Part 13 (1/2)

Another laugh.

”Not that I was suspected! The police, I was never a suspect. I'm sure there was a brief time in the beginning where I was a person of interest, of course. But as soon as I ran to them and made it clear to them I had nothing to do with any of this.”

As soon as he says that, he corrects himself. He says he does know something special about the case. ”Dude, there's something you don't know, something really big. I do have some big chits on that, but I've got to hold them back. You want to know the truth, I mean, honestly, everybody would say the same things I was saying, even if they were guilty. But there's a lot out there I know, I don't want to say this because a lot of them are my friends, but at the end of this, the police are going to have a lot of pie on their face.”

When I ask why Shannan called the police that night, he laughs his biggest laugh so far.

”I'm sorry to laugh,” he says. ”That was, like, the easiest-you know, it's so funny-sometimes the most obvious answer is the most easiest one to figure out. And, like, that is the question I get more than any, and that is the most easy to figure out.” He pauses. ”No, I'm sorry, I'm gonna take that back. The easiest one is I must have scared her, I must have threatened her, you know, obviously, that's number one choice. But that is far from-I was ready to help her. And you know what, dude? If they ever release that 911 call, I know my voice is in the background. And I know I'm the only voice of reason, and I know the police know that. I would never harm a soul. If you actually read through, you can put it together why she ran crazy into the night. You know, the answer's there. Yeah, I know everybody wants a bad guy, they want a villain, and they want me to be the villain. It's not that sensational, buddy, it's not what happened.”

The first thing I think of is Joe's transvest.i.te story-that he wouldn't pay her because he thought she was a man. That was hardly the most obvious explanation, though it was pretty sensational. It was also ludicrous. So I decide not to bring it up. Then there is the question of the drifter reported as being at Joe's house that night. Though the police would continue to say that Brewer was alone with Shannan, a few months after my talk with Joe, the drifter would finally surface, self-publis.h.i.+ng a memoir under the pen name ”W.” Confessions of the Oak Beach Drifter does not deliver on the promise of its t.i.tle. The author, a West Islip native, confesses to a life of burglary, drugs, a.s.sault, rape, and one shooting. What he doesn't offer is any insight into Shannan's death, just a few swipes at Joe for liking rough s.e.x with prost.i.tutes (something the author doesn't seem exactly against) and for, he believes, telling the Post about him as a way to divert suspicion from himself. As a houseguest of Joe's not long before that night with Shannan, the drifter, in the book's sole accusation, recalls ”one particular night I was awakened by a woman screaming, 'No! Please stop! Please, don't do that!' and that was followed by a loud thud. And then there was silence.” But he also says that his memoir is partly fictionalized, and he offers no date for the incident in question, and he allows that his drug and alcohol problem ”was at an all-time high” during his stay on the Fairway and that he ”had quite a few blackout nights.” All in all, the drifter's account is a wash for Joe.

I tell Joe that it sounds like he's saying Shannan had a bad reaction to a drug that night.

For the first time, Joe is less playful. ”No, I'm not saying that.”

Then I'm not following you, I say. What is the obvious explanation?

”No, I'm not saying that at all,” he repeats. ”I did not say that at all.”

I apologize.

Joe chuckles. All is forgiven. He seems to be thinking over whether to say something.

”I mean, it would be shocking to you,” he says. He laughs again. ”Well. I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. First of all, Shannan was a nice girl. I spoke with Shannan. I met Shannan. I knew who Shannan was as a person. And she was a sweet-And you know, she had a rough life, I'm sure. I think there are some people who choose that profession. Some people are kind of forced into it because they have a family or lost their job. And some people are kind of thrown into it, and I've got a feeling that Shannan was one of those who was thrown into it.”

He is not-so-subtly turning the focus away from himself and toward Shannan's family.

”And I've got a lot of compa.s.sion for that. She took care of a lot of people, you know? She supported her mother. She supported her family. They knew what she did. You know? That's why she needed the rent money for her mom. You know? I feel bad for that situation. There was a very poor, sick girl, and people want to point at me for blame, and that's not how it was.”

Joe won't answer the question of why Shannan called 911, at least not directly. The real story, he says, is that he was trying to help her that night. ”I was the only one trying to help her till the very last moment,” he says. ”Until even after when I knew she was gone, I was reaching out. And I was n.o.body. I was just some guy, she was in my house that night, I don't know what to call it, I wasn't a person of interest, I had no connection to her, I was n.o.body. It's a strange thing. But, uh, why she left my house? That is the million-dollar question. To be in a rage and fearful of her life?”

He's back to teasing it out, playing up the drama. ”Well, that answer will come. I have that answer.”

A pause.

”Well, to be honest, I don't have it a hundred percent.”

Another laugh.

”But basically, based on what I heard, I have more pieces to the puzzle than anybody. And I think my theory is pretty good.”

I don't want to misrepresent you, I say.

At this, he laughs very hard. ”What's gonna happen? Another pile of sand is gonna go on my face? That's gonna make me do something at this point? I know who I am. I don't need anybody, I don't need to plead to anybody who I am. I answer to one person. I'm not really Catholic, I'm more agnostic, but I believe in G.o.d, I believe in morals, I believe in yin-yang and karma. I'm a huge-Well, maybe this happened for a reason. I'm in tune with myself. I don't need the money, let me tell you. Any money I make, I'd donate some to some kind of charity for some girls who are stuck on the streets. And I'd put it away in a college fund for my daughter. Money isn't my motive. I wouldn't want a five-hundred-thousand-dollar contract movie deal, because that would probably break my family apart even more. But my story will come out.”

He starts to beg off. ”Ask about me. I'm a pretty well-known guy in town. I've been lifting people when they're down my entire life. So, I mean, it's just, it's such an odd time. It is so-What is this a test? What, you know? Maybe it was given to me because I could handle it, 'cause I wouldn't crack. And these girls needed to be found, and maybe some higher power up there-not that I believe in that stuff, necessarily-but maybe Shannan had a purpose, and I had a purpose, and she was on a path to destruction, and I, you know, I could handle this kind of thing. I don't know. I don't know what made these two asteroids. .h.i.t in the sky, but this is a straaange f.u.c.kin'-this is a strange event. It is.”

Joe decides he's said enough. ”G.o.d, talk about a trillion-to-one shot. But I went through a lot, dude. I mean, my life is-I won't say destroyed, because I won't let them beat me. It actually made me a better person. How's that? There's a quote for you. So if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably let it happen again, because it's probably made my life better.”

A pause.

”Except for the fact that any girl had to suffer,” he says. ”But anyway.”

THE REMAINS.

They found two more bodies after New Year's. On February 17, 2012, a man and his dog discovered a new collection of skeletal remains in the pine barrens of Manorville, a short distance from where two of the Gilgo Beach victims' body parts had been found years earlier. On March 21, a jogger stumbled on yet another set of remains, also in Manorville. Each set of remains had been left in two distinct areas, both remote and densely wooded, the perfect spots to dispose of a body. The police urged the public not to a.s.sume these discoveries were connected to the Gilgo murders.

These discoveries didn't seem to register with the media, either. New stories upstaged the serial-killer case. In Manhattan, the police had raided a posh Upper East Side brothel, and the madam, Anna Gristina, made the front page of the Post after threatening to reveal the names of some of her more famous and powerful johns. In Na.s.sau County, three high-ranking police officials were indicted on bribery charges, sending the Websleuths world into a long discussion about whether the police in Suffolk were any better. Those following the serial-killer case saw conspiracies everywhere: Could the cops in Suffolk have been bribed by powerful interests in Oak Beach to call Shannan's murder an accidental drowning? Even the brush fires that plagued Manorville all spring seemed suspicious, a perfect way to obscure the investigation even more.

By spring, Suffolk County's new homicide squad chief, Detective Lieutenant Jack Fitzpatrick, suggested another change in strategy, saying that ”The case is going to be looked at again, from perhaps a different perspective.” At the same time, he went out of his way to knock Dormer's single-killer theory, saying he believed ”it's very unlikely that it's one person.” Over in the DA's office, Spota was pleased. ”We are in sync again,” he said. ”Not one detective familiar with the facts of this case believes one person is responsible for these homicides.”

Mari, in a turnaround, went back to Oak Beach to voice confidence in Fitzpatrick. Michele Kutner, the families' local booster, explained that Mari was trying to be a little less down on the police and more positive in general. Possibly, Mari realized she'd overplayed her hand with her threatening letter to the police, and that she still needed them to share the results of the medical examiner's report.

Lynn tried not to get her hopes up. ”I just hope it's not too late,” she said, ”because it's been a long time.”

On May 1, 2012, two years to the day after her daughter went missing, Mari, her lawyer, John Ray, and Shannan's three sisters drove to police headquarters in Suffolk County for a private meeting with the Suffolk County chief medical examiner, Yvonne Milewski, to learn the findings of the medical report.

The meeting lasted two and a half hours. Milewski and new detectives a.s.signed to the case were mostly quiet as Hajar Sims-Childs, who had performed the hands-on work, did most of the talking. Sims-Childs, according to Ray, was the medical examiner who had told Dormer in December that it was possible Shannan had died of exposure. At this meeting, she told the Gilberts that after over four months of a.n.a.lyzing Shannan's remains, they knew little more than they did before they started; in a sense, they knew less.

The cause of death remained a huge question mark. Sims-Childs said Shannan's skeleton had been discovered almost entirely intact. All that was missing, besides a few finger and toe bones, were two of the three hyoid bones-the small, fragile bones in the upper part of the neck. A broken hyoid bone is a hallmark of strangulation cases. That the bones were missing suggested that Shannan, like the first four victims, was strangled. But Sims-Childs said that without knowing whether those bones were broken or just never made it out of the marsh, it was impossible to tell for sure. The medical examiner tried to explain that away by saying it was common for small bones to disappear; the hyoid tended to come loose quickly, and it was small enough for, say, a rodent to take away. On the other hand, there are 206 bones in the body. How likely would it be that the only bone selected by an animal happened to be the one bone that could link Shannan's cause of death to the other murders?

The drug question also remained only partially answered. Sims-Childs said they had some challenges a.n.a.lyzing Shannan's remains. They needed bone marrow but couldn't find any in a femur bone, and for reasons she didn't explain, they didn't crack open any other bones to search for marrow. Instead, they used a smattering of tissue from the brain and a small clump of hair, which they tested for signs of cocaine use. The tests were negative. While that didn't eliminate the possibility that Shannan had done c.o.ke-especially since the hair had spent eighteen months deteriorating in a salt.w.a.ter marsh-it did make it less likely that she had. Even if nothing she'd taken that night had seeped into her bones, the theory that she was high that night, and a drug addict in general, was less plausible if Shannan didn't have traces of some cocaine in her system.

What stunned Mari and her lawyer was that the medical examiner didn't appear to test for any other drug, not even pot. Bone marrow might have yielded more information about any number of drugs: pot, meth, psychotropics, everything but alcohol, which evaporates. Based on what Sims-Childs was saying, she hadn't searched for marrow beyond that one femur bone. In light of the a.s.sumption that Shannan was hysterical and irrational that night, wouldn't they want to test for any psychotropic or psychedelic drug they could think of in order to confirm their theory? Sims-Childs did not have an explanation.

Then there was the matter of Shannan's clothes, which the police had yet to test for anything-blood, DNA, s.e.m.e.n-that might indicate who was with her that morning. Ray and Mari had to wonder what the police had been doing for five months.

After the meeting, Mari spoke to reporters. ”I'm more frustrated and angry than ever,” she said. ”I was hoping for something more substantial and solid. But all I got was . . . ”

She thought for a second or two before settling on the right word.

”Betrayal.”

A few days later, John Ray and some members of his law practice went to Oak Beach at five A.M. to retrace Shannan's steps in the marsh under what he believed were ideal conditions: the same time of day and the same time of year when Shannan made the trip. He'd been told by the medical examiner that the marsh was in roughly the same condition now that it would have been two years earlier-most important, the water level was the same. To try to keep the conditions as close to the real thing as possible, they walked through the parts of the marsh that the police hadn't mowed, just to see how hard it would have been for Shannan to run through there. Ray even brought a woman about Shannan's size to simulate what she must have experienced, what she could and couldn't see.

It wasn't hard at all to walk in the marsh. The soles of Ray's shoes barely got wet. It was easy to see, too. Ray and the woman with him found that their sight lines extended past the reeds. From the thick of the marsh, they could see houses, the highway, everything. It was difficult to believe that Shannan was lost at all, and even harder to believe that she might have drowned or died of exposure. Ray remembered the ME saying that all of Shannan's bones had been bleached by the sun in such a way that her body seemed to have been lying down for a long time. When Ray asked if that meant Shannan could have been placed in that spot after she was dead, Sims-Childs would neither concede nor deny the point.

How else might Shannan have died? Sudden heart failure from drugs? They couldn't know, because the remains were tested for only one drug. Strangulation? They couldn't know, but the absence of two hyoid bones sure was suspicious. Granted, Mari was Ray's client, and he had a vested interest as her lawyer, and he had gone to the marsh already suspecting that Shannan had been killed and dumped there, her things flung in the marsh at a different time. But after his morning stroll, Ray was more convinced than ever that the police theory was wrong. The police explanation of hysteria not only didn't make sense; it was practically Victorian in its view of prost.i.tutes, as if Shannan had died of sorrow, or fright, or sadness, or heartache. Against all common sense and with willful ignorance of Shannan's own words that night, the police seemed to be saying that Shannan Gilbert had died because her soul had been rent asunder by a life in the streets.

It was left to Mari to champion her daughter. Months after Lorraine and Missy spurned her, some of the most devoted followers of the case would also drop out of Mari's Facebook group, even the steadfast Michele Kutner. ”I hung by her,” she said, ”but I'm not going to stay there and be abused.” None of the conflict seemed to rattle Mari, although conflict had always resembled her natural state. She spent the summer ushering in new Facebook friends who had heard about the case through repeats of the 48 Hours episode. She was casting about for a way to get Shannan's case on John Walsh's TV show, America's Most Wanted. During a midsummer visit with John Ray on Long Island, Mari went out of her way to be kind about Lorraine, if a little patronizing. ”Lorraine is sweet. She's a little slower at talking, because she wants to make sure it's right.” And she didn't resist the chance to judge Missy, suggesting she hadn't done enough to help Maureen while she was alive. ”I hurt for her the most,” Mari said. ”Because I hope it's not haunting her, the choices she made.”

Mari was more comfortable forgiving herself, even if it meant not questioning what part, if any, she might have played in her daughter's tragedy. ”I can't be plastic,” she said, adding that she wished Shannan had been a little more like that. ”I think if Shannan inherited anything from me, it was being able to do what she chose to do and not care what people thought. I wish she were more street-smart.” Mari was trying hard to be philosophical, in her own way. ”Sooner or later, things will catch up to a person. You do the best you can when you're in that situation. And everything is meant to be. You cannot disrupt the order of life. You just can't, because it's gonna happen anyway. So you do the best you can. You roll with the punches. You get knocked down, you dust yourself off, you keep going.”

By then even Sherre had lost patience with Mari. They didn't speak over most of the summer. ”I think my mom's a hater,” she said one afternoon in a park near her home in Ellenville. ”She's lost a lot of her friends. She's closing herself off from people. We've always had our ups and downs, but it's gotten much worse since Shannan's been gone.” Sherre spent much of her time carefully vetting all the coverage of the case, protesting whenever anyone used the word prost.i.tute to describe her sister. This wasn't the life she wanted, she wrote in a message to friends. The world can't see if she would've changed, what her life may have become . . . Before you judge her or judge us, make sure your life is perfect because none of our lives are! Privately, Sherre didn't spare herself any criticism. ”I just feel bad because I never really tried to stop her. I never talked about it with her.”

Despite staying active online, Sherre felt isolated. Not talking to Mari meant having fewer people with whom to mourn Shannan. Even before she vanished, Shannan had such an ephemeral place in her family's world-living at home on and off, making such foreign choices-that Sherre couldn't stop wondering, almost in an endless loop, what might have made her sister's life so different from her own. ”I just feel like Shannan always wanted to be loved,” she said, fighting back tears. ”And she never felt like that. And I think her doing what she did, it was something that she didn't really care about. You know how you're supposed to cherish your body? Maybe if she felt loved. But I don't think she did.”

What seems to hurt Sherre and Mari the most-the complaint they share with Missy and Lorraine and Kim and Lynn-is the way the police's theory of the case blamed Shannan at the exclusion of everyone else. Joe Brewer was still a free man. So was Michael Pak, who, as her driver, posted her calls, which to some made him a de facto pimp. Why was Shannan the only one to answer for what happened that night? Murder or no murder, Shannan and all of the others were failed by the criminal-justice system not once but three times. The police had failed to help them when they were at risk. They'd failed again when they didn't take the disappearances seriously, severely hobbling the chances of making an arrest. And they'd failed a third time by not going after the johns and drivers. Sherre and Mari know that no matter what happened in Oak Beach, Shannan's profession had sealed her fate. Even before she disappeared, she ceased to matter.

Alex Diaz said he hadn't been able to get and stay with a girl since he lost Shannan. ”It's always in the back of my head. I want to know what happened to her. It's kind of hard to move on, not knowing.” He got a straight job, earning three hundred dollars a week as a dispatcher for a valet company. Michael Pak, still living in Queens, said he'd gotten a job, too, though he wouldn't say where.