Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 7th Murder Charge Filed in Gilgo Beach Serial Killings

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The lives of these women matter. And we as investigators, we understand that. Obviously, no one understands it more than the families. Rex Horman now charged with murdering a seventh woman on Long Island. I lay out the evidence the DA says ties Rex Horman to the murder of Valerie Mack. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Rex Horman, the man the Suffolk County DA says is the Gilgo Beach serial killer, is now charged with murdering Valerie Mack. This brings the total number of women Herman is accused of murdering to seven. Huerman is already charged with murdering Sandra Costilla in 1993 and Jessica Taylor in 2003. He's also charged with murdering the women known as the Gilgo Four, Maureen Brainerd Barnes, Amber Costello, Melissa Bartholomew, and Megan Waterman. The bodies of those women had been found wrapped in burlap along Ocean Parkway in 2010 and 2011. Hureman has pleaded not guilty to all of the murder charges. Hureman being charged with Valerie Mack's murder is not a complete shock. Suffolk County D.A. Ray Tierney had

Starting point is 00:01:15 previously said Hureman was a suspect in her murder. A superseding indictment states that Hureman murdered Valerie Mack sometime between September 1st and November 19th in the year 2000. A map includes the indictment and it shows where hunters found part of Mack's remains on November 19th, 2000 off of Mill Road, one mile west of Halsey Road in Manorville. The DA says Mack's remains were found in the general area where Jessica Taylor's partial remains were found in 2003, as you can see by the two red marks on the map. The indictment says a dog with the hunters found a black plastic bag with additional black plastic bags and a set of human remains. The remains were later identified as Valerie Max, and she had been decapitated. Both of her hands had been severed from her body above

Starting point is 00:02:03 the wrist, and her right leg had been cut off mid-calf. Max's skull, hands, and right foot were found along Ocean Parkway in April 2011 along Gilgo Beach, less than a mile and a half from where Jessica Taylor's skull, hands, and forearm were discovered. In the past, the DA has talked about how Hureman has been linked to the victims through hairs that came from a member of his family or even an ex. Tierney says a single hair links Hureman to Valerie Mack. The indictment says, based on the foregoing, it is significant that two forensic laboratories have now independently determined that the aforementioned hair, which was inside the sealed black garbage bags containing Ms. Mack's remains, specifically near the victim's dismembered left wrist, is substantially more likely to have derived from a person genetically identical to Victoria Hureman's DNA profile,

Starting point is 00:02:54 thereby linking evidence from yet another crime scene to the defendant through his immediate family. Notably, at the time of Ms. Mack's disappearance and murder, defendant Hureman's daughter would have been between three and four years old. That's important. Similar to the other cases, we then sent that hair out for nuclear DNA analysis. And because it's nuclear DNA, the most conservative estimate was 1.31 times 10 to the 356th power. So again, you take that 1.31, you move the decimal point over 356 times, and that's the number that you get, which excludes that percentage of the population, but includes, in this case, it was,

Starting point is 00:03:49 I believe it was, it was Victoria Uriman again. I want to tell you about Upside. It's a free app that gets you cash back on things like gas and restaurants. This is real cash back, money that you can transfer straight into your bank account. I used Upside when I went to Dunkin' Donuts for a cup of tea. I claimed an offer for Dunkin' on the app,

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Starting point is 00:04:24 and use our promo code CrimeFix and get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's promo code CrimeFix for extra cash back. This is what Huerman's attorney said in June about hairs and DNA potentially linking his client to the murders. The Castillo murder is, I've read the grand jury minutes and the only evidence that I've seen is allegedly one hair, one hair that ties my client allegedly to that murder. But listen, the basis of all of these cases, the bulk of their evidence, the strongest piece of evidence that they claim they have is a hair, a hair on each body. Tierney also pointed to a document found on Horman's computer where supplies and

Starting point is 00:05:11 things like DS, investigators believe that means dump site, and TRG, believed to stand for target, are discussed. The HK 2002-2004 document recovered from Horman's computer states small is good. Under supplies, it lists rope slash cord, saw slash cutting tools, foam drain cleaner, bag slash tape, and mill road. That's where Mack's partial remains were found. As for the drain cleaner part, the indictment says Horman called a plumber in October 2000 paying $265 for the plumber to check his mainline drain. There was also a document entitled Things to Remember that had disturbing information. Get sleep before hunt. Too tired creates problems. Hit harder. Too many hit to take down. Consider a hit to the face or neck next time for takedown. More sleep and noise control equals more playtime. Use pushpins to hang drop cloths

Starting point is 00:06:06 from ceiling, not tape. Use heavy rope for neck. Light rope broke under stress of being tightened. Tierney says investigators also found old news clippings about the victims, what he called mementos or souvenirs from his desk and safe. Those included a People magazine, a New York magazine, and a copy of the New York Post, all discussing the Gilded Go 4 and other killings. It's evincing his intent. It's evincing his interest in the case. So we think that it's circumstantial evidence of his, you know, that persistent interest in the case, the victims, the methods being used to, you know, starting back in 2010, all the methods used by law enforcement to try to catch the murderer of some of the individuals on Gilgo. All of those

Starting point is 00:07:07 things are events a certain mental state and intent. Valerie Mack's family did not attend the press conference but Tierney said investigators have spoken with them. We spoke to the Mack family. I don't believe that they want to give a statement at this time. I can tell you that I had the opportunity to speak. They are very grateful. They are very grateful for the small bit of closure that the task force has been able to provide. And it was very interesting to us. Well, I'll step back.

Starting point is 00:07:42 They're thankful for all the investigators stemming right back from the very origins of the case and the diligent work that was done in this case. And they're grateful for that. I have gone through in their final moments. It's interesting because we want to solve the mystery. We want to know what happened, but I don't think any of us have been quite prepared for how brutal these slayings were. Every time I look at the documents that D.A. Tierney has brought forth from Rex Uriman's house, it's just so shocking. And then we get even more information. The fact, we always assumed that he was following what was going on during, about the case,

Starting point is 00:08:52 but now we have confirmation. He was going to the gilgonews.com site and logging in. He was reading Bob Kolker's articles, People Magazine. We wonder whether or not he watched our show. I assume he did. It's just, it's frightening. It's tragic and it's scary. Yeah. What really got me was the photographs, and we can put those up, of the People Magazine, of the New York Post, the New York Magazine. These things were in pristine condition. And the indictment describes these as mementos, souvenirs, if you will. And it does describe him as going to the Gilgo News website. And there were clippings about Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack's deaths. So maybe he was following it, but yes, he lives in the area, but also, you know, there's

Starting point is 00:09:46 this kind of indication that he maybe was reliving the experience with these publications. I mean, this is all, these crimes are all about power, you know, obviously, as you can see from the bondage and things like that. It's just, I think in our mind as consumers, we have this idea of serial murder, but then when we really get into the details, it becomes so shocking. You know, I would like to point out that Valerie Mack was 24 years old when she died. And now 24 years later, finally, we have some answers as to who killed her, allegedly. And I think that that's important. It's a shame that it took 24 years, her life, basically, for us to finally, for someone to be charged.

Starting point is 00:10:38 And it angers and frustrates me that it took so long. This wasn't just a typical fact that the serial killer was so elusive that we couldn't find him. It was because there was obfuscation in the case. But it's really the one good takeaway from this is the fact that Ray Tierney really seems to be on the ball. You know, there's an adult in the room and his evidence is unbelievable and what's shocking about it too josh is the fact that it probably didn't need to take this long because once they really started going through what they had already what they had already collected it didn't take them that long to really piece this together so there was a lot going on in the background with

Starting point is 00:11:22 power struggles and things like that that appear to have kept this from being solved for some time. I mean, that's, that's, it's one thing for these, for these women to be killed, you know, that's a tragedy for the families. But then there's the double tragedy, right? Of knowing that maybe you could have had an answer earlier. Parents passed away before they could get answers. That's sad. And, you know, I still feel like the Suffolk County Police Department needs to be held accountable for that. But I am happy to see the way that it's being treated,

Starting point is 00:12:01 the diligence that it's being treated, the care. Obviously, there is a lot of evidence. And I also appreciate reading the bail application, how the DA has been structuring the evidence, going in and, for example, seeing, you know, we know that Valerie Mack was tied up, much like Jessica Taylor. We know there was mutilation to the body. But then going in and looking at Rex's download history and seeing that there was a lot of that type of pornography, sadistic mutilation, BDSM pornography being downloaded at the same time. That's really a smart kind of way to put this case together. Yeah, it is very interesting that they do that. They look at the correlations there and how the knots were similar, the plastic bags were similar.

Starting point is 00:12:55 They talk about all of these different similarities. And then, of course, there was mutilation to Valerie's body, to her breast post-mortem. So it's all circumstantial. And in isolation, it may not seem that significant. But when you put it all together, it kind of paints this picture over the years. And then you have the change in MO, according to the DA, from dismembering the bodies and then talk about drain cleaner and calling the plumber to inspect the drains. And then years and years pass and then there's a different way of disposing of the bodies. So it was almost like a learning experience. I think that's how they'll paint

Starting point is 00:13:37 this once they present it to a jury. You know, the interesting thing, and people have always said this, is why didn't he dismember the other victims? And it's because he didn't have to. Because either he got lazy or the police weren't close to him. They weren't on him. And so he figured, why go through all the extensive effort to dismember a body. So that's another thing. It is interesting and I think we still need to keep our eyes on the victim here, Valerie Mack's tragic life. She did have a son. We were always interested in why part of her leg had been removed and now we we now know it is because of a tattoo we figured that there was some friends of countermeasures being done um in an effort to uh try and uh obscure her identity um but there's still questions that remain questions that i want answered like why why split the locations of where the dismembered body parts were dumped? I know that sounds gory, but it is an interesting thing to consider and ask why.

Starting point is 00:14:53 There has to be some reason. He was so meticulous, had plans laid out for everything he did. The fact that some of Valerie Mack's remains were found in Manorville and some were found in Gilgo Beach, there's a very specific reason for this. The question is, what is it? And it could be just to make it harder, more difficult to solve the crime. I mean, that's what I'm guessing. I don't know that specifically, but that's where my head goes when I think about it. And, you know, of course, Valerie Mack, it's so sad. Her family didn't want to speak at the press conference. They didn't attend. But, you know, she is somebody who was vulnerable. She was

Starting point is 00:15:38 doing sex work and somebody who was, they said, in the indictment, advertising online at times and sometimes walking the streets. You know, somebody who was an easy target. It's so incredibly sad. Where do you see this going from here? There was mention of Karen Vergata in the press conference. There's still Asian dough, peaches, and her child. You know, I know there's been some work done to try to identify peaches, also Asian doe. So there are still other sets of remains that are potentially tied to this case.

Starting point is 00:16:16 Yes, absolutely. I think it's difficult to speculate, but again, knowing Rex's online history, searching for Asian twink and things like that, we now have a better idea that he is responsible for those victims. But trying, it has always been my hope and desire to give those victims a name. And so that's where I hope we're going to go. Obviously, Tierney is not done and that's great to see. And so I hope he continues to do the same work that he has been doing. And I really hope that next will be Peaches. I mean, remember, we have a mom and a toddler, a baby who was found there. So to us, that has always been closure is not really the right word, but getting the answers about the child.

Starting point is 00:17:13 Yeah, most certainly. It's it's just an awful case. Rex Horman, of course, remains held without bail. You know, he'll be back in court sometime next year as the case proceeds. And he's pleaded not guilty. Josh Zeman, thank you as always for joining me. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Much appreciated. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 7th Murder Charge Filed in Gilgo Beach Serial Killings

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