A decade after Lost Girls, Emmy-winning filmmaker Liz Garbus returns to the Long Island case that exposed a corrupt criminal system and left the families of missing women fighting for answers. Her new docuseries, Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer, revisits the same terrain through a different lens: not a dramatization, but a forensic look at a broken system, a community in pain, and a long trail of negligence that shaped one of America’s most disturbing unsolved cases.
The 2020 Netflix film Lost Girls followed a mother searching for her missing daughter and stumbling upon the bodies of four women in the woods near Gilgo Beach. Gone Girls picks up the real investigation behind that storyline, tracking the flawed police work, ignored warnings, and mounting red flags that stalled progress for years.
Across three episodes, Garbus combines first-hand testimonies, archival materials, and newly uncovered details to show how a botched investigation allowed a serial predator to remain at large. The series also reaches the turning point of 2023, when Suffolk County authorities finally arrested Rex Heuermann, a long-elusive suspect now facing multiple charges and a case still unfolding.
Also read ► All New Releases on Netflix this Week
Gone Girls – All the key info on the true-crime docuseries
- Title: Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer
- Format: Documentary miniseries
- Episodes: 3 (approx. 60 minutes each)
- Genre: Documentary, true crime, investigative
- Release year: 2025
- Director: Liz Garbus
- Cast: Real testimonies from family members, investigators, journalists, survivors
- Screenplay: Nonfiction documentary based on real events
- Age rating: VM14
- Produced by: Story Syndicate
Who appears in the docuseries
As a docuseries, the “cast” consists of real witnesses. The protagonists are the voices of the missing victims, their mothers, sisters, friends, and the officers who have followed the case since the first investigations. Among them are also investigative journalists who have been seeking the truth about Gilgo Beach for years. Their testimonies create a mosaic of humanity and cruelty, giving emotional depth to the mystery.
Also read ► Lost Girls: the true-crime drama that re-examines one of New York’s most haunting unsolved cases is streaming on Netflix
Behind the scenes and production notes
As an Emmy-winning filmmaker with deep experience in investigative storytelling, Liz Garbus approaches Gone Girls with a focus on institutional failure rather than sensationalism. Her work on Lost Girls gave her long-standing access to families, investigators and archival material, allowing her to uncover how years of mismanagement shaped the investigation.
Garbus avoids giving credence to the conspiracy theories that circulated before Rex Heuermann’s arrest, yet she is clear about the police department’s role in delaying justice. She notes that once a new task force was formed, investigators identified a suspect within six weeks using evidence that had been available for more than a decade. For her, this illustrates how internal dysfunction, bias and competing interests allowed the case to stagnate.
The director also highlights how longstanding prejudice against sex workers hindered early searches. Some families struggled even to have their loved ones listed in the national missing persons registry, a stark reminder of how many victims may never have been properly counted. With Heuermann now awaiting trial, Garbus stresses that the full scope of the case remains unknown. Key questions persist about the number of victims, gaps in the timeline and the fate of Shannan Gilbert. “The hope is that the families get as many answers as they can possibly get,” said Garbus. “And that we are able to close as many cases as possible and have some resolution for these missing young women.”
The True Story
Gone Girls – The Long Island Serial Killer is based on real events. The case known as the “Gilgo Beach murders” involves a series of unsolved murders that occurred between 1996 and 2011. The story has seen new developments in recent years, culminating in new investigations that reignited media interest and in the arrest of the unsuspected architect Rex Heuermann.
When to Watch the Docuseries on Netflix
Gone Girls – The Long Island Serial Killer has been available for streaming on Netflix since March 31, 2025. ► Watch Gone Girls – The Long Island Serial Killer on Netflix
