The cross between “American Horror Story” and “Twin Peaks: Long Island Edition” did not fade away with a happy ending ride off into the sunset upon an emotionally aching father’s movie-like one-man rescue mission of his month-long missing daughter.
As of Saturday, Feb. 8th, a dozen individuals have now been arrested in connection with the disappearance and sexual exploitation of a 14-year-old girl from East Patchogue.
The victim’s name has been omitted by select organizations at various official stopgaps, given the sensitive nature of the gruesome information being regularly disseminated. Nevertheless, it’s been mass-reported since the moment she was first christened a high-profile missing person back in December that one Emmarae “Emma” Gervasi is the victim of the harrowing human trafficking in question.
With the relentlessness of this case, and as proper authorities diligently and dutifully plow ahead while electing not to comment, Emma and her outspoken father, Frank, have since become the media-tabbed faces of exposing the sick, cruel and twisted nastiness lurking within the darker realm of Long Island suburbia.
Human trafficking is undeniably an international issue. On the local front, heads turn, nay, roll upon each new development that confirms just how many deplorables deal in downright devilish activities nearby.
Emma’s full-custody father’s plentiful, makeshift press conferences self-taped and recorded from the driver's seat of his parked car have rendered him an unlikely online sensation.
In her lone media interview—with Greater Long Island, immediately following a devastating Christmastime amidst the visceral heartbreak of her daughter’s absence, Emma’s schoolteacher mother, Melissa Dervay, said she was on the straight A’s and narrow complications path before a significant traumatic event Emma experienced brought forth a litany of behavioral, mental and substance issues.
Having developed a propensity to run away, Emma’s divorced parents and live-in step-mom were not sure if Emma—who had recently been treated for substance abuse in Minnesota and released under ankle monitor supervision—deliberately fled her East Patchogue home on Dec. 9th.
Emma’s parental triumvirate had thoroughly limited Emma’s social media interactions after she posted sexually suggestive content to Instagram and TikTok, often scantily clothed or in lingerie. She also once posted a video at 4 a.m. of her driving a car at just 13 years old.
Though she did not own a cellphone at the time of her abduction, the Gervasi patriarch would later divulge in an appearance on “The Dr. Phil Podcast” that Emma found a “workaround” via her stepmom’s iPad. On this device, Emma made contact with nefarious individuals she was too trusting of; on the evening of Dec. 9th, Emma summoned an older man she had been speaking with over Snapchat for a year to report to her home.
She reportedly left her home barefoot and under massive rainfall, and entered the Blue Honda of this predator—the first of 12 criminally charged defendants in the case. Doorbell camera footage from neighboring homes do not prove whether she did so voluntarily, or under the duress of a threat.
Twenty-five days after leaving out her front door to “retrieve something” from a truck in the driveway, as she told her stepmom, Emma was recovered by her father Frank in a vigilante-certified, adrenaline-fueled boatside stampede. Following a wee-hour tip that panned out, Frank's seaside-locked daughter was returned to his arms in a hugging embrace.
Suffolk County Police, understandably “mum's the word” during an open investigation, and emergency medical services responded soon thereafter. Emma Gervasi was found alive, albeit “out of it” and unwell, having been freed from multiple weeks of captivity aboard a 56-foot luxury yacht known as “The Phoenix,” and docked in Islip’s Whitecap Marina.
In the weeks to come, a police-led crackdown upon a cavalcade of crackheads and cretins has successfully been forged. If proven guilty, the dirty dozen suspects are all just as responsible for giving the South Shore, and Long Island in general, a bad name and a worse stench with reverberative linger.
Court reports and second reference-relayed details extracted from statements provided to police by Emma thus far confirm and allege:
- Alton Harrel, 35, maintained a year’s worth of online communication with Emma before she got into his car on the night of Dec. 9th. After surveillance footage caught her knocking on motel doors in Bohemia, she was held in a Bellport home by Harrel for the next 24 hours
- Shortly thereafter, Emma ended up with Kevin McDonald, 20, Daniel Burke, 63, and Robert Eccleston, 61, in a trailer park home
- Francis Buckheit, 64, next held her captive on the aforementioned boat, which he owns, from Dec. 13th until her rescue—a period in which many visitors either appeared or paid to manipulate, endanger and assault Emma. He was the first arrested, one day after Emma’s rescue
- Elizabeth Hunter, 34, and Jackquelyn Comiskey, 52—a grandmother and also the daughter of a decorated late cop honored at Robertaccio’s Funeral Home in Patchogue this past December — offered Emma to Bunice Knight, 47, in exchange for crack cocaine. Frank Gervasi told The NY Post Comiskey called in the anonymous tip. Per suspecting her involvement, he refused to provide Comiskey the $15,000 reward he had been offering for Emma’s safe return
- Ralph Knowles, 63, raped, forcibly touched and taunted Emma on the boat, to whom he provided crack cocaine on numerous occasions before and during the assaults
- Rebecca Browell, 48, who cohabitates with Knowles, provided drugs to Emma and was aware she was both underage and having sexual relations with adult men
- Daniel Soto, 36, had sex with the teen between Dec. 13-20 on the boat
Those on the outside looking in and deeply associated with the case anticipate additional revelations and twists.
"There’s more to the story than is going on here," Knowles' attorney Chase Brown said, in conjunction with sentiments expressed by various other defense attorneys tied to the case. "We look forward to discovery to find out the merit, if any, to these allegations."
Brown hit it right on the money. Days prior to his client’s arrest, arguably the most head-scratching development within the case thus far occurred.
On Tuesday, Feb. 4th, Deshaun McClean, 42—an aide at Sagamore Child Psychiatric Center where Emma was admitted for further evaluation and treatment after being rescued—was charged with making criminal sexual contact with her, as first reported by Newsday.
Court reports that sight surveillance footage at the state-run mental facility and statements provided by the victim-once-again conclude McLean groped Emma on Jan. 9th and Jan. 23rd.
“This poor girl,” a Lake Ronkonkoma mother of three shared in conversation with The South Shore Press.
Other local parents polled were equally melancholic—asking versions of the following:
“What is going on?”
“What is happening to our home?”
“Where can our children feel and be safe?”
Followers of the case of all ages are dialed into its objective wackiness–not just limited to Frank’s “Dr. Phil” spot, but also what he considers the undue backlash he has received—for instance, implications from Internet commenters that, as a former amateur pornstar, he makes for a problematic new posterboy for “Protect Our Children” campaigns.
“It’s easy to drop comments about my pornos that I made a few years ago – which, who gives a s–t anyway? Those are consensual adults – has nothing to do with me being a father, nothing to do with my family at all,” he said.
Last month, Gervasi told Dr. Phil: “There’s a lot of missing children out here—not just in Suffolk County, but across Long Island.”
“When my daughter went missing, it made us paranoid. It’s a huge problem out here, and across the country.”
“There are predators everywhere… You don’t necessarily need a phone to get in trouble these days. Be diligent, and keep an eye on your children.”
This month, he is not saying as much, perhaps because even after Emma’s rescue, there are likely still more players to hold accountable who have yet to make the perp walk they deserve.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney mentioned it in his re-election announcement last month, and Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr., and Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina followed suit last week. Suffolk County’s jail has the first human trafficking unit in the nation, which Toulon started in 2018.
"They [human traffickers] find them. They exploit them mentally. They ultimately find a way to meet up with them physically," Commissioner Catalina said. “They offer them drugs and fake love...."They turn around after a period of time and say, 'Hey, now you have to pay me back.”
Meanwhile, attorneys for today’s held defendants posit Emma was not as hopeless or helpless as it seems; that though she was a minor who cannot legally consent to sexual activity with adults, she was complicit in soliciting the presence of drug dealers who she summoned via a phone purchased for her by alleged abuser and captor, Francis Buckeit.
The latter’s lawyer, Michael Ross, adds that Emma’s witness statement is “a sad, horrible tale of a girl who is very lost in life” and “traveling across Suffolk County smoking crack and being with various people.”
Whatever comes next within the investigation into Emma Gervasi’s disappearance and captivity continues to unfold, the truth will surely remain stranger than fiction indeed.