The Gilgo Beach case has drawn immense public attention since human remains were found along a New York beach highway more than a decade ago.
The mystery attracted national headlines for many years and the unsolved killings were the subject of the Netflix film "Lost Girls. The deaths of 11 people whose remains were found in and have long stumped investigators.
Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers. Several of the bodies were found in thickets along a sandy stretch known as Gilgo Beach. Shannan Gilbert's disappearance in triggered the hunt that exposed the larger mystery. A year-old sex worker, she vanished after leaving a client's house on foot in the seafront community of Oak Beach, disappearing into the marsh. Months later, a police officer and his cadaver dog were looking for her body in the thicket along nearby Ocean Parkway when they happened upon the remains of a different woman.
Within days, three other bodies were found, all within a short walk of one another. By spring , that number had climbed to 10 sets of human remains -- those of eight women, one man and one toddler. Some were later linked to dismembered body parts found elsewhere on Long Island, making for a puzzling crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort community on Fire Island and out to far eastern Long Island. Gilbert's body was found in December , about 3 miles 5 kilometers east of where the other 10 sets were discovered.
They are linked to the deaths of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. While Heuermann is not charged in that death, the indictment said he is the"prime suspect in her death. They are known as the "Gilgo Four," and were each found within a quarter mile of one another.
