Hidden True Crime - GILGO BEACH SERIAL KILLER: What created Rex Heuermann? A Psychological Deep Dive PART 1

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

What created the man currently charged in a series of murders haunting Long Island for decades? Dr John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, discusses Heuermann's upbringing and family life, assessing the man charged with the unthinkable. 59-year-old Rex Heuermann was arrested in July, 2023. He was a married family man and architect working in New York City and at the time of this episode he was charged with the murders of 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy, 22-year-old Megan Waterman and 27 year-old Amber Costello. Heuermann was later charged with the murders of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 20-year-old Jessica Taylor and 28-year-old Sandra Costilla. He remains a suspect in continuing investigations. This episode was originally recorded on July 23, 2023 Lauren Matthias - a television reporter - and her husband, Dr. John Matthias - a criminal psychologist - started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders of Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and the man currently charged in this series of murders that police say sped. banned from the early 1990s to 2011. The Long Island serial killer, also known as Lisk, left Suffolk County, New York and the surrounding areas on edge for over a decade, particularly the remote beach towns of Gilgo and Oak Beach where the remains of many of the victims were discovered. Podcasters and profilers speculated on the killer or killers, and the New York Times suggested the killer was most likely a middle-aged white male with connections to law enforcement and that he had used burlap sacks to dispose of the victim's bodies.

The speculating continued until, of course, the arrest of 59-year-old Rex Heuerman in July 2023. Rex, a married family man, an architect working in New York City and a longtime resident of Long Island, was originally charged with three counts of first-degree murder, as well as three counts of second-degree murder in the death of 24-year-old Melissa Barthelamy, 22-year-old Megan Waterman, and 27-year-old Amber Costello. In January, 24, Heurman was charged with the murder of 25-year-old Marine Brainerd Barnes, and on June 6, 2024, just this month, Heurman was charged with the murders of 20-year-old,

Jessica Taylor, and 28-year-old Sandra Costilla, and he remains a suspect in continuing investigations. The search for the killer began in May 2010, so we're talking nearly 15 years ago. a 24-year-old woman named Shannon Gilbert called police. She stated in this 23-minute 911 call, quote, they are trying to kill me, end quote. She fled from a home in the area and was last seen banging on a door, asking for help before running off, never to be seen alive again. In December 2010, while searching for Shannon, police and cadaver dogs first came upon a skeleton wrapped in burlap. It was later identified as Melissa, and police continue to search the area. of course, to see what else they would discover, only to discover three other victims,

Marine, Megan, and Amber. They became known as the Gilgo Four. In March 2011, partial remains of Jessica Taylor were also found. The other parts of her remains, get this, discovered eight years prior in 2003, also in Suffolk County. And then in April 2011, police discovered three additional sets of remains. An unidentified female toddler. An Asian person who police state was a male, but that they may have been a transgender female, they were between the ages of 17 and 23, and they also discovered 24-year-old Valerie Mack. Additional bodies have been found, including 34-year-old Karen Vergata and an unidentified woman shown to be the mother of that female toddler through DNA testing.

While the Gilgo Four were found in December 2010 while searching for Shannon, Shannon Gilbert's body wasn't found for another year on December 13th, 2011. Police say the remains of Shannon Gilbert were found in a marsh, about a half a mile from where she had disappeared. Originally, police said that the death was an accidental drowning. And while Shannon is the reason Rex Heurman's victims were found, Shannon's cause of death is still up for debate, especially with a second autopsy that was performed. And there are many suspicious circumstances surrounding Shannon's body. But nobody has been charged and her family continues to fight for justice.

Police say evidence against Hewerman includes his Chevrolet Avalanche being linked to one of the killings by a witness. Cell phone records showing contact with at least three of the victims. Damning online searches, including sadistic and child sex abuse material. Online searches for progress in the Gilgo Beach police investigation and saved images of the victims and their family members. But it was the genealogical DNA matches between Heurman's pizza crust that he had thrown away and hair found on one of the Burlepsacks

that led to Heurman's arrest in July of 2023. Now, it's now been nearly a year since Rex Heurman's arrest. It's June 2024. And investigators have stated that Heurman's wife and children were out of state each time the killings are believed to have occurred and that they are not involved.

The week after Heurman's arrest, Dr. John and I voiced episodes that we've never shared before on this podcast, but we will share them now, which we will follow up with a episode recorded just this week. This episode that we're about to listen to was originally recorded on July 23, 23, 23, just days after Heurman's arrest.

We are so glad to be with all of you tonight and to discuss a subject that we've definitely been discussing in our house, and I know that the Internet's been talking all about Rex Heerman, also known as the man accused of the Gilgo Beach serial killings, were also LISC, or the Long Island serial killing. Let's talk about Lisk. I think I'll refer to him as Lisk or Rex Huberman, but Lisk is a little shorter, so that might save us some time. We all know who this is. Really quickly.

And Lisk is, Rex Huberman specifically is innocent until proven guilty. Right. Let's reiterate that. We don't know that he's committed these crimes for sure. The evidence is circumstantial, although I think some of it's pretty compelling. Compelling, yeah. But he still has to go to trial and he'll get his day in court. So he's currently, obviously, he's innocent to proven guilty.

And we always start with that assumption. So in that sense, I think I want to talk more broadly about serial killing in general and some of the research on it. It's obviously a very, very big topic. It's been covered a lot in the popular media. But in terms of the academic research on serial killing, there's not a huge out, believe it or not. And the reason is because there's not a big sample and there's not that many serial killers to examine. So a lot of the research tends to be qualitative,

which makes sense because you can't set up an experiment where people are killing other people and examine what those elements are. So the research on serial killing is somewhat vague and therefore I think there's a lot of speculation and it's not entirely clear-cut. And serial killers are different. There's idiosyncrasies among serial killers, obviously. There's different types of serial killing, and there's been different typologies developed to explain serial killing. So it's a big topic. We're going to start broadly talking about it, and then we're going to I'll narrow in a little bit, Rex Heerman and some of the elements I think that might apply here to him. But let me just start with a broad characterization. This is from a textbook. This is probably my

favorite criminal psychology textbook, it's Bartle and Bartle. It's called Criminal Behavior. It's now in its 12th edition. So the 12th edition was in 2021. I believe the 11th edition was like 2017. I actually prefer the 11th edition, but please don't tell the authors that. The 12th edition is more up to date and it's got some of the latest research, but I think it's not quite as detailed. So this textbook, Bartle and Bartle, identify broadly speaking four characteristics, tend to apply to serial killers in general. Those are control, domination, thrill-seeking, and oftentimes media attention.

So if we think about those elements, those four elements of serial killers, I think we can check all those boxes for LISC, right? In fact, I would go so far as to say that I think the main theme that I'm picking up on at the moment that pertains to Rex Humerman would be the theme of domination. This is someone who wants to be in control.

This is someone who values his power. This is someone who physically and maybe emotionally and psychologically exerts a certain amount of dominance and seems quite frequently. So I think the main motif here, so if we look at serial killers broadly speaking and some of those four qualities, the one that really stands out for human is domination. Okay. So another question that people have asked is, what are some of the characteristics of victims? of serial killers. I think that's equally important, right? Because obviously...

As in you target certain victims, in other words. Right, the victims become targets. And victims for serial killers are actually quite different than the victims for, let's call them, one-off or one-time murders, that they tend to be quite different. People that murder people, you know, like a spouse, for example, a lot of that has more to do with the characteristics of the relationship. There's more of an interpersonal quality. And there can be more of a reactive quality. In other words, so the murderer, instead of planning something and organizing it and premeditating the murder, for example, in interpersonal violence, some of those tend to be a little more spontaneous and they tend to be more what we call reactive violence.

So with serial covers, though, you're not going to see that. You're going to see more organized, premeditated murder. And therefore, the victims will often have similar characteristics. So, And this is, again, this is from Bartle and Bartle, the textbook. The three common elements that serial killer victims tend to have in common are availability so that the serial killers know that they have access to the victims fairly readily, if possible, or in some cases, their victims tend to be vulnerable, especially vulnerable. So they target vulnerable populations, which could be the elderly. It could be, as in this case of Rex Heerman, it could be women that are in vulnerable,

physicians doing sex work, for example. And the final element of victims and serial killers is desirability. So typically serial killers were target a certain segment of the population that they find desirable, that they find attractive in some way. So again, here with Rex Heurman, we have victims that are roughly the same age. They're in their early 20s. They all seem to have a particular physique or body type. They tend to be slender.

Petit. Right. They're shorter even sometimes, too. So he definitely seems to have a type in terms of desirability. So again, serial killers, broadly speaking, they tend to focus on these elements of victims, whether they're available. So in other words, whether they can create an opportunity, whether they're vulnerable. So with Rex Huberman, the vulnerability comes into play because as you learned from your interview with Nikki, that Nikki was quite explicit about saying that he believed, the victims were expendable. Right.

Nikki also said that she believed, quote, the victims were people nobody would care about or look for. This is Nikki Brass. This is our interview or my interview with Nikki Brass, a woman who states that she went out with Rex Heerman in 2015. While she was a sex worker at the time and an addict, she explains how she got out of that situation, but she was in this vulnerable position.

And you can see that interview on our channel. Yeah, he seemed pretty normal when I first sat down with him. At first, I thought, oh, maybe my gut was just wrong. He seemed fine. So when we sat down, we talked about, like, basic stuff. He said, like, he was an architect and what he did for a living and this and that, and then talked to me about what I want to do for a living, basic, like, little chichette. And then he asked me if I had an interest in true crime.

And I actually do. Like, I know about every serious filler. So, like, and then he said, well, do you know about the guild? speech murders. He asked you this. Yeah. He brought it up and asked me. And I was like, yeah.

I was like, I think everybody from Long Island knows about the Gilgo murders. Like we're all following it. We're from here. Especially girls who work in that industry. Like they have to take extra precaution and know. Um, so he asked me if I knew about them. And then he started like talking about, you know, the case so far. thing was like when he talked about it it was weird and that's what like gave me a bad gut

feeling and made me want to get out of there was like he didn't talk about it like a true crime fan would or like somebody who had you know was really into the case it like almost seemed like as he talked about it he was like mentally reliving it and like enjoying it you know what I mean can you remember anything specific that he said yeah I mean I didn't talk to the cops yet so certain stuff I'm like nervous to say in case it wasn't uh you know said anywhere else but he so like one thing I remember specifically was when he talked about it he said I said well who do you think did it and obviously he's not going to say me so he was like oh you know he's like it could be Bissett the guy like the aquarium owner and I feel like he said

said that in retrospect, I feel like he said that because the sacks that the bodies were in, the burlap sacks were traceable to Bissett's nursery farm, like nursery that he owned. And I feel like he said that because he knew Bissett would be a suspect when they found the burlap sacks. Wow. So I feel like that's why he mentioned him as like a hypothetical who it could be. And what weirded me out the most was that he's saying all this and being real creepy about it and then says like, oh, I live right by Gilgo Beach. Do you think he was trying to

intimidate you or mislead you? What do you think his intention was? I feel like he wanted to brag about what he had done but couldn't, but knew with girls like me who were vulnerable and addicted to drugs and not likely to be believed that he could almost brag in his own way. You know, like I feel like he, I feel like he wanted to talk about it. He wanted to be able to tell people. He wanted to be able to rig and get the attention. Like he was getting a bit of a high from Sherry. Yeah, like he seemed, I tell people it seemed like he had like a mental orgasm talking

about it. Like his body language changed. He seemed like too excited to be like talking about the victims. And it didn't seem like someone who felt bad for the victims. It almost seemed like he kind of thought of them as. expendable people, people that didn't really matter. And maybe that's how he saw you too? Probably.

I think so. Because I feel like he talked about it. And then when it was coming to an end, he wanted me to go with him. And I was like, I had a really bad feeling. Like my God was telling me I needed to like leave. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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And I was like, well, you know, it's really late. And I'd have to follow you and you live all the way in NASA. And he was like, oh, no, no. Like, I wouldn't want you to follow me. You'd get in the car with me. And I was like, I don't want to look at my car in a random parking lot. And he was like, he's like, no, I definitely, I would want you to come with me in my car. he's like your car will be fine

like he really insisted on the fact that I didn't take my car and now I think about it I'm like he probably didn't want to be on traffic cameras having to ditch a car after killing somebody Wow like he was thinking through He was thinking through Yeah

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Visit Verizon.com today. Additional terms apply. Service and required for Apple Watch and iPad. I want to thank Nikki, by the way. I want to thank her for her interview and her great insights. I think she was really helpful in terms of making sense of some of what's going on here. But if we look at these characteristics of the victims of serial killers, Rex Heuerman checks all the boxes here too. So the victims were vulnerable. Nicky was quite clear about

that. And she believed that the victims that had already been found by then in 2010 and 2011 were, as she said, quote, expendable. And so serial killers tend to focus on that as well. You know, when you think about Dahmer, Jeffrey Dahmer or Israel Keys or many of them found victims that were vulnerable that were down and out in some way or they were perceived to be, by Israel Keys at least, they were perceived to be weak, they were accessible. And this desirability part also obviously comes into play with Humerman because he's interested in sexual gratification and he has to find, these victims have to meet apparently a certain type or threshold for him, I think, to really to act on his sexual impulses. I think that's maybe a good way to get into

this discussion is to talk about kind of the broad criteria that serial killers and their victims tend to kind of meet. I think if we dig a little deeper, though, I think we get into the idea of what's called lust killing. Okay. So lust killing is essentially when you merge sexual desire with a desire to dominate. So those are kind of the two elements. But, Lus killing is essentially sexual serial killing. Okay. And you mentioned that he was dominating. You've already said that.

Right. You know, the interview with a bonjour realty, he says that, that, you know, he had this firm handshake that he was imposing. He is a domineering, interesting man. Okay. So Lus. Yeah, well, it tends to come, this idea of dominating or domination and control comes up a lot with him. I'll talk about some colleagues, work colleagues that saw him this way.

Robert Taffera, who's a well-known, apparently a well-known contractor or very well-known and sought-after contractor in New York City, made some comments for the New York Times about Heerman because he worked with him quite closely. So clearly this issue of dominance is importance. So lust killing is merging sexual desire with a desire to dominate and essentially sexual serial killing. And there's actually a couple books I want to reference that I'll be referring to quite a bit tonight. One is understanding sexual serial killing. This is probably the latest book on the topic by Toots, T-O-A-T-E-S, Totes and Tots. And the other book, I think, that's really relevant to this discussion is called The Psychology of Less Murder.

That's by Purcell and Origo. That was published in 2006. Psychology of Lus Murder, Paraphylia, sexual killing, and sexual homicide. So let me back up just a little bit and talk about this idea of what psychologists, this is in the DSM-5, what psychologists call parapherias. So parapherias are, broadly speaking, would be defined as abnormal sexual behaviors or maybe debient sexual behaviors, aberrant sexual behaviors. Some parapherias are harmless, many aren't. So an example of a parapheria that would be harmful would be pedophilia. Pedophilia would be someone who is aroused and sexually attracted to children

and specifically children under age 13, at least by DSM criteria. So that's an example of a parapheria. There's hundreds of parapherias, by the way, many of them, most of them, the vast majority of them are not listed in the DSM. But there's actually a parapheria for that many people aren't aware of. There's a parapheria for lust killing, and it is called erratophonophilia. That is the term for lust murder or lust killing. I'm going to have Purcell and Erigo define this a little better, so I'm going to read from their book, their introduction where they define it.

Erratophonophilia is the acting out of injurious behaviors by brutally and sadistically assailing the victim. These actions are undertaken so that the offender can achieve sexual satisfaction. Lust murderers are likely to repeat their crimes, making them serial in nature. Mutilation of body parts, especially the genitalia, represents a routine characteristic of this form. form of perophilia deviance. So broadly speaking, Rex Huberman would be considered to have this parapheria. Periphylias, by the way, are quite common or expected among sex offenders in particular. Oftentimes, as I said earlier, when you pair kind of sexual desire with this desire to dominate, then you get into violence. Of course, sexual offenses are violence in and of themselves.

A sex offense is by definition of form of violence, but some sex offenders who engage in sexual assault or lust murder are obviously taking the violence to an extreme. So they're committing sexual crimes and violent acts at the same time. Okay. Wow. I'm taking that in. Wow. Okay. The things we learn, the things I learn from my husband. If somebody asked you about lists, just say, oh, yeah, that's a rata. I can't even pronounce it. That's erotaphonophilia. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We know that. Interestingly, though, with Hewerman, I'm just going to mention this tonight. We're going to talk about this in another time.

But in the bail statement that was released by NYPD, there's a discussion of his, it's redacted by the way, but other people have found the non-redacted version somehow. But his searches, his web searches, his internet searches are filled with searches for child material. that's illegal child material. I can't mention that term or we're going to get. Correct. We know what you're referring to. Yeah.

Right. And so I think, you know, that was an interesting element of this crime for me because some lust killers have an attraction to children, but I mean, a lot of them kind of have a similar age range that they're interested in. So for Hewerman initially, it appears like early 20s, right? But to find out that he's searching for roughly, we looked at some of the searches and there does seem to be a specific age range, which is roughly 10 to 14-ish. That, by the way, that specific age range is called heaphylia.

So pedophilia, I know that's going to get confusing. Stay with me here. No, you're doing great. You're in rare form. Well, you're always doing great, so it's not rare form, but you're doing wonderful. Thank you. We're following. So pedophiles tend to have an attraction to prepubescent children.

And hebophiles, so 10 to 14 is usually children that are, maybe a little prepubescent, but, you know, they're kind of, they're getting into puberty, right? It's, it's that gray area. Okay. And so I think it's an interesting part of this case, because it really raises the question about whether he is attracted to children and to what degree. And it brings up another issue, which is that often I've worked with many sex offenders and evaluated many sex offenders over the years. Many sex offenders have multiple parapherias. So you typically won't have one. And so you're, you're, seen that here. You're seeing the possibility of

heaphylia or pedophilia. I'm sure, by the way, Satanism or sadomasochism can be another parapheria. That's a little more complicated in terms of whether the person is distressed by it. So to add another way of complication to this, to get a diagnosis for a parapheria, essentially there has to be some level of social or occupational or clinical distress. So in other words, has to somehow bother the person or distress the person or create some discomfort. So we call that, psychologists call that something that's ego-distonic, as opposed to

egosentonic. So I know this sounds a little crazy, but imagine that, let's take sadomasochism, for example. Okay. Some people might be distressed by that. Many people won't. So if somebody has, for example, an interest in sadomasochism and it doesn't interfere with their life and it's egosentonic and they don't. don't see any problem with it and it becomes a normal part of their, let's say, sexual practices,

then it wouldn't qualify for a diagnosis. So it wouldn't be clinically significant, right? It's a little more complicated with something like pedophilia in the sense that pedophilia, this is where it gets a little tricky, but so pedophilia is obviously illegal. Correct. By any law or any standard, right? So it presents a problem there. But if somebody is attracted to children and they don't find that to be egotistonic. In other words, they don't have a problem with that. In fact, they prefer that. You know, it gets into this issue of, okay, well, so is that a diagnosis? I mean, it may not be. People will recognize that it's illegal, and that's probably going to create some distress. They recognize you can't go out and molest children. And so maybe that's where the distress comes

from. So I guess my point is that there's a difference between the legality of something and whether someone finds that behavior to be acceptable. Those are two different. But I don't want to go too far down this path. My main point here is that Rex Huberman, he seems to have multiple parapherias, which is consistent with people that have parapherias. His main one seems to be erratophonophilia, which is lust murder. And there seems to be some possibility of pedophilia or have aphelia here too.

And probably some stuff around sadism. You know, I don't know. we're just getting into this case. We're obviously going to learn more. I want to clarify. People are like saying like pedophilia, of course it's illegal and of course it's not normal. That's what John is saying. It isn't normal.

But sometimes an offender might start to think. I just want to clarify. What I'm saying is that I'm talking about purely from a clinical standpoint, that it's a peculiar, it can be a peculiar diagnosis. Oftentimes people that are pedophiles will have some. distress, but sometimes they won't. And that's a concern. That's a problem. Right. That's a concern, right? An offender that has no distress about molesting children is a problem, obviously. It's a major problem. It's a major, right? And so maybe this is a simpler

way of summarizing it. A pedophile that sees that behavior is perfectly acceptable and doesn't care about the legalities of it is someone without a conscience. How about that? That's helpful. Thank you. That's someone without a conscience that says something. Yeah. Right. Maybe that's a simpler way of clarifying that issue. But LISC seems to have multiple parapherias. That's my main point here. And so for me, it's a little bit of a curiosity to know or learn whether he ever acted on this apparent attraction to children. And he's also, by the way, associating these same elements. It seems like he's associating these same elements with children, which is sexual desire and the desire to dominate, which again are the elements. that you'll find with less killing. So there was the body of a child found among the 11 bodies in Gilgo Beach. But so far, we don't know if there's a connection to Heerman, and we don't know if that was a sex crime as well, right? So there's a lot of uncertainty here, but that would certainly elevate these crimes to an entirely different level. And, you know, I don't know. That would make

this guy in a really rare league if he's targeting children as well, sexually targeting children. And I believe that the body they found was a two-year-old. So I mean, that's that's unthinkable, right? So. Yes. Blackbird speaks says you have a well-educated audience. Dr. Bayspoint was not lost in most of us. Don't worry. Thank you. Okay. I am the one that's always overwearing. So thank you. Okay. So I know if I don't clarify things the right way, I'm going to get some pushback. So yeah. I'm bracing for some of the. emails. But thank you. I appreciate that comment. So let me go to TOTS for a little bit, the textbook

dimension. And this is a huge oversimplification because in the TOTS textbook, he goes through hundreds of cases. It's a really comprehensive look at sexual serial killing. It's really a comprehensive textbook. I'm not going to do it justice here. But for the sake of a short program, I have to summarize things and try to distill them down to their essence. So that's what I'm going to do here. So Tots, Tots argues, and again, his research is mostly a summary of other people's research and mostly qualitative, but Tots makes the argument that there's two main prongs to lust murder or arotophonophilia. I'm sorry. I'll get it right one of these times. I think it's adorable. I've never heard of not be able to pronounce a word. Yeah, I was saying it fine earlier. I think

I'm a little dehydrated because of the 115, but errata phonophilia. There we go. So the two main motivations or prongs of lust killing according to TOTS are one, dominance. We talked about that. So I'll be developing this idea of dominance with human men a little later, but the other element is humiliation. So TOTS sees those two as kind of working together to lead to lust murder.

And again, I want to point out, like one of the things that's important to recognize, is somebody might have an obsession with dominance and somebody might have some humiliation in their past or dealt with humiliation, that doesn't mean they're going to become a lust murderer. The argument is always that there's always a particular idiosyncratic set of circumstances that come together that lead to the creation of a serial killer. So when I talk about bullying, for example, when I talked about bullying with Brian Coburger, I wasn't saying that somebody who's bullied is going to become Brian Coburger.

or that there's a causal, there's never a causal relationship between something in someone's past and becoming a serial killer or becoming a murderer. Thank you. Right. It's an idiosyncratic combination of elements. Like with Coburg, for example, a few people wrote to me and said, well, you're saying that people that are obsessive, compulsive are murderers. And I'm saying, no, I'm not saying that at all.

I'm saying that somebody like Coburger who had violent fantasies and had these, he almost certainly, that's another element. that, by the way, a commonality, according to the psychology of lust murder, that all lust killers have in common is they all have violent fantasies. Many of them are violent sexual fantasies. Many of them are just violent fantasies, but they all have violent fantasies. My argument with Kohlberger is that I never, first of all, I never diagnosed him with OCD, but my argument is, and was and is, that the violent fantasies are the problem, not the OCD. It's the violent fantasies that become obsessive, that begin to dominate someone's thoughts, that's what presents the problem.

Yes. And so I would say the same thing about humiliation or even shame. It's not being humiliated once or bullied once that matters. It's how it gets interpreted by the killer or the would-be killer and how the person doesn't let go of it. This is from page 72 in understanding sexual serial killing. One comment feature underlined the aggression shown by serial killers is earlier, humiliation, such as being rejected or ridiculed. The issue is never resolved, and it gnaws away

over the years. Aggression is rewarding and tends to restore some kind of psychological equilibrium, albeit only very briefly. So he basically sees the two fundamental motivations that lead to less murder as dominance and humiliation. And again, let me repeat, the issue is never resolved, and it gnaws away over the years. That's, I think, the important point is that it's not the humiliation or the shame or, and actually, in the case of Huberman, at least one of his high school classmates has spoken up and said that he was bullied in high school. I don't know how badly. I don't know why he was bullied. This is something we're going to really try to figure out here, but there was apparently some bullying. The classmate also said that he did fight back a little bit.

So, and again, I'm not saying there's a causal relationship between the bullying, but it's these experiences of humiliation that, as Toast just said, as I just quoted, that gnaw away at someone. I think for Coburger, it's the shame that was involved in the bullying that really ate away at him, not away at him over the years. It's the unresolved component. So there's many kids that are bullied that are resilient. Correct. That just brought it off. And they resolve it in some degree, right? To some degree. But it's the kids that can't resolve it. It's the kids that hang onto it. And that's where I think OCT comes into play. That somebody with obsessive, compulsive disorder, and I don't know if

Kohlberger has that. I speculated that he has obsessive tendencies. That's as far as I'll go, because I don't know more. But it's the obsessive component that creates the problem insofar as Coburger can't resolve it, right? That's the problem. That's the problem. So presumably, I would say, I would guess, speculate with Rex

Hewerman that there's some trauma, there's probably multiple. traumas from childhood. We don't know exactly what those are and they're unresolved. They show up again and again in his life and they play some role or contribution to his less killings. That makes sense. Find the thumbs up button at some point now or later. It means a lot so we can share our channel and John's immense wisdom with many people. Thank you. So let's dig a little deeper into, so now I've kind of talked in general terms about maybe some of the categories that Rex Heerman tends to fit into and possibly some of the motivations. And again, I'm being really, really broad here. You know, I apologize. We just don't have to, we don't have the time to dig

super deep here. But this is the beginning. Right. This is not our one and only. We're going to continue following this case. We're giving a broad overlay today. And we'll be going to going in detail later. Let me talk about a few things I think that are interesting that also need some attention here. One was my source for most of this, by the way, is the New York Times. So almost every article that the New York Times has written about this case, I've read, I'm using some of those quotes here.

I trust that the New York Times has vetted these sources. There's just too much information out there for us to vet. There's a lot of speculation on YouTube channels. You know, just for me to feel comfortable here, I've had to keep it within the domain of journalistic sources that I feel are credible and have talked to people and vetted them. Outside of that, our sources are videos that we've seen people discuss him and we believe that they're accurate and honest sources. Nikki would be one of those. We believe Nikki Brass. So this is from one of the New York Times articles.

This is actually from somebody that worked in one of the local grocery stores. Long Island where the family shop and the clerk at the grocery store said, quote, he's talking about the healer men's here or he's talking about Rex. He never shopped with his family and his family always appeared to be cheerless. So, wow. So that's interesting. You know, that's a little comment, but it's interesting that this court could work there for over a decade and she said every time that, am I pronouncing this right? Issa? Asa. Asa. Asa. Asa. Asa, Asa Elarup, who's Rex Heerman's wife. Soon to be ex-wife. She just filed for divorce.

She's soon to be ex-wife. When Asa would come into the store with one or both of their children, she always showed up alone. She never, ever went to the store with Rex. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers,

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a decade. And she also mentioned that when they did show up, that they appeared to be really cheerless. One of the neighbors in the neighborhood said of the family, quote, they were always reclusive and enigmatic. I'm going to now read a quote from Nikki. This is during your interview. Okay. Nikki's interview with us. Interview with, right, with us. As to why Nikki felt that Rex Hewerman was committing these crimes. She said, quote, it was an escape from a life that he didn't want. He was not happy with his family life, and he found it very boring. When I start looking at all these little pieces, here let me read, this is from a work colleague. Paul Tito Bomb was on a board with Rex Heerman for several years.

Here's what Paul T. So he was in the architecture business in New York. Here's what he said. Describing Rex. He's a cold and distant person, kind of creepy, with a swagger of, I'm the expert, you're lucky to have me. So he's describing someone, you know, cold, distant, remote. Another person who was on a project with Rex Tillerman, I mean, Heerman, and this is from New York Times again, said, quote, he was rude and dismissive. Kelly Perisi, who was on a co-op board

with Rex Hillerman for five years, says, quote, he was adversarial with everyone, and he was overly fastidious. So the board fired him. I mean, so I think what starts to emerge, when you look at what people are saying about him and their perceptions of him, I think what starts to emerge is someone who really doesn't connect with people very well, right? This is someone who appears to be... Clearly. Right. This is someone who's distant and he doesn't seem to have the best social skills. And again, this would be typical of many serial killers, by the way, but this is someone who's not really good with people. And in fact, I would go, if I were looking for clinical diagnoses,

you know, one thing that kind of stands out or might stand out here, I think, would be some type of depression. I'm not diagnosing, but, I mean, his family is described as cheerless. He's seen as cold. He's never warm. He's never engaging. This feels like someone who's depressed to some degree. And I don't know if that's true.

I've never met with him, obviously. But they just have the sense of Rex Hewerman's life that it's, you know, As Nikki said, it's boring. He's trying to escape from it. You know, I think you have a portrait here of someone who's really struggling with depression. You have a portrait here of someone, I think, who is probably has issues with self-worth. You know, I see Rex Kumerman as being someone who probably has some damage sense of self. And again, I don't know, I don't know why that would be the case.

We don't know enough about his family life. There was an article in the New York Post that, We didn't vet, but that he had a very controlling mother. His mother tended to be somewhat cold, although very close to him. I can't go really far with that analysis, but his father passed away when he was 11 years old. I think that plays a huge role here. So I think the absent father during that critical period of his life when he was an adolescent, I think that's probably a huge part of this story. He's remained in the house he grew up into, which I find very interesting. Yeah. He bought his current home from his mother, who then moved.

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2025 pilot or a 2.9% APR on a 2025 Ridgeline or CRV. See Dealer for financing details. I want to say I agree with the boring life. You know, most of us or a lot of us, I don't know if most of us, a lot of us has seen the interview done with Bon Jo Realty last year where the realtor interviewed Rex Hewerman and a lot of people mocked or didn't understand why the realtor was laughing all the time.

I'm an interviewer. As a reporter, I would interview people. It was very clear to me. He was trying to make the interview fun. He was trying to be lighthearted. He was trying to make Rex Heurman a little bit more exciting. Rex Eurman, I'm an architect, I'm an architectural consultant, I'm a troubleshooter, born and raised on Long Island. Okay.

Been working in Manhattan since 1987. People don't always understand when it comes to building codes. They never read the administrative section. I have actually gone to the commissioner's office, sat down in his waiting area

at 11, 11.30 in the morning, and a little after 5 o'clock I heard him finally holler out, is Rex still there? That's how long I waited. Oh, God. Because that particular client, I had to see the commissioner. They were the only ones who could give us an answer. Okay, got it. Oh, so this is a perfect segue.

Do you have a story where a good success story to tell us? There are so many different ways of looking at it. But you have one. Only one. Okay. One of the first ones to come to mind. Yeah. Go ahead.

Was a building downtown Manhattan. Okay. They put a generator on the roof. Typical, generators go on roofs all the time. Okay. Except the fuel lines to feed the generator will run through the exit stair. Let's see. Pumping diesel fuel through an exit stair,

that generally is not a good idea. This sounds very safe to me. I'm not even in your field. And we're talking a 20-something story building. Even better. But he's not exciting. He's boring. And he has a boring life and he has a boring job.

Maybe that's not true. But if you watch the interview, that's at least what I come across thinking. Boring life, boring job. And the interviewer is doing everything he can to make it a little bit more upbeat. a little bit more exciting. So I just want to say, this is what I see.

I see him as living a boring life, too. I validate what you're saying. Yeah, right. And I think some of that has to do with depression in the sense that, but it goes beyond depression. So I think one way to think about that might be to see part of his trauma as unresolved grief related to his father, that I think losing his father at age 11.

And again, you and I, we're just scratching the surface of this. We're going to dig as deep into this as we can as we get more sources and more information. But I really think that this seems to me like someone who loses his father at age 11. He probably has a somewhat ambivalent relationship with his mother, especially if she's overly controlling or maybe even domineering. I don't know. You know, we're going to have to learn more about his family. But I think this is the kind of guy that is not going to grieve over his father. and there's probably some trauma there that's unresolved.

Again, getting back to this idea of humiliation. It's not the humiliation. It's the unresolved part of the humiliation. I think you probably have some unresolved grief here. For those of you, I'm just going to throw this in. This may not be totally relevant. But for those of you who like Shakespeare, the Michael Fastbender movie in 2017,

the interpretation of Shakespeare of Macbeth, I think it's a remarkable piece of work. And one of the reasons it's remarkable is because the movie begins with an infant on a funeral pyre. And Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are standing around essentially watching their child apparently is passed away. And they're at their child's funeral. So for those of you who know Macbeth, that is not a part of the book. That's an interpretation. but it's a brilliant interpretation because it suggests that the entire sequence of events,

including the murders that occur in Macbeth, are related to unresolved grief. And I've never forgotten that scene in that movie because it's such a brilliant interpretation of Macbeth that, you know, many interpretations of Macbeth focus on whether it's ambition and wanting to be king, blah, blah, blah, blah, I could go on and on. But nobody, at least in a visual format, has had, you know, kind of the courage to suggest that maybe it's grief. We know that Lady Macbeth lost a child or seemingly lost a child. And so this movie takes the risk of putting that child out front and say, look, you know, this is really about unresolved grief that Macbeth goes on this murderous rampage because he lost this child. And so I think

potentially you could have something similar here with Rex Heurman that the loss of his father had a major impact on his adolescence and young adulthood and maybe he never recovered. You know, of course, there could be additional traumas, the bullying. I don't know, right? We're still trying to figure this out. But anyway, so that's just a thought. I think one of the things that often happens with depression is that sometimes anger and repressed hostility become a part of that. In other words, sometimes rage and anger become a way to push away that depression. In fact, Freud, Freud was one of the first people to really hypothesize that depression is really a form of anger. It's really kind of a repressed rage. It's the rage and the anger that keeps someone from falling into like a full-blown clinical depression where

they can't function at all. So we know that Hellerman was able to function. But I think we also know that his victims, my guess is the way that they were found, the way that they were bound, apparently they were strangled to death, that this is somebody who had a lot of rage too. And again, like, for those who don't know the story about how he would always cut wood, he would always chop wood with an axe in his front lawn. Some of his neighbors described that as menacing, that when people would say hi to him, he would give them a really kind of mean-spirited look, right? All of that would be consistent with somebody who's repressing a certain amount of hostility or rage.

Okay. Yeah. So who's trying to kind of fight off this depression, this underlying depression. And Nikki's quote about how he's trying to escape from a boring life. But in the interview, he talks about how one of the qualities that an architect needs or somebody consulting to architects is patience. What do you think is the most important qualities a person in your position dealing with the DOB must have? Patience.

That's funny. I was hoping you would say that. Yeah. patience, and I don't like to use the word tolerance, but sometimes you have to. And it's not just with the city, it's also with the client. And I mean, he tells this story about going down to City Hall and having to sit there all day and he's in the office for nine hour, you know, seven and a half hours. And then they finally call him in and say, Rex, you're still there?

And he says, yep, I'm here. And he uses that as an example of patience. And I thought the only thing I could think of after he told that story was that guy must be filled with rage going into that office after waiting seven and a half hours because this is someone who does not want to wait. This is someone who wants his way right away, right? This is someone who wants to be dominant. He wants to be recognized. We know now he's obsessed with the immediate attention. Everybody he met or knew or ran into, including Nikki, he said, hey, did you know about the Gilgo Beach murders?

I mean, he was like one step shy as saying, that was me, I did it, I did it. He wanted to say that so badly, but he never did. And so, can you imagine this guy sitting there for seven and a half hours waiting for a meeting over, you know, something to do with red tape? No, I can't imagine. Don't take a

guy like this off. No, I can't imagine. Right, exactly. So, I mean, first of all, I'm glad that whoever that was, the city commissioner is safe. I'm glad he's still alive, but putting that aside, putting that aside, Putting that aside, I could just imagine him going home that night and trying to connect with somebody that he was going to harm. Right. Right.

Like, that's the vision I have is that, yeah, he doesn't like his life. He's probably disconnected from his family. There's probably some oppression. He's got this repressed rage and hostility. He doesn't connect to people. And he's absolutely taking it out on these women that he's murdering. and he's feeling a sense of dominance, he's feeling a sense of potency. I think there's some repairs that are being made to his damaged self in a way.

I guess if that's a way of putting it, that's kind of similar to Coburger. I think Coburger is getting some sense of potency from these killings. I think, you know, he's been fired as a grad student, essentially. He's been rejected and he's trying to repair that damaged sense of self. I think with Rex Heerman, you have a similar dynamic. With him, though, and I'm going to read a quote here, you know, there's another interesting component to this. So I don't think it's just the trauma.

I think there's a component here of not living up to expectations. In other words, I think there's, he envisioned a certain life for himself that involved a lot of success, a lot of attention, a lot of kudos, maybe some awards. I don't know. He has a lot of education. He worked hard. He worked hard on his education and his schooling. And yeah.

Well, by some accounts, he's made a lot of money and he's been very successful. Again, it's in the eye of the beholder, right? It's all relative. Yeah, it's relative to what he thinks his life should be. So this is from a New York Times article. It's by Jania Dela Fonte, July 23rd, 2023. The title of this article is, The Class Rage in the Heart of the Gilgo Beach suspect.

Here's what she says. I think this is enlightening. but she talks about essentially his resentments around not being kind of in the upper echelon of the architectural world. Let me read her quote because it's brilliant. So here she says, quote, like so many professions, architecture can be punishingly stratified. And Mr. Hewerman, who by all accounts was extremely knowledgeable about the city's labyrinthine building codes, did not fall on the visionary side of the spectrum. But as a journeyman who held barricratic authority, He could veto the plans of architects with degrees from Yale and projects in Nantucket,

who were attained by clients not accustomed to their ideas getting sidelined. So she, I mean, essentially what she's saying is that he's kind of a mid-level bureaucrat who does some work for the city. He's hardly a visionary. My guess is that in his mind's eye, he saw himself as a visionary. He saw himself like a Frank Gehry or, you know, some of the great architects of Frank Lloyd Ryan. you know, that are creating visionary structures and buildings, and he's not doing that. Yeah. So he wants to be Frank Lloyd Wright, and he's definitely not.

So there's kind of this idea of a failure, of failed ideals or failed dreams here. You know, there's a little bit of a Willie Lohman type component of he had all these pipe dreams and they never came true. And so how does he deal with that? I mean, again, she does a brilliant job, I think of summarizing this, that he held bureaucratic authority. He could veto the plans of architects with degrees from Yale and projects in Nantucket. So in other words, he could stop, and he did this, by the way. So the guy I mentioned earlier, the contractor, Robert Taffera, and I'm, you know, I don't know him, but apparently he's a very well-known contractor that if you get him to do work

on your project, it's going to be recognized. But Taffera, Taffera called, he's worked with Huberman, he called Huberman essentially an obstructionist, that all the jobs that Taffera, or many of the jobs that Taffera did with, with Hureman, he would hold them up. Or he would find a small code. He would get into like these bureaucratic red tape issues, details, minutia, and he would hold projects up. And it drove people crazy. Huh. This is what Robert Taffera said.

This is from the same article I just quoted. Robert Taffera says, quote, about why Huberman was holding all these projects up. Tafara says, it was a control issue. If sadistic is watching people go through hoops over and over without much reason, it was sadistic. Wow, sadistic. Wow. So Tafara, these people that don't know this guy's a serial killer, are, finding these same qualities, right, of control.

And, I mean, even a bit sadistic in the sense that he's forcing people to go through hoops or to recognize these small little bureaucratic portions of projects just to torture them, right? Hewerman knows that he's being a pain in the neck. He knows he's holding these things up. This is all about control and this is all about domination. This is about Rex Huberman, Huberman imposing his will on the world. It's about a failed architect to some degree that's not a visionary that is taking out that failure on the world. Of course, there's more to the story, right?

There's the bullying. There's the depression. You know, there's a lot of components to the story. The mother. These are some of the elements that make the most sense to me at the moment. At the moment. Right. And for those that have more inside information into Rex Sherman, email us at Hidden True Crime Info at Gmail.

The more we learn, the more detailed we will become. This is the broad picture right now. Right. And on that issue of sadism, by the way, and I'll go back to your interview with Nikki, she mentions it too. She felt like Rex Heerman brought up the Gilgo Beach murders with her to kind of taunt her. Right. Right.

That's a big part of it, I think, is this taunting. The fact that he's on this date with Nikki and this is what he wants to talk about. He asks if she likes true crime. She says she does. And then he starts talking about the Gilgo Beat serial killer. That's crazy. Yeah. I've been wanting to ask you about this.

Go ahead. It's almost taunting her, in other words. I think that goes along with this idea of him being a little sadistic, him, you know, wanting to harm people and enjoying it. She said she said she had the sense that he enjoyed taunting her, right? Her words, it seemed like he was having a mental orgasm talking to. about this. Her words, Nicky words. And she explained, she was, you know, when you're talking with a friend about true crime, that was not what this was. He was getting something out of this.

Sadistic then. Right. Exactly. And so I think that's, when you start putting these pieces together, when you start looking at this need for dominance and control, maybe some element of thrill-seeking. And again, I'll bring up Nikki here. Nikki believed he was committing these crimes. because it was a bit of a thrill, that if his life at home was boring, then this was a chance for him to really find something that wasn't boring, right? It was a chance to find something that was thrilling. And I'm going to read on that issue, I want to read from, there's not a lot of great academic articles on serial killers,

but this is one of the better ones. This is by Lawrence Miller from a journal called Aggression and Violent Behavior. He has two parts to this article. This is part two. It's called serial killers. Part two, development dynamics and forensics. This is published in 2014. He is summarizing the work of Robert Simon. Robert Simon is a psychiatrist, a forensic psychiatrist, who's done a lot of work with murderers and violent offenders. And so Simon kind of echoes some of my sentiments tonight. I'm going to talk about Miller's interpretation of Simon here because I think it summarizes a lot of what I've been talking about. And it's interesting too because Simon, Simon does not see serial killers necessarily as, well, the quote will show this, but as necessarily as antisocial predators. He sees them as damaged individuals. So here's what Miller says about Simon.

Simon's approach places the underlying psychology of the serial killer, not primarily in antisocial predatory. and narcissistic entitlement, but fundamentally in a core of self-loathing, from which the killer briefly relieves himself in the acts of controlling, torturing, and killing a victim. In this view, only the most intensely violent, sexually sadistic exploitation of his victims can bring the serial killer out of an emotional deadness to life,

temporarily enabling him to feel calm and relaxed. many serial killers report a profound sense of relief after carrying out a torture and murder episode stating that this act is the only way they can feel, quote, normal, unquote. The only way they can feel normal. So that would be consistent with this idea of kind of thrill-seeking, that if you have someone who's intensely depressed or somewhat depressed and they have this, let's say this underlying resentment or rage, they have this need for domination. They feel like a failure to some degree because they haven't lived up to their expectations, right?

So there's kind of this unlived life idea that they act out. They act out through this violent, aggressive, sexually sadistic manner because it makes them feel in control. And as Simon says, it helps them deal with this, quote, emotional deadness to life. I love that interpretation. I don't know if it's right on, but it's an interesting way of, it's a version of kind of what I'm saying tonight, I think. I also want to point out that Robin wrote a great comment. Imagine the thrill he would have gotten telling his victims that he was Lisk. We were talking about sadistic, you know, almost like that was his next step. If Nikki Brass had gotten in his car and made a different choice that night or didn't call her friend or didn't have backup. Right.

Would that be part of like the sadist and like the sadistic quality of. by the way, I am Lisk. Yeah, no, I could definitely see him doing that because at that moment, you know, assuming that I don't know if we have all the details about how he committed these crimes, by the way, there's some belief now that he committed the crimes at his house and then took the bodies over to Gilwell Beach and dumped them, which makes sense because he's trying to confuse the crime scene. And obviously he doesn't want, he doesn't want any. particular evidence to be in a closed space at a crime scene because that's the easiest way

to decipher suspect is when there's a lot of evidence in a closed space. And so he obviously knew enough to know to take the bodies elsewhere where they would decompose and it would be very hard to figure out or to gather any forensic evidence in that type of a crime scene. Yeah, right. So I think that's kind of my introduction to this case. I don't know. A lost serial killer. Any people you would compare this to, so Israel Keys, who else? fits a description. Yeah, right. So what serial killers have committed sex crimes or lust killings that were the main motif as dominance, Israel Keys certainly would fit that category. Israel Keys, I think, and again, if we're talking about parapherias, Israel Keys was also had a

parapheria that was necrophilia. Israel Keys would molest corpses. As far as we know, Rex Herman's not doing that. So, but in terms of Israel Keys, his main theme was dominance, that he, he definitely was interested in torturing and prodding and harming and hurting his victims as much as possible. And he, it's cozy season and nothing compares to wrapping yourself in a Minky Couture blanket, luxuriously soft, perfectly warm, thoughtfully made. From movie nights to chilly mornings, Minky Couture turns everyday moments into pure comfort. Once you feel it, you'll understand why it's called the original best blanket ever. Visit minky couture.com or a store near you and make this cozy season your softest one yet.

I found that to be really erotic. So I think that Rex Heerman has a similar characteristic. A lot of people are bringing up the BTK said Rex is his twin or he's just like him. So BTK would also be a lust murderer, but in terms of victims, he was choosing victims that were within his geographical region, kind of like Hewerman. But he wasn't targeting women that were as vulnerable as LISC. Right. Well, let me take that back. BTK's victims, they were all vulnerable, of course.

Some of them were a little elderly. If you read about BTK and the crime scenes and his murders, you're not going to find. such a homogenous group as Rex Humerman in terms of age, body type, right? Rex Humerman's clearly focused on his desirability is much clearer than somebody like BTK, or even Israel Keys for that matter. And a lot of people bringing up Ed Kemper. Any thoughts? Yeah.

Ed Kemper mutilated his mother. And again, we don't know enough about Rex Hummerman's mother, but there does seem to be kind of an ambivalent, problematic relationship with his mother. and that was the source of a lot of Edmund Kemper's pathology. So I think that could be a similarity. We don't know enough yet. But that's true. Kemper focused on a very specific class of victims.

Most of them were in a similar age range. Most of them were college students, female college students, that were somewhat vulnerable. I mean, he overwhelmed them with force. But yeah, that's true in terms of if you look at the victims and kind of what we started with in this discussion, I think that I think someone like BTK may feel some closeness or affinity to Heerman because they're both sexual sadists and they're both lust killers, lust murderers.

But, you know, if you look deeper, I think Hewerman, I think there's quite a few differences. Yeah, thank you. There are a few stories of him sort of talking with women that didn't necessarily become as victims, but sort of jumping out at women, startling them being kind of, I guess that's part of the dominance, right? Just sort of kind of, just this intimidating persona.

That was a great question somebody asked. He would sort of jump out from the bushes. Yeah, some people would refer to him whether or not this is exactly how it happened. I don't know, but people would say it was almost like he came out of the bushes, jumped out of the bushes,

and started talking to women, you know, and kind of unkempt clothes. Yeah. A couple thoughts on that. that, you know, one, something as simple as the interview he gave to the realtor, the realtor said that he had one of the most, how did he put it? He had one of the most aggressive. He said that his handshake was so firm. It was like grasping the thing of marble. Yeah. And so, I mean, something as simple as a handshake. And by the way, that's something I look at when I evaluate

criminals is I always start with a handshake. And I want to see, are they trying to take my hand off? Are they shaking my hand for a minute? Are they shaking? my hand for two seconds. Are they giving me a limp handshake? I know that doesn't sound like much, but when I'm starting an interview with a criminal, I want as much information as I can. Are they making eye contact? Are they greeting me in a personable way? Are they saying, how are you, right? Are they showing empathy? And I'm learning all that in the first two minutes in a jail cell or a prison with an inmate. So, so handshakes matter. And somebody, a realtor, that he's giving like a really dominant handshake to.

I think that's interesting. That's potentially diagnostic of it fits this theme of dominance. Rex, hello. How are you doing? Good to see you. Likewise. Same thing with him jumping out of the woods and surprising people. There's a story with one of his associates, right?

He called him in to watch a video. Yes, a woman. Or no, it was a man. It was a male. Yeah, it was a male. And he called him in to watch a gore video. that was bad, was quite horrendous. And the coworker had no idea what he was showing him.

And so this moment occurs in the video that's quite gory. And the co-worker's taken aback and doesn't quite know how to react to it. And so, again, that's that theme of dominance. Then Hewerman's in control. He's got the upper hand. He's trying to upset his coworker. This theme of domination is such a big theme for him. I think you just see it everywhere that you look with this guy.

Somebody asked, and I'm curious too, knowing what you know about Coburger, if indeed Coburger is guilty, what type of killer would that make him? Or would he not be a serial? When that crime occurred and we had no idea who the suspect was, I speculated that this was more like a mass murder. That's right. And then he tended to fit the profile more of a mass murder who might use a gun, like a school shooter.

And I still think that's true with Kobe. So serial killers are much different in the sense that they will murder their victims one at a time over a period of time, unlike a mass murderer who will murder two or more, three or more people at the same time at the same place. And so this is different in the sense that you can't really, I mean, it's possible that Coburger could have committed other crimes, so we don't know that. But given what we know, I think that there's a different dynamic between a mass murder. Well, let me take it back. There are underlying similar psychological elements between mass murderers and serial killers. But, for example, shame would be one of those. Humiliation would be another one.

Kind of what I said earlier about how dominance and humiliation seem to be the two underlying motivations for lust murderers. I think for Coburger, you know, I think shame plays a big role as well. So there are some underlying dynamics, but the way the murders are carried out are quite different. And so I don't know if that analogy quite works. But yeah, there are similar dynamics among all murderers. Yeah. Someone brought up, and this is a question I have too, the taunting of his victim's family members calling a 15-year-old sister to taunt her after he killed her sister. Is that part of the sadism? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's very much that's sad.

component. And again, it's very much related. So sadism would be, I would see, sadism would be a branch of dominance. Okay. So sadism would be like if you had a tree, right, and dominance was your trunk. Sadism would be one of the branches that would be an expression of dominance. So the goal is dominance. Satanism would be a part of that. He is finding it pleasurable and enjoyable to create pain, to have the sister suffer. 15-year-old sisters suffer from those types of calls. Thank you. Anything else you want to say about this interview, the Bonjour Realty interview?

The most interesting element of the interview is I think this is the most fascinating part of that interview. You know, it's amazing how much you can pick up on in a 20-minute interview. There's so much in there that speaks to his psychological state, you know, his perceptions of the world. But I think the most interesting element of the entire. interview was when he talked about how when he became an architect, I think the realtor asked them the question, what have you learned? And Huberman says, essentially, I had to learn about people.

And what he says is, I think some of you were probably seeing this, but what he says is, you know, when I became an architect, I thought that there was, there was a technical aspect and I would go build buildings. And this was just about creating a structure. This is about creating a building. And then I realized, oh, wait a minute, you know, I may have to learn something about people. Does this job taught you about yourself? I think it's taught me more about how to understand people. Because dealing with the technical aspects is something a person can learn. You go to school and do an architectural program.

You work for the experience of doing all. You get your license to practice. Yeah, yeah. As your time goes on, you learn about the buildings and about the codes and the different buildings of timeframes. I'm dealing with a building from the 1880s right now. You know how they react. But it's the people, how they're all so different and how you deal with the people, I think,

is one of the more interesting aspects that have come out of this. Yes. Okay. Okay. He divides up architecture into what he calls the technical elements of architecture and the people part of architecture. And so. I know the exact part you're talking about. I watched this.

I was like, oh, my gosh, John. Right. You know what's amazing about it is I almost have the sense that that Huberman went into architecture. I think he goes into architecture thinking he's going to become the next Frank Lloyd Wright or whatever. I think he seems some type of fame and fortune in architecture. You know, there's also another part of this story. I think there's this underlying perfectionism. That's probably, and perfectionism is almost always rooted in shame, by the way.

That oftentimes people that have a lot of shame will seek perfectionism to try to cover up that shame. Or think of it as perfectionism is a way to cover up imperfections. And as someone who's a recovering perfectionist, I can speak a lot to this issue. But anyway, I have the sense that Hewerman gets into architecture with the sense of perfection and the sense of limitless possibilities. The way I see it is that he sees himself as building the perfect home or the perfect structure. He has this fantasy of fame and fortune and he's going to create, you know, like Frank Gehry, he's going to create like the structure that the world's going to talk about and love and visit.

And maybe he's going to do it in New York. I don't know, maybe he's going to do another MoMA, who knows? I know they just redid that, so he probably won't do that. But I'm talking about his fantasies. So he wants to create the perfect structure. Okay. That's his dream. However, there's one big problem.

And that is over time, Rex Humerman starts realizing that people inhabit those structures. And what Rex Humerman starts realizing is that people are imperfect. And so here you have this perfectionist with depression and a sense of dom, all this stuff, right? He wants to be, he wants to create this perfect structure. And then all of a sudden he recognizes, oh, my gosh, like people are in structures and people were imperfect. And maybe this isn't what I pictured, right? So he gets, he gets mired in all this consulting stuff where he's dealing with codes and

details. And this is not the life he envisioned. This was not what he expected. And he certainly didn't expect to have. to deal with people. And so some of my closing thoughts here would be, I'm going to make kind of an obscure reference here. I don't know if people have seen this movie, but the director, Lars von Trier, who's somewhat controversial and some have called him a visionary. He's certainly a really interesting director. He came out with a movie in 2018 called The House of the Jackbill.

The House of Jackbill is about a serial killer who happens to be an engineer with architectural dreams. So the house that Jack built, Jack's goal in the end is to build the perfect home. He wants to create the perfect home, right? He's got all these plans. He starts building it. The problem is it never meets his expectations. So Jack starts tearing down that home. Like every time he gets one structure put up, it doesn't mean expectations and he tears it down because he's a bit of a perfectionist. And so anyway, he keeps trying, these homes keep getting torn down. And there's a lot more to this movie, by the way. It's not an easy movie to watch, by the way. It's a very gory movie. It's a tough, tough movie to watch. But over time, and I don't want, spoiler alert here, I don't want to

give this away. But over time, you start realizing that what von Trier is really after is, Vontrrier is trying to get us to understand that building a home isn't about a structure, that building a home is about something more. It's about people. It's about love. It's about connection. It's about populating that structure with people that matter and that you can connect to. So it makes sense that a serial killer can't build a home because a serial killer can't put people in there to love, right?

So what happens towards the end of the movie, and again, spoiler alert, for those who haven't seen it, he finally constructs a home. But that home isn't a home. That's a home that's composed of dead bodies. It's composed of all the people he's murdered. Sounds okay. Familiar. I get it. He finally, he builds a home.

It just happens to be a home of dead bodies, of the dead bodies he's killed, right? And so, Von Trier is continuing with this metaphor of what a home is and what it means. But I think what von Trier is doing with that is. And it's a really grotesque scene, by the way. But, I mean, it's memorable. But I think what Von Trier is trying to say with that scene is that the home of dead bodies that he builds is a reflection of his inner deadness. It's a reflection of his inability to connect with other people. It's a reflection of his own depression.

In fact, that part of the movie actually reminded me a lot of Rex Hewerman. Yeah. That Heurman can't really build a home because he doesn't have the human qualities to do it. In the same way that Jack, in the movie, can't build a home that's a real home that doesn't consist of dead bodies because he doesn't have the vitality and the empathy and the love and the ability to really build a home that we would consider a home. And people even pointing out that his house was in a lot of disarray and needing repair, his actual home. It's the home he grew up in. Right, exactly. And so, you know, when I think about Rex Heerman, at least now, and of course we're going to learn more.

I think about like this movie. And the villain, by the way, in that movie is not really like Hewerman in the sense that he's not a lust murderer. He's a serial killer, but he's not a less murderer. But I think that, you know, the message I got from that movie, and it's the message I get when I think about Hewerman is, you know, there's probably no such thing as the perfect home. Because people are imperfect. Right. And if you really want to love people and connect to people and understand people, you have to recognize that people are imperfect and you have to have compassion for them and understanding. And it doesn't matter what walk of life they're in.

It doesn't matter where they work, right? Like, you know, a couple weeks ago, I went out to eat with my dad and it was really hot out and there was a homeless person outside. And, you know, we brought her some lunch and brought it out to her and talked to her. And it's just home is a metaphor for something else. I mean, sure, we can have a nice. home, it's a building, but I think that's true of Heerman. It's true of that movie. Maybe it's true of life in general. But I think the kind of the moral here, for me at least, is that when

Rex Hehrman talks about how the importance of people and understand people, he certainly has a different understanding than I do, because he's not willing to allow that people were imperfect. And I think that's the tragedy here is that the Rex Hewerman, for whatever reasons, just fails to connect human beings. Thank you. And sees, sees human beings as objects or objectifies them and certainly isn't willing to make allowances for people's imperfections. Thank you. Dr. John. That was an amazing moment in the interview for me too, where he says, I've learned how to understand people and then goes into the technical side of architecture. In other words, he hasn't, he doesn't understand people.

everything's technical. Yeah, he thought it would be technical. He thought you could have the perfect plans, building plans, and you could construct the perfect building, and fame and fortune would follow. But again, like, there's people behind those plans. There's people that are going to live in that home, right? So I don't know.

There's a total disconnect there. But I think if you really want to understand Rex Herman, understanding that statement from his video and understanding what it means to be an architect for him is so critical. That being an architect really defines his worldview, but it's a worldview that's completely skewed because it doesn't include people. And as Mayor Beir says, the house that Rex grew up in will probably be demolished and torn down. Right.

And thank you for that. That's another part of this story, which is that you can build all the houses you want. But eventually they're all going to fall apart. Eventually, they're all going to come down. So it's not the house. It's what happens in the house with the people in the house. Design or build. Some people will, yeah, design or build, right.

Design any house you want. Thank you. Thanks, babe. This is our broad picture of Rex Ewerman. It is not our last. So again, I request anyone with any inside information. Anyone that also wants their story told to email us at hidden true crime info at gmail.com. We are hoping for some insider info as we continue to assess this case and who Rex Huberman is.

And we hope to delve into more interviews just like Gie Brass and to give more people a voice when it comes to Lisk when it comes to the Long Island, S.K. Or Gilgo Beach, S.K. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for joining with us on a Sunday night. Thanks for liking this video. Doesn't mean you like the topic necessarily, but thank you for liking the video. If you did appreciate this live tonight, and please share with your friends.

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