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powered by shopify sign up for a one pound per month trial period at shopify.co.uk slash glass box all lowercase. Go to shopify.co.uk slash glassbox to take your business to the next level today. shopify.co.uk slash glassbox. Hi, I'm Karina Bemisterfer, host of Morning Cup of Murder, your daily true crime podcast. Yes, you heard me right. Daily true crime.
Everyday Morning Cup of Murder tells you a straightforward, short-form story about murder, true crime, cold cases, disappearances, serial killers, cults, and more. And I do that all in under 15 minutes. With over three years of stories and over 20 million downloads, the Morning Cup of Murder podcast has become a staple of so many people's daily routines. So why not add it to yours? Stream Morning Cup of Murder everywhere you listen to podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Mopac Audio.
If you love The List Podcast, please make sure you rate and subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Also, take a quick moment to find us on social media where we post case updates, behind-the-scenes photos, and exclusive content. Follow us at our handle, Atlas Podcast, on Twitter. Instagram, and Facebook. A note to listeners, the following podcast contains content that may not be suitable for all audiences. Previously on Lisk, Long Island Serial Killer.
Well, it's a disturbing call. She is very obviously incoherent at times and seems to be irrational. When you listen to the audio you kind of realize that Shannon is not comprehending very well. Oh, boy, did that piss me off. And the reason I pressed him was, you know, I don't know. I mean, maybe the NYPD, we had a different, basically, we didn't give a shit if the ground was frozen.
If somebody was missing and you have bodies turning up to say, oh, you know what, we'll start up again in the spring. We've worked on cases where we've had dogs find bodies that were underwater that you couldn't see. that there's no other way we would have ever known that the body was there. Last episode, we left off at the search for Shannon and how it led to the discovery of the Gilgo Four. And we briefly introduced you to a former journalist, and until recently...
a lifelong Long Islander. My name is Stephen Barcelo. I used to be a journalist for the New York Daily News. It was seven days a week. We kept very busy. We did everything from stakeouts, court cases, mob, a Gatti family, celebrity, of course, dealing with the Hamptons and all that. Strangely enough, Steve was raised on the South Shore. not too far from a beach.
the ocean parkway we were kids we'd actually walk across the bridge i knew old beach well i mean even as kids we used to ride our bikes up and cross the bridge to go to capture state park which is literally right at the other end of the ocean parkway so it was kind of my backyard
A few years ago, Steve decided to leave the craziness of Long Island and journalism, and he and his family moved to a small town in North Carolina. But back when the Lisk story broke, Steve was at the center of it and got to know almost everyone involved. Or realized he already knew them. We found out this young lady was missing from Oak Beach. And this is when I first ended up dealing with Joe Brewer banging on his door for an interview.
He comes out. He looks at me. He recognizes me before I recognized him about a bar he owned in West Island that a friend of mine was renting. And we're out there. I was helping him move some stuff in with a truck I had. He came out. He's running the liquor store next door. His family owned.
and tells you I got to move the truck. I said, I will when I'm done. He goes, no, you got to move it now. And I basically told him to take a flying leap. And he walked away. But he comes back to me after I knock on his door and remembers like, I remember you. You're that guy that gave me shit.
And so we had a rapport because he felt comfortable that he knew me from the past. Joe was all over the place. Joe one minute would be calling you, going, you recording me, jackass? You recording? The next minute he's telling you a joke, and a minute later he's crying.
Very emotional guy all over the place. But Steve really got to know and spend time with the victim's families. In the beginning now, when these stories first started coming through, the families were actually coming out to Oak Beach. And they would be like releasing balloons. I'm going to get into how I met Mary, but let me get into some of the background. Here he's talking about Mary, Shannon Gilbert's mom.
I would take them out for every time we had a press conference or the families would show up. When the families came out, I would say like, listen, tell everyone you're going home. But anyway, so I could expense that. I could get them French fries and burgers and sodas or whatever. And some of the more interesting stories I got were sitting around.
I mean, one time in there, one of the family members was telling me how they had to sell their plasma TV so they had the money to come down to Long Island, pay for the tolls and the gas and stuff. So, I mean, how much they sacrificed just to come down here to keep the media on tact and to keep the police doing their job.
Given it was Long Island and all the years he spent covering it, Steve had written on some bizarre stories. But the List case brought it to a whole new level. It was a crazy story. The people that these stories draw out of the woodwork, oh my God. I mean, everybody and their mother comes out. You mix a little bit of celebrity, the way they looked at mayor and some of these people, the media.
sex, death. It was crazy. We found people up there where the flags were for the bodies being marked. We had the flags removed. They were stealing dirt from where the bodies decomposed. One guy I think was trying to sell it on eBay. As the Lisk story grew into this frenzy, Steve, with his Long Island ties and connections, did what he could to offer some insight and guidance to the families. I actually got my buddy Johnny Ray involved.
I said, can you do me a favor? And I told him the story. He's going, holy jeez. I mean, I barely get into it. He's going, this is the craziest thing I ever heard. I said, well, this woman needs legal help. She has no money. Can you at least guide her in the right direction? We're here today. at the site of these terrible crimes because the Suffolk County Police Department is grossly derelict in its duty. As a reminder, that's John Ray with Mary Gilbert.
He became the Gilbert family attorney and is known for his attention-grabbing press conferences and fashion choices. The commissioner of police in Suffolk County has acted like he's running an investigation like the Pink Panther.
And not everyone likes his methods, but John Ray has been a key player in keeping SCPD's feet to the fire. And he was a great guy. He is a great guy. We did another visit, brought her in. He literally explained to her, I'm going to do some pro bono work for you and help you out.
And it was because of these connections to the families and others involved that Steve would get tips or inside information that could potentially be important to the LISC investigation. I couldn't get answers. People that I knew and I had relationships with.
didn't want to talk about this story in Suffolk County Police. I would get interviews with people. Someone would come to the house. I would let them know. I was like, this is what I got. I just want to let you know. Do you have this? And the auditor got, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know all that. We know all that. They just didn't, they couldn't give a shit.
You'll hear more from Steve later. And before we pick up from where we left off in the last episode, here's Bob Colker to lay out a timeline, but more so how their stories unfolded or didn't, to add some context to the bigger picture. we take for granted and are able to see so clearly today. So let's go back in time a little and take a look at what the public does and doesn't know as this is happening.
Back in 2007, Maureen Brainerd Barnes disappears in the middle of Manhattan. There is no publicity. It doesn't make the papers. It's just another missing escort. The world doesn't seem to value these people at all, and that's half the problem. A couple years go by. It's 2009. Melissa Bartholomew disappears. Her family gets some help in Buffalo, and it's a local story in Buffalo, particularly when Melissa's sister Amanda starts to get those menacing phone calls.
But there is no real connection to Long Island. It is not a New York City story. It's not national news. It's nothing. And then a year later in the spring, Shannon Gilbert disappears. Again, it's not on the news. Nobody cares about it. And then just a few weeks after that, Megan Waterman disappears. And this, as the summer goes on, is the first time that the notion of an unsolved missing escort makes the local news in Long Island.
Megan Waterman's disappearance ends up on CNN. Lorraine Waterman ends up on camera talking about her daughter. And because Meghan, you can think cynically, sort of fits the mold of the missing white blonde girl narrative that you have on a lot of these shows, she fits a certain slot for the national news media, and she has her 15 minutes.
then that case kind of goes away too. Amber disappears in September, doesn't make the news. And the first time that anybody really seriously thinks about these women is when the four bodies are found in Oak Beach in December of 2010. And as we're well aware, nothing gets attention like a serial killer. But we also know all that attention puts a spotlight on law enforcement and SCPD was feeling it.
I should mention, by the way, and there may be a question out there about who we worked with with this investigation. A big player was NYPD. These prostitutes worked NYPD. This is former Commissioner Dormer in 2014, trying to clear up the confusion on SCPD's willingness to work with other law enforcement agencies. Well, when these four were found, we were involved with the FBI, the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, NYPD, State Police, Nassau County PD.
and local police departments throughout New York. So Dormer confirms the FBI, among others, were involved initially. But we know that later, with new SCPD leadership, that would change. But... Once the Gilgoth Four were found, questions and rumors started circulating about how they got to this aerial long ocean parkway and what condition the bodies were in. He's taken some risks. Very little.
He drives with a body or body parts in his vehicle. He parks on the side of the roadway. But for a very short time, we figure it's seconds, where you open up the door of the vehicle. Take out the wrapped body or body parts. You walk across or push your way through the shrubbery, through the briars, and you dump the body on the other side. You walk right back, get into your car and drive away.
It takes too much time. So from the time he pulled up on the side of the highway at Gilgal Beach, till he walked through the brush, dumped the body on the other side of the brush, got back to his vehicle and left. was less than 30 seconds. First, this speaks to a theory that's not wildly popular, but is still out there. That the killer transported the bodies by boat.
given they were placed in a small section of land between Ocean Parkway and the South Bay. We've been to this area, and although the South Bay is close at points, to arrive by boat, and then haul a body through the bramble almost to Ocean Parkway makes little sense. We've also parked there at night, and when headlights appeared behind us, we timed how long it took them to reach us.
meant the killer had ample time before a car was close enough to determine anything that might be happening. All that to say, bringing the bodies by boat is not impossible but highly unlikely. So dismemberment was part of the signature of the killer. The bodies were wrapped. There's been a question if some or all of the Gilgo Four bodies were wrapped in burlap. I'm not going to say how they were wrapped.
But again, that's the signature of the killer. That's Police Commissioner Dormer from 2014 after he left the SCPD and was a little more carefree with case information. So one can assume that all of the Gilgo Four, at least, were wrapped in burlap. They were murdered at a different location and dumped at Gilgo.
With the Gilgophore collectively, the last issue we've seen is a wild rumor about how the bodies were found, that they were all at the same level of decomposition, so they must have been preserved or stored, manipulated even. then all discarded at the same time. I should mention that two of the victims disappeared in 2010. So they were recent. homicide victims. So their remains were not degraded that much. So the medical examiner had something to work with from an evidence point of view.
And although no one other than the killer can conclusively say if the bodies were brought there separately or altogether, Dormer's comment should clear up the decomposition question. Have you ever heard about the woman who woke up in a cold sweat like she just had a nightmare, but she knew what she saw while she was sleeping was more than just a bad dream?
Or the violinist who disappeared from the orchestra pit in front of thousands of people in the audience? What about when a mark left behind at a crime scene led investigators to wonder if there were devil-worshiping cultists prowling their rural neighborhood? Well, the Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is nothing but these kinds of stories.
Each episode is meticulously crafted to keep you hanging on every word until the final chilling twist. Seriously, the host, Mr. Ballin, has this unique ability to keep listeners balanced on the edge of their life and death with just a dash of excitement like they've never heard before.
Follow Mr. Ballin Podcasts, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Have you ever wondered what it's like to witness a murder? Forrest grabbed the knife and then just stabbed Johnny in one motion. Or how it feels to be shot. I was immediately hit by a barrage of bullets. Or how you would react if your spouse hired someone to kill you.
And he was to put me in a grave with a bullet wound on my head. These are the stories you'll hear on the podcast called What Was That Like? True stories told by the actual person who went through it. You'll hear from a stalking victim. Came back upstairs, and when I came back and turned the corner into my room, I saw him standing there. You'll hear from a man who was kidnapped and tortured. I would do anything, say anything, to simply get away.
And you'll hear actual 911 calls. Real people in unreal situations. Search for What Was That Like on any podcast app or at WhatWasThatLike.com. From here, we'll cover the bigger individual questions concerning the Gilgo Four. starting with Maureen Brainerd Barnes, the first to go missing. Here's Bob Kolker reminding us a bit about Maureen's backstory. Well, Maureen's family remembers a pretty happy childhood for her.
And the source of most of the happiness was her brother Will and her sister Missy. I was scared of thunderstorms and lightning and my sister used to help me at night. I would stay up all night. like looking at the radar and I'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm so scared. I would sleep with her and she would cover my ears and I'm like, but I could see the lightning and she's like, just shut your eyes. So.
That was with his kids. I mean, in reality, where they lived was public housing, and it was mostly with their mother, who was working 24 hours a day and not really around at night. Here's Sarah. maureen's friend who'd end up following her into sex work talking about where they grew up right in connecticut it's definitely a sailor town if you're not in the navy
Or working for an electric boat. They're struggling just to make your own way. Pretty much minimum wage jobs. And for Maureen, she wanted more than her mom's constant work and toil, but she felt stuck. And this is where the reality of sex work in the 21st century really comes into play. I mean, only in this era would it be possible for someone like Maureen to reinvent her life. Sadly, this reinvention didn't happen.
In the summer of 2007, Maureen and Sarah took the train to New York City and posted some Craigslist ads. After a tumultuous and not-so-lucrative weekend, Sarah caught a ride back to Groton with friends. Meanwhile, Maureen, who was facing an eviction back home, decided to stay and try to make up the much-needed funds. Here's Missy again. And this is July 8th. I was laying in bed next to my husband now.
And my phone rang. It's Maureen. And Maureen's like, do you think Chris could come get me because I don't drive? So I was like, Maureen, it's 11.45 at night. We're in Norwich. Like, where are you? And she was like, I'm at Penn Station. I'm trying to get home because someone robbed me. And I was like, what do you mean someone robbed you?
Penn Station, that's where she said she was robbed, correct? No, outside the hotel. Outside the hotel, she said she was robbed. And I was like, I... So you had to call Will because Chris is already sleeping. She calls me back and says, well, Will can't pick her up, but she has a few other people that she could call from here, like family, that she'll see.
But if not, she'll take the train, that she'll just use the money that she has. I said, okay, I love you. I was like, call me in the morning. And she was like, all right, I love you too. This claim that Marine had gone to Penn Station to catch a train back to Groton has raised a lot of questions for people. Because, they say, there are no trains from Penn Station that go to Connecticut, so the story must be wrong.
Yeah, it's Amtrak. It goes right to New London because that's how she was able to get to and from New York City all the time. And just a note, when we first started talking to the families, Missy had a lot going on in her personal life. But during 2020's lockdown, like many of us, she had more time and we were able to get on a call. About two weeks after she went missing.
I get a call from the police department in New York City and they said that they were coming to Connecticut to interview me and my brother on exactly what we knew about her going missing in the timeline. My brother came over and we're waiting for the police department. And I'm like, they said they were internal affair officers. And he was like, yeah. And I'm like, you know what internal affair officers are? And he goes...
No. And I'm like, they're the police. They're the police. Why are they investigating her missing person? Now, before we get into some questions about Maureen's case, we're able to get an important background from Missy on how her sister's case unfolded. The interview with the internal affairs officer, they asked us, your sister ever been to Long Island? And I was like, no, Lauren's never been to Long Island. And I was like, I went through her email. There is no Long Island.
There's nothing there. And I didn't know why they were asking me this. And they left. And, of course, throughout... The three and a half years that Maureen was missing, there was not much activity or much to say between us and the police department, especially in internal affairs. We would call and they would say they're still working on it. When the NYPD internal affairs officers showed up, they had questions that, at the time, made little sense.
On December 11, 2010, I think me and the rest of the world were watching the news on how they found a set of remains on Long Island. And so when they did find the remains... In December 11th and December 13th, we got a call from the detective that was an internal affairs officer that was actually investigating her missing persons case. He said that he was going to submit our DNA.
because the ping off the cell phone tower on Long Island after she went missing could be Maureen. To help clarify, in 2010, when the first four bodies were found at Gilgo, All they had were basically remains. So to identify them through DNA, SCPD began by contacting anyone who had a missing person connected to Long Island in some way.
So this is the first Missy learns of Maureen's cell phone pinging off the Fire Island cell tower. And the first time those NYPD questions from years earlier about Maureen and Long Island finally made sense. But that still left a question that I asked Missy about. So you had mentioned that you and Will, your brother, were like, why does internal affairs coming? Which is weird. They are the police for the police. What was that about?
I requested a sit-down meeting with the Norwich Police Department. Norwich here, basically a sister city to Groton, Connecticut, is the local police. So I had a sit-down meeting with them. And they told me, this is what we did in our investigation. They said the moment that they got the missing persons report and they got the passwords from me, they get access to our email.
They started to track the fact that Maureen never left New York. They called New York City and told them, they were like, listen, you need to start investigating this because she never left the city. New York City went back to Norwich and said, no, this isn't our case, this is your case. And New York City's like, no. The chief of detectives looked at me. He goes, if your child goes missing in Walt Disney World, are you traveling all the way up to Connecticut to report your child missing?
He's like, no, because Orlando police are supposed to be investigating them, not where the person lives. I'm like, yeah, you have that right. So even with the Norwich PD harassing them, the detectives refuse to do anything. But they, the NYPD, finally did agree to this. They finally agreed that Norwich would go in plain clothing, not even being detectives. They weren't even supposed to be outside of Norwich, let alone outside of Connecticut. But they did.
They sure did. They went to New York City and he said we were sitting at a coffee shop with a laptop going through Maureen's email. And there was a client that they had found and they... Did a background check on this name and it came up that he was a New York City police officer. So they call him New York City and they're like, hey, we got an issue. This fact finally. seemed to get the NYPD to take notice of Maureen's case.
And they tell Norwich police basically, hey, we're taking over this case. You guys need to go back to Connecticut. And that's how internal affairs got involved. And you know what? Thank God they did. Because if they didn't, you think New York City detectives even cared at this point in time? No, they were letting Norwich.
come in a jurisdiction that they shouldn't have been investigating at that point. We should note that this NYPD officer did call about Marine's services. But after an internal affairs investigation, they did clear him from being Lisk. One of the victims, when we went through, the investigators went through all the cell phone records, there was a hit from a police officer. And he was vetted. He never met with that girl.
But this is partly why, from early on, there's been the theory on who Lisk might be. Here's former Police Commissioner Dormer speaking to another aspect of this. Well, you know, because of the technology, the use of the computers, the cell phones, and covering up your tracks, the media suggested, oh, this could be law enforcement. And it's possible it could be anybody.
But there's one thing that Missy mentioned earlier that's been a key aspect to Maureen's story and to the overall case. He said that he was going to submit our DNA because the ping left the cell phone tower. on Long Island after she went missing. Could be Maureen. When in New York, she worked exclusively in Manhattan. So for her to end out in Long Island is strange. Here's Sarah, who learned the business from Maureen.
One of the other rules you were talking about, I wasn't allowed to go to Washington Heights, stay in Midtown Manhattan. You don't go to the Lower East Side. Don't go to Alphabet City. Long Island, I never got a call to go to Long Island. The only island that I ever had in a title was Staten Island. If I wasn't allowed to go to Staten Island, which is way closer, I wasn't going to be allowed to go to Long Island.
But then for Maureen's phone to ping out on Fire Island is even stranger. Here's our detective from episode one with a reminder on his thoughts about this. I think an important part of the Lisk investigation... involves a cell phone tower on Fire Island. Fire Island, it's a small island off the coast of the mainland. There's one cell phone tower which covers the whole island. So to register off that tower...
You either have to be on the island or you have to be on a boat in close proximity to the island. You're not going to be on the mainland and registering a phone call off that tower. To the detective's point. This ping from Reen's phone two weeks after she disappeared meant that the killer was either on this small, sparsely populated island or was on a boat near it. And knowing the exact time of the ping narrows that pool of suspects even more.
We hope SCPD has looked into this, or soon will, whether they find the POI file discussed in Episode 1 compelling or not. So as you heard, Missy, Maureen's sister, had a horrible experience with the NYPD detectives before internal affairs took over. Then, once Maureen was discovered out on Long Island, it became SCPD's case.
So we asked Missy how working with them has been. I think at the beginning, they really didn't know how to handle this case. I think that there was a lot of political issues between the department. Certain things were very confusing at first to the families. Like when we would ask if this is a serial killer case, we were told they can't comment on that. But then when the news release came out, we hear Thoda saying this is a serial killer.
case. Of course, the commissioner and the DA going back and forth on how many killers. As family members, you're emotionally involved with it. So if there's two department leaders arguing within each other and they can't work together, it makes you feel like this isn't right. Like, you know, you guys got to get your stuff together. Luckily for Missy, at least.
Things with SCPD have improved. Personally, since the new detective took over this case about five years ago, I talk to that detective almost every week, once a month. I have a great relationship with him. He calls me, see how my kids are doing, see how I'm doing. I could tell you the website that I worked for 10 months. This is SAPD's website, Gilgonews.com, that went live last year.
They were trying to figure it out, so it wasn't something that they just kind of like threw out there. They were really maintaining contact with the families and letting them know that they were working on it, that they weren't exactly sure when it was going to be released. After Missy had researched and provided everything she could to SCPD that could help the case, she wasn't going to just sit back and wait.
After the realization that I wasn't going to solve my sister's missing slash murder investigation, everything that I knew. The police knew more, so I started focusing myself on the unidentified victims. I created a Facebook page for them called Try to Help Identify the Unidentified on Ocean Parkway.
And it basically has all the NamUs accounts and their pictures and stuff on it. And I did a lot of work trying to go through NamUs and trying to compare different missing persons cases to those images at that point in time. And Missy's work on the unidentified list victims has moved things along. I came across the peach tattoo from Peaches, which is the mother of the toddler that they identified through DNA.
And I was kind of like tinkering with the color variation. As I was tinkering with it, something came up. In the leaf, in the peach, there are initials. contact the piece and let them know. If they didn't know, there's initials in the piece. Missy and I also talked about what her hope is for the work she's doing with the unidentified. Yeah, exactly. Identify the victims. You learn their stories.
And through their story, you learn the evidence. They're still nameless. And I guess in a way that gives whoever that killed them power because now they're nameless. So it's important for them to be identified because once they're identified, that power is taken away. Step into the hidden corridors of the past with hometown history. where every episode uncovers the untold stories and secrets nestled in the streets and alleys of our own backyards. We bring history to life.
revealing the extraordinary and the ordinary from local legends to forgotten tales that shape the communities we know today. Tune into hometown history and embark on a journey through time right from where you are. Do you find yourself captivated by the inexplicable, entranced by enigmas and tantalized by the unknown? We are Shane and Josh Waters, brothers who will weave you through tales that have mystified us for years. From haunted hotels to inexplicable disappearances.
With a gripping narrative, we invite you to join us on a journey into realms of the unexplained. So, armchair detectives, curious minds, and seekers of the strange, it's time to put on your headphones and dim the lights. Dive into the uncanny world of the Mystery Inc. podcast and prepare for a journey into the unknown that you'll never forget. And remember, some mysteries are better left unsolved, but not unexplored.
Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with MS-13 in El Salvador? How the Russian Mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s? Or what about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunting the world's biggest meth lab? Or why the Japanese Yakuza have all those crazy dragon tattoos?
I'm Sean Williams. And I'm Danny Golds. And we're the hosts of The Underworld Podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over reporting on dangerous people and places. And every week, we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all over the world. We know this stuff because we've been there.
We've seen it, and we've got the near misses and embarrassing tales to go with it. We'll mix in reporting with our own experiences in the field, and we'll throw in some bad jokes while we're at it. The Underworld Podcast explores the criminal underworlds that affect all of our lives, whether we know it or not. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Now we'll turn our attention to Melissa, the second of the GoGo4 to go missing back in July of 2009.
My name is Lynn Bartholomew, and my daughter's name was Melissa Mary Bartholomew. I was born in South Buffalo. Melissa was born in the same hospital, and it's funny because the doctor that delivered me delivered her. So that's a little peculiar. When Melissa was growing up in Buffalo, she grew up in a kind of a tough neighborhood. And Melissa was good in school, but the opportunities were drying up. And she put herself through the academy to get her cosmetology degree.
A friend of hers, Marcus, had taken her down to New York City a few times. And she met up with this guy, Johnny Terry, that she had told me that he owned a salon. And she said that she had gotten a job there. And it turned out that Johnny Terry was a pimp. And Melissa just became one more woman under his control. Whether there was an actual salon job in the city or not, Melissa did see the sex work as a way to jumpstart what she hoped to achieve. She wanted to make enough money.
Come home to Buffalo and open up a salon. Here's Melissa's younger sister, Amanda. You know, knowing that good money is going to be involved and she wanted to provide a better life for herself and for me and my mom. During a couple of the summers, Amanda had spent a few weeks with her sister in New York City, and during one of those visits, she was let in on the secret of Melissa's work. In the summer of 2009, Amanda was going to come down to New York again.
And she was texting with Melissa a lot about it. And at some point the texts fell off and she wasn't answering her phone. Her family would eventually learn that Melissa was last seen waiting for a John outside her Bronx apartment. And the NYPD was slow to respond the same way they are with a lot of people who are over 21 and engaged in sex work.
The only way the police start to take it seriously is when Amanda starts to get some mysterious phone calls from Melissa's telephone. I was at my cousin's house. All of a sudden my phone rings and it says Melissa and I answer the phone and there's a man on the other line. I'm thinking maybe somebody found her phone or knows where she is and they just started prodding and, you know, wasn't anybody that cared about her or knew her. These disturbing calls made to a 15-year-old Amanda.
have been the source of questions and confusion. How many were there? How long and when were they made? What was said? Were they recorded? Were they traced or pinged and why did they stop? There is one way to answer a lot of these.
My mom had a book of all the phone calls, everything that was said in the phone calls, what times they were made, the dates, you know, everything. I kept this going up until... when Suffolk County came to tell us that it was Melissa that they had found and they confiscated my book.
On numerous occasions, I asked them if I could have it back, and they said they needed it. And I was like, well, why can't you make photocopies? That's my journal. Here's an interesting detail Lynn remembered that pertains to one of the calls. I think it was probably the second visit when Amanda finally realized what Melissa was really doing. But with them being so close, she kept Melissa's secrets.
And now poor Amanda has to live with that for the rest of her life. You know, could I have saved my sister? And she still got that thought going through her head because this guy in the phone call had said, haven't you figured out who this is yet? And she swears that she only met Johnny and one other guy. The whole time she was there, besides like, you know, nail shop attendants, storekeepers. I mean, she just, it rattles her brain every day too. Who is this guy?
And we did learn from Lynn roughly when the calls had started. She goes missing in July. We had a benefit to try and raise money so we could hire private detectives. And 10 days after the benefit... My mom was mowing the lawn and she had a massive heart attack and died immediately. It was such a rough year for my family. I want to say he called four to five times. Here's Amanda with some of what she remembers.
He always kept it under that minute. He was smart. He knew what he was doing. Because they say, like, after a certain amount of time, like, you know, you can track it then. Like, you would always make sure you hung up in time. He just called her a whore. He just said what he did to her, things like that. I was only 15 at that point and it was hard to focus on school and homework and is my phone gonna ring? I kept my phone on at school.
Just in case, you know, I was always just waiting for my phone to ring. Just stringing me along and like the last phone call, he had said, you know, maybe I'll come tell you where her body is. But he had already stated that she was dead. So at that point, it wasn't really hope. finding her alive. It was hard, you know, going to school and my school didn't really cooperate with me. They had bad days and I'd be just sitting there crying in class and they'd be like, go sit and...
Student services in this little room by yourself. Like, you're lucky I wasn't any other kid because I probably would have, like, slipped my wrist. Another player in this who did not cooperate is the phone company. They just don't want to help anybody. That's a whole other story all in itself. Billy took it upon himself to calling downtown Buffalo and getting us a phone that would record.
the killer's voice when he called Amanda because Verizon wouldn't help us out. Lynn is talking about the NYPD detective who really went out of his way to do what he could to make things happen. The funny part of getting that phone is it was a little too late. The last call that came in was August 27th and the phone she didn't get until like the 29th or 30th of August.
That was also when a Buffalo news station revealed that the calls were happening. And once they did, the killer never called again. So Melissa vanished on July 12th. And it's been reported that the first call came on July 16th. Then one on the 19th. the next on July 23rd, and then over a month later, the last one on August 27th. Here's former Commissioner Dormer back in 2014. Well, the calls were made from New York City and from Long Island.
So we have that nexus here. We have the connection between New York City and Long Island. It has always been reported that the calls the killer made were from busy parts of Manhattan, Penn Station and Times Square. But on the night Melissa disappeared...
She had checked her voicemail, causing a cell tower to ping out in Massapequa, Long Island. The question is, when dormers said there were calls from Long Island, or were there other calls the killer made from Long Island that we're not aware of? Regardless of cell tower pings.
What would have truly been helpful at that point is tracking or tracing Melissa's phone location in real time. A lot of times suspects use burner phones, they turn the phones off. That's our area detective who's an expert in cell phone data and technology.
We know the killer was using Melissa's phone, but his idea still applies. But just because you have cell phone records doesn't mean that they're going to solve the case immediately. The phone's barely used. The phone's only used to make calls to... a specific person. You're going to get some tower history, but it's going to be very limited. And it could be in a very busy area. So this must have been the situation with the killer using Melissa's phone. It was turned on for those calls to Amanda.
so we have those tower pings, but otherwise turned off so tracing or tracking it was not possible. Now we'll move on to 2010 and Megan Waterman. I believe it was August. I was working at the Long Island Press at the time, and I was just going to the store. And there were flyers up. This missing woman, and I never heard of her before. This is journalist Jacqueline Gallucci, who's also a Long Island native. I didn't know about this from my job.
And that was really frustrating because this is months later and I have heard nothing about this. So I started looking into it. Before there was a Gilgal 4 or a serial killer and hordes of journalists. Jaclyn was writing about the women vanishing in Long Island, and it started with Megan's missing poster. Megan Waterman grew up in Maine and had an extremely turbulent life as a child.
She had a mother she really didn't see that much until she was a teenager. It was in 2003, so 15. So she took 25 Kronopin and drank a bottle of that cough syrup. This is Megan's mom, Lorraine Hila. And that's when I came home from Florida. And then we just started talking and she ended up going back to jail. Theft. Yeah. She cut off my father. Because he steals too.
Megan started socializing with a whole group who would come up to Portland, Maine from the New York area. Megan started meeting all these guys when she was 18. She dated a couple, but then she fell in love. And her boyfriend ended up... being her pimp. Toward the end, Megan would be taking trips to Long Island to work. Maybe it was because there was more money. At 1 o'clock in the morning, Megan's walking back into the hotel by herself. 1.15, Akeem calls Megan.
And Megan told Tim that she's going to the store. 1.23 a.m., Megan's walking out of the hotel by herself into thin air. What Lorraine is basing this on is one of the big questions with Megan's story. Don't they have security camera footage of where she went or perhaps some of the killer's car? Lorraine has seen what SCPD had to offer. There were cameras covering the front desk and then the foyer as someone exits.
so you get a general direction they take. There is one active camera at the hotel that apparently shows Megan leaving, but it doesn't show whether she got into someone's car. It doesn't show where she went. Maybe the killer knew he didn't want to be on any cameras and so wanted to meet her down the road ways. Anyway, he doesn't show up on whatever camera the hotel furnished for police. Maybe the confusion around security cameras.
comes from the fact that a witness would come forward saying they saw someone fitting Megan's description walking along the service road between the hotel and a convenience store. The next question with Megan Waterman is the key theory about the killer and cell phones. That, after Melissa, he adapted and would go on to convince Megan and Amber to leave their cell phones behind. Here, our detective from the area explains why this detail is important.
During my experience where we would do stings, every single girl we ended up arresting, approximately 200 girls had their pocketbook, their cell phone, their identification on them. For one of them to not bring a cell phone leads me to believe that it's not their first encounter with Lisk to the point where they felt comfortable enough meeting up with him. And I think that's a humongous clue in this investigation is that...
At least two of these girls who didn't bring their cell phones with them had prior interactions with Lisk before. So when it comes to Megan and her cell phone, there have been conflicting reports and rumors. Here's Megan's mom, Lorraine. And when I had talked to Detective Higgins, I asked him what was in that room. And his response to me was, I can't tell you nothing.
Really? That's my daughter's stuff in that room. My daughter is missing. Is there any evidence in that room? Was something left behind that could be a clue to something? You know what I'm saying? And for him to say, well, we can't say, I'm like, all right, did she have a cell phone with her? I can't tell you that. Was there a pocketbook in the room? Can't tell you that. We checked in with who we see as the definitive source for case information.
outside of the SCPD. He's the Lisk Reddit page moderator and the creator of the Gilgocase.com website. He passed along the most explicit example he could find that goes beyond rumor. As for what was really in the room, Well, thanks to the meticulous work from the creator of the Gilgocase.com website, we were able to find a January 19th, 2011 article from the New York Post that claims Megan's cell phone was left behind.
Now, the post isn't always known for its diligent fact-checking, but the article did come out soon after the discovery of the Gilgo Four, so perhaps before the rumors and misinformation started spreading. Now, there's the last of the Gilco Four and the last to go missing Amberlynn Costello. She grew up in North Carolina, but here's Dave Scheller, who she lived with in Long Island at the inn.
Amber was, you know, she was one of those people that was lost and wanted to, you know, basically somebody to give a shit about her. Amber and her older sister Kim were the only two kids in a small family. The parents stayed married. It wasn't a broken home and it wasn't an abusive household. However, when Amber was in her early teens, she was sexually assaulted by a neighbor. But she wouldn't end up the only victim. It really kind of...
shocked the entire family for a while. I think her dad went off the wagon and ended up having to go to jail for a little while. The mother ended up having to take care of the kids by herself. There was a lot of alcohol. I think by the time Amber was in her... Mid-teens, her mother had died. Her father wasn't really able to support her. It was really up to her to make her own way in the world. Kim at the time was in college and struggling to afford it.
So she began working at an escort party girl service like bachelor parties and stripping. Kim then introduced Amber to this world. Eventually, Kim and Amber started to work elsewhere. They would travel around and make money. all over the place. At a certain point, they split up. Kim headed north and landed in Long Island. Amber went south to Florida for a new start. But eventually, the drugs would win out, and so did the well-paying work that supplied them.
Dave is the one who really wants to help her. He sees that she's in a bad situation. He gets Kim's okay and he arranges for Amber to come to Long Island and go to rehab. But the times were to go to rehab. The whole way I got her up here was basically to save her ass, you know, which turned out to, it's crazy that I brought her up here to save her from what was going on down there.
Amber came out of rehab clean and with a boyfriend, and they both went to live with Dave Schaller in Babylon. But eventually, all three of them relapse, and they're all on drugs. And the money they're using to pay for the drugs is coming from Amber working on Craigslist. Less than nine months later, the boyfriend was back in rehab and Amber was taking dangerous jobs to pay for her and Dave's habit. And then on September 2nd, Dave walked Amber outside.
Said goodbye, and she headed off to meet a high-paying client parked just around the corner. So, I mean, that's how close it was for me to have seen what she got into, you know, at least an identifier, or I could have... You know, it plagues me. It's like a never ending. It's like on a loop in my mind, you know. First, we should wrap up the question. Did the last two victims leave their cell phones behind?
With what Dave remembers that night, it's pretty straightforward in regards to Amber. I'm like, you're forgetting your shit. And she's like, oh no, I don't need it. She's like, he said I can use his phone. And I'm like, you're not going to take your phone or your pocketbook. You don't need ID, nothing. No, no, no. We're just going to go to his place. The girls I dealt with were so afraid that I was law enforcement that they took steps.
They would call the hotel room to make sure I was there. They would ask me to send a selfie of my face to see what I looked like. Things like that because they were more concerned about getting arrested than they were about... Again, this is our detective from the area.
So when the girls would come during the sex trafficking stings, they would never trust you. They would ask a lot of questions. They would look in the bathroom to see if you had a toothbrush. When I used to work the undercover investigations, I used to answer the door brushing my teeth.
because they would automatically feel at ease knowing that I'm actually staying at the hotel and I'm not law enforcement. Beyond being simply fascinating, here's how this connects with LISC. So during my experience where we would do stings, Every single girl we ended up arresting, approximately 200 girls had their pocketbook, their cell phone identification on them, which to me, that's the biggest clue in this entire investigation. For one of them to not bring...
a cell phone or a pocketbook, leads me to believe that it's not their first encounter with Lisk, to the point where they felt comfortable enough meeting up with him. And I think that's a humongous clue in this investigation. Given the detective's experience in this world... We asked him to share some of the knowledge he's gleaned over the past decade. We worked numerous undercover things.
Most of the girls throughout that initiative and a few years before that, we probably arrested between 150 and 200. And they were from all over the country. Long Island, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, a lot from Atlanta for some reason. Most of the girls... for alcohol when they would come to you, did have drivers. We would call them pimps. This observation drives home a sad reality seen in this world. These women and men, already on the fringe and perhaps estranged from family,
are often traveling from state to state for this work. All this helps explain why there are lags in them being reported missing or sometimes why they're not reported missing at all. When I was working sex trafficking, our main goal was to try to... recover underage girls that were forced into human trafficking. It was rare. We did come across a few, but not as many as I think we initially thought there would be. So we would work initiatives and we would constantly try to line up.
prostitutes that come throughout the night in hopes of finding underage girls. Most girls were probably between the ages of 18 and 25. Majority of them, probably 80 to 90 percent, were high. some type of drug, whether it be heroin or cocaine or crack, but most of them were high and the girls would never show up on time. So there were times that I was working undercover and I would have one girl in the room and then all of a sudden the door would knock.
And I'd have to put that girl in the bathroom and bring the next girl in. And then the door would knock again. And it was very difficult to stagger because a lot of these girls, they're living such a tough life doing this profession that they abuse drugs. Here's how Amber's sister explained the situation to Bob Kolker. As Kim likes to say, and as a lot of people agree, you don't get into this work because of the drugs or the alcohol.
You get into it because of the money, and then to keep working, that's when you develop the problems with drugs and alcohol. That covers most of the bigger individual questions concerning each of the Gilgo 4 that we've seen, but there are more about them as a whole. Undoubtedly one of the biggest, did the killer leave any DNA behind?
And that's been asked the most about Amber, who spent the least amount of time in the elements, roughly about three months. As with so much of this case, only SCPD knows exactly what exists. But we did talk to DNA experts who, given the factors involved, share what's possible when it comes to Gilgo foreign DNA evidence. And we'll delve into this later when we cover the other victims that were found that spring.
Now we move forward to March, the end of March, and into the first couple of weeks of April, when the search commences along that area off Ocean Parkway. And on March 29th, we found one remain. This is the search that found the Gilgo Four and the same search Shannon's family and the other families with missing loved ones.
had spent three months waiting to start back up. But now, with a serial killer involved, the world had been waiting too, and SCPD found itself stuck center stage in literally a global story. And they were scrambling to look and play the part. And so they have us up by the road. And we have our tripods set up there. We're filming. It's great video. We're getting people going through the thicket and stuff.
This is Steve Barcelo, the former journalist with the New York Daily News. And they had these guys on horses. There's police from upstate New York. There's dogs all over the place. One of the guys, one of the canine guys from Suffolk came up to me and said, are you enjoying the show? I said, well, yeah, I guess. He goes, they're doing this for you. He goes, almost all those dogs out there are not cadaver dogs. They're bomb-sniffing dogs. Those dogs have no interest out there.
And they're just running out of the stick and as quick as they can. He goes, this is purely a show they're putting onto the media. I had insight there. It was just like, he said, you got to kidding me. This episode was written, produced, and recorded by myself, Chris Moss, Jonathan Beal, and Shannon McGarvey. Editing and musical composition by Blake Maples. Executive producers are Jonathan Nowzarden, Jonathan Beal, and me, Chris Moss. Brought to you by Mopac Audio.