Lost Girls by Robert Kolker

Published by Harper on July 9, 2013

In December 2010, the remains of four young women were found buried in Oak Beach, a community in one of New York's barrier islands. The women all worked as escorts, as did a fifth woman whose body was discovered later. They all disappeared between 2007 and 2010. Arguing that these lost girls do not deserve to be stereotyped and forgotten simply because they engaged in prostitution, Robert Kolker brings them back to life in a book that is dedicated to telling their stories, if not to solving the mystery of their killer(s).

A pregnant high school dropout at sixteen, Maureen went through a series of dead-end jobs and failed relationships. A hair stylist in training who did well in high school, Melissa saw a path out of Buffalo when a man (who turned out to be a pimp) offered her a job cutting hair in a New York barbershop. Rebellious, impossible to control, and marked as white trash, Megan was impregnated by a thirty-two year old when she was seventeen. Sexually abused as a child, Amber eventually joined her sister at an escort service because the workers provided her with a sense of family. All of the women advertised on Craigslist and disappeared after making appointments with unidentified clients.

Raised in a series of foster homes, Shannon worked for an escort agency that catered to high-end clients before the police put it out of business. She also turned to Craigslist. Her last appointment was in Oak Beach. Unlike the other lost girls, Shannon made quite a scene before she disappeared, running around Oak Beach screaming and banging on doors, perhaps frightened by something, perhaps suffering from cocaine psychosis. She called 911 but got no help from the police. Her client that night was Joe Brewer. When the remains of four women were found buried at regular intervals along an Oak Beach highway, Brewer became a person of interest. Shannon's body, however, was not one of the four. Her skeleton was found a year later. Whether she was murdered or accidentally drowned in a marsh is unknown; the autopsy was inconclusive, although it seems to have been less than thorough.

Once the police started digging, they found several more bodies. How many of the bodies are connected to the same killer is unclear. Some have never been identified. Rumors identified a variety of suspects, from Long Island clammers to New York cops, from pimps to "my ex-husband" (two of those, actually). Kolker reports stronger reasons to be suspicious of a doctor who made an odd phone call in which he claimed to have seen Shannon, then denied making the call before admitting the call but disclaiming any knowledge of Shannon. Strange behavior, yes, but far from proof of guilt. Kolker also reports a variety of (mostly farfetched) conspiracy theories that took root in the insular world of Oak Beach, with its petty jealousies and backstabbing neighbors.

Lost Girls is thoroughly researched and easy to read, but it doesn't solve the crimes. Then again, neither did the police. One of Kolker's strongest themes is the indifference of law enforcement to crimes committed against prostitutes. Escorts never receive the same attention as advantaged girls from wealthy families who go missing. When Melissa disappeared, the police ignored her missing persons report for ten days because (as they candidly admitted) they are unconcerned about hookers who can't be found. The police in Suffolk County laughed when Shannon's boyfriend reported her disappearance. At least initially (before the bodies were discovered), the investigative work by family members (which Kolker describes in detail) was more thorough than any efforts made by the police. Still, some family members seemed to be exploiting the tragedies for their own benefit, basking in the attention they received as the mother or sister of a crime victim. The sections of the book that depict family members sniping at each other are among the most interesting. The chief of detectives who investigated the case, on the other hand, resents the pressure he received from family members and condemns the victims for being "greedy." There are no heroes in Lost Girls, but the least heroic are all the police officers who didn't think potential crimes against missing prostitutes were important enough to investigate. Even worse are those who blame the prostitutes, who imply that they deserved to die.

Of course, once the bodies were discovered and it became likely that a serial killer was responsible, the talking heads of crime media descended like vultures. Kolker has done a credible and detached job of reporting, unlike many of the media sensationalists who reported the story, particularly Nancy Grace, who made factual pronouncements with absolute certainty despite knowing none of the facts. Pundits busied themselves making monsters out of any plausible suspects while exploiting the tears shed by the victims' families to boost ratings.

As is often true of book-length investigative journalism, we are sometimes treated to facts that seem like filler, including the history of Oak Brook and biographical details of pimps and drivers who play only a collateral role in the crime story. On the other hand, Kolker offers a compassionate glimpse of the difficult and dangerous life that prostitutes live, and includes a balanced (but too brief) discussion about whether Craigslist provides a useful service or causes social harm by permitting escorts to advertise. Most importantly, Kolker encourages readers to see prostitutes as individuals. They don't all have the same story. They haven't all been trafficked or abused. They come from different family backgrounds and have different attitudes about their work. Perhaps the one thing that unites them is their vulnerability to crime in a society that marginalizes their existence. Apart from its objective reporting of an unsolved mystery, that theme makes The Lost Girls worth reading.

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