Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker can provide 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 past due spring night in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after operating in the course of the oceanfront group of Oak seashore screaming for her lifestyles, went lacking. not anyone who had heard of her disappearance proposal a lot approximately what had occurred to the twenty-four-year-old: she was once a Craigslist prostitute who were fleeing a scene—of what, not anyone may 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 became up 4 our bodies, all lightly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. yet none of them Shannan's.

There used to be Maureen Brainard-Barnes, final obvious at Penn Station in new york 3 years previous, and Melissa Barthelemy, final noticeable within the Bronx in 2009. there has been Megan Waterman, final obvious leaving a lodge in Hauppage, ny, 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 12 months. Like Shannan, all 4 girls 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 provides the 1st exact examine the shadow international of escorts within the web age, the place being profitable is less complicated than ever and the risks stay all too genuine. He has talked exhaustively with the chums and relations of every lady to bare the third-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 chanced on itself the focal point of nationwide media scrutiny—where the police have flailed, the physique count number has risen, and the associates have all started pointing palms at each other. There, in a distant group, out of sight of the shorelines and marinas scattered alongside the South Shore barrier islands, the women's tales come jointly in loss of life and darkish secret. Lost Girls is a portrait not only of 5 girls, yet of unsolved homicide in an idyllic a part of the United States, of the bottom of the web, and of the secrets and techniques we preserve with out admitting to ourselves that we retain them.