Police in Suffolk county, New York, on Friday arrested a man in connection to a string of murders of at least 10 people, marking a potentially significant breakthrough in the so-called Long Island serial killer case that has captivated the public and confounded police for more than a decade, multiple media outlets reported.
The arrest, first reported by News 12 Long Island, occurred in the early hours of Friday morning as video footage from local reporters showed law enforcement vehicles gathered in Massapequa Park, a Long Island neighborhood.
The Associated Press, CBS News and NBC News, citing unnamed law enforcement and government sources, reported that police held a suspect in custody. The suspect, who has been identified in at least one media report as a 59-year-old man, is reportedly from Massapequa. Police has yet to release the suspect’s identity officially.
In February 2022, Suffolk county police launched a joint task force focused on investigating the so-called Gilgo Beach murders to search for whoever was responsible for the killings from 2010 and 2011.
The mystery surrounding the killings began when Shannan Gilbert, who had worked as a sex worker, vanished in May 2010 after she met a client at Oak Beach. Gilbert made a 22-minute 911 call where she reportedly said: “They are trying to kill me.”
Police found her body in a marshy area along Ocean Parkway. Soon after, they discovered four other women – Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello – in the same area, with each body covered in a burlap cloth.
Investigators then found six more sets of remains, including more female sex workers, a man and a toddler, setting off a decade-long inquiry into the killings that went cold for a time and had been mired in questions of “law enforcement failures rooted in incompetence or, worse, institutional disregard”, the Guardian reported in January 2022.
That changed last year after the Suffolk county police commissioner Rodney Harrison inherited the case and moved forward with the task force with FBI and state law enforcement agencies. Police released evidence ranging from maps to images at the time to Gilbert’s 911 call.
At the time of Gilbert’s disappearance, police initially said that she likely died by accident. And in 2022, Harrison said in a press conference that “based on the evidence, the facts and the totality of the circumstances, the prevailing opinion of Shannan’s death, while tragic, was not murder and most likely not criminal”.
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A spokesperson for Suffolk county police declined to comment about the arrest on Friday morning, as more details were awaited.
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