Gilgo killings unsolved for 13 years as a result of ‘unhealthy dudes botched the case’

If solely folks had paid extra consideration to Lengthy Island-based true crime writer Robert Banfelder.

The 80-year-old creator may have instructed anybody who listened years in the past that the Suffolk county DA and the cops in control of the Gilgo Beach serial killer investigation have been bungling the case.

“They failed, they failed miserably,” Banfelder instructed The Submit Thursday, referring to a number of the Suffolk County legislation enforcement officers that have been a part of the prolonged so-called Gilgo 4 probe. “They thwarted everybody who was attempting to assist the investigation, particularly the FBI. These are unhealthy dudes who botched the case.”

Final week, Rex Heuermann was charged with three counts each of first and second-degree murder in reference to the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Amber Lynn Costello, 22, and Megan Waterman, 27.

All three ladies’s stays have been found within the marshes alongside Ocean Parkway close to Gilgo State Park in December 2010.

He has pleaded not responsible to 3 counts every of first- and second-degree homicide. He’s additionally the primary suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25. She was the primary to go lacking, in 2007.

Banfelder, who has lived in who’s lived within the city of Riverhead, some 45 miles east of Gilgo  Seashore, for greater than three a long time, wrote two books on the case: “The Long Island Serial Killer Murders – Gilgo Beach and Beyond,” in 2020 and the sequel  “Snuff Stuff” final 12 months.

As just lately as final 12 months, he gave talks regionally about what he referred to as the case’s “tradition of corruption” involving the now-disgraced hierarchy of the Suffolk County Police department and DA’s office: specifically, former police chief James Burke, former DA Thomas Spota and former Anti-Corruption Bureau Chief Christopher McPartland.

Burke was just lately launched after going to jail in 2016 for a cover-up involving his beating of a petty legal who stole a bag of intercourse toys and pornography from his automotive.

In 2021, Burke’s longtime mentor Spota — who was disbarred a 12 months earlier than — and one other ally, the highest Spota deputy Christopher McPartland, have been sentenced to 5 years in jail for his or her half within the cover-up.

Banfelder additionally blamed present County Govt of Suffolk County Steve Bellone for bungling the Gilgo case, pointing out that Bellone had been warned about Burke’s past and character prior to hiring him.

“He dropped the ball,” Banfelder stated. “He employed Burke. However that was a part of the issue. He employed a foul cop.”

Not lengthy after being appointed Chief of Police in 2011, Burke eliminated the FBI from the Gilgo homicide investigations — as a result of, The Post reported in 2015, he knew he was additionally being investigated for assaulting the thief who stole his intercourse toys.

“Burke by no means needed us concerned on this [serial killer] case as a result of he knew we have been ­investigating him,” stated a federal supply.

Banfelder, due to his affinity for true crime, stated he was properly conscious of what he referred to as the “corruption” surrounding Burke, Spota and McPartland.

“All of them go approach again,” Banfelder stated.

Years in the past, Banfelder had adopted the strange case of a 13-year-old boy named John Pius who’d been found dead at an elementary school in Smithtown, LI, in 1979. Stones had been stuffed down the boy’s throat to asphyxiate him. Spota was the younger prosecutor assigned to the case and Burke, who was simply 14 on the time, was one in every of Spota’s key witnesses. (Burke was by no means implicated or charged within the crime.)

By the point Burke was the county’s prime police officer, they have been approach too cozy, Banfelder stated.

“Spota needed to observe sure tips in a authorized sense,” Banfelder stated. “However Burke may do what he rattling properly happy. And in a approach this was all Jimmy Burke’s stomping grounds too. He was concerned in prostitution and he was partying. There’s no query about that.”

The Submit first reported in 2016 — and there have been similar accounts just lately — that Burke attended parties with drugs and prostitutes in Oak Beach, not removed from Gilgo Seashore, in response to John Ray, an lawyer for victims Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor. Ray additionally represented a prostitute who claimed a relationship with Burke, and per a separate supply, Burke denied that relationship.

Banfelder feels sorry for the households of the useless ladies — who he stated have been dissed by many authorities as a result of the victims have been seemed down upon as prostitutes.

“I really feel emotional simply eager about on a regular basis it took to make an arrest in these instances,” he stated. “It’s shameful.”

Banfelder honed his protection of serial killers when he attended the trial of Long Island postal worker Robert Shulman who was convicted in 1999 of beating three prostitutes to death with blunt objects inside his Hicksville, LI, residence between 1991 and 1996. Banfelder was in court docket on daily basis, he stated, and obtained to know each the prosecutors and protection attorneys.

He beginning writing books in 1990 and has additionally penned  a whole bunch of true crime articles.

As for Heuermann, he stated, “He’s going to be accused of murdering the fourth one. That’s nearly a given. And from there, they’re going to go on to working at these different six victims and even past them past that.”