Tejasvani Datta
Netflix’s ‘Lost Girls’ narrates a hard-hitting tale of a mother’s desperate attempts to bring justice to her missing daughter. The film is based on the real-life tragedy surrounding one of America’s most notorious murder cases in the modern times. It is a heartbreaking fictional rendering of Robert Kolker’s 2013 book, Lost Girls: An American Unsolved Mystery which follows the Long Island Serial Murders.
Kolker’s book traces the lives of 5 murder victims, all of whom were sex workers who suddenly went missing. These women were failed by both the criminal justice system and the society at large, which chose to stay blind to these tragedies. The result? Well, unfortunately, these cases remain unsolved even a decade after they were first brought to light. The perpetrator in these cold cases is known as the Long Island Serial Killer (abbreviated as LISK).
It was the mother of one of these victims who brought the whole horrific ordeal to light in the first place. Netflix’s ‘Lost Girls’ focuses on this journey. Mari Gilbert relentlessly implored the police to investigate her daughter’s disappearance. Gilbert’s daughter, Shannan, was a 24-year-old escort who disappeared in 2010 around Oak Beach, Long Island. Due to the indifference and inaction shown by law-enforcement agents, Mari began her own investigation. This eventually led the police to find the remains of 4 bodies around South Shore. But none of these belonged to Shannan.
As the investigation continued, over ten bodies were found within a year, some of which were determined to be all the way back from the 1990s. Eventually, Shannan’s body was discovered. But her death was proven to be accidental, which didn’t tie it to the Long Island serial murders. Mari continued to fight the authorities to bring justice to her daughter, but they failed her more than once. Sadly, she never got any answers before she herself passed away.
Mari Gilbert Did Everything in Her Power For Her Daughters
Mari was born in New Jersey in 1964 but later shifted to Ellenville, where she lived with her daughters, Shannan, Sarra, Sherre, and Stevie. She worked as a Department Manager at the Walmart in Middletown, around 70 miles north of New York. Mari was a pivotal figure in the Long Island Serial Killer investigation as she initiated and led it in May 2010, when Shannan went missing. The rest of the struggle is portrayed in ‘Lost Girls’, as the criminal-justice was not much of a help. For a long time, the case of the missing person was not taken seriously because of Shannan’s work.
However, Mari continued to press the police to investigate, and within a year, the remains of ten bodies were found on Long Island’s South Shore. Eventually, after over 18 months of imploring the authorities to investigate Shannan’s vanishing, on December 13, 2011, her skeletal remains were found in a marshy swamp around Great South Bay. Unfortunately, despite the other murders being tied to LISK, Shannan’s death was proven to be accidental. The police dismissed the connection Shannan had to the other murders and announced that her death happened by drowning.
Soon, the news of Shannan’s death and the other murders began to fade away from the limelight. Nevertheless, Mari Gilbert continued to fight to get her daughter the justice she thought she deserved as she believed Shannan to be one of the victims of the serial killer. Mari, along with attorney John Ray, fought to reopen the case in the hopes of some concrete answers, closure, as well as overall justice, leading to an independent autopsy of Shannan’s remains.
It was in 2016 that this independent autopsy was conducted by Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York City. According to his expertise and experience, he concluded that Shannan was indeed, in all probability, strangled as the damage to her neck was “consistent with homicidal strangulation.” This renewed the interest in the case, ultimately driving the FBI to join the search for Shannan’s killer. Unfortunately, though, despite her relentless efforts, Mari Gilbert never got the answers she sought or received any sort of closure owing to her own tragic demise.
Mari Gilbert Was Killed by Her Younger Daughter
Mari Gilbert tirelessly fought for her daughters until her death. But alas, in the summer of 2016, she was tragically killed by one of her younger daughters, Sarra Gilbert. It happened in Sarra’s apartment on Warren Street in Ellenville on July 23, 2016, during one of Sarra’s episodes. After all, she had reportedly been diagnosed with extreme paranoid schizophrenia. She actually stabbed her mother 227 times because she was convinced Mari was a demon.
Attorney John Ray later revealed that Sarra used to hear voices in her head, hallucinate, and was in and out of psychiatric hospitals since 2014. It was also reported that she murdered her pet puppy and threatened to kill her son before murdering her mother. The Gilberts faced another devastating tragedy with Mari’s death. It has also been believed that Shannan’s murder was a trigger in Sarra’s deteriorating mental health. Mari could not live to see what she started. But her daughters, Stevie and Sherre, are determined to continue fighting for justice for Shannan.
Read More: Where is Sherre Gilbert Now?
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