Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker gives you a haunting and humanizing account of the true-life look for a serial killer nonetheless at huge on new york, in a compelling story of unsolved homicide and web prostitution.

One overdue spring night in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after operating during the oceanfront group of Oak seashore screaming for her existence, went lacking. nobody who had heard of her disappearance inspiration a lot approximately what had occurred to the twenty-four-year-old: she used to be a Craigslist prostitute who were fleeing a scene—of what, not anyone might be certain. The Suffolk County Police, too, appeared to have paid little attention—until seven months later, whilst an unforeseen discovery in a bramble along a close-by road grew to become up 4 our bodies, all lightly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. yet none of them Shannan's.

There was once Maureen Brainard-Barnes, final visible at Penn Station in big apple 3 years previous, and Melissa Barthelemy, final visible within the Bronx in 2009. there has been Megan Waterman, final obvious leaving a lodge in Hauppage, manhattan, only a month after Shannan's disappearance in 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, final noticeable leaving a home in West Babylon a number of months later that very same yr. Like Shannan, all 4 ladies have been petite and of their twenties, all of them got here from out of city to paintings as escorts, and so they all marketed on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage.

In a triumph of reporting—and in a riveting narrative—Robert Kolker offers the 1st particular examine the shadow global of escorts within the net age, the place being profitable is less complicated than ever and the risks stay all too actual. He has talked exhaustively with the buddies and kinfolk of every lady to bare the 3-dimensional truths approximately their lives, the suffering cities they got here from, and the goals they chased. And he has won detailed entry to the Oak seashore local that has came across itself the point of interest of nationwide media scrutiny—where the police have flailed, the physique count number has risen, and the associates have began pointing arms at each other. There, in a distant neighborhood, out of sight of the shorelines and marinas scattered alongside the South Shore barrier islands, the women's tales come jointly in dying and darkish secret. Lost Girls is a portrait not only of 5 ladies, yet of unsolved homicide in an idyllic a part of the USA, of the bottom of the net, and of the secrets and techniques we hold with no admitting to ourselves that we preserve them.