I was a little skeptical going into Lost Girls by Robert Kolker because it’s really a book about unsolved murders. Look, I’m just the reader here. I don’t know these girls. So my first thought when I heard about this was, “so what’s the payoff?”
For starters, this book starts off with Shannon Gilbert fleeing the scene of an escort booking she had arranged for herself via Craigslist. She’s running through this neighborhood knocking on doors trying to get help. Finally, she just runs off into the marsh…never to be heard of again. This sparks an investigation that is spurred on from her family as, apparently, the police in that area don’t care too much about missing persons cases.
So this whole search for Shannon Gilbert starts turning up bodies in this one Long Island area. As each body is found it becomes evident that they’re all linked together somehow. Most bodies are found in a burlap sack and a lot of them are grouped very close to each other.
But even as the bodies are uncovered they still can’t find Shannon – the one person they were looking for to begin with.
The book zeros in on five girls and how they’re all connected. They’re all escorts that do their business through Craigslist or Backpage. But there’s very few leads. The police investigate this john and that trick but they all come up empty handed. They can’t seem to get a grasp on anything solid. Conspiracy theories pop up, allegations are thrown around, money is raised and lost, and things get a little blown up for certain members of the families.
Well, if you’re looking to crack the Long Island Serial Killer case, or the Craigslist Killer case, or whatever it is they’re calling it now, then you’re not going to be satisfied with this read. However, you might be interested to read about a girl that starts over here at point A and then ends up dead over here at point Z. This book does a nice job chronicling what makes a girl even want to start up her own escort service. You get to see how someone can go from flipping burgers to turning tricks. And that’s only one aspect of the book.
Kolker’s Lost Girls also examines the investigation that led to the unearthing of over 10 women in the Long Island area. You get to see how the search for one girl led police to the discovery of a vast graveyard of other girls. You also get to see a conspiracy theory grow as the police never come up with any credible leads but the community is convinced it’s someone that the police don’t even consider as a suspect.
Lost Girls examines the path that a person can voluntarily take leading to a life of prostitution, into an early grave, and the resulting aftermath that affects the family and friends of everyone involved. It looks at how the internet is this neutral ground, a blank canvas: In some hands it can foster an insidious downward spiral and in other hands in can help pull people together in the way of a virtual support group.
