Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mia podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and orders. This podcast was
Speaker 1: recorded on It's the early hours of May one, twenty ten,
Speaker 1: and Shannon Gilbert calls nine to one to one from
Speaker 1: a house in Long Island, New York. She's there working
Speaker 1: as an escort with a client she met on Craigslist.
Speaker 1: There's somebody after me, She repeatedly tells.
Speaker 2: The operator where are you? There's somebody answering, Okay, where
Speaker 2: are you? So somebody answer where are you?
Speaker 1: Ma'am? I thought you're The entire call lasts twenty two minutes.
Speaker 1: She sounds calm and then confused. You can hear her
Speaker 1: talking to two men in the background. She keeps telling
Speaker 1: someone to stop please. Then she starts running down the street.
Speaker 1: You can hear her screaming and breathing heavily. She asks
Speaker 1: neighbors for help, knocking on their doors. Two different homes
Speaker 1: called police, but when they finally dispatch officers to the area,
Speaker 1: Shannon is nowhere to be found. Months pass and despite
Speaker 1: extensive searches by local law enforcement, there is no sign
Speaker 1: of the twenty three year old. They do, however, stumble
Speaker 1: on another grisly discovery, the bodies of four young women,
Speaker 1: all of them, like Shannon, are escorts who met their
Speaker 1: clients online. The similarities between the women are uncanny, all
Speaker 1: of them petite, all of them in their twenties, all
Speaker 1: of them working as sex workers, posting ads on Craigslist.
Speaker 1: Immediately police know their hunting a serial killer. The following year,
Speaker 1: six more sets of remains are found in the same area,
Speaker 1: bringing the body count to ten. The hunt for answers intensifies.
Speaker 1: This is a case with many twists and turns, all
Speaker 1: culminating in a sensational arrest in July twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: more than a decade after the bodies were found, rex
Speaker 1: Hueman has been charged with multiple counts of murder and
Speaker 1: is currently awaiting trial. It was supposed to start in
Speaker 1: September this year that has been delayed. Alexis Linkletter is
Speaker 1: a true crime producer and investigative journalist from Long Island
Speaker 1: who has been reporting at length on the case and
Speaker 1: continues to provide updates via her podcast Unraveled. Alexis joins
Speaker 1: us now Shannon Gilbert. During her nine to one one call,
Speaker 1: two men could be heard in the background while she
Speaker 1: was telling the operator she was unsafe and someone was
Speaker 1: after her. What do we now know about what was
Speaker 1: happening on that May first morning?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So, on that May first morning, we know that Shannon
Speaker 3: Gilbert was called to the home of Joseph Brewer and
Speaker 3: she was brought there by her driver, Michael Pack And
Speaker 3: at that point, when Shannon had called nine one one,
Speaker 3: Joseph Brewer was trying to get her out of his
Speaker 3: house because she was panicking about something. And you can
Speaker 3: hear them on the nine one one call in the background,
Speaker 3: sort of seeming to talk to each other. It's kind
Speaker 3: of unintelligible, but it sounds like they're communicating about what
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: Her disappearance prompted a search of the nearby area. What
Speaker 1: did that search junk cover? And it was something that
Speaker 1: went on for several months.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So at first the search for her uncovered nothing.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until December of that year that a police
Speaker 3: officer conducting a search with a search dog found some
Speaker 3: skeletal remains, and everyone assumed that those remains would be
Speaker 3: that of the missing Shannon Gilbert, the woman they had
Speaker 3: been looking for, But that wasn't the case. It turns
Speaker 3: out these remains actually belonged to a missing young woman
Speaker 3: named Melissa Bartholemy. And after those remains were found, the
Speaker 3: remains of three other women were also found left there,
Speaker 3: nearly identically, and they were left about five hundred feet
Speaker 3: from each other, along the stretch of highway that was
Speaker 3: in very close proximity to the neighborhood where Shannon Gilbert
Speaker 3: vanished from.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us.
Speaker 1: A little bit about the women. Let's start with Melissa
Speaker 1: because her family in particular had been receiving kind of
Speaker 1: taunting phone calls, hadn't they.
Speaker 3: Yes, So shortly after Melissa's disappearance, her sister Amanda received
Speaker 3: calls from an unknown person. This person used a lot
Speaker 3: of derogatory language. This person had explicitly said things like,
Speaker 3: I'm watching your sister rot your sister is dead, just
Speaker 3: things like that. The exact verbiage we don't know, but
Speaker 3: that was the types of things this person was saying.
Speaker 3: And at that point, Melissa had been missing, so these
Speaker 3: were obviously very terrifying calls to receive.
Speaker 1: Who was Melissa and the other women amba, Megan and Mulraine.
Speaker 1: They all had a lot of similarities, didn't they.
Speaker 2: Yes, So they were all young women.
Speaker 3: They were all batite, and they were all advertising their
Speaker 3: services on Craigslist because they were working as sex workers.
Speaker 3: But that's not what any of them wanted to be doing.
Speaker 3: Melissa Bartholemy was last seen in New York City. She
Speaker 3: had goals of opening her own hair salon. She had
Speaker 3: a lot of friends, a lot of people who loved her.
Speaker 3: And Megan Waterman was from Maine and she was essentially
Speaker 3: trafficked across state lines by her boyfriend slash pimp to
Speaker 3: conduct sex work on Long Island and in the city,
Speaker 3: and that's what she was doing when she was last seen.
Speaker 3: And then Amberlin Costello she was actually the only one
Speaker 3: living on Long Island when she disappeared, and she was
Speaker 3: last seen getting into a truck in front of her house,
Speaker 3: presumably with a client, and then she was never seen again.
Speaker 3: And then Maureen brainer Barnes, same thing. She was a
Speaker 3: young sex worker who vanished after meeting a client.
Speaker 1: What kind of time frame are we talking about when
Speaker 1: these women went to me seen?
Speaker 3: So Maureene brainer Barnes vanished in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: and the others disappeared between that and two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: with the final two disappearing within just a few months
Speaker 3: of each other in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: And when police found their bodies, were I able to
Speaker 1: determine any think about how they died.
Speaker 3: Presumably yes, but that information wasn't released right away, and
Speaker 3: because it was skeletal remains, very little.
Speaker 2: Was released to the public at that time.
Speaker 3: What the public was made aware of is that these
Speaker 3: women were petite, They were wrapped in burlap, and that's
Speaker 3: kind of all we learned, and that's all we knew
Speaker 3: for a really long time.
Speaker 1: A discovery like this is obviously shocking. Did police immediately
Speaker 1: know that they were hunting a serial killer? Because I
Speaker 1: can imagine that starts some pretty serious task forces and
Speaker 1: escalations that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: So at first, when the gil Go fur and that's
Speaker 3: what those first victims were referred to as the gil
Speaker 3: Go four, the assumption right away was that somebody had
Speaker 3: killed these four victims. Where there was a diversion in
Speaker 3: terms of the theories that occurred in April of the
Speaker 3: following year, which is when several more sets of human
Speaker 3: remains were found along Ocean Park. But these victims, the
Speaker 3: circumstances were much different. There were victims that were dismembered.
Speaker 3: There were victims that varied in terms of the race
Speaker 3: of the victim. The victimology differed, and we had a
Speaker 3: victim who was biologically male, dressed in women's clothing, who
Speaker 3: was killed as a result of blunt force trauma. So
Speaker 3: the mos started to become very varied. And that's when
Speaker 3: the big debate about whether we were dealing with one
Speaker 3: or two killers really arose.
Speaker 1: Because that was six more PayPal, wasn't it. There was
Speaker 1: even a toddler among those remains.
Speaker 3: Yes, So that's when the controversy really began about whether
Speaker 3: one person was responsible for all of these people. But
Speaker 3: as far as the first four, everyone believed right away
Speaker 3: that one person had done all of those.
Speaker 1: And then Shannon's reminds were eventually found as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, eighteen months after she disappeared, Shannon was found, and interestingly,
Speaker 3: her remains were found very close to where she disappeared from,
Speaker 3: which created a lot of questions about how thorough the
Speaker 3: search had been for her to begin with, how had
Speaker 3: they not discovered her sooner if she was essentially right
Speaker 3: down the street from where she vanished from.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, with Shannon, Palais actually said that I didn't
Speaker 1: think she'd been murdered, right.
Speaker 3: That also creates a lot of confusion for people, especially
Speaker 3: given her similarities to these other victims that were found
Speaker 3: right down the street. It's hard to believe for a
Speaker 3: lot of people that she's not a murder victim. But
Speaker 3: the Suffocunty Police Department essentially says, and they stand by
Speaker 3: the fact that they believe Sheannon Gilbert died as a
Speaker 3: result of misadventure, which is essentially sort of an unknown cause.
Speaker 3: They believe she has succumbed to the elements, whether that's
Speaker 3: suffering some sort of psychotic drug induced episode that caused
Speaker 3: her to crawl into this really thick brush and drowned.
Speaker 3: You know, they've been sort of unclear because again, eighteen
Speaker 3: months later, she was found in a state of just
Speaker 3: skeletal remains. It's hard to know what exactly caused her death.
Speaker 1: So this is ten bodies, eleven including Shannon. For those
Speaker 1: who haven't been to Long Island, I haven't. Is it
Speaker 1: quite a small area geographically to be finding all of
Speaker 1: these remains.
Speaker 3: So Long Island itself, to give context, is thirty miles
Speaker 3: wide by one hundred miles long. This particular area, if
Speaker 3: you look at a map, it's a long stretch of land,
Speaker 3: but when you're there, it feels extremely small.
Speaker 2: It's really remote.
Speaker 3: There are no other houses there, and the strip of
Speaker 3: land between the road it's on the water, so it's
Speaker 3: on a highway. The strip of land between where the
Speaker 3: road is and the water is very small. So it's
Speaker 3: just a very specific place. You know, it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like a very obvious place for someone to hide human remains.
Speaker 3: So the idea that there was this massive concentration of
Speaker 3: victims in this one area led a lot of people
Speaker 3: to suspect that, yes, we're dealing with one serial killer.
Speaker 3: But again, because the victims that were found later varied
Speaker 3: so much and differed so much from the first four,
Speaker 3: there was still a big question mark over whether or
Speaker 3: not there's one killer or multiple killers, especially because of
Speaker 3: victims like the toddler, where it's such a departure from
Speaker 3: what we're dealing with. As far as young women in
Speaker 3: their twenties who are active in sex work, it really
Speaker 3: caused a lot of confusion.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you personally how it felt to
Speaker 1: have this news breaking, because you're from Long Island, don't.
Speaker 3: You, Yeah, so I grew up going to the beaches
Speaker 3: where this all occurred. It's devastating because most of Long Island,
Speaker 3: it's very affluent. In most parts, you think of it
Speaker 3: as a very safe place. It's a place where people
Speaker 3: from the city have, you know, expensive summer homes. You
Speaker 3: would just never think that something so insidious could be happening,
Speaker 3: and be happening for so long without people realizing it.
Speaker 1: I want to focus on the Gilg four as they
Speaker 1: were known. Were there any witnesses or people in the
Speaker 1: women's orbits that were able to give police any decent
Speaker 1: clues in those early days?
Speaker 3: It turns out yes, although that's not something we learned
Speaker 3: about until July.
Speaker 2: Of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Wow. But it turns out that Amberlin Costello, who was
Speaker 3: the last victim to disappear in the summer of two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine, we found out a little bit about
Speaker 3: her last two days before she vanished, And what occurred
Speaker 3: was is that she was advertising her sex work services
Speaker 3: on Craigslist and she was engaging with the client through text,
Speaker 3: and her and her roommates decided that they wanted money,
Speaker 3: but she didn't want to have sex with this calent,
Speaker 3: so they were going to.
Speaker 2: Do sort of a ruse.
Speaker 3: And basically have the client come over and then Amber's
Speaker 3: roommate would interrupt and act like her angry boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Then the client would be chased off.
Speaker 3: He would have already given the money and she wouldn't
Speaker 3: have had to go through with this act. So this happens,
Speaker 3: and the roommate actually does get into a physical altercation
Speaker 3: with this client, who he describes as someone you know
Speaker 3: who's six ' five hulking. He describes him as looking
Speaker 3: like an ogre, and another key detail he includes is
Speaker 3: that this man was driving a green Chevy Avalanche, an early.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and two model.
Speaker 3: So we've learned that the next day after this ruse
Speaker 3: occurred with this client, the client reached back out to
Speaker 3: Amber and said something to the effect of that wasn't nice.
Speaker 3: Do I get credit for next time, suggesting that he'd
Speaker 3: still like to see her and make another appointment. And
Speaker 3: based on Amber's cell phone records, we've now learned that
Speaker 3: she did agree to meet this client on the very
Speaker 3: day that she disappeared, and neighbors later said they saw
Speaker 3: Amber walking in the direction of a green Chevy Avalanche. So,
Speaker 3: putting the pieces together, she's meeting up with this man
Speaker 3: who was disgruntled the day before and that's the last
Speaker 3: time she's ever seen and this tip about the avalanche
Speaker 3: was provided. So it's strange that this is the clue
Speaker 3: that would eventually lead the Suffolk County Police Department to
Speaker 3: a suspect, because they had this clue all along, So
Speaker 3: why wasn't it followed up on?
Speaker 2: Then We'll never really know.
Speaker 1: Were there any suspects in those early days that the
Speaker 1: public knew about well that the police kind of shard
Speaker 1: details about.
Speaker 3: So as far as official suspects, the police were not
Speaker 3: transparent about that. But something that really hut a spotlight
Speaker 3: on this case was the fact that a lot of
Speaker 3: people suspected that the Suffolcunti Chief of Police had a
Speaker 3: hand in the Long Island serial killer case. So from
Speaker 3: a pop culture standpoint, as far as people who are
Speaker 3: familiar with this case, the police chief, his name is
Speaker 3: James Burke, is someone who comes up right away, someone
Speaker 3: who is front and center, and he has been accused
Speaker 3: of not only being the Long Island serial killer, but
Speaker 3: also just that he purposefully derailed and sabotage the case,
Speaker 3: which is why it remained unsolved for thirteen years.
Speaker 1: Well that in particular, James Burke, the investigation stooling is
Speaker 1: what you started to investigate and kind of dig a
Speaker 1: bit deeper into because you did have a personal connection there.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about Chris and what he told you,
Speaker 1: what happened to him?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: So I went to high school with a guy named
Speaker 3: Christopher Lobe a column Chris and I was working in
Speaker 3: the true crime space in Los Angeles, moved away from
Speaker 3: Long Island, and around twenty thirteen I started hearing that
Speaker 3: he was in jail for something he had done involving
Speaker 3: the Suffolk County Police Chief. Now we were put in
Speaker 3: touch after many years of not being in contact, and
Speaker 3: that's when he told me the story of what happened.
Speaker 3: So what occurred was by this point Chris had become
Speaker 3: a heroin addict. Opioid addiction is something that a lot
Speaker 3: of people on Long Island struggle with, and all over
Speaker 3: the United States that's a big problem. So in the
Speaker 3: throes of addiction, in order to fuel his habit, he's
Speaker 3: resorted to robbing cars to find things to steal, and
Speaker 3: he was doing just that in December of twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: and it was then that he came upon a black
Speaker 3: suv and the doors were unlocked, and he opened the
Speaker 3: door and he stole a duffel bag out of this car.
Speaker 3: He doesn't look at it until he gets home, and
Speaker 3: when he opens the bag, he finds some procure things.
Speaker 3: He finds magazines, you know, for ammunition. He finds evidence bags,
Speaker 3: things that you might find in a police officer's duffle bag.
Speaker 3: But he also finds things like anal, beads, porn, sex toys,
Speaker 3: really bizarre items to also be with these police items.
Speaker 3: And this bag belonged to the Suffolk County Police Department's
Speaker 3: Chief of Police, James Burke. So after the theft of
Speaker 3: this bag, Chris was on probation for a different crime.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how, No one really knows how
Speaker 3: Burke knew it was Chris. But James Burke, the chief
Speaker 3: of police, and several other officers descended upon Chris's house
Speaker 3: and entered the home under the guise of it being
Speaker 3: you know, a routine sort of probationary search. And they
Speaker 3: recover the bag and they beat up Chris in front
Speaker 3: of his mother and they drag him down to the
Speaker 3: police station. And after that he's subsequently, you know, beaten
Speaker 3: and tortured and taunted by James Burke. And after that,
Speaker 3: James Burke threatens everybody who was there to never say
Speaker 3: a word, and there's basically a conspiracy to cover up
Speaker 3: what's just happened that ensues. After that, Chris is thrown
Speaker 3: in jail and silenced as a result. And it's at
Speaker 3: that point that he and I reconnect and I realize, WHOA,
Speaker 3: there's like really a story here. But I entered this
Speaker 3: story thinking of this as a story about political corruption.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until I started piecing together the timeline of
Speaker 3: everything that I realized how much influenced James Burke would
Speaker 3: have had over the Long Island serial killer case.
Speaker 1: Well, there was one particular day style that Chris gave
Speaker 1: you about a daba a day that quite clearly could
Speaker 1: incriminate him in terms of the Long Island Killer. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us about that?
Speaker 3: So Chris alleges that, and this is something he didn't
Speaker 3: tell anyone until he participated in my series Unraveled, And
Speaker 3: this was a story he told in twenty twenty when
Speaker 3: this event occurred in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: But he said that there was a.
Speaker 3: Snuff film DVD in the back, and he said that
Speaker 3: the girl on the film looked like Megan Waterman, one
Speaker 3: of the Gilgo fur victims.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't believe that.
Speaker 3: But when you're doing journalism, when you're a journalist, you
Speaker 3: can't really insert your opinion. I was skeptical, but it
Speaker 3: is what Chris swore up and down happened.
Speaker 2: And was it just a blonde girl who looked like Megan? Maybe?
Speaker 3: Was it a fake snuff film where it's porn that's
Speaker 3: really rough and that's what's supposed to be depicted. There
Speaker 3: was a lot of nuance with what it could have
Speaker 3: been at that time. But everybody heard this and immediately
Speaker 3: the conspiracy theorists were abound with theories about James Brooke
Speaker 3: being the Long Island serial killer. And we uncovered so
Speaker 3: many truthful things from his past about what he did
Speaker 3: with sex workers. He had a really checkered history. He
Speaker 3: was violent with many sex workers. He was known to
Speaker 3: hire sex workers, he had a long term relationship with
Speaker 3: a sex worker, and in fact, he attended a sex
Speaker 3: party in Oak Beach, which is the same neighborhood where
Speaker 3: Shannon Gilbert disappeared from, and was engaged with a sex
Speaker 3: worker was violent with her.
Speaker 2: It just looked really bad as far as Yeah.
Speaker 3: Of course you wouldn't want the FBI or any other
Speaker 3: larger police agencies investigating this case and potentially uncovering your
Speaker 3: ties to these women and to this neighborhood where the
Speaker 3: women were found.
Speaker 1: So allegations of snuff film aside, there was plenty of
Speaker 1: solid evidence you were able to find about James and
Speaker 1: in fact he actually stood down, didn't he There was
Speaker 1: proof that he kind of fumbled the investigation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's on records that the FBI tried to
Speaker 3: get involved and he blocked that. He was ultimately charged
Speaker 3: for what he did to Chris Loeb, and he didn't
Speaker 3: do it alone. He had accomplices and he was working
Speaker 3: with the District Attorney, which is I don't know what
Speaker 3: they call them in Australia, but it's just the highest
Speaker 3: prosecuting attorney for the state essentially for this county. And
Speaker 3: it turns out his name is Tom Spoda. He's in
Speaker 3: jail right now for his involvement in this and him
Speaker 3: and James Burke had had a relationship for forty years
Speaker 3: where they were essentially involved in corruption together, helping each
Speaker 3: other it was kind of a quid pro quo relationship
Speaker 3: where they were covering up a lot of stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's it really got serious when they were indicted for
Speaker 3: their roles in this and people really started to suspect, Okay,
Speaker 3: whether James Burke is a serial killer or not, he
Speaker 3: has a hand in why this case is not solved.
Speaker 1: You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Jimmy Bath.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with true crime host and producer Alexis Link
Speaker 1: Litter Up. Next, I ask Alexis how the police managed
Speaker 1: to discover and catch who they suspected to be the
Speaker 1: Long Island serial killer. Well, let's skip forward to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, because a new task force was formed and
Speaker 1: within six weeks they had a new potential suspect. How
Speaker 1: did police find Rex Hueman?
Speaker 3: So we were all very excited when the new task
Speaker 3: force was assembled and there was this renewed effort to
Speaker 3: really regroup and do this right.
Speaker 2: From the start.
Speaker 3: And it's a little disheartening to realize that it only
Speaker 3: took them six weeks of true focus, of real valiant
Speaker 3: effort to do this, considering how many people had been
Speaker 3: suffered for how long without these answers. But essentially it
Speaker 3: was the tip provided by Amberlin Costello's roommate about the
Speaker 3: Chevy Avalanche that actually led the police to the door
Speaker 3: of their suspect. And that's frustrating because that means it
Speaker 3: wasn't like they found a new piece of evidence or
Speaker 3: a new tip or anything. It was a tip they
Speaker 3: had that had been ignored, that had been slipped through
Speaker 3: the cracks, that was lost in a time when James
Speaker 3: Burke would have kind of been in control of how
Speaker 3: to solve this case. So it sort of proved our
Speaker 3: hypothesis about why this case wasn't solved because they had
Speaker 3: this information all along. And it was ironic that it
Speaker 3: was a female investigator who uncovered it, which.
Speaker 1: I loved well, as you say, two decades it sat there,
Speaker 1: just sat there in front of them. There was also
Speaker 1: some DNA that they were able to link.
Speaker 2: Wasn't there, Yes, So we didn't know this until there
Speaker 2: was an arrest.
Speaker 3: Several hairs had been found on the remains of the
Speaker 3: Gilgo fr and.
Speaker 2: Megan Waterman, that victim.
Speaker 3: There was a male hair that was found and once
Speaker 3: Rex sewer Men, who is the suspect who would come
Speaker 3: to be arrested. Once he was identified as the person
Speaker 3: who owned that Chevy Avalanche, they were able to follow
Speaker 3: him and get a surreptitious DNA sample and connect it
Speaker 3: to hairs that they were covered on this victim, Megan Watermen.
Speaker 3: They were also able to connect Rex Sierman's family to
Speaker 3: other hairs.
Speaker 2: Found on other victims.
Speaker 3: So that was a huge development to because the Chevy
Speaker 3: Avalanche is a great connection, but it's not what juris
Speaker 3: want to see these days. They really want to see DNA,
Speaker 3: so to be able to link him with DNA was huge.
Speaker 1: So they arrested him in July twenty twenty three, initially
Speaker 1: only charging him with three of the motives. Eventually he
Speaker 1: was charged with a fourth. Can you tell us about
Speaker 1: that fourth charge, because the allegations in that case were
Speaker 1: quite surprising, weren't they.
Speaker 2: So with the.
Speaker 3: Fourth one with the timeline we discussed between two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven and two thousand and nine with the Gilgo
Speaker 3: four victims, Yes, they were able to charge him with
Speaker 3: a three that occurred later across those couple of years.
Speaker 3: Maureen Rynard Barnes was the first victim who disappeared in
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, so presumably they just had less
Speaker 3: in the form of, you know, digital evidence. With the
Speaker 3: other three victims, they had phone records and they had
Speaker 3: text messages. They were able to conclude that Rex Yeerman's
Speaker 3: family was out of town when each of these occurred,
Speaker 3: but it just took a little longer to charge him
Speaker 3: with Maureen Ringard Barnes's murder. But it was revealed that
Speaker 3: instead of waiting for all four, which is I think
Speaker 3: they wanted to do initially, there was a sense of
Speaker 3: urgency to get these charges filed because they suspected that
Speaker 3: he might kill again because his family had a trip
Speaker 3: coming up, and that was something that they had been
Speaker 3: able to identify as a constant for when each of
Speaker 3: these victims disappeared. So they also were tracking his phones
Speaker 3: and seeing that he was talking.
Speaker 2: To sex workers.
Speaker 3: They were just very worried that he was ramping up,
Speaker 3: so that's why they pulled the trigger, even though they
Speaker 3: only had enough for the three at the time.
Speaker 1: I know police don't think that Shannon was murdered, but
Speaker 1: it's really hard to separate her from the gilgo fuur
Speaker 1: considering she was also in sex works. She also found
Speaker 1: people on Craig's list do they allege she had any
Speaker 1: run in with human.
Speaker 3: They have not disclosed whether or not they have found
Speaker 3: a link between Shannon Gilbert and Rex Huerman. However, people
Speaker 3: have come forward claiming that there is a link between
Speaker 3: Shannon Gilbert and Rex Huerman, but law enforcement have not
Speaker 3: verified this information. But John Ray has taken affidavits from
Speaker 3: witnesses who claim to have seen Rex Yuerman with Shannon
Speaker 3: Gilbert at a motel in Suffolk County, So there are
Speaker 3: claims that there may be a connection there.
Speaker 2: I think what.
Speaker 3: Is a challenge with Shannon Gilbert would be connecting him
Speaker 3: to that Oak Beach neighborhood, which as far as I
Speaker 3: have heard, there are no connections. There are no connections
Speaker 3: between Joseph Brewer and Michael Pack, the men who were
Speaker 3: heard in the background of that nine when one call.
Speaker 3: It's hard to know how Okay, there's all this proof
Speaker 3: that Shannon ran from that house that night, she knocked
Speaker 3: on neighbors doors. You know, Rex Yerman would have had
Speaker 3: to encounter her by happenstance while she's screaming running through
Speaker 3: a road in the middle of the night, and he
Speaker 3: has no ties to this area. So it's just hard
Speaker 3: to understand how that would have happened.
Speaker 1: So it's just a coincidence, which is wild.
Speaker 2: Maybe or or maybe not.
Speaker 3: I think the fact that we're dealing with such a
Speaker 3: small area, like we discussed in the beginning, and the
Speaker 3: idea that so many men are connected to these sex
Speaker 3: workers in this way also reflects just a greater attitude
Speaker 3: about women, showing how pervasive this is, which it's not
Speaker 3: something I understood before getting involved in this case. It's
Speaker 3: one of the more bizarre elements of this case. It's
Speaker 3: really hard to understand how she could not be connected.
Speaker 2: It's really hard.
Speaker 3: It's hard to face that you look at it on
Speaker 3: a map. This happened very close together. She also matches
Speaker 3: the descriptions of these women. She's batite, she's blonde. She fits,
Speaker 3: you know, but then she doesn't. It's just very hard
Speaker 3: to understand.
Speaker 1: What do we know about human married kids? What does
Speaker 1: he do for work?
Speaker 3: So we know that Rex Huerman is married, He's been
Speaker 3: married twice. He's got a biological daughter and a son
Speaker 3: who he essentially adopted through marrying his second wife. He
Speaker 3: is a Long Island lifer is what they call them,
Speaker 3: born and raised on Long Island.
Speaker 2: He currently.
Speaker 3: I mean, up until the moment of his arrest, lived
Speaker 3: in the home that he was raised in. He bought
Speaker 3: the house from his mother in the nineties ninety one,
Speaker 3: and he.
Speaker 2: Is an architect.
Speaker 3: And in ninety three, I believe, is when he opened
Speaker 3: his own architectural firm. That office was located in Midtown, Manhattan,
Speaker 3: And for geographical context, that's about an hour and change
Speaker 3: away from.
Speaker 2: Where he lives.
Speaker 3: And he lives in a town called massive Pequa Park
Speaker 3: and he commutes back and forth from his house to
Speaker 3: the city every day to get to his office.
Speaker 2: He has hobbies. He likes to hunt. He was a
Speaker 2: member of social groups.
Speaker 3: He's strange. We talked to people who went to high
Speaker 3: school with him. He was bullied. He was described as odd.
Speaker 3: He doesn't appear like on paper you wouldn't think he's
Speaker 3: a serial killer, but he looks like one.
Speaker 1: Well physically, he kind of fits that description the roommate gave,
Speaker 1: doesn't he.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a perfect match. But what I just
Speaker 3: think is interesting about him. Think about the most famous
Speaker 3: serial killer is like, think about Brian Koeberger. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you're familiar with that case. To the Idaho
Speaker 3: College students. He doesn't look like a serial killer, Like
Speaker 3: he's conventionally attractive, you know, Ted Bundy, It's like Rex
Speaker 3: Hwerman looks like a serial killer to me.
Speaker 1: Like the Hole, he's quite intimidating.
Speaker 3: He's huge, he's hasty, he's disheveled, and he has this
Speaker 3: really these vacant eyes. He's quite scary looking. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so that is sort of the summary about Rex Huerman.
Speaker 3: You know, we also know that in college he worked
Speaker 3: at these beaches doing maintenance and things like that, at
Speaker 3: near where these victims remains were found, so he has
Speaker 3: very strong ties to this area.
Speaker 2: We know that Massapequa Park where he lives.
Speaker 3: One of those phone calls to the sister of Melissa
Speaker 3: Bartholemy was able to be traced to Massapequa, so they
Speaker 3: knew they were looking for someone with ties to that area.
Speaker 3: Other calls were traced to Manhattan. They knew they were
Speaker 3: looking for someone with ties to that area as well.
Speaker 2: And he really fits the bell.
Speaker 3: And he had that same exact Chevy Avalanche, but he
Speaker 3: gave it to his brother, but he got a new
Speaker 3: one that's exactly like his old one.
Speaker 2: So this is a car.
Speaker 3: He seems to really like, that's what we know about
Speaker 3: Rex Herman. He seems to have very strong emotional.
Speaker 2: Ties to this house.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting that he's an architect because his house
Speaker 3: is dilapidated, like it looks like it's on the verge
Speaker 3: of collapsing. He's got his porch propped up with a
Speaker 3: piece of plywood. It's really just an awful shape. And
Speaker 3: pictures of the inside revealed that there was some hoarding
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 2: It's really a bizarre situation, all of it.
Speaker 1: Well, the house in particular is also a big focus
Speaker 1: of the investigation itself, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, and we keep learning more and more
Speaker 3: about why that is. And while it's not been explicitly stated,
Speaker 3: evidence shows and their implications that suggest he used the
Speaker 3: basement of his house to commit these crimes. This is
Speaker 3: where they suspect the murders occurred over the course of
Speaker 3: days when his family was out of town, and with
Speaker 3: the evidence that has been made available, we're also piecing
Speaker 3: together these timeline he was keeping his victims in his
Speaker 3: basement and still going to work, still going to meetings,
Speaker 3: keeping up a very normal facade of day to day life,
Speaker 3: even though he had victims in his basement, probably still alive,
Speaker 3: because we're learning that this was a prolonged experience for him.
Speaker 3: This wasn't something that he did quickly. This was something
Speaker 3: he did over days, and he was going to work
Speaker 3: pretending to be normal and able to do that. The
Speaker 3: compartmentalization that takes is uncanny, but he was able to
Speaker 3: do this, and it's just a very scary, sobering realization
Speaker 3: that that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: Since he's a rist. He has been charged with two automotives,
Speaker 1: Sandra Castilla and Jessica Tyla. What do we know about
Speaker 1: them and what happened to them?
Speaker 3: So this is where it gets very interesting. So Sandra
Speaker 3: Costilla was murdered in nineteen ninety three, and them in
Speaker 3: her case is completely different than with any of the others.
Speaker 3: She was stabbed, she was posed, she was left in
Speaker 3: a completely different area in Southampton, which is further east
Speaker 3: than where all of the other victims were found. And
Speaker 3: what's interesting about Sandra is that everybody suspected that Sandra
Speaker 3: was murdered by somebody else. So a man named John
Speaker 3: Bitroff was arrested in twenty fourteen for the murders of
Speaker 3: two women Rita Tangretti and Colleen McNamee. They were murdered
Speaker 3: within a three month period, and the woman murdered between
Speaker 3: them was Sandra Costia in that timeline, and these three
Speaker 3: scenes had a lot of similarities. Everyone suspected that John
Speaker 3: Bitroff had killed Sandra Costia also, but everyone just believed
Speaker 3: that the DA didn't have enough to charge him with
Speaker 3: Sandra's But everyone knew like Sandra Costia was killed by
Speaker 3: John Beitroff. So when they announced Rex Huermann's indictment for
Speaker 3: Sandra's case, it was a huge surprise, not only because
Speaker 3: everyone thought someone else did it, but this expands the
Speaker 3: timeline significantly because everyone to that point believed that with
Speaker 3: the two thousand murder of Valerie Mack would have been
Speaker 3: the first sort of in this serial killer series. He's
Speaker 3: not been charged for the murder of Valerie Mack to
Speaker 3: this point, but he has been named as a lead
Speaker 3: suspect officially by law enforcement. So the idea that now
Speaker 3: the timeline of when we know he was allegedly killing
Speaker 3: has expanded by eight years is really alarming because it
Speaker 3: means there could be that many more victims.
Speaker 1: So he said that he's a suspect in another case.
Speaker 1: We didn't mention Valerie, but he has been charged with
Speaker 1: Jessica's murda.
Speaker 3: Yes, So the reason why I bring up Valerie is
Speaker 3: because Valerie and Jessica are very much connected, and they
Speaker 3: were found way before any of the victims along Ocean
Speaker 3: Parkway Way, before the Gilg four Way, before anyone else.
Speaker 3: So Valerie's remains were found in a place called Manorville,
Speaker 3: which is about forty miles away from Ocean Parkway and
Speaker 3: Gilga Beach and Valerie when she was found in November
Speaker 3: of two thousand, her head was missing and her hands
Speaker 3: were missing, and she was completely dismembered and found in
Speaker 3: trash bags and she's found in the woods. She was
Speaker 3: not able to be identified for twenty years. She was
Speaker 3: identified in two thousand, but three years after Valerie's remains
Speaker 3: were found, Jessica Taylor's remains were found. Her head was missing,
Speaker 3: her hands were missing, and she was found within one
Speaker 3: thousand feet of where Valerie was found three years prior.
Speaker 3: So everyone always believed that these two were connected. It
Speaker 3: wasn't until two thy eleven April of twenty eleven where
Speaker 3: when those other remains were found. After the gil Go
Speaker 3: fur valorying. Jessica's missing remains were found there.
Speaker 2: Oh, so that's how.
Speaker 3: They were connected to the Long Island serial killer case
Speaker 3: because their head and hands were found with the toddler
Speaker 3: and Peaches the victim, and all these other victims that
Speaker 3: are connected to the case but had different ms the
Speaker 3: victims that caused the confusion about whether it was one
Speaker 3: or two killers. So Rex has been charged with Jessica
Speaker 3: Taylor's murder because again they found a hair that they
Speaker 3: were able to connect back to him. And this is
Speaker 3: very significant because while he hasn't been charged with those
Speaker 3: other victims along Ocean Parkway, her body parts were found
Speaker 3: amongst them, which leads everyone to believe that he will
Speaker 3: be charged with every other victim there because this was
Speaker 3: obviously where all those other victims were left there earlier
Speaker 3: than the go go for we're talking Karen Vergata's remains
Speaker 3: were found there. She was murdered in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: The Asian victim was murdered around two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: Peaches was murdered in nineteen ninety six. So this is
Speaker 3: like his earlier EMO. He was dismembering and he was
Speaker 3: leaving them there and then later on he was leaving
Speaker 3: them whole, you know, wrapped in burlap. So his mom
Speaker 3: evolved and we know, you know, he's been charged with
Speaker 3: Santra Christia. She was left somewhere else and murdered in
Speaker 3: a completely different way. So this guy really is like
Speaker 3: a chameleon as far as what he does to victims,
Speaker 3: what he's capable of doing, the locations where he's leaving them,
Speaker 3: and victimology. You know, some of these victims are white,
Speaker 3: some are black, some are a It's really shocking because
Speaker 3: we just don't know when it's going to end.
Speaker 2: You know, we don't know how many he's.
Speaker 3: Responsible for, because there's countless unsolved murders all across Long Island.
Speaker 3: And now we know that he doesn't just leave victims
Speaker 3: in an ocean parkway, because Sandra Costillo is found somewhere else.
Speaker 3: So it's really he could be responsible for an untold
Speaker 3: number of victims.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So for the moment, he's been charged with six motives
Speaker 1: if my account is correct, which hat denies. I should
Speaker 1: point out he is yet to stand trial. Where are
Speaker 1: we cult wise, because we was still waiting for a trial,
Speaker 1: he was supposed to already have started one.
Speaker 3: Before these additional charges were filed. The judge was trying
Speaker 3: to speed things along when he was only charged with
Speaker 3: a Gilgo four and they were trying to expedite the discovery,
Speaker 3: which means the prosecution handing over all the evidence in
Speaker 3: the defense so they could prepare. But now that victims
Speaker 3: keep getting added, it just gets less and less realistic
Speaker 3: that this trial is going to happen in a timely manner.
Speaker 3: And he's waived his right to a speedy trial, and
Speaker 3: it could be a lot longer because you know, as
Speaker 3: recently as last week the DA held a press conference,
Speaker 3: they're still trying to identify some of these victims with
Speaker 3: the hopes of further connecting Rex Yuerman to them. And
Speaker 3: that's actively occurring. I mean, this is something they're working
Speaker 3: on day and night behind the scenes. So they may
Speaker 3: continue to charge him with victims, and that would just
Speaker 3: add more time between when a trial could occur, because
Speaker 3: then his defense will have to prepare further.
Speaker 2: Well, that could make ease.
Speaker 3: Really it could mean years. Yeah, I mean we're already
Speaker 3: at one year having passed.
Speaker 1: Is his wife supporting him in all of these.
Speaker 3: So at first it seemed like no, she filed for
Speaker 3: divorce almost right away. It's hard to know exactly what
Speaker 3: the thinking is. You know, she has been spotted at
Speaker 3: court appearances. She brought their dog to the last appearance.
Speaker 3: She has said things like I want to see how
Speaker 3: it all plays out, and it's until proven guilty. You know,
Speaker 3: I think, I think there's a lot of psychological implications
Speaker 3: here with how hard it might be to come to
Speaker 3: terms with this reality. So I try to reserve judgment.
Speaker 3: But it appears that she's loosely supporting him. She's still
Speaker 3: visiting him in jail.
Speaker 1: We know that, but we also know she signed a
Speaker 1: media deal.
Speaker 3: Yes, so there is a documentary, a multi part documentary,
Speaker 3: and yeah, she and her daughter Victoria are participating. I
Speaker 3: also sat for an interview for it. It's going to
Speaker 3: feature their perspective in terms of like their shock or
Speaker 3: you know. I'm interested to see what they've said.
Speaker 2: I have no.
Speaker 3: Idea, but I do know that this is going to
Speaker 3: be a long process. Them coming to terms with this
Speaker 3: reality is not going to be an overnight thing. And
Speaker 3: they've said that this was a financial decision. They have
Speaker 3: no money. She is in remission from cancer treatments, and
Speaker 3: the suspicion is that this was financially motivated decision to
Speaker 3: participate in this documentary.
Speaker 1: After the break, we learn what's happening now with Rex
Speaker 1: Human's trial. The trial might be years away, but the
Speaker 1: prosecution has still been putting forward evidence as part of
Speaker 1: court proceedings, so we have been getting a few more
Speaker 1: details there about the allegations. Can you tell us about
Speaker 1: the kind of digital web and the ways that they
Speaker 1: accuse Human of trying to contact victims.
Speaker 3: Yes, So it's been reported that he has over one
Speaker 3: hundred burner phones, which are sort of they're called ghost phones.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you know, it's a phone you go into seven
Speaker 3: to eleven and you buy and then you buy minutes
Speaker 3: for that you can purchase anonymously and as not tied
Speaker 3: because like a regular cell phone is tied to a
Speaker 3: credit check, at least here in the US, is tied
Speaker 3: to you know, you need an ID for it, you
Speaker 3: need an address. It's directly tied to your identity. These phones,
Speaker 3: you can have as many as you want. You can
Speaker 3: adminutes to them. You cannot, So he was contacting victims
Speaker 3: that way. He was contacting victims through Craigslist, using aliases
Speaker 3: and using alias emails, several of them, and he was
Speaker 3: doing this through these burner phones, so these emails weren't
Speaker 3: connected to his IP at his home or his office,
Speaker 3: or connected to his personal computers.
Speaker 2: He was doing this.
Speaker 3: All on these anonymous phones. We know that he was
Speaker 3: also using these phones for things like Tinder. You know,
Speaker 3: years later he continued doing this sort of dance with
Speaker 3: these electronics. He was also using digital shredding software and
Speaker 3: that was an effort to erase you know, some of
Speaker 3: this digital evidence. A lot of the Google searches implicate
Speaker 3: him in really strange ways. He was googling podcasts, he
Speaker 3: was googling my podcast about the case, he was watching
Speaker 3: TV shows about the case. A lot of the evidence
Speaker 3: they have on him is this digital evidence, and it's
Speaker 3: very compelling when it's all laid out and put together.
Speaker 2: They also talk.
Speaker 1: About a supposed planning document or blueprint, which is quite chilling.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The planning document, I think is sort of what ups
Speaker 3: the ante for people who are familiar with serial killer cases.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've never seen something so horrifying in my life.
Speaker 3: And basically it's a word document that was created in
Speaker 3: two thousand and updated several times between two thousand and
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, and on this document he basically
Speaker 3: talks about his pre planning for the act, the act itself,
Speaker 3: and what he does afterwards, you know, clean up notes,
Speaker 3: and it's essentially a to do list of items he
Speaker 3: needs to buy, things he needs to do to ensure
Speaker 3: that he's going to get away with this, car maintenance,
Speaker 3: what to destroy, getting his story straight. He has notes
Speaker 3: on there about scouting dumping ground locations, scouting locations of
Speaker 3: picking the victims up, making sure there's no surveillance cameras,
Speaker 3: how to wash the victims' bodies, to check for fibers,
Speaker 3: to scrub for fingerprints, what kind of torture he wants
Speaker 3: to do. He also had notes about reading the book
Speaker 3: mind Hunter, which was written by John Douglas, the famed
Speaker 3: FBI profiler who essentially developed modern day profiling in the FBI.
Speaker 3: He basically read John Douglas's book mind Hunter and took
Speaker 3: notes about how to confuse and mislead law enforcement so
Speaker 3: he could further get away with this. So it's really
Speaker 3: just a chilling glimpse into not only the monster we're
Speaker 3: dealing with, but also what these victims went through.
Speaker 1: And also the level of evidence we have in this
Speaker 1: Do we know what his defense plans to use or
Speaker 1: do to try and aggie he's case.
Speaker 2: We don't know what they will ultimately do.
Speaker 3: But what Michael Brown, rex Human's defense attorney has said
Speaker 3: during press conferences is that there were these other suspects
Speaker 3: that law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Had their eye on.
Speaker 3: To the point where it was rumored that an arrest
Speaker 3: was coming, and this was somebody who's not rex Uerman.
Speaker 2: This is someone else.
Speaker 3: They had their eyeon with the initials that matched these
Speaker 3: initials that were found on a piece of evidence, which
Speaker 3: is WM. So there was a belt found it was
Speaker 3: found with Maureene Brainerd Barnes that had the words WM
Speaker 3: carved in the back of it, and for a long
Speaker 3: time until they got the tip about the Chevy Avalanche
Speaker 3: which led to rex Ureerman.
Speaker 2: The assumption is.
Speaker 3: That that's what the police were really focusing their search on.
Speaker 3: These initials. So we know that Michael Brown is he's
Speaker 3: going to point to these other suspects as potentially being
Speaker 3: the real suspects, and they are going to try to
Speaker 3: poke holes in the hair evidence because hair testing forever
Speaker 3: has been done with nuclear DNA and done with the
Speaker 3: root of the hair. This testing that was done with
Speaker 3: these hairs was done with mitochondrial DNA testing, So it's
Speaker 3: like very groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: Am I right in saying that he plans to also
Speaker 1: bring in that police chaef we mentioned earlier James book.
Speaker 3: So it's unclear as to whether he'll actually be called
Speaker 3: to testify, but Michael Brown, rex Ywerman's attorney has requested
Speaker 3: all of James Brooke's files to review, so I'm sure
Speaker 3: he plans to point to negligence that was done in
Speaker 3: this case as a way to explain why potentially this
Speaker 3: evidence is not reliable. Right, this was an investigation led
Speaker 3: by a corrupt criminal. How can we trust the validity
Speaker 3: of this evidence? Which I think I think is the
Speaker 3: biggest shame of what James Burke has done. Police work
Speaker 3: is supposed to be done with integrity, so that convictions
Speaker 3: can be found with integrity, you know, and it's really
Speaker 3: a shame that he's cast doubt on portions of this investigation.
Speaker 1: You are so daping this investigation and it looks like
Speaker 1: it's going to keep unraveling. Does that feel as a
Speaker 1: journalist overwhelming for you? Exciting a you kind of nervous
Speaker 1: as to what else might come out.
Speaker 3: I'm excited because there are so many people who are
Speaker 3: still seeking answers and victims who are still seeking to
Speaker 3: have their identities back. I think there is more bad
Speaker 3: news to come. I think there is more to be
Speaker 3: learned about the depths of this person's depravity. But I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of relief and justice to be
Speaker 3: found on this journey as well. People who don't know
Speaker 3: what happened to their family members who will finally get
Speaker 3: those answers, People who have been wanting justice for twenty
Speaker 3: years who are going.
Speaker 2: To get it.
Speaker 3: So I think hopefully we're only on the upswing, and
Speaker 3: I just hope that we're able to connect more people
Speaker 3: to this serial offender because we don't believe Sandra Costia
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety three was his first victim. We just don't,
Speaker 3: and we don't believe there were none between her and
Speaker 3: Valerie mac and Jessica Taylor. So who else is there?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: I think it's exciting that these investigators, these really good
Speaker 3: investigators now who who care about this case, are going
Speaker 3: to connect all these dots and bring all this hopefully
Speaker 3: you know, closure, I hate that word closure, but bring justice.
Speaker 1: What about Long Island itself. It's used in like the title,
Speaker 1: you know, alleged Long Island serial killer. It's such a
Speaker 1: spotlight on it. Has it tarnished the area? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's your fuller home. Would they ever be able to
Speaker 1: come out from underneath the white of these.
Speaker 3: It hasn't tarnished the area, but it's definitely shone a
Speaker 3: light on the area's shortcomings, some of the systemic failures
Speaker 3: that have been occurring since the nineteen hundred's and earlier.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of marginalized people, a lot of
Speaker 3: oppressed people, a lot of attitudes about sex workers, people
Speaker 3: addicted to drugs. I think it's really brought an understanding
Speaker 3: to the people who have been in power and what
Speaker 3: they thought was important. This case was neglected largely because
Speaker 3: these women were in sex work, and I think that's
Speaker 3: the only reason they were able to get away with
Speaker 3: neglecting this case to this degree. So the area itself tarnished, No,
Speaker 3: but it really is like a microcosm for what is
Speaker 3: being talked about on a larger scale now.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Alexis for assisting us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jemma Bath and Tali Blackman, with audio
Speaker 1: design by Scott Stronik. I'll be back next week with
Speaker 1: another true crime conversation.