They had planned to
gather on Tuesday, on the barren shore along Ocean Parkway on Long Island, to remember the victims of a suspected serial killer, the remains found scattered among the area’s shrouded thickets over the past year.
Instead, they paid special respects to the woman whose disappearance unfurled this grim string of mysteries in the first place.
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Hours before relatives of some of the victims were to hold their vigil, law enforcement officials said they had discovered what they believed to be the “skeletal remains” of Shannan Gilbert, a New Jersey prostitute last seen in May 2010.
In their search for Ms. Gilbert, who was 24 then, investigators found the remains of 10 other victims, including 8 women, a toddler and a man wearing women’s clothing, raising the specter of a serial killer of prostitutes. Each victim had a possible connection to the sex trade, said Richard Dormer, the Suffolk County police commissioner. (The toddler, whose body was discovered on April 4, is believed to be the child of a prostitute whose remains were found miles down Ocean Parkway on April 11.)
The relatives arranged the anniversary vigil before the prospect of Ms. Gilbert’s discovery was even raised: On Dec. 13 of last year, officials reported the discovery of four bodies in the brush on Jones Beach Island.
The authorities have maintained, though, that Ms. Gilbert’s case is not necessarily related to the others. The location of the body believed to be hers, Mr. Dormer said Tuesday, has helped validate his belief that Ms. Gilbert drowned while trying to reach the parkway through the swampland nearby after knocking on a door in Oak Beach. The body was found, Mr. Dormer said, about a quarter mile northeast of where investigators last week retrieved what they believed were Ms. Gilbert’s purse, jeans, shoes and cellphone.
“She traveled at least half a mile, three quarters of a mile, on foot through that muck,” Mr. Dormer said at a news conference on Tuesday. “It would be very easy to get exhausted and fall down and not be able to move any further.”
Later, Mari Gilbert, Shannan’s mother, appeared at the vigil with a small group of friends and relatives of the other victims. Those gathered released balloons into the air, recited the Lord’s Prayer and, in some cases, hammered crosses into the earth beside the
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But Mari Gilbert, who said the authorities contacted her on Tuesday morning with news of the discovery, was unconvinced that the remains were her daughter’s, noting that an autopsy had not been completed. “Until I hear positive confirmation that it’s my daughter, I’m going to believe it’s not,” she said.
Ms. Gilbert has also
expressed doubts that her daughter’s death was accidental. She spoke on Tuesday of hoping to meet a killer who the authorities are not sure exists. “I want to meet him face to face one day,” she said. “And I just want to ask him: ‘Who hurt you? Who hurt you this badly that you have to hurt others?’ ”
Mr. Dormer said areas adjacent to where the remains had been found were drained over the last week to aid in the search. Detectives were traveling through thick brush on an amphibious vehicle, Mr. Dormer added, before noticing “the skeletal remains
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It is still unclear why Ms. Gilbert might have charted such a dangerous course through the swamp. After leaving a seaside home in the Oak Beach area early on May 1, 2010, Ms. Gilbert banged on the door of a resident, Gus Coletti, shortly before 5 a.m. “She kept saying, ‘Help me,’ ” Mr. Coletti said in an interview last spring. When he dialed 911, she ran. He did not see her again.
Since the discovery of the first bodies along Ocean Parkway, on Dec. 11 and Dec. 13 last year, victims’ relatives have forged a unique, if heart-rending, connection, they say. “We’re a family,” said Lorraine Ela, the mother of Megan Waterman, whose body was found last December, “but not by blood.”
At one point, Mari Gilbert expressed her grief that, if the remains were not her daughter’s, another victim had been added to the tally. “Nobody truly knows how,” she began, before Ms. Ela completed her thought. “How it feels to have a missing child come up deceased,” Ms. Ela said.
Over the past year, Ms. Gilbert seemed to find solace in the notion that her daughter’s disappearance had shined a light on other victims.
“Everyone has their destiny,” she said last spring. “Maybe this was hers.”
