Netflix latest true crime drama Lost Girls tells the story of the Long Island Serial Killer – or elements of the case at least – but there is plenty more to learn about this strange and horrible series of crimes that didn’t make it into the movie. If you’ve seen Lost Girls and want to know more about the true story of the Long Island Serial Killer (aka the Craigslist Killer), here are some of the things the movie changed, omitted or chose not to focus on.

This article contains spoilers for Lost Girls (but check out our spoiler free Lost Girls review)

Mari Gilbert’s daughters

In the movie Mari has three children, Shannan, Sarra, and Sherre. In real life Mari had a fourth daughter, Stevie, the youngest of the family. Sarra also had a baby of her own in 2009 with her then boyfriend Manny. Sarra, who as the film explains in the end credits, went on to kill her mother during a psychotic break, had quite a difficult and troubled life which isn’t explored in the movie – you can read more about Sarra’s troubles in this article, written by Robert Kolker, the author of the book Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery which the film Lost Girls is based on.

The discovery of the bodies

In the movie Mari suggests that the first of the bodies wrapped in burlap who came to be known as the Gilgo Beach Four were discovered when a policeman let his cadaver dog out for a bathroom break, but the official line is that this wasn’t quite the case. It was officer John Mallia and his dog Blue who discovered the bodies when they were patrolling Ocean Parkway. Some reports say it was part of ongoing training, others that Mallia and Blue were actively out looking for Shannan the day the other bodies were found – both can be true. Either way Mallia and Blue were active in helping to uncover the bodies of the Gilgo Beach Four.