Long Island police and FBI agents yesterday swarmed an oceanfront home where a missing prostitute was last seen alive as they ramped up their investigation of four corpses mysteriously dumped on a nearby secluded beach.
The renewed interest in the disappearance of Jersey City call girl Shannan Gilbert came as Suffolk County police confirmed that all the bodies, found Saturday and Monday, were those of women.
The victims were likely murdered by a serial killer, which is why the FBI was called in for assistance, said Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer.
Gilbert, 24, was last seen on May 1 at a party at the ritzy home of Joseph Brewer in the exclusive Oak Beach gated community, a short drive from Gilgo Beach off Ocean Parkway where the bodies were discovered.
Brewer, who hosted the party and invited Gilbert via Craigslist.com, told investigators the woman was dropped off by a driver. However, she became agitated during the evening and ran out of the house in near-hysterics.
She banged on the door of neighbor Gustav Coletti.
She spent some time inside before fleeing after Coletti said he had called the cops.
Gilbert was never seen again.
“That was the last time she was seen. We saw her footprints in the sand,” said Justin Canning, 20, who lives down the street.
“She was in a panic. We thought she was on drugs.”
Her mother, Marci Gilbert, told The Post that Shannan called 911 that night screaming, “He’s trying to kill me! Help me!’ ” and shouting a man’s name.
Brewer has repeatedly denied any involvement in the woman’s murder.
Aside from the Oak Beach home, Brewer’s family owns several rental properties across Suffolk.
Neighbors said he had been living at the Oak Beach home until several months ago when he moved back into his mother’s West Islip home.
Also living there are his young daughter and the girl’s mother.
The mother said Brewer is “cooperating” with investigators.
“I don’t know what’s happening right now. He’s talking to who he needs to talk to,” she said outside his home.
A neighbor who spotted Brewer Tuesday recalled commenting about bodies being “dumped” at Oak Beach.
“He [Brewer] just shrugged his shoulders and didn’t say anything,” said the neighbor, who declined to be identified.
Meanwhile, Lorraine Ela, mother of another possible prostitute victim, Megan Waterman, submitted a DNA sample to help investigation determine if one of the bodies is that of her daughter. She also implored her daughter’s imprisoned pimp to talk.
“He knows what happened to her,” she told The Post from her home in Scarborough, Maine.
The pimp, Brooklyn-born Akeem Cruz, 21, is in a Maine jail on drug charges.
His attorney, Robert Napolitano, said Cruz “is not willing to say anything to anyone but me.”
Waterman was last seen in June with Cruz at a Hauppauge hotel about 15 miles from where her body was found.