RedHanded - GILGO UPDATE: Rex Heuermann Pleads Guilty

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

The lead suspect in the Gilgo Beach Killings - 62 year old former architect Rex Heuermann - has now pleaded guilty.So, with a trial off the table in the Long Island Serial Killer saga, join us for an... update on what investigators found that finally nailed Heuermann - forcing him to confess. Then stick around and revisit our two-part episode on this harrowing case that haunted Long Island for decades.Plus, join us on next week’s Under the Duvet - over on Patreon - for a look at the impact this has all had on Heuermann’s own family.--In 2010, Shannan Gilbert made a series of frantic 911 calls as she ran through the streets of Oak Beach, Long Island, screaming: “They’re trying to kill me”. Then she vanished. A few months later a body was found - but it wasn’t her. And neither were the next 9 sets of human remains they found along Ocean Parkway. Now, over a decade later, with the arrest of Rex Heuermann - the police believe they’ve found the elusive Long Island Serial Killer.But the questions still stand; Why did it take so long to catch him - and was this the work of a lone serial killer, or multiple men using the same dumping ground? We’ll look at Heuermann’s family life, his background - and delve into the 33-page bail document that offers us an in-depth look at how investigators finally caught this notorious, modern American serial killer.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 This year I was bracing myself for a huge trial. That of Rex Huraman, the Gilgo Beach serial killer. The case that we covered in depth last year in a two-parter. But, honestly, I needn't have worried, because on Wednesday the 8th of April in a Suffolk County courthouse, he pleaded guilty to murdering seven women. Melissa Bartholomey, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, Marine Bernard Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, and Sandra Castilla.
Starting point is 00:00:28 and also he pleaded guilty to intentionally causing the death of an eighth, Karen Vagata. In exchange for the guilty plea, Heuraman won't be charged with Karen's murder, but he will still spend the rest of his life behind bars. Huraman's lawyer claimed that his client had decided to plead guilty to spare his victim's families the ordeal of a drawn-out trial. But given that this is the same man who phoned his victim's loved ones to taunt them after he had killed them, I find that quite hard to believe.
Starting point is 00:01:00 This last-minute change of plea is probably much more likely to do with the documents that investigators found on Huraman's computer. An architect, by trade, it seems that Huraman kept a chilling planning document to, in the words of the prosecutors, methodically blueprint how to select, kill and dump his victims. Police found a word document on a hard drive in the basement of, the house that Huraman shared with his wife and children. In this document, spelled out in capital letters, they found a file outlining how to package bodies up for transport, as well as steps that he needed
Starting point is 00:01:38 to take to avoid being caught, and also top tips to remove trace DNA evidence. The manual, because what else can you honestly call it, even contained headings such as supplies and problems, with, for example, DNA listed as a top concern for him. There was also a section titled Body Prep, which, if you remember this case, we'll know that it is pretty grim because it detailed how to clean, dismember, and move the bodies of his victims.
Starting point is 00:02:10 While another part of the document called Post-Event provided a sort of checklist to not leave a trail. These documents, which Huraman had actually tried to delete, along with the DNA evidence that was found on that pizza crust that he had chucked in the bin was just clearly too much. And I'm sure his lawyers strongly advised him that he needed to just plead guilty. It would have been very, very difficult for them to overcome this level of evidence. I guess the question people are asking now was why did he write this all down?
Starting point is 00:02:41 Could it have been instructions for a co-conspirator who hasn't been identified? Because remember, there was some talk of the fact that maybe he was operating at a team. I don't know, I doubt it, I think it's much more likely that this is just reflective of Huraman's grandiosity and the thrill he got from the entire process, from the planning, the stalking, the kill, and even the aftermath. Writing it all down is a way for him to relive it, but also document his genius and bask in the glory of his own brilliance. And ironically, that's exactly what ended up bringing him down. Now, before I let you guys get on with the re-release of our Gilgo episodes to remind yourself how this case went down, let's just touch upon his
Starting point is 00:03:24 victims. Like I said, at the start, he admitted to killing eight women. But it's highly likely that Rex Huraman murdered more. And finally, just to let you guys know, next week on Under the Duve, which is our Patreon exclusive show, we're going to take a bit of a deep dive into this Peacock documentary series, House of Secrets, which is all about Huraman's home life. And it seems that they've got interviews with his wife and even his daughter. I'm really interested to see just how life was for them, how it is that they had absolutely no idea that their husband and father was a serial killer for nearly two decades. I'm about to sit down and watch that documentary series now and like I said, we will be reviewing it, recapping it, going into it, all on under the duvet over on Patreon next
Starting point is 00:04:13 week. So if you're a patron, get ready. If you want, then maybe think about becoming one. You can listen to under the duvet for as little as $5 a month. And you can watch the video releases for as little as $10 a month. So check that out. And yeah, enjoy this recap. And with that, I'll leave you with our two-parter on the Gilgo Beach killings. A case that after decades can finally be put to rest. I'm Suruti.
Starting point is 00:04:50 I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, where we are going to dive into quite a large case today. But before we do that, we have a very quick. Request for everybody. I know that since last summer, when we were making this exact same request, we have had a lot of newbies join the fold. Our numbers have grown quite considerably. Thank you very much for listening. And so maybe you don't know what we're about to talk about.
Starting point is 00:05:17 It's the British Podcast Awards. It certainly is. So just to fill everybody in on the history of the situation. Obviously, British podcasting is a little bit further behind than I would say it is across the pond. but we have had an awards for it for the past few years. Sadly, we've only ever been nominated once, and we have never ever won in the true crime category. Typically tends to be dominated by the BBC
Starting point is 00:05:40 and all of the other categories by the BBC and by celebrities. Yeah. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that. They can do what they want, but there is a very slim chance of two people like us who started this podcast in our bedrooms or sorry slash locked in a cupboard under some stairs with a 10-pound microphone to ever win.
Starting point is 00:05:58 So the one category we have won for the past two years has been down to nobody else. Nobody on the judging panel, nobody else taking part in the awards other than all of you beautiful listeners. Because it is the most important award of all, the listeners choice. And that means it was voted for by you and we won gold for two years in a row. The first year we won, we decided that we would do something crazy. I think Hannah's exact words were, if we win, I will get a tattoo of a listener's name on my body. Yeah, I think I said face, but I quickly retracted. You did say face.
Starting point is 00:06:31 You did say face. And then, unbelievably, we won. And Hannah did follow through. She didn't get a tattoo on her face, but she did get a tattoo of a listener on her body. And then the following year, we thought we can't repeat this. But we did. Unbelievably, we won. And again, we offered you guys the choice of a bonus episode of your choice, if we won.
Starting point is 00:06:51 And also, some other crazy thing you wanted us to do. And you made us jump out of a fucking plane. Yeah. I still haven't recovered. Yeah. Emotionally. You can go watch the video of that horrifying experience, which actually I didn't mind too much.
Starting point is 00:07:03 I wouldn't do it again, but it was fine. On YouTube. This year, third year, we would love to go for a hat trick because it really did the last few years we've won, make people in the industry, make people in Britain, make people across the world,
Starting point is 00:07:16 take notice of what we were doing here at Red Handed, which isn't exactly the flavour that, you know, the corporate podcasting industrial complex seems to like, because yes there is already such a thing and we would just love to win again this year the competition does seem to be a bit more stiff we're up against in the listener's choice quite a lot of celebrity fronted podcasts
Starting point is 00:07:38 including a podcast who have won I think five Christmas number ones so they are big and they have a big fan base that is quite enthusiastic so we don't know if we're going to win again but we would absolutely love it if we could So please, please, please, if you wouldn't mind, take two seconds to head on over to British Podcast Awards.com slash vote and vote for red-handed.
Starting point is 00:08:04 Then go to your emails and please verify that vote. You do not have to be British. You guys always ask and we encourage your diligence and your conscientiousness, but you do not have to be British. We do and we are, I promise you. So go vote for us if you wouldn't mind. And then go please find the Google link, which will be in the episode description, to vote for the episode you would like as your bonus.
Starting point is 00:08:25 episode, the month that we win, if we win, which you will get as an extra special treat, and also whatever crazy thing you would like us to do this year, which I believe the number one is currently spending the night in a haunted house. Yes, and I know for a fact that in the production office, there have been a lot of research calls being made to which haunted houses you can actually stay in. I believe one of them is the Rams in. That sounds terrifying. I've watched a ghost adventures about that. So they do let you stay in there. So that might, I think it's up in New York to some of Cumbria, maybe. So the wheels are returning. So, and of course we will film it because we don't do scary things without getting
Starting point is 00:09:04 some content out of it. So if you want that to happen, just go to British Podcast Awards.com forward slash vote. We'd love a hat trick. It's the only way we can stick it to the map. Exactly. So yes, we would love it if you could do that for us. And yeah, just pause this podcast right now. Go do it. Come back. And then settle in for what is going to be a very unsettling. few hours with us. Yes, somewhat of a red-handed tradition now is that we will get wind of a true crime case that everybody is talking about and then we'll stay up really late for two weeks getting it all together. And that is what we have done again this time for you. Everybody is talking about it. And by the time you've got to the end of this episode and the next one, you'll know more about it
Starting point is 00:09:45 than anybody else and you can bore everyone to death at the pub. Absolutely. Because that is exactly what I have been doing while I have spent the last month researching this episode. And I am ecstatic that for once I get to talk about it with legitimate reason for the next four hours because we're doing a double record and you guys can hear it over the course of the next two weeks. So let's get into it. On the 13th of July, 2023, so just a few weeks ago, a 59-year-old man named Rex Huraman was arrested outside of his Midtown Manhattan architectural practice by a swarm of plain-clothed NYPD officers.
Starting point is 00:10:20 He was taken into custody and charged with the murders of three women. Melissa Barthelamy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Their bodies were found on a quarter-mile stretch of Gilgo Beach on Long Island, New York, 13 years ago. In the months that followed that discovery, police uncovered the remains and partial remains of a total of 11 people scattered along Ocean Parkway, a desolate highway that runs down the southern shoreline of Long Island, including Gilgo Beach. In the decades since the remains were found, the case of the Gilgo Beach killings, or the Long Island serial killer, or LISC to those in the know, has become an obsession for the true crime community. And it's easy to see why, because however you cut it, this is the unbelievable story of a modern American serial killer. We all said it would never happen, but it's happening right now.
Starting point is 00:11:16 Police corruption, beyond belief is there as well, and the eventual meticulous detective work. that finally led to last month's crucial arrest. And as soon as this arrest was announced, we wanted to get this story out for you guys as quickly as possible. We've been doing it more and more recently with cases like Delphi, with cases like Elek Murdoch, but there's been so much to wrap our heads around that we wanted to do it right, not just fast.
Starting point is 00:11:42 Because this arrest, like in the Delphi case, was in and of itself a total shock since we have gone years with next to nothing coming out about this investigation. And while the evidence against Heuraman is very compelling, it's probably as close to a slam dunk as it's possible to get. But it is hard to get away from the fact that his arrest has still left so many questions unanswered. Questions like this. Why did it take so long to catch this man? What conspiracies lay at the heart of the Suffolk County Police Department?
Starting point is 00:12:16 Are these victims Huberman's only ones? Is he really the only killer involved? And how, after all this time, a decade, and all the theories and missed opportunities, did the police finally land this arrest? Now, if you don't know what the hell we're talking about, because you do not know this case,
Starting point is 00:12:36 don't worry. We are going to go through quite literally everything. And since this is an enormous saga, spanning decades, stretching over county lines with at least 11 victims, and very possibly more than one killer, this is going to have to be a two-parter. So let's get started.
Starting point is 00:12:55 On the 1st of May 2010, three 911 calls were made by a 24-year-old woman named Shannon Gilbert. These calls lasted a total of 22 minutes, and in them you can hear a distressed Shannon repeatedly claiming someone's after me. Shannon, who was an aspiring actress, originally from New Jersey, was working as an escort. And that night, she had gone all the way from Manhattan to the upmarket gated community of Oak Beach on Long Island for a job.
Starting point is 00:13:23 Shannon had been involved in sex work for a while. She knew the risks. Most people do. So she'd taken a man named Michael Pack with her. Pack has been incorrectly labelled as Shannon's pimp by a lot of media outlets. He wasn't. Shannon didn't have a pimp. She found her Johns through Craigslist and Backpage.
Starting point is 00:13:41 She paid Pack to be her driver and act as her protector. And the very fact that she took PAC with her that night, and the fact that she was willing to go all the way out to Long Island, signaled that this was no ordinary job. There must have been the promise of a big payout. But something went wrong. And at 4.51 a.m., Shannon called 911. Say, police, try.
Starting point is 00:14:09 Yeah, there's somebody asked me. I'm sorry? There's somebody asked for me. Where are you? There's somebody asked me. Okay, where are you? There's somebody asking me. Where are you, ma'am?
Starting point is 00:14:20 I don't know. You're driving right now? I'm inside a house. What house? I don't know. You trace where I am. No, I can't. What's your callback number you're calling from?
Starting point is 00:14:33 Somebody's after me, please. Are you in Suffolk County or Nassau County? I'm in Long Island. Where on Long Island are you? No, no, no, stop, no. Where in Long Island? Do you in Suffolk County, Nassau County? County, you on the line?
Starting point is 00:14:53 Stop. Please, stop it, please. Please, please, please, you should have to go? No, time to go. Please, please. Come on, let's go, come. Come on, let's go, come over, I said, just like that. Come, cross that over.
Starting point is 00:15:11 All of us, fuck, come over outside, come. No, please. Why? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? You're going to kill me? I'm in the middle of nowhere. I'm in the middle of nowhere.
Starting point is 00:15:32 Please, stop. No, stop, but please. Hello? Hello? Please. Yeah, it basically just goes on like that for ages. but the two men you can hear are Joseph Brewer and Michael Pack. And basically all they keep saying again and again is what's wrong with you,
Starting point is 00:15:50 please just leave, please leave. And Michael Pat keeps trying to get into the car, but she keeps saying, somebody's after me, somebody's after me, somebody's after me. So Shannon had fled the home of her client, Joseph Brewer, and was seen running down the street on Oak Beach. Shannon banged on doors begging neighbours for help. One of these neighbours was Gus Coletti. On the 911 call, you can hear Shannon,
Starting point is 00:16:14 shouting at Gus. Help me, help me, help me. Shannon. Gus says that she then ran from his house and hid under a boat in his front yard. At this point, Gus says he saw an Asian man, obviously Michael Pack, driving a black SUV, who seemed to be looking for Shannon. When asked later by police, if Gus thought Shannon was scared of this man, he just said she was scared of someone. Shannon then bolted from under the boat and the car took off after her. At 521 a.m., Gus called 911. Something police, they say something to you, location of emergency.
Starting point is 00:17:02 Yes, I live at Old Beach in the association. There's a young girl about 14 years old running around here screaming, and there's some guy trying to follow her. Do you have a description of the girl or the boy? The girl was about 14 years old, got blonde hair, very small. The boy, I can't tell. He was into like a... Bourbon?
Starting point is 00:17:23 What color? Black? They just went past the gatehouse where the entrance is. All right. We hear somebody over there? I'll be watching. Oh, okay. Bye.
Starting point is 00:17:33 And Shannon continued to run banging on the doors of other residents. But by the time police arrived at 5.41 a.m., there was no sign of Shannon Gilbert anywhere. And she was never seen alive again. And you can hear in the call, like, she is all sorts of fucked up. Like, she's slurring, like, nobody's business. Yeah. And we are going to talk more about.
Starting point is 00:17:53 Shannon Gilbert and these calls later, but yeah, there's no denying in those calls that she's not totally okay. Not just scared, but something else is going on. Shannon's family naturally were beside themselves, and they kept the pressure on the police to find her. But nothing much seemed to be done. Then, on the 10th of December 2010, an off-duty police officer decided to take his cadaver dog, Blue, out to Gilgo Beach for a training exercise. Out of your blues, who do you think would be the best cadaver dog? My blue, big blue. I didn't want to lead the witness.
Starting point is 00:18:37 Big blue for sure. But this is proof. Blues are top dogs. Big Blue, actually, he's a fucking big Alsatian. He's out there with this officer. Bigger Blue. So he takes Bigger Blue out onto Gilgo Beach for a training exercise. That day, the officer and Bigger Blue found the body of a woman.
Starting point is 00:18:56 Sure that it was Shannon Gilbert, the officer called it in. But much to everyone's surprise, it wasn't Shannon Gilbert. And neither were the next nine sets of human remains uncovered by authorities along that very strip of shoreline over the next five months. It's just like a can of worms. They open it up, they start looking and just body after body after body starts appearing. And one thing I do want to make clear because people hear beach, especially Gilgo Beach, and they think Long Island, New York, it's hardly like a rural place. Like, how could these bodies have laid there for that long and nobody knew they were there?
Starting point is 00:19:36 Well, Gilgo Beach and the stretch of shoreline that is off Ocean Parkway. So Ocean Parkway is the highway, kind of dips off the main road, no streetlights along that strip of highway or shoreline. And the beach is like marshy. It's rough, it's desolate. There is no reason anyone would go there for, like, you know, a little. swim. It's not a nice place. It's very, very rough, wild terrain. And as you'll find out by how long some of these bodies were there, nobody was going there. One by one, seven of the ten victims found on Gilgo Beach were identified. To this day, we still don't know who three of them are.
Starting point is 00:20:19 If we had recorded this five days ago, we would be saying six out of ten had been identified. So this case is moving quickly. By the time you listen to this, it may be out of date again, and you know, we'll just come back to it and do updates whenever it's relevant, so bear with us. So, like we said, we now know who seven of the victims were, but three of them, we do not. What we do know, however, is that all of these remains and all of these bodies had been periodically dumped off the road, Ocean Parkway, over the course of 15 years, from 1996 to 2010. But how could we possibly know this if we don't even know who all of the victims are? I hear you scream.
Starting point is 00:21:01 How, for instance, could we know how long the unidentified victims have even been missing if we don't know who they are? Well, hold on to your hats. We know it was over at least 15 years because of a nasty twist in this story. But put a pin in that for now. We will come back to it. First, let's go through the victims. The bodies of 24-year-old Melissa Barthelami. 22-year-old Megan Waterman,
Starting point is 00:21:27 27-year-old Amber Lynn Costello, and 25-year-old Maureen Brenard Barnes, were all found in December 2010. So pretty much as soon as blue, bigger blue, finds Melissa Bartholome, she's the first body to be found. The other three are found in quick succession. And these four women were all wrapped in burlap, bound with either duct tape or belts,
Starting point is 00:21:49 and they were buried, almost perfectly, equally spaced out, 500 foot apart. on the same stretch of Gilgo Beach. All four of the women were also sex workers. They all used Craigslist or Backpage to advertise themselves. They were all petite, under five foot, and no more than a hundred pounds. All of them had green or hazel eyes, and they had all vanished in the summer months. Maureen was the first one to go missing in 2007, with the other three, all last seen in the summer of 2009.
Starting point is 00:22:21 Their similarities in life and death, and the proximity of their proximity of their. remains in a cluster led to Melissa, Megan, Amber and Maureen being given the name the Gilgo Beach Four. And it seemed obvious that they had all been victims of one serial killer because there are more than three. Yes. Though I believe the FBI have changed the rule now. I think it's only two. And I think some people were like, well, why would they do that? And it's interesting.
Starting point is 00:22:45 It's because serial killing isn't technically, serial killer isn't technically like a type of criminal. It's a type of behavior. So if somebody has killed two people in two separate events and they're doing things like keeping trophies, they're doing things like planning the next attack and they're in their calling off period, it does seem redundant to not call them a serial killer. Yes, that's true. So I believe some of the rules have changed on that. But yeah, absolutely. I think everything you just spelled out, it would be beyond belief to think that these women were not all the victim of one killer, of one man. So then the police continue to search that area off ocean parkway.
Starting point is 00:23:24 And the following spring, so in 2011, the partial remains of two more women were found. 20-year-old Jessica Taylor and 24-year-old Valerie Mack. One of Jessica's arms, her hands, and her skull were found just under a mile up the shore from where the Gilgo Beach Four had been discovered. So again, like, Gilgo Beach is like one part of this massive stretch off ocean parkway. So I know what I'm about to describe to people like in terms of miles distances apart. It's confusing. Please go look at our social media, and we have put up a very comprehensive map of what we're about to explain, because it is important. So yes, partial remains of Jessica,
Starting point is 00:24:04 her arms, her hands, her skull found just under a mile up the shore from where the Gilgo Beach Four were. And then about another mile and a half further up the coast, authorities found Valerie Max's right foot, hands and head. Jessica and Valerie were not physically dissimilar to the Gilgo Beach Four. They're both young, they're both in their early 20s. They're both white, like it could fit a pattern. They were both also sex workers, and their remains had turned up on the same stretch of shoreline. What's a mile to a mile and a half, like, away from these bodies?
Starting point is 00:24:38 It's still very, very close. But we do have to point out that there was one major difference. The remains of Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack were not in pieces due to decomposition. Both of these women had been dismembered. And the reason they were both identified so quickly, despite police only having their partial, heavily decomposed remains to work with,
Starting point is 00:25:02 was because both Valerie and Jessica's torsos had been found years before in the early 2000s, so they've already got their DNA on file. And those torsos had been found 45 miles away from Gilgo in a place called Manaville, another area of Long Island. Valerie had last been seen in the summer of 2000, Jessica, the summer of 2003. Both of their torsos had been found wrapped in plastic in the pine forests of Manaville within weeks of them disappearing.
Starting point is 00:25:34 So at this point, in mid-2011, the body count sat at six, but we are not even close to nearly almost being done. On the 4th of April, the same day they found Valerie Mac's partial remains, authorities also discovered the body of an unidentified. female toddler between the ages of 16 and 24 months. And because they had no idea who this baby was, they called it baby dough. Oh, this case is bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak. If you just go Google Images of Gilgo Beach or off-ocean Parkway,
Starting point is 00:26:10 it is bleak and desolate as this fucking case is. It is grubby. There is a fucking baby out there. It is absolutely miserable. to this day, we don't know who babytoe is. And then we have an unidentified Asian male victim whose body was found dressed in women's clothes. Investigators guessed that this man could be anywhere between 19 and 35.
Starting point is 00:26:37 Then, seven days later, on the 11th of April 2011, near Jones Beach State Park, another set of partial remains, this time belonging to a black female, were discovered. These remains were less than four miles down the coast from Gilgo Beach. And just like Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor, this woman's torso had also been found years before in 1997. Her torso had been stuffed into a black plastic bag and dumped in a bin.
Starting point is 00:27:08 Not in Manaville this time, but 11 miles away from where her partial remains were found in a place called Hempstead Lake Park. Authorities didn't know who this victim was, so they named her Peaches due to a tattoo of a distinctive heart-shaped peach with a bite out of it on her left breast. And unbelievably, Peaches was also identified as being the biological mother of baby dough. So fucking grim. And the other thing that is so grim about this is so Peach's torso is found in Hempstead Lake Park, which is not near the shoreline, it's like inland. Her arm and like some jewelry and like partial remains are found four miles down the road from Gilgo Beach, but again on
Starting point is 00:27:52 that same shoreline off ocean parkway. Baby dough is far miles away from her. So whoever did this didn't even have the fucking decency. And I say this in the most like irrelevant way because like they're both dead at this point and this person has killed them. But moved the baby away from her and dumped the body miles away up the coast. Like none of it makes any sense. And there's no way. I can't any way in which that baby's body moved on its own. Somebody dumped them separately. And it's just like the final insult in death, it feels like. It does feel like that.
Starting point is 00:28:25 So yeah, it's a lot. And try not to feel too terrible about it because we're not done still. There's more to come. We've got one more victim to discuss with you. On the same day, investigators found Peaches. They also discovered a skull, Nitobe Beach, almost exactly halfway between where Peaches' partial remains had been found and the Gilgo Beach four bodies had been buried.
Starting point is 00:28:46 And it was at this point a retired homicide detective had contacted the task force and told them about a pair of severed legs wrapped in plastic that had washed ashore on Fire Island back in 1996. And fortunately, these legs were still in a freezer at the medical examiner's office. And when they were compared,
Starting point is 00:29:06 the skull and the legs were a match. And just a couple of weeks ago, 27 years after Fire Island Jane Doe's legs were first discovered, the police were able to identify her. Yeah, I had to go through the script, Control F, Fire Island Jane Doe, replace with her actual name, because this is unbelievable. This literally happened like, I don't know, a few days ago.
Starting point is 00:29:32 So, Fire Island Jane Doe was actually 34-year-old Karen Vergata, a sex worker who was living in Manhattan. She called her dad on his birthday, Valentine's Day, 1996, and then she vanished. But like we said, to this day, peaches, baby dough and Asian male have still not been identified. And it would be 18 months after Shannon Gilbert vanished, after making those 911 calls. And almost a year to the day after the first body was found on Gilgo Beach, that the police finally found Shannon's body.
Starting point is 00:30:08 Shannon's remains were found out on the marshes near where she was last seen on Oak Beach. And again, guys, I totally get at what I'm saying might be hard to keep track of. And I know that we've just pummeled you with a lot of information, but it is very important. And essentially what you need to know is that all of the remains discovered between 2010 and 2011 were found in basically a straight line on this shore just off ocean parkway. So from peaches at one end of the line to Karen Vergata's skull, the Gilgo Beach 4, Asian male, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mac, Baby Doe, and finally, at the end of the line, the location on Oak Beach where Shannon Gilbert was found,
Starting point is 00:30:47 it's all one line. The only deviations from this near straight line are the locations of where Peaches, Valeries and Jessica's torsos were found years before the rest of their remains. And this line along the shoreway is maybe four miles, from one end to the other. And like I said, we've posted a comprehensive map on our social's marking all of this. So go check it out. It will definitely help make things a little bit more clear if you are confused. So now, by 2012, Suffolk County Police had 11 bodies on their hands. Nine women, one man, one baby, all found on the same stretch of shoreline. I'd be panicking.
Starting point is 00:31:26 You would, wouldn't you? That's not what happens. On the face of it, it obviously appears that all of these bodies are connected. They have to be. But whether or not all of these victims are linked is one of the most enduring mysteries surrounding this infamous case. Some people were convinced that all of the victims, and possibly countless more, which we will get to in next week's episode, are all linked to one prolific serial killer. While others say that the Gilgo Beach Four are definitely the work of just one killer,
Starting point is 00:31:58 but that the MO, victim types and disposal methods of the rest just don't fit the same pattern, and therefore the south shore of Long Island must have been a dumping ground for multiple killers. And I can see that argument. Yes, honestly, I can argue this both ways. And I flip-flopped again and again whilst researching this case and rewritten this bit of the script multiple times. But ultimately, I have landed on the fact that I think it's just too early to definitively say one way or another. I just don't think we have enough information to say that.
Starting point is 00:32:31 And I think while people all be like, come on, it just makes sense that it's one killer because of like Occam's razor or whatever, like four miles of one bit of speech, like multiple bodies dumped there. Like how could you think it's anything else? I don't know. I think trying to force a conclusion at this stage could either leave a killer on the street or allow one to walk away from court a free man. But it is interesting to theorise.
Starting point is 00:32:54 So let's give it a go. Like we mentioned earlier, the Gilgo Beach Fall all fit a very specific. patent. Their appearance, the way they met their Johns using things like Craigslist and Backpage, the time of year they vanished, they all went missing in the summer months, they were all wrapped in burlap, the bindings and the way their bodies were disposed of, it all matches. It even turned out that some of the Gilgo Beach Four's loved ones had received taunting phone calls from a man with a long island accent, using the victim's own phones. I know, we're going to get to it. It's horrible. So, the victimology, the M.O., the signature and the dump site, all point clearly to the Gilgo Beach Four being the work of one serial killer. That is, in my mind, irrefutable. One person did those four killings.
Starting point is 00:33:44 Then, when you look at Peaches, Karen Vergata, Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor, the latter three we know were also sex workers, obviously. We haven't identified Peaches so we don't know. and could fit the physical preference type of the Gilgo Beach Four killer. Peaches, though, we don't know if she was a sex worker, and, crucially, she was black. But, more importantly, all four of them were dismembered, and their torsos or legs, in the case of Karen Vergata, were left, wrapped in plastic, totally out in the open. And their remains were spread between places like Manneville, Hempstead Park, and Ocean Parkway.
Starting point is 00:34:23 The killer of the Gilgo Beach 4 on the other hand hid his victims. He covered them in camouflage burlap and laid them out neatly in a row. One set of behaviour points to a killer trying carefully not to have his victims found. The other set seems to point to someone much less concerned with discovery.
Starting point is 00:34:41 And just, you know, to refute anybody who's like, well, how can you say dismemberment and scattering body parts is not somebody concerned with discovery? The only reason I say that is because the Gilgo Beach 4 were not discovered for a very long time. time. And even when they were discovered by Blue and the officer who was with him, whose name I don't actually know, irrelevant. Irrelevant. They were discovered purely by chance. They had laid there, like Amber Costello had only been missing for a while, but the first victims, they had been there
Starting point is 00:35:09 for a very long time. The torsos that were found in Manaville, they were just found by a dog walker. So they were very much not buried or, if you'd gone to the effort to dump them in the woods, why wouldn't you bury them? It's almost like they were like, I'll dump them in the woods. but I'm okay if somebody finds them. I don't know. I don't know. And you could argue with me on that. It's just how it seems to me. So what we're saying is that you can group the Gilgo Beach Four together.
Starting point is 00:35:33 They were clearly killed by one man, the Long Island serial killer or Lisk. Let's all agree on that. Then you could group Peaches, Karen Vergata, Valerie Mac and Jessica Taylor together and say they may have been murdered by another killer. Let's call him as some are the Manaville Butcher. That leaves the three outliers, baby dough, Asian male and Shannon Gilbert.
Starting point is 00:35:58 None of them were dismembered, like those we're attributing to the Manaville Butcher in this particular theory. None of them were covered in plastic or burlap, and none of them were bound, like the Gilgo Beach Fort. But I think it stands to reason to say that whoever killed Peaches also killed her child. It doesn't make any sense that somebody else killed the baby. No. And then dumped the baby in the exact same place. So if we're saying there are two killers in this particular theory,
Starting point is 00:36:24 then that would mean the Manaville Butcher also killed Peaches' baby, baby dough. Now we don't actually know how Baby Doe died. All we pretty much know is that her body had been wrapped in a blanket. Now Asian males' cause of death was a savage beating. And he is interesting because he's the only man out there for a start. And he's also died in a completely different way. You will see a lot of reports out there saying that the Gilgo Beach Four were strangled, to death. I haven't seen conclusive evidence of that. So I don't know. I don't know on that front.
Starting point is 00:36:57 But Asian male was definitely beaten to death. And if I had to group him with one set or the other, I would put Asian male with the Gilgo Beach Four and say that he was probably also killed by Lisk. And this is, I grant you, it's speculation. The only reason I'm saying that is purely due to the proximity of his body to Gilgo Beach Four. He was found right next to the Gilgo Beach Four cluster. Again, is it a coincidence that another killer killed him and then dumped his body right next to four other bodies? Possibly. But let's go with this theory. The other reason that this theory might fit, and I say this is a big might in fucking italics,
Starting point is 00:37:34 is because search terms found on Rex Huraman, so the man who's been arrested for being Lisk, search terms found on his computer did include Asian male twink tied up porn. But again, Asian male was a man. tied up. It's one search term that we've been made privy to. Is it enough? I don't know. It's definitely not a smoking gun, but it could fit. And as for why he, if Rex Hurom and Islisk beat Asian Mouth to death and why he didn't bind him or kill him in the way that he killed the other victims and, you know, didn't like bind him and bury him in burlap, etc. It could be because he's a man and he doesn't fit with the other victims.
Starting point is 00:38:13 But I would say that there is enough about the manner of his death and where he's found that like I agree with you. Like it makes much more sense to link him with the Gilgo Beach Four than it does with the others. Some have also speculated that it could be that the only reason that Asian male was beaten to death was that Lisk only discovered that he was a male after they became intimate and then killed him in outrage. Maybe. But we also know that he searched Asian male twink. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:50 It kind of is like it's one or the other. So I don't know. Or it's neither. Yeah. And could it be rage at himself for homosexual desire, some sort of rabid internalised homophobia? It's possible. But everything is possible. Everything happens. The only niggle we could find about Lisk having killed Asian male is that Lisk was very methodical. He carefully laid out the Gilgo Beach four. That strip of shoreline was probably like a little trophy garden for him. Somewhere he likely drove up and down all the time to relive what he had done.
Starting point is 00:39:22 It does seem odd. that he'd bury four victims who all fit a certain type in a very neat line and then dump a totally different kill right alongside them. It irks my mild levels of OCD that I'm just like, why would you lay out four, 500 feet perfectly spaced apart, and then just randomly dump one more body that doesn't fit the pattern like right next to them? I don't know. Maybe.
Starting point is 00:39:44 This is such a leap. Let's hear it. I'm reading Dan Treiber's book, right? Yeah. And in it he talks about there's a Zen concept. of the rough corner, right? So in every Zen garden, there will be one corner that you leave completely to the elements and it acts as a balance for the neatness of everything else.
Starting point is 00:40:03 How interesting. So maybe. And look, let's just leap all over the fucking place if we're going for this. Rex Heron is an architect. Ah. They are people who are thinking about space, who are thinking about balance, who are thinking about composition. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:40:21 We are jumping all over the fucking place. Yeah, but go and read Dan's book. It's great. It's called The Theory of Everything Else. But, you know, this is all we can do at this stage, because this is all of the information we have. So, you know, why not? But questions, questions, questions. So we've gone through all the victims now, except for the last outlier, Shannon Gilbert. Much to the fury of her family, Shannon's death was ruled accidental. The Suffolk County Police claimed that she had run out onto the marshes, drunk high and paranoid, and drowned. How they concluded that Shannon had drowned when they only had her skeletal remains,
Starting point is 00:40:57 given that they found her 18 months after she went missing, is beyond me. They haven't got her lungs to check. Like, how could they know? How could they know? And a private autopsy carried out later, at the request of the family, found that Shannon had a damaged hyoid bone. Now, this could be indicative of strangulation. Again, without the soft tissue there to be able to see bruising,
Starting point is 00:41:19 etc. It is not definitive, but it could be indicative. And many people point to the fact that Shannon was also partially undressed and that her clothes were strewn around the marshes, a sign of foul play perhaps. Although, we can also believe that Shannon was running from someone. She was genuinely terrified for her life. And because she was probably high, or having an episode of some sort,
Starting point is 00:41:44 she was able to run barefoot onto the marshes. Like, if you see these marshes, If you see video of people going out onto the marshes to see where Shannon died, there is a documentary which you can watch. It was up on Channel 4, but they've taken it down, but it is on Amazon Prime now called The Killing Season. It's the people who made Cropsey. Ah. But yeah, go watch it. It is very good.
Starting point is 00:42:03 They're jumping around all over the place too. But yeah, they go out into the marshes and you look at the floor of the marshes, like of the ground of the marshes. And it's like, there is no way anyone who wasn't terrified and or high could put barefoot on to that ground. And look, we don't know for sure if she was high, as Suru said, we only have skeletal remains, but she doesn't sound 100% lucid in those 911 calls. Shannon did also have a history of mental health challenges and drug abuse, so perhaps she'd been given drugs.
Starting point is 00:42:34 She was overwhelmed and she ran away. And maybe while she was out on the marshes hiding, she started to get hypothermia, which could explain the removal of her clothes because of paradoxical undressing. But in reality, we just don't know how Shannon died. Some say whether she was murdered or not, Shannon, despite being the reason for the list case ever coming to light, is not connected at all. Because, yeah, Shannon is the lynchpin in this. If she never went missing, if she didn't call 911, if they didn't know where she had been when she vanished, that officer and bigger blue would never have been on that beach doing that exercise.
Starting point is 00:43:09 So interesting. They thought they were looking for Shannon and they thought they found her, but they uncovered this. So, I don't know. While I personally don't think that Shannon was killed by Lisk or the Manneville Butcher, if we continue with the theory that there are two killers, I do think that Shannon could still be connected. But we'll come back to that later. For now, let's run with this idea that there are multiple killers. How likely could this really be? Well, we already know at least one other serial killer of sex workers who was active in the area at the same time.
Starting point is 00:43:39 His name is John Bitroth. He was a married carpenter and father convicted in 2014 for the murders of two women. Rita Tangreddy and Killeen McNamee. And he was suspect number one in the death of a third woman called Sandra Costilla. These murders took place between 1993 and 1994 and guess where John Bitrov lived. Disneyland Paris. No, Manaville. Yeah, man.
Starting point is 00:44:06 You couldn't make this up. And like they caught him. I'd like said, they only convicted him of the murders of two women. He was absolutely suspected in the murderer of Sandra. and God knows how many other fucking women. And also, do I need to remind everybody who else was a fucking serial killer in Long Island, Mr. Bloody Joel Rifkin?
Starting point is 00:44:25 And he was caught in 1993. So again, the timeline isn't a million miles off. So we already know that there are multiple serial killers active in the area. And Long Island is not a huge place. No. And the idea of a shared dump site between multiple killers is also not ridiculous. It's happened before.
Starting point is 00:44:44 The case of the killing fields in terms. Texas, where since the 1970s, dozens of bodies have been discovered on an overgrown field by a stretch of highway in League City. And these have been attributed to multiple different killers. Also, like, there are so many places. If you just Google, top places where bodies get dumped. I mean, I'm currently listening to the prosecutor's fucking 10-part episodes we're up to now on the case of Adnan's side. Leakin Park.
Starting point is 00:45:13 Yeah. Bodies get dumped there because people know if you want to do. dump a body, that's where you go to dump a. And Annand also knew that, no matter how much he says he didn't. So yeah, I think, like, the idea that killers dump their bodies in the same place is not particularly, like, a rarity. And, like, it worked. They were there for fucking ages. Exactly. And also, I think we have to look at the sheer prevalence of serial killers, because that also points to the fact that there could easily have been multiple killers. We've already named at least two, and now throw in Rex Huraman, if he's guilty, there were at least.
Starting point is 00:45:45 three active overlapping in Long Island at the same time. But let's look at the prevalence of serial killers according to the FBI. They estimate that there are currently 25 to 50 serial killers active in the US at any one time. That's horrifying. And I suspect that that is a gross underestimate. Whether we'll get to like, you know, another killer like a Gacy or a Bundy or something who are racking up into the 20s, 30s kill count like that, I don't know. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:13 but multiple serial killing is not that uncommon. Now, the FBI will also say that, you know, that's around 1% of overall homicides are serial cases. So yes, that does make it look like it is very rare. But it is conservatively believed that 4% of female homicides in the US are serial in nature. So that is quite interesting and quite terrifying. And that percentage of victims,
Starting point is 00:46:43 who are victimized by serial killers only increases when you talk about those victims being sex workers. So again, if you're finding sex worker after sex work after sex worker on this stretch of shoreline, could point to one killer, could point to multiple. Like, nothing here is definitive. On top of this, I found a report on murderdata.com, which actually, the URL will make you laugh. It made me laugh. It still makes me laugh. But it is actually, they're doing great work.
Starting point is 00:47:11 and basically they've plotted all of the unsolved female homicides in the area surrounding New York, Nassau County and Suffolk County in Long Island. So basically the two counties that sort of span this particular case and also thrown in New York, because we know where Rex Heron worked, and found that the cluster of murders, similar to the Gilgo murders, stretches far wider and encompasses far more victims than the 11 victims on the beach. so of course there could have been multiple killers in the area. Though we do have to say that none of this is definitive and all of these 11 victims could very much be the work of one killer and for a lot of people that just makes more sense than there being two maybe more people involved.
Starting point is 00:47:57 If you consider the evidence in a linear fashion, you could even explain away the big difference of dismemberment. Let's look at who was dismembered. It was early victims like Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Karen Vergata and Peaches. They were cut up and their bodies were scattered. Bits of them were wrapped in plastic. Later victims, like the Gilgo Beach Four, were all intact and covered in burlap,
Starting point is 00:48:18 which actually promotes decomposition unlike plastic. So it could easily be the same killer who first tried harder to cover his tracks when disposing of victims and then evolved with experience. And it also could be that as the years passed and the partial remains he dumped in Manaville were easily found, but those by the shore and ocean parkway weren't.
Starting point is 00:48:39 The killer may have decided all of the effort of dismembering his victim's bodies just wasn't worth it. And this is a thing. Again, I know we're talking out of both sides of our mouth because we're like, hey, maybe dismembering the bodies and spreading them around Long Island makes it harder for them to be discovered. But he also leaves them in very open places and doesn't bury them, which makes it easier for them to be discovered. So which is it? Like, I get that. It's not clear. I think all we can say is if you look at them in a linear fashion, as you mentioned, the change in M.O. could be linked to. to the passage of time and his evolution as a serial killer. But then again, typically organized killers go from more organized to less organized as they devolve. So as time goes on and as they kill more people, they typically get more sloppy over time. So it would be unusual that a killer went from scattered body parts out
Starting point is 00:49:31 in the open to bound, neatly laid out, burlapped victims. Because maybe he thought chopping them up and spreading them around all over the place would make it harder for him to be discovered. But when they start to be found, maybe he's like, oh, this is a terrible plan. Let me not go through the effort of dropping them up. Let me just bury them in one place and wrap them in burlap.
Starting point is 00:49:49 I don't know. So you could say that the bound, neatly laid out burlaped victims, is him becoming more careful and more organized over time. But that's not typical. That's not what you typically see with serial killers. And as for the different types of victim,
Starting point is 00:50:02 from white to black and one man and one child, again, this doesn't necessarily, disprove the single killer theory. While a serial killer may have a preference, and in this case it would be for petite white women, there is nothing to say that serial killers won't deviate from that preference. Look at Dennis Rader, Richard Ramirez, or Gary Ridgeway. So for now, let's park the single killer or multiple killer question
Starting point is 00:50:28 and get back to the investigation. Which you can't see, but I'm putting in massive fucking airports. Because the very last thing that the... Suffolk County Police Department was doing at the time was investigating. And now we're going to introduce our favourite character in this story. A few days after Shannon Gilbert's body was discovered, a new chief of police was placed in charge. His name is James Jimmy Burke. He started off by declaring that Shannon's death was an accident and then basically just
Starting point is 00:51:01 proceeded to cover everything up. Those 911 calls that Shannon made that we played at the top of the episode, they weren't released by the police until 2022. The police department just spent years claiming that in the calls Shannon didn't sound distressed, which it's opposites day, apparently. And the department stood by these statements even after those three harrowing calls were made public. But that is just the tip of the dirty, dirty, poo-coloured iceberg. Form officers from Suffolk County described the regime there under Burke as a system of paranoia and fear akin to the KGB. be during the Cold War. And one, Peter Fiorello, said this. Every place has corruption,
Starting point is 00:51:44 but on a scale from one to ten, it's an 11. And I think that's not even telling you enough about how fucked up the SCPD were at this point. So the FBI obviously, naturally, tried to get involved with the list case. Eleven bodies is serious business. And expert profilers from the BAU came to Suffolk County to a... assist the department. But Jimmy Burke and Tom Spota, the then-DA, who had inserted himself right into the middle of the investigation for some reason, blocked the FBI at every turn. There are stories that they wouldn't even let the FBI read any of the reports. Apparently Spoter and Burke would sit in a room with the FBI saying, we'll just read you what we think you need to know.
Starting point is 00:52:31 But why? Why would a police chief and DA up to their eyes in dead bodies? not want the help of this elite team from the FBI. I think nothing would prick my ears up more than I'm just going to show you some of it. Yeah, they're literally like, you can sit over there and I will read you what I think is important. Like, of course everyone was screaming cover up. What the fuck is going on? But the question is why? Why were they doing this?
Starting point is 00:52:58 Why were Spota and Burke doing this? Who would not want a case like this cleared? Like the pressure, the fucking stress of 11 bodies, people in Long Island were terrified because there is a killer, at least one killer on the loose. Why would you say no to the resources of the federal government? And I only actually thought about this and discovered this during the research of this case. Because serial killer hunting, if we want to call it that, in America has changed drastically since 9-11. Interesting. Because up until 9-11, the BAU, the FBI,
Starting point is 00:53:33 They were very concerned with serial killers. That was like one of their main things that they did. The BAU was almost known as the elite serial killer catching team. But after 9-11, resources and priorities shifted. And the FBI have since then been a lot more focused on terrorists than serial killers. That is interesting. So resources, funding, time, priorities, everything has been shifted away from that. And it kind of makes sense because we have like a lot of very public terrorist attacks happening.
Starting point is 00:54:03 in the US and in Europe, serial killers have been on the decline, despite, you know, the statistics we gave you earlier, which I hope doesn't scare you because, yes, it is only 1% of killings that are linked to serial killers, unless you're a woman in which case is four, but do you know what I mean? It's like they have had to look at spending their time on other things, like anti-terrorism. So in that case, when the FBI, like, even this, warrants us looking at this serial killer, why would you turn them down? Enter major suspicions of a cover-up. And pretty soon, graffiti started to appear all over Long Island, pointing the finger at Chief Jimmy Burke himself being Lisk. And you might be saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, come on, it can't really be the Chief of Police.
Starting point is 00:54:49 And in any other case, we would agree with you, but not this time, Delilah. Kinder, but yeah. And while we now have Rex Hurerman in custody with a solid case against him, we don't think Burrude. is Lisk, but he is about as dirty as a cop can get. And how he came to be chief of police, given that during his career he'd been picking up sex workers while on duty in his cop car without even securing his gun, which actually went missing during one of his little trists.
Starting point is 00:55:18 All of that is pretty shocking. They must have a real recruitment problem on the island. This whole story is beyond fucked up. Burke had also been in a sexual relationship with a woman named Lorita. Rickenbacker, who I had to put her name in. Loretta Rickenbacker. Yeah, I can't even...
Starting point is 00:55:39 Love it. ...place where that would remotely come from. Long Island. And Lerita Rickenbacker with her name was a convicted sex worker and drug dealer, and Burke himself had arrested her multiple times. So, you know, just keeping everything above board. Yeah, the separation of church and state is... Anyway, it was strongly suspected that Burke was using his authority to shake down street dealers
Starting point is 00:56:02 and taking the contraband to enjoy with Rickenbacker. And when all of this came out, Burke wasn't even demoted. He just lost a few days of holiday. And then was eventually promoted to the top cop on the force, over 2,500 other officers, making it the 11th largest police force in the United States at the time. That is outrageous.
Starting point is 00:56:25 There is no end to how outraged you are all going to be. We are all going to collectively be over the next 10. minutes because this whole thing, it is unbelievable. Because Burke ran things at SDP like a mob boss from his wild sex addiction, drug addiction, extortion, illegal wiretapping, drunk driving, corruption and so much more. It is bonkers. So no, I personally wouldn't put murder past Jimmy Burke. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 00:56:57 In fact, Burke isn't just a passing character in this story who we wanted to like tell you about because, you know, it's interesting and a bit saucy. No, no, no. I read an entire 450-page book all about him by journalist Gus Garcia Roberts called Jimmy the King. And I would definitely recommend it. And I think, I've forgotten who the reviews from, but the review at the top of the front cover says, if Martin Scorsese wrote a film about corrupt cops, this is that story. It is so unbelievable that it reads like a film script. Because how Burke handled this particular case of LISC, how he ever came to be chief,
Starting point is 00:57:38 how he survived for so long at the top, and all the depraved shit he was up to, is a crazy story in and of itself, and absolutely, very importantly, relevant to the LISC case. So let's start with a stolen duffel pack and how it was the beginning of the end for Jimmy the King. In December 2012, so after all 11 bodies had been discovered off Ocean Parkway
Starting point is 00:58:01 and the whole of Long Island knew that there was a serial killer quite literally on the loose. A 26-year-old heroin addict called Christopher Loeb stole a bag from a car. He opened it up, hoping for something he could sell. But he found handcuffs, mace, and a gun. So it looked like this duffel bag belonged to a cop. But there were also some more colourful items in said bag, including butt plugs, sex toys, pornocular. and several child sexual abuse images.
Starting point is 00:58:36 Loeb maintains to this day that in the bag were DVDs on which he saw sex workers being tortured. Was it real? Was it role play porn? Did this material even ever exist? We don't know. And we'll never know because Loeb, terrified of what to do with the bag and its contents, hid it at his poor mum's house. Yeah, and Loeb, like, if you listen to Unravelled, there are interviews in there with Loeb talking about this. And again, like how much of what he's saying is true, how much isn't, it's hard to know. We'll never know, like you say. But he basically says, imagine finding a bag. I think there were also some outlets that said there was even a badge in there, so he knew which carpet was.
Starting point is 00:59:16 Finding all of that and then finding what he says he finds, like torture, images, child sexual abuse material. And he's like, where do I go hand this in? He knows this is wrong, this is fucked up. I want to report this. But if you know it's the chief of police's bag, well, you're just going to walk into the police station and tell them they're going to fucking arrest she. Yeah, right. So he doesn't know what to do with it is what he says.
Starting point is 00:59:37 However, within days, the cops had found him anyway. And what was essentially a SWAT team blasted through his mum's house and they arrested Loeb for taking the bag. Even Chief Jimmy Burke was there, which was highly unusual given at this point. It was just a simple case of bag theft. Yeah. And obviously the reason we'll never know what was in there is because they take the bag. and they're not very diligent with documenting what's inside.
Starting point is 01:00:02 So the chief even led on the interrogation of Christopher Lope, when it became clear that the bag was, of course, his. Now, according to Lope, when he called Burke a paedophile in this interview, Burke exploded and beat the shit out of him while he was handcuffed to the table. And according to Lope, Burke even got other cops at the station to take turns beating him, with Burke referring to them as his palace guards. That is gross. This man is fucking on one.
Starting point is 01:00:33 Burke was out of control. Now Loeb claims that one of these police officers, while he was beating him, even told him he was going to rape his mother. And Burke threatened to murder Loeb with a hot shot, which is a fatal overdose of heroin that could be made to look like an accident. Now, after this incident,
Starting point is 01:00:52 Loeb basically tries telling everyone what happened to him. But the media just claimed that Burke was a bit of a purve. but harmless. I'm yet to meet a harmless pervert. I mean, yeah, they're just like, oh, you know, we just had a bit of pornography in his bag, but we're just going to ignore everything else that you're saying and just say he's a bit colourful, but like, whatever.
Starting point is 01:01:11 And the police establishment looked very much the other way. It was only years later in February 2016 after a massive FBI probe. And the probe only started because some cops within SCPD finally had had enough of Burke and started speaking out about what he was doing and also what he had done to Christopher Loeb. And after this, basically,
Starting point is 01:01:34 Burke at last did have to admit that he had violated Christopher Loeb's civil rights, you know, by beating the shit ass of him while he was handcuffed to a table, and also admitted to knowingly conspiring to conceal evidence of it. And after this, he was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. Worf. Yeah. I mean, I don't like him, but that would be horrible.
Starting point is 01:01:54 And I'm shocked that it happened. Yeah, me too. So just a little reminder in case you're lost in this timeline. The chief of police was jailed during the time that Suffolk County police should have been investigating a serial killer and while they've got 11 bodies on their hands. And it only got worse because it didn't end with Burke. In 2019, the Suffolk County District Attorney, who we met earlier, Tom Spoter, and former Anti-Corruption Bureau Chief Christopher McPartland,
Starting point is 01:02:27 were both sentenced to five years for helping cover up for Burke. They were convicted of witness tampering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, and they are still in prison to this day. But why? Why, why, why, why? Would a DA risk his career, and let's face it, his life, to protect a chief of police as reckless and as out of control as Jimmy Burke? Well, to understand that, we all need to take a little trip down memory lane. Let's hold hands, no one get lost.
Starting point is 01:02:54 On the 21st of April 1979, there was a 13-year-old boy called John Pius Jr. And he was found dead in the woods behind Dogwood Elementary School in Smithtown, New York. He'd been suffocated by six rocks that had been stuffed down his throat. The investigation was a botched one. Police barely looked for any clues or questions the boy's parents or his neighbours, who had allegedly been sexually abusing little John. Even back then, Suffolk County cops, had a reputation.
Starting point is 01:03:26 At that time, the department had a 97% confession rate for murder suspects. A number far, far, far, far higher than any other homicide squad in the country. Basically, the only way they closed any of their cases was with a confession. They didn't do any investigating. They were just like, we'll pick him, get him in, and you can guess how they got their confessions. This number was so high that, of course, allegations of duress and torture used to extract confessions seemed hard to ignore. Examples include a man who claimed that he was beaten with a slab of concrete, and another who said cops held his penis over a paper shredder while they questioned him.
Starting point is 01:04:12 That is deranged. They were deranged, and this shows you how far back they were deranged. So, of course, they weren't fucking investigating LISC because they had no suspects to fucking torture. It is insane. But the cops from SCPD, they weren't even trying to cover this shit up. They were proud of their tactics and of their records. Apparently, they'd even walk around when they were off duty wearing t-shirts that said 97% on them.
Starting point is 01:04:38 I'm unwell. They're unwell. They're fucking sick in their head. It is like a little sociopathic thiefdom. Jesus. That just went from generation to generation to generation. So SCPD always knew that they could get a. confession. Nobody was watching them, nobody was checking their tactics. All they needed was some
Starting point is 01:04:57 suspects, and nothing was different with the case of John Pius. And eventually, these cops pointed their dirty little fingers at four local high school kids. Michael Quarantano, Peter Quarantano, Thomas Ryan, and Robert Bresnick. The prosecutor assigned to the case was none other than a young, ambitious, but already very corrupt Tom Spoter. He knew that the evidence against the boy was weak. All he had was the clearly coerced confession of a minor who had been barred from seeing his parents or a lawyer. All Spoter really needed was a witness. And bingo, one materialised. He was a 14-year-old local school kid too. It was James Jimmy Burke. It's unbelievable. It's so fucked up. So yeah, Tom Spoter is a lot older than Jimmy Burke. So he's 14 and Jimmy Burke is like
Starting point is 01:05:47 in his 30s at this point. And it was already known that at the tender age of four, James Jimmy Burke was already a minor drug dealer and quite a major thief. Burke testified, saying that the boys had admitted to the murder, so Spota got his conviction, and he and Burke began a twisted relationship that would last for decades. By 21, Burke had joined the police force, and with Spota backing him, he made very quick work of climbing the ranks. Spota was corrupt, sure, but Burke was depraved. and we're not sure if Spota knew just how dangerous Burke would become, in general, or to him specifically, or if he thought that he would always be able to handle him, he's much older than him, remember.
Starting point is 01:06:32 Either way, both of them were sent down, and accusations that the Suffolk County Police were not taking the list murders seriously, was laid out for all to see. And this is the thing, I really think that Tom Spoter thought, here's this kid, he's helped me out once, how else can I use him? I'll put him a position of power like chief of police and then the two of us will run this whole fucking show. And I've got something on him because he owes me for getting him in this position and Burke's got something on Spota because he knows that he most likely lied
Starting point is 01:07:02 when he testified in that trial for John Pius's murder. So they kind of have this really twisted, fucked up relationship but I don't think Spota knows that he has let a snake into his corrupt little gang. But the question is, was Burke covering it all up? So we're talking now about the LISC case, because he was involved in the murders himself as some claim, or was he doing it because he and Spota were up to all sorts and they just didn't want the FBI anywhere near their precinct?
Starting point is 01:07:36 Probably the latter. But there is another interesting plot twist to this case. Remember Shannon Gilbert and how she'd gone to Oak Beach the night she died? Well, Oak Beach is a notoriously secretive community full of wealthy and incredibly well-connected people. In the Unravelled podcast, they even talk about the guy who had developed that whole gated community built the bridges and the underpasses solo that even buses couldn't come down them
Starting point is 01:08:03 because he didn't want the poor people coming down there. So it is a very, very exclusive little community where everybody looks after each other because nobody wants the house of cards to come falling down. And the wild sex parties thrown. and attended by many of the residents of Oak Beach involved drink, drugs and sex workers and it was incredibly common knowledge.
Starting point is 01:08:26 And countless high-profile people have been linked with attending these sticky soirees, including Jimmy Burke. And if you listen to the 911 calls made by Shannon the night she disappeared, she keeps saying they are after me. And it doesn't seem like Joseph Brewer, the man whose house she was at, or Michael Pack, both of whom can be heard on the call trying to get Shannon to leave are who she's scared of.
Starting point is 01:08:52 Because even when they are there, you can hear them on the other end of the phone. Shannon keeps saying they are trying to get me. Yeah, like, wouldn't you just say they're here? Her demeanor doesn't change when you can hear Joseph Brewer and Michael Pack's voices. She still makes it sound like she's scared of somebody else she's trying to get away from. And I know some people point to the fact of why did she keep running away from Michael Pack? Maybe he was who she was scared of. because Gus Coletti says that he saw an Asian man and that she hid under the boat and then ran away from him.
Starting point is 01:09:21 I do think that points more to Shannon Gilbert having some sort of episode or drug-related episode because Michael Pack, it doesn't really fit the model of him being the killer. He goes back the next day with Shannon's boyfriend, Alex, to go look for her. Why would you do that if you killed her? Like it doesn't really fit for me. So did Shannon go to this party, get dosed with drugs and then get freaked out by some man or men there who she was a afraid of. We're not saying it's Jimmy Burke, but it could be. And if you regularly have drug-fueled sex parties with sex workers that most of the people there don't give a shit about, is it beyond
Starting point is 01:09:57 belief that at least one girl has died out there? And if you have high-profile people and cops in attendance at these sex parties, were they cleaning up and dumping the remains? This theory could even explain Baby Doe. Because if you listen to the podcast series Unravelled, there are interviews with the girls who worked that particular area and one particular quote will stick with you. Here it is. It took a part of you every time. They always wanted more and more, even suggesting involving children. And that's of course about these sex parties that were going on at Oak Beach all the time. And sure, it is just speculation, but Shannon did die and she died out there. This is the thing. It's obviously rampant speculation. But the first
Starting point is 01:10:43 fact is very high profile people were known to go to these sex parties. And are they the kind of people to give a shit if a sex worker gets murdered at one of these parties? Probably not. And when you have an open door policy for probably anybody can come to these, as long as you've got the right credentials, who's doing any vetting on who is a sadist and who's got, you know, fucked up tendencies of what they're going to end up doing there? There's also drugs involved. Are you telling me, like, it's beyond belief that one girl has died out there. And if they have, the cops are there to fucking clean it up. I know. I sound like a conspiracy theorist. No, but it also sounds
Starting point is 01:11:15 very root of evil though. It does, doesn't it? It really, really does. Which, like, if you haven't listened to it, what are you doing? I know. We haven't shut up about it for about four years. But yeah, it's that very, like, decadent vibe of these high society people who get, essentially, the less dead in to do whatever they want. Yeah. And somebody
Starting point is 01:11:31 cleans up after them because everybody's lives and reputations and livelihoods are tied to this secret not being outed. So, anyway, let's get back to Shannon. So, like we said, about the drugs, her maybe having some sort of mental break running out there. There is a person of interest who came to light in the aftermath, who might make you consider whether Shannon took the drugs by choice or not.
Starting point is 01:11:54 Because obviously one of the big questions is, well, did she just take the drugs? Because she hated what she was about to have to do, I don't know. But this person is certainly very, very suspicious. Because two days after Shannon made those 911 calls, but before her mum Marie knew that she was missing, someone called Marie and asked her if she knew where her daughter was. It turned out that this call was made by a doctor from Oak Beach, Dr Peter Hackett. He was Joseph Brewer's neighbour.
Starting point is 01:12:24 Joseph Brewer was obviously the client who had paid for Shannon to come there that night. And Dr. Hackett is a fucking weird guy. There's like one scene of him being questioned by like the media and he pretends to have a heart attack. He's so weird, I can't even tell you. So Hackett, when he phones Shannon's mum, Mari, told her that he ran a halfway home for Wayward girls and that Shannon had come there a couple of days before.
Starting point is 01:12:51 He said he gave her some medication and that she freaked out and ran off. Hackett then vehemently denied ever speaking to Mari until his telephone record showed that he definitely, definitely did call her. Marie began pursuing a legal case against Dr. Peter Hackett, saying he had offered to help Shannon, possibly when he had seen her either running from house to house being scared, or he was at the party himself and he had given her these drugs. And then she had, you know, had some sort of negative reaction to them and he had just tossed her out.
Starting point is 01:13:25 And it was his negligence that had led to Shannon's death. Now, as we all know, a civil case has a much lower bar that needs to be met than a criminal case. so Mari was sort of doing the best she could to get some justice for her daughter because fucking Burke isn't doing anything. But Mari Gilbert died before the case could be settled. And this is just yet another jaw-dropping tragedy linked to this nightmare never-ending bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak case. Because Mari Gilbert was stabbed to death by her other daughter and Shannon's sister, Sarah. Sarah was not very well.
Starting point is 01:14:01 She'd been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and hospitalized several times. But her addiction to ecstasy made it hard for Sarah to recover. And the discovery of Shannon's remains absolutely played a role in pushing Sarah even further over the edge. In February 2016, she drowned the family dog in the bath at her mum's house. After this, her son Hayden was taken away from her and she blamed her mum Mari for that. And on the 23rd of July 2016, after asking Mari if she was an evil god, Sarah stabbed her own mom 227 times. The civil case against Dr Hackett died with Mari.
Starting point is 01:14:41 The police also cleared Hackett, Pack and Brewer, using polygraph tests. And Shannon's case, just like the other ten murders, went cold, due in no small part to Burke and all of the bullshit going on at SCPD. The Gilgo case was then taken over twice before a new task for, took charge in February last year, 2022. And within just five weeks, they had done more than had ever been done in the previous 13 years.
Starting point is 01:15:13 But blue balls for you, I'm afraid. You have to wait until next week to hear all about how they finally got to the arrest of Rex Huraman and you'll know all about it because you'll be back here next week, same time, same place for part two. I'm exhausted. It is so much, guys.
Starting point is 01:15:35 I know it so much. And we've given you so many little side tangents of this case, but it's got to be done because this is a whopper. So yeah, like Hannah said, we'll be back next week to talk to you about. I'm Surruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red-Hounded, where Mabel is chewing up Hannah's shirt on the floor underneath me. Hi, Mabel, I know.
Starting point is 01:16:02 Desperate attempt to keep her quiet for the next hour of it. What are you trying to tell me, apart from tune my end? Are you trying to tell me that the people should vote for us in the British Podcast Awards listeners' choice? I think so. I think that's what Mabel is trying to tell us. So don't do it for us. Do it for Mabel. Do it for Mabel Elizabeth McGuire.
Starting point is 01:16:19 Mabel gets 50 treats from me over the course of the next year. If you vote for us in the listener's choice for the British Podcast Awards, guys, I know we've asked this of you multiple times before. And you have delivered every time because we have won gold for the last two years. Mabel, those are my feet, and you have delivered. And we would love you to do it one last time. We're not going to enter the listener's choice again after this year because, quite frankly, it's just a lot of work and we're probably going to do something else next year.
Starting point is 01:16:50 We might still do something crazy and just like do it for charity or something. So go and vote for us at the British Podcast Awards.com slash vote and we'll go spend a night in a haunted house and film the entire thing and also give you a bonus episode of your choice in the month that the podcast awards rolls around which I believe is September. So that sounds right. Sounds about right.
Starting point is 01:17:10 So go do that. And remember to verify your vote. And now let's get on with today's episode because there is so much to get through. And we're going to pick up exactly where we left off last week. It goes without saying, look at the title, good people. It is part two of whatever we have decided to name this. Go listen to part one.
Starting point is 01:17:30 Otherwise, this will make even less sense than last week's episode probably made in last. So we're going to pick up exactly where we left off last week. The Gilgo Beach murders, or Long Island serial killer case, had long been ignored within the Suffolk County Police Department. First came Jimmy Burke, who was placed in charge of the investigation and made Chief of Police a few days after Shannon Gilbert's remains were found. He actively obstructed the investigation, removing the FBI from having any involvement in the case,
Starting point is 01:18:00 not following up on any leads, and outright shutting down any detective work. Why did he do all of that? Was he, as some have suspected over the years, involved in the killings? I don't think so. Burke was involved with the shady world of sex work on Long Island. He slept with sex workers. He was a drug addict, and he went to those weird sex parties on Oak Beach.
Starting point is 01:18:22 And he was probably involved in a lot of underhanded criminal activities, which is likely why he wanted the FBI, as far away from his patch as possible. But during the FBI probe into Burke for the Christopher Loeb case, they turned his life inside out to convict him. And if there had been any hint of him being involved in the LIS case, the FBI would have found it then. So we don't think he was involved. But he is, as we said last week, as bent as a copper can get.
Starting point is 01:18:52 When Burke was eventually jailed, people thought, few, maybe with a new person in charge, we might finally get some answers. But, sadly, no such luck. And yes, new investigators had a lot of cleaning up to do following Burke. into such a complex case, and it's not as if they got a clear and succinct handover. But strangely, the new police commissioner and the new DA, following Tom Spoter's conviction,
Starting point is 01:19:17 just seemed to spend all of their time publicly arguing about whether they had one killer on their hands or multiple. And while that is a legitimate question, the way they were gunning for each other, in full view of the public, was alarming. Because now that they've arrested Rex Huraman, you can see how any good defense attorney will jump straight on this public spat. If even the officials couldn't agree if there was one killer or multiple,
Starting point is 01:19:43 how can the jury be sure that Rex Huraman is the guy? We've seen this time and time again. In terms of like any sort of serial killing case in particular, you never ever want to introduce the idea that somebody else could be involved because then it diminishes the possibility that your prime suspect is solely involved. So this is dangerous. Remember, the defence only needs to introduce beyond reasonable doubt. This public infighting was also absolutely a window into the serious dysfunction
Starting point is 01:20:12 that was still plaguing the investigation post Burke. So, while some people think that between 2017 and 2021, after Burke was out of the picture, the list case was this amazing high-tech investigation, we've got to tell you guys, it just wasn't. And for some reason, they kept a lot of information secret, information which could have helped them gain vital leads. For example, they only told the public about the now infamous belts that were found binding Maureen Brinard Barnes in 2020,
Starting point is 01:20:41 13 years after they had found her remains. And one of these leather belts had initials on it, reading either HM or W-H. They also didn't clarify that the burlap on the Gilgo Beach Four was duck-hunting camouflage burlap. And a bunch of people hounded this nursery owner on Long Island who actually ended up killing himself the day after Shannon's body was found.
Starting point is 01:21:11 But there was no evidence against him whatsoever. Only the fact that he had easy access to burlap, possibly. Which, as it turns out, wasn't even the right kind of burlap in the first place. I know. And look, I know we're saying like it was ridiculous that the SCPD, even after birth, kept all of this information that could have got them leads.
Starting point is 01:21:31 Like, it's got a fucking belt with initials on it. Release that to the public. Someone might recognize it. And the whole burlap thing, they never clarify what type it is. And look, before anybody messages us and me like, well, that guy was a bad guy anyway. I don't care. There was no evidence that he had anything to do
Starting point is 01:21:50 with Shannon Gilbert's murder or any of those murders. And they even do it in the killing season. That documentary we mentioned last week, they go to Long Island, they try find Burlap, and the only place they can find it is at a nursery. And I don't mean like a kid's nursery. I mean like a plant nursery. And so like, it must have been this nursery owner.
Starting point is 01:22:07 Let's hound him. Let's get him, guys. And then he fucking kills himself the day after Shannon's body's found. And then everyone's like, oh, he did it even more. Look, he's killed himself. And I'm like, no, he's not okay. And you guys didn't make it better. So on one hand, I'm like, they didn't release this information.
Starting point is 01:22:22 On the other hand, I'm like, the public can't be trusted with this information because they go and fucking hound people to death. But anyway, then in November 2021, a new DA, Ray Tierney, was elected, and he clearly stated that the list case was going to be his top priority. And you know what? I have to hand it to Ray Tierney. The new task force that he assembled sat down for their first meeting on the 15th of February 2022. And a month later, on the 14th of March, they had Rex Hurerman on their radar. and a year later, they had an arrest. And look, we all know serial killer cases are the hardest to solve. And some people may have even balked at the question we asked at the top of last week's episode
Starting point is 01:23:08 when we were like, why did it take so long to catch this man? Because people can be like, he's a fucking serial killer who killed people he had no connection to. That is hard to catch. Because I felt the same way when I heard people asking that. But honestly, looking at all of the evidence that SCPD had, This case could and should have been solved years ago if they had had a competent police force acting on it.
Starting point is 01:23:34 As we go through the evidence that this new task force used to arrest Rex Huraman in 2023, you will see that a lot of what they used was already there. This unit have just done a very good job in piecing it altogether and actually following up on leads. Even the DNA evidence that many people would tell and be like, well, that's the reason nobody caught him before. is because of the DNA evidence, no. That could all have been tested for years ago.
Starting point is 01:23:59 While yes, DNA technology has massively improved over the years, the ability to run mitochondrial DNA testing on hairs, which spoilers, has been pivotal in this case, has been around since the early 2000s. So, if you know anything about this case, you'll be like, but the bail document, why haven't they spoken about the bail document yet? Well, we're about to. We're going to go through the 33-page bail document
Starting point is 01:24:22 that was released alongside Rex Huraman's arrest last month. Because it is an example of great police work. And of course Rex Huraman deserves a fair trial. There isn't a person on earth who doesn't, but the evidence against him is extremely compelling. I hate his name. It's so annoying to say. Huraman.
Starting point is 01:24:42 Huraman. What? And also, oh my God, one of my friends whose baby shower I went to, a few weeks ago, we were talking about baby names. And she's like, oh, I'm not superstitious. These are the names I want, but me and my partner are arguing about it. And her top name is Rex.
Starting point is 01:24:56 And now I'm like, oh, no. Oh, dear. I know. That's the thing. Like, I don't think it's a superstition thing. It's more like the second you tell anyone, they're just going to tell you what a dog shit name is. The minute you tell me, I'm going to be like, oh.
Starting point is 01:25:08 He killed 12 women back in 08. My godson's name is Tet. You know what? You just got to go for the obvious. And they'll be like, yeah, I'm what? And what? And the next one. His name is Baby Gacy.
Starting point is 01:25:23 Baby Gacy. This is baby John Wayne. And they're having a girl in November. So just fucking call it Dorothy Appointe. Why not? Ethnic. Or Rose West. Let's start with the truck and Amber Costello.
Starting point is 01:25:42 Because it is this connection that pointed the task force squarely in the direction of Rex. Horrible man, horrible name, Heuraman. On the 1st of September 2010, Amber Costello had a John come to her home. And immediately, this is odd. Why would a sex worker allow a client to come to her own home? Well, as it happens, Amber and her housemate, Dave Shaw, had a ruse that they ran on some of these men. Amber would invite these potential clients to the house.
Starting point is 01:26:20 Dave would then turn up, acting like an angry boyfriend, and chase the men away. These men would already have paid up front, so Shawl and Amber got to keep the money, and Amber didn't have to have any of the sex. So they run this ruse on the man on the 1st of September, and he left after telling Shaw, tell her I'll give her a call, which is a bold move to say to the guy
Starting point is 01:26:42 who's acting like the angry boyfriend. Yeah, right. And he sticks to his word because the next day, Amber got a text from this man, saying, that wasn't very nice, I get a credit for next time. And so, the pair arranged to meet that evening. Amber left the house and was never seen alive again.
Starting point is 01:27:02 Shaw went to the police and described the man as white, large, about 6-4 to 6-6 maybe, in his mid-40s with dark bushy hair and big oval-style 1970s-type glasses. He also said that this man looked ogre-like. Shaw noticed a dark first-generation Chevrolet avalanche truck parked in the driveway the night before when the man had come to visit Amber. And we know that it was the same man who was in the house on the 1st of September that Amber went to meet the next day.
Starting point is 01:27:33 And then she vanished. And we know this not just because of Dave Shaw's testimony, but also because of the mobile phone data. Amber had been receiving texts from this man, from a burner phone. Messages had come in in the days leading up to her disappearance, and then they had stopped completely after she vanished. During the time that many of these messages were sent,
Starting point is 01:27:56 the burner phone was in West Ampteville and Massapequa Park. The day Amber disappeared, the same burner phone had contacted her to arrange the second meetup. And this time, the messages had been sent while the phone was in Midtown Manhattan. These locations will become very important later on, so please put a pin in these for now, we will come back to them. And on the evening of the 2nd of September, when Amber left to meet the man who'd been at the house the day before,
Starting point is 01:28:24 the Bonaphone cell site location placed it in West Babylon, where Amber lived. So it clearly showed that this man lived and worked elsewhere. But he was in the vicinity of Amber's house on the 1st of September, when he'd been roused, and he was also in the vicinity when Amber went to the meetup the following day, from which she'd never return. And Dave Shaw, who was at home when Amber left on the 2nd of September,
Starting point is 01:28:50 saw a dark truck, similar to the one from the night before drive past the house, coming from the direction Amber had just walked towards. Unbelievably, Amber left her own phone behind, so police couldn't track that. But this truck, the task force concluded, was driven by Amber's killer. And again, all of this information already existed. Dave Shaw told the police this way back in 2010 when Amber vanished. but no one bothered to follow it up. So, the new task force checked for Chevy avalanches registered in and around Massapequa Park.
Starting point is 01:29:27 It isn't a common vehicle, so it did stand out. And they quickly found that one such truck had been registered at the time of the Gilgo Beach murders to a Massapequa Park local, Rex Hurerman. Someone who, also just so happened, to match Dave Shaw's physical description of Amber's killer. Huraman is in fact 6-6 and huge. Oh, and he also just so happened to work in Midtown Manhattan. The location that the burner phone Amber had been contacted from often pinged. Using this, investigators were able to get in excess of 300 subpoenas and search warrants
Starting point is 01:30:08 to dig up more potential evidence connected to Mr. Huraman. And there is a lot that they found. So let's start with the phones. All of the Gilgo Beach Four had been contacted by different burner phones in the days leading up to their disappearances. After Maureen Braynard Barnes, Melissa Barthelamy and Megan Waterman vanished. Each of their phones remained active for a while afterwards. Maureen was last seen on the 9th of July 2007 in New York City. Her phone made two outbound calls to her voicemail three days after she was last seen or heard from.
Starting point is 01:30:44 Melissa was last seen on the 10th of July 2009, again in New York City. Cell site records show that after Melissa went missing, her phone repeatedly moved between Massapequa Park and Midtown Manhattan, where Rex Huraman lived and where Xuraman worked. Melissa's phone was also used to check her own voicemails after she vanished, and on five occasions, starting about a week after Melissa was last seen. her phone was used to make taunting calls to her 15-year-old sister Amanda. In these calls, the man called Amanda by her name and even knew what she looked like.
Starting point is 01:31:29 He asked Amanda if she knew what her sister was doing and called Melissa a whore. He then told Amanda that he had raped Melissa and killed her. And he also asked Amanda if she was a heart. half breed. These calls were coming from Midtown Manhattan, and they all came in about the middle of the day, and the cell site locations placed them just 87 feet away from Rex Heuraman's architectural office. So he's calling Amanda, Melissa's 15-year-old sister, on his fucking lunch break while he's
Starting point is 01:32:03 at work. Now, we don't know the manner in which the Gilgo Beach Four were killed. We also don't know if Rex Huraman did it, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. But this tells you, whoever did this is a fucking sadist. Then we've got Megan Waterman. She vanished on the 6th of June 2010. Last scene, leaving a holiday inn in Horpage. Her mobile phone's last known location was on the night she disappeared.
Starting point is 01:32:30 It pinged in Massapequa Park, right near the residence of one Rex Huraman. Fascinating but horrible stuff. But all these phone pings really proved. is that these burner phones and the missing women's phones were active in locations, Heuraman might spend time, but he's also not the only person in Midtown Manhattan. Or in Massapequa, or in West Babylon, etc., etc.
Starting point is 01:32:57 So the task force needed to place him there with the phones. But the problem was, cell site records, so records of where Heuraman's own personal phone was pinging at the same time for some reason, don't exist anymore. This is a thing. By the time the task force get to this,
Starting point is 01:33:15 it's been over a decade. And I don't know how long mobile phone companies keep that kind of record for. If they had done it at the time, they could have got it. Now apparently they're saying those records don't exist anymore. And maybe it's different now,
Starting point is 01:33:30 but maybe from back then they're just saying, we don't have those records. I mean maybe, but they're not writing them down with a quill on parchment, are they? Like, I just don't believe that like metadata
Starting point is 01:33:39 data isn't somewhere, but, you know, what are I? No idea. I'm just an idiot in a dress. However, all was not lost. Investigators matched up Heuraman's American Express records to show that wherever those burner phones and those missing women's phones were being used, Huraman was always nearby at the time. Spending money on his Amex.
Starting point is 01:34:00 It's always Amex, isn't it? Like, nobody ever rings up fucking Barclay card and it's like, uh, maybe just nefarious people use Amex. And also, they have the best customer service. Like if you're ringing anyone else, you're on the phone for seven hours. They really do. This is not sponsored by American Express. But we have another interesting point for you.
Starting point is 01:34:19 There wasn't one instance where the phones of the missing women and the burner phones were active that Hurerman could be definitively proven to be in a different location. As we said, he's nearby every single time. Still not enough. A good defence lawyer could tear that shit up. I take your point. So good news. investigators located a number of online accounts and yet more burner cell phones
Starting point is 01:34:43 linked irrefutably to Rex Huraman. There were two burner phones in particular, one that will call burner A, which had been used to access Tinder under the name Andrew Roberts, Andrew being Rex Huraman's middle name. And this Tinder account had been set up with the email address, Springfield Man 9 at AOL.com. But the Springfield Man 9 at AOL.com account had been created in January 2011 using a different name.
Starting point is 01:35:14 Homer Simpson. John Springfield. And it had also been set up using another burner cell phone that we'll call Burner B. So now you can see that Burner A and Burner B are linked to this Tinder account and linked to these email addresses because they've all been used in various ways to set up multiple different accounts. But they are linked. That is important. Burner B had also been used to set up another burner email.
Starting point is 01:35:39 Thwark 080672 at gmail.com which we will from now on call the thawk email address because that is a terrible email address to keep reading out loud. And this was created not under the name Homer Simpson, but as close as you're going to get it to Rex Huraman's version of Max Power, it was created under the fake name Thomas Hawke. And a search warrant for the thwark email revealed that this account had been used to conduct
Starting point is 01:36:04 thousands of searches of pretty grim things and I have very helpfully Hannah given you the list to read out. I know you have but I've done the same thing to you so many times that this was coming my way eventually. It's horrible. I mean it's like not the worst I've ever seen but some of them are pretty horrible. All right let's just get it done. Mistress Long Island mature escorts Manhattan. Girl begging for rape porn. Teen girl begging for rape porn. Pretty girl with bruised face porn Torture Redhead porn 10 year old school girl
Starting point is 01:36:38 Fucking hell This one's the worst one Hentai Plump pussy lips Cut Off porn Skinny Redhead Tied Up porn Short Fat Girl Tied Up Porn Tied Up and Raped Porn
Starting point is 01:36:52 Asian Twink Tied Up Porn Tide Slave Force Fed Cock, Comet and Crying Porn Girl Hogtide Torture Porn There's more 10-year-old blonde hair girl Chubby 10-year-old girl
Starting point is 01:37:07 Black girl 10 years old Girl with face beat up Chubby 10-year-old girl crying 13-year-old school girl age 12 child girl with blonde hair and blue eyes Blonde hair girl young depressed Teen girl oiled bodies Pre-teen girl with makeup
Starting point is 01:37:26 And finally in at number 26 Nude Slave Girls Excellent Yeah. I'm so glad I'm not a man. Yes, grim. Grim, grim, grim. So that's dumb. So this thwark email address was also used to conduct in excess of 200 searches between March 2022 and June 2020. That is the exact time period between when the new Gilgo task force was set up under Ray Tierney and Huraman's own arrest. So as you can see, as soon as this new task force
Starting point is 01:38:00 sits down for their first meeting, he seems to be a little bit rattled. And these searches were all about things like serial killers. For example, he searches a lot about John Bitrov, who was the serial killer we mentioned last week, the disappearances and murders of Maureen Braynard Barnes and Melissa Barthelamy and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, and the investigations into their murders.
Starting point is 01:38:23 There were also extensive and obsessively repeated searches for pictures of the Gilgo Beach Four and their family. as well as countless, very specific questions, like why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the Long Island serial killer? Why hasn't the Long Island serial killer been caught? The Long Island serial killer investigation, how new phone technology may be the key break in case. And maybe you're thinking what we're thinking,
Starting point is 01:38:52 hold on a second. All the evidence shows so far as the investigators could map Rex Huraman's movements, using his Amex, not his phone, to the burner phones and the missing women's phones. And yes, you can link these burner phones and Thwark and Springfield man emails to some very, very weird searches. But it's just not really enough. And it doesn't necessarily make you a killer.
Starting point is 01:39:15 No. So how are the new task force going to link all of these things and the murders, irrefutably to Rex Huraman? Well, he makes a mistake. He used his own card to pay for Tinder on Burner Phone A. And a selfie of Rex Furerman was sent from Burnerphone B, the one that's linked to the thwark email. And that selfie was sent to a sex worker. That's the thing.
Starting point is 01:39:45 It's not even just a picture of him. It's a selfie in the mirror. From that phone to another phone. If you're going to the effort of two burner phones, like cop yourself on a bit, you know? I also was listening to this defence attorney who was like, look, normally I'd say something that I read this bell document and I'm like, if I was his defence attorney, I'd be like, it looks like you're in trouble. And he was like, can you even really call it a burnephone? Because a burnaphone's only a burner phone if it's not connected to you. If you're using it as some pictures of yourself to sex workers and using your own personal card to pay for Tinder off it, is it even a burnophone anymore, which is a good question. On top of that, wrecked Huraman was also spotted by investigators who were surveilling him
Starting point is 01:40:28 going to a phone shop in Midtown Manhattan and topping up both burnaphone A and B. So maybe you're thinking, well, of course he's Googling about the serial killer from Long Island. He's from Long Island as well. Everybody would have been Googling the same thing. And as for the gross sex searches, again, as Suru said, weird, doesn't make him a killer necessarily. And if you are thinking those things, you would be right. But we have to consider the totality of the evidence. So let's go through it.
Starting point is 01:40:54 He has a fascination with the list case, and more importantly, perhaps, the victims and the victims' families. And he had an interest in violent pornography, including CSAM, so child sexual abuse images. He regularly used burner phones and burner emails to contact sex workers. His home and place of work matched the movements
Starting point is 01:41:17 of the murdered women's phones and contact burners. He drove a truck that matched what an eyewitness saw during the disappearance of Amber Costello. And he also matches a physical description of the man Amber went to meet the night she vanished. And that's not it. There's more. The DNA evidence. Multiple hairs were found on the Gilgo Beach victims. One female hair was discovered on Maureen. Two female hairs were found stuck to the tape used to bind Megan.
Starting point is 01:41:44 And another female hair was again trapped in the tape used on Amber. At the time the bodies were discovered, technology didn't allow for DNA testing on hairs like these because there wasn't any root tissue attached to them. So all forensics could say was that the hairs looked similar and they were probably from a Caucasian woman. Thankfully though, the hairs were preserved and in July 2022 under the new task force, they were retested for mitochondrial DNA, which exists in the hair shaft itself, so you don't need the root. And these tests were able to confirm that the hairs found on all three of those victims belonged to one woman, who was not. one of the victims, nor was she related to any of them. And the police had a hunch that it might
Starting point is 01:42:27 have been a hair accidentally left behind by the killer. Not that the killer was a woman, but that the hair may have belonged to someone close to the killer, and he had transferred the hares to the victims from his clothes at the crime scene. So as soon as they got the confirmation of it not being a victim's hair, the police went and took a bunch of rubbish from Huraman's bins. We've talked about this before. This is called abandonment evidence. They can legally do this. And they tested the female DNA from the hairs against the DNA profiles from the rubbish. And bingo. The hairs on the victim belonged to a woman who likely lived in Rex Huraman's house. Because her DNA was all over the rubbish. There was also one male hair found in the bottom of
Starting point is 01:43:16 the burlap sack that Megan Waterman's body had been put in. The task was the task, the task, force needed a clean match as they followed Huraman. And on the 26th of January, 2023, standing outside of his office in Midtown Manhattan, Huraman ate a pizza and threw the box, complete with discarded crusts, into a public bin. Officers nabbed it, and boom, it was a match to Rex Huraman. And once they arrested him, they took his wife, Asa Ellarop's hair, and tested that against the female hairs found on the victims. And once again, a chance. definitive match. We already know that the task force had had Hurerman on their radar for a long time, but they waited until the 13th of July 23 before they moved in for their arrest.
Starting point is 01:44:06 And that arrest, as we told you last week, was carried out in front of Hurerman's architectural offices. Why they did it here rather than a dawn raid at his home became clear when we discovered that Huraman, who had 90 registered firearms, actually had had a a stockpile of nearly 300 weapons in his basement at his home in Massapequa Park. So they weren't going to take that kind of risk. No, they say very clearly they're like, yeah, we were never going to go to his house because you're going to have some sort of fucking Waco situation with this guy. When Hurerman was arrested, he also had Burnaphone B on him.
Starting point is 01:44:40 And when he was accosted, allegedly he cried and said that he didn't do it. Now, since he's been in jail, Huraman has apparently been quiet and compliant. His defense attorney, on the other hand, has been very vocal about how his client is innocent. But honestly, like, the guy's got to do what he's got to do. He is a defense attorney, but good luck to him. The task force has already handed over to Huraman's defense team 2,500 documents of evidence in the initial discovery phase. Apparently, it's something like 3 terabytes of evidence. Now, I googled that, and I was like, how many documents is that?
Starting point is 01:45:17 And it was something bazillions, but then I realized, like, a lot of it would also be. pictures. So they've got a lot to sift through. And it's a lot of yikes because what was in the bell document is no doubt just scratching the surface of what investigators have against Huraman. Like we told you guys when we did the Brian Coburg a case, they do not put out their full case in the bell document. Why would they? They just need to put enough for the arrest to be okayed. This is just a tiny fraction of what they've got against him. So who is Rex Huraman? We've already told you that he's a 59-year-old architect, who owns and runs his own business in Midtown,
Starting point is 01:46:02 and he has done that since 1987. He's been married to his second wife, Asa Ellorup, for more than 27 years. But after Hureman's arrest, Asa was granted and no contest divorce within days. Unsurprising. They have two adult children, 27-year-old Victoria, who works at Huraman's business, and 33-year-old Christopher, who's got special needs.
Starting point is 01:46:23 The family all lived in Massapequa Park, an area of Long Island popular with commuters for its rural feel, yet close proximity to New York City. The street that the curiamans lived on is tree-lined, quiet, residential, and there's loads of well-maintained houses and perfectly pristine lawns. Rex's house was the one that stood out. And not in the way that you might expect an architect's house to stand out. He had actually bought the house from his mother in 1994,
Starting point is 01:46:53 because it was his childhood home. And honestly, it's nothing short of a dump. The house is in such obviously bad condition that if you watch videos or look at pictures of like the front of it even, you can see that the porch is being held up by spare two by fours. Like it is completely run down. And inside the house was a mess, dated and lying in complete disrepair. The only part of the house that seemed to have had any work, time or money invested in it
Starting point is 01:47:23 was the basement. Huraman even allegedly took time off work to install a concrete-lined vault down there. Now, a lot of media outlets have gone with the headlines soundproof room found in Huraman basement, but the police have rolled back on this due to the obvious subtext that it implies that he was holding or killing victims down there.
Starting point is 01:47:43 And I don't know what the police know, but I don't think we have enough public information to say one way or another whether he was doing that. What he kept down in that basement is a load of weird shit that we're going to go on to and all of his fucking guns. And the only other thing we can say as to kill sites and what he was getting up to in various houses
Starting point is 01:48:03 is that this house in Massapequa Park was not Rex Huraman's only property. Huraman owns homes in Las Vegas and South Carolina as well. Apparently he bought the home in South Carolina with his brother Craig and they apparently planned to retire there one day. When this house was being searched, photographs from the scene did show that a medical officer was there. It would be unusual for a medical officer to be at a search if there were no human remains or suspected human remains to have been found. And it would make sense. It's pretty unlikely that the killer would take victims back to his own
Starting point is 01:48:38 house though, especially in a busy area like Massapequa Park. But his home in South Carolina is a lot more rural. The killer of the Gilgo Beach Four bound his victims. That would have taken time and space. So it makes sense that there was a meat point, a kill location, and the dump site off-ocean Park. The garden of Huraman's home in Massapequa Park, complete with a no warrant, no entry sign that he had propped up outside of his house, has also been excavated, and countless boxes of evidence have been removed, some of the most noteworthy being what police found in his cement basement, including a painting of a girl with two black eyes, the 272 firearms, and a child-sized doll in a glass box. And this doll caught a lot of people's attention because it is alleged, and again,
Starting point is 01:49:38 I honestly guys, I cannot confirm this 100%. I have seen pictures of it. The pictures exist. I will share a link to the pictures and we will also post it on our socials. But it is alleged that following the discovery, of the Gilgo Beach Falls remains. Someone left a doll on each of the women's grave markers. So after they were found, there's like little wooden crosses that are put up by the families
Starting point is 01:50:02 that say their names on. And somebody apparently allegedly turned up and mysteriously left these dolls on these graves. Now, these dolls were apparently taken by the police because obviously they know people who come to the scene are just as likely suspects as they are, you know, well-wishers. And if you look at these pictures of these dolls,
Starting point is 01:50:23 it is hard not to see the similarity between these dolls and the one found in Huraman's basement inside that glass box. Did he, before the police were able to take them, managed to take one of the dolls and keep it as a trophy? Purely speculation at this point. Police also scoured two storage units that were owned by Huraman, and these storage units were in Amityville, and a fun fact for you.
Starting point is 01:50:50 Rex Heuroman's home is less than three miles from the Defeo Amityville Horror House. Honestly, you've got John Bitrov, you've got Rex Ehrman, allegedly, you've got Joel Rifkin and the Defeo's like, this fucking area. And I feel like in the killing season, the documentary, like Zeman, the guy who makes it, who also made Cropsy, like we said last week, he's from Long Island. It's like he's desperate trying to explain why so many serial killers or like mass murderers are coming out of Long Island. and like obviously he knows it better than I do
Starting point is 01:51:20 but I feel like he's just kind of like oh it's the pressure of this like pressure pot of trying to keep up with the Joneses and being so close to New York and like maybe but it is weird it is very inexplicable why there are so many in this one area maybe it's the fumes blowing over from the city quite possibly so yeah lots of weird stuff
Starting point is 01:51:38 going on on Long Island but we have to just stick with Eurman today an odd thing about him was obviously he's a reasonably successful architect one would have to be to roll an office in Midtown, that shit's expensive. So why did he live in such a rundown house? Some people have theorised that it's because of his upbringing. So he wants to maintain the house in the same way that his parents did.
Starting point is 01:52:00 And perhaps that lets him hold on to, or perhaps master some childhood trauma. Yeah, there's definitely like something going on with his dad for sure. Like, I don't know, there is a random YouTube interview. with Rex Huraman, which I believe has been taken down now, but there are people reacting to it so you can still find it and watch body language experts talk about it, etc, etc. And it's really weird because there is no video footage of Rex Huraman ever,
Starting point is 01:52:32 ever, ever, ever before in his 59 years of life. But one video that was shot and filmed and put up on YouTube of him being interviewed about being an architectural man that were shot like a few weeks before he was arrested. Now there's people out there that suspect that the FBI themselves send this guy in there to do the interview. Maybe. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:52:50 He certainly seems to find a lot of things that Rex Huraman is saying funny that are not funny. But then maybe he's just trying to be a good interviewer. But it was basically with this company called Bonjour Realty. Mm-hmm. And it is so fucking boring. And if Rex Huraman wasn't arrested for being literally lisk, no one would ever watch that shit.
Starting point is 01:53:10 But it's basically just guy who goes in there and he's like questioning him. And he's like making all these jokes. because of comparing himself to a hammer. And he talks about his dad. And his dad was an aerospace engineer. Right. And he says, you know, he put satellites into space, etc.
Starting point is 01:53:24 And he taught me how to build furniture. And there's definitely a like shift in his behavior when he talks about his dad. Again, we're going to have to wait years before we find out anything about his upbringing or his background. But I definitely got the feeling of I underachieved compared to my father. That doesn't make you a serial killer. A lot of people feel that way. But there's something going on. And then when you put it together with the childhood house, I don't know.
Starting point is 01:53:47 So perhaps it's that Rex was too scared to change the house, even though his dad is now dead and his mum doesn't live there anymore. But we're going to have to wait years to find out. Until then, we just can't say for sure. Although, less interestingly, it simply just might have been because whilst Rex had a good job and a successful practice, he wasn't in great shape financially. Asa even used food stamps to do the family shopping.
Starting point is 01:54:11 and Huraman and his wife owe 81,500 American dollar-re dues in personal income taxes to the state. Bizarly, Curiaman has over the years also filed several lawsuits in New York, where he accused drivers of injuring him in collisions. It's worth a shot. I think that's his whole philosophy. And while some people have said that Rex Huraman was so normal, we had no idea. Others did know that something was seriously off with this guy. For example, Rex Heuraman did things like steal oranges from Whole Foods.
Starting point is 01:54:48 He regularly burned rubbish in his garden, which according to the neighbours was not something anyone in that area ever did. Two weeks before he was arrested, he also harassed a woman in the local park to the point that she actually filed a police complaint about him. And in 2006, he scared the shit out of an intern at his own business. Apparently, he called this intern over to his desk one day, saying, let me show you something. And then he played for this kid a video of a man in a police interview room shooting himself in the head.
Starting point is 01:55:22 Huraman allegedly found this whole thing hilarious. And then proceeded to tell the shocked intern how many guns he owned. I mean, look, the oranges, the harassing the jogger in the park, all of this kind of stuff, it kind of happens quite close to his arrest. And you do wonder, because he starts Googling about the task force, basically immediately as soon as they're, Is he under increasing amounts of stress because he's worried that they're on him? For the first time, there is a competent police investigation into this case. But the intern thing happens in 2006.
Starting point is 01:55:51 So he is an weird guy. Apparently he was also a total fucking jobsworth. I mean, obviously being a serial killer is worse than a drops worth. But I just can't stand it. I know. He is a total fucking jobs worth. Again, lots of people compare him to BTK, Dennis Raider. and like Dennis Raider himself has even written a letter from prison
Starting point is 01:56:13 saying that Rex Heuraman is the clone of him. We're going to talk about that later. But like I literally do not think they are. Again, we'll come to that in a bit. But BTK also a total fucking jobs worth. So not saying everyone who is as a serial killer, that they're probably a bit of a wrong end. There's a vent diagram.
Starting point is 01:56:28 Yeah, there's a vent diagram. So yeah, Huraman apparently got into constant altercations on the train he took from Long Island to New York every day, telling other commuters off for doing things he deemed to be against the rules. That's the train you get every day. I have been on commuter trains where you get the same train every day and you look at the same people. Why would you start a fight on that train?
Starting point is 01:56:47 I don't know. This is what I mean. He's not a normal guy. He was willing to put himself in these confrontational situations. I think there's a commuter train that goes from Brighton into London and every Christmas, they have a Christmas dinner on the train carriage because everyone sits in the same place. Oh, that's nice.
Starting point is 01:57:02 It is nice, isn't it? And now we come on to the Port Jefferson date. A sex worker called Nicole Brass went on a date in 2015 with Rex Huraman. During this, Nicole claims that Huraman just wanted to speak to her about the murders. She claims that he was misty-eyed, like he was watching a videotape of the murders and enjoying every moment of it. Nicole completely freaked out and left. Clearly, this is all about power and control for Rex Huraman. You see that, you see it, right?
Starting point is 01:57:30 You see that if this is him, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, there's only so long he can keep the darkness bottled up the fucked up shit he can put on the front of being this family man he's got these two kids he's got his wife he's got his business in midtown manhattan but every now and again it leaks out and he can't stop himself so sure as you can see the evidence against rectoranman is astonishingly strong and it is probably like we said at the top of the show last week as close as you can get to a slam dunk.
Starting point is 01:58:05 Now let's discuss something I know has been contentious. Police found Rex Heurman's wife's hairs on three of the victims. And Aza had been married to him for 27 years. So people out there are, of course, asking was she involved? Now personally, I think that is highly unlikely. Hairs transfer easily. And if Heuraman did bring any of his victims to his house, Again, we don't know it's a big if on that until we know more,
Starting point is 01:58:34 but if he did, hairs getting on them would have been even easier. Also, the police have confirmed that on multiple occasions when the Gilgo Beach victims went missing, Acer and her kids were either in Iceland, which is A's home country, or out of state. Ace and the kids went to Iceland for two weeks every summer without wrecks. And this seems to have been his killing window, because, come on, we told you guys already,
Starting point is 01:59:00 the Gilgo Beach Four all went missing in the summer months. They all went missing in July. And come on, it would be fake to pretend like there aren't cases in the past where so many times a serial killer's been arrested and the wife had no idea what was going on. I don't think she was involved. She's a weird person. I'm not going to say she's not.
Starting point is 01:59:19 She is. But it doesn't mean she knew what he was doing. No. Some people say that allegedly Acer said it is what it is when police told her that her husband had been arrested on suspicion of being the Long Island serial killer, which obviously implies that she wasn't shocked and knew all about it. And again, like, I say allegedly here because, like, we don't know for sure if she did say that, but she has said that since.
Starting point is 01:59:45 And I'm like, stop saying that, Isa. Your husband has been arrested for being a serial killer. Please stop saying it is what it is. But again, I don't feel like she has the strongest social skills. Right. And obviously, it's pretty probable. that Aesan knew that her husband was a bad guy. She was with him for 27 years and they had kids
Starting point is 02:00:03 and I'm sure that she and her kids were victims of his as well. Yeah, I mean, if you're starting fights for people on commuter trains because they're not following the rules, imagine what he's like at home behind closed doors. And while I think the Aces probably being quite unwise at the moment mounting attacks against police and forensic teams for turning their house upside down, essentially saying that their rights are being violated,
Starting point is 02:00:24 I can't really imagine how that must feel. Yeah, they basically, obviously, as you can imagine, the forensics teams have just gone in there and torn this house apart looking for evidence. And they have to do that. They have to follow their job. They have to do that. But at the same time, Aces is always like, my house has been destroyed. But I think it makes you look quite tone-deaf to be saying that.
Starting point is 02:00:48 Like when she says things like, you know, my kids video games have been broken into pieces and they're like, well, John Ray, who's the attorneys for the victims, is like, how many pieces were women? that your husband probably murdered left in. So I don't think she's doing herself any favours. No, but another thing that we have to consider is that recently it was discovered that Acer is undergoing treatment for breast and skin cancer. So she's got cancer, she's undergoing invasive treatment,
Starting point is 02:01:17 her house is being torn apart, and her husband of almost three decades has been arrested for being a serial killer. It's a bad time to be Acer. Yes. So let's leave that behind. And let's now quickly come back to the point that we raised last episode.
Starting point is 02:01:32 Are the 11 victims out on Ocean Parkway the work of one man or multiple? Now we discuss this at length last episode so we are not going to rehash it all here. But it is worth mentioning that Rex Heurman, as far as we can see from the bail documents and granted this is not all of the evidence that the police have against him,
Starting point is 02:01:49 but in this bell document, it suggests that he obsessively searched the internet for anything to do with the Gilgo Beach fort and their families. Again, I'm not saying this is everything. We don't know that he wasn't Googling the other victims, but if he was only Googling those four victims, it kind of makes it seem less likely that he killed the others
Starting point is 02:02:11 because why wouldn't he care just as much about them? I don't know. Also, police have only recently released the identity of Fire Island Jane Doe. We now know it's Karen Vergata, but they have known her true identity for a while. Karen's dad died back in December 22 and the police had told him that they had found his missing daughter after almost three decades.
Starting point is 02:02:33 So they kept it under wraps for almost a year that they knew who Karen really was. And we also know that they had been tracking Rex Huraman for over a year. If the task force could have connected Huraman and Karen, we might know by now. Again, we don't know what other information investigators have because they are playing it all as they well should. very close to their chest.
Starting point is 02:02:57 And then there is also the problem of it's not what you know, it's what you can prove in court. So even if the police suspect the Rex Huroman is indeed responsible for all of the murders out there, minus Shannon Gilbert, because that just doesn't make any sense. That's too crazy to imagine that he was also at that sex party and killed Shannon Gilbert, but that he's responsible for all 10 other murders out there.
Starting point is 02:03:19 They need to be able to prove it. Hence why, at the time of recording this, the police still haven't even charged Rex Hurerman with Maureen-Barns's murder, even though she's one of the Gilgo Beach Four and clearly seems to fit the pattern. Especially given the fact that Ray Tierney has stated on the record that they believe the belt used to bind Maureen, remember the one that we told you about earlier with WH or HM stamped on it, belongs to Rex's granddad, William Huraman.
Starting point is 02:03:46 I know. And again, if you're got to tell me it's nothing to do with how fucked up his family were. why did he was his granddad's belt again it's a fruit of evil shit man yeah and morin was the first victim of the gilgo beach four group and the reason they haven't charged him with morin brainard barnes's murder yet but the other three even though they clearly fit together as one even though they know it's him if he killed the others is because there wasn't DNA or the DNA or morin was too degraded for them to be able to test so i think if you introduce a weaker case into the mix you stand to risk the whole thing falling apart. So they've clearly only gone with the three that they feel the most
Starting point is 02:04:23 solid about. So whether the police think he killed all of the 10 victims or not will basically depend on whether you see them continuing to look for a killer for the others after they prosecute Rex Heuraman. Now another question worth asking is why did Rex Heuraman stop? If the last victim was Amber Costello, she was killed in 2010, well, firstly, we don't know that he did stop. remains of the Gilgo Beach Four were discovered just three months after Amber was reported missing. So maybe Huraman got spooked and lay low for a while after his dump site was found. But he also fucking knew that Dave Shaw saw him and saw his fucking truck. But the police just didn't pay any attention.
Starting point is 02:05:05 They could have caught him three months after Amber went missing. But then again, we don't know that he got spooked and he stopped because he could well just have moved his area of disposal, changed his ammo, or altered the way he found his victims. If so, Rex Huraman, if he is the killer, may well have carried on killing over the past 13 years. However, saying that, let's have a look at Huraman's age. He was 59 when he was arrested in July 23. If he only killed the Gilgo Beach Four, he would have been 46 when he started. And that's just way too old.
Starting point is 02:05:40 It's so old. If he killed the other victims, the oldest one dating back to 1996 being Karen Vergata, he would have been 32. Typically, serial killers start to kill on average in their late 20, so 32 isn't a million miles away. And we also know that killers can stop when they have to. Dennis Rader, aka BTK, stopped killing for years when he became a father. And in some interesting parallels,
Starting point is 02:06:06 both Rader and Hureman were 59 when they were caught, and both of them had two kids. As Sauru said, Rader has actually written a letter from prison, saying that he thinks Rex Huraman is his clone. But that is just a narcissistic witch by Dennis Rader. He just wants to be relevant any time he has the opportunity to like rear his weird ugly little head up, he takes that chance. And they are different because Huraman went exclusively, as far as we currently know, after sex workers and dumped their remains on a desolate beach. Rader killed a mixture of people, including entire families in their homes and he left them to be found.
Starting point is 02:06:41 What's even more surprising with Rex Huraman is that police seem to have moved. in for the arrest because they were worried about the risky post to the public. It appears the heurman was, once again, after 13 years, it would seem, but then again we don't know because nobody was fucking tracking him up until a year ago. In talks were sex workers using burner phones. Was he getting ready to kill again? If he was, that is highly, highly unusual. Not because he took a big gap and then started killing again or was starting to think about killing
Starting point is 02:07:16 again, but because in a study carried out by the FBI, they found that sexual homicide offenders tend to stop as they get older. Look at like DiAngelo, the Golden Sake-Kil, they find him, he's just a fucking old man who's like mowing his lawn and he's like, when they arrest him, he's like, I've got a roast in the oven. Like, they tend to stop when they're sexually motivated because the prowess goes, the desire goes, and also the strength goes and their ability to do it, like, is dampened. And this study found that, by the body, By the age of 55, when it comes to serial sexual homicide offenders, less than 1% were still active by that age.
Starting point is 02:07:55 90% of these type of killer fit into the 19 to 45 age group, after which they slow down and stop altogether. And the fact that the Gilgo Beach 4 were all killed when Huraman was already 46 makes him, if he is guilty, very rare, but also kind of suggests that that was his finale, his grand finale, maybe in his head. but it certainly adds more fuel to the fire of the idea that they were not his only victims because he was so old by that point. So what else might the police have? There was a very specific request for information on peaches a few months ago.
Starting point is 02:08:28 So, much like Karen Vergata, some people are theorising that the police already know who she really was. And the thing is, identifying victims is the only way this case will be concluded. Whether Huraman is responsible for all of the bodies or whether there is another killer out there, it is only by finding out who the victims are that we can be certain. And Peaches is an interesting victim, firstly, because her child, Baby Doe, was found dead, miles away from her. But both Baby Doe's body and Peaches' torso were found wrapped in blankets. Web sleuths have done some great work discovering that these blankets were on sale in Rockville Centre, a mall near Hempstead, which is where Peach's torso was found.
Starting point is 02:09:09 So maybe that could lead to more clues as to her kids. And again, we're just going to keep saying this. Remember, remember, remember, the police are withholding a lot of information. Until very, very recently, we didn't even know that they had DNA from the Gilgo Beach Four. We didn't know about those hairs they had.
Starting point is 02:09:28 The other interesting thing about Peaches is that if she was killed by the same man who killed the Gilgo Beach Four, allegedly Rex Heuraman, then it suggests that he used a different tactic to find her. Peaches, if we go with the theory that she was a sex worker, and I know we don't know who she is,
Starting point is 02:09:44 but I don't think it's an outlandish theory given that basically everyone else out there was a sex worker. If we go with that theory, and she took her baby with her to go meet this John, if we say that that's who killed her, that of course tragically does happen if a sex worker can't find someone to watch her baby and she needs to work.
Starting point is 02:10:03 But given this fact, it seems highly unlikely that whoever this man was picked peaches up on the street. It doesn't seem typical that Peaches would have been out on the street with her baby. It seems much more likely that this was some sort of like pre-arranged meetup. But in that case, how did they organise it? Peaches weren't missing in 1996.
Starting point is 02:10:25 That's way too early for Craigslist and Backpage. They weren't really even mainstream until like the early 2000s. And so this idea that at some point Rex Heerman or whoever killed her, if it was him, could have been finding his victims in a different way back then, does open doors to links between Heuraman, and other cold cases, like the Eastbound Strangler or Atlantic City murder case. Though at the time of recording, it does seem that the police have ruled out that possibility. So, now we wait.
Starting point is 02:10:55 And the wait will be long. Rex Heron is almost certainly going to go to trial. New York doesn't have the death penalty, so there's nothing prosecutors can take off the table in exchange for a guilty plea. So if your choices are plead guilty and go to prison for life or plead not guilty, go to trial and be found guilty. and go to prison for life, you can bet your house, Heerman will go to trial because there will be a chance.
Starting point is 02:11:18 But that trial will not be happening for a very long time. But now you know all there currently is to know and if there is more to know, we will tell you. We will indeed.
Starting point is 02:11:30 We will keep you guys updated on what happens, but I think much like the Delphi case, much like the Brian Kobrger case, but even more so because of the number of victims that are here, this is going to be a case
Starting point is 02:11:39 that very, very, very, very slowly moves forward. So yeah, we're just going to have to keep an eye on it and come back to it later. But that is, for now, everything you need to know about the Long Island serial killer case. Yeah, let us know what you think. If you've got theories of your own and we will ever your obedience servants decide for ourselves. Exactly.
Starting point is 02:12:04 So we'll see you guys next time for something else. And, yeah, stay safe. Be good. Be good. Bye. Thank you.

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