It hadn’t been that long, really, since news of two active serial killers prowling the streets of New York had been the front page kind. In 1991… 1992… and 1993, Joel Rifkin and Robert Schulman simultaneously targeted the young women of metropolitan New York in separate but equally evil campaigns of terror. Murders. Dismemberments.
Rifkin had been killing for a year or more by the time Robert Schulman joined him in terrorizing New York and they lurked gotham synchronously until Rifkin was arrested in 1993… almost like a competition some say, even to this day. Rifkin led police on a high speed chase after they observed his truck on Long Island’s Southern State Parkway. He crashed his truck on the courthouse steps in Mineola in Nassau County Long Island. The decomposing body of his final victim, Tiffany Bresciani was found under a tarp in the back.
Schulman continued on for two and a half years more. The Associated Press reported in April 1996, Schulman, a Long Island postal worker, picked up prostitutes and brought them to his Hicksville home, where he murdered and dismembered them in his bedroom. Schulman was tracked down by police detectives looking for a blue Cadillac eyewitnesses had reported–a car that would be later linked to him.
It was before the information revolution and the 24 hour news culture and information came to us a little less frequently then, printed in the dailies, viewed in newscasts from TVs that were just learning to give us 50 or 60 channels and broadcast to us as radio in our cars on the way to work and school. No internet. No mobile phone. No pocket or wearable computers. No texting. We didn’t get the news as often back then, but when something bubbled through to the mainstream media, it usually meant something, and this did.
It was a shock to think two serial killers could stalk the same hunting ground at the same time. Two. It felt like a benchmark. The kind of thing that made your grandpa slap his leg and ask What is the world coming to? This, for sure, was the sign that modern society was about to crumble… Two.
A few years later in Manorville, a killer they called The Butcher stalked the pine barrens two thirds of the way from New York City to the northeast end of the Island in Montauk. Murders and dismemberment.
And then, just one decade into the new millennium, people were saying it again. There are not one, but two serial killers simultaneously stalking young women and sex workers on Long Island. And guess what? These murders are happening just 50 minutes down the road from Manorville.
Is the Long Island Serial Killer really one killer, or are there two? Should we really be asking “Who are the Long Island Serial Killers?” Right now, today, it is a controversial question.
There are those who theorize the Gilgo Beach 4 might be the work of a different predator than the killer of the women whose remains were found later to the northeast. The Gilgo Beach victims were buried next to each other in burlap sacks, their bodies intact. The remains found to the northeast in 2011 were from victims who had been largely dismembered, not buried, and no burlap sacks. Some were not even complete bodies, just body parts.
There are also those who believe the opposite… that a more successful sole killer has been roaming the Island for decades. Maybe the Manorville Butcher and the Long Island Serial Killer are one and the same–their crimes separated only by twenty-some years and a three cigarette drive down the highway. The Visalia Ransacker, East Area Rapist, and the original Nightstalker were crime sprees we would later understand to be all perpetrated by a single man–the alleged Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo. So it is not far-fetched to believe the Manorville Butcher and Long Island Serial Killer could be one and the same.
[Richard Dormer announces discovery of Shannan]
And then there’s the Shannan Gilbert question. The official law enforcement position is, Shannan Gilbert, the call girl whose disappearance led to the discovery of the Gilgo Beach 4, died of exposure. She wandered into the marsh, possibly in an altered state-of-mind, not dressed for the weather. As her body temperature dropped, she experienced a common reaction to hypothermia… she felt hot and stripped off her clothes in freezing cold weather. Her body was found a short distance from her pants… her purse… her shoes. An accidental death from exposure and possible drowning in the marsh. Simply a coincidence that Shannan Gilbert wandered to her death in a dumping ground for at least one serial killer.
That’s the official position.
[Sarra Gilbert audio]
That’s Sarra Gilbert, younger sister of Shannan Gilbert talking to 48 Hours about the danger her sister faced working as an escort, and she sees it from the perspective that her sister did not die a natural death of exposure in a marsh. Rather, she was murdered by the Long Island Serial Killer.
There are those who would remind us, however, there was a problem with mental illness in Shannan’s family and Shannan suffered from it and so did Sarra. Five years after Shannon’s remains were found, that young woman we just heard from, her younger sister Sarra, killed their mother, Mari Gilbert with a knife in her New York apartment. Family Attorney John Ray said Sarra Gilbert suffered from serious mental disabilities and had been previously charged with fatally stabbing her own dog.
It is hard to know what to think about the death of Shannan Gilbert, and how it relates to the Long Island Killer case.
If the death of Shannan Gilbert in such close proximity to victims of the killer is merely a coincidence, much effort has been lost chasing justice for Shannan pursuing links between the killer and Shannan Gilbert where none exist. Likewise, the effort to identify the killer has been confused.
Really, all we can do is keep digging for information and piling up facts.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote:
It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.
[soundbite: Richard Dormer, former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Gilgo Beach Used to Discard Remains]
The victims discovered in 2010, the Gilgo Beach Four…
Melissa Barthelemy
Maureen Brainard-Barnes
Megan Waterman
Amber Costello
…were all call girls, murdered between 2007 and 2010, buried neatly in burlap sacks, all in close proximity to one another.
In 2011, more remains were found not far away on Fire Island. On April 4th, 2011 the head, right foot, and hands from a victim who would come to be known as Jane Doe #6 were recovered near Jones beach. They were later linked through DNA to another set of remains discovered in 2000 in Manorville. Remains unearthed in 2011 linked to others discovered in 2000.
A week later, on April 11th, 2011, the skull and teeth recovered from a woman who would be known as Fire Island Jane Doe was matched to a pair of severed legs found in 1996.
The same day, remains initially dubbed Jane Doe #3 were found to be the mother to Baby Doe, the murdered toddler I told you about in Episode 9… found miles away in another county. Why would the killer separate a mother and her toddler? Considerable time has been spent on the question. There are those who believe the mother and toddler discarded miles apart might have been the real wife and child of the killer. Some speculate the Long Island Serial Killer intentionally dumped victims across county lines to confuse the authorities and take advantage of a perceived lack of communication between departments. Some have taken it a step further and suggested the killer is an active or former police officer… that he knows too well how to confuse the investigation.
Jane Doe number three’s remains were later genetically matched with the dismembered torso of a woman discovered near Lakeview, New York in 1997.
Decapitated and dismembered remains of Jessica Taylor, discovered in 2003, were matched with more of her remains found just off Ocean Parkway in 2011.
The bodies discovered in 2010, the Gilgo Beach 4, have led to a sprawling investigation back through time… first to 2007, then 2003. The year 2000, then ’97 and ’96. Bodies found are connected to crimes from a decade, fifteen years ago. Each killing is a horror in its own right, made more terrible because we understand each discovered body reveals the killer has been doing these deeds a year longer than we knew… or two. Or ten.
If the murder victims found in the impenetrable marshes off Ocean Parkway were all killed by the same person, it means one faceless serial killer has been stalking New York for more than 20 years unidentified, with as many as 16 victims.
Sometimes, he just calls them, and they come to him.
There hasn’t been an artist’s rendering or an eyewitness description of the killer associated with any of the women found on Jones Beach Island… because their deaths weren’t discovered until long after the act. The killer is invisible… a shadow who strikes in the darkness and disposes of his victims without being seen.
But for every sick predator like the Long Island Serial Killer, there are a thousand investigators working to find him… stop him. Local police, the FBI… the entire online world, all dedicated to catching… you. Identifying, you.
It starts with questions.
Back in episode 9 we talked about Shannan Gilbert and the night she disappeared. If we believe that Shannan was a victim of the Long Island Serial Killer, then any good law enforcement investigation begins with the local authorities asking questions.
Shannan’s driver, Michael Pak, who waited in the car in the driveway for two hours, passed a polygraph and is not considered a suspect.
Dr C Peter Hackett, who made the bizarre phone call in the days after Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance, in which he claimed she was at his in-home rehab facility, has been loosely described as a loudmouth and thoroughly investigated. He is not officially considered a credible suspect.
Joseph Brewer, Shannan’s final client, also took a polygraph and is not officially considered a suspect in the death of Shannan Gilbert or any of the other victims found off Ocean Parkway.
Some suggested a man named James Bissett, a co-owner of the Long Island Nursery, might be the killer. His profession meant he had easy access to burlap sacks. He committed suicide two days after Shannon Gilbert’s body was found and the rumor mill swirled on the motive behind the act. The New York Post reported in 2015, however, that authorities no longer consider Bissett a credible suspect.
A theory about a man named Joe Foti, a former corrections officer, was creatively uncovered. The tip on Joe Foti was gleaned from an edit on the Long Island Serial Killer’s Wikipedia page in which someone named Joe Foti the killer. Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Rachel Mills brilliantly detailed the process in which Amanda Barthelemy, little sister to Long Island Serial Killer victim Melissa Barthelemy, who was taunted with sick phone calls from her sister’s killer a decade ago, listened to a recording of Joe Foti’s voice but only said “I don’t know,” when asked if it was the same man who called her. On Wikipedia, however, investigators could see the IP address of the person who inserted Joe Foti’s name into the Long Island Serial Killer entry. And as even the most amateur sleuth knows, IP addresses can be traced. Joe Foti’s name was posted by someone at an IP address registered to the Suffolk County Police Department.
Was someone in the Suffolk County Police Department trying to leak information on a suspect? Or did someone at the Suffolk County Police Department have some other reason for pointing the finger at Joe Foti?
Today, none of these men.
- Michael Pak
- Joseph Brewer
- Dr Hackett
- James Bissett
- Joe Foti
Have ever been charged in connection with the remains that have turned up on Long Island. None of them are officially considered suspects.
Unofficially, in the court of online opinion, everyone is a suspect… all these men and more.
If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe, rate and review at Apple Podcasts because in the next episode we’re gonna talk about one more person of interest, someone who made those who follow the story closely sit up and take notice. Next time in the third part of the Tales of True Crime multipart series on the Long Island Serial Killer.
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[music] Black Vortex, Grave Blow, Unnatural Situation, Unseen Horrors, Echoes of Time and Cryptic Sorrow by Kevin MacLeod, Incompetech.com. Creative commons license via FilmMusic.io
[sources]
Newsday Dec 16, 2016
CBS News, 48 Hours, July 18, 2013
NYPost, Jan 2015
Associated Press, Apr 1996, July 2016
NY Times, April and May, 2011
Dark Minds, Investigation Discovery
A&E’s The Killing Season
CBS 48 Hours, July 20, 2013
Fox News, December 15, 2016
