The Top 10 Stories of 2024

Traffic was a topic of conversation all summer, as 2024 proved to be perhaps the worst year for traffic congestion on the South Fork. In August, on a busy Friday evening, soon-to-be President-elect Donald Trump came to East Hampton for a fundraiser and, just weeks after an attempted assassination, roadblocks were more severe than usual — creating a massive jam that delayed motorists for hours.

In early February, clearing began without warning along Sunrise Highway, on a portion of the Shinnecock Nation’s Westwoods property. The plan is for a gas station and travel plaza with retail space, a project that’s been part of the nation’s plan for years. COURTESY SHINNECOCK NATION

A quiet residential street was the scene of an “incredibly brutal and heinous crime,” as a prosecutor described it: Jeremy Allen, 43, is accused of beating 43-year-old Christopher Hahn of Hampton Bays to death over several hours at Allen’s residence. TE MCMORROW

The 1st District of the New York State Assembly has been represented by Fred W. Thiele Jr. of Sag Harbor since he won a special election in March 1995. After being reelected 14 times — a 1st District longevity record — Thiele, who turned 71 in August, announced that he would retire from the post at the end of 2024.

The Shou Sugi Ban House is a luxury spa and hotel in Water Mill, hardly a place where a violent death would be expected. But in late October, the bloodied body of a 33-year-old Brooklyn artist, Sabina Rosas, was found by housekeeping in one of the hotel rooms. She had been the victim of violence, though investigators withheld the cause of death.

A year ago, a blockbuster arrest was made in the Gilgo Beach murder investigation, which focused on a series of murders between the 1990s and early 2010s, with many of the bodies found along a stretch of remote Ocean Parkway in western Suffolk County. In June of this year, police connected the suspect, Rex Heuermann of Massaspequa Park, to a body found near Fish Cove in North Sea in 1993. Hunters had discovered the remains of 28-year-old Sandra Costilla in November 1993

The year began with a major storm in January that devastated the Ditch Plains area of Montauk. The beach was nourished for summer, and by October East Hampton Town officials were told that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might pay to reconstruct the damaged dune system there.

Governor Kathy Hochul and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland joined local officials and Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine at the Stony Brook Southampton college campus in March to ceremonially “turn on” the South Fork Wind project’s offshore turbines. The 12 turbines about 35 miles southeast of Montauk Point will produce enough electricity to power 70,000 homes.

For more than 80 years, the family-owned Gosman’s Dock has been a fixture of Montauk’s waterfront. In October, the word came down: The complex of restaurants, shops, and wholesale and retail seafood purveyors spanning nine parcels and 11.5 acres would be sold, reportedly to billionaire investor Stephen Deckoff. In November, the price was revealed when filed with the Suffolk County clerk’s office: $34.35 million.

For the first time since the trustee system of leadership was put into place in 1792, the Shinnecock Nation elected a woman as the chair of the Shinnecock Nation Council of Trustees. In April, Lisa Goree won the seat just 30 years after women first earned the right to vote in tribal elections. REBEKAH PHOENIX WISE