Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Accused Long Island Serial Killer Disturbing Searches

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Nancy Grace is joined by Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder Sheryl McCollum  to break down the evidence against accused Long Island Serial Killer, Rex Heuermann. The architect's computer searches shows disturbing title of bondage, torture and  child pornography. The accused killer also drives a Chevy Avalanche described by a witness. He's caught on surveillance video buying more minutes for a burner phone. Investigators have determined a hair found on one of the victims is a DNA match to Heuermann's famliy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Finally, the devil behind bars. I'm talking about a well-known architect, Rex Heuermann, now charged in three of many Long Island murders. How many more is he connected to? And not only that, are my suspicions real? Is this guy connected to even more dead bodies?

This is what has been going right now. Do you do the same thing every morning? I do. I go and I make a cup of hot tea, either half skim, half hot water, or half cashew milk and half hot water. Then I read crime news. That's around 5 a.m. after I take my mother a cup of coffee.

I do the same thing every morning. You want to tell me he quit murdering women? Because as recently as 2023, and I checked three times, he was buying more minutes in a cell phone store for his burner phone, which is how he contacted all of these murdered women through burner phone. He's still at it. I believe that's why he was arrested at this time, not earlier, not later, because for some, police feared he was yet again on the hunt. Joining me right now, longtime friend and colleague, forensic expert, founder, director of the Cold Case Research Institute and star of a new hit series, Zone 7. Cheryl McCollum is with us. Cheryl, he ain't done yet. Nancy, I think you are spot on.

I think not only are there more bodies coming, I think we're going to look in different states. If we can connect them. And now that we've got his DNA off a pizza crust, I'm so happy they got it off a pizza crust. Now that we've got his DNA, I think it needs to be compared to every other unsolved homicide case of women. Now, we do know that there was one Asian male in this mix, one of the many bodies found there on Long Island near Gilgo Beach. So it's not just limited to women, but I think largely, generally speaking, it is women. That's who he likes to torture. Have you seen his Google searches?

I have. I hate to even say them out loud. I had to go rinse out my mouth after I read them out loud. They actually physically make me sick. I hate to even actually look at them on my iPad or my laptop. Hey, Cheryl, you remember when I wrote my first book, it was Objection. And I wrote one chapter about blood money, about how people like sell autopsy reports and autopsy photos and just horrible things associated with murder. By the

time I looked all that up, I actually got rid of the laptop. It's like a $300 laptop because I felt that it was just tainted with all the disgusting searches I had to run to write that book. And when I look at these searches, I mean, can we just talk about that for a moment, please? You start. Oh, I think you need to read a couple of them. Okay, I'm pulling them up right now. Just give the folks some highlights because i think it's important for people to understand this while i'm looking them up again tell me how close the bodies were to each other oh within three miles i mean how many bodies all of these bodies eight

that we know of in that three mile stretch four bodies within 500 feet oh you're right that's yeah is that the gilgo four jack was it those four the gilgo four or four out of many bodies right along that that very small stretch of remote beach that were discarded in camouflage type burlap bags. And the way they were tied up and the mode of death were all similar. And there's DNA connecting back to him and his wife. She's not involved. Her hair, I believe, was transferred from either her or their home to the perp, the alleged perp, and that he transferred that to them. That said, back to the searches.

Okay, here we go. Are you ready? Well, it sounds innocuous enough. It starts with Mistress Long Island, Mature Escorts Manhattan. You know, his office, his architectural office is in Manhattan. Here we go. Girl begging for rape porn. You better sit down, Jackie.

Teen girl begging for rape porn. Pretty girl with bruised face porn. Torture redhead porn. This one's scary. Ten-year-old school girl. Hint-a-plump-blank-lips-cut-off-porn. Plump blank lips cut off porn. Skinny redhead tied up porn. Short fat girl tied up porn. Tied up and raped porn.

Asian twink tied up porn. Twink is a slang word for a male who has feminine characteristics. Tied slave, force-fed blank, blank shot, and crying porn. Girl hog tied, torture porn. I mean, I guess I'll keep going. 10-year-old blonde hair girl, chubby 10-year-old girl, black girl ten years old. There's a lot of searches for ten-year-old girls. Girl with face beat up, chubby ten-year-old girl crying. This is a hateful person that would even write this or think it. Chubby ten-year-old girl crying, 13- crying 13 year old school girl age 12 child girl with

blonde hair blue eyes blonde hair girl young depressed teen girl oil bodies pre-teen girls with makeup nude slave girls old janitors blank little school girl, crying girl, painful blank, school girl crying teen porn. Can I stop now? That's 30 entries. Oh, you can stop. Yep. And there's a clear pattern. This torture porn, the tying up, the cutting off. We know one victim for sure was dismembered. But when people, you know, post things and they say things like, oh, I'm shocked there would be this much that he would research, I want to be perfectly clear, Nancy, you can be a part-time father. You can be a part-time reporter. You can be a part-time preacher, but you cannot be a part-time pedophile, part-time rapist, or part-time serial killer. That is what you do full-time.

People say, well, his house doesn't look like an architect. That's because he doesn't care about the house. He doesn't care about the money. He doesn't care about cars. He doesn't care about his wife. He doesn't care about his kids. He cares about this. He researches it. He reads about it. He fantasizes about it. He drives around hunting. He drives around looking for the right victim. He makes phone calls. He researches burner phones. He researches GPS. He uses the burlap. He thinks he's done all these things, but this is what he does every single day.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm just thinking about what you said. Cheryl, you know what I think about all the time. I think about the twins, my children, and solving unsolved homicides and finding missing people. That's what I think about. I do other things. I talk about the law. I cook special dinners almost every night for the twins.

I take care of my mom. But the other thing is what I'm thinking about all the time. If I think about, oh, what am I going to make for supper tonight? It's about what would the twins like? They just had their wisdom teeth out. What can they eat? What would appeal to them? Or my mom, what could she eat?

She's so picky. What would appeal to them? Or my mom, what could she eat? She's so picky. What would be good for her? All the time, every other topic relates back to that. Absolutely. Listen, you and I got together recently, and it was the twins and, of course, Huck and Caroline. But you were on your way to the store to get the meal prep. You were talking about not just they were starting high school, but then you were talking about, you know, potential colleges. Like you're now in the future. Every single thing we did that

day revolved around the twins or talking about my children. We did a little investigating on the side, but at the eight hours we were together, predominantly it was our children. And that's what I'm telling you. When the children are not even with you, you're thinking about what to feed them. Oh, I've got to get their clothes ready. Oh, I forgot to call the orthodontist. You're doing things for them all the time. That is disman. So instead of the twins, it's murder. Can you even imagine performing these searches? Hey, I've got so much to talk to you about. Can we talk for a moment about this idiot? Now, when I say that, I know the guy is a very astute architect, so he's not stupid. He's probably got a pretty high IQ.

But that said, I'm reading between the lines, trying to decipher everything we've learned so far. Do you think this idiot, it reminds me a little bit of Koberger, Brian Kobe Berger in Idaho. Did he actually travel with the burner phones with his personal cell phone? Because you can, I'm guessing, can see him. He did. Like when you kidnap somebody and everywhere your phone goes, their phone goes, right? Exactly. Okay. The two phones are right there together.

Traveling together. Two little dots. Do you understand the facts they haven't come out and said that yet but that's how i understand the facts that's exactly how i understand it and it makes sense because he wouldn't have left one phone he had to have both in case his wife called up to seven burner phones up to seven and what we're understanding is most of these crimes occurred when his wife and daughter were out of town which leads me to the point of did the some at least some of the crimes occur at the home because these were extended torture sessions where the victims were bound i gagged, tortured, raped, most likely repeatedly, and then killed, then put in burlap bags, and then discarded.

Pretty close to his time, about a 25-minute drive. So I don't see crimes that took that long occurring in his Chevy Avalanche. Do you think they occurred at the home? I do. And if you remember the first victim, Gilbert, she was 24. Remember, she had a driver. She had a security person, but she called 911 and she said, somebody's after me. She was at a residence, I believe. And she even called her driver and said, please come get me out of here, Mike. That's one of the statements. But this whole thing is the stuff of nightmares, Nancy, because if you want to know if police believe things happen at the house, they're digging up

the backyard. They're taking things out of the house that just give you such a creepy feel, these dolls, that doll that's encased in the wooden and glass little frame um and now we've moved on to a storage unit so yeah i think this thing is going to get deeper and wider and more twisted and darker as the days go explain to me you're the forensic expert how you break down a house like that you would literally have to go room for room and take your time because you don't know where something is relevant for him. So again, I don't know why the doll is relevant, but I know they took it and I know what it did for me when I saw it because I know some dolls were left at some of the scenes where bodies were recovered.

So I don't know if that's his thing. I don't know if he took something off each victim and put it on that doll. I don't know if that's something his mom had and he just kept it. I just know it looked really creepy, and it looked sinister to me. And again, law enforcement took it. But you would start literally with that front door, whatever room you're in, and I would go from the living room, what's on the walls? What's on the side tables? What's on the TV? Where's the computer? Look at his, you know, the way he's got things set up. Is there a freezer? Is there anything in the basement? He's got a shed that he called. In one

video, he's being interviewed. He talks about like a little work station, work shed. I would go through that like a crazy person because he talked about hammer and you know there's going to be other tools in there. The one victim that was dismembered, is there anything in there like a circular saw or anything that would make that job easier? Does he have knives? You're going to look at drawings. You're going to look at writings. You're going to look at things that he collected. Is there any jewelry that's not in his wife's jewelry box that may be in a cigar box on his side of the bedroom? I would go through every single solitary thing. I wouldn't miss nothing. Another issue, did he take items from the victims as souvenirs. And I'll tell you why I think it's entirely possible.

Number one, that is a really textbook sign of a serial killer. Like I scrapbook for the twins. I may take ticket stubs or a menu or something to remind me and put it with pictures. That's how serial killers and other killers act. There were several victims that had jewelry missing, items that they always wore were gone. And I want to harken back to a particular phone call that I believe this perp, Rex Heuermann, made. One of the victims, a man used the victim's phone to call the victim's sister. So he used her phone. So the sister thinks, oh my star, she's okay. She's calling me from her phone. I'll call her ID. She picks up. It's a man

that starts asking questions about her. And he then says, I raped her before I murdered her. That was very amateurish. It was basically an evil, hateful prank call. So if he would do that, that leads me to believe he would do other similar acts like keep souvenirs. I agree. He also made a mistake when he left the belt that possibly belonged to his grandfather. I thought a while back that belt was going to be what broke this case. I thought it was going to have the suspect's DNA on that, and I thought somebody was going to recognize that belt. For example, a wife or a girlfriend or a sibling,

that somebody would know that belt. I still find it odd that nobody said anything about it, but I think maybe that'll come later. But I think it's important, again, that the jewelry, anything that is missing from those victims, anything that they can now say, we found this in the home in an unusual place, and they should put it out there for people to say, I know that, or I recognize this, especially family members. A cooler was removed from his home. A doll, as you hear Cheryl describing, encased in a glass case was removed from his home. We don't know what else has been removed exactly. Many of the bags were opaque, so we couldn't see into what was being taken out.

But we also know that his office was raided. And I guarantee you his office is going to yield something, because that's what he would keep away from his wife, although his daughter did work for him the wife would see things that the daughter may not see what do you make of that i think the office again is where most people spend the majority of their week what's going to be there is going to be what he spends the majority of his time doing, which again, hunting, being a predator, researching, gathering, the burner phones, when he decides to go where, how many he decides to buy.

The other thing that I think is going to be in there, in that office, is a money trail. And what I mean by that is there may be hotel rooms, there may be other storage units, there could be things that he's paying for that his wife has no idea about. So I think that's going to become something that I'm interested in. This thing, again, Nancy, it's so much wider and it is so much deeper than we know now. Anywhere he traveled, anywhere he spent a significant amount of time. Again, you are not a part-time serial killer. So if you spent a lot of time in South Carolina or Rhode Island or Massachusetts, I would concentrate on all of those places.

I would concentrate on any murders that occurred when his wife was out of town. Absolutely. And now that we've got his face, you're going to have more people contact law enforcement going, he approached me in a parking lot. Because let me tell you something about this person. Just like Ted Bundy, he didn't kill everybody he engaged with. Some of this was a cat and mouse. It was fun to him. He liked to upset people. He liked to see people nervous and scared, but he didn't kill every one of them. But they're going to come forward too because they've had interaction with

this person and can put him at places and times and behavior. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Another interesting thing that was taken out of his home is the cat scratch pole. I find that really interesting. I'm wondering if cat hair was found on any of the victims. We know that he was married during the time many of these people, many of the victims were killed, that his wife and family were gone out of state when some of the murders occurred. That makes me wonder if somehow more hair wasn't transferred. We know his wife's hair was transferred.

Three of her hairs were found on three victims. One of his hairs, according to police, is found at the bottom of one of these burlap bags. I'm really curious about taking the cat scratch pole, the cooler, other items. And another issue. Yeah, I think you're on it. What do you make of the Chevy Avalanche? I can't believe one of the victims was seen with a guy who had a Chevy Avalanche at her place.

Here's his Chevy Avalanche, which, as you know, I pointed out, was a discontinued manufacturer in 2013. But yet he has a Chevy Avalanche today. It was just towed out from in front of his place. I think another family member has a Chevy Avalanche. Could it be the same one? I mean, they haven't been made since 2013. What an incredible eyewitness to not only recognize it's a Chevy Avalanche,

but to know it's the first generation in the color. So to me, again, that vehicle is going to be a money tree. Because, again, this is a person, if you look at the Lockhart principle, transferred hair from his home to his person to the victim, the scene. So you've got, number one, an incredible crime scene investigator that found one hair. Brilliant. Now you've got this connection to a home, to a person, to a crime scene. They're going to be able to do the same thing with the truck, from the truck to the person to a crime scene. They're going to be able to do the same thing with the truck, from the truck to the person to the crime scene. What about, you notice all these victims, 24,

25, 22, 27, 20, 24. The male was between 17 and 23 at the time. In the last weeks, another woman comes forward and she filed a police report at the time about this perp approaching or sneaking up on her in a park, coming up behind her and asking about her boyfriend. The fact that she told other people about it, that is an outcry at the time contemporaneously with the incident. She's not just making this up now. She verified it. She authenticated it at the time. It's this guy coming up and asking her very personal questions. Again, it reminds me of Koberger, Cheryl. He would come up to women at bars, bars he was later kicked out of, and say things like, hey, what's your home address and phone number? I would run for the hills as if I had seen a monster. If a guy came up and wanted to know, you know, what's the make and model of

your car? Where do you live? What's your address? What's your phone? No, that's weird. Just like this. And this woman actually has identified Rex Herman as being the guy. Well, here's what we've got to remember. You've got somebody like Ted Bundy that also killed a 12-year-old. This guy is a sexual pervert. So the Asian male could have been a witness that he had to get rid of, or it could have been something he was just, again, his fantasy he was playing with. So there's going to be, I'm telling you, more people that come forward like this woman. He approached probably hundreds of people over the years, conservatively,

just messing with them, Nancy, just to watch their reaction. To say something personal, to say something inappropriate. Once he got that reaction, he just giggled and walked off. That's just, he just had fun. And I'm telling you, I guarantee you the phone's ringing right now with people that have those stories about him. This was on July the 3rd, which means he's still up to the same thing. The woman says, quote, the first time he came up behind me, I felt like breathing behind me. Then he asked me what time it was. And he saw a picture of me and my boyfriend on my phone. So he started asking questions.

He came up to her more than once at Brady Park. That's when I got my sister on the phone because I was scared, nervous. She had to come pick me up. I couldn't even go home from my bike ride. And she filed a police report about the encounter. That's July 3. Okay.

Couple that, Cheryl McCollum, with that. In 2023, he's back at a cell phone store buying more minutes for his burner phone. As I told my husband last night, man gets a burner phone, wife gets a lawyer. If my husband popped up with a burner phone, bye-bye. Why do you need not one but seven burner phones that we know of? And this year, he's back adding minutes. Somebody asked me, what do you think he's been doing since 2010?

Raping and killing? I do not think he has stopped at all. But where are the bodies? As soon as these bodies started being discovered, I think he moved to a new dumping ground. I believe so, too, because, again, he's watching the news. This is what he does full time. So you remember Wayne Williams? They came out and said, hey, we've got forensic evidence on the body.

Suddenly, the next victims were thrown in the river. This guy's watching the news. So as soon as they find, you know, Gilbert and the other 10 people along that beach line, I'm certain he moved. There's no doubt in my mind. Of course he did, but where? And again, when his wife was gone, when he would have the home to himself, she's Icelandic. Does she travel back home to Iceland?

Because that would give him a big window. So he probably got long periods of time. Yeah, exactly. Cheryl, what else do you expect we will discover about the evidence? I think there's going to be more forensic evidence that we now are going to be able to understand where it came from, whether it's computer information, cell phone pinging information, or things like you mentioned, the cat hair. There's no way there's not cat hair on their sofa. So when he sat down and leaned back and then got into his truck and then got to the victim,

that there's not cat hair transferred. So we're going to have that come out and that's going to make much more sense now. And once they get that hair analyzed, they can prove it's not just a feline. It's the same feline. You know, you're right, Sheryl McComb. You know, I've always been a dog person. Didn't really like cats until I took it astray when I was an assistant district attorney. Nobody else would take.

I tried to push it off on other people. Nobody would take it. That cat ran my life for the next 18 years coco solid black male love the cat i became a cat person and a dog person i now have another cat lucy wanted i thought giving her a cat would cure her of her obsessive watching cat videos cinnamon she named it i can't go anywhere without being covered in cat hair i don't care and now we have the guineas and the dog i'm the other day david said what is all over you know what you know what honestly i do not know you'd have to take this to the crime lab and figure out

what what let me just tell people for the record, you vacuum every day. And still, there's going to be evidence that you have a cat. Only the twins room, so they do not inhale all that into their little bitty bodies. Okay. The rest of us can just go straight to. But, yes, I do. Yes, I'm constantly cleaning something that an animal did. But my point back to you, you know, if he had a cat, it's all over him.

He can even hate the cat and never even pet the cat. He'll still be covered in cat hair. I don't know how it happens. You have to ask a vet about that. Cheryl McCollum, I can't wait to see the evidence unfold. Sadly, there is no death penalty in New York. Unbelievable police work from that task force. Unbelievable on scene from the crime scene.

Man, you know it. And as far as punishment, I guess we'll have to leave that to the Lord, right? Absolutely. I can't wait for this evidence to unfold. Cheryl McCollum, thank you. This is an iHeart Podcast.