When Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ skeletal remains were discovered in the roadside scrub near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach in the winter of 2010, investigators faced a daunting challenge.
Despite the grim find, there was scant physical evidence to identify her killer, save for a single, degraded strand of hair. At the time, extracting viable DNA from such a sample was beyond the capabilities of forensic science, leaving detectives to search for other clues in their hunt for a suspected serial killer scattering women’s bodies along the coastal parkway.
