Shannan Gilbert — How a Missing Sex Worker Sparked the Hunt for a Serial Killer

Though she is not considered a victim of the Long Island Serial Killer, there is no discussing how this case began with Shannon Gilbert. If not for the disappearance of this 24 year old sex worker, the bodies of ten victims might have remained hidden for many more years to come.

Shannan went missing in New Jersey in 2010. Though the search for her turned up the ten victims attributed to the Long Island Serial Killer, her body would not be discovered until more than a year later. It was Shannan’s mother, Mari, who pushed the authorities to look for her missing daughter. Her search for answers is the subject of a new Netflix documentary called “Lost Girls.”

Though Shannan’s body was eventually discovered in the area near the other bodies, a forensic examination of the location and her body indicated there was no foul play in her death. It is believed that she experienced some sort of psychotic episode, perhaps drug fueled, that led to her demise. Autopsy results revealed her cause of death to be drowning.

On the night of her disappearance, Shannan had been driven to a client’s home. An interview of the client revealed that she had became hysterical and fled the home after making a call to 911 in which she claimed that someone was after her and trying to kill her. Her driver confirms this to be the case, stating that she ran off into the night and he left her there.

It was during the December 2010 search for Shannan that police made a grisly discovery. Though they didn’t initially find Shannan, they did recover 10 other bodies. It would still be a year later before they discovered Shannan’s remains in a remote marsh a mere half mile from her last known whereabouts. It is believed that after she ran into the marshes, she became disoriented and exhausted, perhaps collapsing, and unable to get herself back to safety.

It should be noted that the family never accepted these findings and insisted that Shannan was murdered, either by the same serial killer as the other victims or someone else. They insisted that the refusal of police to release the audio of her 911 call to them was evidence of something negligent or perhaps even sinister that the authorities did not want revealed. Their fight let to…