Gilgo Case Shows There's No Way To Screen For Killers, Advocate Says

LONG ISLAND, NY — The Gilgo Beach serial killings make the number one misconception that the public has about prostitution more apparent: Prostitutes really can't screen for killers.

That's according to Alisa Bernard, a former prostitute who now works with the advocacy group World Without Exploitation as its national campaign manager.

There’s “a misconception that somehow we can screen out the bad guys, like there's a difference between a good buyer and a bad buyer," she told Patch.

“In my opinion, if women had learned how to screen out bad guys in our lives, we would have started doing that generations ago,” she said, adding, that it’s “a victim blaming way” to point out that the women who were killed “just didn't screen well enough.”

She makes a point of noting that she is the exception to the rule, as she does not have the same ethnic or socio-economic background as most women who took part in prostitution.

Bernard, who is white, said that most of the people working in the sex industry are disproportionately women of color, LGBTQ, and the impoverished.

Similar to some, she did experience sexual abuse in her childhood and she was a teenage runaway.
“Things just kind of led from there,” she added.

It’s a time in her life that she does not feel comfortable revealing details about.

She escaped that life at 25 years old, though she did not immediately seek help.

Sometime after, she sought out therapy, support groups, and other services.

Now deeming herself a survivor of prostitution, she said started by “going to support groups and learning from other women like me, and kind of just recognizing that there was a shared experience there of trauma and all the other things that kind of come along with that.”

She immediately became involved in volunteer work, and later ran a non-profit walk-in center in Seattle, WA.

Another misconception about prostitution Bernard shared is that prostitution is a job like any other.

There's a certain level of heightened anxiety that comes along with recognizing any person “you are doing a date with could be this kind of sex buyer who could potentially murder you,” she says.

She was prostituted in Seattle, WA, where the Green River Killer was very active. Even after his arrest, there were sex buyers who would say things like, ‘Oh, hey, guess who I am?', or I'm the Green River Killer,’ just to kind of scare you,” she recalled.

“Once that door closes, there's really no two ways about figuring out who that's going to be right there,” she said.

Four women allegedly died because of it.

On July 14, Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect who is married with two children, was charged with six murder counts in the deaths of three of the Gilgo Four, including Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello, and Megan Waterman.

He is the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

The remains of the four, all working in prostitution, were found along Ocean Parkway at Gilgo Beach. An additional seven sets of remains, including those of a toddler, and an Asian male, were also found along the strip.

No charges have been lodged in connection with those killings.

The investigation was sparked by the disappearance of another woman, Shannan Gilbert, whose remains were found at nearby Oak Beach. She went missing after visiting a client’s house in Oak Beach.

Gilbert's cause of death was reportedly contested, with a government autopsy ruling it was undetermined and a private one saying she could have been strangled.

Heuermann was linked to the Gilgo Four by a combination of DNA evidence, burner cell phone tracing, and the vehicle he used, law enforcement has said.

His lawyer maintains he is innocent, and just yesterday, after a court conference, said there would be no plea deal and that he is looking forward to his day in court.

As an upper-middle-class businessman with disposable income and no criminal record, Heuermann “would have checked every screening box you could do,” Bernard said.

“I think there's this common misconception that somehow we can regulate away the harms that go into prostitution, which are the harms that are part of the sex trade, but at the same time, whose onus are we putting that on within that context?” she added.

There appeared to have been no obvious red flags with Heuermann.

Those In Prostitution Are Targeted

The way to counteract the inability to screen clients is accountability for sex buyers as the people with the demand that perpetuates the industry, Bernard says.

If guilty, Heuermann is far from the first serial killer who has targeted prostituted people, she pointed out.

Gary Ridgway did just that in the Seattle area. Other serial killers with a similar preference for victims include Joel Rifkin and Robert Shulman, as well as Jefferey Dahmer.

The list goes on, Bernard said, adding that “a person's likelihood of engaging with or being the victim of a serial killer, if you are within the sex trade, is vastly disproportionate to the rest of the population.”

“I think the predominant thing to look at is that these guys aren’t pimps in general. These aren't traffickers in general, most of them are sex buyers,” she said.

Labeled a sex buyer, Ridgway, who was dubbed the Green River Killer, admitted he chose prostitutes because he “thought that they were disposable” and didn’t think anyone would look for them, according to Bernard.

His language showed the view that he had of his victims, she said.

'No Way To Tell' A Killer From A Buyer

“There's no way to tell a ‘Ridgeway’ from an average guy, and I think that's what I want the public to recognize about this is that [prostitution] isn't a harmless activity,” she said. “This isn't something that we should just kind of say, ‘It's all right, go for it — men will be men or boys will be boys’ or whatever you want to say.”

“I think we need to hold the men in our community to a higher standard of that and say, I don't think any woman, girl, or LGBTQ person — their best option should not be the sex trade,” Bernard said.

She added: “There should be options for them to leave if they want to. And I think that that's what I want to impart to people within the sex trade, is there are options to leave if you want to. And also, I recognize that not everybody is in a place where they want to be working, and that is 100 percent okay.”

Women in prostitution generally suffer rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder about twice that of returning war veterans, which is about 60 percent of them, according to Bernard.

“There's a pretty good reason as to why they would need support after that,” she said.

"Most of the women who I've worked with over the years like myself have required therapy or medication, and were dealing with use disorders and things like that."

“That wasn't my personal story,” she added. “But more often than not, I found mental illness and substance use disorder, as well as marginalization and student poverty, have a tendency of kind of putting people in situations where they do need services to exit.”