(NewsNation) — New information was released by police Thursday on four victims believed to have been killed by the Gilgo Beach serial killer in New York City, a case that has inspired a Netflix movie and documentaries.
Credited so far with 10 victims over more than a decade, the youngest of them a toddler, police are hoping that releasing information on the killer’s first four victims, all prostitutes, will lead to clues on the suspect’s identity.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, believed to be the killer’s first victim, was living in Connecticut and traveling to Manhattan to work as an escort when police believe she was murdered.
Last seen at her apartment in the Bronx, 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy was another victim of the killer police release information about Thursday.
Amber Lynn Costello, 27, was never even reported missing and 24-year-old Megan Waterman was last spotted at a hotel in New York.
Waterman’s final moments were captured on hotel surveillance footage, where she can be seen coming and going from the hotel over a three-day period. Police believe Waterman left the hotel to meet her killer on her final day.
All four victims were found in a wooded area off a highway on Long Island in 2010 and 2011 and were wrapped in burlap, according to The New York Post.
After Waterman’s family reported her missing, her remains were found in a marsh near the highway. It was then that the disappearance of another sex worker, Shannan Gilbert, triggered a much wider hunt along the Gilgo Beach area where the remains of other women were found.
Police are hoping the release of new information may “jar someone’s memory” who can come forward with any information they may have.
But John Ray, the attorney for Gilbert’s family, argues the public needs to be brought into the case even more.
“This is the first step but it’s a very small baby step towards what should be done,” Ray said, “which is to bring the public into this case, it’s the only way this will be solved.”
Gilbert made a frantic 22-minute 911 call while running, telling police she was going to be killed before she was killed. Ray is demanding police release the audio of that call.
Alexis Linkletter, who runs the true crime podcast “The First Degree,” said no new commonalities of the four victims were released in this information dump.
The killer went so far as to call and taunt the families of some of his victims. Linkletter said it is unclear how those calls have aided the investigation because police have not released that information, but said it is known that calls were made from Freeport and Lindenhurst in addition to Massapequa and Manhattan.
“Again, it’s unclear and it would have been a lot more helpful had they released this information 12 years ago,” Linkletter said. “These are pretty obtuse details to release 12 years later and expect people to have jogged memories about these kind of minor details.”
