The Gilgo Four site

This is the location where police discovered the remains of the Gilgo Four.

The site lies beside Ocean Parkway on Jones Beach Island, a barrier island off the southern coast of Long Island, New York.

The coordinates are 40.624692, -73.375849.

Search

On May 1, 2010, sex worker Shannan Gilbert disappeared after fleeing a client's home in Oak Beach. When she failed to reappear after a month, the Suffolk County Police Department dispatched canine officer John Mallia and his cadaver dog, Blue, to search the area.

Mallia and Blue searched fields, swamps, and overgrown terrain for more than six months without success. After failing to locate Gilbert, Mallia expanded the search westward along Jones Beach Island.

Mallia had recently read an FBI report indicating that killers often dump victims relatively close to the roadside. Consequently, he began to focus his efforts on the shoulders of the highway.

Discovery

On Saturday, December 11, 2010, Mallia was walking along the shoulder of this section of Ocean Parkway when Blue stopped and adjusted his head toward the brush.

Realizing the dog had detected a scent, Mallia crossed the grass and pushed into the thick brambles beside the road.

A few feet inside the bushes, he located a skeleton. The victim's head, torso, and legs were bound with tape. The adhesive side of the tape indicated the victim had been wrapped in a burlap-like material that had since decayed.

Gilgo Four

Mallia initially believed he had located Gilbert. However, Gilbert had a titanium plate in her jaw, whereas the skeleton did not.

Detectives presumed they were dealing with a single homicide. Although they planned to return the next day to search for further evidence, severe winter weather forced them to postpone the operation until the following Monday.

On December 13, 2010, investigators returned to the area and began searching west from the site of the initial discovery. Late that morning, they discovered a second set of remains.

One hour later, officers discovered a third body. By the end of the day, they had found a fourth set of remains.

Former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer later recalled his reaction to the discoveries in an interview with Mike Blangiforti on the Daily Blu:

And I get a call in my office late that morning from the chief (Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone). "We found another body." And I was really taken aback. I said, "Another body?" And now that's two. About an hour later, he calls again. "We found another one." I'm wondering what the heck is going on out there? I said to the chief, "Is this a graveyard? What have we got out there?" And then, he calls again a couple of hours later and says, "We've got another one."

The victims were all found within a quarter-mile radius of one another on the north side of Ocean Parkway.

Three of the women were wrapped in duck-blind camouflage burlap, a material hunters use to conceal themselves from waterfowl.

In the following weeks, investigators identified the victims as Maureen Brainard-Barnes (25), Melissa Barthelemy (24), Megan Waterman (22), and Amber Lynn Costello (27).

Because of their proximity to each other and Gilgo Beach, they were nicknamed "the Gilgo Four."

Serial killer

The location of the remains and the distinctive disposal method led authorities to conclude they were dealing with a serial killer.

Detectives soon learned that the four women were sex workers who had disappeared between 2007 and 2010 while advertising their services online.

The first victim, Brainard-Barnes, disappeared on July 9, 2007, after meeting a client outside her Manhattan motel. Barthelemy was an escort who traveled to Manhattan to meet a client on July 10, 2009, and never returned.

Waterman and Costello both went missing in 2010 and were the only known victims picked up on Long Island.

Cellphone records indicated the killer had scheduled outcalls with the women using prepaid burner phones.

The evidence pointed toward an offender who lived on Long Island. Brainard-Barnes and Barthelemy had told people close to them that they were meeting a client who lived in the area. Furthermore, some of the victims' phones had gone dead around Massapequa.

Expanded search

Plans to extend the operation further along the highway were postponed after canine handlers reported that their dogs were struggling to work in the cold.

Fearing critical evidence might be missed, officials determined the search should resume between late March and mid-April.

This narrow window offered optimal conditions. It was warm enough for effective ground searches, but early enough to precede the spring growth of Ocean Parkway's dense foliage.

Police resumed the operation in late March and began searching the bushes along the highway. In the following weeks, they found six additional victims at multiple sites along Ocean Parkway.

Jessica Taylor

A search team found a skull and two hands off Ocean Parkway on March 29, 2011.

DNA tests confirmed the remains belonged to Jessica Taylor, a sex worker whose torso was found at the end of an access road in Manorville in July 2003. The killer had dismembered Taylor and dumped her remains at two locations 46 miles apart.

Asian Doe

On April 4, 2011, a recovery team discovered the skeletal remains of an unidentified Asian male. The medical examiner estimated that the victim, known as Asian Doe, died between 2001 and 2006. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Authorities believe Asian Doe may have been transgender or a gay man who engaged in cross-dressing, as the remains were found in women's clothing.

Valerie Mack and Tatiana Dykes

That same day, police discovered the partial remains of 20-year-old Valerie Mack and the skeleton of a female toddler near Overlook Beach. Although Mack and the child were found just 250 feet apart, DNA testing confirmed they were unrelated.

The discovery of Mack's remains revealed yet another Manorville connection. In November 2000, a group of hunters and their dog had found her torso near a wooded trail in Manorville.

The toddler, who could not be identified, became known as Baby Doe.

Karen Vergata

On April 11, 2011, authorities discovered a skull in the bushes near Tobay Beach, just south of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Wildlife Sanctuary.

DNA tests linked it to a woman whose legs had washed ashore on Fire Island in 1996. The victim, nicknamed Fire Island Jane Doe, remained unidentified for 26 years until the FBI identified her as 34-year-old Karen Vergata.

The discovery of Vergata's remains pushed the timeline back, revealing that the area around Gilgo Beach had been used as a dumping ground since 1996.

Tanya Jackson

On April 11, 2011, police also found the skeletal arms and legs of a woman in a thicket near Jones Beach State Park. DNA analysis confirmed the partial remains belonged to an unidentified victim called Peaches, whose torso was dumped inside the treeline at Hempstead Lake State Park in June 1997.

Investigators later determined that Peaches was the mother of Baby Doe, whose remains had been found near Overlook Beach.

The pair remained unidentified until April 2025, when authorities in Nassau County announced that they had been identified as Tanya Denise Jackson (26) and Tatiana Dykes (2).

Shannan Gilbert

Despite the extensive search, Gilbert remained missing for eight more months. Authorities eventually recovered her remains in a marsh near Oak Beach in December 2011.

The medical examiner ruled her manner of death as undetermined. Although Gilbert's disappearance prompted the discovery of the Gilgo Four, Suffolk officials do not believe she was a murder victim.

Ocean Parkway

This straight, one-way section of Ocean Parkway provided the killer with full visibility, allowing them to check their rearview mirror for headlights before pulling over.

The highway's layout gave them approximately 60 seconds to dispose of the victim and leave before another car approached from their rear. If a car was following too closely, they could continue driving and loop back via the opposite lane.

The wide, tree-lined median and lack of streetlights further insulated them from traffic in the opposite lane.

Leaving four victims in the same area marked a deviation from the killer's earlier behavior of spacing out disposal sites.

By the late 2000s, they could not progress further west without exposing themselves to oncoming traffic or residential properties.

The thicket along the northern side of Ocean Parkway is dense. The foliage is often low-hanging and tightly packed, making movement through it difficult and visibility limited.

Photographs of the search operation show bare branches because authorities discovered the remains between December 2010 and April 2011.

However, the killer typically operated during the warmer months when the thicket was in bloom.

In December 2020, former SCPD Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone told CBS This Morning that the killer may have selected burlap to camouflage the remains among the bushes.

Arrests

In July 2023, police arrested Massapequa Park resident Rex Heuermann in connection with the case. He was subsequently charged with the murders of three of the Gilgo Four (Waterman, Costello, and Barthelemy).

The following year, prosecutors indicted Heuermann for the murders of Brainard-Barnes, Taylor, and Mack. He was also charged in the killing of an earlier victim, Sandra Costilla. Costilla was found murdered in North Sea, Southampton, in 1993, approximately three years before the first known Gilgo Beach victim disappeared.

Investigators had long believed the deaths of Jackson (Peaches) and her daughter Tatiana were also linked to the Gilgo Beach case. However, in December 2025, Nassau County officials charged Tatiana's father, Andrew Dykes, in connection with Jackson's murder.

Dykes is currently awaiting trial.

On April 8, 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty to the murders of Costello, Waterman, Barthelemy, Brainard-Barnes, Taylor, Mack, and Vergata. He also pleaded guilty to the 1993 murder of Sandra Costilla.

As of April 2026, no charges have been brought in connection with the death of Asian Doe.