The search for Shannan Gilbert in the following months led to the discovery of human remains along a stretch of Ocean Parkway in the dunes running between Gilgo and Oak Beach, including four other women in their 20s who were also online escorts. Richard Dormer, who was the Suffolk County Police Commissioner at the time of the search for Gilbert, didn’t believe she was one of the serial killer’s victims. “She went missing in Oak Beach, and this has nothing to do with the serial killer,” he told the New York Daily News in November 2011.
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Early the next month, investigators found some of Gilbert’s belongings — shoes, jeans, a pocketbook with her ID, and a cellphone — at Oak Beach, per The New York Times. Then on December 13, 2011, they finally found her remains in a nearby marsh. Police said she drowned while trying to cross through the swampy area, but her family refused to believe it was an accident.
