ELLENVILLE- On May 1, 2010, at around 4:15 a.m., 24-year-old Shannon Gilbert made a frantic 911 call from the Oak Beach Association in Suffolk County telling the 911 dispatcher that someone was after her. That was the last time anyone heard from her.
Shannon Gilbert was a graduate of Ellenville High School. Her mother, Mari Gilbert, first filed a missing person report for her daughter with the Ellenville Police Department, which was passed on to law enforcement in Suffolk County.
Gilbert’s body was eventually found in December 2011, more than a year after she disappeared, in an area where ten other bodies were discovered as well. More than a dozen years later police have not linked Gilbert’s death to the others and a lawyer for the family, John Ray, says that conclusion makes no sense and there is new information about the case being developed almost daily.
Ray questions the work of law enforcement in the case and said that police developed a faulty theory on the case from the beginning.
“You can hear Shannon’s struggle, her physical struggle on the tape, and you can hear her blood-curdling screams as she runs out. So, these same police made up a story that was outright willfully false and they are adhering to that story, so how can anybody conclude that they are acting in good faith,” questioned Ray.
In 2020, a Netflix film called “Lost Girls” was released that recounts the story of how Shannon’s mother searched for the truth about her daughter’s disappearance and how her quest led to the discovery of a serial killer.
On July 13, 2023, Rex Heuermann was arrested for the killing of Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, and Melissa Barthelemy, just three of the ten victims. Investigators also named him as the prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Ray believes there is sufficient evidence to connect Heuermann to Gilbert’s death as well.
“For one thing it turns out that Heurmann is a stalker and he is a very refined stalker. He is very good at what he does, and that comes from a number of sources. And, when you consider that in light of Shannon’s call on the 911 operator tape that we have, the very first thing that she says, that she repeats several times, is ‘someone is after me,'” Ray said.
The sisters of Shannon Gilbert want to see justice for her disappearance and death.
“We are hoping that somebody will come forward in this morass that will finally be decisive in connecting Heurmann with Shannon, in connecting Heurmann with the other girls who are dead, whose cases have not been solved,” Ray said.
