Filmmaker Joshua Zeman wanted nothing to do with another serial killer case after finishing his 2009 documentary “Cropsey,” about the kidnapping of five children on Staten Island. But when the bodies of 10 dead sex workers were found near Gilgo Beach, LI, in 2010 and 2011— and years went by without an arrest — he was intrigued.
Zeman, who was born on Long Island and raised on Staten Island from age 4, and his co-filmmaker, Rachel Mills, take on that unsolved case of the so-called Long Island Serial Killer in the new A&E docuseries “The Killing Season,” premiering Saturday at 9 p.m.
“I don’t think our intention was to ever really think that we were going to solve this case — that should really be for the police to do. What we saw was a case that wasn’t getting solved and we wanted to know why,” Zeman, who now lives in Sunset Park, told The Post. “In a lot of ways it was very much like a narrative; you had political backstabbing, police corruption and women who [turned] themselves into the perfect victims because they were trying to evade law enforcement.”
Throughout the eight-episode series, the filmmakers tracked down people connected to the case who hadn’t spoken to authorities in a long time — or, in some instances, ever. Those include Khalil White, the boyfriend of victim Jessica Taylor; and Sara Karnes, who was with another victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, the night Brainard-Barnes disappeared in 2007 and who claims she was contacted by the killer.
Mills believes that particular anecdote underlines how there may be more information out there that the police aren’t aware of. Then “there are contributing factors that had nothing to do with the case that did not allow the best detectives, the FBI, to come in and give some assistance on a serial murder case,” she added.
She’s referring to the corruption, not directly related to the case, inside Suffolk County law enforcement. In May, top Suffolk County executive Steve Bellone called for the resignation of the county’s district attorney Thomas Spota, in part for blocking cooperation with the feds in the Gilgo Beach case. Former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison Wednesday for beating up a man who had stolen a stash of porn and sex toys from his official police vehicle, and then orchestrating a coverup.
“It is 10 bodies, it’s one of the strangest [cases] in the past decade and they never had a [full] profile from the FBI,” Zeman said. “It just blows my mind.”
Spurred by tips from amateur cyber-sleuths at Websleuths.com, “The Killing Season” also looks into similar cases of serial murder of sex workers in Atlantic City, NJ, Daytona Beach, Fla., Oklahoma and New Mexico, and discovers systemic reasons why these cases go unsolved. As the filmmakers were shocked to learn, there are more than 20,000 law enforcement agencies in the US and none are mandated to report homicide data to the FBI’s centralized database.
In the Long Island case, Zeman believes the murders were the work of two separate serial killers. But the show focuses more on debunking theoretical suspects promoted by rampant speculation online — and making way for new theories to be considered.
“A lot of what we were doing wasn’t necessarily trying to find the killer, but [to] demystify a lot of the conjecture out there,” he said. “There were so many rumors focusing on so many individuals that we believe it was taking away from the real issues of the case.”