Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Gilgo Beach Serial Killings: 7 New Shocking Details Revealed as Suspect Hit with 4th Murder Charge

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Rex Heuermann, the man accused of being the Long Island serial killer, has been charged with a fourth murder — the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes in 2007. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said new DNA test results further link Heuermann to the crime along with new digital evidence. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with retired NYPD cold case sergeant Joe Giacalone about the new details in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. I wish she was here today, but she was taken from us. Accused Long Island serial killer Rex Horman now charged with the murder of a fourth sex worker, Maureen Brainerd Barnes, who went missing in 2007. This indictment marks a change in the investigation. The grand jury investigation of the so-called Gilgo Four is over. We have seven new details in documents just released

charging Heuermann with that fourth murder. I'm Anjanette Levy. It's Tuesday and this is Crime Fix. Rex Heuermann now faces a second degree murder charge in the death of Maureen Brainerd Barnes. When Hureman was charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelomey, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello last summer, the Suffolk County DA made it clear that Hureman was the prime suspect in the murder of Brainerd Barnes. Following Hureman's appearance in court,

Maureen Brainerd Barnes' daughter, Nicolette, spoke about her mom. It was actually the first time she had done so publicly. I'm here to speak for my mom, Maureen. I was only seven years old when my mother was murdered. Her loss drastically changed the trajectory of my life. There are countless times I needed her and she was not there. I remember she read to me every night and now I can no longer remember the sound of her voice. I wish she was not there. I remember she read to me every night and now I can no longer remember the sound of her voice. I wish she was here today but she was taken from us. For years it looked like there might not be charges filed against any suspect for the murder of my mother. While the loss of my mom has been extremely painful for me, the indictment by the grand

jury has brought hope for justice for my mom and my family. I owe so much to my mom, and I know that she would want me to speak out for her in this process and let everyone know who she really was. Even though it was difficult for me, I'm doing this because I want her to be remembered as the loving mother that she was. It took some time to get enough evidence to file these charges. Brainerd Barnes disappeared before the other victims, so her body had been in the elements a lot longer. Additional DNA testing was needed, according to Suffolk County DA Ray Tierney. And with regard to the hair found on Maureen Brainerd Barnes on that belt buckle, it was 7.9 trillion times more likely to have come

from someone with the identical genetic profile as Asa Ellerup. Well, with regard to those other bodies and those other murders, the grand jury, the task force will continue to investigate those cases. They'll be investigated through the grand jury. For his part, Rex Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him, and he plans to go to trial. You're talking about a gentleman who has never been arrested before. He's a productive member of society. He's going to work every day. He's supporting his family, and he's incarcerated, and he's claiming he didn't do this. So obviously it's troubling, and he's dealing with it on a day by day basis, one day at a time, but he is looking forward to having his day in a quarrel. With me to discuss these new details is somebody who's been following the Gilgo Beach case with

me from the beginning. He's Joe Giacalone. Joe, talk to me a little bit about how important you think it is that the investigators are saying now that Asa Ellerup's DNA in the form of her hair was found on Maureen Brainerd Barnes' body, and she was actually bound with three leather belts. Yeah, so this is now talking about that transfer evidence again. A lot of people are going to be questioning, you know, still as ACE are involved in this. Most of this can be, you know, talking about transfer evidence. Comes from the vehicle, comes into the bag, comes on the tape, the belts, what have you. This is the kind of thing that is, they're only pointing these things into one direction, and that's to Rex. And that's something that's really important that came out of this

today. Yeah, and let's hit on that next. There are some new records that have come to light from the search of Rex Horman's storage facility, including some credit card records. And this indictment, the superseding indictment, says that Rex Horman's wife Asa and the kids were out of New York when Maureen Brainerd Barnes was murdered back on July 9th, 2007, sometime around there. And they say that there's a Bank of America credit card statement that shows that Asa Ellerup was in Atlantic City at a hotel for a nearly two-week period that covers the time that Maureen Brainerd Barnes was murdered and that Rex came to visit her and the kids on July 13th. So it was in that time period. But they're saying, listen, everybody,

she was out of the state. She was not there for all of you people who keep saying she was involved. The investigators and the District Attorney Ray Tierney has said this over and over again, that Asa doesn't have any stake in what actually happened in these homicides. But this is an important clue in regards to the investigation and the timeline. Listen, the police don't release things that are coincidences. They're trying to show everybody, trying to pinpoint the time where the incident happened between the suspect Rex Yerman and Maureen Brainerd Barnes, and the fact that they have this document that shows a specific time where Rex then goes to Atlantic City a few days

later. So now we can kind of narrow down the timeline for the homicide that happens within a specific date and time, which is important because when you have an investigation going on of a homicide, you need to have those timelines done, the victim's timeline, the suspect's timeline, and then the investigator's timeline. You got to see where that victim and the suspect cross. And it's important because estimating time of death is extremely important in these cases. Joe, when it comes to Rex Shorman uh one of the big things that they say the investigators say links him to these homicides or these burner phones the burner accounts the digital evidence and now they're saying there are even more accounts that they've uncovered including an

account owned by somebody named andrew roberts who they say is him they say he used a gmail account called sandbagger 303 to communicate with a sex worker advertising his big booty BDSM. There were Internet searches for things like medieval torture of women, wooden pony porn, skinny white teen crying porn, Long Island mistress BDSM, among others. And they say in 2021 that the prosecutors are saying that Horman used the Sandbagger email account to search for information about the Gilgo Beach homicides, including a number of different items. So what do you make about this new account? It shows that there are other accounts with these different monikers possibly linked to Rex Horman. Yeah, the electronic DNA in this case, so far, you know, in this case is going to be outstanding, right? So they have this really important evidence, and now they're tracing him all across the internet, all across different

contacts with the cell phones and the email addresses. And the thing is, they're doing this years and years later. So this opens up a whole other issue about how long this data is kept and also how valuable this can be because they might end up identifying other potential victims with the with those contact information with the cell phone and the emails and you know the back page is mentioned and i'll tell you the list of his searches were absolutely disturbing we're not going to even repeat them. But, I mean, wow, it's just kind of off-the-chart stuff. Really getting into the mind of this guy is really something I think they're going to be talking about for decades and decades like they do with the Ted Bundys of the world. I mean, this guy has serious dark issues.

I'm glad that you mentioned that because there are a lot of these searches that I didn't even list because that's how disgusting they are. I don't think I could even say them that they're very raunchy and I don't even want to go there. One thing I found interesting was that on March 1st, 2020, they're saying that there was a phone that Huberman was using that sent a message to this BDSM ad. And the message said, quote, I am working all day. I was free today. My wife is out for the day, working Monday as he's going back and forth, trying to set up a date with this person. So yet again, you've got this kind of evidence showing that Rex Horman, according to prosecutors, is doing all of this stuff when his wife is not around. Yes. Like I said, there's no coincidences in regards to how they're treating this information as

they're releasing it to the public. And listen, we only know a quarter of what they actually have. So every time something comes up, they're releasing more and more information. When this trial actually happens, I think we're going to hear about some unbelievable evidence between not only the DNA, but also the electronic DNA evidence, because this case is going to be one for the record books. It's going to teach investigators going forward about how to put these cases together with such large volumes of information and technology. When you think about it, it could span several states too. We don't know yet.

So it's kind of interesting to see how this goes. One thing that I think is interesting about this as well is the fact that going back more than a decade, the investigators are claiming that Rex Horman was looking for and purchasing software that can basically shred information on digital devices. It can wipe software. So he was cognizant, according to prosecutors, of the fact that this stuff could be tracked back in like 2010. He was aware of this and he was employing these things to try to erase the evidence of his contacts with these women. Yes. You know, and the Secret Service was involved in the recovery of a lot of this evidence and and like you know things that happened 13 years ago on the internet when the software is kind of like you know dinosaur age compared to what they are able to do now so just like every company that tries to develop a situation or a software that could wipe out you know all your history and make sure

nobody gets it there's others on the other side that go back and create software to try to recover all that stuff so there's that constant battle that's happening between those two software makers out there. But it also shows you that, you know, if he comes up with a defense where I didn't know or I'm not of my right mind, you know, it's going to be very difficult for a defense attorney to prove that because it kind of shows of that, you know, intent to get rid of this because he knows what he's doing is bad and he knows what he's doing is criminal. And that's going to be his mens rea, right? That guilty mind, so to speak. We have more family DNA, according to the prosecutors, found on these victims.

And this time it's Rex Hureman's daughter, Victoria Hureman. They're saying that they found hairs that belonged to Victoria Hureman on Amber Costello's body. So why do you think it was important for them to mention this particular evidence? Because we already know that Asa Ellerup's hair, according to the prosecution, links Rex Hureman to these homicides. But now we've got the daughter's hair on one of the victims. So why do they throw that in? Well, it's important because when you get a mixture of DNA samples from a crime scene, daughter's hair on one of the victims. So why do they throw that in? Well, it's important because when you get a mixture of DNA samples from a crime scene, you have to eliminate and exclude all others as potential suspects. And that's the name of the game of an investigation. And this is what they actually did here. So they had several,

say several, at least three DNA deposits of different varieties. And then they went about their business on how to go about getting those exemplars and elimination samples so they use the you know green reverse california the abandonment sample decision where the police can go and collect things that you've thrown away and then test it for dna and what have and fingerprints and what have you so it is a real testament of how this investigation developed and how well that they dotted their eyes across their T's. Because the defense attorney is going to say, well, there are other pieces of DNA here that you didn't identify. And maybe those people were the killers.

They're actually eliminating all those arguments right now as we speak. So they're putting a nice bow on this case. And I really like the way that the district attorney has really put this together, as well as the Suffolk County investigators and task force. Another thing we learned from these new documents, Joe, was the fact that we knew that they were tailing Rex Horman. Of course, they had him under surveillance. They were following him everywhere. But now we found out they were actually following members of his family, including his daughter, Victoria Hureman. They actually followed her onto a train. There is a photograph of her sitting in a seat on a train.

And the way they got her DNA to begin with was they went through some trash. She tossed away a can of a monster energy drink and they got a DNA sample that way. So they weren't just following Rex Horman. They're following the entire family. What do you think of that? Yeah, that's exactly what they needed to do because they needed to get those elimination samples. And that's the only way to do it. Because if you walked up to her and said, listen, we're the police. We think your father's a serial killer. I mean, that's not going to work. So they need to do this covertly. They need to do this. And listen, I can guarantee you this wasn't a one-time-out, lucky, one-off event. They probably had to do this several times in order to try to find or follow her, in order to try to find it.

It's also a good indication that, you know, they kind of did their due diligence on this. They spent the time, they spent the money and the effort to make sure that they got these samples and that they were able to attach these samples to ones found at the crime scene, because then it leaves no other answer other than Rex. And I think that's really going to be damaging for the defense to try to even explain this away. And just to touch on this whole thing about the DNA again, something that piqued my interest was the fact that they're saying in these documents that they have talked to Asa Allarup. And it sounds like they were cooperative, both the wife and the children. They gave DNA samples willingly to the police.

So it's not like it doesn't sound like they had to go get a warrant. It sounds like they said, yeah, you can take a swab or what have you. So I found that to be interesting. You know, one of the other developments is that the fact that they're saying that Asa Elirup's hair was found on the outside of the head area of Megan Waterman. And there was also male hair found on Megan Waterman that was linked to Rex Horman. We kind of already knew about that. But again, it's just some more evidence from the home or the truck linking pure men to these bodies according to the prosecution. Right. And I'm just going to try to simplify that a little for the viewers because there's

some confusion with this. It's you can only get a DNA sample from somebody. I call the three C's court order through consent or through covertly, which is the abandonment sample. So once they had it because they the district attorney specifically said mitochondrial dna and i always tell my students just remember m for mom that's the for mitochondrial that's the only way that you're going to get that dna is the mom's family so you're missing half the family the nuclear dna contains the entire nucleus which is the entire family now this had to do with hair follicles and it is the breakdown the hair shaft only has mitochondrial dna the bulb is what contains the nuclear dna so that's why investigators needed to get those consent samples after that they had so that they had the

mitochondrial dna and attach it to the nuclear dna which the district attorney rightly called it the gold standard and that's basically what they're they did here. So they really did a textbook style here investigation with the DNA. And that's about the easiest way I can explain it. Joe, Rex Huerman is now charged with murders of four sex workers. But that doesn't mean that this investigation is anywhere close to being over. There are still a number of other sets of remains that were found along Gilgo Beach, some remains that were found on Fire Island, or at least parts of remains that were found on Fire Island. So where does the investigation go from here? Where do you see it going? And do you think that Rex Horman could face charges in possibly other cases? I mean,

some of these other cases are much older. Well, from the very beginning, when this investigation first launched, I had the theory that this was one serial killer responsible for all of these bodies, all of them from up from Manorville, all the way to Fire Island to the Gilgo. And the reason why I said that it was somebody whose MO had changed from picking girls up off the street, and then have to dismember them because someone could have seen something to where he then transferred himself to the electronic, the internet, and then the burner phones where he felt more comfortable and the reason why he didn't have to dismember anybody. So I believe technology had a lot to do with how this person transitions from

doing what he was doing. And also the fact that when you're looking at some of these cases now uh when i i was asked about this a long time ago i said you need to concentrate on the gilgo for because we can all agree that there was one person responsible for those four the other cases are going to be hard but there's one case in particular engine that i'm looking at really close and that's the case of peaches her her body was found in a bucket, a plastic bin in a place called Hempstead Lake State Park, and her toddler was found out on Gilgo Beach. And the reason why I focus in on that case is because the FBI was already involved in identifying her. And the second thing is inside a plastic container, she was wrapped in a blanket, if I remember correctly, and there's some other items in there where we might get lucky where a DNA sample was attached attached to it whether it's a hair follicle or something like that because it

was in a contained location so that's the case that i'd be focusing on next and for investigators listen the case doesn't end when you make an arrest you have those four cases now that are clearly in the hands of the district attorney investigators now will go start seeing what else they can find on those other cases and see if there's any tied. You have somebody who is already suspected of four. Could it be more? Of course, you always stick with that. But you have to develop your theories and keep on going and collecting evidence. And it could take some time as well because these cases are older.

The evidence could be degraded. Yes, in Peach's case, it may have been more preserved because of the cooler and things of that nature. But still, this can be a painstaking process. I think we can see with the how extensive the DNA testing was in the Barnard, Marine Brainerd Barnes case, we can see that sometimes this takes a long time because you have to go through another layer of testing or two sometimes with DNA when it's been degraded. Exactly right so they didn't name those DNA labs yet. They will come out and eventually but also in regards to how long this takes is that we know the district attorney is fond of using the secrecy of a grand jury and that takes a long time coming putting that together in

New York state. It compr prizes of 16 to 23 people that have to be chosen so it's not you know a 12-person jury you have to go for a much larger group of jurors which takes even longer to go through the process and then you know that that take look how long that took with the marine brandon bonds case so patience is going to be the name of the game for those that are watching this case and for the families i could just say to them you know like we we hope that this helps a little bit what i don't want to see happen at the end of this is him taking a plea i think he needs to go to trial and i think the family members need to hear him hear the jury say he's guilty and i think that will help with them

move on with their lives because it's been devastating for them. Well, we will see how it ends up for sure. He's at this point saying he didn't do it. So there is another charge now, another case. We kind of expected this, but still, it's going to take some time to wind its way through the courts. We know that. Joe Giacalone, thanks so much for coming on as usual. We appreciate it. Anytime. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix on Tuesday, January 16th, 2024. I'm Anjanette Levy. We'll see you back here tomorrow night. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel

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