LOST GIRLS-Robert Kolker

year old. She was a craigslist prostitute, had been 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 in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap, but

none of them Shannon's. There was Maureene Brainerd Barnes, last scene at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and Melissa barth Emily last seen in The Bronx in two thousand and nine. There was Magan Waterman, last scene leaving a hotel in Wapogue, Long Island just a month after Shannon's disappearance in twenty ten, and Amber ln Costello last seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months later that same year. Like shen and, all four women

were petite and in their twenties. They all came from out of town to work as escorts, and they all advertised on Craigslist and its competitor backpage. Lost Girls is a portrait not just of five women, but of unsolved murder 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. The book that we're featuring this evening is Lost Girls and Unsolved American Mystery,

with my special guests, journalist and author Robert Coker. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.

any reporter. Then the bodies were identified, and it was that they were Craigslist escorts. And the most interesting thing happened among a lot of people in the New York area interest in this case sort of deflated a little bit. It all kind of got a little quieter for some reason, because people said, oh, these women were prostesies, and that to me was the first time that something unusual was

going on here. It became very clear as time went on that this happens a lot in serial killer cases, that serial killers actually rely on the idea that their victims will not be missed, and that even if they were discovered, that the public won't necessarily go on a crusade to find them, because as a society we stigmatize these women and decide somehow that they have it coming. Never mind that the Johns are also breaking the law, The pimps are breaking the law, the drivers are breaking

the law. So then tis time went on became more complicated, and in Lost Girls, I cover all the ins and outs of the case. I as a reporter, got to know some of the family members of some of these women, and it became immediately clear that they defied expectations I had assumed, and I think a lot of other people had too, that these women didn't have families, that they didn't have people in their lives who cared about them that they were somehow lost to the world long before

they actually disappeared and were murdered. And what I learned is that nothing could be further from the truth. These women had very close relationships with family members, stayed in constant touch, and were leading more or less semi functional lives for a very long time. And they are family members cared deeply when they went missing, and it was in many cases law enforcement that dropped the ball when they disappeared, because again, our society stigmatizes in this line

of work. From there, it became clear that the women involved were doing something new in terms of prostitution. They were taking advantage of the Internet, and this allowed them to lead even more mainstream lives than previous generations and prostitutes have been able to do. They no longer have to go to a bad neighborhood. They can work out of their home. They don't need to work for a pimp. They can be their own boss, they can set their

own hours. They can lead a kind of a compartmentalized life. Their prostitution life can be in a box. They can just do it a few days and months and then lead normal lives the rest of the time, and that meant that in many cases, these women were people who might never have become prostitutes ten or fifteen years ago, but the Internet made it easier for them. It lowered the barrier to entry, and it made them feel safer because they weren't walking the streets the way that you'd

have to. And all of these factors were things that put them in harm's way. And I thought myself, after writing a magazine story about the case that brought the family members together, wouldn't it be great to write a book that made it clear to the public who these women really were, and to make them seem more than just cardboard characters or extras in a serial killer case. What if we could understand what it is exactly that

makes women like this so vulnerable. It's not just that they chose to take this risk, it's that we chose to turn our backs on them. And what have I got to know their families better? And what have I got to know their communities better? And what if their lives were actually windows into a part of America that the media doesn't really talk about much. All these women came from struggling parts of America that the media doesn't talk about. Places where opportunities have been drying up and

where the recession is still going strong. Places where a generation earlier there might have been jobs, but now the best jobs are at dunkin Donuts or at Walmart, and now the Internet, there's a temptation for some women to make more money in one night than their friends and neighbors are making in a week or two weeks working at the local gas station or convenience store. This is a part of America that I really think deserves attention, and so I thought Lost Girls could do that as well.

But for your listeners, obviously, Lost Girls is also a murder mystery, and I go through the ins and outs of the case. I have exclusive interviews with people who are considered persons of interest in the case by the public. I speak with the police commissioner at the time and the chief of detectives at the time. There are exclusive interviews there as well, and with a John who's at

the center of the case as well. So what I wanted to offer readers was a three hundred and sixty degree view of a murder mystery and also of a broader mystery of what it is in our society that makes women like this so vulnerable.

So take us back and tell us what you found out from all your research about who Shannon Gilbert was and how she was formed and some of the formulative years for her.

them were kind of in business together. And it also said that she had grown up in Ellenville, New York, which is upstate. It's sort of halfway between New York City and the state capitol, Albany. It saw in a in a kind of a more rural or not really suburban, more rural part of the state, and she, you know, obviously came to the New York area to make money. And then there were a couple of reports that said that perhaps that she had been prescribed antidepressants and you know,

might have used substances. And that's really all anyone knew. But the mystery about Shannon in her life is exactly what her childhood like. Because it also became clear over time that she was I had a mother, and she had three sisters, and that the family all lived in Ellenville, but that Shannon didn't always live with the rest of

her family. And what I had learned through my research and lost Girls was that through various family complications and difficulties that her mother was having, Shannon ended up living in foster care for almost her entire childhood, from the time she was seven years old going forward, she maybe only lived at home for about a year. Despite all this, she got excellent grades. She graduated high school from a very good high school, New Paul's High School, and just

after just three years of high school education. She had an amazing singing voice. She performed for her friends and they loved listening to her singing. She was a buoyant, upbeat, joyful personality around her friends. There was no suggestion that this foster care situation was eating away at her. You know, there was none of the you know kind of trauma, that obvious trauma that the stereotype you might expect what happened in terms of someone deciding to become a prostitute.

But she was a restless person with ambitions and in Lost Girls, as you get to know her better, you learn exactly what motivates her to go off to try to make a name for herself, and that is that, according to many of her friends and those who k who are best, she really wanted to re enter her family and be welcome back into her family and to have a position of power within her family. And making money from prostitution for a short period of time actually

was helpful to her in this way. She was able to buy people presents and you know, swoop into town and treat everybody to, you know, whatever they wanted, because she had the money, and everyone was concerned learned about her. But of course nobody in this book thinks, you know, none of the characters in the book think that they're going to be murdered by a serial killer, and so,

you know, not a lot was done to really stop her. Also, she was such a fiercely independent and energetic person that it was hard to imagine her putting herself in harm's way and not being able to defend herself. And in fact, in Lost Girls, her mother Mary points out, you know, she fought back. She ran screaming from this house in

Oak Beach. We can talk more about the circumstances of her disappearance now or later in the program, but that Knight at Oak Beach has probed extensively in the book, from the point of view of her driver, from the point of view of her John, from a neighbor down the block, from the police, and then from several people who have researched the case independently on webs Less, which I'm sure your listeners know about, you know, one of

the great major independent, you know, internet sites where people we'll talk to one another and share information and try and do their own saluting at home about a case.

commuter train from Jersey City into Manhattan. She went into Manhattan and she went to a street corner and waited for her ride. For her driver. Her driver's name is Michael Pack and she had been working together several nights a week for at least eight or nine months. They were friendly and had a nice, you know, rapport going.

And he came and picked her up at the place that they had determined and she got into the car and with a you know, with a little netbook and with her phone, she posted an ad and waited for a call. But it was a slow night, and she had one call several blocks away from where they had met.

But there really was nothing else going on except a call coming out from Long Island, from way out in Long Islands, more than an hour's drive from mid Timp Manhattan, even that late at night, and that call came from a gentleman named Joe Brewer, who was the john at

the house where she disappeared. They decided that, given that it was a two hour minimum, you know, for this appointment, that they would go out there, because in many cases you can take a two hour date and try and extend it into a three or even four hour date, which would end up paying for the whole night, and it wouldn't matter that they traveled so far. And so with that in mind, they decided to drive out there.

They went out to Oak Beach, which is a secluded beach community in Long Island where on paper all the residents are millionaires because they have beach front property, but in fact it's a much more peculiar place than that. This isn't like East Hampton or West Hampton or one of these millionaires rose. It's filled with middle class and even some working class people who families have owned these

houses and they've watched the values rise up. And it's secluded and far away from the rest of Long Island. You've got this metropolitan area of over ten million people all around, and yet Oak Beach is just seventy two homes, a twenty minute drive from the nearest convenience store, from the nearest gas station, from the nearest supermarket. If you want to court a milk, you've got to drive twenty minutes over a bridge into the rest of Long Island.

So the only people who live here are people who are desperately holding on to homes because of their value, people who like to live remotely, who want to be off the beaten track, people who want to be a big fish in a small pond, or don't want to be hassled. And in this case, Joe Brewer enjoyed his house because it was a party pit for him and his friends. It was almost like a frat house for him.

He was, you know, a father, but divorced, hadn't worked for a while, had a little money in his family and was basically hanging out and had hired prostitutes there in the past, and Shannon was just another one. So they show up. She goes in Michael Pack the driver waits outside for you know, an hour, maybe two, but early on she gets he gets a phone call from Shannon saying that she and the John are going to

go out on a drive to run an errand. Michael Pack isn't sure exactly what that errand is for, but he assumes it's to go get drugs. They aren't gone more than ten or fifteen minutes, which means they didn't leave the general area of Oak Beach, right. They come back and Michael Pack keeps you know, hanging out in his car, playing poker on his cellphone, waiting for the date to keep going. At some point he gets another

call from Shannon. This time Shannon is asking him to go off to the nearest pharmacy or a drug store and get some things that might help keep the the date going longer, things like playing cards and you know k why.

contact with the driver. And what Brewer seemed to be telling Michael Pack was got We've got a problem. I want this date to end, and you know your girl isn't leaving the house. And so Michael Pack reluctantly gets out of the car and follows Brewer into the house. And what follows, at least according to Michael Pack, is a very peculiar chain of events where Shannon is refusing to leave, but is crouched behind a couch and trying to keep away from not just from Joe Brow but

from Michael Pack. And slowly it becomes clear to Michael that Shannon is on the telephone with the police with nine one one, trying to say what's going on here and what she says, is they're trying to kill me. Michael Pack tries a couple things to try to convince Shannon to come with him. She refuses. Brewer tries to at one point to grab a hold of her to get her out of the house, and she screams and runs away. Brewer throws up his hands and walks out

of the house. All these events, by the way, are according to Michael Pack, so it's his version of events. It's unclear this is exactly what happened, but this is based on his recollection. And so now no one knows what to do. And Michael Pack says, forget it, I'm out of here, and he leaves the house and sits in the car again. And that's when Shannon comes running out of the house, screaming, stumbling and running again into

the darkness. Now I want to slow down even further and talk with your listeners about what a peculiar moment, says Shannon Gilbert has never been to Oak Beach before. She does no idea where she is or how she got there. She was driven there. She it's the middle of the night or actually dawn and will be breaking soon, but it's still very dark outside. She can't see a thing. The only soul she knows in this area is her driver, Michael Pack and yet she runs away from him into

the darkness. And he is supposed to be her security detail. He is supposed to be the one who's guaranteeing that she gets out of there just fine. And yet she's not just running away from her John, she's running away from him. It is unclear exactly why she is so upset. Joe Brewer might have told the police more than he's told the public, but it's very clear that he must

know something about why she is so upset. The police have tried to describe her behavior as a reaction to the drugs, a psychotic break, but that doesn't explain why she could be on the telephone, Why she would be on the telephone with nine one one for twenty three minutes. That is not a lot of people believe, that is

not the work of an irrational person. Again, it's highly unusual for a prostitute to be calling the police anyway, because you know the police are only going to cause trouble for her, and so a lot of people believe, and based on my findings and lost Girls, I am highly persuaded to believe that Shannon had a very good reason to be calling the police, that there's an incomplete, missing piece of this story about what happened to her inside that house, and that she genuinely feared for her life,

and that she for some reason didn't trust her driver either, and kept on going. She started to knock on doors in the neighborhood. The first person who sees her down the road a few doors down is Gus Colletti, an elderly man. He's up early because he and his wife are going to drive off for a day trip, so his lights on, which is probably why she came to

the house. But he says that he's going to call the police when he sees her, and that just sense her shrieking and sending and screaming and running off again, so that that's sort of a false you know, that's a that's a dead end for her, and she keeps running. She knocks in a few more doors, and this time nobody comes out. Another neighbor calls nine to one one when they see her, but they don't come out and

don't help her. And that is the last we know of what happened to Shannon, except that her body is found some time later.

class or charming guy. But is you know, very you know, has a high opinion of himself and likes to brag to people around him about what a lady's man he is, and he's not above hiring prostitutes to entertain his friends at parties.

a passport. What he was accused of doing and convicted of doing, was an immigration scandal, trying to he was flying out to be a the companion of someone who was being sneaked into the United States, and at customs he was stopped and it was clear that the two of them weren't really together, and he was arrested and did some time in a federal jail. But that's not violent crime, so it's unclear that he's ever had any experience in causing people harm.

about Jones Beach. Now, for your listeners who don't understand the New York area, Jones Beach is an enormous state park that is a beautiful beach in Long Island, and that's very close to Oak Beach, and as far as major landmarks go, it's something that that someone like Shannon, who was unfamiliar with the area would be the only place around there that she knows about. So she's panicking. She's on the phone, and she says something about Jones Beach.

The operator switches her over to this New York State operator. The New York State operator tries to get more information about where Shannon is, but never learns a thing, and so in a way, the nine to one to one call, even though it's twenty three minutes long, is something of

a non starter. Now, we haven't heard every minute of that call because in New York State laws, they don't release nine one one tapes, particularly when they're you know, there's there are open cases going on, But as far as what the police have said about what's on the tape and what family members say they've been told by police, that's all there is. And so they don't even treat it as a missing person's case, and they certainly don't

treat it as attempted murder. In fact, it sits there and that po least don't connect the dots between that car and the other nine to one one calls from Oak Beach for weeks, which seems a little outlandish in my opinion. I'm talking about two more nine to one one calls that were made, one by Gus Colletti, the neighbor, and another by another neighbor named Barbara Brennan. These were about a woman going screaming through Oak Beach about Shannon Gilbert.

The police do respond to those calls. They do get there in a semi decent amount of time, something like less than twenty minutes after the second nine one one call, But by the time they get there, Shannon does not appear to be anywhere, and Michael Pack is gone as well. Michael Pack later told me that he threw up his hands after searching for a while and split. It doesn't seem like he actually spent that much time looking for her, to be honest, but that's what he says. And so

the police come. But again, think about it. The police are not there to investigate an attack or an attempted murder, because no one's told them that she believes someone's trying to kill them, and they don't know about her own nine one one call. All they know is that a woman has been screaming in the running down the street and that now her and her companion, the driver, are gone. And so the police officer at that time kind of shrugs after spending some time there and says, oh, well,

I guess they resolved whatever argument they were having. And he leaves again and he writes up the disappearance, but the incident, but it's not perceived as anything more than a curiosity, like a strange moment that happened at Oath Beach. So that's that's, you know, the morning of May one,

twenty ten. It takes several weeks, perhaps even two months, before the missing person's report that Shannon Stanley filed in her hometown in Jersey City is actually connected to the events at Oak Beach and to the nine one one call, and by that time the trail is cold. Scous Coletti talks about a police officer coming in August to knock on his door and to interview him a second time about what was going on. By that time, the security

video at Oak Beach had been taped over. No one in the community cared enough about what had happened to bother preserving what was on that video. Now there are conspiracy theories that say that they're covering up for each other and that there were things on that video that were potentially incriminating, but we may never know because that

video was taped over and doesn't exist anymore. Well, so, you see, it's an investigation that falls through the cracks for logistical reasons, for very human frailty reasons, and just sort of the folly of bureaucracies. For technological reasons, they couldn't trace you're trying late and trace her cell phone call to nine one one, And then for reasons of apathy, the community didn't care enough to hang on to that security video, or perhaps they're hiding something months.

hearing that. Also, she's in her twenties, she's not a small child, and so they think, well, wherever she is, she be where she wants to be. Maybe she found a better date. And then they say then they don't even accept her missing person's report. They say it has to be filed in the city where she resides, which is Jersey City, New Jersey. Her family eventually does, along with the boyfriend, file a report in Jersey City, and that's that report that eventually floats back to Suffolk County.

But think of all the time that could have been saved if the police in Suffolk County had paid attention, had taken it seriously. Instead, they decided it wasn't their problem. Now, imagine for a minute that Shannon Gilbert wasn't a prostitute. Imagine if she was a middle class person, if she was the daughter of a doctor, or of a lawyer, or of a judge. Somehow I think the police would have snapped to attention and done a little bit more for her friends coming to say that something had gone

wrong that night. Something would tell me that the community would have been compelled to turn over that security video within minutes or hours of her friends going to the Suffolk County Police. But none of that happened because of Shannon's line of work. The stories like that echo throughout Lost Girls. By the way, we learn about things like this happening with a lot of the other women as well,

and then something sorry go ahead. Then something really peculiar happens, which I further detail in Lost Girls, which is a neighbor at Oak Beach, a doctor named Peter Hackett offers to help Shannon's boyfriend and spread the word about Shannon's disappearance in the community, and he gets Mary Gilbert's number. Mary is Shannon's mother and he calls her. He says he called to offer the assistance as the representative of the community of Oak Beach, but Mary says that the

was actually far more peculiar than that. She feels that he was checking to make sure to see to to sort of cover his bases because he's hiding something. She says that he said that he runs a home for wayward girls.

the conspiracy theories really spin. All through Lost Girls, there are neighbors that Oak Beach who are convinced that the doctor saw her that night, that he tried to help her that night. There are some neighbors who say that they even overheard him saying that he did. He of course denies all of this, and I work I should before just in the interest of fairness, I worked very hard to portray the situation fairly. Because the doctor has

his own you know, he defends himself. He says, that all this is completely wrong, But at the same time he also deceived the public. He denied that he was ever on the phone with Mary Gilbert. He denied it for a year until finally he was forced to admit it and so and even when approached after that, he

continued to dissemble when talking about this case. So either he is incredibly naive and defensive and scared about all the attention for no good reason at all, or perhaps he knows more about what happened that morning than he cares to admit. The conspiracy theories about him are are all over the place. Some say that he, you know, should be a suspect of the case. He of course denies this. Other people say that he was a bystander who is covering up for someone else. Then there's the

added complication that he has physical disabilities. He walks with a prosthetic leg, and would he actually have the ability to physically overpower Shannon. The speculation runs wild, but the

police went an entirely different direction. After interviewing Brewer and Michael Pack and doctor Hackett and others in the community, they decided that this was not a criminal matter, that this was an accident, that Shannon had a bad reaction to drugs and was going through psychosis, and that she ran off, And they were convinced for a year and a half that wherever they found her, it would be

in the water, perhaps anywhere else. She would not be a murder victim, that she would be a victim of circumstance. Now this is just if true, it's highly coincidental. Given the fact that four other women just like her, women in their twenties, who advertised on Craigslist, were found just three miles away on the side of Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach. It would be incredible to think that her disappearance led to the search that led to the discovery of these other four women, and yet the cases are

somehow not connected. You can tell that this is becomes a slightly convoluted set of events with lots of different theories. What Lost Girls tries to do is untangle all these theories and get to the bottom of what might be behind them.

he was playing the averages. He thinks that her case is a little different from the others because she had a driver, and that the killer's m was to try to get these women alone, and so he thinks that this is the police commissioner at the time, Richard Dormer, believes that it just doesn't make sense that she would be targeted by the same killer for this reason and

this reason alone. And so from there he he starts to, you know, unfurl a whole other scenario where there's no foul play at all, and where the neighbors are innocent bystanders, and where she just sort of runs off and dies. But I try to make clear and lost girls that this is a this is more than just a strange and outlandish theory. It also is kind of polluted by this old fashioned Victorian sense of prostitutes. It's almost it suggests that Shannon Gilbert died of hysteria or of a

broken heart, or of melancholy. You know, that her soul was somehow driven asunder by a life living on the streets, and that just is it just doesn't seem quite right, particularly since there's so many inconsistencies in the doctor's story and so many inconsistencies in the the entire it was an accident theory.

these Barrier Island beaches. Ocean Parkway is distinctive in that at night you can tell when you're alone because it's a straight shot at night with very few street lights. And so if you are, let's say, a killer trying to dispose of four bodies close to one another, you can pull over and you can know pretty much that no one is watching you, because you know there are no headlights coming from miles away. And that is presumably

what this killer did. He pulled over, dumped a body, drove a little bit, dumped the second, jumped a third, and dumped a fourth and got out of there. But they all are very close to one another. Burlap was found around the bodies. Perhaps they were shrouded in burlap, perhaps they were in burlap bags and the skeletons. The bodies themselves did not seem to leave. It seemed to

be stripped of any flesh, and this is interesting. It's unclear whether this was a function of the weather, whether they'd been left there a long time, or whether the killer had actually gone to work on them to make

sure that they were this way. In any case, this is a methodical disposal of bodies, one that has great intentionality behind it, with a real eye for detail, And the fact that they were located so close together suggests to many profilers that this killer wanted to remember exactly where they were, wanted to be able to drive by any time and relive the experience of having killed them.

Wanted to continue his relationship with these women well beyond the act of killing them, wanted to know every murder like this is an act of of violence more than of anything else, but it's also it's also about domination and control, and to control every aspect of their body disposal seems important to this killer.

County to use as a training exercise. And so you know, of course, we all know that the after the first forty eight hours of a missing person's case, it becomes likely that the person has died. And so in this case, an officer in Suffolk County who had a cadaver dog was simply of the opinion that Shannon Gilbert's body had to be somewhere, and why not use a dog on a training exercise to try to find it. So he would go out from time to time, and he tried

the neighborhood and didn't find anything. And he tried one side of the highway, didn't find anything, and then he went to the other side of the highway, and sure enough, three miles down from the Oak Beach entrance. In December of that same year of twenty ten, seven months after Shannon disappeared, they found those first four bodies. Then the winter came. The snow made it impossible to search for

more bodies. But at the end of March and beginning of April they found five more bodies, and some of them they all were different, They weren't in burlap, some of them were not complete skeletons. Some of them later on became linked to remains that had been left in other parts of Long Island. Years earlier. A torso left several miles away of one victim. Now there was a

leg from that same victim found. And none of these victims have been identified the way that the first four have, except for those that except for another prostitute named Jessica Taylor, who had disappeared several years before, and they don't quite fit the same exact profile as these first four women

in Burlap. One of them is a small Asian man, another one is a toddler who appears to be related to a woman who was found several miles away, but the police commissioner at the time, Richard Dormer, was of the opinion that they really all could have been killed by the same killer. He has a theory that the killer when he first started killing, had a little less control over who his victims were. It was who he ever picked up, whoever happened to be in the right

opportunity for. But then with the advent of the Internet, he was able to actually get on the phone to find exactly the right person for him. He was actually able to go shopping for the perfect victim for him, and so he became more selective and the victims became more similar to one another. He also believes it's one killer because he again, he's a cop. He's playing the averages. He just can't believe that there would be two serial killers, or more than one killer deciding to leave bodies in

roughly more or less the same exact spot. It just

doesn't seem like it statistically likely to happen. But there are a lot of people who disagree with that police commissioner, including the district attorney in the area, Thomas Spoda, who has went on the record very early saying that it's not clear that there's one killer, that no one should believe it as yet, that it could be just that it is a very good, you know, practically good dumping ground for bodies, much the same way that the swans and swamps of New Jersey might have been the Netlands

before they built the football arena, or perhaps some areas in Staten Island for mob hits. That this is just one place where people leave a lot of bodies.

has his theory. So I'm very intrigued by that kind of argument between those two people that should be basically on the same side.

we're fighting over exactly what has happened here. It just isn't it isn't good for the prosecution to be doing this. And so in Lost Girls you hear the story of how the commissioner was replaced with someone who is much more in step with what the district attorney believes, and how they've been in lockstep ever since and are trying to learn from that mistake. But in some sense that the damage has been done.

So self interest plays a role here, I believe.

There are things that could happen, and at least Dormer seems to have some pretty good evidence to back up his theory.

he know for sure. But he thinks that the fact that they have gone unidentified for so long, particularly a small child a toddler, suggests that these people were really living off the grid in a profound way, that unlike the women and lost girls, they really had no connections in life, and that they were engaging in survival sex. They think that the clothing that the Asian man was

found with was women's clothing. They think that the toddler traveled around with the mother doing calls, which is not unheard of at the low end in prostitution, particularly if you're a street walker. And again he believes that the killer may have evolved. He may have gone out looking for whatever hooker he could find in the beginning, and then as time went on, decided he wanted to be more selected, and there was the Internet providing him with the perfect shopping list.

down that phone number and calling that phone number. And let's say that woman has a disposable cell phone that's made out to a phony person, and or or maybe she shares the phone with six women, and you know, by the time that woman is dead, the police can go back and see who is looking at Craigslist that day and clicking on the adult services page. But that's still only in thereror is it down to hundreds of people, perhaps even thousands of people. So it's not exactly a

dead end for the police. But it's not a slam dunk either, particularly if women are using burners third party cell phones, whatever ability the NSA might have to triangulate exactly what these phones are doing. You've got to know who the phones belong to, and when they belong to them, and whose hands they're in, so it gets complicated, but there is not a lot of information, given that this is an open case, about exactly what the police know about who called these women and phone what their phone

calls were. It does seem as if some of their johns were chased down early in the investigation and interviewed, but no suspects were named, and no persons of interests were named, and it's seems as if the police have come up dry, which is astonishing when you consider the original Craigslist killer, John Markoff from Boston, was found within a day, right, But I think the difference there is that he had hired someone in a massage category, someone

who lived, you know, wasn't who is living slightly more above board and whose son can be traced, and whose disappearance was taken more seriously.

to put it that way. So the thing is without being judgmental, because that's what you haven't done here, But you have reported on all the little snippets that you've heard from overhearing somebody say at a vigil, you know, all this for a whore, you know, So I'd like to hear how one woman went and sort of went off the rails, or at least how she wound up in prostitution, and why and what the family's reaction was.

Tell us, give us the trajectory of one woman, and so you can the audience can clearly get a sense of what you bring to this really added dimension to these people's lives rather than again, just a little bit of lip service about how they're just regular human beings.

or turn them into saints. But at the same time, I'm aware there's a lot of victim blaming going on here, and that these women were far more than that shouldn't just they shouldn't just be written off, and the causes of what brought them to this it really deserves attention, and that there's a lot about them that was they

were that made them much more human. I believed in humanization, and everyone in this book, with the exception of the killer, of course, is treated humanely, with a lot of fairness. And I'll talk about Maureen Brainerd Barnes, who was adored by her family and was a linchpin in her family. She was the oldest of three children, and her sister and her brother in living in their twenties, were you know, we're a tight knit group who cared for one another

and looked after one another all the time. You know, she was twenty four years old, she was when she first got into prostitution. She had one child, she was not holding down a steady job, and she was suddenly aware of how much money she could make just in

one night. And given the you know, given all of the pressures of her life, the childcare pressures, the rent pressures, to be able to make that much that fast with something she decided to try, and from there she decided, you know, to take trips to New York for one or two days at a time. She developed a system of rules. She became very very responsible about the way

that she could stay safe. I interviewed a friend of hers who went down with her for a few trips, and she talked about just how responsible Marine was being, how safe she was being, how she wasn't taking any risks. And then toward the end of one weekend, she lets down her guard and sure enough disappears. After a day, no one knows what to do about it. They go and the hotel staff claims never to have seen her. The police in the hometown of Groton, Connecticut or are

of no use to them whatsoever. The NYPD does barely anything for them either. It's two thousand and seven when Maureen disappears, and if you can believe that, it takes you know, three and a half years before they get any sense of what happened to her. And they to this day they have no idea how a woman who swore she would never even leave Manhattan for a call ended up on a beach in Long Island.

this profession. Obviously, There's people like Joe Brewer and his friends, and a lot of people, a lot of people, respectable people, all kinds of people take this prostitution very lightly and then and there is no moral judgment. So what was the overall out of these four women, five women, what was the overall attitude why they engaged in prostitution despite everything else other than the economics, which again is a

big factor. But was there did you find a normalization of this of sort of a just looking at it as work?

or self sufficiency financially in their lives. It also meant that they, to a great extent, could be their own boss. They wouldn't have to be beholden to anyone. Maureen enjoyed how it meant that she could be independent from any boyfriend and not have to work for any escort service. Melissa Barthelmy had a pimp for a while. She thought that Craigslist could liberate her from that tent and help her make enough money to get out of this forever.

They all had plans to not do this forever, and they all knew that there was absolutely no other way in their lives that they could achieve those plans as quickly as if they if they didn't do this.

it took some chances here somehow. Why is society still have to demonize victims.

cases with many many victims. I think it's easily it's easy to say that the predators go after people who are vulnerable, and prostitutes are vulnerable because they work in the shadows, and prostitutes work in the shadows because of the social stigma that has been attached to them for decades, for centuries, and the irony is that the demand for sex has never gone away, that the Internet has made it more accessible than ever because the Internet affords you

a certain amount of privacy, not just the prostitute, but the johns can go on anonymously no one. You don't have to go to a bad part of town anymore. And so there was a sense in the last ten years or so that prostitution could become professionalized, that everyone could be like the Mayflower madam, because they'd be working out of their own home. They wouldn't have to be hooked up with some sleazy people. They could pay their way through college, do whatever they wanted, and it's all

consensual and the victimless crime. And yet the killers among us still see these women as vulnerable, and in many cases they are, and they be in so Craigslist and Backpage and all these services became a shopping list for these predators. It's really quite something. But you asked a really about the social stigma, and I think that is that, along with class, is really the root of the discussion and lost girls. And I don't come out one way

or another pro or con about legalizing prostitution. I deliberately set out that argument because I think that that it's the stigma of prostitution most of all, that can be mitigated even if you don't decriminalize it. I mean, imagine if prostitutes were allowed immunity if they told police about threats to their well being. Imagine a world where police actually cared more if a prostitute was in danger and

didn't just laugh at them if they came to them. Certainly, if you're a low level pot dealer and somebody threatens your life, you could probably get immunity if you went to the police, but not if you're a prostitute. There's misogyny at work here, there's class arguments at work here, And I think that my hope is that a book like this changes people's views a little bit, helps change the discussion, a little bit, helps people understand that these people's lives work something.

people to the same level. I mean, I can't believe that there's so much effort in humanizing serial killers fictionally and nonfiction wise, and then very little attempt to humanize victory. People say, well, innocent victims, Well, all victims are innocent, and the killers are the only people that we should revile. Never for a moment it can anybody be responsible for their own death.

the genre that it's in. But it's a very very very fascinating read and ride for everyone to enter into these women's lives and really get a picture of a serial killer hunting for just regular folks just like you and I, and we're all again terrorized by the specter of this serial killer. And you've really captured the entire feel this media circus, the victims families, maybe even their overreaction.

It's a very very interesting and incredible tale. And I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about Lost Girls.