Lost Girls: The Unsolved American Mystery of the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Murders - Softcover

Kolker, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0063012952 ISBN 13: 9780063012950

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2020

Synopsis

New York Times Bestseller • Now a Netflix Film

“Rich, tragic. . . monumental. . . true-crime reporting at its best.”— Washington Post

The bestselling account of the lives of five young women whose fates converged in the perplexing case of the Long Island Serial Killer—with a new epilogue by the author. 

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert—after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life—went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old: she was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene—of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention—until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery near remote Gilgo Beach on Long Island turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannan’s. 

There was Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and Melissa Barthelemy, last seen in the Bronx in 2009. There was Megan Waterman, last seen leaving a hotel in Hauppauge, Long Island, just a month after Shannon’s disappearance in 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months later that same year. Like Shannan, all four women were petite, in their twenties, and had come from out of town to work as escorts, and they all had advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage. 

Long considered “one of the best true-crime books of all time” (Time), Lost Girls is a portrait of unsolved murders in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them. This edition includes an epilogue that speaks to developments in the case, including the shocking fate of Mari Gilbert, Shannan’s mother, for whom this case became the crusade of a lifetime. 

About this title

About the Author

Robert Kolker is the author of Hidden Valley Road, an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, and one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice/Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting. His journalism has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Wired, O the Oprah Magazine, and The Marshall Project. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0063012952
• ISBN 13: 9780063012950
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432