Lost Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer's Victims

May 2010. A police officer searching for a missing woman on Long Island's Ocean Parkway finds something no one expected: human remains hidden in the brush. Then more. Before the search ends, the bodies of multiple people are recovered along the same stretch of coastline.

Robert Kolker's Lost Girls starts where headlines stopped. It follows Shannan Gilbert's disappearance, which led searchers to the remains, and it centers the women whose lives were reduced to a label. Kolker spent years talking to their families, friends and coworkers. He rebuilds who they were: daughters, sisters and mothers with dreams, debts and plans. The book asks a hard question. Why did so many people overlook these women while they were alive?

That question still hangs over the case. No one has been convicted of the killings. In 2023, Rex Heuermann was arrested and charged in connection with several of the victims. He has pleaded not guilty, and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. Prosecutors have leaned on DNA and other forensic evidence, and the case continues to move through the courts. Shannan Gilbert's own death remains debated, and officials have not tied it to the same killer.

Lost Girls is a reported, human and unsettling read. It is not a gore-fest. It is a book about being unseen. Start it tonight: find Lost Girls on Goodreads and pick up your copy from there.