In 2010, the disappearance of a young woman near Gilgo Beach, Long Island would lead to the discovery of ten other young women buried in the sand along the beach highway. Over six years later, The Long Island Serial Killer has never been caught and the girls found that day seem to have been forgotten to all, but their loved ones. Killing Season is a true crime docuseries that follows two documentarians as they travel to Long Island to try to uncover information that could lead them to who killed these women. What they found was much more than what they had expected, murders of thousands of women each year across the United States, and all remain unsolved. With all the advancements in DNA analysis and forensic science, the unsolved case count should be decreasing, but it is just doing the opposite. The advancements in these areas help, but the police also need to input the data from these homicides into the national database. That is something that unfortunately doesn't happen often enough, and it takes longer for anyone to catch on to a killing pattern.
Are so many of these murders going unsolved because the time is not taken to input data into a computer? There is also the underfunded and understaffed police departments, who just don't have the man power to work on all these cold cases. Another reason could be because of the stigma that surrounds a lot of these women, many are prostitutes, runaways, and addicted to drugs. So it is often assumed they just took off and vanished, sometimes these cases don't seem as important to some to solve. To these girl's families, it is very important to find out what happened; to discover the truth.
Next, they travel to New Mexico, to the site of one of the largest mass graves of more young women. In 2009, eleven young women's remains and one fetus were found buried in a hundred acre site in Albuquerque. These are known as the West Mesa Murders and like the ones in Long Island, they remain unsolved. As they investigate and ask questions they find a tight-lipped police department, and more girls on the streets disappearing. People have several theories to who could be behind these murders. The police had several suspects who were cleared. The girls that walk the streets believe a bad cop is behind the killings, of course these girls fear the police, and fear for their lives. Some feel these girls were murdered because they were running drugs, and the drug cartel wanted to send out a message. The families of these girls wonder if they will ever know what happened, and they don't feel they will ever get justice.
Killing Season is an eye-opening docuseries, It's sad to think it took a television show to open people's eyes and to get the police more involved. It is also scary to think how many women are murdered every year, their bodies dumped in shallow graves, thrown away and forgotten. These girls, no matter where life has taken them, are someone's daughter, mother, wife, and granddaughter. They deserve justice, to be more than just the forgotten and the lost. Hopefully, one day we will all see how important it is to solve these cold cases. Maybe someone will take the time to look closer at these murders and find the clues everyone has overlooked. One day I hope we will find these killers, and the others that are hiding in the shadows. One day these girls will no longer be thought of as the forgotten, they will be remembered.
