What we know and don't about Long Island’s suspected serial killer case originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

PHOTO: ABC News In-depth Feature (ABC News Photo Illustration) More

It has been nearly 10 years since police were searching for a missing sex worker, Shannan Gilbert, and made the grisly discovery of 10 other bodies on a stretch of beach on the south shore of Long Island -- a chilling revelation that shook the greater New York area and made national headlines.

To this day, mystery shrouds the cases. The killer (or killers, by some accounts) has not yet been caught and five of the victims have not been identified. The way in which the victims who were identified, most of whom police say were sex workers, were killed is still not clear, but a Suffolk County police spokesperson told ABC News investigators are working under the assumption that a serial killer is to blame in some, if not all, of the killings.

And while police do not believe Gilbert's death is connected to the other murders, questions remain about how she died. A lawyer for her family, in fact, believes that she may also be a victim of the possible serial killer, based on an independent autopsy that could not rule out strangulation.

"Unquestionably, I believe it's a homicide," Gilbert's family lawyer, John Ray, told ABC News.

Suffolk County police recently released new evidence in the investigation of the deaths, which are being treated as one case, and announced the launch of a website dedicated to providing updates and collecting tips, in hopes of coming closer to solving the murders.

Yet even with the newly-released piece of evidence -- a photograph of a belt that was collected at the initial stage of the investigation but was withheld from the public -- many questions remain unanswered.

Here's what is known, and unknown, about the murders.

MORE: Police reveal 'significant' evidence in unsolved Gilgo Beach serial killer case

Bodies are found

On Dec. 11, 2010, authorities were searching in a weedy area off Ocean Parkway, which runs through a remote stretch of beach on a barrier island between Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Park, for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker from New Jersey who had been missing since May of that year. Police did not find Gilbert during that search but found the remains of a woman later identified as 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy.

Two days later, during another search in the same area, authorities found the bodies of three more victims: Amber Lynn Costello, 27, Megan Waterman, 22, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.

Three months after that, in March 2011, the remains of 20-year-old Jessica Taylor were also located near Gilgo Beach. Other parts of Taylor’s body had been found nearly eight years before in Manorville, New York (about an hour further east).

PHOTO: An aerial view of police cars near where a body was discovered in the area near Gilgo Beach and Ocean Parkway on Long Island, April 15, 2011, in Wantagh, New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images, FILE) More

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