Police on Long Island, New York, say they have confirmed the identity of another victim of the unsolved Gilgo Beach murders.
The victim was among 11 sets of remains found on a stretch of highway on Long Island when police were searching along Ocean Parkway for a woman who disappeared in 2010.
Authorities previously identified one of the victims as “Jane Doe #6,” but in an update on Friday police said they now know who she is. Her name will be released “in the near future,” Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement.
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Police worked with the FBI and used DNA technology to identify the woman, whose partial remains were found in Manorville in 2000 and at Gilgo Beach in 2011.
Police began to make the grisly discoveries while looking for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker from New Jersey who vanished in 2010 after leaving a client’s house in Oak Beach.
During the search, the remains of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, were found on Dec. 11, 2010. Two days later, three more bodies were discovered — Megan Waterman, 22; Amber Lynn Costello, 27; and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.
In March 2011, Suffolk police found the partial remains of Jessica Taylor along Ocean Parkway. Eight years earlier, remains also belonging to Taylor were found in Manorville, police said at a news conference in January.
The following month, in April 2011, police uncovered three additional remains. They belonged to “Jane Doe #6,” a female toddler and an Asian man. The shocking discoveries continued when two additional bodies were found in Nassau County.
Gilbert’s remains were eventually discovered by police on Oak Beach in December 2011. According to NBC New York, four of the victims, including Gilbert, were sex workers.
The murders have never been solved, and police have not publicly named a suspect.
