Download Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery AudioBook Free
Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker gives a haunting and humanizing accounts of the true-life search for a serial killer still most importantly on Long Island, in a convincing tale of unsolved murder and Internet prostitution. One late spring evening this year 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life, went lacking. Nobody who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had occurred to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist prostitute who was simply fleeing a picture - of what, nobody could be sure. The Suffolk Region Police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven calendar months later, when an urgent discovery in a bramble alongside a close by highway turned up four body, all consistently spaced, all covered in burlap. But none of them Shannan's. There was Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Place in Manhattan 3 years before, and Melissa Barthelemy, last seen in the Bronx in '09 2009. There was Megan Waterman, last seen giving a hotel in Hauppage, Long Island, just a month after Shannan's disappearance this year 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in Western Babylon a couple of months later that same time. Like Shannan, all four women were petite and in their 20s, they all came from out of town to work as escorts, plus they all marketed on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage. In a very triumph of reporting - and in a riveting narrative - Robert Kolker presents the first in-depth look at the shadow world of escorts in the Internet age, where making a living is easier than ever before and the hazards stay all too real. He has spoken exhaustively with the friends and family of each woman to show you the three-dimensional truths about their lives, the battling towns they came from, and the dreams they chased. And he has gained unique access to the Oak Beach neighborhood that has found itself the emphasis of national advertising scrutiny - where in fact the authorities have flailed, your body count has increased, and the neighbours have begun directing fingers at each other. There, in a distant community, out of sight of the beach locations and marinas dispersed across the South Shore hurdle islands, the women's stories get together in loss of life and dark secret. Lost Young girls is a family portrait not merely of five women, but of unsolved murder within an idyllic part of America, of the lower of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them.
