A Cruel Hoax

Rebecca “Becky” Koster was a 24-year-old home health aide from Medford, on Long Island. In early December 2009 she spent a night out at Butcher Boys, a Long Island bar, where security video showed her talking with Evans Ganthier, a man from Port Jefferson Station. She got home in the early hours, texted her mother, and then vanished.

Soon after she disappeared, a driver in North Stonington, Connecticut, saw a fire beside the road and called 911. It was Rebecca’s body, burned and mutilated. Her mother, meanwhile, was getting texts from Rebecca’s phone claiming the man she was dating was holding her captive. Ganthier had sent them to point police at someone else. A fingerprint on duct tape found with the body matched Ganthier, and investigators learned he had taken the Port Jefferson ferry to Connecticut.

At trial, Ganthier’s lawyers said Rebecca died in an accidental fall in his garage, though he admitted burning and mutilating her body. A Suffolk County jury convicted him of second-degree murder on August 29, 2013, and he received the maximum sentence of 25 years to life. In August 2025 a federal judge vacated the conviction and ordered a new trial, ruling that his right to confront witnesses was violated when a doctor who had not performed the autopsy testified about its results. New York appealed that decision.