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With Killer Still Loose, Prostitutes Prefer Johns With Refs


By

Garth Johnston

Published May 31, 2011

Modified May 31, 2011


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Working girls

 

LIFE archives


By

Garth Johnston

Published May 31, 2011

Modified May 31, 2011


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It has been nearly six months since police began uncovering bodies of dead prostitutes on Long Island's Gilgo State Beach and with the police seemingly no closer to catching the killer (or killers) working girls in the area are understandably still taking precautions. Johns of New York, please remember to ask your sex workers for good references—they may come in handy down the road!

One rattled escort tells the Gray Lady that some working girls “are not only asking for personal information, but they are asking for references of sex workers the client has visited.”

Other precautions taken by sex workers include texting license plate numbers to their pimps, making sure johns coming to hotels for a rendezvous check in at the front desk ("so the clerk would be in a position to identify the face of the man going to her room if anything went wrong later") and carefully reviewing their roster of clients to weed out "customers that stood out for being particularly off-putting or threatening."

Meanwhile, as Long Islanders returned to Gilgo this weekend and tried to focus on happy memories of the strip of sand [reg. req'd], police are carefully and methodically trying to figure out how the body of a little girl found its way to the beach (“It is not simply that it is a toddler’s death,” mused a criminologist and law professor. “It is that it’s a toddler’s unreported death. Whether it is accidental, intentional or something in between, when the death of somebody that young goes unreported to the authorities, the lack of reporting suggests that this is intimately linked to events involving the custodial parent. Sometimes it’s abuse. Sometimes it’s neglect. Sometimes it’s an accident.”).

And finally, the mother of the still missing prostitute Shannan Gilbert—whose disappearance near Gilgo last summer led to the discovery of the beaches many bodies—worried to the Post this weekend that her daughter would have been fine if she hadn't pressured her for a Mother's Day gift.

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gilgo state beach

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long island serial killer

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