Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - SKULL IDed: Long Island serial killer suspect Rex Heuerman's office just blocks from victim 7 apartment

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Another body linked to the Long Island Serial Killer has been identified.  The 34-year-old woman was named  Karen Vergata, a sex worker who disappeared from her Manhattan home in 1996. Two months later, her legs were found in a plastic bag at Fire Island’s Blue Point Beach, leading to her being referred to as “Fire Island Jane Doe.” Her skull was found 15 years later and linked to the Fire Island remains via DNA analysis,   Charges have not yet been brought in this case, as police ask for a DNA swab from Rex Heuermann.  Joining Nancy Grace Today:  Bernarda Villalona – NY Criminal Defense Attorney & Former Prosecutor, Villalona Law, PLLC.: @BernardaVillalona (FaceBook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads); Twitter: @VillalonaLaw Dr. Angela Arnold – Psychiatrist, Atlanta, GA; Expert in the Treatment of Pregnant/Postpartum Women; Former Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology: Emory University; Former Medical Director of The Psychiatric Ob-Gyn Clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital; Voted “My Buckhead’s Best Psychiatric Practice of 2022” Sheryl McCollum – Forensic Expert, Founder: Cold Case Investigative Research Institute in Atlanta, GA. Host of "Zone 7"; Twitter: @149Zone7 Joseph Giacalone  – Former NYPD Sergeant SDS and Author: “ The Cold Case Handbook” and “The Criminal Investigative Function: A Guide for New Investigators 4th Edition;” Twitter: @JoeGiacalone Josh Zeman – Filmmaker and Producer; Director of “The Killing Season” (an 8-part series on the Gilgo killer and ties to other victims in the area from 2017) Dr. Tim Gallagher – Medical Examiner State of Florida; Lecturer: University of Florida Medical School Forensic Medicine; Founder/Host: International Forensic Medicine Death Investigation Conference Jen Smith- Chief Reporter for DailyMail.com; Twitter: @jen_e_smith See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A major development in the so-called Long Island Serial Killer case. In the last days, yet another woman has been positively identified. A 34-year-old woman. What more do we know? And how long till her body will be linked to Rex Heuermann, now charged in the murders of three of the so-called Gilgo Beach Four. But there are many other bodies.

In this particular case, Karen Vergata is the most recently named victim. Her legs were found several miles away at Davis Beach. Her skull is found at Gilgo, where the other victims had been disposed, thrown away like trash on a remote stretch of beach. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. What do we know? First of all, take a listen to our friends at NBC. Even though accused serial killer Rex Hurman sits in jail awaiting trial, there are still many unanswered questions in the Gilgo Beach murders case.

At least 11 bodies were discovered on Long Island over a decade ago, and Hurman is accused of killing three of the women. Today, a breakthrough. We are here to announce that as part of the Gilgo Task Force re-examination of all the evidence in the case, we are able to identify Fire Island Jane Doe as Karen Vergata. With me, an all-star panel. But first, I want to go to a special guest, Joseph Giacalone, former NYPD sergeant, cold case investigator, and author of The Cold Case Handbook and The Criminal Investigation

Investigative Function, a guide for new investigators. You can find him at josephjacalone.com. Can we just get real just a moment? We're hearing Rex Heuermann is not being linked to this newly identified skull. But what's the likelihood? What is the likelihood, Joseph, that another killer just happened to hide a skull so close in proximity to the other victims? I don't find that actually practical. From the very beginning,

I was a firm believer in one serial killer, not two using the same location to dump their bodies. Yeah, who came up with that theory? Where did that come from? Well, the theory actually I've been floating for a long time now is that the individual who was responsible for all these killings changed his MO over the years due to technology. So there was a reason he had a dismembered body in the beginning. He picked up these women, probably who were streetwalkers at the time, and was worried about somebody saw them get into his car. Okay, wait.

Did you say streetwalker? Yes. I haven't heard that since I read it in a novel in the 10th grade. But I like it. Feel free to continue saying streetwalker. You mean, as they now say, sex worker. I don't think we're supposed to say hooker or prostitute anymore. But you know what?

You say tomato. I say tomato. What I don't like about it, Joseph, is that somehow their lives are devalued because they're a hooker. These are also mothers, sisters, daughters. You know, I don't care what my daughter did. I still love her. I may not like what she does, but I love her so much. And for them to just be slated off as, oh, they're sex workers.

They're a lot more than that. But that said, go ahead. Why you think it's one serial killer that changed him as I'm very interested in this? Well, so he had to pick them up off the street. So the issue that comes down to is that he was in need for disposing the bodies by dismembering them because he was worried about it. So even if you look at the Peaches case where, you know, not only was she dismembered, but he was trying to remove a tattoo. He wanted to make everything impossible for the police to identify these women so that he could keep on going, doing what he was doing. And then along comes the internet and along comes burner phones. And he's now able to what he believes to be anonymous, where he can pick up women on the internet without having to worry about anybody tracking him down

and then use a burner phone to communicate with them. So there was no need for him at that moment to have to dismember them. And that's why we could all have agreed in the very beginning of this case that the Gilgo Four, the four women found in close proximity, wrapped in burlap, that they were all killed by the same person. The other cases are going to be much different. But there are a lot more bodies, Joseph. What was that last thing? I said the rest of the victims are going to be much more difficult to prove because not only are they old, but we don't know if there's any DNA available like we saw with the Gilgo 4. Interesting. Jen Smith is joining me, chief investigative reporter, DailyMail.com.

Hold on, Jen. One quick question to Josh Zeman, filmmaker and producer. And you may wonder, why am I speaking to a filmmaker and producer? Well, he's the director of The Killing Season. And I've got to say, it's incredible. It's an eight-part series on the Gilgo Killer. And this existed before Rex Heuermann was arrested. Zeeman's been on the case for a long time and tying to victims back in the area from 2017.

Josh Zeman, I'm very intrigued by what Joe Giacalone just said. That based on technology, the Long Island serial killer changed his M.O. I agree with that, but I also think that he got away with killing and dismembering and then decided that he didn't really need to dismember anymore. Maybe he got comfortable in his killings. Maybe he thought, wow, nobody's caught me yet. Hey, I'll just keep going. I'm not, I don't know if it was just technology or his own psychopathy. What do you think, Josh Zeman? I would say probably both.

I mean, you know, it's just so interesting. It takes a lot of work to dismember a body, right? And we know that women, some of those dismembered bodies were found in plastic bags. The question is, where did he do that? So I think, yes, definitely. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I know about the burlap bags. We all know about the burlap bags and that one of his, Rex Ewing's hair, was allegedly found in one of the burlap bags with the dead body. But what can you tell us about plastic bags? Well, let's look at Karen Bregada. She was found,

or at least her legs, tragically, were found in a plastic bag. That bag was floating in the water. So, you know, that's one example. Jessica Taylor, whose torso was found in Manorville, was found on plastic sheeting. There was another victim found in a rubber made, this is Peaches, who was found in Hempstead Park, was found in a cooler. So, you know, he's wrapping the body parts tragically in some kind of something, plastic, plastic sheeting. So, you know, we have to assume that this is a very complicated process. So if he gets lazy or comfortable or what have you, you can see why he wouldn't. I mean, he's since 96, he hasn't been caught. So, you know, he's got 10 years of not having been caught.

So, yeah, maybe that changed part of his M.O. But I also believe Joe is right with regards to the technology. It's so interesting because sex workers were actually one of the first people to go on the Internet and really use it for messaging on message boards, putting ads together. If you go to the history of the Internet, sex workers were early, early adopters. You know, I'm thinking about everything you're saying. I could listen to the two of you, Josh Zeman and Joe Jekyll all day, but I have an incredible panel joining us to you, Cheryl McCollum, founder and director of the Cold Case Research Institute, star of a new hit podcast, Zone 7. You can find her at coldcasecrimes.org. Cheryl, no word can make me happier than plastic right now. When you have a plastic sheeting, plastic wrap, a plastic bag in water,

even a cooler that is very likely made of plastic, of hard plastic. It's such an excellent conduit for fingerprints, even if it's been in water. Absolutely. A lot of times people think that they're going to wrap something or encase something and that's going to destroy evidence. A lot of times it actually preserves it. And what we're seeing here, when you're talking about a skull being found in one place, torsos in another, legs in another, the transport is key to me. This person, this killer, had a way to not only dismember, but to individually transport those body parts to different locations. That's critical to understanding who this person is. Okay, I asked you about plastic and you're telling me about transport. Why? But it's critical because that's how he's transporting them.

They weren't just put in there and put on the outside. They transported them this way. And that's what I'm saying is critical. Hair, fingerprints, other biological material on the victim would be key. Dr. Tim Gallagher joining me, medical examiner out of Florida, lecturer, University of Florida Medical School, and founder of the International Forensic Medicine Death Investigation Conference. And you can find him at pathcaremed.com.

Dr. Gallagher, thank you so much for being with us. I've got so many things to talk to you about because Karen Vergara's skull is found at Gilgo. Her legs are found at Davis Beach. But what I want to ask you right now is we've all heard the phrase oil and water. They go together or they don't mix like oil and water. The reason that fingerprints on, for instance, plastic, which is such a great medium, a great conduit for evidence, is because of the oil in the human body. When you touch something, it's the oil markings that show the swirls on your fingertips. That's how it works. And on plastic, even if it's been submerged in water, that oil may very well still exist. Well, that's true, Nancy. The body,

especially the skin, produces a large amount of oil for the lubrication and the suppleness of the skin to keep it that way. But that oil is excreted through every pore on the body. And if that finger comes in contact with any surface, especially a plastic surface, a smooth surface, that oil will be deposited. That print will be very readily available for identification using the proper techniques. So plastic is always a good thing to find at the scene, especially when you're trying to identify somebody or a suspect live. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace straight out to jen smith chief investigative reporter dailymail.com jen thank you for being with us what happened well i mean we're just moving through this

investigation bit by bit this most recent discovery of karen Karen Bergata being the woman whose body was found, you know, this takes it all the way back, this investigation, to 1996. That really changes the game in terms of Rex Heurman and the case against him. We have to think about where he was in 1996. What did his life look like? Could he be responsible for all of these deaths? And we do know that he was living in Massapequa Park back then. So this most recent development, positively IDing this Jane Doe,

who's a poor woman who was dismembered all the way back in the 90s, really broadens the scope here. Guys, I want you to take a listen to this. In 2010, police discovered four bodies on Gilgo Beach. Rex Kierman is accused of killing three of them. Police believed at the time they had a serial killer. In the search for more victims, they found Vergara's skull just over five months later. But no ID was made until Suffolk County officials assembled a task force. The DA says that no one reported her missing. Her family may not have been looking for her. The FBI relied on that large DNA database that now exists to identify her. was developed for genealogy testing. In September 2022, the FBI loaded the profile into a genetic

genealogy database. In October, a Vergara relative was identified and asked for a DNA swab. You are hearing our friends at NBC and PIX11. So that is how she, Karen Vergara, was identified and given a name so many years later. Remember, she goes missing in 1996. She lived in Manhattan on 45th Street. She goes missing on Valentine's Day, 96. What happened? She was not reported missing, her name not heard until now. Another curious angle before I get into the complexities of the DNA to Dr. Angela Arnold, renowned psychiatrist joining us out of the Atlanta jurisdiction at AngelaArnoldMD.com. Dr. Angie, I'm going to give you an anecdotal scenario, and then you can explain, I'm sure. In many cases, and I didn't understand it until I was on, I don't know, my seventh, eighth, ninth murder prosecution, I noticed that

very often victims would be covered up. They'd be wrapped in something, they'd have a blanket over their face, sometimes something as rudimentary as putting leaves or limbs over the face specifically, sometimes the whole body. If a shallow grave wasn't created and used as a disposal, the victim would be just somehow covered in some way. Not always, but very often. I've even covered a case where a woman is found dead in her home, in her bed, and a wicker trash can had been put over her head. What does that mean? Because here, many of the victims are wrapped in plastic. One is in a cooler. What does that mean psychologically? I think it signifies a couple of different things, Nancy.

One of the things that it could unconsciously signify for the murderer is a finishing, a completion of what he has done, and a burial, which is a completion of the act of murder, okay? So, and it's unconscious. They do this unconsciously to finish what they have started. The covering of the face is to make the person who has been murdered seem less human to the murderer. Okay? So it's kind of a two-pronged thing. But I know it sounds weird to people because somebody would dismember and murder these people horribly. But then unconsciously, they want to bury them to finish it it to me it's very much like keeping a souvenir afterwards so they they bury

the body they complete what they have done so in their mind it's finished okay and of course like I said the covering of the face is to make them less human to the serial killer. Make them less human. Hold on. I need to write that down. Make victim less than human. Okay. With me, a veteran trial lawyer, Bernarda Villalona, worked in Homicide Bureau with a prosecutor on the Gilgo case.

Now, that's interesting enough right there. But this woman knows her way around a courtroom. And, you know, you don't hear, Jackie, if you notice, lawyers don't really compliment each other very much. So when you hear one lawyer say about another one, that's a fine lawyer or that's a veteran trial lawyer. That is a huge compliment. She's a New York criminal defense attorney now, sadly. You can find her at violonallaw.com. Bernarda, you know, I'm listening to what Dr. Angie Arnold is saying from her point of view as a psychiatrist, and I'm not finding fault with anything she's saying, but there's something else, and I don't quite know how to describe it. I've experienced it,

and I've seen literally thousands of other people experience it as well. When you, as you had to do, as did I, are presenting a case to a jury or investigating a homicide. You go to the crime scene. You see the dead body. You go to the autopsy. Maybe you see the dead body. But I've noticed that when jurors see the crime scene photo, they see the dead body very often. It's very visible. They wince.

They close their eyes. They look away. I think the killer, even though they're the one responsible they did it i think it's hard for them to look at the dead body much less if the victim's eyes are open looking right back at them but there's something about looking at a dead body nobody wants to do it except maybe you gallagherher. But that's a whole other can of worms. I think, what do you think about that, Bernarda, as a reason for covering the body and wrapping them in plastic and the lengths that killers go to to hide the body, to cover it up?

Thank you for having me, Nancy, and thank you for your kind words. So you've got to think, Nancy, as prosecutors and even as trial attorneys, when you're putting in these crime scene photos, these autopsy photos, you're trying to bring the jury back to the scene. You want to make them feel as if they were present, as if they were eyewitnesses to the homicide itself. So it's hard for the jury to see that, but you want to relay that opportunity and relay those feelings to a jury in terms of the killer the actual killer looking away i think it's probably i think it's something of i don't think it's regret because they come back and do it again anyway that's how rex human came back and did

it again and again and again is it something that maybe at that point he feels some kind of remorse i don't know is it a reflection because if he felt remorse he wouldn't keep doing it exactly but i do know there's something instinctual instinctive about recoiling from a dead body okay you know josh zeman there's only one thing i don't like about you you don't jump in enough how many times have I told you guys that this is not high tea at Windsor Castle and Jack alone what you're always so outspoken I don't get it uh Josh Zeman there's so much happening right now but I think one thing I'll be looking at and I want to hear from you how you think this fits in. I believe that, and I still haven't even gotten to the DNA, that now the prosecutors have gone back to Rex Heuermann and asked for another buccal swab taken out of the mouth. Josh, don't you believe that right now investigators are investigating how Vergara advertised?

However she advertised, it's not like they went to elementary school together with Heuermann. How did she advertise? Can it be reconstruction, reverse engineered, and find whether Heuermann contacted her? I don't know if those records can be found. I don't know what existed in 96. Certainly not, you know, the websites, the escort sites that exist today. But how do you think they're going back to 1996 and putting this back together again? I mean, the obvious choice, Joss, is find DNA on this woman that links her to Hueyerman. But what if they can't?

That's a tough one. 1996, so many years ago, 26 years ago. And by the way, Hueyerman would have been 32 at the time, which is pretty right on the money. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Not everybody speaks serial killer. So what do you mean by that? 32, right on the money. 32.

Average male age of a serial killer starting first kill is 28 and a half. So 32 is pretty close to that. You know, we have to assume that he didn't, when we're talking about the Gilgo Beach Four, he didn't start killing in his 40s. So, you know, 96 kind of makes perfect sense. Going back to one of your earlier questions, you know, look, he's leaving torsos in places where they can be found. He's doing that with Jessica Taylor. He's doing that with Peaches. So I think in this case, we might not be dealing with covering as a way to kind of dehumanize the victim. But I think we also might be dealing with a way that he's pulling law enforcement away from his quote unquote, and I hate to use this term,

but I know nothing better, trophy garden in Gilgo Beach. Oh, gosh. Trophy garden. You're referring to all of the remains as the trophy garden? Yes. Wow. So you're thinking that when he rides by Gilgo, that's when he looks at the trophies on a shelf? Absolutely. I mean, he went there as a child. We know he went there and went duck hunting with his father. He continues to duck hunt.

You know, this is a special place for him. Okay. Everybody be on notice. I'm stealing that from Zeman. I'll probably spout it off everywhere. Gosh, his trophy garden. I was thinking, Josh, and all of you serial killer experts jump in. When I think of a trophy, I think of a piece of jewelry, a pair of underwear, an item, a driver's license,

something that belonged to the victim, a hair ribbon, a barrette, a ring. I didn't think of his trophy garden being Gilgo Beach itself. That literally put a chill down my spine. Okay. I can't believe it's taken how many minutes for Cheryl McCollum to interrupt? I mean, Cheryl, please. Come on. I know the man has done an eight-part documentary, but go ahead and interrupt him. What? No, I want a tag team with him. So I have a theory of why the victims are facing north. When you're an architect, just like a crime scene investigator, your drafts, your first drawings are north-centered.

So that's how he would think of this. If he's doing a project drawing versus a drafting, then what he's doing, if he's placing these victims, as you all are saying saying in this garden to me those are like buildings he has set them up like a cityscape that's why they're all in a line down that is so smart keep talking but that's keep talking like a cityscape exactly so you think of victim one two three, they're all in a line. They're all together down this road where he has placed them, again, due north. Wow.

Zeman, what about it? You know, to me, it's all about hunting. You know, he was a hunter. He had 290, what, six guns. He was an instructor. Gilgo Beach is a hunting area. Manorville, if we assume that he also is the Manorville butcher, if you go and look at Manorville, it's surrounded by hunting clubs. You know, to me, these are trophies, like tragically again on a wall, or the fact that the four women were laid out, dolls on a shelf.

Oh, gosh. You know, Dr. Angie Arnold, when I'm listening to everybody on this panel, Bernarda, you, Cheryl, Joe, Josh, Dr. Gallagher, Jen Smith, it almost sounds like a murder mystery. It does. Where the killers are absolutely diabolical. But when Cheryl described this as setting their bodies out like a cityscape along a street, and Zeman, Josh Zeman, said like dolls on a shelf.

It's hard to believe this is real. This is really happening. I just want to jump in something, too. I believe the only jewelry that was found was on the toddler. So none of the other victims, if I recall correctly, and Josh can correct me on this, had jewelry on them. So we don't know if he kept anything from any of those victims, too. That's Judge Akelon jumping in. Okay, go ahead.

Nancy, what I was going to say is, I am just intensely interested in studying this man, in imaging his head. Oh, dear Lord. You know what? Save your studies for later. Right now I'm trying to solve a serial killing. I think that because so much time has passed

since Karen Vergara was murdered back in 96, we're going to have a very, very hard time connecting her. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jen Smith is joining me, the chief investigative reporter for DailyMail.com. The other three, the three of the four, Gilgo Beach Four, their MOs are so incredibly similar. They're in burlap bags. The defendant's wife's hair has been transferred to them. One of his hairs is in the bottom one of the burlap bags. I mean, they're very obviously all the same. The MO changes. In those cases, we have DNA. We also have burner phones and connections to the victims that can be proven extrinsically outside of DNA or like thereof. In this case, there's not that kind of technology, Jen Smith.

There's not, Nancy. But just going back to the similarities between the Gilgo Beach Four and then the previous victims, beginning with Karen Vergata, there is one other victim who we briefly mentioned, Peaches the Toddler. Peaches' mother, we don't know her name, she has killed Jane Doe

tragically after all these years. The first portion of her remains were actually found in 1997. That's only a year after Karen Bergassa. So, sure, the timeline is a little bit more stretched out. And then we have, you know, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, and Shannon Gilbert. Those come later. But we do have a kind of linear chronology here. We have 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2007, 8, 9, and so forth.

I mean, it's going to be harder, sure, to tie Rex Hurman to these earlier victims, but it is not so far apart that you can't deduce a pattern. I want to talk about peaches. She had a very distinctive feature. A tattoo on her chest of a heart-shaped bitten peach. Hence the name Peaches. And she has remained a Jane Doe. I've seen the photo of the tattoo over and over and over and the question, who is the girl with the peach tattoo? Now, tattoos are very often easily tracked. Who gave

her the tattoo and who can help identify her? Right now, I think our best chance of connecting Huerman to Karen Vergata is going to be DNA, since we're not going to have social media connections. Again, she was identified by a, you know, Jen Smith, I'll let you explain how she was identified with DNA through an ancestral family tree. And then investigators got a current day living relative to give a swab and they could identify who she was based on time of disappearance and location. You explain. Yeah, it's a strategy that we've seen multiple times. It was actually how they were able to trace Brian Kohlberger

and the Idaho killing. They built a genetic, it's called a genetic profile, and they worked their way backwards. It's a very long process. They worked their way backwards from anyone who could have supplied DNA to a publicly accessible database, one of these Ancestry.com 23andMe jet match type databases. This will produce hundreds, if not thousands, of potential matches, people you might share a tiny part of DNA with. And then investigators start the kind of old-fashioned

quote-unquote police work or looking at among all those people who could have been living in the right place at the right time and so forth with karen vergata this is really interesting because in terms of finding a living relative for her we know that she had two sons when she died she had she had a hard life like many of these other victims she'd actually put the boys up they had been adopted by someone else so she did have genetic relatives but none that were you know frantically immediately looking for her at the time and they actually found her name they identified her last year it was august 2022 and only now has this become public this week following the arrest of rex uriman but they held her identity back publicly for a year i think they know who they are i think they know who she is

and the reason why is 100 i think they know the identity of teachers. Teachers. Oh, yeah. And the Asian man. Oh, yeah. I think they do, too. For sure. Guys, I want you to take a listen to our friend Stephanie Goskin, NBC.

Karen Vergata was 34 years old, living in Manhattan and working as an escort. Her remains were discovered in 1996 on Fire Island, off the coast of Long Island. Police couldn't identify her. Nearly 15 years later, Vergara's skull was found here in a wildlife sanctuary, miles from the other remains. The DA did not link Vergara's death to Rex Sherman. He also didn't say how her skull wound up here in these bushes so far away from the rest of her body. What we do know is that where I'm standing is about four miles from Gilgo Beach. And more.

Take a listen to our friends at Inside Edition. Karen Vergata disappeared on Valentine's Day, 1996. She is one of nine women whose remains were found on an isolated stretch of beach on Long Island, New York, beginning in 2010. Architect Rex Heuermann has been charged with murdering three of the women. Authorities would not comment if he's a possible suspect in Vergara's disappearance, but their paths could have crossed. Vergara lived on this block in Midtown Manhattan.

It's just nine blocks from where Rex Heuermann worked. Cheryl McCollum, please. How many times have I said there is no coincidence in criminal law? All the time. Period. His office, which is apparently the hub of his prostitution activity and contacts, is nine blocks from where Karen Vergata lived. There are no coincidences here in this case at all, Nancy.

Not his phone calls, not his his internet searches not where the victims were recovered from not where they were last seen from all of these things are going to be connected and I just want to point out to everybody we worked cases like Ted Bundy and Wayne Williams without the benefit of DNA just because we don't have DNA from him on a case does not mean they're not going to be able to link him to victims. When you have MOs, when you have geography, when you have victims facing north, when you have all the victims being sex workers, all the victims nude except for the Asian male, all of those things are going to give you a totality of what was happening and who was

doing it. Also, guys, we are learning that the district attorney has asked specifically for more DNA. The DA is going to watch, hopefully, to video and photograph Heuermann's DNA being extracted. When I say extracted, it sounds, I don't know, difficult. It's not. It's a buccal or buccal swab, which is like a really long Q-tip being brushed along the inside of your mouth. That's all it is. I've done it myself. I have watched DNA being extracted from a murder defendant when the first sample was not protected by chain of custody. It matched him, but I knew I couldn't get it into evidence. No chain of custody. So I had to have it done again.

And I watched it myself and made my investigator, Ernest, watch it as well, so I would have a witness. Ernest then took it himself to the crime lab and handed it directly to the scientist. And that is what we're going to have right now. Guys, take a listen to our cut, 164. Well, that's a standard practice in cases. So it's been reported that we got what is known as abandonment samples. So typically, after you make an arrest on a case and you have the defendant in custody,

you take swabs just to confirm that the abandonment sample DNA profiles are accurate. That is the Suffolk County District Attorney speaking, Ray Tierney to Newsday. I want to talk about that DNA sample straight out to... And Nancy, this is Bernarda. Yes, jump in. This is quite common, Nancy. Yes. Yeah, definitely this is quite common in all the cases when our prosecutor cases in Brooklyn and

the homicide cases and even in other regular cases where there was DNA, there was a DNA sample that was left where that needs to be tested. You will get a direct DNA extraction from the defendant because it makes it number one, easier to explain to the jury, like, look, we compared and develop a DNA profile directly from the mouth of the defendant, as opposed to from a pizza crust. So that way it can be easier to explain to the jury and you have a direct hit from the defendant crust. So that way it can be easier to explain to the jury and you have a direct hit from the defendant himself. So what the prosecution did in this case is that they filed a motion to compel the taking

of a DNA sample from Rex Hurman. It's going to be up to the defense whether he's going to contest that. But in a case like this, a judge is going to grant that compelling of the taking of the DNA. What's not common is the videotaping here in New York of the DNA sample being taken from the subject itself. But that is a great idea, especially since you want to show to the jury to try to get a conviction that Rex Newman's DNA is a direct match to what they found at the scene.

Wow, that was a mouthful, and I agree with every single word that Bernardo Villalona just said. Cheryl McCollum, the prosecutor, doesn't want to stand in front of the jury and says, here's the pizza crust that we took out of the trash, purportedly bearing DNA of Rex Heerman. We think this is the crust that he just bit. No, you don't want to do that. See,

just like Koberger, I think Bernardo said that, and Koberger, Brian Koberger, who is now charged with four murders in the Idaho University Slays, they saw the dad throw out trash, they get into the trash at the dad's

home in the Poconos, and they match it to the knife she found at the scene of the crimes. And the DNA says that the only person that could have left that DNA at the crime scene would be the biological son of the donor, who was Koberger's father. He only had one son, Brian Koberger. They then go, based on that, and they get a warrant, a search warrant, based on probable cause, to do a buccal swab to get that 1 in 5 octillion, 5.3 octillion match. That is exactly what's happening here. You don't want to stand in front of a jury and go, hey, here's the pizza. I found spit on it.

And we're pretty sure it's Rex Ehrman's spit. Uh-uh. That's right. Because the first thing the defense attorney is going to say is you didn't see him eating that pizza. The pizza delivery man could have sneezed on that crust. You don't know. You could still have a killer out there. So it's really important that they get the new DNA and then cross-check it with what they have to show that it absolutely is him. And I'll tell you something, Nancy, when I do this

as a work in crime scene investigator, I always have a detective or an officer with me and I get them to turn on body cam. There's going to be no question who I took the swab from or how he was treated during it. That is so well put. Right now, guys, we are waiting on the latest, as many of us have deduced. Peaches, another Jane Doe with a peach tattoo, we believe has been identified. Why would a skull turn up on Gilgo Beach where the other victims are, if not the handiwork of Rex Heuermann? We wait as justice unfolds. Goodbye, friend.