time the trail is cold. Scous Coletti
Speaker 7: talks about a police officer coming in August to knock
Speaker 7: on his door and to interview him a second time
Speaker 7: about what was going on. By that time, the security
Speaker 7: video at Oak Beach had been taped over. No one
Speaker 7: in the community cared enough about what had happened to
Speaker 7: bother preserving what was on that video. Now there are
Speaker 7: conspiracy theories that say that they're covering up for each
Speaker 7: other and that there were things on that video that
Speaker 7: were potentially incriminating, but we may never know because that
Speaker 7: video was taped over and doesn't exist anymore. Well, so,
Speaker 7: you see, it's an investigation that falls through the cracks
Speaker 7: for logistical reasons, for very human frailty reasons, and just
Speaker 7: sort of the folly of bureaucracies. For technological reasons, they
Speaker 7: couldn't trace you're trying late and trace her cell phone
Speaker 7: call to nine one one, And then for reasons of apathy,
Speaker 7: the community didn't care enough to hang on to that
Speaker 7: security video, or perhaps they're hiding something months.
Speaker 6: Go by, what was Shannon's family's reaction.
Speaker 7: This is the interesting part. Her family and her boyfriend
Speaker 7: Alex all want to know what happened to her. Alex
Speaker 7: takes a trip within a day or so of Shannon
Speaker 7: being missing, and he goes out there once by himself
Speaker 7: and talks to Joe Brewer. He and Joe Brewer try
Speaker 7: to file a missing person's report for Shannon at the
Speaker 7: local police precinct in Suffolk County, and they practically get
Speaker 7: laughed out of there when they go in. The police say, oh,
Speaker 7: she's a prostitute, and they don't seem to care after
Speaker 7: hearing that. Also, she's in her twenties, she's not a
Speaker 7: small child, and so they think, well, wherever she is,
Speaker 7: she be where she wants to be. Maybe she found
Speaker 7: a better date. And then they say then they don't
Speaker 7: even accept her missing person's report. They say it has
Speaker 7: to be filed in the city where she resides, which
Speaker 7: is Jersey City, New Jersey. Her family eventually does, along
Speaker 7: with the boyfriend, file a report in Jersey City, and
Speaker 7: that's that report that eventually floats back to Suffolk County.
Speaker 7: But think of all the time that could have been
Speaker 7: saved if the police in Suffolk County had paid attention,
Speaker 7: had taken it seriously. Instead, they decided it wasn't their problem. Now,
Speaker 7: imagine for a minute that Shannon Gilbert wasn't a prostitute.
Speaker 7: Imagine if she was a middle class person, if she
Speaker 7: was the daughter of a doctor, or of a lawyer,
Speaker 7: or of a judge. Somehow I think the police would
Speaker 7: have snapped to attention and done a little bit more
Speaker 7: for her friends coming to say that something had gone
Speaker 7: wrong that night. Something would tell me that the community
Speaker 7: would have been compelled to turn over that security video
Speaker 7: within minutes or hours of her friends going to the
Speaker 7: Suffolk County Police. But none of that happened because of
Speaker 7: Shannon's line of work. The stories like that echo throughout
Speaker 7: Lost Girls. By the way, we learn about things like
Speaker 7: this happening with a lot of the other women as well,
Speaker 7: and then something sorry go ahead. Then something really peculiar happens,
Speaker 7: which I further detail in Lost Girls, which is a
Speaker 7: neighbor at Oak Beach, a doctor named Peter Hackett offers
Speaker 7: to help Shannon's boyfriend and spread the word about Shannon's
Speaker 7: disappearance in the community, and he gets Mary Gilbert's number.
Speaker 7: Mary is Shannon's mother and he calls her. He says
Speaker 7: he called to offer the assistance as the representative of
Speaker 7: the community of Oak Beach, but Mary says that the
Speaker 7: was actually far more peculiar than that. She feels that
Speaker 7: he was checking to make sure to see to to
Speaker 7: sort of cover his bases because he's hiding something. She
Speaker 7: says that he said that he runs a home for
Speaker 7: wayward girls.
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Speaker 7: And that Shannon had spent some time with him, and
Speaker 7: that he had tried to help her that day that morning,
Speaker 7: and that now she wasn't with him, and he just
Speaker 7: wanted to make sure that she got home all right.
Speaker 7: She feels in hindsight that the doctor was on a
Speaker 7: fishing expedition calling her up, trying to suss her out
Speaker 7: and play her in some way because he knew more
Speaker 7: about the disappearance than meets the eye, And that's when
Speaker 7: the conspiracy theories really spin. All through Lost Girls, there
Speaker 7: are neighbors that Oak Beach who are convinced that the
Speaker 7: doctor saw her that night, that he tried to help
Speaker 7: her that night. There are some neighbors who say that
Speaker 7: they even overheard him saying that he did. He of
Speaker 7: course denies all of this, and I work I should
Speaker 7: before just in the interest of fairness, I worked very
Speaker 7: hard to portray the situation fairly. Because the doctor has
Speaker 7: his own you know, he defends himself. He says, that
Speaker 7: all this is completely wrong, But at the same time
Speaker 7: he also deceived the public. He denied that he was
Speaker 7: ever on the phone with Mary Gilbert. He denied it
Speaker 7: for a year until finally he was forced to admit
Speaker 7: it and so and even when approached after that, he
Speaker 7: continued to dissemble when talking about this case. So either
Speaker 7: he is incredibly naive and defensive and scared about all
Speaker 7: the attention for no good reason at all, or perhaps
Speaker 7: he knows more about what happened that morning than he
Speaker 7: cares to admit. The conspiracy theories about him are are
Speaker 7: all over the place. Some say that he, you know,
Speaker 7: should be a suspect of the case. He of course
Speaker 7: denies this. Other people say that he was a bystander
Speaker 7: who is covering up for someone else. Then there's the
Speaker 7: added complication that he has physical disabilities. He walks with
Speaker 7: a prosthetic leg, and would he actually have the ability
Speaker 7: to physically overpower Shannon. The speculation runs wild, but the
Speaker 7: police went an entirely different direction. After interviewing Brewer and
Speaker 7: Michael Pack and doctor Hackett and others in the community,
Speaker 7: they decided that this was not a criminal matter, that
Speaker 7: this was an accident, that Shannon had a bad reaction
Speaker 7: to drugs and was going through psychosis, and that she
Speaker 7: ran off, And they were convinced for a year and
Speaker 7: a half that wherever they found her, it would be
Speaker 7: in the water, perhaps anywhere else. She would not be
Speaker 7: a murder victim, that she would be a victim of circumstance.
Speaker 7: Now this is just if true, it's highly coincidental. Given
Speaker 7: the fact that four other women just like her, women
Speaker 7: in their twenties, who advertised on Craigslist, were found just
Speaker 7: three miles away on the side of Ocean Parkway in
Speaker 7: Gilgo Beach. It would be incredible to think that her
Speaker 7: disappearance led to the search that led to the discovery
Speaker 7: of these other four women, and yet the cases are
Speaker 7: somehow not connected. You can tell that this is becomes
Speaker 7: a slightly convoluted set of events with lots of different theories.
Speaker 7: What Lost Girls tries to do is untangle all these
Speaker 7: theories and get to the bottom of what might be
Speaker 7: behind them.
Speaker 6: Okay, now you've jumped ahead just a little bit here.
Speaker 6: The police figure that she drowned in the marsh or
Speaker 6: something like that. But again, what was the evidence other
Speaker 6: than that she was drug crazed I mean, maybe they
Speaker 6: had some evidence or testimony to that effect, but where
Speaker 6: was this How did they come to that conclusion of
Speaker 6: drowning without any body.
Speaker 7: That's a very good question. And some say that it
Speaker 7: was merely a pressure that the police commissioner was feeling
Speaker 7: to get this case out of the way, to just
Speaker 7: sort of clear the case. But I also believe that
Speaker 7: he was playing the averages. He thinks that her case
Speaker 7: is a little different from the others because she had
Speaker 7: a driver, and that the killer's m was to try
Speaker 7: to get these women alone, and so he thinks that
Speaker 7: this is the police commissioner at the time, Richard Dormer,
Speaker 7: believes that it just doesn't make sense that she would
Speaker 7: be targeted by the same killer for this reason and
Speaker 7: this reason alone. And so from there he he starts to,
Speaker 7: you know, unfurl a whole other scenario where there's no
Speaker 7: foul play at all, and where the neighbors are innocent bystanders,
Speaker 7: and where she just sort of runs off and dies.
Speaker 7: But I try to make clear and lost girls that
Speaker 7: this is a this is more than just a strange
Speaker 7: and outlandish theory. It also is kind of polluted by
Speaker 7: this old fashioned Victorian sense of prostitutes. It's almost it
Speaker 7: suggests that Shannon Gilbert died of hysteria or of a
Speaker 7: broken heart, or of melancholy. You know, that her soul
Speaker 7: was somehow driven asunder by a life living on the streets,
Speaker 7: and that just is it just doesn't seem quite right,
Speaker 7: particularly since there's so many inconsistencies in the doctor's story
Speaker 7: and so many inconsistencies in the the entire it was
Speaker 7: an accident theory.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it was irresponsible to sort of make
Speaker 6: that kind of conclusion. So, I mean it there seemed
Speaker 6: to be I don't know about the pressures, because, like
Speaker 6: you say, there's a Lackaday's lackadaisical attitude. Anyway, let's get
Speaker 6: to now the discovery, because it's in a couple a
Speaker 6: couple of days to get the four bodies of and
Speaker 6: we will name these people. Maybe you can go ahead
Speaker 6: and name the women that are found. First. There was
Speaker 6: Maureen Brainerd Barnes found first.
Speaker 7: She was the first to disappear, but it was Melissa
Speaker 7: Bartholemy's body that was found first, and then two days
Speaker 7: later the bodies of the others of the other three
Speaker 7: that which would be Maureene Brainerd Barnes and Amberlin Costello
Speaker 7: and Megan Waterman.
Speaker 6: Just without getting into bigger details, just give us the
Speaker 6: description of how the women were found and where exactly
Speaker 6: they were found in just the condition of the bodies.
Speaker 7: From what we know from police, and this may be
Speaker 7: incomplete information. The bodies are found roughly about a tenth
Speaker 7: of a mile away from each other, so pretty close
Speaker 7: to each other. All technically in Gilgo Beach, but really
Speaker 7: the side of a highway, a long straight highway called
Speaker 7: Ocean Parkway that connects the rest of Long Island to
Speaker 7: these Barrier Island beaches. Ocean Parkway is distinctive in that
Speaker 7: at night you can tell when you're alone because it's
Speaker 7: a straight shot at night with very few street lights.
Speaker 7: And so if you are, let's say, a killer trying
Speaker 7: to dispose of four bodies close to one another, you
Speaker 7: can pull over and you can know pretty much that
Speaker 7: no one is watching you, because you know there are
Speaker 7: no headlights coming from miles away. And that is presumably
Speaker 7: what this killer did. He pulled over, dumped a body,
Speaker 7: drove a little bit, dumped the second, jumped a third,
Speaker 7: and dumped a fourth and got out of there. But
Speaker 7: they all are very close to one another. Burlap was
Speaker 7: found around the bodies. Perhaps they were shrouded in burlap,
Speaker 7: perhaps they were in burlap bags and the skeletons. The
Speaker 7: bodies themselves did not seem to leave. It seemed to
Speaker 7: be stripped of any flesh, and this is interesting. It's
Speaker 7: unclear whether this was a function of the weather, whether
Speaker 7: they'd been left there a long time, or whether the
Speaker 7: killer had actually gone to work on them to make
Speaker 7: sure that they were this way. In any case, this
Speaker 7: is a methodical disposal of bodies, one that has great
Speaker 7: intentionality behind it, with a real eye for detail, And
Speaker 7: the fact that they were located so close together suggests
Speaker 7: to many profilers that this killer wanted to remember exactly
Speaker 7: where they were, wanted to be able to drive by
Speaker 7: any time and relive the experience of having killed them.
Speaker 7: Wanted to continue his relationship with these women well beyond
Speaker 7: the act of killing them, wanted to know every murder
Speaker 7: like this is an act of of violence more than
Speaker 7: of anything else, but it's also it's also about domination
Speaker 7: and control, and to control every aspect of their body
Speaker 7: disposal seems important to this killer.
Speaker 6: How did how did the bodies come to be discovered,
Speaker 6: and what the circumstances led to that.
Speaker 7: Well, we'll go back to Shannon Gilbert's disappearance in twenty ten.
Speaker 7: The last time the police seemed to come to Oak
Speaker 7: Beach was in August. And then, as far as the
Speaker 7: neighbors were concerned, this wasn't you know, this was a
Speaker 7: missing person's case that might have even been resolved for
Speaker 7: all they knew. It wasn't in the papers, nobody cared,
Speaker 7: and as far as the media was concerned. But because
Speaker 7: it was a missing person's case on record, it was
Speaker 7: a perfect case for the cadaver dog unit in Suffolk
Speaker 7: County to use as a training exercise. And so you know,
Speaker 7: of course, we all know that the after the first
Speaker 7: forty eight hours of a missing person's case, it becomes
Speaker 7: likely that the person has died. And so in this case,
Speaker 7: an officer in Suffolk County who had a cadaver dog
Speaker 7: was simply of the opinion that Shannon Gilbert's body had
Speaker 7: to be somewhere, and why not use a dog on
Speaker 7: a training exercise to try to find it. So he
Speaker 7: would go out from time to time, and he tried
Speaker 7: the neighborhood and didn't find anything. And he tried one
Speaker 7: side of the highway, didn't find anything, and then he
Speaker 7: went to the other side of the highway, and sure enough,
Speaker 7: three miles down from the Oak Beach entrance. In December
Speaker 7: of that same year of twenty ten, seven months after
Speaker 7: Shannon disappeared, they found those first four bodies. Then the
Speaker 7: winter came. The snow made it impossible to search for
Speaker 7: more bodies. But at the end of March and beginning
Speaker 7: of April they found five more bodies, and some of
Speaker 7: them they all were different, They weren't in burlap, some
Speaker 7: of them were not complete skeletons. Some of them later
Speaker 7: on became linked to remains that had been left in
Speaker 7: other parts of Long Island. Years earlier. A torso left
Speaker 7: several miles away of one victim. Now there was a
Speaker 7: leg from that same victim found. And none of these
Speaker 7: victims have been identified the way that the first four have,
Speaker 7: except for those that except for another prostitute named Jessica Taylor,
Speaker 7: who had disappeared several years before, and they don't quite
Speaker 7: fit the same exact profile as these first four women
Speaker 7: in Burlap. One of them is a small Asian man,
Speaker 7: another one is a toddler who appears to be related
Speaker 7: to a woman who was found several miles away, but
Speaker 7: the police commissioner at the time, Richard Dormer, was of
Speaker 7: the opinion that they really all could have been killed
Speaker 7: by the same killer. He has a theory that the
Speaker 7: killer when he first started killing, had a little less
Speaker 7: control over who his victims were. It was who he
Speaker 7: ever picked up, whoever happened to be in the right
Speaker 7: opportunity for. But then with the advent of the Internet,
Speaker 7: he was able to actually get on the phone to
Speaker 7: find exactly the right person for him. He was actually
Speaker 7: able to go shopping for the perfect victim for him,
Speaker 7: and so he became more selective and the victims became
Speaker 7: more similar to one another. He also believes it's one
Speaker 7: killer because he again, he's a cop. He's playing the averages.
Speaker 7: He just can't believe that there would be two serial killers,
Speaker 7: or more than one killer deciding to leave bodies in
Speaker 7: roughly more or less the same exact spot. It just
Speaker 7: doesn't seem like it statistically likely to happen. But there
Speaker 7: are a lot of people who disagree with that police commissioner,
Speaker 7: including the district attorney in the area, Thomas Spoda, who
Speaker 7: has went on the record very early saying that it's
Speaker 7: not clear that there's one killer, that no one should
Speaker 7: believe it as yet, that it could be just that
Speaker 7: it is a very good, you know, practically good dumping
Speaker 7: ground for bodies, much the same way that the swans
Speaker 7: and swamps of New Jersey might have been the Netlands
Speaker 7: before they built the football arena, or perhaps some areas
Speaker 7: in Staten Island for mob hits. That this is just
Speaker 7: one place where people leave a lot of bodies.
Speaker 6: It must have been some other what you know, the
Speaker 6: DA and the police are, like you say, with an
Speaker 6: ongoing open investigation, are not going to reveal every single
Speaker 6: detail that will show to demonstrate to the public that
Speaker 6: there are differences in say burial or some of those things.
Speaker 6: So I think the word of the DA is interesting.
Speaker 6: But but then again, the Police commission has Police commissioner
Speaker 6: has his theory. So I'm very intrigued by that kind
Speaker 6: of argument between those two people that should be basically
Speaker 6: on the same side.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's deeply troubling to the families in this case
Speaker 7: that they weren't on the same page for a long time.
Speaker 7: Strictly from a practical standpoint, let's say, God willing, there
Speaker 7: is a suspect in this case, and that person is
Speaker 7: arrested and brought to trial. It would be a very
Speaker 7: easy thing for the suspect's defense lawyer to get up
Speaker 7: and try to pick apart the prosecution's case by talking
Speaker 7: about how everyone in law enforcement had differing opinions and
Speaker 7: we're fighting over exactly what has happened here. It just
Speaker 7: isn't it isn't good for the prosecution to be doing this.
Speaker 7: And so in Lost Girls you hear the story of
Speaker 7: how the commissioner was replaced with someone who is much
Speaker 7: more in step with what the district attorney believes, and
Speaker 7: how they've been in lockstep ever since and are trying
Speaker 7: to learn from that mistake. But in some sense that
Speaker 7: the damage has been done.
Speaker 6: Well, it's interesting too, the district attorney isn't just pressure
Speaker 6: to lump them all together and then hope, you know,
Speaker 6: hope for the very very best that you would grab
Speaker 6: one suspect and then it would be easy, under the
Speaker 6: light of all the passion, to be able to lump
Speaker 6: all of them, and he would have no way of
Speaker 6: proving otherwise that suspect. Meanwhile, there's another killer of still
Speaker 6: roaming the streets.
Speaker 7: So yeah, I mean you have to wonder how much
Speaker 7: of this is about closing cases and or how much
Speaker 7: of it is about pr about about containing people's expectations
Speaker 7: and hopes what might be possible or for their fears.
Speaker 7: You know, one person thinks it's a good thing to
Speaker 7: say that there might be more than one killer. Another
Speaker 7: person might think, well, that's terrible in terms of you know,
Speaker 7: public hysteria, to think that there's more than one killer
Speaker 7: that's unsolved. It's a bad image for the police department.
Speaker 7: So self interest plays a role here, I believe.
Speaker 6: But it is interesting, very very interesting Richard Dormer position
Speaker 6: in that his theory has as far as my research goes,
Speaker 6: I don't think he's that far off. I mean, we
Speaker 6: might watch TV and there's some rules on criminal minds,
Speaker 6: but definitely there's probably rules and rules are meant to
Speaker 6: be broken in terms of stereotyping what a serial killer
Speaker 6: can do and can't do. In terms of changing and
Speaker 6: we have seen serial killers change their signature, method of operation.
Speaker 6: There are things that could happen, and at least Dormer
Speaker 6: seems to have some pretty good evidence to back up
Speaker 6: his theory.
Speaker 7: I think that's a strong point. He also points out
Speaker 7: by the way that he thinks that the unidentified people
Speaker 7: are quite likely also prostitute. Now, of course, he has
Speaker 7: no real evidence to lead him to this theory the
Speaker 7: only and he had freely admitted at the time talking
Speaker 7: to me that it's just a theory because how could
Speaker 7: he know for sure. But he thinks that the fact
Speaker 7: that they have gone unidentified for so long, particularly a
Speaker 7: small child a toddler, suggests that these people were really
Speaker 7: living off the grid in a profound way, that unlike
Speaker 7: the women and lost girls, they really had no connections
Speaker 7: in life, and that they were engaging in survival sex.
Speaker 7: They think that the clothing that the Asian man was
Speaker 7: found with was women's clothing. They think that the toddler
Speaker 7: traveled around with the mother doing calls, which is not
Speaker 7: unheard of at the low end in prostitution, particularly if
Speaker 7: you're a street walker. And again he believes that the
Speaker 7: killer may have evolved. He may have gone out looking
Speaker 7: for whatever hooker he could find in the beginning, and
Speaker 7: then as time went on, decided he wanted to be
Speaker 7: more selected, and there was the Internet providing him with
Speaker 7: the perfect shopping list.
Speaker 6: I want to ask this question too, did the does
Speaker 6: craiglist provide did for a Craigslist and this case provide
Speaker 6: any kind of problems inherently for the police in terms
Speaker 6: of trying to identify that John Joe Brewer. Was it
Speaker 6: hard to do or was it easy through Craigslist? Was
Speaker 6: it easy for police to be able to get that information?
Speaker 7: Well? I don't think they needed Craiglist in Joe Brewer's case,
Speaker 7: because he was you know, he was ready to admit
Speaker 7: that he contacted her through Craigslist and brought her there.
Speaker 7: He has not admitted that he had sex with her,
Speaker 7: but he had said he was just a lonely guy
Speaker 7: and wanted to have some company for the evening.
Speaker 6: But okay, well, my question my question is then again,
Speaker 6: in your examination of how prostitution has changed through social
Speaker 6: media like Craigslist, is it easy you're for police to
Speaker 6: be able in a case like this, and pardon me
Speaker 6: using a super bad example, but in a case similar
Speaker 6: like this where they wouldn't know they would want to
Speaker 6: know the identity of the John, is it is harder
Speaker 6: or easier?
Speaker 7: I think it's extraordinarily hard because because the way that
Speaker 7: these listings work is if you're you put a listing
Speaker 7: on you you post your name and a name and
Speaker 7: a photo and maybe a sentence saying what you're offering,
Speaker 7: and then you list a cell phone number, and the
Speaker 7: the john's are all on that page, right, But they
Speaker 7: aren't clicking anything on that page. They aren't clicking through
Speaker 7: and ordering a prostitute for via Craigslist. They're just scribbling
Speaker 7: down that phone number and calling that phone number. And
Speaker 7: let's say that woman has a disposable cell phone that's
Speaker 7: made out to a phony person, and or or maybe
Speaker 7: she shares the phone with six women, and you know,
Speaker 7: by the time that woman is dead, the police can
Speaker 7: go back and see who is looking at Craigslist that
Speaker 7: day and clicking on the adult services page. But that's
Speaker 7: still only in thereror is it down to hundreds of people,
Speaker 7: perhaps even thousands of people. So it's not exactly a
Speaker 7: dead end for the police. But it's not a slam
Speaker 7: dunk either, particularly if women are using burners third party
Speaker 7: cell phones, whatever ability the NSA might have to triangulate
Speaker 7: exactly what these phones are doing. You've got to know
Speaker 7: who the phones belong to, and when they belong to them,
Speaker 7: and whose hands they're in, so it gets complicated, but
Speaker 7: there is not a lot of information, given that this
Speaker 7: is an open case, about exactly what the police know
Speaker 7: about who called these women and phone what their phone
Speaker 7: calls were. It does seem as if some of their
Speaker 7: johns were chased down early in the investigation and interviewed,
Speaker 7: but no suspects were named, and no persons of interests
Speaker 7: were named, and it's seems as if the police have
Speaker 7: come up dry, which is astonishing when you consider the
Speaker 7: original Craigslist killer, John Markoff from Boston, was found within
Speaker 7: a day, right, But I think the difference there is
Speaker 7: that he had hired someone in a massage category, someone
Speaker 7: who lived, you know, wasn't who is living slightly more
Speaker 7: above board and whose son can be traced, and whose
Speaker 7: disappearance was taken more seriously.
Speaker 6: Now, we don't have the necessary time, and I don't
Speaker 6: think that you would want to go through everybody's history.
Speaker 6: But let's say let's take one of the young women
Speaker 6: and talk about her life right from the beginning, and
Speaker 6: because you really do, this really is a almost what
Speaker 6: people have described, almost a tribute to the to these
Speaker 6: women because so many people pay lip service to this
Speaker 6: idea that well, you know, prostitutes are people too, you know,
Speaker 6: and even that just sounds ridiculous that they would have
Speaker 6: to put it that way. So the thing is without
Speaker 6: being judgmental, because that's what you haven't done here, But
Speaker 6: you have reported on all the little snippets that you've
Speaker 6: heard from overhearing somebody say at a vigil, you know,
Speaker 6: all this for a whore, you know, So I'd like
Speaker 6: to hear how one woman went and sort of went
Speaker 6: off the rails, or at least how she wound up
Speaker 6: in prostitution, and why and what the family's reaction was.
Speaker 6: Tell us, give us the trajectory of one woman, and
Speaker 6: so you can the audience can clearly get a sense
Speaker 6: of what you bring to this really added dimension to
Speaker 6: these people's lives rather than again, just a little bit
Speaker 6: of lip service about how they're just regular human beings.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Dan, I appreciate that. I really appreciate the
Speaker 7: chance and lost girls, and I'm grateful to everyone I
Speaker 7: spoke with, including and especially their family members, because the
Speaker 7: effort here isn't I wasn't out to canonize these women
Speaker 7: or turn them into saints. But at the same time,
Speaker 7: I'm aware there's a lot of victim blaming going on here,
Speaker 7: and that these women were far more than that shouldn't
Speaker 7: just they shouldn't just be written off, and the causes
Speaker 7: of what brought them to this it really deserves attention,
Speaker 7: and that there's a lot about them that was they
Speaker 7: were that made them much more human. I believed in humanization,
Speaker 7: and everyone in this book, with the exception of the killer,
Speaker 7: of course, is treated humanely, with a lot of fairness.
Speaker 7: And I'll talk about Maureen Brainerd Barnes, who was adored
Speaker 7: by her family and was a linchpin in her family.
Speaker 7: She was the oldest of three children, and her sister
Speaker 7: and her brother in living in their twenties, were you know,
Speaker 7: we're a tight knit group who cared for one another
Speaker 7: and looked after one another all the time. You know,
Speaker 7: she was twenty four years old, she was when she
Speaker 7: first got into prostitution. She had one child, she was
Speaker 7: not holding down a steady job, and she was suddenly
Speaker 7: aware of how much money she could make just in
Speaker 7: one night. And given the you know, given all of
Speaker 7: the pressures of her life, the childcare pressures, the rent pressures,
Speaker 7: to be able to make that much that fast with
Speaker 7: something she decided to try, and from there she decided,
Speaker 7: you know, to take trips to New York for one
Speaker 7: or two days at a time. She developed a system
Speaker 7: of rules. She became very very responsible about the way
Speaker 7: that she could stay safe. I interviewed a friend of
Speaker 7: hers who went down with her for a few trips,
Speaker 7: and she talked about just how responsible Marine was being,
Speaker 7: how safe she was being, how she wasn't taking any risks.
Speaker 7: And then toward the end of one weekend, she lets
Speaker 7: down her guard and sure enough disappears. After a day,
Speaker 7: no one knows what to do about it. They go
Speaker 7: and the hotel staff claims never to have seen her.
Speaker 7: The police in the hometown of Groton, Connecticut or are
Speaker 7: of no use to them whatsoever. The NYPD does barely
Speaker 7: anything for them either. It's two thousand and seven when
Speaker 7: Maureen disappears, and if you can believe that, it takes
Speaker 7: you know, three and a half years before they get
Speaker 7: any sense of what happened to her. And they to
Speaker 7: this day they have no idea how a woman who
Speaker 7: swore she would never even leave Manhattan for a call
Speaker 7: ended up on a beach in Long Island.
Speaker 6: Interesting and the idea of prostitution itself. What does all
Speaker 6: this writing this book, researching this book, talking to these families,
Speaker 6: talking to people that don't necessarily condone it but understand
Speaker 6: it as a way of life and in the simple
Speaker 6: economics when you look at making ten times as much
Speaker 6: money as you normally could make, and you're lucky if
Speaker 6: you can get part time work. These women are young
Speaker 6: and attractive and there is a demand. Not everybody demonizes
Speaker 6: this profession. Obviously, There's people like Joe Brewer and his friends,
Speaker 6: and a lot of people, a lot of people, respectable people,
Speaker 6: all kinds of people take this prostitution very lightly and
Speaker 6: then and there is no moral judgment. So what was
Speaker 6: the overall out of these four women, five women, what
Speaker 6: was the overall attitude why they engaged in prostitution despite
Speaker 6: everything else other than the economics, which again is a
Speaker 6: big factor. But was there did you find a normalization
Speaker 6: of this of sort of a just looking at it
Speaker 6: as work?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, and there were very personal reasons why some of
Speaker 7: the women ended up in this situation. And you know,
Speaker 7: one of them was, you know, did have sexual issues
Speaker 7: based on being an abuse victim, and another one was
Speaker 7: roped in somewhat by a boyfriend who acted as a pimp.
Speaker 7: But what they all shared was a sense of how
Speaker 7: the money, it wasn't just money it was it gave
Speaker 7: them agency. It gave them power over their own lives.
Speaker 7: It gave them, whether it was authority in their family
Speaker 7: or self sufficiency financially in their lives. It also meant
Speaker 7: that they, to a great extent, could be their own boss.
Speaker 7: They wouldn't have to be beholden to anyone. Maureen enjoyed
Speaker 7: how it meant that she could be independent from any
Speaker 7: boyfriend and not have to work for any escort service.
Speaker 7: Melissa Barthelmy had a pimp for a while. She thought
Speaker 7: that Craigslist could liberate her from that tent and help
Speaker 7: her make enough money to get out of this forever.
Speaker 7: They all had plans to not do this forever, and
Speaker 7: they all knew that there was absolutely no other way
Speaker 7: in their lives that they could achieve those plans as
Speaker 7: quickly as if they if they didn't do this.
Speaker 6: Why do you think society, of all the evolutionary processes
Speaker 6: that we've gone through, where we've had sort of seen
Speaker 6: the light of day from all the barbaric practices and
Speaker 6: all the outmoded ideas. Why is it still hooker dead?
Speaker 6: Why are these people that are most vulnerable Again, we
Speaker 6: don't seem to demonize the high class stripper, the Heidi
Speaker 6: Flices and the escorts that you can go through a
Speaker 6: phone book in Canada like it's pizza, But the vulnerable
Speaker 6: woman on the street or the again the woman it's
Speaker 6: it took some chances here somehow. Why is society still
Speaker 6: have to demonize victims.
Speaker 7: In that sense?
Speaker 6: We didn't you cut out for about a minute or
Speaker 6: so or thirty sevens.
Speaker 7: Oh my gosh, that's so strange.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm get lost you so oh again?
Speaker 7: Yeah I heard one question. Yeah, well, you know that
Speaker 7: it's interesting that this this this issue of processutes being
Speaker 7: mass murdered, it cuts across time and and and eras
Speaker 7: like Jack the Ripper, and also through different societies. I mean,
Speaker 7: in Canada there's there's the there are some very grizzly
Speaker 7: cases with many many victims. I think it's easily it's
Speaker 7: easy to say that the predators go after people who
Speaker 7: are vulnerable, and prostitutes are vulnerable because they work in
Speaker 7: the shadows, and prostitutes work in the shadows because of
Speaker 7: the social stigma that has been attached to them for decades,
Speaker 7: for centuries, and the irony is that the demand for
Speaker 7: sex has never gone away, that the Internet has made
Speaker 7: it more accessible than ever because the Internet affords you
Speaker 7: a certain amount of privacy, not just the prostitute, but
Speaker 7: the johns can go on anonymously no one. You don't
Speaker 7: have to go to a bad part of town anymore.
Speaker 7: And so there was a sense in the last ten
Speaker 7: years or so that prostitution could become professionalized, that everyone
Speaker 7: could be like the Mayflower madam, because they'd be working
Speaker 7: out of their own home. They wouldn't have to be
Speaker 7: hooked up with some sleazy people. They could pay their
Speaker 7: way through college, do whatever they wanted, and it's all
Speaker 7: consensual and the victimless crime. And yet the killers among
Speaker 7: us still see these women as vulnerable, and in many
Speaker 7: cases they are, and they be in so Craigslist and
Speaker 7: Backpage and all these services became a shopping list for
Speaker 7: these predators. It's really quite something. But you asked a
Speaker 7: really about the social stigma, and I think that is that,
Speaker 7: along with class, is really the root of the discussion
Speaker 7: and lost girls. And I don't come out one way
Speaker 7: or another pro or con about legalizing prostitution. I deliberately
Speaker 7: set out that argument because I think that that it's
Speaker 7: the stigma of prostitution most of all, that can be
Speaker 7: mitigated even if you don't decriminalize it. I mean, imagine
Speaker 7: if prostitutes were allowed immunity if they told police about
Speaker 7: threats to their well being. Imagine a world where police
Speaker 7: actually cared more if a prostitute was in danger and
Speaker 7: didn't just laugh at them if they came to them. Certainly,
Speaker 7: if you're a low level pot dealer and somebody threatens
Speaker 7: your life, you could probably get immunity if you went
Speaker 7: to the police, but not if you're a prostitute. There's
Speaker 7: misogyny at work here, there's class arguments at work here,
Speaker 7: And I think that my hope is that a book
Speaker 7: like this changes people's views a little bit, helps change
Speaker 7: the discussion, a little bit, helps people understand that these
Speaker 7: people's lives work something.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yes, absolutely, And it really is a tribute to
Speaker 6: these women because normally the buck stops right at the
Speaker 6: newspaper headline and the short article with all the misinformation,
Speaker 6: and that's it. We don't ever look at this any differently.
Speaker 6: And there's realms of book realms of books the same
Speaker 6: way where it's I mean it's not like they're nasty
Speaker 6: about it, but it's certainly not doesn't really elevate these
Speaker 6: people to the same level. I mean, I can't believe
Speaker 6: that there's so much effort in humanizing serial killers fictionally
Speaker 6: and nonfiction wise, and then very little attempt to humanize victory.
Speaker 6: People say, well, innocent victims, Well, all victims are innocent,
Speaker 6: and the killers are the only people that we should revile.
Speaker 6: Never for a moment it can anybody be responsible for
Speaker 6: their own death.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I mean they think of all the high risk
Speaker 7: professions out there, and you know where death happens that
Speaker 7: people don't blame the victim. We're very willing to do
Speaker 7: it for a prostitute.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's very very odd. Well, I want to congratulate
Speaker 6: you on this, Robert. I think this is a really
Speaker 6: really interesting book and very very important. Again, very many
Speaker 6: true crime books are formulaic, and I don't know if
Speaker 6: I look at this a true crime, but this is
Speaker 6: the genre that it's in. But it's a very very
Speaker 6: very fascinating read and ride for everyone to enter into
Speaker 6: these women's lives and really get a picture of a
Speaker 6: serial killer hunting for just regular folks just like you
Speaker 6: and I, and we're all again terrorized by the specter
Speaker 6: of this serial killer. And you've really captured the entire
Speaker 6: feel this media circus, the victims families, maybe even their overreaction.
Speaker 6: It's a very very interesting and incredible tale. And I
Speaker 6: want to thank you very much for coming on and
Speaker 6: talking about Lost Girls.
Speaker 7: I really appreciate it. Dan, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, and you have a great night,
Speaker 6: and I hope to talk to you again soon.
Speaker 7: Good night, thank you, good night.