Original subtitles

REPORTER: A gruesome find by Gilgo Beach...

REPORTER: Tonight police say they discovered three more bodies.

We could have a serial killer.

It is a nightmare.

There's a killer murdering women left and right.

She's running through the neighbourhood

screaming "Help, please help." and vanishes.

Something was extremely suspicious.

Immediately I thought, this is scary.

What happened to her?

They found remains.

This is the Long Island Serial Killer.

And Shannan Gilbert's still missing.

Was there more to this story that we didn't know?

It's a scary situation, it's terrible

that we would even have to discuss this type of thing but this is life.

This guy is an organised killer so he covers his tracks very well.

But he's made a mistake some place.

And the investigators

got to find that mistake.

My daughter Shannan was loved

more than I think she realised or understood she could be loved.

Shannan was a good big sister.

When she was younger

she would help her little sister Stevie with homework.

She was very, very, very smart.

Shannan Gilbert was a talented,

gifted, smart student.

She graduated from high school a year early

and was really full of promise.

She was cheerful and happy and very ambitious.

And she had dreams of becoming a singer.

ROBERT: Ellenville's this small town where Shannan came from.

It's midway between New York City and Albany

and for someone like Shannan it really was the middle of nowhere.

And Shannan wanted to be on the stage in New York City.

So in 2007 Shannan moved down to Jersey City, New Jersey

which is right across the river from Manhattan.

She would work at night and during the day be able to go on auditions.

And when the auditions petered out, Shannan studied.

She enrolled in college and was, you know, taking courses.

My sister, she obviously wanted to better herself.

But Shannan

was really struggling with trying to kinda stay afloat.

CHRISTINE: Shannan, you know, she never wanted to just be a waitress

and make, like, $5 an hour, $7 an hour

and she was completely broke and so she

got involved in the escort business to start making money.

ALICIA: She could make between $500 to $1,000 a night

and it and it made her feel like

she was able to take care of herself and her family.

NARRATOR: The money gives Shannan the freedom and independence she craves.

But it also comes with a high price.

When we first learned that Shannan was escorting

I was super embarrassed, like, I didn't even wanna talk to her.

I'm, like, thinking to myself "Like you're so smart,

"you graduated when you were 16 years old.

"You know, you could've had a decent job and you're doing this."

She vehemently assured me

that she was OK, she would be safe.

It was only temporary until she finished her education.

And regretfully I... (SIGHS)

didn't push it

because I didn't want to have her...

you know, move away from me.

ROBERT: The stereotype, I think a lot of people mistakenly have

about a life of escorting

is that the people involved are outcasts from their own families,

that they have no-one, that they've been living on the streets.

And I guess for some people that's true.

But Shannan was able to maintain ties with her family.

She would go back to Ellenville.

Shannan would be there with her sisters and with her mother

on special occasions.

SHERRE: She came over, she had gifts,

she had gifts for the boys, my nephew and my son.

She was really happy.

Throw a kissy.

Oh, you wanna get away from me now?

CHRISTINE: Shannan actually went home a lot.

She wanted to prove to everybody around her

that she could take care of herself, and that's what she did.

NARRATOR: Shannan is in a shady, even dangerous business

but she's not in it alone.

Shannan was with an escort service. One of the drivers was Alex Diaz.

The two of them really hit it off.

And they fell in love.

They ended up dating

and moved in together and became very serious.

ROBERT: They were making lots of money, both living well.

And for a short period they were happy.

Until the escort business was busted by the cops.

(POLICE RADIO IN BACKGROUND)

SHERRE: Shannan and Alex wanted the finer things in life.

And when they didn't really have that,

Shannan and Alex had a really rough relationship.

ALICIA: As times became difficult for the couple, they began to fight,

their relationship turned very volatile.

According to arrest records,

Alex hit Shannan so hard that it shattered her jaw.

CHRISTINE: She ended up having to have surgery

and a titanium plate was actually put into her jaw.

SHERRE: It's scary, you know, you just,

you kinda fear for her life at that point.

I was trying to tell her, like

"You have to get away from him, he's not a good guy."

But even after all that happened she still stayed with him.

It just kinda shocked us.

Shannan just loved him so much

but at the same time I knew it wasn't right.

ALICIA: After the escort service closed down

Shannan was struggling to make ends meet

and so she decided to advertise on Craigslist.

ROBERT: It made good economic sense, you were eliminating the middle man,

you could take home more money for the same amount of work.

But you need a driver in those situations

because if you're out there alone you're not safe.

Sometimes her boyfriend Alex Diaz was the driver

but sometimes he wasn't

and she ended up using a driver named Michael Pak.

ALICIA: Michael Pak was an older gentleman who she felt safe around.

CHRISTINE: Pak was there to, like,

drive her to every location and wait for her.

The john would always know that she was brought there by somebody

'cause girls get ripped off all the time on Craigslist

and they get beat up.

ROBERT: May 1, 2010

was a working night like any other for Shannan.

She had been doing calls in New York City.

Her driver was Michael Pak.

And then she got a call to go out to a place she'd never been before

which was Oak Beach, Long Island.

ALICIA: Oak Beach, which is, like, an hour outside the city.

There's about 40 or 50 houses that are out there.

It's really desolate.

Oak Beach is a community generated

in the heyday of the '70s and the early '80s.

Drugs, cocaine, alcohol,

party, party, party, party.

It is a party town.

It's a private community, nobody bothers you,

the police do not patrol it and you can do whatever you want.

ROBERT: Shannan got out there at midnight this small beach community.

There's a gatehouse and they call the john

to get the code for the gate.

The john comes out to greet them.

He's a friendly guy, his name's Joe Brewer.

He's a little off kilter but very sociable guy.

They go to the house.

ALICIA: And so Michael drops her off and then waits in the car

as per their usual agreement.

NARRATOR: Shannan usually spent an hour with each client.

But with the long drive to Oak Beach, she was guaranteed five hours.

Michael Pak waited outside

until finally at one point he fell asleep.

Somewhere around 4:30, 5:00 in the morning,

the sun hasn't quite risen,

there's a tapping on his car window and he rolls down the window

and it's the john, it's Joe Brewer.

And he's annoyed.

Joseph Brewer asks Michael's help because Shannan won't leave

and at this point, Joseph just wants this situation to be over.

ROBERT: He and Brewer walk inside

and there in the living room Shannan is hiding behind a couch.

She is panicking, she is very frightened.

Something has clearly gone wrong inside the house

with Shannan and Joseph Brewer.

ROBERT: As he tries to engage Shannan in conversation

Michael Pak comes to understand that there's something else going on here

which is that Shannan is on the phone.

She's on the phone with the police and she says

"They're trying to kill me."

Not, "He's trying to kill me." or, "I'm about to be killed."

But, "They're trying to kill me."

NARRATOR: In the private community of Oak Beach, Long Island

something has gone wrong.

Shannan Gilbert is panicking.

Are the only two people she knows there,

Michael Pak and Joe Brewer, out to get her?

Shannan is talking to 911

and one of the things she says to the 911 caller is

"They're trying to kill me."

ROBERT: It's unclear what she means by this.

Was someone else in the house?

Joe Brewer or was Michael Pak doing something menacing to Shannan?

Is she having a breakdown? Are drugs involved?

But in a very short amount of time

Joe Brewer is suddenly walking over to Shannan and trying to grab her

to get her out of the house.

She shrieks and she starts running.

Shannan runs out of Joseph Brewer's house.

She's frantic.

At this point Michael Pak is annoyed.

He's got Shannan behaving erratically, talking to the police,

putting them both in danger.

He expects her to go to the car but she doesn't.

She passes him and runs down the road.

And this annoys Michael Pak even more.

The driver's supposed to be your security man,

if you're in trouble, the first thing is go back to your driver.

With Shannan, it seemed the last thing she'd ever do

is go back with the driver.

ALICIA: Shannan is in a panic,

she's running through the neighbourhood

and is knocking on doors begging to be let in.

She runs towards this guy named

Gus Coletti's house and Gus Coletti is this older guy

that's been living in the community for a long time.

It was about five in the morning and Gus Coletti's up.

He opens the door, she comes in, she's like, "Help me! Help me!"

Gus Coletti's like, "What's going on?"

And she stood there for a minute and then she bolted.

Coletti says when she observed the headlights of Pak's car

coming down the road adjoining his house,

that's when she ran.

Coletti, who I interviewed, said that he sees this SUV, he sees Pak.

And he told Pak that he had called 911.

Pak said to Coletti "You shouldn't have done that,

"you're going to get her in trouble."

As Michael and Gus are arguing, Shannan disappears into the night.

Alex, Shannan's boyfriend wakes up the next morning

and realises she's not there.

He calls Michael Pak, her driver

and Michael is shocked to find out that Shannan isn't home.

He relays to Alex the craziness of the night before

and how erratic Shannan's behaviour had been

and exactly what had occurred.

ROBERT: According to Michael Pak he had tried searching for Shannan

but at some point he gives up and leaves.

He says it was because it was sunrise,

thinking "Well, maybe she'll find her own way home."

This is astonishing to me because they both are hours from any place

that they have ever been before

and this is when Alex starts to really worry.

He calls the police.

The police aren't helpful at all,

they say "She's an escort, she's over 21.

"We are not gonna take this case seriously.

"Besides, you need to report her missing in her home town

"which is Jersey City."

I got a call from Alex

and he said "Have you heard from Shannan?

"I haven't heard from her since May 1."

Immediately I thought... something was wrong.

Right after that phone call, her driver Michael calls me.

And it's just a really weird conversation with Michael.

He said he just wants to make sure Shannan is safe and that she's OK

and I'm like "Well, you dropped her off there at Oak Beach that night,

you should've stayed to pick her up,

make sure she was safe and bring her home, so it was your fault."

He said "I have an alibi. So I didn't do anything wrong."

I'm, like "Michael, if you have nothing to prove

why are you telling me you have an alibi?"

After the phone call from Michael, I immediately call the police.

RICHARD DORMER: Shannan Gilbert went missing May 1 2010.

Eventually it's picked up

by the Suffolk County Detectives' Missing Persons Bureau.

And this initiates an investigation into Shannan's disappearance.

She's gotta be out there some place.

NARRATOR: Police start their search for Shannan

with the 911 call she made the night she vanished.

That's when they discover that call lasted 23 minutes.

During that call, Shannan told 911 she is on Long Island,

probably near Jones Beach.

Which in a way it is but it's not Jones Beach.

911 turns the call over to the New York State Police

because the State Police deal with Jones Beach.

Jones Beach, which is many miles further west

of Oak Beach.

And so the State Police operator now has a conversation with Shannan

about where she is,

trying to determine the location so they could send assistance.

At some point the phone went dead

and contact with her ended.

NARRATOR: But Shannan wasn't the only person who called police that night.

Dispatchers took two more calls about a woman frantic and screaming.

That officer that responded

didn't know anything about Joe Brewer,

the driver, Pak or Shannan Gilbert.

And so the police officer who responded

isn't sure what to make of the situation.

There's nobody claiming a crime has been committed.

All that he'd heard was that a woman was screaming

and now the woman is gone.

And so that never gets connected

to Shannan Gilbert's 23-minute 911 call.

And because of this confusion

nobody went immediately looking for Shannan.

NARRATOR: As police struggle to gather information

regarding Shannan's disappearance,

her mother receives an unexpected call

that may break the case wide open.

I received a phone call from a man who identified himself

as Dr Peter Hackett.

He asked me if I...

know where Shannan is, if she was home?

And I said "No, she's not here."

He allegedly told her that he ran this home for wayward girls

and that he saw Shannan that night and he was taking care of her

and that he gave her some drugs to calm her down.

He continued to say that he's worried about her.

Right away I knew something was extremely suspicious.

NARRATOR: On May 1, 2010,

Shannan Gilbert disappears from the small community

of Oak Beach, Long Island.

Two days later,

her mother gets a disturbing call

from one of its residents.

Mari Gilbert

has never known Peter Hackett before.

He tells Mari Gilbert

on the phone,

"Hi, I'm Dr Peter Hackett,

"I run a home for wayward girls.

"Your daughter has come to me.

"I've treated her with medication."

He wanted to make sure she was OK because when he had last seen her

she wasn't doing well.

When Mari asked her, "How did you get my number?"

Hackett tells her,

"Shannan gave it to me."

MARI: Shannan would never give my phone number to anyone.

She would never go to or need

a facility.

Her time away, her respite,

was coming home

which she did frequently.

Right away, I knew something was extremely suspicious.

NARRATOR: Suspicious enough for the Gilbert family to take action.

On Mother's Day, 2010 they drive to Oak Beach looking for answers.

So we get down to the community,

we notice Peter Hackett's house.

We see him having a party on his deck so we go there.

So we're, like "Oh, hi, you know, we're here because

"you had called the day after we found out Shannan was missing

"and we just wanna know if you know more about her disappearance."

He denies that he ever made the calls.

He said, you know, "I would never do that,

"I don't run a home for wayward girls.

"I would never have said that.

"I would never have made those calls."

And we're like, "You did call, you know,

we wouldn't just make it up."

So he just was kind of, like, dumbfounded that we were even there,

that we were even questioning him about my sister's disappearance.

When Peter Hackett denied he ever spoke to me or called me

my first initial reaction was... disbelief.

How someone could be such an outright liar.

ALICIA: Mari tells police about the call she received

from Peter Hackett

and when police follow that up and contact Hackett

he denies ever having made the call.

REPORTER: Did you ever have any teen centre or anything like that?

Nothing.

What do you think about this phone call?

It's painful. It's hurtful.

ROBERT: The Suffolk County Police knew Peter Hackett

as an emergency medicine doctor who's been living

in Oak Beach for something like 20 years before Shannan disappears.

It's a small community and everybody knows him.

NARRATOR: In fact, Peter Hackett

lives less than a half mile from Joe Brewer.

ROBERT: He's not just a doctor,

he's sort of 'the' doctor of the neighbourhood.

This is a neighbourhood where everything is far away,

even a grocery store.

So if somebody cuts their finger,

Peter Hackett's the one who comes to the rescue.

He considers himself sort of the local big shot.

ALICIA: The police look into Peter Hackett

and he's dismissed as a suspect.

MARI: It seemed that no-one at that time was listening to me

and recognising what I had said

and what really had happened.

ALICIA: As the days go by

Shannan's family is increasingly desperate to find her

and her mother, Mari, is distraught.

She continues to pressure police.

She calls, she puts flyers up around town,

she asks as many people as she can.

And the search continues for Shannan.

NARRATOR: It's been seven months since Shannan's disappearance.

But on a cold December morning

something happens that turns this missing persons case

into one of the most baffling mysteries in New York history.

When you train with a cadaver sniffing dog

you train on open cases.

So Shannan Gilbert was a perfect training exercise.

The cadaver dog with the handler does a search around at Oak Beach.

There's thick brush,

it's not a very friendly environment.

I remember

getting the call at home from the Chief of Detectives

and he said "I think we've found Shannan."

I got a phone call

and I was told that a body was found

and that it could possibly be my daughter Shannan's.

We're all hysterical. You know, we're in shock.

But then at the same time a part of us is relieved.

OK, she's found.

CHRISTINE: They knew that Shannan had that titanium plate in her jaw

from the time that her boyfriend Alex broke it.

So if she was the victim, they knew that they'd be able to identify her.

Well, it turns out when they tested the body, the remains,

it didn't have the metal plate in her jaw.

It's not Shannan. It's someone else.

I got the news that it was not my daughter that they had found.

And it just confused me.

ROBERT: It's horrifying.

Suddenly you find a woman like Shannan but it isn't her.

And then within a day the dog finds more.

They find the bodies of four women over three days.

All of them are women in their twenties,

all of them are presumed to be prostitutes like Shannan.

None of them are Shannan Gilbert.

The crime scene becomes the scene of a potential serial killing.

I don't think it's a coincidence

that four bodies ended up in this area.

And that's when Commissioner Richard Dormer

appears before the TV cameras.

REPORTER: It seems you have a serial killer

dumping bodies along this stretch.

Well, you know, I'm not going to say that but certainly

we're looking at that, we're looking at that

that we could have a serial killer.

And that's when the media goes crazy.

NEWSREADER: A gruesome find by Gilgo Beach,

skeletal remains discovered right off of Ocean Parkway.

NEWSREADER: Tonight police say they discovered three more bodies.

NEWSREADER: They may have found what appears to be another body

near Gilgo Beach.

NEWSREADER: The body count along Ocean Parkway continues to climb.

ROBERT: These four bodies that were found,

they were obviously related to one another

and not just because all the victims were women in their twenties

who were prostitutes.

It's also because they all were fully intact skeletons

and they all were shrouded in burlap

which leads most people to believe that they were in burlap bags.

ALICIA: Along with being wrapped in burlap bags

all four of these young women

have been killed by strangulation.

CHRISTINE: When the police found these women

the bodies were about 500 feet apart from each other,

almost side by side.

ROBERT: You can almost imagine the killer in the middle of the night

driving along the highway slowly and pulling over

and throwing one body into the bramble.

And then driving on and away before anyone notices.

Initially, jaded people and the media said

that you might never figure out who these women are.

Maybe they'd be undocumented immigrants who were off the grid.

And again this case defied expectations because

the four women who were discovered all had lives,

they all had people who loved them,

who had been looking for them for years

but the police had neglected their cases.

The first to disappear in 2007 was Maureen Brainard-Barnes,

she lived in Connecticut.

She was a mother, she had a boyfriend and a sister

and a brother and a mother.

She was having a lot of problems.

She had a daughter, she was about to get evicted from her apartment.

She was struggling and she'd go to New York on the weekends

and work the weekend and make a lot of money.

Go back home, be with her kid and then come back on the weekends.

The second to disappear two years later in 2009

was Melissa Barthelemy.

Melissa had a family in Buffalo who she was in steady touch with

and a little sister who would come to visit her in New York City.

She wanted to be a cosmetologist

and she was basically trying to make up enough money

so she could go actually move back to Buffalo

and open up her own store.

ROBERT: And then Megan Waterman disappeared.

And Megan came from Scarborough, Maine, near Portland.

And she had a boyfriend

and the two of them worked together.

He was sort of her agent and she would come in for weekends

to make money much the same way that Maureen Brainard-Barnes did.

And then finally, the fourth to disappear in September of 2010

was Amber Costello.

Amber had a very close relationship with her older sister Kim.

The two of them had both worked as escorts

but they weren't going to do it forever.

Amber was from North Carolina and she was a real sad story.

She had been married and just got involved in drugs

and she ended up becoming, like, really addicted to heroin.

And actually her sister's friend brought her to New York

and she went into rehab

and she actually cleaned herself up for a while

but then got involved in drugs again and the escort business

just so she could get high.

NEWSREADER: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman,

Amber Costello and Melissa Barthelemy

went missing over the past four years

and all of them were working as escorts off the website, Craigslist.

This generates a huge outcry of fear

that there's a killer that's murdering women left and right.

NEWSREADER: Shannan Gilbert was here in Oak Beach alive.

What happened to Shannan Gilbert on the streets of Oak Beach?

If it takes the rest of my lifetime

till the day I die, I'm gonna find out.

ROBERT: The media is all over the community

and it is a complete nightmare for the residents of Oak Beach.

Did you see Shannan Gilbert on that night?

How could we? She was missing. She was missing.

Prostitutes, murderers, everybody's sick of hearing it,

everybody is just tired of hearing about the stories

over and over again.

That seems to be the prevailing opinion of most neighbours

in Oak Beach.

Everybody go home, leave us alone.

Nobody even expresses any sympathy for Shannan Gilbert

or for her family.

NARRATOR: Four dead young women, all murdered.

But what happened to Shannan Gilbert is still a mystery

and with winter setting in

the search will have to wait until spring.

We decided to postpone an extensive search

till the start of spring, April.

And we went out there with detectives,

park police, State police,

fire department personnel with their ladders

that could look over the brush along the side of the highway.

We find four more remains.

Now it's eight.

NARRATOR: Authorities wait four months for winter to end

before resuming their search.

When they do, they're shocked to discover four more bodies

bringing the total to eight.

Now we're chasing a serial killer and Shannan Gilbert's still missing.

All eyes are on the Suffolk County Police Force.

They wanna know where Shannan Gilbert is

and how long it'll take to find her.

We've redoubled our efforts to try and find Shannan

and there's about 400 acres of swampland.

It's a vast area.

And so, I remember sitting down with the task force.

We told Nassau County and the State Police,

two jurisdictions that work next to Suffolk County Police,

to do a search in the area that we didn't get to.

And they find even more bodies.

I couldn't believe it. They had found two more remains.

Now we had 10.

One of them was an Asian male wearing women's clothes.

The other was a toddler.

Now this was really a twist in the investigation.

I remember saying to the Chief of Detectives

"What do we have, a dumping ground?"

I mean, this is unbelievable.

He says "I don't know what the heck we have but it's big, it's huge."

It was such a scary thought to know that all of these bodies are found.

You have a serial killer right in your backyard.

Could my sister really be a part of that?

RICHARD: Most of the victims were in the sex business.

Shannan was in the sex business.

We wanted to find out was there more to this story that we didn't know.

And so we did an exhaustive investigation of Brewer,

Shannan's last client...

and Pak, Shannan's driver,

the last two people with Shannan the night she disappeared.

ROBERT: The police go straight to Joe Brewer's house

and they start to search everything.

RICHARD: They search his house, the backyard, his vehicle.

They sat down with him, he was very forthcoming.

Joe Brewer says "My life is ruined and my heart goes out to this girl

but I had nothing to do with this."

RICHARD: Next, we interviewed Shannan's driver, Mr Pak.

Mr Pak told us, after Shannan ran out of Joe Brewer's house

he drove around looking for Shannan.

He indicated that he drove around on Ocean Parkway

which is the main highway

next to Oak Beach where Joe Brewer lives.

Couldn't find her and then drove back to Manhattan.

Even though Mr Pak and Joe Brewer were very forthright

we still got polygraph tests on them.

After we had run them through the vetting process

in our opinion anyway, in the investigators' opinion

they were not involved.

NARRATOR: With Michael Pak and Joe Brewer off the hook

detectives turned their attention towards the other victims

and any connection to Shannan.

One of the things that comes out after the bodies were found

is that Melissa Barthelemy's disappearance

a-year-and-a-half earlier

has an amazing set of circumstances.

CHRISTINE: Eight days after Melissa disappeared

her younger sister Amanda got a call.

It's Melissa's number but it's a man on the phone.

He taunted her and he'd asked

"Are you planning on becoming a prostitute?"

RICHARD: He called her a number of times

to talk to that youngster in very explicit terms.

CHRISTINE: He'd never stay on the phone for very long,

less than three minutes.

And then he would hang up.

The very last call he told her that he killed her sister.

Shannan Gilbert's family believes

they've been taunted by the killer as well.

JOHN: Peter Hackett calls Mari Gilbert and tells her

"I run a home for wayward girls. Your daughter has come to me.

I've treated her with medication."

He was involved in a sort of a tormenting of the mother

in making this weird call.

ROBERT: Of course the doctor has denied any involvement.

But according to Shannan's family

Hackett knows way more than he is saying

and he has the capability of being especially deceptive.

NARRATOR: It takes nearly a year,

but Mari Gilbert's claim that Dr Hackett called her

two days after her daughter Shannan went missing

is finally substantiated through phone records.

When they confront Hackett with that phone record,

Hackett changes his story and says "Oh, sorry, I was only kidding.

"I do remember now I made one call but it was just to comfort Mari."

ALICIA: Peter Hackett has no reason to call Mari.

They're not acquainted, they're not friends.

Why is he inserting himself into this case

if he doesn't have any information to share

about the whereabouts of Shannan Gilbert?

Hackett was like a wrench

in the wheel of this investigation.

He wasn't forthright with the investigators at first.

That caused a delay in furthering the investigation.

I don't believe and our investigators didn't believe

that he had anything to do with Shannan's disappearance

or the serial killer case.

SHERRE: The investigators decided to do one last search for my sister.

The Suffolk County Police start searching Oak Beach again.

They say it's because of some data that they found

from aerial photography.

Bulldozers start showing up at the marsh

right in the centre of Oak Beach.

We get the special equipment that can go into this swampy area.

It's a kind of a machine

that moves on the surface of the mud and muck and water.

ROBERT: They go to the marsh, further than it would seem

anyone would be able to go in by themselves

but within a day

they discover a purse,

a shoe, a pair of jeans.

And when you look at that marsh on a map,

the house that directly abuts that marsh

belongs to Dr Peter Hackett.

Two days later police find the body of a young woman

face up and naked.

It's two years from the time

that they first found those four bodies

and now, in the same area where Shannan was last seen

they found a body.

SHERRE: The first way to determine if it was her or not

would be to see if she had that metal plate in her jaw.

They didn't really have to do any DNA because they saw the plate.

Without a doubt it's Shannan.

Now the hope is gone.

JOHN: The police drive up to Ellenville, New York

and pick up Mari Gilbert

and bring her down to the site.

They bring her

to a house which has a deck 26 feet up on top of the house

so that you could look out over the whole community.

He pointed to where they found my daughter Shannan's remains.

JOHN: They bring her up on this deck to show her this

and the deck they bring her up on is Dr Peter Hackett's deck.

MARI: Can't get anymore ironic than that.

Shannan's remains were found to the right of his house.

And her belongings were found to the left of his house.

It was a sad day.

I knew deep down inside

from that first minute of that phone call from Dr Hackett

something seriously wrong had happened.

I do believe in my heart

that... Dr Hackett

did play a major role in my daughter's death.

It was already proven that he was a liar once

by denying he called me, for over a year.

NARRATOR: But police have a different theory,

one where Dr Peter Hackett's name is never even mentioned.

It appears that she was heading towards the Parkway

towards the lighting on the causeway

and so that would lend to our theory

that she was trying to get out of the area.

Everything pointed to Shannan,

that night, running out of Brewer's house,

scared, upset and running away

into that marshy area where she

was overcome by the elements.

Of course her family didn't believe that

and said that she was murdered.

So they hired a renowned forensic pathologist

who performed an autopsy on her.

Shannan had been found on her back

in a marshy area

but there was no evidence that there was enough

water present that she could have drowned.

In my examination of the skeletal remains

was that all of the bones were normal

except for the hyoid bone in the upper throat.

That is the bone that is most commonly broken

by squeezing on the neck.

Homicide by manual strangulation cannot be ruled out.

ROBERT: There are two scenarios you could look at with Shannan.

The first is that she was murdered

and her body was stashed as deep in the marsh as possible

because they thought that no-one would possibly ever look there.

And the other scenario is the police scenario.

Shannan was having some sort of panic moment

perhaps drug induced.

She ran away from the one guy she knew there,

her driver Michael Pak who could offer her safety.

That she ran from another neighbour who offered to help her...

that she ran into a thick marsh

that doesn't look like anything you could possibly enter...

the idea that she took off all of her clothes

and all of her belongings when she was inside the marsh

and then she is able to fight her way through the marsh

3/4 of a mile before finally falling down

and perhaps drowning in a little few inches of water...

it makes no sense.

NARRATOR: To this day, Shannan Gilbert's case remains open.

Even if the Suffolk County Police Department is correct

and she drowned in the marsh,

the Long Island Serial Killer remains at large.

The only people who seem to really be fighting for this case

are Shannan Gilbert's family.

They brought a civil suit

that they hope will force residents of Oak Beach to be deposed

and to talk about what happened to their daughter and sister.

They wanna know what happened to Shannan.

It's obvious to me

that Dr Peter Hackett, you know, is the one who killed my daughter.

When are others going to see what I can see?

It's, like, even up to now it seems as if nobody's listening.

My sister when she was younger always wanted to be famous.

It's weird because... her story

maybe it's not the famous that Shannan was talking about

but if it wasn't for her

none of these other victims would've been found

and I think that it was something that she was destined to do.

(CRIES) There's so many times where I just wanna talk to my sister,

there's so many times where I just wanna, like, tell her about my day.

WOMAN IN VIDEO: Throw a kissy!

(CRIES) I have three kids now. She's only met one.

I would just want her to see, like, the life that I have now.

I would just talk and be, like, you know,

"How are you? I miss you."

(CRIES)

I can't even do that.

The coroner said my daughter Shannan chose to be an escort.

A life is a life and...

you know, don't judge...

any person

or family

because that has

nothing to do

with their life being taken.

What if it was your daughter,

your mother, your sister?

Murder is murder.

It's senseless, it's evil.

And it's painful.

The person who

needs to be judged

is the murderer themselves.

Captions edited by Ai-Media ai-media.tv