The disturbing true story behind ‘Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer’
Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer is a three-episode true-crime documentary on Netflix, directed by Liz Garbus, which recounts a chilling case of alarming serial killings.
According to Garbus, Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer is a really interesting “companion piece” to the scripted film, Lost Girls, from which the documentary evolved (via Tudum).
“In early 2016, I got the script for Lost Girls, which was based on the book [Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery] by Robert Kolker,” she recalled. “What was extraordinary about this book and his reporting was the way in which you really felt like you really got to know these victims and their families.” But why revisit the story now, after a year of Gone Girls’ release?
On April 8th, 2026, the alleged perpetrator, Rex Heuermann, pleaded guilty to murdering eight women, bringing long-awaited justice to the victims and their families.
Following the Long Island serial killer’s apprehension in 2023, there was renewed media interest in the case, which made Garbus feel it was the perfect time to revisit the disturbing true story. “Now we know who the alleged perpetrator is,” she says. “In the course of the documentary, we got to examine what was going on in the police department, and uncover a corruption scandal that made it clear why so little was being done for these women.”
But what is the true story behind Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer?
Investigators kept stumbling across human remains along a stretch of Ocean Parkway in Suffolk County, Long Island, for over a year, and the victims identified were mostly young women from the New York City area who were involved with sex work and had mysteriously gone missing. In some cases, the missing cases were reported a decade before they were found.
It didn’t take long for the police to figure out that a pathetic serial killer was out on the loose, who had been targeting a sector of the vulnerable population. Despite the piling body bags, the case remained unsolved for 13 years until 2023, when Heuermann, suspected of being the Long Island serial killer, was ultimately apprehended.
Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer follows the highly publicised, lengthy investigation that culminated in the arrest. But it also examines and highlights the common stigma surrounding the victims’ line of work, which may have contributed to the delay in the inquiry.
Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer is packed with interviews with journalists, law enforcement officials, and friends and family of the victims and the accused killer. The Netflix documentary additionally features reenactments to help viewers identify with the victims who are dead.
“I wanted to… bring these women to life and make them relatable. These are people’s daughters, sisters, mothers, and they worked in the sex industry,” Garbus says, whose 2020 drama, Lost Girls, focused on the mother of one of the Long Island Serial Killer’s victims and her quest for justice. “The families didn’t have troves of pictures with them. So I wanted them to feel up close and personal in a way that could only be achieved with an actor.”