Arrow pointing to where one of the latest unidentified bodies was found on Ocean Parkway. (Long Island Press)
Suffolk County police wrapped up a four-day comprehensive search of a westbound stretch of Ocean Parkway on Thursday and the area is open to traffic for the first time in a week. Now, beginning Monday, the search will continue past the Nassau County line, police say, as investigators continue to search the cell phone, credit card and computer records of the four women found at the beach in December for leads through the weekend.
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Nassau County police will begin their search of the Nassau County portion of Ocean Parkway on Monday when parkway will again be closed to traffic from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. But that doesn’t mean the search in Suffolk County is over.
Suffolk Count Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said Thursday that detectives and cadaver dogs would be searching the area continuously. Only the massive search that kept the parkway shut down for a week is coming to a close, for now.
“It’s possible that we missed something,” Dormer told reporters Thursday in Oak Beach, declining to discuss any other evidence that may have been found in the past four days. “We’re going to come back here again.”
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It also doesn’t mean the investigation is over–far from it. Although police remain tight-lipped as to the details of the case, they have hinted multiple times that there is, in fact, evidence and clues and have repeatedly stated they are “confident” they will catch their killer. No suspects have officially been named or made public at this time.
Investigators found three sets of human remains Monday and a fourth last week near Cedar Beach, four months after discovering the bodies of four dead online escorts about a mile down Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach. Next week, Nassau County police are planning to pick up the search on the western half of the barrier beach.
This easternmost seaside community overlooking the Fire Island Inlet plays a central role in the investigation. K-9 officers were searching for a New Jersey prostitute who disappeared from here when they found the first four remains in December.
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Shannan Gilbert, 24, of Jersey City, had met an Oak Beach man who she had booked through Craigslist on May 1, 2010. A neighbor, 76-year-old Gus Coletti, said she knocked on his door frantically asking for help but then ran away.
Gilbert fled but a man in an SUV came looking for her when Coletti told the man that she fled after he called 911.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Coletti said the man told him. “She’s going to get in a lot of trouble.”
Detectives have interviewed the client, Joseph Brewer, but have not named him as a suspect. They also have not named any other suspects in Gilbert’s disappearance or the found bodies.
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County medical examiners are working with New York City anthropological experts to identify the latest four remains, all of which have been ruled out as being Gilbert. The new remains have not been definitively linked to the first four.
The first four victims were identified as: 27-year-old Amber Lynn Costello, last seen Sept. 2 in her hometown of North Babylon; 22-year-old single mother Megan Waterman, of Portland, Maine, last seen at a Hauppauge hotel June 6; 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy, last seen July 12, 2009 in the Bronx; Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Conn., last seen July 9, 2007 in Manhattan.
The eastbound lanes of Ocean Parkway are slated to be open Friday for the first time this week.
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