I first heard about this case 13 years ago in 2010. Four sets of human remains were found on the side of a highway on Long Island, just an hour's drive from New York City.

At the time I'd been reporting about crime and murder, so this case seemed like a natural fit for me,

but I resisted writing about it at first, because I thought

that the case would be solved basically by the time I got into my car.

There had been the Craigslist killer case up in New England 18 months earlier, and that person had been caught in just two days.

But that's not what happened here.

What started out as the discovery of four women's remains

ballooned to include as many as 10 or 11 possible victims.

These became known as the Gilgo Beach Killings or the Long Island serial killer case.

And what made it especially strange, to me at least, was that they took place so close to New York City. The idea that a

killer or killers could operate unnoticed for years and perhaps decades in the same

general area so close to New York, it's just shocking that it went unsolved.

My name's Robert Kolker and I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine. The Gilgo Beach case defied expectations in other ways. The first

four women had something in common, that they all participated in sex work.

Back then I probably would have believed in the cruel stereotype our culture has about murder victims like this, that they're off the grid or outcasts from their families,

that no one knows who they are, or that the bodies would never be identified.

But it turned out that not only were the victims identified right away,

but their families had been searching for them and they wanted attention for the cases.

And so that led to a magazine story and then a book called Lost Girls which came out in 2013.

Lost Girls focused on the victims and their families,

but the case was still unsolved.

The police had no suspects or persons of interest, and it seemed like it would be like that for some time.

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