Long Island, New York. May 2010. Shannan Gilbert — a 24-year-old sex worker — placed a frantic 911 call from a client's home in Oak Beach and then ran barefoot down Ocean Parkway banging on strangers' doors. She disappeared that night. She was never seen alive again. Police searched for her along the barrier beach highway. In December 2010 — in the dry scrub brush beside Ocean Parkway — they found four sets of human remains. All were young women who had advertised escort services online. All had been strangled. All were bound in burlap and left at the roadside. They became known as the Gilgo Four: Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello. The search widened. Eventually 11 sets of human remains were found along the parkway and surrounding areas — some dating back to 1993. The original investigation stalled. A decade passed. The highway looked the same. In January 2022, a new task force was formed. More than 300 subpoenas and hundreds of warrants were executed. Investigators tracked burner phone data, matched location records, and found DNA from hairs inside a house in Massapequa Park that matched victims found in the brush. On July 13, 2023, Rex Heuermann — a 59-year-old architect who ran his firm RH Consultants & Associates four blocks from One World Trade Center in Manhattan and drove home to Long Island on weekends in a Chevy Avalanche — was arrested. On his devices, investigators found a planning document he had written himself. It outlined strategies for committing serial murder, how to dispose of a body, how to avoid leaving DNA evidence, and what supplies to bring. He had not been impulsive. He had been studying. On April 8, 2026, Rex Heuermann stood in Suffolk County Court and pleaded guilty to eight murders committed over seventeen years — from Sandra Costilla in 1993 to Amber Lynn Costello in 2010. His wife Asa Ellerup had filed for divorce after his arrest and said she had no knowledge of his activities. Shannan Gilbert — whose midnight run started the search that found everything — was not among his victims. Her case remains separately disputed and unresolved. Several victims found along Ocean Parkway still have no names. If you have information about any unidentified Gilgo Beach victim: Suffolk County Police Department or 1-800-220-TIPS. Subscribe to GraveFile TV — new investigation every week.