Friday marks the 10-year anniversary of the first body being found near Gilgo Beach in a string of unsolved killings, launching one of the most extensive and mysterious investigation in the tri-state area.

Dec. 11, 2010 was the day a Suffolk police officer and his K-9 made the grisly discovery.

"His tail started waving, he started sampling the air," said John Mallia in 2010. "At that point, I saw the skeletal remains of the body."

Over the next year, the bodies or body parts of 10 more people would be found along the 3.5-mile stretch of beach -- more than an hour's drive from Manhattan.

News 12 has been covering the slayings for the past 24 years. Four dismembered women were found from 1996 to 2003 in all parts of Long Island. Those cases went cold until their other body parts were found in 2010 along Gilgo Beach as police searched for missing Jersey City escort Shannan Gilbert.

After nearly a decade of silence about the serial killings, Suffolk County's current Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart is taking a new approach. The police department has also released new evidence pictures on multiple occasions this year.

"You go all the way back to Fire Island Jane Doe, you have four women that were dismembered in a very particular way and their remains were scattered in at least two different places, and that's very unique to those four," says Hart. "And when you move the clock forward, you have the four that we found on Ocean Parkway on the beach, it's the 'Gilgo four' as it's referred to often. So that often leads to the discussion, was it one killer or two?"

On Wednesday, we take an in-depth look at some of the twists and turns that may have blocked the investigation.