Hamptons Crime Festival Nixes Gilgo Panel

The organizers of the inaugural Hamptons Mystery and Crime Festival canceled a panel discussion on the unsolved Gilgo Beach / Long Island Serial Killer case after some family members of the victims cried foul.

East Hampton Village officials organizing the event maintain that the intent of the panel — one of nearly three dozen events featuring fiction and nonfiction crime writers leading discussions at multiple venues over three days in April — was to continue to shine a light on the unsolved murders in and around Gilgo Beach.

But the village conceded that it did not want to be insensitive to those who lost loved ones.

“We have decided not to proceed with the Long Island Serial Killer Panel this year,” the village said in a statement Friday. “Although all of our true crime programming is meant to be educational, thoughtful and handled with sensitivity, we do not want to upset any members of the victims’ families … We have extended the invitation for some family members to attend our event, and see how we are taking this seriously, and they have agreed to attend.”

The event is the latest and most local version of true crime conventions held nationwide that has proliferated as the genre continues to expand its reach.

Suffolk County police were searching for Shannon Gilbert, who was reported missing from Oak Beach, when investigators found 10 sets of human remains in and around Gilgo Beach in 2010 and ‘11, later finding Gilbert nearby.

John Ray, the Miller Place-based attorney for the family of Gilbert and Jessica Taylor, who was among the victims in the case, “had a productive and positive conversation” with the village, according to East Hampton officials.

“We are satisfied that the organizers buckled under the weight of their own very poor judgment,” Ray said of the decision to pull the panel. “We are not for a minute persuaded that the cancellation was done out of regard for the sensibilities of the victims’ families or out of respect for women or babies or for the LGBT young man who were all slaughtered. Were it otherwise, the boorish fools who conceived of a festival of death by murder amusements would not have named it a ‘festival,’ nor defended it on TV until forced to drop it by decent, normal people.”

Shannon’s sister Sherre Gilbert felt more should have been done.

“I’m glad they decided to cancel the panel but it would’ve been better to cancel the entire thing altogether,” she said. “Not all publicity is good publicity. There are lives forever changed by these crimes. We’re still grieving our loved ones.”

One of the panelists, Joseph Giacalone, a former New York City cold case homicide investigator who is now a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College, said he plans to participate in a panel discussion about cold cases in general instead.

“Nobody was looking to do any harm, everybody was looking to put the case back in the spotlight. and since this was the first-ever Hamptons Crime Festival, we thought it was a good place to discuss the case,” he said. “The family has spoken and the festival has granted their wish and we will pivot. I will be on another panel about cold cases in general, researching, analyzing and investigating, including ethics that must be adhered to while discussing cold cases.”

For more information about the East Hampton Mystery and Crime Festival, visit hamptonswhodunit.com.