Until yesterday, I’d never heard of the Gilgo Beach serial killings on Long Island. I lived in New York during the time of the murders, but I guess being a medical student meant I wasn’t keeping up with local news. (Fortunately, I do remember where I was when Sully landed that plane on the Hudson, though, so I wasn’t completely shut off from the real world!)
Very cool stuff and interesting research/analyses. But, I'm a nurse, math and science person. This was really good medical detective work though and you may be onto something really useful. If it's not already offered in criminal justice academies, forensic epidemiology like this would be an interesting course to put on the curriculum. Forward this column of IM to a prof at John Jay College of Criminal Justice CUNY, I bet they would find it fascinating. Thanks for the insight and enjoy your Sunday!
Interesting - For a BA, Research Methods in Criminal Justice (CJ), Quantitative Inquiry of Problems in CJ and Social Science Math are on the curriculum. For a BS, Research Methods and Statistics for CJ is required.
For anyone interested, there's an interesting Netflix series from 2020 called Lost Girls that follows how the bodies on Gilgo Beach came to be discovered. Shannan Gilbert is believed to be a potential victim of the Gilgo Beach killer. She was a Craigslist escort that went missing on May 1, 2010, after placing three disturbing 911 calls from inside the house of her client Joseph Brewer at Oak Beach. She escaped on foot, telling 911, "They're trying to kill me.” She also pleaded with several neighboring residents to help her, but when one of them told her the police were on the way, she got up and fled. It took police almost an hour to respond to the 911 calls. An interesting aspect to her case, besides Brewer, was her connection with a resident named Peter Hackett, MD., a former "police doctor," who called Shannon's mother twice (then denied it) telling her he ran a halfway house for for people that wanted to get off the street and that Shannon had been there, but left with her driver. Shannan's body was discovered on December 13, 2011 in the marshes of Gilgo Beach, near Dr. Hackett's backyard. It was Shannon's body that led police to find several other victims' bodies of the Gilgo Beach killer. Shannon's cause of death, initially thought to be drowning, was later ruled more likely to be from strangulation. Her death is still an ongoing investigation. Although her mother filed a wrongful death suit against Dr. Hackett, she was tragically murdered by her daughter, Sarra. Life can be very strange. This case leaves me to wonder if there are more people involved with Heuermann, or if there's another killer.
Nice analysis. Some facts or assumptions may have been unavailable or unknown to investigators. Also, the victims being “sex workers” may have affected the resources and diligence devoted to solving the crimes until the task force was created a decade later.
Yes I responded to Mary Janes's comment above re: what the detectives knew and when. I agree I can't help but wonder if the case got less resourced for the reasons you state.
Fascinating. I'd love an extended tutorial in data mining, or just other real-world examples of it.
Re this case, from what I've read -- also never having heard of these murders until a day or two ago despite having had a close friend with a home on Gilgo -- the police say they didn't learn about the Avalanche until March 2022 (maybe the new team didn't realise they had this info in the files until then?). From what's been published about the case, it seems there was some high-level police corruption that may have impeded the case, including a long delay in allowing the FBI to join the case because the Suffolk police chief at the time, James Burke, actively blocked FBI involvement (Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for assault and conspiracy in 2016). Still, even without the FBI, it seems, as you show, that the case could have been handled more expeditiously, unless they really didn't take the witness statement about the vehicle and height until 2022. (A Rolling Stone article says that the witness actually said his height was " approximately 6’4″ to 6’6” !)
A lawyer for one of the women's families, who has of course followed the case closely for over a decade, said "“Police incompetence, along with certain willful conduct by members of the police department, was a bad mix that destroyed the ability to solve this case." And a state senator for Long Island’s fourth district "has asked the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, for an outside investigation of the investigation, believing that figures in the local police force hampered the inquiry and prevented investigators, including the FBI, from looking at cellphone records."
To me the $1 million question is related to what you said: "unless they really didn't take the witness statement about the vehicle and height until 2022. (A Rolling Stone article says that the witness actually said his height was " approximately 6’4″ to 6’6” !)". When did they know this info is what I'm super interested to find out.
I'm not trying to embarrass anyone...people make mistakes. But as I've mentioned in the comments elsewhere, the crux of this comes down to when the investigators learned of the height and car info. If it was 2022, why didn't they have it in 2010? Did the witness not come forward until 2022? Did he but we was the information he gave ignored? These are the q's that I'm fascinated by. After they got that info, the investigation seems to have been done quite well, albeit I don't read a lot of these cases, so I don't have a baseline for comparison.
This analysis is great. I would bet an FBI profiler would come to a possible suspect as quickly as you did. So sad for these women. It doesn't sound like the police were looking very hard.
Very cool stuff and interesting research/analyses. But, I'm a nurse, math and science person. This was really good medical detective work though and you may be onto something really useful. If it's not already offered in criminal justice academies, forensic epidemiology like this would be an interesting course to put on the curriculum. Forward this column of IM to a prof at John Jay College of Criminal Justice CUNY, I bet they would find it fascinating. Thanks for the insight and enjoy your Sunday!
I wonder what their curriculum is!
https://jjay.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2022-2023/undergraduate-bulletin/majors/criminal-justice-ba-ma/
Interesting - For a BA, Research Methods in Criminal Justice (CJ), Quantitative Inquiry of Problems in CJ and Social Science Math are on the curriculum. For a BS, Research Methods and Statistics for CJ is required.
For anyone interested, there's an interesting Netflix series from 2020 called Lost Girls that follows how the bodies on Gilgo Beach came to be discovered. Shannan Gilbert is believed to be a potential victim of the Gilgo Beach killer. She was a Craigslist escort that went missing on May 1, 2010, after placing three disturbing 911 calls from inside the house of her client Joseph Brewer at Oak Beach. She escaped on foot, telling 911, "They're trying to kill me.” She also pleaded with several neighboring residents to help her, but when one of them told her the police were on the way, she got up and fled. It took police almost an hour to respond to the 911 calls. An interesting aspect to her case, besides Brewer, was her connection with a resident named Peter Hackett, MD., a former "police doctor," who called Shannon's mother twice (then denied it) telling her he ran a halfway house for for people that wanted to get off the street and that Shannon had been there, but left with her driver. Shannan's body was discovered on December 13, 2011 in the marshes of Gilgo Beach, near Dr. Hackett's backyard. It was Shannon's body that led police to find several other victims' bodies of the Gilgo Beach killer. Shannon's cause of death, initially thought to be drowning, was later ruled more likely to be from strangulation. Her death is still an ongoing investigation. Although her mother filed a wrongful death suit against Dr. Hackett, she was tragically murdered by her daughter, Sarra. Life can be very strange. This case leaves me to wonder if there are more people involved with Heuermann, or if there's another killer.
Yeah I read about this stuff too. The whole story is 10/10 creepy and awful.
Nice analysis. Some facts or assumptions may have been unavailable or unknown to investigators. Also, the victims being “sex workers” may have affected the resources and diligence devoted to solving the crimes until the task force was created a decade later.
Yes I responded to Mary Janes's comment above re: what the detectives knew and when. I agree I can't help but wonder if the case got less resourced for the reasons you state.
Car would have been registered in Nassau County, fyi. Not sure how much that would affect your car math. Just sayin
Could have slowed them down, but not by much. There just aren't that many 6'4 dudes driving a Chevy Avalanche....even in Nassau...
Fascinating. I'd love an extended tutorial in data mining, or just other real-world examples of it.
Re this case, from what I've read -- also never having heard of these murders until a day or two ago despite having had a close friend with a home on Gilgo -- the police say they didn't learn about the Avalanche until March 2022 (maybe the new team didn't realise they had this info in the files until then?). From what's been published about the case, it seems there was some high-level police corruption that may have impeded the case, including a long delay in allowing the FBI to join the case because the Suffolk police chief at the time, James Burke, actively blocked FBI involvement (Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for assault and conspiracy in 2016). Still, even without the FBI, it seems, as you show, that the case could have been handled more expeditiously, unless they really didn't take the witness statement about the vehicle and height until 2022. (A Rolling Stone article says that the witness actually said his height was " approximately 6’4″ to 6’6” !)
A lawyer for one of the women's families, who has of course followed the case closely for over a decade, said "“Police incompetence, along with certain willful conduct by members of the police department, was a bad mix that destroyed the ability to solve this case." And a state senator for Long Island’s fourth district "has asked the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, for an outside investigation of the investigation, believing that figures in the local police force hampered the inquiry and prevented investigators, including the FBI, from looking at cellphone records."
To me the $1 million question is related to what you said: "unless they really didn't take the witness statement about the vehicle and height until 2022. (A Rolling Stone article says that the witness actually said his height was " approximately 6’4″ to 6’6” !)". When did they know this info is what I'm super interested to find out.
We all need a tutorial on 'Data Mining', thank you InMed. Caution, association is not causation & not admissible evidence,
In this case, the associations would just narrow your search. From there, you've got your DNA and cell phone and email records.
Perhaps rather than trying to embarrass the police you should offer a free tutorial on data mining.
I'm not trying to embarrass anyone...people make mistakes. But as I've mentioned in the comments elsewhere, the crux of this comes down to when the investigators learned of the height and car info. If it was 2022, why didn't they have it in 2010? Did the witness not come forward until 2022? Did he but we was the information he gave ignored? These are the q's that I'm fascinated by. After they got that info, the investigation seems to have been done quite well, albeit I don't read a lot of these cases, so I don't have a baseline for comparison.
This analysis is great. I would bet an FBI profiler would come to a possible suspect as quickly as you did. So sad for these women. It doesn't sound like the police were looking very hard.
Yes I wonder whether the witness who gave them the height and car make in 2022 was a) ignored in 2010? b) not even interviewed?
It's not like the witness suddenly remembered these facts in 2022....And he was right!