- Aspiring actress Shannan was terrified someone was after her when she made an emergency call and disappeared shortly after
- Along with Shannan, four other women vanished too and it would later be known that a serial killer was at work
- Ultimately, a pizza box would lead to killer’s arrest
On the night she vanished, a terrified Shannan Gilbert, 23, called emergency services and made a spine-tingling claim.
‘Somebody’s after me,’ the aspiring actress told the operator.
The time was 4.51am on May 1, 2010. The location, Long Island, New York.
That night, Shannan, who worked as an escort to make ends meet, had gone to a client’s home near Gilgo Beach.
But she ended up fleeing from the house, as well as from the driver she had arranged to wait for her outside.
In a panic, she made that 22-minute emergency call, during which she sounded, at times, scared and screaming.
She knocked on the doors of neighbours asking for help before continuing into the night.
Then she disappeared.
READ MORE: Married to a murderer: Melanie discovered her husband’s double life
The search for Shannan would end up uncovering a sinister secret – there was a serial killer at work in Gilgo Beach, and the victims were mounting up.
Seven months after Shannan vanished, the remains of four women – Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman – were found in hessian sacks along a stretch of the beach less than a kilometre long.
They became known as the Gilgo Four. All of them were escorts and all had been strangled.
In March and April the following year, the remains of four more people were discovered – two women, a toddler and an unidentified male.
It was another eight months before Shannan herself was found – her skeletal remains were uncovered from a marshy swamp 11km from Gilgo Beach, in December 2011.
READ MORE: Hannah had a perfect life, then her hubby was arrested for attempted murder
How she had died remained inconclusive, and for a decade, the other slayings also remained a mystery.
Then, in January 2020, Suffolk County police released photos of a black leather belt embossed with the letters ‘HM’ which they believed was handled by the murderer.
It would be another two years before police had a suspect. In 2022 they zeroed in on a married father named Rex Heuermann.
Rex was an architect who drove a green ute. A witness had identified that vehicle as being close to the scene of Amber Costello’s disappearance in 2010.
It was seen parked in the driveway of Amber’s home before she vanished, with the driver described as a ‘large white male approximately 6ft 4 to 6ft 6 in height’.
Rex Heuermann was 6ft 4ins.
READ MORE: He crashed his ex’s party in disguise and murdered nine people
Investigators began surveying him and his family, and used phone records to pinpoint his location at the times of the killings.
Further probing linked Rex to several ‘burner’ phones allegedly used to contact some of the missing women.
And a search of his computer showed he’d looked for details on the status of the Gilgo Beach murder investigation at least 200 times.
But it was an innocuous pizza that would finally see a serial killer captured.
In January 2023, Rex Heuermann threw a takeaway box into the garbage outside his office.
Inside were pizza crusts, which when tested were found to contain DNA that matched a hair found on Megan Waterman’s body.
On July 13, 2023, Heuermann, then 59, was arrested and charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman.
He pleaded not guilty.
In January 2024, he was charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. Later that year he faced charges over the murder of two more women, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla.
That December, he faced a seventh charge over the death of Valerie Mack, whose remains were also found near Gilgo Beach.
He’d denied the slayings, but in April 2026, at Suffolk County Court, Rex Heuermann, then 62, changed his plea.
He admitted to the seven murders, and to killing an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, calmly telling the court he had strangled his victims, and dismembered some, before discarding the remains.
In June 2026, Heuermann was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
‘There are no words I can say,’ the serial killer told the court. ‘I am responsible for all that was said in this room today. The words I would say have no meaning.’
Judge Timothy Mazzei was furious. ‘I know you’re sorry that you got caught… Are you a little bit sorry for what you’ve done to these poor, innocent women…?’
When the murderer replied, ‘Yes’, the judge called him ‘a disgusting and small man, if you’re a man at all.’
A serial killer was finally behind bars, but what justice was there for the woman whose disappearance first alerted a community to the murderer in their midst?
Shannan Gilbert remains one of four people found near Gilgo Beach, whose deaths were not connected to Heuermann.
Investigations into what happened to Shannan cleared the driver and her client of any criminal involvement, and police called her death ‘tragic’ but ‘not a murder’.
They believe that, after fleeing her client, Shannan ran into tall marsh reeds where she got lost and succumbed to the elements. Shannan’s family however don’t agree. A private pathologist they hired determined Shannan died of strangulation or asphyxiation.
‘It doesn’t matter if people believe she’s a victim of the Long Island serial killer or not,’ Shannan’s sister Sherre told CBS.
‘Something happened to her that night. She ran for her life. She was in fear.’
Share this post