Police were initially searching for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old woman from New Jersey, who went missing on May 1st 2010 working as an escort. “It is clear that the area in and around Gilgo Beach has been used to discard human remains for some period of time,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota. On November 29, 2011, however, the police announced that they believe that one person is responsible for all 10 deaths and that they did not believe that the case of Shannan Gilbert, an escort who was missing when the first set of bodies were found, was related. On May 9, 2011, authorities surmised that two of the newest sets of remains might be the work of a second killer. Police believe that the latest sets of remains predate the four bodies found in December 2010. The remains of four victims were found in December 2010, while six more sets of remains were found in March and April 2011. The Long Island serial killer (also referred to by media sources as the Gilgo Beach Killer or the Craigslist Ripper) is an unidentified suspected American serial killer who is believed to have murdered 10 to 17 people associated with the sex trade over a period of nearly 20 years and dumped their bodies along the Ocean Parkway, near the remote Long Island beach towns of Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach in Suffolk County and the area of Jones Beach State Park in Nassau County.
