Episode 57: There Are No Ordinary People - The Gilgo Beach Murders - Part 1

Part 1 of 2. Between 1993 and 2010, at least eight women were murdered by the same man on Long Island — and for most of those years, the world barely noticed, because he chose women the world had stopped watching. Before we tell you about the killer, the botched investigation, and the stunning resolution (that's next week), Katie and Allison spend this episode where it should start: with the women. Sandra, Karen, Valerie, Jessica, Maureen, Melissa, Megan, and Amber — the eight women he admitted to murdering — plus Shannan Gilbert, whose death was never attributed to him but whose disappearance uncovered them all. Nine condensed life stories, in the spirit of Robert Kolker's "Lost Girls," told in chronological order.

Trigger warnings: violence against women, sex work, sex trafficking, strangulation, drug addiction, foster care trauma, mental illness, death of a parent, children losing mothers.

LISTENER DISCRETION IS HEAVILY ADVISED. 

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Advocacy & ways to channel the anger:

• The CSE Institute (Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation, Villanova Law) — the group behind "Humanizing the Victims in the Gilgo Beach Murders." They've studied this case directly and push law enforcement to reform how missing-persons reports are handled when the person is a sex worker or trafficking survivor, which is exactly the gap that let Valerie Mack sit unreported and unidentified for over two decades.
• Murder Accountability Project — a nonprofit of retired detectives, journalists, and forensic experts who track unsolved homicides nationwide and have repeatedly exposed how serial killers exploit police indifference toward murdered sex workers. Their data-driven pressure campaigns have helped reopen cold cases like this one.
• Sex Workers Project (Urban Justice Center, NYC) — the first legal services program in the country built specifically for sex workers and trafficking survivors. They fight police misconduct, help clear criminal records, and keep women in danger from disappearing through the cracks the way these nine did.
• NY Assembly Bill A6730 — the legislation Megan Waterman's family is championing to stop convicted killers' families from profiting off their crimes.
• End Slavery Now — Antislavery Directory — searchable by zip code, this directory lets you find anti-trafficking organizations near you if you want to get involved locally, not just donate.

Sources & further reading:

• Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker (book, 2013; Netflix film, 2020)
• Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer (Netflix docuseries, 2025)
• Gilgo Beach serial killings — Wikipedia
• Netflix Tudum — the victims' profiles
• CNN — sentencing takeaways, June 2026
• Victim impact statements

HUMAN TRAFFICKING DEFINED:

From the U.S. Department of Justice website: Human Trafficking is a crime involving the exploitation of a person for labor, services, or commercial sex.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and its subsequent reauthorizations recognize and define two primary forms of human trafficking:

• Sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(A)).
• Forced labor is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. (22 U.S.C. § 7102(11)(B)).

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW NEEDS HELP:

• National Human Trafficking Hotline — call 1-888-373-7888, text 233733, or chat at humantraffickinghotline.org. Free, confidential, 24/7, 200+ languages.