First Lost, Then Murdered Melissa moved to New York to cut hair. Then she became a prostitute.
First Lost, Then Murdered
Melissa moved to New York to cut hair. Then she became a prostitute. Then she was gone.
Without Blaze knowing about it, Melissa switched almost entirely to Craigslist. She wasn’t the only one. Kritzia had another friend, Fabulous, who did it, too. In the few years since the website had caught on, Craigslist had done more to delegitimize the age-old system of pimps and escorts than a platoon of police officers could. Why sign on with a pimp when it was so easy to take a picture and let a guy call you—way easier than walking the streets and looking for a guy and then trying to convince him and then waiting forever at the ATM while he tried to sober up enough to remember his PIN. With Craigslist, johns came to you, and you didn’t have to share the money with anybody.
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On July 11, 2009, Melissa sent a late-night text message to Amanda to firm things up for another visit to New York. The next day, the security camera of her local bank recorded Melissa depositing $1,000 into her account—the proceeds, it is believed, from a date she’d had earlier that night. She withdrew $100 before heading out the door.
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The next day, when Melissa stopped returning all calls and texts, Lynn and Jeff called off Amanda’s trip and began phoning local hospitals. They tried to file a missing-person report. But for three days, the police deflected them. They said Melissa was 24 years old with no history of mental illness and no psychiatric prescriptions; just because her family couldn’t find her didn’t necessarily mean she was missing. Only 10 days later would the police start to investigate. Only then would they subpoena Melissa’s phone records, canvass the neighborhood, and pull a DNA sample from her toothbrush. That was when they learned that her phone records showed access to her voice mail on the night of her disappearance and that the calls were traced to a cell tower in Massapequa, Long Island. Only after that—nearly two weeks after she went missing—would the police visit two nearby motels, Budget Inn and Best Western, to speak to the staff and review security tapes, and find nothing.
It would be 18 months until, in December 2010, Melissa Barthelemy’s body would be the first of four uncovered close by one another in the sand dunes of Gilgo Beach, Long Island, wrapped in burlap. The Long Island serial killer case remains unsolved even now, and six more sets of remains have been discovered and still await identification. The first four bodies were identified as women in their 20s — just like another woman, Shannan Gilbert, who had mysteriously disappeared three miles from where the four were found. Like Melissa, Shannan Gilbert, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello all took part in a modern age of prostitution in which clients are lured with the simple tap of a computer keyboard. The method is easier than street walking, seductively so, almost like an ATM—post an ad, and the phone rings seconds later—but the dangers are less transparent.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/07/a_long_island_serial_killer_who_targeted_prostitutes_murdered_melissa_barthelemy.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_3