• A mystery with hard-to-come-by answers: One year ago, police began their search for Shannan Gilbert, a 24 year-old prostitute. During that search, they found the remains of Melissa Barthlemy, another prostitute. In the following days, they found three more bodies along the shores of Long Island. They nicknamed the killer the “Craigslist Ripper” because some of the victims had advertised online. Ten bodies have been discovered over the past year; seemingly all of them worked in the sex industry, though one of the bodies found was the two-year-old daughter of one of the victims.

• past Officials used to think that this was the work of multiple serial killers. The oldest body was killed way back in 1996. They thought they were looking for “a number of killers who all favored the remote scrub land for dumping bodies.”
• present According to Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, the police’s view of the events has changed: “It appears that one person, comfortable with the area, comfortable with Long Island, is involved in these crimes.” source

• 13 students could get arrested over SAT/ACT cheating scandal source

• » Were the parents involved in this? According to a state senator, the amounts of money being talked about in the test-taking scandal (which involved students taking the test in place of other students) were just too much for the kids involved to raise on their own. “There are parents that are complicit in this. They are involved,” claimed State Sen. Ken Lavalle. “You can’t tell me that students are walking around with $3,500, or $2,500, or $1,200. That’s a lot of money, and that means the parents were involved.” The case involves a number of different high schools in the same region; some of the districts have emphasized that the students alone are to blame for their actions.

• bad A Long Island babysitter, 39, suffered a heart attack and died while caring for a young infant Thursday night.
• worse When the babysitter collapsed, she collapsed onto the infant. And the child died as well. This story is incredibly tragic and sad. source

• He was doing it because he lost his job and I was sick. … He did it. He did all of this.
• Melinda Brady • Explaining what she says may have led her husband, David Laffer, to kill four people in a Long Island pharmacy on Father’s Day. During the shooting, the suspect reportedly tried to steal prescription drugs from the pharmacy he could not afford, in what sounds like an awful recession story in the making. Brady and Laffer, who proposed to his wife at a New York Islanders game a few years ago, were arrested Wednesday after local police received hundreds of tips on the case. source

• good The eye of the Category 4 Hurricane Earl will stay off the coast over the next few days. Hooray! *whew*
• bad The storm as a whole will get very close to North Carolina, Long Island, and Cape Cod. Crap. Nevermind. source

• See any pools down here, guys? They’re kinda like handing out parking tickets for Riverhead, N.Y., which forces pools to have inspections. But since not everyone does it, they’ve resorted to using Google Maps to find out who’s breaking the rules. It’s netted them $75,000 so far. Not a bad way to nickel-and-dime your residents. source

• In response to a question, Terry said that we had approximately three dozen subscribers who have signed up to pay $5 per week for access to newsday.com.
• Cablevision President of Local Media Tad Smith • In a memo regarding Newsday’s plan for subscriptions and Cablevision’s overall media strategy. Sure, he’s full of it and then some, but we have to admit we got a kick out of the fact he noted our subscription in the note. We’re No. 36! We’re No. 36! source

• When we read yesterday that Newsday had a total of 35 subscribers to its paywall-riddled Web site, we wondered how this could be. How could only 35 people who weren’t subscribed to Cablevision or the print product say, “I’m paying Newsday $5 a week for some of the best damn journalism to be found on Long Island!” So, we decided to find out why. ShortFormBlog is now Customer No. 36.

Subscription notes:

• one They don’t bill you right away or ask for your credit card. Instead, Newsday.com staff contacts you afterwards. This is stupid.
• two You have to give them your phone number. And the registration thing is written as if you live in New York state. We live in D.C., dudes.
• three Newsday gives you a huge list of ways you can receive news from them. This includes e-mail and SMS alerts. We signed up; hey, we paid for it!

Review of Newsday’s signup process:

• C- it clearly doesn’t understand how online commerce works source

• one Ford Windstar minivan drove the wrong way on a divided highway; it crashed, then rolled down a hill and burst into flames source