Inside Scoop: Gilgo Beach Murders
I write this not to shock or sensationalize. I write to let others know these families could not imagine how this could happen to them.
In the summer of 2010 Megan Waterman went missing. She had boarded a bus and arrived in Hauppauge, New York. She left the Holiday Inn there and was never seen again. According to the Gilgo Beach News link to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department web site Megan called her pimp and she vanished from the face of the earth. Her body was found on December 13, 2010, on Gilgo Beach.
Megan’s pimp was arrested on interstate charges, sentenced to three years and has not been charged with crimes related to Megan’s murder. However, finally after more than a decade of frustration, the alleged murderer has been found. Rex Heuermann, a local architect, was recently arrested for her murder and the murders of two other victims thanks to positive DNA testing.
Megan left behind a daughter (age three at the time of the murder). Megan was loved and missed by her daughter, aunt, mother, sisters, and friends. When Megans family first asked me to assist, I could never have imagined the 13-year journey I would take to get justice for her.
I went to the crime scene twice. I interviewed family, friends, neighbors, and anyone associated with Megan. One for one they were very afraid to speak. There was so much crime surrounding this case that my soul felt covered in mud, that I could not wash away. This feeling continued for years. In fact, long after I left the crime scene, women would call me declaring their ex-husbands guilty of the crimes. Two people actually wrote to me in secret insinuating who the culprit was. One was so well-known that the FBI agent I spoke to had already interviewed the author because of other complaints. I must admit, it was all a bit rattling. For many a morning I woke up wondering, how did I get involved in this chaos?
Burial Site & Dealing with the Law
After Megan’s body was located, the Waterman’s asked if I would help Shannan Gilbert’s family to locate Shannan. I agreed. Shannan went missing under similar circumstances and location as Megan. In fact, the search for Shannan led to the discovery of ten more bodies on Gilgo Beach. Shannan made eleven including a baby to our mutual horror that was also discovered on the site.
The bodies of these poor prostituted souls were found, murdered, and discarded in the very harsh terrain of brambles, insects, peat type soul of a marshy beach. Eliminating them posed little or no risk to the killer. Their bodies were abandoned near a wealthy neighborhood in contrast to these women coming from such humble means.
These families were dragged into an ongoing battle of corruption over justice and apathy instead of love. The police treated the families as harshly as any I have ever helped. Words cannot describe the malice that surrounded this case.
Discovering Shannan’s Body
They finally found Shannan’s body much later, and attributed her cause of death that she initiated her own demise! This was concluded even though she had actual criminals chasing her. There was the man who drove her to the john that purchased her and seen pursuing her. The transporter guy and Shannan’s pimp returned the next morning to get the money from the buyer, even though Shannan was still missing.
Shannan cried out for help. For twenty-two minutes and forty-two seconds she was desperately asking for someone to come to her rescue. Here is a link to her 911 call, you can hear the despair in her voice. To this day it still breaks my heart.
The police claimed to have extensively searched for her but failed to find her. Her sisters did not give up and while combing the boardwalk near the house owned by the man who purchased her, they located one of Shannan’s earrings. One would think that this find would alert one of the detectives on the case, but it was ignored as evidence even though this was a home of a bachelor and of course the john.
It is important to note that several officials in the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department were arrested due to the culture of corruption that radiated throughout the department and especially this case.
Shannan’s mother and sisters continued their search for her. Finally, Shannan’s body was discovered in December of 2011. Her remains were discovered mere yards from where she was last seen.
The Beginning of the End
Shannan’s death was just the beginning of the extreme downward slope for this family. Her mother was later killed by her other daughter, Sarra Gilbert. I met Sarra and she appeared to be the most approachable. I found her to be such an innocent soul just trying to find her older sister. She was not the toughest one. Yet, she stabbed her mother 227 times. This was the end of Shannan’s family. Sarra is in prison for 25 years, and only one remaining sister is free and still pursuing justice for Shannan. I equate Shannan being missing to a nuclear bomb going off in her family -- total destruction.
Postscript
I write this not to shock or sensationalize. I write to let others know these families could not imagine how this could happen to them. They did not sign up to be on the news or to be pursued constantly by the media. They simply loved a family member who was being sexually exploited. Those who exploit do business with all types of monsters. Monsters who buy people for sex and monsters who sell people for sex create volumes of destruction. We need to stop allowing this as a society. We cannot wait for someone else to stop this! If you wait until it touches your family, it is too late!
I hope when you hear about this case as it will be in the global news for some time during the court procedures, I hope you will understand that whoever is convicted of this is a nobody. The ones who need to join him are the ones who lured, groomed, sold, advertised, housed, transported, and benefitted from the sale of the victims. Those people conspired to commit a crime where there was death.
The law allows for them to face capital punishment no matter no matter how the victims died. I ask for full justice, until those who make money from the sale of others are help fully criminally accountable this will continue and none of our teens or young adults are safe today or in the future.