Case 354: The Gilgo Beach Serial Killings (Part 1/2)

SPEAKER_1 (0:13)

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In the middle of the afternoon on Saturday, December 11, 2010, 59-year-old Officer John Mallier made his way to Ocean Parkway, a 15.5-mile four-lane highway that stretches along Long Island in the state of New York. Initially designed to be a pleasure drive due to its sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and southeastern bay, the highway provides access to the area's beaches and barrier islands that run parallel to the south shore. But Officer Mallier wasn't there for recreational purposes. A young woman had gone missing in the nearby neighborhood of Oak Beach more than six months earlier, and no trace of her had been found. A month after she first went missing, the Suffolk County Police Department's Missing Persons Bureau asked Officer Mallier, a 31-year veteran of the force, to search for the woman with his partner, a seven-year-old German shepherd named Blue. Officer Mallier had trained Blue as a pup, teaching him to be a cadaver dog. Missing Persons cases often served as ideal training exercises for cadaver dogs, who would sought to identify the scent of human remains and notify their handlers of their discovery. Officer Mallier and Blue had searched Oak Beech together throughout the summer months of 2010, focusing mainly on the southern side of Ocean Parkway. It hadn't been an easy task. Parts of the terrain were thorny with brambles. Blue had sustained scratches while searching the overgrown area, parts of which were too dense for him to enter. There was poison ivy growing there as well, which gave Officer Mallier a rash. The two persisted despite the unpleasant conditions and the fact their searches hadn't yielded any results. Sometimes they even went looking outside of office hours, with Officer Mallier using his own time to search with Blue.

By December, the heat of the summer months had given way to the cold of winter, which made for easier search conditions. Some of the thick overgrowth had thinned out, making previously hard to reach areas more accessible. On Saturday, December 11, the top temperature was just 6 degrees Celsius, or 43 degrees Fahrenheit, and by the afternoon, the skies were sunny and clear. Yet, the scene felt remote and desolate due to the distinct lack of people. It was a marshy area not conducive to walking, and the heavy vegetation provided a kind of barrier from the highway, concealing the passing traffic. Officer Malia and Blue first scoured the southern side of Ocean Parkway, searching the Oak Beach area where the woman had gone missing. Finding nothing there, they crossed over to the northern side of the parkway. Thick shrubs, brush, trees and marshland ran between the road and the water. They headed west for around three miles, sticking close to the parkway's shoulder due to the thick brush. Blue's nose was glued to the ground as he sniffed. Then his tail suddenly started wagging. He pushed his nose into the dirt and started digging. Leaning in to see what Blue had found, Officer Mallia saw a heavily disintegrated burlap sack. Inside it was a human skeleton.

And Brainard Barnes had desperately needed money. She and her housemate were a couple of months behind on rent and were facing eviction if they couldn't provide it within a few days, before a scheduled court date on Tuesday July 10 Maureen was a dreamer and the oldest of three siblings. Born Maureen View, she'd grown up in Groton, Connecticut, an industrial port town about two and a half hours east of New York City. Her mother had worked constantly to provide for her family and Maureen's father hadn't been especially involved in his children's lives. Consequently, the people Maureen was closest to were her sister Missy and her brother Will. The three of them formed a tight-knit trio. As a teenager, Maureen was a voracious reader and a poet who wrote rap songs. She fantasized about making it big with her songwriting and becoming a star. Maureen had notebooks filled with all her song lyrics and poetry. In 1998, when she was 16 years old, she found out she was pregnant and left school to have a baby, a daughter named Caitlin. Maureen married her boyfriend Jason Brainard Barnes and took his last name. The young couple had moved in with Jason's grandparents, but their marriage ended amicably within a few years. Caitlin lived with Jason due to better schooling options in the village where he was living, and Maureen moved in with her siblings.