News: Vigil for Gilgo Beach Victims
(Long Island, N.Y.) The family members and friends of the Gilgo Beach victims will honor them in a candlelight vigil tomorrow near the location where their remains were discovered. While it has been nearly a year since the last known victim disappeared, tomorrow’s vigil will bring the grieving families together. The service will also be designed as a tribute to the girls who were taken at the hand of a serial killer during summer months.
The mother and brother of twenty-two-year-old Megan Waterman, one of the first four victims to be discovered, have helped organize the event. Waterman was the first victim to be identified after being found by a Suffolk County Police Department canine unit in December of last year. She was last seen in Hauppauge on June 6th, 2010 while on a trip to Long Island from Scarborough, Maine.
This month marks the year anniversary since Waterman’s disappearance, and some of her loved ones are using it as an opportunity to say a final goodbye. The vigil is also designed to bring attention to the Gilgo Beach/Jones Beach investigation during weeks when no new developments have been made in the case. Tomorrow’s event will mark the first trip Waterman’s mother will make to the Gilgo Beach site.
The family members and friends of some of the other victims are expected to attend Saturday’s vigil along the beach highway where the remains were discovered. While Waterman’s mother was unable to attend a similar event held by members of the other victims’ families, she hopes to receive a turnout of fifty people. It was Waterman’s mother who had chosen the June 11th date, and reports stated that all are welcome to attend.
A candlelight vigil was also held on June 25th of last year, just weeks after Waterman’s disappearance. The event, which took place in Portland, Maine, was open to the public. Waterman’s friends and family members spoke in her honor with the message of hope in receiving further knowledge about her fate and whereabouts.
Last year’s event attracted an estimated hundred people and was sponsored by LostNMissing, Inc. The corporation, along with Waterman’s mother, helped design a webpage with photographs and news links created in her honor. Some of the images show Waterman in a loving pose with her young daughter.
Friends and family members of Waterman claimed they knew something was wrong when she didn’t call to check on her daughter. Waterman had a habit of calling multiple times a day to speak with the girl, and had always been a concerned parent. Notification of Waterman’s disappearance was issued shortly after she went missing.
Like the other Gilgo Beach victims, Waterman’s remains were discovered during an investigation for missing New Jersey woman Shannan Gilbert. Six more sets of remains were found in the Gilgo Beach/Jones Beach area since Waterman and the three other original victims were discovered in December. Jessica Taylor, a twenty-year-old woman who was initially found in Manorville, is now among the identified victims.
