'Eyewitness to Gilgo Beach' Chapter 2: "We could have a serial killer"

'Eyewitness to Gilgo Beach' is a documentary series about the serial killings and the arrest of Rex Heuermann

ByJosh Einiger, Darla Miles, Stacey Sager, and Emily Hartmann WABC logo
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Chapter 2: We Have a Serial Killer
Chapter 2: We Have a Serial KillerGo behind the scenes with New York's number one news team as Eyewitness News tells the convoluted and downright creepy story of the search for a serial killer near Gilgo Beach.

LONG ISLAND, New York (WABC) -- Shannan Gilbert's disappearance in 2010 sparked the discovery of 11 bodies on and near Gilgo Beach on Long Island.

"One of the most significant things I've ever heard any kind of public official say I think it was the first full day after that first report that we did," recalled Eyewitness News reporter Josh Einiger. "There was a press conference with the man who was then the police commissioner. And he said something that to this day, I remember everything about what he said and how he said it."

"We're looking at that. We're looking at that. That we could have a serial killer," said Richard Dormer, the Suffolk County Police Commissioner.

"To this day, so many years later, it symbolized the moment that it was clear that this was something enormous," Einiger recalled.

"There was a lot of speculation, because it's still a remote area, maybe more than one person use this as a dumping ground because it was that isolated the weather conditions were that extreme out there," recalled Eyewitness News reporter Darla Miles, who was also there reporting the next morning after the bodies were first discovered.

"The tragedy of this story is how incompetently managed this investigation was from the beginning," said Einiger.

Watch Chapter 2 in the player above

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