Private detectives on missing woman case

Private detectives hired by an international activist group are investigating the disappearance of a Maine woman once thought to be among the four dead women found in Gilgo Beach, the woman's family said Monday.

Relatives of Megan Waterman, 22, who worked as a prostitute and vanished after meeting a client in Hauppauge in June, said they worked with Avaaz - an online group advocating on climate change, human rights and corruption - to hire two investigators in mid-November.

Suffolk detectives have turned up no evidence that Waterman is among the dead whose bones were found wrapped in burlap on Dec. 11 and 13 off Ocean Parkway, police say, but they have not ruled her out definitively. Monday, Suffolk police said there was nothing new in the probe of the bodies.

Waterman's aunt, Elizabeth Meserve, said hiring the investigators should not be viewed as criticism of the police work on the case. "We are very confident that they are working our case every day," Meserve said, but she added: "A lot of times when girls are in this line of work, their case can fall by the wayside."

David Van Norman, an expert on identifying missing persons and the deputy coroner investigator with the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner's Department in Southern California, said the investigators could be of help.

He said the private investigators should ensure that all information on the missing person - photographs, DNA, dental records, circumstances of the disappearance - have been properly entered into state and federal databases. That could mean tracking down old fingerprints taken by an out-of-state agency or workplace, something local police often do not or cannot do.

The investigators, both women, specialize in sex trafficking cases and work out of New York and Texas, said Avaaz spokeswoman Brianna Cayo Cotter, declining to name them. Avaaz is paying for the detectives, one of several missing-person cases it's probing as part of an anti-sex-trafficking project, she said.

Meserve said the family was referred to Avaaz by the National Organization for Women.

Meanwhile, the family of Shannan Gilbert, 24, the missing call girl from New Jersey ruled out as one of the bodies last week, is trying to keep a spotlight on her case, setting up a Facebook page called Praying for Shannan Gilbert. It had 108 members Monday. "I don't care what anyone has to say, I'm not letting Shannan go down like that," Gilbert's sister Sherre wrote. "I'm going to make sure you get the proper recognition."