TRAGIC END: Police probers scour the area in Gilgo Beach, LI, where four bodies were found, one believed to be that of Shannan Gilbert. (Dennis Clark)
Shannan Gilbert (TOMAS E. GASTON)
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He’s the Long Island Craigslist Killer — a serial murderer who lures hookers off the Web site, slays them and then dumps their bodies in his own private graveyard along a desolate beach road.
Suffolk County Police revealed today that all the bodies found on the beach were women.
“All of the victims were female and we are meeting with the FBI today,” police said.
No new search has begun today and the Suffolk County Police Mobile Command Unit pulled out of the site just after 6 p.m. yesterday. Police said they plan to discuss widening the investigation with the FBI.
As chilling new details emerged about the murderer, relatives of one possible victim told The Post that cops believe they may already have a crucial lead in the sensational case — the identity of the last john the woman was with.
The killer’s tally is up to at least four victims, two of whom are believed to have been prostitutes who used Craigslist and were last seen in the area.
They include hooker Shannan Gilbert, 24, who placed a harrowing 911 call the day she disappeared, telling an emergency operator that she feared for her life and was trying to get away from a john.
Police, however, said an early analysis shows Gilbert, who vanished in May, may not be one of the victims, although investigators have not ruled it out.
The family said police know the john’s name — and he lives near the stretch of Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach where the body believed to be Gilbert’s and three others were found in the past two days.
“We all heard the last 911 call,” Gilbert’s mother, Mari, told The Post at her home in upstate Ellenville. “[Shannan] was screaming the person’s name [and saying,] ‘He is trying to kill me!’ She was saying, ‘Help me! Help me! Help me!’
“She was trying to escape. We know who it is.”
Mari Gilbert, 43, said she has been in touch with investigators, but they ignored the case for months — taking it seriously only when it began to look this week like she was the victim of a serial killer.
“They were acting like it didn’t happen,” she said.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said that cops have questioned both Gilbert’s driver and john.
And, a police source told The Post that Gilbert’s client has been questioned multiple times — both when she disappeared and again after the bodies were unearthed.
The source said the john — whose name was not released — has stuck to his story that Gilbert was at his house for several hours but became agitated.
After he coaxed her to leave, she ran out of the home and that was the last time he saw her, the source said.
Meanwhile, on Long Island, cadaver dogs yesterday continued combing Gilgo Beach, searching for more victims.
A police officer and dog stumbled on a body believed to be Gilbert’s on Saturday, during a routine training exercise.
Two days later, the other three bodies were discovered — including one thought to be that of a missing Maine mom.
Two of the bodies were stuffed into burlap sacks.
Police officials reluctantly acknowledged that they might have a Jack the Ripper on their hands.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that four bodies wound up in this area,” Dormer told reporters.
Police said the bodies were dumped separately over a period of up to two years and were severely decomposed.
The killer would apparently stop his vehicle on the side of the road and stay just long enough to toss a corpse into the underbrush.
Investigators first tentatively identified Gilbert, who was last living in Jersey City and has a history of prostitution arrests.
Cops and family members said she had arranged through Craigslist to meet a client on Fire Island on May 1.
Still, Suffolk investigators cautioned that they have not positively identified the victims and are waiting for the results of DNA tests, which could take weeks.
They are also working with other law-enforcement agencies to see if there are any other missing-persons cases that could be tied to the bodies found at the beach.
The FBI is closely watching the case but is not involved at this point, officials said.
Prosecutors in Atlantic City, NJ, yesterday said they have been in contact with their counterparts on Long Island to see if there might be some connection to a series of unsolved hooker homicides that occurred in their area four years ago. But sources said they do not believe the cases are connected.
Authorities confirmed that they have a possible ID on a second victim in the Long Island case: Megan Waterman, 22, of Maine, who disappeared in Suffolk County in June after coming to Long Island for a rendezvous with a john she connected with on Craigslist.
“I hope it’s not my daughter,” Waterman’s mom, Lorraine Ela, told The Post in her Scarborough, Maine, home.
She said she broke down in tears yesterday morning when a friend called to say she heard police think one of the bodies might be Megan’s.
“I’ve been ready [for the grim news] since she went missing,” she said.
As Waterman’s 4-year-old daughter scampered around the house, Ela said she has decided to stay in Maine for now because New York “is not a good place for me right now.”
It’s been “rough, heartbreaking, frustrating not knowing” what happened, Ela said.
Mari said she had tried to talk her daughter into finding other work.
“But she liked expensive things. It was fast money and good money,” the mom said.
“She wasn’t a $20 corner girl. She said, ‘Mom, you can’t believe the clients we have: doctors, police officers, famous people.’ I was the last one to talk to her. We were making plans for her to come home for my birthday.
“I said, ‘Be safe.’ And she said, ‘I always am.’ ”
Additional reporting by Selim Algar, Chuck Bennett and Ikimulisa Livingston in New York and Joel Page in Scarborough, Maine