Lost Girls director Liz Garbus returns to focus on a corrupt criminal system and crime victims and their families seeking justice in the trailer for Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer, which bows on Netflix March 31.
The 2020 Lost Girls movie for Netflix that starred Amy Ryan centered on a mother searching for her missing daughter in Long Island and who makes a horrifying discovery in the woods where the murdered bodies of four girls had been dumped.
Gone Girls, also for Netflix and set to bow March 31, is also based on the famously unsolved Long Island serial murders, and Garbus brings her cameras again to a troubled police investigation that left friends and family of disappeared and forgotten women in the sex industry denied justice.
“There were red flags, one after the other, as to what was not looked into by the police,” one commentator says in the trailer for Gone Girls, a three-party documentary series. But that changed in 2023 when, after a 13-year search, the Suffolk County police arrested a Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect, Rex Heuermann.
Now Lost Girls, a drama about the hunt for a serial rapist, has been followed up with Gone Girls, a doc series about a botched investigation into a serial killer at long last arrested and facing criminal justice. Emmy-winning director Garbus retraces the twists and turns in a case that is now winding its way through the courts after Heurermann pleaded not guilty to allegedly killing seven women, but has yet to go on trial and may face added charges as more victims are potentially uncovered.
Garbus, who directs and executive produces the series, in a Q&A from Netflix explains her journey with the Long Island serial killer case: “Lost Girls really told that story. We revisit the same case in Gone Girls. Why? Because thanks to a new regime in Suffolk County, we now have the answers the families were looking for over a decade. We got to explore what was going on in the police department and uncover a corruption scandal that made it clear why so little was being done for these women. I think it’s a really powerful companion piece to the scripted film.”
Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer from Story Syndicate is also executive produced by Dan Cogan, Anne Carey, Jon Bardin, Mala Chapple, Elizabeth Wolfe and Kate Barry. Joshua Levine is producing.