Who Is Mari Gilbert, Amy Ryan’s Character in Netflix’s ‘Lost Girls’?

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Lost Girls on Netflix.

Lost Girls is a new film on Netflix today based on the true story of the killings of sex workers in Long Island, New York, which are believed to be the work of an unidentified murderer who came to be known as the Long Island serial killer, or LISK.

Starring Oscar-nominated actor Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone, The Office) as Mari Gilbert, and directed by Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus, Lost Girls is based on the non-fiction bestselling book of the same name by Robert Kolker. But while Kolker’s book focuses on the families of five victims, Lost Girls the film focuses on one mother in particular who became the face of the investigation: Mari Gilbert.

Who is Mari Gilbert?

Mari Gilbert was the mother of 24-year-old Shannan Gilbert, who went missing in May 2010 in the Ocean Parkway, Long Island area. As you see in the movie, Gilbert, who was from New Jersey, sounded the alarm about her missing daughter and insisted authorities search the area for her. When they did, they discovered a body—the near-disintegrated remains of a woman in a burlap sack. That woman was not Shannan Gilbert. Then they discovered another body, and another, and another, until ten bodies of women had been found, most of them sex workers, as Shannan Gilbert had been. It wasn’t until over a year later in December 2011 that police announced Gilbert’s body had been found.

Mari Gilbert did not stay quiet for that year-and-a-half. She made many media appearances with her three other daughters—Sarra, Sherre, and Stevie—and became a spokesperson for the families of the victims of the killings. She wondered, often and loudly, why police weren’t taking the case seriously; why the lives of sex workers seemed less urgent to authorities than another serial killer case might be.

Authorities eventually concluded that Shannan Gilbert’s death was not related to the murders and was an accidental drowning, despite the fact that Shannan had made a 911 call on the night of her disappearance. The Suffolk County police have refused to release the tape of that call. Mari Gilbert had an independent autopsy of her daughter done that showed she likely died of strangulation and had the case re-opened as a murder investigation.

Mari was also a complicated figure, and the Lost Girls film does not shy away from that. Shannan Gilbert grew up in foster care because, according to director Liz Garbus who spoke to Decider for an interview, she couldn’t afford to provide the mental health care she needed. She also accepted money from Shannan that she earned from her work as a sex worker.

What happened to Mari Gilbert? How did Mari Gilbert die?

Mari Gilbert’s death—which is revealed in an end-credits caption in Lost Girls—came as a shock to all on July 23, 2016.  She was brutally stabbed to death by her then 27-year-old daughter and Shannan’s younger sister, Sarra Gilbert. Sarra was said to have paranoid schizophrenia and was hospitalized twice before her mother’s death. She was charged with second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Though Mari Gilbert’s death is not depicted in the film beyond the end-credits note, Garbus did highlight Sarra’s mental health problems, as played by actor Oona Laurence in the film.

“I know from people who were close to Mari that she really was kind of relishing that role, of Sarra’s mental health care,” Garbus told Decider. “So the fact that she was finally able to do that in a way that she wasn’t able to do for Shannan, and to have it end this way… it’s just so tragic.”

Watch Lost Girls on Netflix