For decades, a serial killer preyed on young female sex workers, using New York City’s busiest beaches as his dumping ground.

The killer’s crimes went largely unnoticed until 2010, when a young woman’s disappearance led the Suffolk County Police Department to discover the remains of 11 people – nine women, a man, and a toddler – around Gilgo Beach. But it would take another 13 years until a task force could name a suspect following a corruption scandal that shook the county and likely delayed the investigation.

Architect Rex Heuermann was arrested July 14, 2023. The Massapequa Park resident worked in Midtown Manhattan and has been linked to seven killings, though there are believed to be more.

Now, a new Netflix documentary series blows the case wide open. Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer, directed by Liz Garbus, is a thorough and impactful documentary unpacking how Shannan Gilbert’s tragic 911 call in 2010 set off a decade-long search for the serial killer. The documentary features firsthand accounts from the families of the victims, those who knew and have met Heuermann and lived to tell the tale, and the officials who worked on the case.

Garbus previously directed the 2020 scripted adaptation of Robert Kolker’s book Lost Girls, starring Amy Ryan as Mari Gilbert, Shannan’s mother. But after Heuermann was arrested, Garbus tells DECIDER she “immediately” reached out to the families.

“As I got back in touch with them, I thought, I have to do a documentary. There was so much more to the story,” she says. “I also, after making Lost Girls, followed the case of the corruption trials in Suffolk County and got to know a lot more about what what had been going on in Suffolk County than I was able to know when I was making the film Lost Girls. So that, of course, was another impetus to want to make the series Gone Girls.”

The Emmy Award-winning filmmaker tells DECIDER about the shocking things she learned about the case while filming, the possible impact of police corruption, and actress Amy Ryan‘s shocking connection to the alleged Gilgo Beach murderer.

DECIDER: What was it that first interested you in the case and what made you continue following it after all of these years?

LIZ GARBUS: Like many New Yorkers, I had heard about the Gilgo Beach disappearances covered extensively by New York papers when Shannan Gilbert went missing in 2010. What I didn’t know was all the other women’s stories. There was much less coverage at that time until they were found along the side of Ocean Parkway outside of New York City. So, I was aware of the story, and I think it was 2015, which is now ten years ago, where I got the script for the movie Lost Girls, which was based on the incredible book by Bob Kolker, based on extensive reporting with the family. He embedded himself in their lives and was able to, not just talk about their deaths and their murders and disappearances, but also their lives and their families and their sisters and their mothers and their friends, and paint a full picture. And that became the basis of the movie Lost Girls. Of course, that story didn’t stop. The case wasn’t solved. People died …

And one summer day, I got a text, actually, from Amy Ryan who had played Mari Gilbert in [Lost Girls] saying like, ‘Oh my God, look at the papers.’ And it was that they had made an arrest in the case. And she also said to me, ‘Liz, he’s been in my apartment, this guy.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ He was an architect and worked in New York City and was involved in many buildings in nearby the Brooklyn neighborhood where both Amy Ryan and I live now. I immediately reached out to the families and expressed my hopes that this would bring them some justice. And as I got back in touch with them, I thought, you know, I have to do a documentary. There was so much more to the story.

What was it like bringing this story to life as a documentary as opposed to a scripted film?

It’s totally different. Documentary filmmaking and scripted filmmaking are very different. However, they share one very essential creative task, which I think is the heart of filmmaking, which is the edit room, the edit process. People have asked me about going back and forth and while the means of production are totally different, the edit room is one thing that unites all, and that’s where you sort of really dig into the storytelling. So, it’s totally different.

We were able to include the family members, but also talk to people who were friends of the missing women who had been there when they started escorting. We got to understand how, when you were on Craigslist, how women kept each other safe, how they had each other’s backs. And so those systems were really interesting to learn about; how they would show up after an hour if their friend didn’t respond to a text, the ways in which they really kind of try to keep each other safe.

I was so impressed by the amount of people featured in the documentary – people who had suspicious run-ins with Rex Heuermann, his former colleagues, his family members. What was it like fostering relationships with these people and getting them comfortable to speak with you on camera?

I have an incredible team of producers and researchers who did great investigative journalism. And of course, there are a lot of people who don’t want to talk, and they don’t want to be [involved] with the story. And there are a lot of other people who are still really processing it. And in fact, being part of a documentary is part of their processing it. Taylor, for instance, who lives in Philadelphia and had the encounter where she tells us where she was brought into a house and she heard what she thinks was a person upstairs trying to get attention. I mean, she was having severe PTSD. I think being part of the documentary was actually processing that and and talking about it with people who wanted to listen and understood. And it’s also part of the desire to get justice. Especially for women who have worked in the sex industry and could not be really safe talking to police about these encounters, finally having the power to speak about them, I think was something that was very meaningful.

Why did you choose to focus so heavily on Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance in Episode 1?

Shannon’s disappearance was the tip of the spear for us, for the entire world to understand the Gilgo Beach case. But there were family members who were screaming into the wind about the disappearances of their sisters and daughters and nieces, and were not getting attention. When Shannan went missing in Gilgo Beach and there was a 911 call, which was a call that none of the other women were able to make, there was finally attention. There was something verifiable that there was a woman who was scared for her life because all the other women, they had just said, “Oh, she’s going on a bender,” or, “Oh, she’ll turn up.” But here was somebody who had called 911 and said, “They’re trying to kill me,” and then disappeared. So Shannan was really the public’s entry to the story. So I relied on that as a way into the story as well.

Tell me about what it was like working with the Suffolk County Police Department for this documentary.

Stuart Cameron, he was so involved in the case from the moment that Shannan’s 911 call came into Suffolk County. So, having his participation was incredible. Having Ray Tierney, the District Attorney of Suffolk County who is responsible for charging this alleged perpetrator, having his involvement and his telling us about the Gilgo task force, which in six weeks was able to put together and find a name that had eluded the predecessors… All the evidence that was used to charge Rex Heuermann was there already and the pieces were not put together until these new set of folks were in charge in Suffolk County. 

Can you speak more about why you chose to focus on Burke’s corruption scandal in Episode 2? How do you think the scandal might have impacted the investigation?

You talk to families about their experiences interacting with the department and there was dysfunction. I think we learned through the trial of Jimmy Burke and D.A. Thomas Spota, that the top brass of that department were very occupied trying to cover up their own misdoings. It doesn’t mean that they were involved in anything to do with the Gilgo Beach case, but it means that their eyes were on a different ball, and I thought that was really important to look at. I think it validates a lot of what the family members had been upset about, and I think that was really important. 

It’s such a validation for the mothers… and the sisters like Missy and Amanda, who were saying find them, work harder, do more. And then that this new regime was able to do that work in six weeks. I mean, it’s really important to look at that and to understand the difference between effective policing and and not effective policing.

Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer premieres March 31 on Netflix.