Liz Garbus Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer,’ starring Melissa Cann, Amanda Funderberg, Robert Kolker, Jaclyn Gallucci, Steve Bellone, Ray Tierney and Dave Schaller

April 5, 2025

by Carla Hay

An archival photo of Maureen Brainard-Barnes in “Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Klller” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer”

Directed by Liz Garbus

Culture Representation: The three-episode documentary series “Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans) discussing the case of the Long Island Serial Killer (also known as the Gilgo Beach Killer), whose known victims (all young female sex workers) were murdered in New York state from the 1990s to the 2010s.

Culture Clash: Rex Heuermann—who had his own small architectural company in New York City, and who lived on New York’s Long Island, where the bodies were found—was arrested for several of these murders, and pleaded not guilty.

Culture Audience: “Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching true crime documentaries about high-profile murder cases and serial killers.

A 2023 mugshot of Rex Heuermann in “Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Klller” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” is an efficiently made docuseries about the investigation into these notorious murders. Some information is missing, but the series is a fairly good summary of what happened before Rex Heuermann went on trial. At the time this documentary was released in March 2025, Heuermann had been charged with the murders of seven women. The victims were all female sex workers in their 20s who were murdered from 1993 to 2010. Heuermann (a Long Island native who was born on September 12, 1963) was arrested in July 2023 and pleaded not guilty. A trial date had not yet been set at the time this documentary was released.

Directed by Liz Garbus, “Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” interviews family members and friends of some of the murder victims; journalists; law enforcement officials; and various people who knew Heuermann. In some scenes, the documentary has typical true crime re-enactments by actors and actresses. Garbus directed the 2020 Netflix drama film “Lost Girls,” which was told from the perspectives of family members of some of the murder victims. At the time “Lost Girls” was filmed and released, Heuermann wasn’t on law enforcement’s radar at all, but other men were believed to be persons of interest.

Because the Long Island Serial Killer murders have gotten a lot of media attention, it’s already a well-known fact that Heuermann was arrested for these murders for a number of reasons. These reasons included his DNA being found on the murdered bodies and crime scenes. When he was being investigated, Heuermann was under secret surveillance by law enforcement. His DNA was obtained when he discarded a pizza box with some unfinished pizza he had been eating. Heuermann had thrown the pizza in a garbage can on a public street, which was why it was legal for law enforcement to get this DNA without Heuermann’s knowledge or permission.

There was also proof that he owned the burner phones that were used by the killer to make contact with some of the murder victims and to harass family members of a few of the murder victims. Police also found computer records from Heuermann that had detailed plans of the murders, which included sadistic torture. These computer records were obtained through computer forensics that were able to uncover many files that were deleted but still stored on a hard drive.

Heuermann and his dark green first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche truck matched the descriptions of the man and the car who reportedly attacked sex worker Amber Costello in her home during a prostitution job in September 2010. Phone records later proved that Heuermann had made contact with Costello the following day, which was the day she disappeared. Costello was later found murdered in the same vicinity as other murder victims of the Long Island Serial Killer.

The three episodes of “Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” are edited in a cohesive way. The first episode, titled “Part One,” details the cases of the so-called Gilgo Four: the four women whose murdered bodies were found at Gilgo Beach on New York’s Long Island, and which were the first indications that there was a serial killer responsible for all four murders and possibly more. The second episode, titled “Part Two,” examines the corruption in the Suffolk County Police Department and Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office that hindered the investigation and led to the conviction and imprisonment of two high-ranking law enforcement officials on corruption charges. The third episode, titled “Part Three,” chronicles the breakthroughs in the case that led to the arrest of Heuermann.

“Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” has a very good variety of people who are interviewed, but the documentary filmmakers don’t uncover anything new from their own original reporting. The documentary relies a lot on the reporting of journalist Robert Kolker, who covered these cases extensively for New York magazine. Kolker, who is interviewed in the documentary, provides clips of audio recordings of interviews that he did with some people who are not interviewed for this documentary. Kolker is the author of the 2013 non-fiction book “Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery,” which was updated in 2024 and the title changed to “Lost Girls: An American Mystery.”

Part One begins with audio excepts from 911 calls made by Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker who disappeared from the Long Island city of Oak Beach in the early-morning hours of May 1, 2010. In the calls, she can be heard frantically asking for help because she said that people were trying to kill her, but she couldn’t coherently describe where she was located or who was trying to kill her. She also went to a few houses in Oak Beach and banged on doors and shouted that she needed help because people were trying to kill her.

Gilbert lived in New Jersey and had gone to Oak Beach for a job to service a client named Joseph Brewster. For protection, Gilbert employed a driver named Michael Pak, who was waiting for her in his parked car outside of Brewster’s house until Gilbert was ready to leave. According to interviews that Kolker did with Brewster and Pak (snippets of the interviews are heard in the “Gone Girls” documentary), Gilbert had “freaked out” while in Brewster’s home and refused to leave.

Brewster then went out to where Pak was sitting in his car and asked for Pak’s help in getting Gilbert to leave. Gilbert then reportedly burst out of the house and ran away. Pak ran after her and tried to find her, but he lost her in the darkness. She wasn’t answering her phone, so he gave up trying to look for her and left because he assumed she would find another way home.

People in the neighborhood, including Gus Coletti (who is interviewed in the “Gone Girls” documentary), saw or heard Gilbert calling for help but were too afraid to let her into their homes. Some of these neighbors called 911. By the time police arrived, they couldn’t find Gilbert, and Pak had already left. After Gilbert was reported as a missing person, police questioned Pak and Brewster and ruled out Pak and Brewster as suspects.

Shannan Gilbert was reported missing by her mother Mari Gilbert the day after she disappeared because Shannan did not show up as planned for a family get-together. In the movie “Lost Girls,” Mari is portrayed by actress Amy Ryan and is the main character in the movie. In December 2011, Shannan’s skeletal remains were found in an Oak Beach marsh, 19 months after her disappearance. Her death has officially been ruled as accidental, although many people believe that she was a victim of the Long Island Serial Killer, including Mari Gilbert’s attorney John Ray, who is interviewed in the “Gone Girls” documentary. There has been no evidence linking Heuermann to the death of Shannan Gilbert.

What is indisputable is that after Shannan’s disappearance, Mari went on a crusade and media blitz to try to find out what happened. She put pressure on police to look for Shannan, which led to the December 2010 discovery of four murdered women in close proximity to each other near Gilgo Beach. These four women, just like Shannan, were sex workers in their 20s who advertised their services on Craigslist:

Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who went missing in 2007
Melissa Barthelemy, who went missing in 2009
Amber Costello, who went missing in 2010
Megan Waterman, who went missing in 2010

Heuermann has been charged with murdering these four women, who are often described in the media as the Gilgo Four. Heuermann has also been charged with murdering these three women:

Sandra Costilla, who went missing in 1993
Valerie Mack, who went missing in 2000
Jessica Taylor, who went missing in 2003

Mack and Taylor had both been dismembered, and their body parts were found several miles apart from each other. Several other murdered people have been found in the same stretch of area on Long Island where these women were found, but those murders remained unsolved at the time this documentary was released. Most of the murder victims were women, but the other murder victims were one unidentified baby girl (the daughter of one of the unidentified victims) and one unidentified man dressed in women’s clothes.*

Costello is the only murder victim who was actually seen being attacked by Heuermann, according to Dave Schaller and Bear Brodsky, who were two of Costello’s housemates at the time. The “Gone Girls” documentary has interviews with Schaller and Brodsky, who say that in September 2010, a man whom they identify as Heuermann, was in their house because he hired Costello for sex work.

Schaller says in the documentary he was not at home when Costello frantically called him to say she had locked herself in the bathroom and to come home immediately because she was hiding from a customer who assaulted her. Schaller and Brodsky say when they arrived at the house, Heuermann was there and tried to put up a fight and wouldn’t leave. They eventually got him to leave, but Schaller remembers how intensely the customer looked at Costello, like “a predator.”

Schaller and Brodsky say that they reported this assault incident to police, but this evidence was forgotten or ignored until 2022, when the investigation had new leaders. Costello went missing the day after she was attacked by this customer. Her body was found three months later near Gilgo Beach in December 2010.

Schaller, who describes Costello as being goofy and generous, believes that Heuermann was able to lure Costello into a trap by offering her much more money than she usually charged. Schaller says that Costello usually charged $200 per sex session. According to Schaller, the customer who hired her on the last day that Costello was seen had offered her $2,500 and convinced her not to bring her cell phone with her.

Unfortunately, the “Gone Girls” documentary does not mention that Schaller has changed his story and given different versions of what happened in other interviews. The only thing that has remained consistent in his story is his description of the attacker and the attacker’s truck in the incident where Costello was allegedly attacked by a customer. If a police report hadn’t been filed about this incident, Schaller’s story wouldn’t hold much weight in this case.

“Gone Girls” is also inconsistent in giving background information on the women whom Heuermann is accused of murdering. There’s quite a bit of personal history about Brainard-Barnes but not much personal history is given about the other victims. Brainard-Barnes’ sister Melissa Cann and Brainard-Barnes’ former sex-worker best friend Sara Karnes are both interviewed. Cann, who is two years younger than Brainard-Barnes, didn’t find out that her sister was a sex worker until after Brainard-Barnes disappeared. Brainard-Barnes had told her family that she went to New York City for modeling jobs when her trips were really for sex work.

Karnes actually gives more incisive details than Cann about what was going on in Brainard-Barnes’ life that led to her tragic murder. Brainard-Barnes and Karnes both lived in Connecticut but would go frequently to New York City for sex work. Karnes describes their friendship this way: “We were the escort version of Thelma and Louise, except we ain’t driving no car off a cliff.” Karnes says that they looked out for each other when they were doing sex jobs but admits that the only weapon they might have carried for protection was a pocket knife.

During the weekend that Brainard-Barnes disappeared, she was desperate for money. According to Karnes, Brainard-Barnes had an upcoming court hearing that Tuesday because she was in a custody battle with the father of her daughter. Brainard-Barnes was also close to getting evicted from her apartment, which meant that she would most likely not be awarded custody. Karnes says that Brainard-Barnes needed about $3,000 to take care of all of these problems. And she believes that the person who murdered Brainard-Barnes was a customer who enticed Brainard-Barnes with that amount of money or more.

Karnes gets tearful when she mentions she has only one regret about her experiences as a sex worker: She didn’t stay in New York City with Brainard-Barnes, who said she had to stay in New York City longer than expected because of a customer who was going to pay her the money that she needed. Karnes says that after Brainard-Barnes disappeared, an unidentified man called her from a blocked phone number and told her that he saw Brainard-Barnes at a New York City brothel. She asked the man to call her back with an unblocked number so she could pass the number along to the police. He never called back.

Also interviewed in the documentary is Amanda Funderberg, the younger sister of murder victim Barthelemy. Barthelemy was a cosmetics school graduate. Funderberg says that after Barthelemy disappeared and before she was found murdered, Funderberg got harassing phone calls from the killer, who blocked his phone number during these calls. The caller abruptly stopped because Funderberg thinks he began to suspect that she reported the calls to police.

Waterman was also a single mother. Her daughter Liliana “Lily” Waterman was 3 years old when her mother Megan died. Lily is shown briefly in the documentary in a scene where she is having a get-together at a restaurant with Funderberg, Cann, an unidentified man and Megan Waterman’s aunt Elizabeth Meserve. Lily is not interviewed in the documentary, but Meserve is interviewed.

Megan Waterman’s mother Lorraine Ela, who was a tireless activist for justice for the Long Island murder victims, died in 2022, at the age of 55. Her cause of death has not been made public. Ela’s death is briefly mentioned in the documentary, which has some archival news footage of Ela with other loved ones of the murder victims of the Long Island Serial Killer. Mari Gilbert led a support group for these loved ones. The support group still exists.

The “Gone Girls” girls documentary mentions that Mari Gilbert died in 2016 (she was 52), but doesn’t mention the tragic way that she died. Mari was stabbed to death by one of her daughters, Sarra Gilbert, who has schizophrenia. In 2017, Sarra Gilbert received a prison sentence of 25 years to life for second-degree murder. Even though Shannan Gilbert is not officially considered a murder victim, she will forever be linked to the Long Island Serial Killer case because of how her disappearance led to police discovering the murdered bodies near Gilgo Beach.

The episode that details the corruption in Suffolk County law enforcement mainly focuses on Thomas Spota (who was Suffolk County’s district attorney from 2001 to 2017) and James “Jim” Burke (who was chief of the Suffolk County Police Department from 2012 to 2016). Spota and Burke left their positions in disgrace when they were eventually convicted of corruption crimes in cases unrelated to the Long Island serial killer. Spota was convicted of obstruction, witness tampering and conspiracy charges; he was in prison from 2021 to 2024. Burke was convicted of assault and obstruction of justice; he was in prison from 2017 to 2019.

From the beginning of the Gilgo Beach murder cases in December 2010 and continuing in 2011, Spota clashed with Richard Dormer, who at the time was police commissioner of the Suffolk County Police Department. Dormer told the media that the murders of the Gilgo Four indicated that the murders were done by the same person. Spota vehemently contradicted that theory and told the media that the murders were most likely committed by more than one person. Dormer was police commissioner of the Suffolk County Police Department from 2004 to 2011, the year that he retired. He died from cancer in 2019, when he was 79.

Spota and Burke had a long history together, going back to 1979, when Burke was a key witness for the prosecution in a trial for the murder of a 13-year-old boy named John Pius. Two bothers—Michael Quartararo and Peter Quartararo, who were teenagers at the time—were convicted of the murder. Spota was the lead prosecutor for the case. There has been speculation over whether or not Burke lied and was coached in his witness statements and trial testimony. Burke has maintained that he told the truth and was not coached.

Over the next several years, Spota became Burke’s mentor and helped Burke’s police department career tremendously, even when Burke was the subject of numerous internal investigations and complaints. Steve Bellone, who was Suffolk County executive from 2012 to 2023, is interviewed in the documentary and seems very embarrassed that he gave Burke a huge promotion in 2012, when Burke went from chief inspector to chief of the entire Suffolk County Police Department. Bellone sheepishly says his only excuse is that Spota highly recommended Burke for the job. In hindsight, Bellone knows it was a big mistake.

The documentary mentions that in the early years of the Long Island Serial Killer case, Spota and Burke prevented other law enforcement agencies (including the FBI) from collaborating or helping with the case. The reasons for this exclusion aren’t explicitly stated. But considering that Burke was accused of being a frequent customer of sex workers, it’s easy to speculate that because the Long Island Serial Killer case would require many sex workers to be interviewed, perhaps Burke didn’t want certain information exposed about his own alleged activities with sex workers. Whatever the reasons, Spota went out of his way to protect and elevate Burke, and that corruption would lead to both of their downfalls.

Burke declined to be interviewed for the documentary and denied speculation that he was involved with prostitution and was somehow responsible for committing the Long Island Serial Killer murders. Spota did not respond to requests to be interviewed for the documentary. What the documentary doesn’t mention is that in August 2023, Burke was arrested in Selden, New York, for public lewdness, indecent exposure, offering a sex act and criminal solicitation of an undercover male police officer who was posing as a sex worker. Two of the charges were dropped, and Burke was ultimately charged with public lewdness and indecent exposure. In September 2023, he pleaded not guilty.

After the downfalls of Spota and Burke, new people took over the Long Island Serial Killer cases, including Rodney Harrison (who was Suffolk County Police Department’s police commissioner from 2021 to 2023) and Ray Tierney, who became district attorney of Suffolk County in 2022. Tierney is interviewed in the documentary. Harrison is heard giving a brief quote by audio only, but it’s unclear if this was commentary he made for the documentary or for another interview.

Other people interviewed for the documentary are Geraldine Hart, a senior agent of the Long Island FBI from 2018 to 2021; Stuart Cameron, inspector for the Suffolk County Police Department; Kim Overstreet, sister of murder victim Costello; Long Island Press journalist Jaclyn Gallucci; Newsday reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts; former Long Island sex worker Nikkie Brass; John Parisi, a childhood friend of Heuermann’s; Etienne De Villiers, a former neighbor of Heuermann’s; Muriel Henriquez, a former right-hand” co-worker of Heuermann’s; Lisa Marcoccia of the Legal Aid Society; and Suffolk County Police Department detectives Rob Trotta and John Oliva.

A few people interviewed in the documentary are not identified by their full names. For example, a woman named Margaret (whose last name is not revealed in the documentary) says she’s the wife of one of Heuermann’s cousins. She says that Heuermann was the chief organizer of their family reunions, and she was shocked to hear that he’s an accused serial killer.

Margaret says that Heuermann’s father Theodore was very abusive. Childhood friend Parisi says that he witnessed Theodore Heuermann’s raging temper when Theodore would yell and scram at Rex. Heuermann’s mother is briefly mentioned only by Margaret, who says that Rex’s mother “for whatever reason couldn’t leave this abusive man that everyone was traumatized by.” Theodore Heuermann died in 1975, when Rex Heuermann was 11 or 12 years old. The cause of death of Rex Heuermann’s father can be made public in 2025, per New York state law.

Rex Heuermann did not have a criminal record prior to his 2023 arrest for these murders. In fact, people say that Heuermann had a reputation for being a “gentle giant” (he’s 6’4″ and about 250 pounds) who was an introverted loner. One of the people in the documentary who describes Heuermann as very introverted is his childhood friend Parisi, who is two years younger than Heuermann. Parisi was Heuermann’s schoolmate for several years, beginning when Parisi was in the second grade.

Parisi describes Heuermann’s personality this way: “He was very, very quiet. Almost too quiet.” Parisi remembers a childhood incident where he saw Heuermann getting beaten up on a playground by about three or four boys. The boys who were attacking Heuermann were much smaller than Heuermann, but Heuermann didn’t fight back.

Another woman identified only as Taylor says she saw another side of Heuermann when she had a harrowing encounter with him in Philadelphia, in October 2010. At the time, she was 18 and working at a strip club, where she sold alcohol shots. She was also a part-time drug dealer who did much of her business through people she met at the strip club. Taylor says that someone she knew at the strip club arranged for her to do a cocaine deal, where she had to go to a house to make the sale to a customer. According to Taylor, Heuermann (whom she says used the first name John) was the customer, but she didn’t know his real name until after he was arrested for the Long Island murders.

Taylor says she met Heuermann at the strip club, and he drove her back to the townhouse where the cocaine deal was going to take place. Taylor says that during this car ride, he immediately made her uncomfortable because he seemed to be interested in having sex with her, and he talked about his pedophilia fantasies of having sex with girls and boys. According to Taylor, this customer asked her about her friends and wanted to know their ages, which gave her the impression that he was trying to see if Taylor could arrange for him to have sex with any of her friends. She remembers consciously avoiding touching him because she didn’t want to have any sexual contact with him.

Taylor says they went to a barely furnished town house that had a small pile of unopened mail on the floor and a TV in the living room that was playing a porn video on repeat. Taylor describes doing cocaine with the customer. At one point, he went upstairs, and she heard strange noises, such as thumping and furniture being moved around. She suspected that he was assaulting someone who was being held captive upstairs.

In the documentary interview, Taylor comments: “It felt like something out of a horror movie. Whatever it was, it freaked me out.” Taylor says she never saw anyone else but Heuermann in the house, but these suspicious noises led her to believe that there was someone else in the house with them. Taylor says hearing these noises was enough for her to want to leave the house as quickly as possible because she felt that her life was in danger.

According to Taylor’s story, Heuermann suddenly came running down the stairs and tried to prevent her from leaving. She says she had to use a taser on Heuermann’s neck to escape. It’s unknown how well the documentary’s filmmakers verified this story. Because she was involved in illegal drug activity, Taylor didn’t report this incident to police or other law enforcement at the time she said this incident happened.

Taylor admits she feels some guilt about not reporting the incident to police because she thinks lives might have been saved if she had come forward sooner. However, at the time, she didn’t know that the man who tried to kidnap her would be accused of being a serial killer. In the documentary, Taylor says she has been researching the cases of missing or murdered women who might have been in contact with Heuermann. She believes Heuermann has many more victims that the public and law enforcement don’t know about yet.

As for Heuermann, the “Gone Girls” documentary does not uncover anything new about him. It’s already been widely reported that he lived in the same home where he was raised as a child in Massapequa Park, New York. Heuermann owned a small architectural company called RH Consulting and Associates, which he launched in 1994 and had an office in New York City’s Manhattan borough.

The documentary includes a clip of the only known video interview that Heuermann did before his arrest: In 2022, he did an interview for the YouTube channel Bonjour Realty, where he gave a tour of his small and cluttered office. Heuermann describes himself as an architecht and architecht consultant who is a lifelong resident of Long Island.

According to reports, most of the architechtural work that Heuermann did was consulting rather than designing buildings. In the Bonjour Realty interview, he appears to be friendly and welcoming. But based on the prosecution’s case against him, Heuermann had a very dark side of his personality that he did not show to most people.

The strangest thing that neighbors said they saw about Heuermann was he kept his house very run-down, without any repairs or upgrades for decades. “He just kept it like a capsule of time of his childhood,” his cousin-in-law Margaret comments. Margaret never went to the house. However, she says her husband visited the house and described it as dark and creepy.

Heuermann’s former employee Henriquez says in a documentary interview that she had an interior designer friend who was hired to possibly do an interior design job for the Heuermann house. When this interior designer went to the house to do room measurements, Heuermann wouldn’t allow her to go into the house’s basement and told the interior designer that he had guns in the basement. Henriquez says, “That’s the one room she never got to measure.”

Heuermann lived in the house with three other people: his wife Asa Ellerup, an Iceland native whom he married in 1996; their daughter Victoria Heuermann; and his stepson Christopher Sheridan, who was from Ellerup’s previous marriage. Police found nearly 300 guns at the house when they did a search raid. According to law enforcement and evidence found at the house, it’s believed that an unknown number of victims of the Long Island Serial Killer were tortured and murdered at the house.

Police say that based on phone records and other evidence, Heuermann committed murders while his wife and kids were away on vacations. Heuermann’s family members have not been charged with anything related to the murders. Not long after Heuermann’s arrest, Ellerup released a statement saying that she and her kids had nothing to do with the murders and had a hard time believing that he was guilty. She has since filed for divorce from Heuermann.

A few tidbits of information are missing from the “Gone Girls” documentary about the disappearance and death of Shannan Gilbert. First, her incoherence and paranoia shortly before she disappeared might make people wonder if she had been under the influence of drugs. According to several news reports, an autopsy revealed that she had no drugs in her system. However, what remained of Shannan’s body when she was found were skeletal remains, and you can’t do a full toxicology report from decomposed bone matter only.

During her cries for help, Shannan did not name the people she said were trying to kill her. Was this murder plan in her imagination or was it real? We’ll never know. The people who witnessed Shannan running away said that they didn’t see anyone chasing after her. Did she have some kind of psychotic break with reality? We’ll never know.

“Gone Girls” also doesn’t mention that before Heuermann was accused of being the Long Island Serial Killer, someone else was under a cloud of suspicion: Dr. Charles Peter Hackett, also known as Dr. Peter Hackett. Mari Gilbert reported that before she knew Shannan was missing on May 1, 2010, she received a strange phone call that day from an unnamed man who identified himself only as a doctor who operated a home for wayward women. Mari’s phone apparently did not have caller ID.

This doctor said that he was looking for Shannan because he had been helping her, but Mari said she didn’t know where Shannan was. Hours later, when Mari figured out that Shannan was missing, she remembered the phone call, but had no way of knowing who called her. She later found out that Dr. Hackett’s backyard led to the marsh where Shannan’s body and other murdered women were found. Dr. Hackett denied making the phone call to Mari, but phone records showed that he did. In 2012, Dr. Hackett moved to Florida and has stayed out of the public eye.

Another person who received intense speculation that he was the Long Island Serial Killer is John Bittrolff, who was convicted in 2017 of the murders of sex workers Rita Tangedi and Colleen McNamee, who were both found murdered on Long Island. Bittrolff, who was suspected but never charged with Costilla’s murder, has maintained that he is not guilty of all three murders. After the arrest of Heuerman, who has been charged with Costilla’s murder, the Suffolk County district attorney has declined to reopen or retry Bittrolff’s murder cases.

“Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” won’t be considered a comprehensive documentary about the case because it was released before Heuermann went on trial. This docuseries could have done a better job of independent research instead of relying so heavily on other people’s reporting. The documentary’s interviews are with many of same people who’ve told their stories in other documentaries and news reports. However, it’s a good-enough documentary that gives an overview of the most important facts, even if there are some interesting details left out and the documentary doesn’t give a full story of the women who are said to be Heuermann’s murder victims.

*April 24, 2025 UPDATE: The unidentified murdered mother and baby daughter have now been identified as 26-year-old U.S. Army veteran Tanya Denise Jackson and her daughter Tatiana Dykes.

Netflix premiered “Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer” on March 31, 2025.

Review: ‘Lost Girls,’ starring Amy Ryan, Thomasin McKenzie, Lola Kirke and Gabriel Byrne

January 10, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Lost Girls”

Directed by Liz Garbus

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in New York state and partially in New Jersey, the dramatic film “Lost Girls” features a predominantly white cast (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class in depicting the real-life people involved in the Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) murder mystery.

Culture Clash: Mari Gilbert, whose murdered daughter Shannan is believed to be a LISK victim, fights for justice with her daughters and family members of other LISK murder victims, who believe that law enforcement isn’t properly investigating these crimes.

Culture Audience: “Lost Girls” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in dramatic portrayals of true crime stories and don’t mind if some scenes in the movie are unrealistic.

Thomasin McKenzie, Amy Ryan and Oona Laurence in “Lost Girls” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

The ongoing investigations into the unsolved murders of at least 16 people who are believed to have been victims of the Long Island Serial Killer (also known as LISK, the Gilgo Beach Killer or the Craigslist Ripper) are too complex to condense into a scripted movie. Almost all of the murder victims were women who worked as prostitutes, they advertised themselves on Craigslist, and their bodies were found on New York state’s Long Island from the 1990s to the 2010s. Instead of telling all of these murder victims’ stories, the Netflix dramatic feature film “Lost Girls” focuses on the perspective of one real-life mother whose eldest daughter is believed to be one of the LISK murder victims. As of this writing, no suspects have been arrested in the murders.

Directed by Liz Garbus, “Lost Girls” is a well-acted but ultimately a by-the-numbers and often-melodramatic depiction of Mari Gilbert’s struggle to get justice for her murdered 23-year-old daughter Shannan Gilbert, who disappeared on May 1, 2010, in Oak Beach, New York, shortly after Shannan visited a prostitution client. Shannan’s body was found on December 13, 2011, about half of a mile from where she was last seen in public. Investigators have concluded that she died of strangulation sometime in the after-midnight hours when she disappeared.

Michael Werwie wrote the “Lost Girls” screenplay as an adaptation of Robert Kolker’s 2013 non-fiction book of the same title. It’s fairly obvious that much of the movie was fabricated for dramatic purposes, particularly in depicting the police investigation and by showing Mari suddenly turning into a supersleuth. People who like the type of “crusading mother” clichés that are often seen in Lifetime movies won’t have as much of a problem with the unrealistic aspects of the “Lost Girls” movie as much as people who might be looking for a grittier and more authentic depiction of what really happens in murder investigations. (And there’s a Lifetime movie about Mari Gilbert called “The Long Island Serial Killer: A Mother’s Hunt for Justice,” starring Kim Delaney as Mari Gilbert. The movie is set to premiere on Lifetime on February 20, 2021.)

Garbus gives “Lost Girls” solid direction, and the talented cast led by Amy Ryan (who portrays Mari Gilbert) elevates the movie slightly above the type of forgettable crime thrillers that are usually made for basic cable networks. Because “Lost Girls” is based on a true crime story that got a lot of publicity, many people watching this movie already know how it’s going to end. By making Mari the central character of the movie, “Lost Girls” sticks to the same “angry mother looking for justice” formula that’s been seen in many other movies just like it.

However, the real Mari Gilbert was much more controversial in real life than this movie makes her out to be. Airing all of her dirty laundry in this movie wouldn’t make her look as sympathetic as the filmmakers want her to look. For example, there were long-standing allegations that she brought up her daughters in an abusive home, where Mari’s boyfriend at the time was accused of sexually abusing her two middle daughters Sherre and Sarra.

The “Lost Girls” movie leaves out a lot of information about the real-life Mari Gilbert and her family. Mari was a single mother with four daughters, but only three of her daughters are mentioned in the movie: eldest daughter Shannan, second-eldest daughter Sherre and third-eldest daughter Sarra. Mari’s youngest daughter Stevie Smith is not seen nor mentioned in the movie. In real life, Sarra was a teen mother to a son named Hayden at the time of Shannan’s disappearance, but the movie makes it look like Sarra was never a mother.

Mari’s daughters Sherre and Sarra were teenagers at the time that Shannan disappeared, so they weren’t as involved as Mari was in hounding the police to properly investigate Shannan’s disappearance. Sherre (played by Thomasin McKenzie) is portrayed as stoic and introverted during this family ordeal. Sarra (played by Oona Laurence) is portrayed as a troubled and rebellious child who’s been suspended from school for lighting paper towels on fire in the school’s bathroom. Sarra is also on various medications for her mental health.

At the time of Shannan’s disappearance, the movie shows that Mari was living in Ellenville, New York, and holding down two jobs—a forklift operator and a waitress—making her too busy to have a love life. The father(s) of her children are not seen in the movie, and it’s implied that these biological fathers have no contact with Mari and her children. “Lost Girls” shows that Mari being a working-class single mother and Shannan being a prostitute had a lot to do with how the police investigated the case. Mari thinks she’s being treated like a second-class citizen and she’s very angry about it.

The movie’s depiction of Shannan only comes in snippets. There’s a home video shown a few times portraying Shannan at 8 or 9 years old (played by Austyn Johnson), singing “Beautiful Dreamer” in a talent contest. There are also brief flashbacks of an adult Shannan (played by Sarah Wisser), with her face obscured, depicting the last-known moments before she disappeared.

According to several eyewitness accounts, the last time Shannan was seen alive in public, she was frantically running alone on a neighborhood street after midnight and incoherently begging for help. There was a 23-minute phone call to 911 from Shannan’s phone, but what was heard on the caller’s end was hard to decipher. Concerned citizens called 911 too, but by the time police arrived more than an hour later, Shannan had disappeared. Because the movie doesn’t have any flashback scenes of what the adult Shannan was like except for this moment of trauma, she’s like a mysterious ghost in the story.

The “Lost Girls” filmmakers don’t reveal anything significant about Shannan’s personality. Viewers will just have to speculate or just go by the tiny hints that are shown in the movie. It’s implied from the way that Mari talks about what Shannan used to be like as a child that Shannan was thought of as a “golden child” and the “star” of the family. Shannan had a lot of potential, but she didn’t live up to those expectations. How and why Shannan became a prostitute is never explained, although the movie does mention that Shannan had a much more troubled home life than Mari was willing to talk about publicly.

For years, Mari had a rocky relationship with Shannan. The movie mentions that Shannan hadn’t lived with her mother since Shannan was 12 years old, because Shannan was put in foster care by Mari, who considered Shannan to be an unruly child. Mari giving up custody of Shannan to put Shannan in the foster care system led to Shannan having abandonment issues and a lot of resentment toward her mother.

The movie doesn’t gloss over this information, but puts more emphasis on this narrative: Shannan (who lived in New Jersey) and Mari were still fairly estranged at the time of her disappearance, but mother and daughter were taking steps to mend their relationship. The movie depicts that Shannan was supposed to have dinner with Mari, Sherre and Sarra in Mari’s home on the day that Shannan disappeared. And when Shannan didn’t show up, they didn’t think much of it at first because it wasn’t that unusual for Shannan to skip appointments and not show up when she was expected.

But something odd happened that turned out to be a crucial part of the investigation. On the day that Shannan disappeared, Mari gets a phone call from a stranger who identifies himself as a doctor who runs a home for wayward women. Mari doesn’t know at the time that Shannan was missing and was last seen running frantically and begging for help. In his phone call to Mari, the doctor says that he is looking for Shannan, because Shannan is one of the women he’s been helping, but Mari tells this stranger over the phone that she doesn’t know where Shannan is either. Mari is so distracted that she can’t fully remember the doctor’s name when she’s asked about it later.

As the hours pass and the Gilberts get more concerned about where Shannan is, they find out that Shannan’s live-in boyfriend Alex Diaz (played by Brian Adam DeJesus) hadn’t heard from her either. (Alex had an alibi at the time Shannan disappeared and was never a suspect.) The family began to suspect that Shannan had run into foul play, but they couldn’t file a missing person report until Shannan had been missing for 48 hours. The movie makes it look like Mari and her daughters didn’t find out that Shannan was working as a prostitute until she disappeared and Alex (who was also Shannan’s pimp) told them that Shannan was a prostitute.

However, Alex expresses skepticism that Mari didn’t at least suspect that Shannan was involved in illegal activities because Mari allegedly demanded that Shannan give her money to help pay Mari’s bills, even though Shannan was supposedly unemployed. When the Gilberts go to where Alex and Shannan lived to question Alex about her disappearance, it’s clear that they blame him for Shannan’s problems. Sherre also makes an angry comment to Alex that indicates that he was physically abusive to Shannan and the family knew it.

Shannan’s prostitution driver Michael Pak (played by James Hiroyuki Liao), who witnessed Shannan frantically running away when she disappeared, also hints that Mari already knew that Shannan was a prostitute before Shannan disappeared and that Mari didn’t care about Shannan being a sex worker, as long as Shannan was giving money to Mari. He comes right out and says that Shannan despised her mother, whom Michael describes in the movie as money-hungry and demanding. Michael (who was also cleared as a suspect) claims that Shannan refused to get in the car and she ran away when he tried to help her during her fateful after-midnight ordeal. He says that he drove around looking for her but eventually gave up and drove away.

“Lost Girls” doesn’t try to make Mari Gilbert look like Mother of the Year, but there’s a definite sense in watching the movie that more could’ve been told about Mari, but this information about her was deliberately left out because the filmmakers didn’t want the audience to feel alienated from the story’s main character. There are predictable scenes of tough-talking Mari storming into police stations and yelling at detectives because she thinks they’re incompetent or not acting fast enough.

Joe Brewer (played by Matthew F. O’Connor), the prostitution client whom Shannan met with before she disappeared, was quickly cleared as a suspect after he passed a polygraph test. Shannan was last seen far from his house. The eyewitnesses who saw Shannan running down the street and desperately going to people’s houses to beg for their help say that she was too incoherent to describe what was wrong. She gave the impression that someone was after her, although the eyewitnesses say they saw no one chasing after Shannan.

Just like in real life, the movie depicts that the investigation into Shannan’s disappearance led to the discovery of more murder victims who were dumped in the same marshy areas near Long Island’s Ocean Parkway. However, Mari was convinced that Shannan was still alive until Shannan’s remains were found more than a year after she disappeared. Many of the people who saw last Shannan, when she was in a hysterical state of mind, assumed that Shannan was on drugs at the time, but an autopsy later revealed that she had no drugs in her system.

Much of “Lost Girls” shows either one of two things: (1) Mari feuding with the investigating police (including holding press conferences that are meant to shame them) and (2) Mari doing her own investigations. It’s the movie’s latter depictions that come across as less authentic. Mari goes snooping around people’s front yards, she looks in windows of places where she’s trespassing, and she interviews neighbors and local business owners, as if she’s a middle-aged Nancy Drew.

“Lost Girls” also has a “good cop/bad cop” cliché that’s frequently used in crime dramas. In this case, the “good cop” is Richard Dormer (played by Gabriel Byrne), who’s leading the investigation into Shannan’s disappearance and murder. The “bad cop” is Dean Bostick (played by Dean Winters), one of Richard’s underlings who’s tasked with doing a lot of the legwork. Richard is portrayed as flawed but willing to help Mari, even when she berates and insults him. Dean is portrayed as a mean-spirited and crude sexist who’s not afraid to show it when he’s rudely dismissive of Mari. At one point, Dean says to a co-worker: “Honestly, who spends this much time looking for a hooker?”

During the investigation, Sherre goes on social media to connect with family members of other suspected LISK murder victims. Eventually, some of these family members travel to New York state to pressure the police to do more in the investigation. The family members also hold vigils and participate in press conferences so that the cases can continue to get media attention. Sherre thinks it’s a good idea for the Gilbert family to meet these other family members who are victims’ advocates, but Mari initially refuses because she thinks that Shannan is still missing and isn’t murdered like the other victims.

Mari doesn’t want to be lumped in with the other victims’ families, and she feels somewhat superior to them. “Lost Girls” author Kolker, who interviewed Mari for the book and followed the case closely, says that Mari was like this in real life too. And just like in real life, the movie shows that Mari aligned herself with the other victims’ families only after she decided that it would be an advantage to show strength in numbers, rather than Mari trying to get media attention all by herself. At one point in the story, Mari exclaims: “It’s our job … to make sure these girls are not forgotten!”

“Lost Girls” portrays Mari as being standoffish yet domineering when she first meets some of the murder victims’ family members (who are all women), who have gathered in a diner. They are:

Missy (played by Molly Brown), a woman from Connecticut whose sister Maureen was a murder victim.
Lorraine (played by Miriam Shor), whose daughter Megan was a murder victim.
Lynn (played by Anna Reeder), a woman from Buffalo, New York, whose daughter Melissa was a murder victim.
Amanda (played by Grace Capeless), who is Lynn’s daughter and Melissa’s sister.
Kim (played by Lola Kirke), an on-again/off-again prostitute from North Carolina whose sister Amber was a murder victim.

It doesn’t take long for Mari to make herself the leader of the group. Gradually, she becomes less aloof and more open to making friends with them. Mari bonds the most with easygoing Lorraine and clashes the most with feisty Kim. Sherre often acts as a peacemaker when Mari gets irritated with other members of the group. At times, Mari acts like she wants to distance herself from the group, but Sherre is usually the one to smooth things over and convince Mari that these other women can be allies.

The movie depicts Mari as being the chief organizer of the group’s press conferences and the mastermind of staging events, such as having this group of women march through neighborhoods where the murder victims were last seen. It’s a bit of credibility stretch to believe that Mari singlehandedly did all the things in real life that she’s depicted as doing singlehandedly in the movie. However, one of the most authentic aspects of “Lost Girls” is Mari’s emotional ambivalence over who to trust in her quest for justice. It’s not an easy issue for anyone to deal with, especially if it’s compounded by the trauma of looking for a missing child and feeling let down by authorities who are supposed to help.

“Lost Girls” also has a character named Joe Scalise (played by Kevin Corrigan), an Oak Beach neighbor of cleared suspect Joe Brewer. Joe Scalise is portrayed as being the first to tip off Mari that a physician named Dr. Peter Hackett (played by Reed Birney), another Oak Beach resident, should be looked at as a prime suspect. Dr. Hackett is a prominent member of this gated community, but Joe Scalise says that the doctor has a weird fascination with helping prostitutes, whom Dr. Hackett treats as his patients in the doctor’s home office.

Dr. Hackett’s backyard also leads to the marsh where many of the bodies were found. Mari puts two and two together and figures that this is the same mystery doctor who called her on the day that Shannan disappeared. Dr. Hackett denied it, but phone records later proved it.

Through her investigation, Mari also finds out that the doctor’s home office has a surveillance camera outside that would have recorded Shannan on the street the night she disappeared. But when Mari shows up at the office unannounced to interrogate Dr. Hackett, his wife/office manager tells Mari that any video recording from that camera on that night was automatically recorded over. Mari personally confronts Dr. Hackett, who is creepy, smug and evasive. Mari is also infuriated when she finds out the police never even asked for the video surveillance footage.

“Lost Girls” repeatedly portrays Mari as someone who uncovers evidence or tips that the police then express skepticism about or completely ignore. The movie implies in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that one of the main reasons why Shannan’s case remains unsolved is because the police have been unwilling to thoroughly investigate the privileged and influential people of Oak Beach. It’s an age-old issue of criminal justice being different for people who can afford great lawyers and those who can’t.

Mari continues to get tips from Joe Scalise (who seems to be a composite of real-life people), and the more she finds out, the more she’s convinced that Dr. Hackett knows more than he’s telling. When Mari pleads with the police to further investigate Dr. Hackett, she’s told that Joe Scalise is a questionable source since Scalise has been feuding for years with Dr. Hackett and appears to have a personal vendetta against the doctor.

Joe Scalise warns Mari: “The good people of Oak Beach live by one thing: Be wary of those who could ruin a good thing. You are the wayfarer they’ve been dreading.” The movie certainly gives the impression that Mari and the victims’ families are fighting an uphill battle against people who are actively protecting the murderer or murderers.

Because it’s a well-known fact that these murders remained unsolved and no suspects were arrested at the time that “Lost Girls” was made, there’s a feeling of doom while watching the movie that Mari and all of the victims’ loved ones won’t get the justice that they’re seeking by the end of the film. People who watch this movie who never heard of these murders before might be surprised that there’s really no cathartic ending for “Lost Girls.” The Gilbert family also suffered another tragedy that’s not shown in the movie but is mentioned in the movie’s epilogue, which includes details on what people can do if they have information that they think can help solve this real-life mystery of the Long Island murders.

Ryan is a very talented actress who excels in every role that she does, so her performance carries this movie to transcend some of its flaws. McKenzie and Kirke also have some standout moments, with McKenzie’s adept portrayal of Sherre’s quiet heartbreak and Kirke’s memorable portrayal of Kim’s fiery cynicism. Byrne and Winters give adequate portrayals of the two cops who have the most contact with Mari. These types of cops have been seen before in many crime dramas, although Byrne’s Richard Dormer character is written to have more compassion than his police colleagues in this investigation.

“Lost Girls” can get faulty when the movie presents an unrealistic depiction of Mari’s sleuthing and how much access she had in the police investigation. A fairly ludicrous scene in the movie is when police allow her to enter a crime scene while they’re investigating, as if she’s law enforcement too. In real life, that access wouldn’t be given to someone like Mari, and it never happened in real life with Mari, who was very antagonistic to the police.

The movie also doesn’t give any room to consider other possible suspects, since the filmmakers make it look like Peter Hackett was the one whom Mari thought was the most likely to be guilty of the crimes. The real Peter Hackett, who has denied any connection to the murders and was never named by police as a suspect, moved out of Oak Beach in 2016, and he reportedly lives in Florida. There’s a scene in the movie where Mari confronts him again when she finds out he’s moving out of Oak Beach—and it’s a scene that looks “only in a movie” fake.

“Lost Girls” tends to oversimply many aspects of these complicated Long Island murder cases, but the movie admirably doesn’t lose sight of its intent of trying to get justice for these murders. It’s not a typical murder mystery where the killer or killers get caught and punished in the end. And in that sense, it’s the most harrowing type of true crime story that can be told.

Netflix premiered “Lost Girls” and released the movie in select U.S. cinemas on March 13, 2020.

Review: ‘All In: The Fight for Democracy,’ starring Stacey Abrams, Carol Anderson, Andrew Young, Debo Adegbile, Sean J. Young and Ari Berman

September 9, 2020

by Carla Hay

“All In: The Fight for Democracy”

Directed by Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, the political documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy” features a racially diverse group of people (African American, white, Latino, Asian and Native American) discussing past and present issues in U.S. citizens’ right to vote.

Culture Clash: The consensus of people interviewed in the documentary is that voting inequalities, such as voter suppression and gerrymandering, stem from party politics and bigotry issues against people of color, young people and people who are economically disadvantaged.

Culture Audience: “All In: The Fight for Democracy” will appeal primarily to people who have liberal-leaning beliefs, since conservative lawmakers are portrayed as the chief villains who want to suppress people’s votes.

A scene from “All In: The Fight for Democracy” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

The political documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy” (directed by Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés) examines the history of voting rights in the United States and how those rights have been violated. It’s a subject that’s theoretically supposed to be a non-partisan issue, but the documentary doesn’t try and hide that it’s biased heavily toward liberal politics and the Democratic Party, which is portrayed as the political party that’s taking the most action to include more U.S. citizens in the voting process. When it comes to modern-day voter suppression and the push to exclude people from the voting process, the documentary puts the blame primarily on Republican politicians and other lawmakers who have conservative-leaning political beliefs.

Democratic politician Stacey Abrams is one of the producers of “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” so it’s no surprise that she’s the main star of the movie, which uses her highly contested 2018 political campaign for governor of Georgia as an example of voter suppression. Her opponent in that campaign was Republican politician Brian Kemp, who was Georgia’s secretary of state in charge of overseeing the voting process in Georgia while he was campaigning for governor. Overseeing the voting process in his own election was an obvious conflict of interest, but Kemp refused to step down from his secretary of state position during his gubernatorial campaign because it was legal in Georgia for him to keep that position while he was campaigning for another office.

In the end, after 10 days of the election results being contested, Kemp was declared the winner with 50% of the votes, while it was announced that Abrams received 49% of the votes. The controversial election resulted in Abrams and her political group Fair Fight filing lawsuits and investigating reports of widespread voter suppression and other tactics to prevent thousands of people in Georgia from voting. The accusations are that this voter suppression has disproportionately affected districts with voters who are registered Democrats and/or people of color. The racial elements of this election could not be ignored, since Abrams would have been the first African American woman to be a state governor in the U.S. if she had won the election.

Critics of Abrams have called her a “sore loser,” but there is a valid argument in wondering what the outcome of that election would have been if thousands of voter registrations hadn’t been mysteriously purged from computer systems. There were also confirmed reports of thousands of voter registrations not being processed in time for the election, mostly in areas of Georgia where there is a high percentage of people of color and/or registered Democrats. It also looked suspicious that most of the voting sites that were permanently shut down in Georgia were in districts with a high percentage of people of color and Democrats.

Even though Abrams gets the most screen time in this documentary, the entire film isn’t “The Stacey Abrams Show,” because most of the film is about the history of U.S. citizens’ right to vote and some of the recurring problems in the U.S. voting process. Abrams’ family background is mentioned (she’s the second-oldest of six kids, raised primarily in Mississippi and Georgia), and her parents Robert and Carolyn Abrams (who are both ministers) are interviewed in the film. The documentary also includes the 1993 footage of Abrams (when she was a 19-year-old student at Spelman College) speaking at the 30th anniversary of the March on Washington. Coming from a family that placed a high value on education, religion, voting and public service, it’s no wonder that she wanted to go into politics.

The first half of “All In: The Fight for Democracy” takes a look at the long history of voter exclusion and suppression in the United States, before the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, and how certain groups of people have constantly had to fight for their right to vote. The second half of the documentary focuses primarily on U.S. voting rights during and after the 1960s civil-rights movement. As historian/author Carol Anderson comments in the documentary: “Past is prologue. Those forces that are systemically determined to keep American citizens from voting, they have been laying the seeds over time.”

It’s mentioned in the documentary that when George Washington was elected the first president of the United States in 1789, only 6% of U.S. citizens had the right to vote. These citizens were white male property owners. The documentary does an excellent job of retracing how laws gradually changed for voting to open up to more U.S. citizens, so that property ownership wasn’t a requirement to vote and U.S. citizens who weren’t white men got the right to vote. The 15th Amendment (which, in 1870, gave U.S. citizens the right to vote regardless of their race, color or previous condition of servitude), the 19th Amendment (which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920) and the Voting Rights Act (originally signed into law in 1965) are three of the most important legislations to make these voting rights possible.

The documentary reiterates that the biggest injustices in voting often stem from racism. After the slaves were freed, the U.S. experienced the Reconstruction period when, for the first time in U.S. history, African American men began to own property and held elected offices on the federal and state levels. But, as “Give Us the Ballot” author Ari Berman says in the documentary: “The greatest moments of progress are followed by the most intense periods of retrenchment.”

In other words, when people of color are perceived as advancing too far in American society, there’s political backlash. The Reconstruction period led to the shameful Jim Crow period, particularly in Southern states, which passed racial segregation laws making it more difficult for people of color to access the same levels of education and resources as white people. Poll taxes and literacy tests became requirements to vote and were used as a way to weed out poor and uneducated people, who were disproportionately people of color. Black men in particular were singled out for arrests for minor crimes (such as loitering), and these arrest records were used as reasons to prevent them from voting in certain states.

The Florida felony disenfranchisement law of 1868 created a trend of felons being barred from voting. The U.S. is currently the only democracy that doesn’t allow convicted felons to vote. Critics of this voter exclusion law say that it’s inherently racist because people of color are more likely to be convicted of the same felonies that white people are accused of committing. Efforts to repeal the “felons can’t vote” laws are mentioned in the documentary, which includes an interview with Desmond Meade of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.

The documentary also mentions that before the civil rights movement of the 1960s, it could be dangerous and sometimes deadly for African Americans and other people of color who voted. African Americans and other people of color could get fired for voting if they had a racist employer. Depending on the area, African Americans and other people of color would be the targets of violence if they voted. And even registering to vote could be an ordeal, since it was common in certain areas for intimidation tactics to be used on people of color during voter registration.

The documentary names Maceo Snipes (an African American military veteran) as an example: In 1946, Snipes was murdered because he defied segregation laws and was the only African American to vote in Georgia’s Democratic primary election. Abrams shares a story that her grandmother Wilter “Bill” Abrams told her about being terrified the first time that she voted, because Wilter was afraid that she would be attacked by white racists at the voting site. Wilter was eventually persuaded to vote by her husband, who reminded her of the people who sacrificed their lives to give people of color the right to vote in America.

“All In” also details how other racial groups have been the targets of voter exclusion in U.S. history. In its early years, California resisted laws to allow Chinese people and other Asians to vote. States near the Mexican border, particularly Arizona and Texas, have a long history of trying to exclude Latinos and Native Americans from voting. In many situations, people were kept from voting if English was not their first language. The United States does not have an official language, and there’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says U.S. residents and U.S. voters are required to speak English.

According to several people in the documentary, the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections of Democratic politician Barack Obama (the first African American president of the United States) sparked a backlash that led to an increased push by conservative lawmakers to erode the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, a conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the Shelby County v. Holder case that voting laws could revert back to the individual U.S. states. This Supreme Court ruling opened up a floodgate of states (usually in the South and Midwest) that revised their voting laws that critics say make it easier for these states to allow voter suppression.

Historian/author Anderson doesn’t mince words about these revised voting laws that began in the 2010s: “It’s Jim Crow 2.0.” Gerrymandering and voter suppression are described in the documentary as two sides of the same coin. The documentary reiterates the warning that voter manipulation usually targets people of color, poor people and young people. And because most people of color who are U.S. citizens tend to be Democrats, the documentary implies that corrupt Republicans are behind a lot of the voter suppression when it comes to people of color.

Voter suppression comes in three main forms: strict voter ID laws, voting roll purges and permanent closing of voting sites. Critics say that voter ID laws are designed to exclude poor and uneducated U.S. citizens who might not have government-issued IDs. Voting roll purges (eliminating voter registrations) are often done without voters’ knowledge and permission, and are usually because the eliminated voters haven’t voted for a number of years or for other random reasons. And permanent closures of voting sites have been found to occur mostly in economically disadvantaged areas where there’s a large percentage of people of color.

In many cases, even if a voter has a government-issued ID, the voter can be turned away at the voting site if the voter’s signature is not an exact match to the signature that the voter has on file with the board of elections office. In the documentary, Sean J. Young of ACLU Georgia says signatures that don’t match are big issues with Asian immigrants, who often have an Asian first name and an American first name. Barb Semans and OJ Semans of Four Directions (a voting-rights group for Native Americans) mention that North Dakota’s voting law requiring a residential address for registration excludes numerous Native Americans who have to use post-office boxes because they live on reservations without residential addresses.

Alejandra Gomez and Alexis Delgado Garcia of Lucha (a voting-rights groups for Latinos) are featured in the documentary. Garcia is seen approaching different people in Latino communities with voter registration information and encouragement to vote. The results are mixed. Some of the people aren’t U.S. citizens and therefore aren’t eligible to vote, while the U.S. citizens are either interested in registering and plan to vote, or are reluctant to register because they don’t like or trust politicians. Gomez comments, “The most important part of voter registration is that human connection and being able to understand why that person does not trust.”

Abrams says in the documentary: “When entire communities become convinced that the process is not for them, we lose their participation in our nation’s future. And that’s dangerous to everyone.” Eric Holder, who was U.S. attorney general in the Obama administration, comments: “Too many Americans take for granted the right to vote and don’t understand that unless we fight for the right to vote, unless we try to include as many people as possible, our democracy is put at risk.”

Other people interviewed in the documentary include Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice; historian/author Eric Foner; civil-rights leader Andrew Young; civil-rights attorney Debo Adegbile; Kristen Clarke of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party; Lauren Goh-Wargo, Abrams’ former campaign manager; Luci Baines Johnson, daughter of former U.S. president Lyndon Johnson, who signed the Voters Right Act into law; Ohio U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge; and student activists Michael Parsons (from Dartmouth College) and Jayla Allen (of Prairie View A&M University).

This documentary is obviously stacked with people who are open with their politically liberal beliefs and who are known Democrats. There’s some attempt to present conservative points of view, but not much. One of the conservative-leaning people interviewed in the documentary is attorney Bert Rein, who represented Shelby County, Alabama, in the Shelby County v. Holder case. He doesn’t say much except that he thought that the case was legally compelling enough for him to want to represent Shelby County.

Hans Von Spakovsky of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which is a major advocate of voter ID laws, is also interviewed in the documentary. He says that the “vast majority” of people in the United States believe in voter ID laws, although he doesn’t list any sources or details as the basis for this statement. Considering that the documentary describes voter suppression and gerrymandering as being perpetrated mostly by corrupt Republicans, it’s not too surprising that a documentary with a Democratic politician (Abrams) as one of the producers is not going to give much of a voice to the opposition.

Even with this blatant bias, “All In” could have done a better job at looking at other cases of suspected voter suppression besides Abrams’ 2018 gubernatorial election campaign. Because the documentary presents Abrams’ case as the only major example of suspected voter suppression, it undermines the documentary’s message that voter suppression is a widespread problem. A skeptic could easily say that the Abrams/Kemp campaign controversy was a rare fluke. It also would have been interesting to see more of what Fair Fight is doing behind the scenes to prevent voter suppression.

And there could have been more of an exploration of how votes are manipulated in ways other than voter suppression. For example, there’s no mention in the documentary about how computer hacking affects voting machines that process data via computers. (The excellent HBO documentary “Kill Chain: The Cyber War Over America’s Elections” examines this cyberhacking topic in depth.) And there is growing concern over how governments from outside the U.S. could be corrupting the U.S. electoral system to influence the votes of U.S. citizens.

The documentary also should have had more interviews with people who work on the “front lines” of voting, such as polling workers and officials who work for boards of elections. There’s a definite “liberal elitism” tone to this documentary, because of the numerous Democratic politicians and liberal attorneys who are interviewed. And during the end credits of the film, several celebrities who are outspoken liberals (such as Gloria Steinem, Constance Wu, Jonathan Van Ness, Gabourey Sidibe, the Jonas Brothers and Yara Shahidi) give soundbites telling people their voting rights.

“All In” makes its liberal bias abundantly clear, but people of any political persuasion can appreciate that the documentary has a superb overview of the history of voting in the U.S. and explains how people can be more informed voters. The documentary doesn’t sugarcoat that there are massive inequalities in people’s voting experiences in the U.S., and many of the problems are rooted in racism and other prejudices. It’s this history lesson and encouragement of more awareness for voter rights—rather than the partisan posturing and finger-pointing—where “All In” shines the most.

Amazon Studios released “All In: The Fight for Democracy” in select U.S. cinemas on September 9, 2020. Amazon Prime Video will premiere the movie on September 18, 2020.

2020 Athena Film Festival: movie reviews and recaps

March 5, 2020

by Carla Hay

Athena Film Festival

The 10th annual Athena Film Festival—which took place at New York City’s Barnard College from February 27 to March 1, 2020—once again had an impressive presentation of female-oriented movies, panels and networking events.

The festival was preceded on February 26 by the annual Athena Film Festival Awards, which honored actress Beanie Feldstein, filmmaker Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and producer Effie T. Brown with Athena Awards, while filmmaker Unjoo Moon received the event’s first Breakthrough Award. Moon’s Helen Reddy biopic “I Am Woman” was the opening-night film at the festival, where the movie had its New York premiere. Gloria Steinem, filmmaker Greta Gerwig (a 2006 Barnard graduate), director Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids”), actress Lorraine Toussaint and Oscar-winning filmmaker Dan Cogan (“Icarus”) were among the presenters at the award show, while singer Arianna Afsar performed at the event. Also in attendance were actress Andrea Riseborough, filmmaker Liz Garbus (“What Happened, Miss Simone?”) and author/public speaker Verna Myers.

Greta Gerwig at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Beanie Feldstein at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards

Gloria Steinem at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Arianna Afsar at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Effie T. Brown at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Unjoo Moon, Beanie Feldstein and Effie T. Brown at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Liz Garbus at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Lorraine Toussaint at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Andrea Riseborough at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Dan Cogan at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Paul Feig at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

Verna Myers at the 2020 Athena Film Festival Awards at Barnard College’s Diana Center in New York City, on February 26, 2020. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for the Athena Film Awards)

One of the changes to Athena Film Festival this year was that it became more environmentally conscious by not having pamphlets, which were provided at previous Athena Film Festivals. (People who still needed to see a schedule on paper could go to the information area, which had a paper schedule on display.) Saving paper by not having pamphlets and encouraging people to go online for information are steps in the right direction for helping the environment. Kudos to the Athena Film Festival producers for being forward-thinking about this important issue.

Almost all of the movies had their world premieres at other festivals, but there were several that had their New York premieres at the Athena Film Festival. (Full reviews will be posted later and can be found at Culture Mix’s Movie & TV Reviews section.)

The New York premieres at the Athena Film Festival included these movies:

The narrative centerpiece film was “Lost Girls,” a mystery thriller directed by Liz Garbus and starring Amy Ryan as a mother searching for her missing 24-year-old daughter. The movie is based on the true story of Mari Gilbert’s quest to find justice for her daughter Shannan Gilbert, who was among the victims of the Gilbo Beach Murders on New York’s Long Island. The story includes how Mari and other family members of the murder victims joined forces to try find out who murdered their loved ones. Netflix will begin streaming “Lost Girls” on March 13, 2020.

If you liked Netflix’s 2019 “Unbelievable” limited series (which was based on a true crime story about the hunt for a serial rapist), you’ll also like “Lost Girls.” The movie’s screenplay, written by Michael Werwie, is based on Robert Kolker’s book “Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery.”

“Lost Girls” team members at the Athena Film Festival premiere of the movie at Barnard College in New York City on February 29, 2020. Pictured from left to right: producer Anne Carey, actress Molly Brown, actress Amy Ryan, actress Miriam Shor, actress Lola Kirke, actress Oona Laurence and director Liz Garbus. (Photo by Carla Hay)

At the Q&A after the “Lost Girls” screening, which was attended by many of the real-life people who are portrayed in the film, Garbus said that she wanted to direct this movie: “I fell in love with the story. I felt if I could be part of telling and elevate the story again and appreciating the incredible work by these women in keeping their loved ones’ stories alive, then it would be a great honor.”

Ryan, who plays Mari Gilbert in “Lost Girls,” was visibly moved when she spoke to Mari’s daughter Sherre Gilbert, who was in the front row of the audience. “I am so grateful to use my voice to help to keep this story going …This story matters. it was really an honor to play your mom.” Ryan added that the actresses who portrayed the grieving allies shared a real-life friendship on the movie set. “Our connection to each other was an amazing reflection of that … I just think when you get a group of women together in a room, it can be very powerful.”

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” was another standout film at the Athena Film Festival. This drama, written and directed by Eliza Hittman, follows the emotionally harrowing journey of a 17-year-old named Autumn Gallagher (played by Sidney Flanigan), who has to travel from her hometown in rural Pennsylvania to New York City to get an abortion for an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. The movie realistically shows the obstacles she faces, as well as the toll that her abortion decision takes on her physically and psychologically. Hittman had been scheduled to do a post-premiere Q&A at the Athena Film Festival, but she had to bow out to attend the Berlin International Film Festival, where “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” won the Silver Bear Award (second-place prize). Focus Features will release “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” in select U.S. cinemas on March 13, 2020.

The dramatic film “The Perfect Candidate,” directed and co-written by Haifaa al-Mansour, is about a woman named Maryam (played by Mila Al Zahrani), who’s facing a different type of obstacle. She’s a Saudi Arabian female doctor who running for her local city council, in a culture where women rarely try to be political leaders because it’s considered unladylike and almost taboo. Not surprisingly, she faces a lot of sexism and degrading reactions to her campaign. It’s a well-acted film that provides further insight into how far some countries need to go before they won’t place a stigma on gender-equality opportunities that women in other countries take for granted. Music Box Films will release “The Perfect Candidate” in U.S. cinemas, on a date to be announced. The movie was already released in Saudi Arabia, which selected “The Perfect Candidate” as the country’s official 2019 Academy Awards submission for Best International Feature Film.

Perhaps the best underrated gem of the festival was the Canadian drama “Kuessipan,” directed and co-written by Myriam Verreault and Naomi Fontaine, based on Fontaine’s novel of the same time. The mostly French-language movie tells the story of two teenage girls in Québec who’ve been best friends since childhood, but their lives are going in different directions. Mikuan (played by Sharon Ishpatao Fontaine) comes from a stable family and is headed to college, while Shaniss (played by Yamie Grégoire) comes from a troubled broken home and is an unwed teenage mother who’s dropped out of school. What makes this story different from others with a similar concept is that the girls happen to be from the Innu tribe. Their racial identity and issues related to their culture are rarely seen in movies, so it’s refreshing that this film does it in a very authentic way. The movie is engaging and very well-made, from beginning to end. “Kuessipan” is highly recommended for anyone who likes coming-of-age stories that ring true.

The only feature film to have its world premiere at the festival was the documentary “Dying Doesn’t Feel Like What I’m Doing,” directed by Paula Weiman-Kelman, about female rabbi/activist Rachel Cowan and how she lived with terminal brain cancer before her death in 2018. The movie played to a sold-out audience. It’s an intimate and starkly made film that treats Cowan with dignity and respect. At the Q&A that was held after the screening, Weiman-Kelman said that she started filming the documentary before Cowan was diagnosed with brain cancer, but Cowan graciously wanted her to keep filming after the diagnosis.

The inspiring documentary “Woman in Motion” (directed by Todd Thompson) tells the story of “Star Trek” actress Nichelle Nicholas’ 1970s campaign to recruit more women and people of color to join NASA and become astronauts. This movie would make a great companion piece to the 2016 Oscar-nominated hit drama “Hidden Figures,” which told the story of three African American women who were underappreciated pioneers at NASA in the 1960s. “Woman in Motion” also takes a look at how “Star Trek” also played a role in opening up people’s minds to the idea that a diverse group of people could be in outer space.

The Irish horror flick “Sea Fever” (written and directed by Neasa Hardiman) is definitely influenced by the 1979 classic film “Alien,” since it’s about a group of people trapped on board with a parasitic creature that can multiply easily, infect humans, and then kill them. And the smartest one in the group is a scientific-minded woman, who’s the best chance that they have of survival. But instead of being a gun-toting warrior like Sigourney Weaver’s “Alien” character Ripley, the heroine of “Sea Fever” is a marine-biology student Siobhán (played by Hermione Corfield), who’s the youngest person on an isolated ship that’s under attack by a mysterious sea creature. Even though the movie has some predictable tropes, what makes “Sea Fever” different from other horror films of this type is that Siobhán has to deal with ageism, as well as the expected sexism. For most of the story, the other people on board don’t take her seriously. And there are dire consequences when her warnings go unheeded. Gunpowder & Sky will release “Sea Fever” in U.S. cinemas on a date to be announced.

“Rocks,” a drama directed by Sarah Gavron, was the festival’s closing-night film. “The movie (written by Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson) is about a London teenager nicknamed Rocks (played by Bukky Bakray), who comes home to find her single mother missing, and she has to take care of her younger brother Emmanuel (played by D’angelou Osei Kissiedu) by herself. With the help of her female friends, Rocks tries to hide her situation from child protective services, which would separate the siblings in foster care. Overall, the movie is good, although some people might have an issue with one aspect of the movie’s conclusion that ends up being vague and open to interpretation. (It has to do with a decision that Rocks makes about Emmanuel.) However, the movie’s greatest strength is that it doesn’t sugarcoat the problems that Rocks encounters as an unexpected underage guardian of her brother. Film4 will release “Rocks” in the U.K. and Ireland on April 24 , 2020. The movie’s U.S. release date is undetermined, as of this writing.

Other movies that had their New York City premieres at the festival included the Marie Curie biopic “Radioactive”; the lesbian cop drama “The Long Shadow”; the Papua New Guinea women’s rugby documentary “Power Meri”; the British drama “Military Wives”; the Israeli political documentary “Objector”; the French coming-of-age drama “Stars by the Pound”; the Spanish lesbian drama “Carmen & Lola”; and the Italian female boxing documentary “Butterfly.”

The festival had some movies that were originally released in 2019 and have won prizes and Oscar nominations. They included the Syrian war documentary “For Sama” (co-directed by and starring Waad al-Kateab); Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-nominated version of “Little Women,” based on the classic Louisa May Alcott novel; the Disney animated sequel “Frozen 2” (co-directed by Jennifer Lee); and the Harriet Tubman biopic “Harriet,” directed by Kasi Lemmons.

There were also networking events (most were invitation-only), discussion panels and creative workshops.

The Athena Film Festival’s “The Silence Breakers” panel at Barnard College in New York City on February 29, 2020. Pictured from left to right: Sarah Anne Masse, Jasmine Lobe, Drew Dixon and Sheri Sher. (Photo Carla Hay)

The most-talked about panel, which also packed the room with about 250 people, was “The Silence Breakers,” featuring #MeToo accusers of disgraced entertainment moguls Harvey Weinstein and Russell Simmons. The panel, which took place on February 29, was moderated by The Hollywood Reporter executive film editor Tatiana Siegel, who has covered several #MeToo stories in the entertainment industry. The panelists shared their thoughts on the February 24 verdict that convicted Weinstein of a first-degree criminal sexual act and a third-degree count of rape. A New York City jury of seven men and five women delivered the verdict, which acquitted Weinstein of the most serious charges: two counts of predatory sexual assault and one count of first-degree rape.

The panelists shared their thoughts on the verdict. “I was really relieved. It felt like a weight I’d been carrying on my shoulders for 12 years had been lifted,” commented actress Sarah Ann Masse, who claims that Weinstein sexually harassed her during a job interview in 2008. “I was expecting him to get away with it, like he had for decades.”

Jasmine Lobe, an writer/actress who says that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 2006, had this to say about Weinstein being convicted of sex crimes: “There was a tremendous sense of victory. We were all preparing for the worst.” Weinstein continues to deny all sexual-misconduct allegations against him. He will receive his prison sentence on March 11, 2020.

Drew Dixon (a former A&R executive at Def Jam Records and Arista Records) and Sheri Sher (a founding member of the all-female hip-hop group Mercedes Ladies) each claim that they were raped by Simmons, who founded the companies Def Jam and Rush Communications. He stepped down from his businesses in 2017, after several women went public with similar allegations. Dixon says her assault happened in 1995, while Sher claims that Simmons sexually violated her in 1983. Simmons has denied all the accusations against him. As of this writing, he has not been arrested for any alleged sex crimes that still fall under the statute of limitations, but he’s being sued in California by an unnamed woman who claims he raped her in 1988.

“It is a game-changer, a watershed moment,” Dixon said of the Weinstein rape conviction. “Also, the fact that a majority-male jury understood the nuance of remaining in touch with your perpetrator.” Simmons accuser Sher added that since the resurgence of the #Me Too movement and now that Weinstein has been convicted of rape, there’s a “sense that it’s a new era. It’s time to change. It’s real.”

Dixon and Sher are among the Simmons accusers featured in the documentary “On the Record,” directed by Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick. The movie was publicly protested by Simmons and some of his supporters. Executive producer Oprah Winfrey and Apple TV+ then dropped out of the project. HBO Max then picked up the documentary, which will begin streaming on a date to be announced. Dixon mentioned that when black women accuse black men of abuse, the situation is more complicated because of the racial injustices that black men face in the legal system.

Meanwhile, the panelists said that although organizations such as Time’s Up have been helpful for many #MeToo survivors, a lot more progress needs to be made in order to change the culture where sexual harassers and predators can still thrive. The panelists advocate for laws that extend or suspend statutes of limitations for sex crimes. They also think there should be more policies that won’t allow non-disclosure agreements for settlements involving sexual misconduct.

Masse and Dixon also noted that more industry people in power who say they care about this issue need to practice what they preach and hire #MeToo silence breakers who’ve been victims of career retaliation. Because the #MeToo issue is not limited to the entertainment industry, Dixon commented that it’s everyone’s responsibility to do their part to stop the cycle of abuse: “If you see something, say something. You call it out. You don’t laugh it off.”