Netflix’s true-crime drama Lost Girls follows the hunt for a serial killer who allegedly targeted sex workers on Long Island. Though fictionalized, the film is based on an actual string of murders, that, for years, puzzled investigators. When the film premiered in 2020, police were still trying to hunt down the killer. Now, they believe they’ve found the culprit.
Rex Heuermann has been arrested for what has been dubbed “The Gilgo Beach Murders.” After a multi-year investigation, Heuermann was accused of killing at least four women—one of whom sparked the creation of Lost Girls. At the heart of the film is Mari Gilbert (played by Amy Ryan from The Office), who worked to bring attention to the murder of her 24-year-old daughter, Shannan.
Lost Girls follows the grieving mothers and sisters turned victim advocates, who pushed police to take the murders of their loved ones seriously. Now that Heuermann has been arrested, justice may finally be served to the actual families. Here’s everything you should know about the case and its horrific aftermath.
Who is Rex Heuermann?
Rex Heuermann is a 59-year-old father, husband, and businessman. He works as a licensed architect and owns a firm in New York City. So far, Heuermann has been charged with the first-degree murders of Melissas Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello, though investigators believe he’s responsible for more killings.
How was Rex Heueurmann caught?
ABC7 reports that Heueurmann was connected to the murders through DNA technology. His DNA was extracted from a pizza crust that matched a male hair found on one of the victims. Additionally, a collection of Heuermann’s burner phones were found, with call logs that connect him to the victims.
According to CNN, investigators believe Heuermann used various cell phones to taunt Barthelemy’s family members in 2009. During the calls, he allegedly admitted to killing and sexually assaulting the young woman. Investigators also claim to have found several email accounts belonging to Heuermann, which he used to search “sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography, and child pornography.”
Despite the evidence, Heuermann has pleaded not guilty. His defense attorney, Michael J Brown, said the case was “extremely circumstantial in nature,” In a statement obtained by ABC7, Brown said, “Rex Heueramann is 59 years old with no prior criminal history. He is a college graduate and is a hardworking licensed architect who has his own NYC firm. He is a loving husband to his wife of over 25 years and an involved and dedicated father to his daughter and stepson. He has entered a not-guilty plea and has insisted he did not commit these crimes. There is nothing about Mr. Heuermann that would suggest he is involved in these incidents. And while the government has decided to focus on him despite more significant and stronger leads, we are looking forward to defending him in a court of law before a fair and impartial jury of his peers.”
Who was Mari Gilbert?
Lost Girls, a book authored by journalist Robert Kolker served as the basis of the film. In it, Kolker offers details of Gilbert’s life that didn’t make it to the screen. She grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but moved with her three eldest daughters, Shannan, Sherre, and Sarra, to upstate New York to escape their heroin-addicted father. Gilbert worked a variety of jobs, including serving as a retail manager, teaching assistant, and Walmart employee, but continued to face personal struggles. Her next partner, the father of her youngest daughter, Stevie, was arrested for domestic violence, and her children spent nearly two years in foster care.
The girls eventually returned home, but Shannan would go on to spend more years in foster care. She was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder at 12 years old, and Mari struggled to manage her eldest child’s at times erratic behavior. Shannan also reportedly didn’t get along with her mother’s abusive boyfriend, further straining their relationship.
By 2010, Shannan was an aspiring actor who lived in Jersey City and worked as an escort. On May 1, she disappeared near Gilgo Beach after making a frantic phone call to police while seeing a customer. Though Shannan had been on the phone with 911 for more than 20 minutes and had been spotted running down the john’s quiet street knocking on doors and screaming for help, police did not arrive on the scene for almost an hour. It took authorities almost a month to connect the call to the missing persons report the Gilbert family had filed for Shannan. Mari Gilbert felt that Shannan’s disappearance wasn’t being treated with urgency and that her daughter was being dismissed because she was a sex worker. “I think they look at them like they’re throwaway,” she told the New York Times in 2011.
She spoke to the press, putting pressure on police and ensuring that Shannan wouldn’t be forgotten. Seven months later, a police dog found skeletal remains on Gilgo Beach, leading to the discovery of three more bodies, all belonging to sex workers who’d used Craigslist to find their clients. Six more bodies would eventually be found. Shannan wasn’t among these victims, but the search for her had led to the realization that a serial killer was at work in the area.
Shannan’s body was found in a nearby marsh in 2011. Though county officials theorized that she had wandered into the marsh and drowned, an independent autopsy sought by Gilbert’s family found that Shannan may have been strangled to death. None of the murders have ever been solved.
“She was not perfect, but she was loved and she was cared for,” Gilbert told the press in 2011. “She does not deserve to be forgotten.”
How was Mari Gilbert killed?
Gilbert’s other daughters supported her effort to bring attention to their sister’s murder, and often appeared alongside their mother at memorials and when she spoke to reporters. But her third daughter, Sarra, suffered from severe mental illness. In his new afterward to Lost Girls, Kolker described the breakdown Sarra experienced after the discovery of her sister’s remains:
In late 2013, Sarra was watching the American Music Awards on television and became consumed with the belief that she and Shannan had cowritten several hit songs for Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z. Not long after that, she developed a second, more ominous set of delusions, involving the people she loved becoming possessed by demons. She would insist that Shannan wasn’t dead, and that she could tell by looking into someone’s eyes if they were possessed. She told people she was a god, and her job was to defeat all evil gods, and that quite often the evil gods took the form of her sisters and mother.
Local newspaper reports about Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance and the bodies discovered on Gilgo Beach.
STAN HONDA//Getty Images
Over the following three years, Sarra spent time in psychiatric hospitals and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She drowned her pet dog, and lost custody of her son, who entered her mother’s care. On July 23, 2016, Sarra began hearing voices and called her mother for help. When Mari Gilbert arrived, Sarra stabbed her multiple times with a kitchen knife and beat her with a fire extinguisher. Despite her well-documented history of severe mental illness and the fact that Sarra had gone off of her medication before the murder, Sarra was found guilty of murder in 2017 and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.
In describing Gilbert’s legacy, Kolker wrote that out of all of the family members of the Gilgo Beach murder victims, “Mari was the one who got the most out of the police, forced them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. And she didn’t just make a lot of noise; the experience of fighting on behalf of her daughter Shannan transformed Mari, too.”
Gabrielle Bruney
Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. She’s based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York.
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