ended up in this area. >> for the past couple of years, women kept disappearing on long island. now, police think they may know why. >> we could have a serial killer. >> we are dealing with a psychotic murderer. >> police still don't have answers, so we tried to get to the bottom of this eerie mystery. >> where are we going now, gus? gus coletti, a man neighbors call the unofficial mayor of this community, showed me around. >> that be the house. that's where it all began. >> he tells me about a night last may that brought an unbelievable mystery to his doorstep. >> she showed up at my door, and she was banging on the door screaming, help me, help me, help me. i opened the door and she stepped in and she just stood there yelling help me. >> he later learned the woman was 23-year-old shannon gilbert. >> i picked the phone up and i

started to dial 911 and she bolted out the door and there was the car coming down this road slow, stopping, going, stopping. i asked him, what are you guys doing? he said they had a party at brewer's house. she got upset and left. they were looking to find her to bring her back to the party. he took off after her. >> in the car? >> in the car. that was the last time i saw her. >> he says he waited about 45 minutes for the police. by the time they arrived, shannon gilbert had vanished. when the police came back later, they questioned the driver who took off after her. the driver told them that he brought shannon out from the city out to long island. police also questioned the man, according to the driver, was throwing the party when they left. that man was joseph brewer who did not return our phone calls to speak with us about this story. police told him gilbert wasn't just a party guest at brewer's house.

>> brewer was the one that hired this young lady to come out here. >> shannon gilbert was an escort who posted ads on craigslist. because of her work as an escort, shannon's sisters sarah and sherry often worried about her. >> why did you guys come all of the way down here? >> because my sister disappeared. >> when did you first know that your sister had gone missing? >> we first found out that sunday, her boyfriend called me and said ha she hadn't come home in two days. >> did you have any thoughts? >> honestly i thought she ran off, found some friends and partied for two days and was going to come home. but then when we looked through her sprint account and figured her last call was to 911, it kind of changed our whole perspective of what might have became of her. >> shannon's phone records showed she was on the phone with police for 23 long minutes before she showed up at coletti's door for help. >> they didn't feel they were being taken seriously or helped and they were very distraught.

>> reporter: gilbert's family started working with dottie laster and a team of private investigators to help find shannon. laughter and her team have been digging into the case for months. they're especially concerned about that 911 call. >> she was in danger. she has not come back. she has not called anyone. >> what did you do? >> we pretty much from there tried to do our own investigation. we made up fliers, passed them out, went door to door, making up notes to give to the detectives. actually found a piece of her jewelry. >> reporter: in searching near brewer's house they said they turned up something the police had overlooked. >> the police had been there and searched it before the sisters went there. but when the sisters went, they said they found her earring on the front porch. so they're more frantic, now they're more frustrated. >> reporter: they got even more frustrated when they left without suspects. >> i feel sorry for them. >> reporter: police ruled brewer and the driver out as suspects.

so the family began working with investigators to piece together any clues from her life before she disappeared. >> this is actually shannon's signature. >> reporter: we went back to visit shannon's sister sarah in the economically depressed region of upstate new york where they grew up. her sister said right before she disappeared, shannon was trying to get out of escort work. >> she was taking online classes. it's hard. we all grew up below poverty. >> she liked to dress up. she liked to have a good time. >> yes. >> she liked to party? >> yes. >> was she like that in high school, too? >> no, she was very quiet. she was like the book worm. >> this is shannon gilbert's middle school. she starred in the eighth grade production of "annie" here. like so many small two girls she had dreams of bright lights and big cities. but what she found was that the reality when she got there is it wasn't nearly as glamorous as she envisioned. when she couldn't pay the rent she found work with an escort agency. easy money paid bills but

ultimately made her life harder. after only a short time as an escort her family says she had an arrest record and a drug habit. i've watched them. you guys are very close. were you close with shannon like that as well? >> yes, we were close. if one of us were missing my sister right now would do the same thing we're doing to try to find her. >> her family kept urging us to please search, to please take the dogs. it was about to get cold. >> reporter: when police finally took search dogs out to look for shannon gilbert a month after she disappeared, they made a shocking discovery. >> missing persons unit called us out on saturday to follow up on an investigation on a missing person. i saw the skeletal remains of a body. >> reporter: over the next couple of days, police would find three more sets of remains. coming up, the search for

shannon and the chilling possibility that a serial killer is on the loose. [ male announcer ] this is the network. a network of possibilities. excuse me? my grandfather was born in this village. [ automated voice speaks foreign language ] [ male announcer ] in here, everyone speaks the same language. ♪ in here, forklifts drive themselves. no, he doesn't have it. yeah, we'll look on that. [ male announcer ] in here, friends leave you messages written in the air. that's it right there. [ male announcer ] it's the at&t network. and what's possible in here is almost impossible to say.

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this past december, police out searching for shannon gilbert in the area where she disappeared in long island stumble on not one, but four badly decomposed bodies. >> okay, good morning, everybody. >> reporter: the police commissioner richard dormer delivers news that tear phis shannon gilbert's family. >> i don't think it's a coincidence that four bodies ended up in this area. we could have a serial killer. >> reporter: four of the victims were found in a burlap-like material. that indicates two things. one, that it's very likely that those four victims were killed by the same person -- a serial killer. and the second thing it suggests is that the killer most likely killed his victims elsewhere and transported them here to be dumped.

in january, police put names to the remains. shannon's family is relieved. she's not one of them. but they're still alarmed. all four victims are eerily similar to shannon in age, height and looks, and every single one advertised on craigslist as escorts. had police searched far enough? one of the bodies police identified was amber lynn costello. her sister, kim overstreet, is looking for answers. >> i was doing research, trying to backtrack, getting everything i could. it got to the point where -- i was obsessed with it. >> overstreet says police have told her very little about the investigation. so like the gilbert family, she started doing her own digging. >> it is my baby sister. you know? it eats at me every day. it's consuming. >> reporter: kim herself used to work for an escort agency. she tried to teach her sister how to stay safe on the job. >> i worked for a service and the guy had to have a home phone

listed in his name. if there wasn't a home phone number listed in his name, he wouldn't go. but, she says her sister was a drug addict which made her even more vulnerable. so where we going now. >> we're going to where amber was staying, where the last place she walked out of was, where she met the guy that picked her up. >> reporter: this is the house where amber was last seen. on the night that amber disappeared, kim was out of the state. are you okay? >> yeah. >> tell me what's going on. >> it's just this is the last place she was. you know? i've been here so many times with her and i just can't believe the one time i'm not with her it happens. that morning she had got a call from a guy who was wanting to set up something that night. he called her again maybe 10:05, and said he was coming down the road, for her to go ahead and walk out. she hung the phone up, gave the phone to the people that was

with and said if my sister calls, tell her i love her. she walked out the door, was never seen again. >> reporter: family and friends of the other victims tell similar stories. each apparently disappeared after meeting clients. melissa bartholomew's family may have even gotten a call from the killer. just days after she went missing, melissa's baby sister picked up the call because she thought it was her sister. at that point was five days when the first call came in, and you know, the caller i.d. melissa, she answers and she's all excite. and there's a guy on the other end. >> reporter: the family got six separate calls from someone using melissa's phone. police don't want the details out there, but melissa's mother lynn will say the caller was threatening and wouldn't answer the family's questions. >> we didn't know what he did to

her, if she was still alive, he wouldn't say if he wanted money or -- >> reporter: on that final call, lynn says he confessed. >> he did confirm that he killed her. so that's why we were thinking that this guy obviously head these girls and tortured them. why else would he have caused for over a month unless he was just torturing us? >> reporter: family attorney steve cohen. >> that's how we know that we're dealing with a monster, a hannibal lecter, someone who's very bright and very calculating and very patient. >> reporter: in april, police find the remains of up to six more victims. they speculate about something truly horrifying. there may be more than one serial killer at work here.

>> certainly the medical examiner is going to be looking at the possibility that shannon gilbert is one of the remains. >> there is no secret that we've been dumping bodies out here for decades. >> reporter: lou colombo is a retired officer from long island. he shows us how hard it is to search here. >> you can just look at it and know you literally cannot walk in from the roadway into this area. as a result, it lends itself to discarding a body, making it almost impossible to find. >> reporter: he says police have always known the area as a good place to get rid of a body, and he explains why this will be a tough case to crack. in all fairness to nassau keep the, the suffolk county police departments, there aren't any really hard and fast clues here, right? >> nothing. there's no physical evidence of forensics unlike you'd find at a conventional crime scene, at an apartment or at a home.

>> reporter: shannon gilbert was not among the remains police found. it's been over a year since she disappeared. as the families of the victims gather to remember this loved ones, none are any closer to knowing what happened. >> we're hopeful because she wasn't recovered, so that does give us hope that she still might be out there. but at the same time we want that closure, we want to know. >> we are dealing with a psychotic murderer who is very bright, very deliberate, very calm, very well prepared, who will kill again. next on "cnn presents" -- >> was the bullying part of the reason you think, erica, that your best friend killed herself? >> most definitely. there's no question about it.

>> what led this 13-year-old to the brink? >> we have no evidence that bullying or harassment took place in any of those cases. and later, what it takes to fight the multi-billion dollar illegal animal trade. a monkey refuge where the people live in cages and animals roam free. e of jack's cereals. fiber one. uh, forgot jack's cereal. [ jack ] what's for breakfast? um... try the number one! [ jack ] yeah, this is pretty good. [ male announcer ] half a day's worth of fiber. fiber one. it's me? alright emma, i know it's not your favorite but it's time for your medicine, okay? you ready? one, two, three. [ both ] ♪ emma, emma bo-bemma ♪ banana-fana-fo-femma ♪ fee-fi-fo-femma ♪ em-ma very good sweety, how do you feel? good. yeah? you did a really good job, okay? let's go back to drawing.

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this is samantha's swimsuit. it's been hanging here, and i just can't put it away. >> a swimsuit hanging lifeless since november 2009 when michelle johnson's only daughter took her own life. >> to see your child lay there lifeless and not know why. >> reporter: what she would learn is that her 13-year-old's world had become unbearable. >> we believe that she was just hiding from everybody because she was feeling helpless. samantha was kind of a tomboy, and she was perceived as gay. >> was she gay? >> no. we don't think she was gay. she was 13. >> reporter: samantha was the first of seven students to commit suicide in a single minnesota school district in less than two years. parents and friends tell us four

of those teens were either gay, perceived to be gay, or questioning their sexuality, and at least two of them were bullied over it. we're about 30 minutes outside of minneapolis in anoka, the biggest school district in the entire state. but the reason we're here is because it has become a battleground over homosexuality in the classroom. the district has a controversial curriculum policy that says staff must remain neutral on matters of sexual orientation. it has ignited a culture war. one that's playing out in school board meetings. >> the homosexual lifestyle is a social controversial issue that should be addressed in the home and not the school. >> these children are human beings. >> we're allowing these kids to be treated as second class citizens. >> reporter: allegations of bullying have brought unwanted media attention, and cnn has

learned a federal investigation to this quiet suburban community. >> a student threw me up against a wall, lockers, and screamed "fag" at me. >> reporter: mike thurston, an eighth-grader at anoka middle school isn't gay but he is the president of the school's gay-straight alliance. >> a student, for whatever reason, came up to me during social studies and said, so how big was it in your mouth last night? >> reporter: the bullying made school a daily battle for kids like mike and samantha. erica hoops was samantha's best friend. >> yeah. she didn't feel safe anywhere. during volleyball they would call her names like fag, and like go over to the boy's locker room. you shouldn't be in here. >> did any adults see this? >> yeah. but they didn't ever do anything. i was in the locker room at one point when she was getting harassed and the coach was looking at it first. but she didn't stop anybody.

>> reporter: samantha's mother, michelle, didn't learn about the bullying until she showed up one day at volleyball practice. >> and the coach said, can i help you? and i said, i'm samantha jones' mother. where is she? she said, oh, i haven't seen samantha in weeks. and i thought, what? how can that be? she's taking the late bus home. so she said, well, i know that there is a couple of girls that are being very mean to her. >> so the coach knew she was being bullied. >> right. >> had she ever told you that before you came down to practice? >> did you see anyone bullying samantha? >> reporter: the district requires staff to report all bullying. we reached out to samantha's coach. >> there was issues everywhere in her life and her situation, and they were addressed to the best of the ability, and i don't

have anything else to say. >> reporter: samantha never made it to another volleyball practice. just like justin didn't make it to his 16th birthday. justin was gay. >> this one girl told the whole school -- >> reporter: his friend brandi says the bullying began shortly after justin was outed in the eighth grade. >> he told me somebody had grabbed his balls and said "you like that." eventually his counselor knew -- noticed something was wrong and she ran up behind. >> reporter: justin's mother, tammy, says she was never contacted about the incident. and then just months before taking his life -- >> he came to me and said, mom, a kid at school says i was going to go to hell because i'm gay. >> can you say without a doubt that justin's suicide was connected to the bullying? >> yes, i believe it was connected. do i know what the last thing was that happened that made

him make the final act? no, i don't know what it was. >> reporter: we will never know what drove samantha and justin to take their lives. but here's what we do know. in a school newsletter, and in a voice mail to staff, the superintendent dennis carlson denies any connection between bullying and the suicides. >> based on all of the information we've been able to gather, none of the suicides were connected to incidents of bullying or harassment. >> reporter: a statement that angered family and friends. >> i kept thinking, you liar, liar, liar, because there's totally a connection. >> was the bullying part of the reason, you think, erica, that your best friend killed herself? >> most definitely, there's no question about it. >> did the school district talk to you after samantha committed suicide? >> i never once got talked to. >> what bothered me most is that nobody asked us. >> we have dozens of people that

are looking into each one of those suicides. they talked to as many people as they can surrounding that suicide. >> reporter: we asked superintendent carlson why no one talked to samantha's mother or her best friend. they feel like, dennis, an investigation or review wasn't done. >> we did not do a formal investigation. we would only do a formal investigation if there was some indication that there was need for that. >> why wouldn't there be a need for that when you have kids killing themselves? >> there needs to be some evidence that bullying, harassment, was part of their life in that school. i cannot emphasize enough, kids need to come forward to the adults in the building and say "we're being bullied." if they do not, there is nothing much we can do. >> i am the mother of samantha johnson who was a student at fred moore. >> after his public statement, michelle e-mailed the superintendent saying she had talked to the volleyball coach, the advice principal and the counselor about samantha's

bullying. carlson insists the district followed up with the school members but can't release the records citing privacy concerns. he says michelle now refuses to speak with them. >> if i can't trust the school when samantha was alive, then i don't know why i can trust them now. >> reporter: when we come back, one teacher who wants to take on the district. >> are you afraid you could lose your job just being here talking about this? >> realistically, yeah. . whose non-stop day starts with back pain... and a choice. take advil now and maybe up to four in a day. or choose aleve and two pills for a day free of pain. way to go, coach. ♪ really? 25 grams of protein. what do we have? all four of us, together? 24. he's low fat, too, and has 5 grams of sugars. i'll believe it when i--- [ both ] oooooh... what's shakin'? [ female announcer ] as you get older, protein is an important part of staying active and strong.

new ensure high protein... fifty percent of your daily value of protein. low fat and five grams of sugars. see? he's a good egg. [ major nutrition ] new ensure high protein. ensure! nutrition in charge! i could not make working and going to school work. it was not until the university of phoenix that i was able to work full-time, be a mom, and go to school. the opportunits that i had at the university of phoenix, dealing wh profesonals teaching things that they were doing every day,

got me to where i am today. i'm mayor cherie wood, i'm responsible for the largest urban renewal project in utah, and i am a phoenix. [ male announcer ] find your program at phoenix.edu. and i am a phoenix. any questions? no. you know... ♪ we're not magicians ♪ we can't read your mind ♪ ♪ read your mind ♪ we need your questions ♪ each and every kind ♪ every kind ♪ will this react with my other medicine? ♪ ♪ hey, what are all these tests even for? ♪ ♪ questions are the answer ♪ yeah ♪ oh