Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. In the headlines recently are the
Speaker 1: shocking revelations surrounding the Long Island serial Killer. From twenty
Speaker 1: ten to twenty twelve, the remains of eleven bodies were
Speaker 1: discovered in or near Gilgo Beach on the south shore
Speaker 1: of Long Island, with many of the victims being young
Speaker 1: female sex workers. The case went unsolved for thirteen years
Speaker 1: until July thirteenth of this year, when Rex Huerman, a
Speaker 1: fifty nine year old architect, husband and father, was arrested
Speaker 1: and charged with the murder of three women in the
Speaker 1: case and named as the prime suspect in a fourth.
Speaker 1: Hueerman pled not guilty long before the arrest. I discovered
Speaker 1: and quickly devoured the podcast unraveled the Long Island serial Killer.
Speaker 1: Later in the pro we'll catch up on the current
Speaker 1: state of the case, but first I want to share
Speaker 1: my original conversation with the podcast's hosts and executive producers,
Speaker 1: Billy Jensen and Alexis Linkletter. This conversation was recorded about
Speaker 1: a year before the Latest Discoveries, their investigative podcast and
Speaker 1: accompanying documentary unravel a web of police corruption and cover
Speaker 1: up centering on the scandal ridden Suffolk County Chief of
Speaker 1: Police James Burke. Suffolk County Executive Steve Malone appointed Burke
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve. Four years later, Burke was convicted of
Speaker 1: assault and obstruction of justice for his attack on civilian
Speaker 1: Christopher Loeb, who had stolen a Duffel bag containing pornography
Speaker 1: and sex toys from Burke's truck. You cannot make this up.
Speaker 1: Burke was sentenced to forty six months in federal prison,
Speaker 1: and in twenty nineteen, District Attorney Thomas Spoda was also
Speaker 1: convin for covering up the assault. Burke's role in the
Speaker 1: Long Island serial killer investigation is now under a spotlight,
Speaker 1: as he blocked the FBI from participating back when it
Speaker 1: was under his control. For link Letter and Jensen, I
Speaker 1: imagine putting their podcast together was challenging digging into a
Speaker 1: whizzly case involving some of the darkest pieces of humanity.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know if there was ever a time
Speaker 1: when the work itself became too dark for them.
Speaker 2: You know, with this case and the way that we
Speaker 2: approach this case, Long Island Serial Killer has been covered
Speaker 2: so many times, and a lot of people have covered
Speaker 2: a lot of the details. One of the things about
Speaker 2: this case as opposed to other cases, is that there
Speaker 2: have been so few details that have been led out
Speaker 2: by the police, So there's not much that you might
Speaker 2: see of the kind of gory aspects that you might
Speaker 2: hear on other podcasts or see on TV. And what
Speaker 2: we were really doing was investigating the investigation. It was
Speaker 2: different for us because as opposed to the typical things
Speaker 2: that I've done in my career, which is looking at
Speaker 2: unsolved crimes and unsolved murders and trying to figure out
Speaker 2: who done it, this got a very political, and it
Speaker 2: got very entangled, and it got more about power and
Speaker 2: privilege and going down those rabbit holes and then trying
Speaker 2: to hold those people accountable.
Speaker 3: For me, I saw this as such an incredible opportunity
Speaker 3: to discuss sort of political corruption and use this case,
Speaker 3: which it is, as a microchasm for what happens everywhere.
Speaker 3: And I never got sick of it because it was
Speaker 3: such an opportunity. Because when you try to sell it
Speaker 3: a show or a podcast concept about corruption and exploitation
Speaker 3: of power, nobody wants to listen to that everyone thinks
Speaker 3: that's boring. So this was such a unique case where
Speaker 3: the political corruption overlapped with an unsolved case, and it
Speaker 3: really got people interested in politics and interested in talking
Speaker 3: about the political corruption that's going on on Long Island
Speaker 3: in a way that I don't think people were before,
Speaker 3: because a completely different group of people were exposed to
Speaker 3: it and could consume it in a way that was
Speaker 3: palatable for them. A lot of people don't want to
Speaker 3: hear about indictments of political officials. I mean, they just
Speaker 3: don't get it, and they don't see they see it
Speaker 3: sort of as a victimless crime in some ways, and
Speaker 3: here it was a really tangible way for people to
Speaker 3: digest what was happening in this part of New York.
Speaker 1: So Alexis correct me if I'm wrong. But the genesis
Speaker 1: of this, or at least a component of the genesis
Speaker 1: of this, is that you knew Lobe and you went
Speaker 1: to school with Lobe correct.
Speaker 3: Correct? So I went to middle school and high school
Speaker 3: with Chris Lobe.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he approached you like, had you knowing him?
Speaker 1: You knew about the case, and how did you make
Speaker 1: the match to do the podcast?
Speaker 3: So Chris and I got back in touch. I was
Speaker 3: already living here in Los Angeles and a friend of
Speaker 3: mine called me and told me that she was seeing
Speaker 3: Chris in the news, and I just started googling and
Speaker 3: digging into it, and I sort of understood off the
Speaker 3: jump the breath of what he was involved in. At
Speaker 3: the time, he was at the Queen's Correctional Detention Center,
Speaker 3: and he was there in custody, in federal custody because
Speaker 3: at that point they were sort of investigating James Burke's
Speaker 3: role and Chris Lobes beating. So I sort of got
Speaker 3: in with Chris at that point. I contacted his girlfriend
Speaker 3: and she put me in touch with him, and we
Speaker 3: started having calls when he was in protective custody. And
Speaker 3: it took a few years to get him to want
Speaker 3: to do this because he felt that he was in
Speaker 3: danger for sharing his stories. So it took us, you know,
Speaker 3: four years or something for him to come around actually
Speaker 3: participate in something.
Speaker 1: Really that long. Yeah, Now, I devoured every episode and
Speaker 1: I found this fascinating in the same way that anybody
Speaker 1: else would. But I did forget, which surprises me. A
Speaker 1: fundamental piece of it, which was when Lobe is rifling
Speaker 1: through Burke's car, finds the evidence bag, puts that in
Speaker 1: the Duffel bag, goes home, finds out all the pirates
Speaker 1: treasure that's in there for him. What is it that
Speaker 1: leads Burke and his squad to come find and what
Speaker 1: tips them off that Lobe is the perpetrator? How do
Speaker 1: they get to Lobe's house.
Speaker 3: It happens that Chris was on probation at the time
Speaker 3: and he actually had a parole officer arrived that morning.
Speaker 3: The story is that it was by chance, that it
Speaker 3: was a coincidence. It's unclear if that's true, but the
Speaker 3: story is that he had a probation visit and the
Speaker 3: officer found something that appeared stolen and that's what led
Speaker 3: the police to descend upon the house that morning. Unclear
Speaker 3: if that's true.
Speaker 1: So the probation officers who allowed to toss your house
Speaker 1: and look for paraphernalia or drugs or whether they're allowed
Speaker 1: to search your house.
Speaker 3: So there was a visit that was a surprise visit apparently,
Speaker 3: and again the stories kind of suspect. But this is
Speaker 3: what we understand based on the facts, based on you know,
Speaker 3: the criminal case against Burke.
Speaker 1: What does Lobe content happened. What does he think happened?
Speaker 3: He doesn't know either. Well, there was definitely surveillance cameras
Speaker 3: at Burke's house as well, So it's unclear whether the
Speaker 3: probation officer story is true or they found him by
Speaker 3: some other way and they had to make that up.
Speaker 3: But the official story is that there was a probation
Speaker 3: visit that morning, which led police there to discover that
Speaker 3: there was stolen property at the house. And you know,
Speaker 3: one thing led to the next, with Burke in his
Speaker 3: entire group descending upon the house and ripping Lobe out
Speaker 3: of his bed and taking him back to the precinct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it seemed incredibly convenient that there happened to
Speaker 2: be a visit right then. You know, probation officers will visit,
Speaker 2: but they don't you know, just what is the luck
Speaker 2: of the draw there, Because if they had known it
Speaker 2: was this kid, he was known to the police, you know,
Speaker 2: they would have had to potentially have gone getting a
Speaker 2: warrant do all of this stuff. But they were able
Speaker 2: to say, hey, let's send the probation officer and do
Speaker 2: it that way. Then they would be able to have
Speaker 2: a lot more reason to go in and not have
Speaker 2: to go through all the rigamarole of getting a warrant
Speaker 2: and doing things are the right way as you're supposed
Speaker 2: to do in a democracy.
Speaker 1: Now, Burke, he starts out in the Suffolk County Police
Speaker 1: Department or Sheriff's.
Speaker 3: Department, police department.
Speaker 1: When he's plucked by spotted to come into the DA's office.
Speaker 1: Where is he in? What rank is he? Is he
Speaker 1: a lieutenant or what it say?
Speaker 3: So he was promoted basically up to I think captain
Speaker 3: and then by the time he's moved over to the
Speaker 3: DA's office around ten twenty eleven, he becomes a DA
Speaker 3: investigator directly Underspoda at the Sepha County Day's Office.
Speaker 1: And when he was a captain, he was a captain
Speaker 1: in the PD or the Sheriff's Police Department. He was
Speaker 1: in the Sefha County Police Department, and then which he
Speaker 1: returns to when he becomes the chief of the police department. Correct.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was fascinating to me was
Speaker 1: did the killings as they were uncovered with the bodies themselves.
Speaker 1: When bodies start emerging, the first body has found, what year?
Speaker 2: It was December of twenty ten, So.
Speaker 1: When twenty ten was Burke a captain in the PD.
Speaker 1: Was he in Spota's office or was he or was
Speaker 1: he the chief of police at the time.
Speaker 3: He was at the District Attorney's office as a DA
Speaker 3: investigator at that time, So.
Speaker 1: He's a DA investigator, he's in Spota's office. See, this
Speaker 1: is what I find interesting is did you get anybody
Speaker 1: that you had strong feelings about but he didn't have
Speaker 1: any corroboration or nobody would would would speak on microphone.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that Spot and people in his office
Speaker 1: they just didn't know what Burke was up to?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Spoda met him at a time
Speaker 2: when he was a juvenile delinquent. You know, during the
Speaker 2: John Pious case, he used him as one of his witnesses,
Speaker 2: and that was the case that kind of made him.
Speaker 2: The John Pious case is a case where a teenage
Speaker 2: boy was found dead and rocks had been shoved if
Speaker 2: pebbles had been shoved down his throat, and the official
Speaker 2: story that came out is that he had seen kids
Speaker 2: stealing a worthless frame of a mini bike and then
Speaker 2: they did that to shut him up. A lot of innuendo,
Speaker 2: a lot of things, and they needed to get corroboration
Speaker 2: of Oh I heard this, you know, I was at
Speaker 2: some place and I heard somebody saying, yeah, we killed
Speaker 2: that kid, that kind of thing. Spoda finds Burke and
Speaker 2: then he kind of acts as his guardian angel throughout
Speaker 2: his career. He knows what's going on. You know, Burke
Speaker 2: had had so many different you know, misadventures and things like,
Speaker 2: you know, having sex with a sex worker in uniform
Speaker 2: in his cruiser, losing his gun at her house, like
Speaker 2: these things that were internal affairs that had looked at it,
Speaker 2: and he still kept rising through the ranks. He was
Speaker 2: doing a lot of things that, quite frankly, should have
Speaker 2: gotten him, you know, more than just a slap on
Speaker 2: the wrist.
Speaker 1: I think, what did he do?
Speaker 2: He lost like a couple of weeks vacation, and we
Speaker 2: know that Spoda was looking out for him the entire time.
Speaker 2: So why he was doing this, you know, why he
Speaker 2: never cut bait on him. That's between those guys. We
Speaker 2: just don't know what they might have had on each
Speaker 2: other or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, between the time that Spoda was working as a prosecutor,
Speaker 3: he worked for the Suffoc Kenny District Attorney's Office several times,
Speaker 3: but He had periods of time in between where he
Speaker 3: worked as a defense attorney in several other things, and
Speaker 3: he did a ton of work for the Police Benevolent
Speaker 3: Association in the police unions, and he represented Burke in
Speaker 3: these indiscretions when there were internal affairs, internal investigations conducted
Speaker 3: on Burke's behavior. So Spoda was his advocate when Burke
Speaker 3: made mistakes and when Burke went against protocol, and Spoda
Speaker 3: knew every step of the way. To answer your question,
Speaker 3: he knew everything.
Speaker 1: How old was Spoda when he was sentenced to prisoner?
Speaker 1: Was he seventy five?
Speaker 3: He just went a few months ago. I think he's
Speaker 3: seventy four. He just began his term.
Speaker 1: He just went a few months ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for some reason, there was a delay in his
Speaker 3: needing to serve. Burke went, you know, years ago. He's
Speaker 3: been out for a while. A Spoda just went.
Speaker 1: And Spoda went for how long?
Speaker 2: Something like three years?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Amazing. Now I'm going to assume that Bologne is
Speaker 1: insulated from understanding the facts of this case and the
Speaker 1: severity of this case, in the way that the Mayor
Speaker 1: of New York is walled off from the police department.
Speaker 1: The police department in New York of zero transparency, or
Speaker 1: they aim for that. They want to adjudicate all their
Speaker 1: own cases and they don't want any interference with their
Speaker 1: own internal disciplinary system.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily, you know, because one of the things that happened,
Speaker 2: one of the things that we learned is that, you know,
Speaker 2: the scuttle butt was that they find the bodies on
Speaker 2: the beach, there's an out, there's a year long investigation,
Speaker 2: they're being somewhat transparent, they're having press conferences, and then
Speaker 2: Bologne comes on their scuttle butt that Bologna is going
Speaker 2: to hire Burke as his chief of police. And Burke
Speaker 2: had done a lot of things about intelligent policing. He
Speaker 2: had this PowerPoint presentation that he used to dazzle people
Speaker 2: with and all of this stuff. So a few people
Speaker 2: got together and sent an anonymous letter to Bologne outlining
Speaker 2: why you shouldn't hire this guy and saying all of
Speaker 2: the outlining everything that he had done, all the internal
Speaker 2: affairs things and everything like that, and he just kind
Speaker 2: of shuffled it off and said, no, I'm still going
Speaker 2: to hire this guy. I think he's good, i think
Speaker 2: he's the future of Suffolk County. He went ahead and
Speaker 2: he hired Burke. First thing that Burke does is he
Speaker 2: fires all of the chiefs, including the head of the
Speaker 2: homicide squad, Dominic Varon. And this is a guy that's
Speaker 2: been working on this case for a year. Of the
Speaker 2: bodies that were found on Kilgo Beach. He doesn't even
Speaker 2: do a debriefing. He doesn't find it. He doesn't talk
Speaker 2: to him, Hey, where you're going, you know, who do
Speaker 2: you think did this? Or anything like that. He just
Speaker 2: tells him you leave.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: Second thing he does is then kicks out the FBI
Speaker 2: and says, we don't need you anymore. And the third
Speaker 2: thing he does is there's no more talking about the case.
Speaker 1: That was it. Burke says this after Bologne makes him
Speaker 1: the head of the police department.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Bologne, should it be presumed, made Burke the
Speaker 1: chief of the police department on Spoda's recommendation or did
Speaker 1: Bolone have his own belief in him?
Speaker 2: It's been said that Boloone had his own belief in him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Spoda was. I mean, there's talk also, and I've
Speaker 2: talked to people that said that Spoda wanted Burke to
Speaker 2: stay with him in the DA's office. But you know
Speaker 2: and thatone Bolone has been sort of characterized and he's
Speaker 2: tried to characterize himself, which he did in our interviews.
Speaker 2: Is this kind of being hoodwinked by this guy. He
Speaker 2: dazzled him with these ideas about how this new policing
Speaker 2: was going to work, and that's the reason why he
Speaker 2: chose him.
Speaker 3: Well, And we know that when Bologne was considering hiring Burke,
Speaker 3: we know that he received a letter warning Bloone about
Speaker 3: Burke's behavior in his history with sex workers and his
Speaker 3: history with drugs, and Spoda told Bologne to ignore the
Speaker 3: letter and that none of it was true, which Spoda
Speaker 3: knew the contents of the letter were true because he
Speaker 3: defended him in several of these cases. So we know
Speaker 3: that Spoto was sort of the censure in the hiring
Speaker 3: of Burke.
Speaker 1: Because I find that interesting. If Belong, I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: how did Bloge survive? Beloone? If I'm not mistaken, is
Speaker 1: still the Suffolk County executive Correct?
Speaker 3: Yes he is.
Speaker 1: Yes, Alexis link Letter and Billy Jensen. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: conversations about true crime investigations, check out my episode with
Speaker 1: the directors of the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer
Speaker 1: Laura Ricardi and Moira.
Speaker 4: Dimas, it just seemed like, you know, he was this
Speaker 4: incredible window through which to look at our system. You know,
Speaker 4: if we followed this man's story, we would go from
Speaker 4: one extreme of the system to the other. So as
Speaker 4: I was saying, you know, we had no money, but
Speaker 4: what we what we could put into it was time,
Speaker 4: which is actually an incredibly valuable asset. And after doing
Speaker 4: a preliminary week of shooting in December, realized this was
Speaker 4: something we wanted to pursue, and we sublet our apartment
Speaker 4: in New York. We've got an apartment in Manatwack and
Speaker 4: we lived there, you know more on and off for
Speaker 4: close to two years.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Laura Richardi and
Speaker 1: Moira Dimas, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After
Speaker 1: the Break, alexislink Letter and Billy Jensen share what they
Speaker 1: believe is behind the phenomenon of true crime reporting. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Alexis
Speaker 1: link Letter and Billy Jensen released Unraveled Long Island serial
Speaker 1: Killer in January of twenty twenty one and a companion
Speaker 1: documentary that march over a decade after the first bodies
Speaker 1: were discovered. I spoke with them in June of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two and wanted to know how the case was
Speaker 1: evolving since the release of their series.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that happened, so, you know,
Speaker 2: us talking to Beloone. You know, we originally had reached
Speaker 2: out to everybody to try and talk to them. We
Speaker 2: talked to Geraldine Hart, who was the chief of the
Speaker 2: police at the time. Bolone didn't want to talk to us,
Speaker 2: but once he heard the line of questioning that we
Speaker 2: had given to geraldine Hart, they really wanted to talk
Speaker 2: to us, which I think was telling. We talked to
Speaker 2: Geraldine Hart, We asked for transparency. There were a lot
Speaker 2: of things that they weren't releasing. They weren't releasing the
Speaker 2: Shannon Gilbert nine one one call who really kicked off
Speaker 2: this investigation. She was the sex worker who had gone
Speaker 2: missing in the town of Oak Beach in the spring
Speaker 2: of twenty ten. And you know, there was also other
Speaker 2: things as well, just a lot of other evidence that
Speaker 2: they just weren't sharing. And if you hadn't had any
Speaker 2: answers right now, why wouldn't you share this evidence? So
Speaker 2: we were asking for transparency. We talked to Bologne and
Speaker 2: you know, Bloone very much made the you know, yes,
Speaker 2: Burke was a bad guy. I didn't know it. You know,
Speaker 2: we didn't know we had a sociopath, and we asked
Speaker 2: him straight out, were you comfortable having a sociopath once
Speaker 2: you knew he was? You know, he left him in
Speaker 2: a position of power for two years and he had
Speaker 2: a sociopath that he thought was a sociopath running the
Speaker 2: Suffocunty Police Department for two years. And he said because
Speaker 2: he didn't want to interrupt a federal investigation, which I
Speaker 2: think is incredibly disingenuous and quite frankly dangerous. So after
Speaker 2: the podcast came out, Geraldine Hart left to become the
Speaker 2: chief of security at Hofstra University. Tim Seeney, who is
Speaker 2: the DA. He lost the election to Ray Tierney, and
Speaker 2: they actually have been using this as a political platform.
Speaker 2: I'm going to solve the Long Island serial killer case,
Speaker 2: which when you think about it, you know, this is
Speaker 2: a twelve year old case. It's something quite remarkable, and
Speaker 2: you know, us going in there and rattling the cages,
Speaker 2: I think really helped with that, and since Tierney came in,
Speaker 2: they hired a new police chief, and they were able
Speaker 2: to start releasing the things that we've been asking for
Speaker 2: them to release, like the nine one one call, like
Speaker 2: the last video of one of the victims, Megan Waterman,
Speaker 2: the last video when she was seen at a hotel
Speaker 2: in Hoppog, that kind of thing. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: more transparency. They created a task force that they say
Speaker 2: is the first ever task force that they've created with federal,
Speaker 2: local and state authorities. But we still have a lot
Speaker 2: more questions. You know, what is going on with that
Speaker 2: task force? What are you doing with it? How are
Speaker 2: you trying to identify the unidentified victims, and how are
Speaker 2: you trying to go to identifying bottom line who killed
Speaker 2: these women?
Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to ask this to Billy first, were
Speaker 1: you ever afraid these are police officers who have the
Speaker 1: ultimate tools and the ultimate power of their disposal to
Speaker 1: kill people and did Yeah, you're dealing with a story
Speaker 1: in which potentially Burke himself is the killer. Were you
Speaker 1: ever afraid of what kind of retaliation you might face?
Speaker 2: You know, when we were there, it was a very
Speaker 2: very odd time when we were working on this story
Speaker 2: because it was still during the pandemic. We actually traveled
Speaker 2: to Long Island, stayed in in airbnb, and had to
Speaker 2: quarantine for two weeks. We couldn't even go out, so
Speaker 2: we were doing a lot of our work on the
Speaker 2: phones and everything. And then when we finally did go out,
Speaker 2: you know, and even when we knocked on Burke's door,
Speaker 2: which we knew we were going to have to do,
Speaker 2: there was not that much fear there. I found myself
Speaker 2: in other situations. It sounds it felt like he was
Speaker 2: laying low and cowering, and quite frankly, when we knocked
Speaker 2: on the door, somebody that definitely sounded like him, you know.
Speaker 2: It was a very meek voice that said he doesn't
Speaker 2: live here, you know, and it just sounded like this
Speaker 2: is somebody that wanted this to kind of go away.
Speaker 1: You never contacted, you never were successful in contacting him.
Speaker 2: Just through the door.
Speaker 1: If that was him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we sent letters to his attorney and
Speaker 2: did everything. But yeah, and you tried multiple times to
Speaker 2: reach out to tried multiple times and in fact, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a moment in the podcast and on the Unraveled
Speaker 2: TV show on Discovery Plus about he you know, talking
Speaker 2: to his life lawyer, and his lawyer telling us, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, we would like to talk to him, and
Speaker 2: as a lawyer telling us, you know, well be careful,
Speaker 2: be careful what you do. It sounded like a threat,
Speaker 2: you know, it sounded like, you know, you have a
Speaker 2: nice store here, would hate for something bad to happen
Speaker 2: to with that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Let me get a Lexus's response to that as well.
Speaker 1: Did you ever feel afraid this is a guy that
Speaker 1: killed a lot of women specifically, Well.
Speaker 3: Listen, we don't know, you know, we can't say for
Speaker 3: sure the level of violence that Burke has contributed to.
Speaker 3: You know, it was what I can say, and it
Speaker 3: bleeds into your last question about these people take advantage
Speaker 3: of people with less power, you know, vulnerable people, and
Speaker 3: the stories we've heard about the kind of violence Burke
Speaker 3: perpetrates against women, you know, our stories like from the
Speaker 3: sex worker we spoke to her names Jane. You know,
Speaker 3: she had a violent sexual encounter with James Burke after
Speaker 3: the body's already started popping up in the neighborhood where
Speaker 3: these bodies were popping up. You know, I think I'm
Speaker 3: too strong for someone like James Burke. I think James
Speaker 3: Burke wields his power over the vulnerable, over the Chris
Speaker 3: Lobes who are chained to the floor, over the Janes
Speaker 3: who are you know, who need money and who you
Speaker 3: know are are forced into sex work. Frankly, so I
Speaker 3: feel protected. I don't feel like I could be targeted
Speaker 3: by Burke because I'm not vulnerable enough for him.
Speaker 1: How much time did Burke serve in prison?
Speaker 3: Thirty six months? Thirty two months?
Speaker 1: And he got out early? Did he get did he
Speaker 1: get out a little early?
Speaker 3: You know what's interesting, While he was in there, we
Speaker 3: found out that they found oxy in his cell and
Speaker 3: he got no extra time for it. He got out,
Speaker 3: you know, on time. He didn't serve any extra time
Speaker 3: for that. And I don't believe he got out particularly early.
Speaker 1: Is he tethered to somewhere in that community, somewhere in
Speaker 1: Seffolk County by probation? Is he on probation for some
Speaker 1: length of time or is that over with as well?
Speaker 3: I believe that's over with. But he is getting his penny. Sure,
Speaker 3: he is still getting his pension, which is you know,
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So even though
Speaker 3: he was corrupt. You know, he was able to keep
Speaker 3: all of his police benefits, which are costing taxpayers. You know,
Speaker 3: it's unbelievable how still he's able to profit. What happened
Speaker 3: with Chris Lowe was just the tip of the iceberg
Speaker 3: as far as the malice he's been involved in. So
Speaker 3: it's just shocking that he's still getting paid his pension
Speaker 3: in retirement we have.
Speaker 2: You know, he's out there living his life. You know,
Speaker 2: we've seen people, you know, people text us. I just
Speaker 2: saw him at the Deli. I just saw him at
Speaker 2: the Robbi Krieger concert out on the on the East End.
Speaker 2: You know, he's out there just spending his pension and
Speaker 2: doing his.
Speaker 1: So he's out in public living his life. Yeah, you're if.
Speaker 2: You're in Suffolk County, you very well could run into him.
Speaker 1: My god, Do you think he's the Long Island serial killer?
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 2: For me, I think that because the FEDS investigated him
Speaker 2: so much, I leaned towards no, just because they would
Speaker 2: have found that. Do I think that that there's a
Speaker 2: possibility that he may know some people that maybe you know,
Speaker 2: along those lines, he might have partied with them, protecting
Speaker 2: people something along those lines or But the thing that
Speaker 2: we definitely know is that we know that he did
Speaker 2: not care for women, and we know that he did
Speaker 2: not care specifically for sex workers. So someone that was
Speaker 2: in the position of trying to solve these women's murders,
Speaker 2: he didn't care to do that, and he was the
Speaker 2: number one person that was supposed to be doing that.
Speaker 2: So that's almost as bad.
Speaker 3: I've said this from the beginning. What Burke contributes to,
Speaker 3: undeniably and indisputably is the attitude towards sex workers that
Speaker 3: enabled the Long Island serial killer. You know, Burke was
Speaker 3: having encounters with sex workers in the same neighborhood. It's
Speaker 3: an attitude and he's definitely connected to that and the
Speaker 3: fact that he was partying in this neighborhood, the same
Speaker 3: neighborhood where the bodies are popping up with sex workers,
Speaker 3: and he's got connections to people all over this neighborhood.
Speaker 3: There's no doubt that there are some loose connections here somewhere,
Speaker 3: And really, from a symbolic standpoint, you know, he was
Speaker 3: sleeping with sex workers in this neighborhood. So when he
Speaker 3: gets control of the investigation, it tanks and knows dives
Speaker 3: because he's trying to cover up his own indiscretion. So
Speaker 3: is he the Long Island serial killer? No, I don't
Speaker 3: think so, but he definitely is the reason why the
Speaker 3: case isn't soolved, and he's got loose connections and he
Speaker 3: contributes to this attitude about the sex workers, which is
Speaker 3: why nobody cared it first, and Burke has a lot
Speaker 3: to do with that.
Speaker 1: Has Bologne made any statements or Spota's successors, has anybody
Speaker 1: made any statements about their determination to solve this case.
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, I mean it was just from the fact
Speaker 2: that it was used as a platform during the DA's race.
Speaker 2: I think Bologne having put pressure on him even twelve
Speaker 2: years later, coming Rodney Harrison, who's the new police chief,
Speaker 2: he told him, listen, I want this case solved, you know,
Speaker 2: because not only would it be a feather in his cap,
Speaker 2: it would push him further away from Burke, who he
Speaker 2: realizes he made a mistake of, you know, naming him
Speaker 2: the chief of police. So they have come out and
Speaker 2: they have said, yeah, we are determined to solve this case.
Speaker 1: It's funny gilgo Toe Bay, Jones Beach, that's my stomping
Speaker 1: ground from my childhood in the way that each of
Speaker 1: the townships on Long Island, running kind of in strips
Speaker 1: from north to south, from Oyster Bay down to Massapeak
Speaker 1: where where I'm from, and Toebay Beach was our town
Speaker 1: beach for our residents. Jones Beach obviously is a state park.
Speaker 1: That whole area was where I spent my entire childhood.
Speaker 1: Other than those little pockets of residential properties, it's a
Speaker 1: very very eerie and very very kind of foreboding place.
Speaker 1: You know. Now, what about the nine to one to
Speaker 1: one call? Refresh my memory here? Has that been released?
Speaker 1: Is that available to listen to or not?
Speaker 3: Just very recently? It was released about two three weeks ago,
Speaker 3: but mind you literally literally the call was made in
Speaker 3: May of twenty ten. They just released the nine one
Speaker 3: one call three weeks ago. And the Gilbert family attorney,
Speaker 3: John Ray, who's a friend of mine, he has been
Speaker 3: fighting this entire time to have her release, and only
Speaker 3: under the tutelage of this new police chief, Rodney Harrison.
Speaker 3: He's you know, made it a point to start releasing
Speaker 3: the evidence that everybody's been calling for, because why would
Speaker 3: you not release that nine one one call? Especially the
Speaker 3: police have always maintained that Shannon Gilbert is not connected
Speaker 3: to the other Long Island serial killer victims. So if
Speaker 3: she's not, why the secrecy having to do with the
Speaker 3: nine one one call? It was a confusing, contradictory move.
Speaker 1: And what is the length of the call? Is it
Speaker 1: terse and dramatic and intense and short or is does
Speaker 1: it lengthy?
Speaker 3: It's about twenty three minutes?
Speaker 1: My god. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There are parts of it that are very tense. There
Speaker 2: are parts of it that are not tense. You know,
Speaker 2: there's parts when she's saying things like they're trying to
Speaker 2: kill me, or they're going to kill me. There are
Speaker 2: parts when you hear her running running away from something
Speaker 2: or somebody. You know, we know that she was in
Speaker 2: the house, and we know that something happened within that house,
Speaker 2: and it was just a matter of trying to decide
Speaker 2: what was going on. You know, the person her client
Speaker 2: that night and her driver that night supposedly have you know,
Speaker 2: cooperated with the police. But it was just one of
Speaker 2: those things where everybody was asking to hear the nine
Speaker 2: one one call, and it was the Suffolk County that
Speaker 2: just did not want to be transparent at all, would
Speaker 2: never release it so them releasing that shows that you know,
Speaker 2: they're finally willing to be transparent, releasing that, releasing the
Speaker 2: video of Megan Waterman, releasing all of these new.
Speaker 1: Information describe what the Megan Waterman video is.
Speaker 2: So, Meghan Waterman had come down from Maine. She was
Speaker 2: working as a sex worker, and she was staying at
Speaker 2: the Holiday and Express in Hopog right near a lot
Speaker 2: of the where a lot of the Suffa County Police
Speaker 2: headquarters are in things on that side of the island
Speaker 2: at least, And there was video of what is considered
Speaker 2: to be the last video of her just being in
Speaker 2: the lobby, dealing with people in the lobby, you know, work,
Speaker 2: looking at the front desk and talking with somebody at
Speaker 2: the front desk. And it was just something that it
Speaker 2: might have jogged somebody's memory if they would have released
Speaker 2: it two or three weeks after she had gone missing,
Speaker 2: and it took them twelve years to release it. So
Speaker 2: it's those sort of things, and those are things that
Speaker 2: we knew they had. We don't know what else they
Speaker 2: have that they have not released yet.
Speaker 1: Why do you think people are because again of the
Speaker 1: word is true crime, emphasis on the word true What
Speaker 1: is it about true crime that you think this has
Speaker 1: become such an industry.
Speaker 3: Well, evil is real, and I think for a while,
Speaker 3: you know, before the Internet, before stories of real life experiences,
Speaker 3: we're disseminated so massively and so broadly. We had fiction,
Speaker 3: and we had horror movies, and I think we remained
Speaker 3: detached from those, knowing it's fiction. And I think now
Speaker 3: understanding the risk any of us are and I think
Speaker 3: people are addicted to understanding, at least I'm addicted to
Speaker 3: understanding cruelty as somebody with a healthy mind who had
Speaker 3: never hurt anybody. I think people want to understand this
Speaker 3: sliver of human nature that most of us don't possess
Speaker 3: because it's so foreign from the norm and from empathy
Speaker 3: and compassion and you know, the lives we all live.
Speaker 3: I think understanding the driving force behind killing someone or
Speaker 3: hurting someone with malice, I think is so far from
Speaker 3: most of us, which is refreshing. But I think we're
Speaker 3: all desperately trying to understand it because we're afraid, you know,
Speaker 3: and there's this complete detachment from the type of person
Speaker 3: who would want to do this. So that's sort of
Speaker 3: where I think it comes from. You know, when you
Speaker 3: boil it down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously, before podcasts, before television, before newspapers, before books,
Speaker 2: people would sit around the campfire and tell stories, and
Speaker 2: a lot of those stories were about monsters, and a
Speaker 2: lot of those stories were warning stories. You know, you
Speaker 2: would say, don't go into those woods because there is
Speaker 2: a monster in those woods. And you know, it might
Speaker 2: have been a bear that attacked somebody and they didn't
Speaker 2: know what it was, and then they'd called it a monster.
Speaker 2: So it's ingrained in us. You know, these are kind
Speaker 2: of these are warning stories, and then at first and
Speaker 2: I think then they turn into almost sort of you know,
Speaker 2: there's the puzzle aspect of it, and people like to
Speaker 2: be able to try and figure something out. And eventually
Speaker 2: the majority of people are good and they just want
Speaker 2: to see justice.
Speaker 1: Billy Jensen and Alexis linkletter. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: tell a friend and be sure to follow here's the
Speaker 1: thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. When we come back. I caught up with
Speaker 1: Billy Jensen following the news of the arrest of Rex
Speaker 1: Huerman and got the latest on the Long Island serial
Speaker 1: killer case. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're a listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Police had spent over a decade investigating
Speaker 1: the Gilgo Beach murders when a new police Commissioner, Rodney Harrison,
Speaker 1: was sworn in in January twenty twenty two. Just a
Speaker 1: few weeks later, he appointed a multi agency task force
Speaker 1: to solve the serial killings, and things moved swiftly after that.
Speaker 1: Phone records and DNA evidence led the authorities to Rex Huerman.
Speaker 1: Thirteen years after the discovery of the victims. It seemed
Speaker 1: the case had finally been cracked. I caught up with
Speaker 1: Billy Jensen earlier this month to learn his thoughts on
Speaker 1: this incredible development.
Speaker 2: Rex Heuerman, who is from Massapeka Park, has been charged
Speaker 2: with three counts of murder, the fourth is forthcoming, and
Speaker 2: that those would all be the victims known as the
Speaker 2: Gilgo four, which is for women who were found in
Speaker 2: a close location, most of them wrapped in burro lap
Speaker 2: along Ocean Parkway. Now it brings up a lot of questions. Now,
Speaker 2: obviously the police department did a big victory lap saying
Speaker 2: we caught this guy, and the new administration did do
Speaker 2: a good job of catching this guy. But the first
Speaker 2: question is is he responsible for the six other bodies
Speaker 2: that were found along Ocean Parkway. Now, those six other bodies,
Speaker 2: their torsos were found in Manorville, Long Island, and then
Speaker 2: their body parts were found along Ocean Parkway during the
Speaker 2: search after they found the gill Go four. And then
Speaker 2: there's Peaches and the baby. Peaches is a African American
Speaker 2: female whose body was found. Parts of her body were
Speaker 2: found in Hempstead Lake State Park. Other parts were found
Speaker 2: along Ocean Parkway along with her toddler baby and the
Speaker 2: Asian male dressed in women's clothing and Fire Island Jane Doe.
Speaker 2: So we don't know if he's responsible for any or
Speaker 2: all of these other crimes. That's the first big question.
Speaker 2: The second big question is has he killed other people
Speaker 2: before or sitting or since the GILG four. And the
Speaker 2: third big question is why did it take so long
Speaker 2: for them to find him.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it did Why?
Speaker 2: Well, it was a combination of I think negligence and corruption.
Speaker 2: The one thing that we learned and they kind of
Speaker 2: skirt past it. So you're listening in the first press
Speaker 2: conference and they say, Okay, well, how did you get
Speaker 2: him and then everybody, you know, they sent out pictures
Speaker 2: of this pizza crust and everyone's like, oh, he got
Speaker 2: caught with pizza crust. No, he got verified. DNA was
Speaker 2: verified with pizza crust.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: They found DNA on one of the victims through a
Speaker 2: hair They verified that through following him around and then
Speaker 2: he discarded a pizza box with pizza crust. That's verification.
Speaker 2: He didn't get caught that way. How he got caught
Speaker 2: was they looked back in the files after they took
Speaker 2: over the investigation twelve years later and they saw that
Speaker 2: there was in the Amber Costello investigation who was one
Speaker 2: of the victims. She used to roll some of her clients.
Speaker 2: She was a sex worker and what she would do
Speaker 2: is she would invite a client over to her house.
Speaker 2: Her friend, acting as her boyfriend, would bust into the
Speaker 2: house and then they would shake down the client for
Speaker 2: money and then the client would leave. Now, two days
Speaker 2: before she goes missing, they do this to a client
Speaker 2: and her roommate, a guy named Dave Shaller, remembers that
Speaker 2: the client was a big giant man, an ogre of
Speaker 2: a man over six foot four, heavy set, and he
Speaker 2: drove a Chevy Avalanche, dark color, first generation. This is
Speaker 2: a truck that you don't normally see that often on
Speaker 2: Long Island. So the police had the fact that she
Speaker 2: had just you know, a woman who had gotten missing,
Speaker 2: had just robbed basically a client of hers who was
Speaker 2: over six foot four, over two hundred and fifty pounds,
Speaker 2: that drove a first generation Chevy Avalanche that obviously was
Speaker 2: around from the Long Island area. It wouldn't take too
Speaker 2: long to figure out who this person was, and they
Speaker 2: never did. They had all of the pieces, not to
Speaker 2: mention the fact that if they were to look in
Speaker 2: even more and say, well, we know that the killer
Speaker 2: was delivering taunting calls to one of the victim's sisters,
Speaker 2: Melissa and saying, you know, awful things to her sister.
Speaker 2: They had traced those calls and knew those calls had
Speaker 2: come from midtown Manhattan and Massapequa.
Speaker 1: Right, and Hueman worked in the city.
Speaker 2: Yes, he worked in midtown, and obviously he had a
Speaker 2: house in Massapequa. He was an architect and he owned
Speaker 2: his own architecture firm.
Speaker 1: Where did he do his building? Where was his career
Speaker 1: in the city or on the island?
Speaker 2: Mainly in the city. It seems like listening to the
Speaker 2: interview that he had done on YouTube, he paints himself
Speaker 2: as sort of a fixer, like when things go wrong
Speaker 2: with somebody else's building or something like that, he comes
Speaker 2: in and fixes all the codes and things. So it's
Speaker 2: not like he has a building up that's like the
Speaker 2: Humorman building.
Speaker 1: Now, what interview on YouTube are you referring to.
Speaker 2: There's a video of him on YouTube which a lot
Speaker 2: of people have been pointing to, of him being interviewed
Speaker 2: about his architecture business, and he's very cocksure of himself.
Speaker 2: Everyone's saying it's very creepy. You wouldn't really, you know,
Speaker 2: I described it as it's South Shore Long Island bravado.
Speaker 2: You know, he's sitting there kind of saying that he's
Speaker 2: the best in the business and the things that he
Speaker 2: does in the architecture world. And this obviously was before
Speaker 2: he was arrested, but you can see his mannerisms and
Speaker 2: the things that he was doing, so he was out there.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a moment ago that they had this information
Speaker 1: some time ago mm hm, and they didn't act on that.
Speaker 1: What triggered them to want to go forward now with
Speaker 1: information they had quite some time ago.
Speaker 2: What triggered them was there was a new administration and
Speaker 2: it was pretty telling and pretty odd that when the
Speaker 2: new administration comes in in a county with millions of
Speaker 2: people and they say one of the first things they
Speaker 2: say is that this is one of our top priorities.
Speaker 2: You know, a group of murders from a dozen years ago.
Speaker 2: It shows that the heat was on them from the media,
Speaker 2: from podcasts like ours, and they said that they really
Speaker 2: wanted to solve this thing. They got the name as
Speaker 2: they were going through the old files within six weeks.
Speaker 2: So they started a year and a half ago, they
Speaker 2: got the name within six weeks. They were able to
Speaker 2: then use the DNA and everything like that. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: the initial investigation before Burke took over, they skipped over this.
Speaker 2: They didn't investigated more of this thing about the Chevy
Speaker 2: avalanche and the ogre of a man. And then obviously
Speaker 2: when Burke took over, he shut down the investigation for
Speaker 2: the most part.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's the better question, not what led
Speaker 1: them to do it? Now, what was it that caused
Speaker 1: them not to do it before? Why do you think
Speaker 1: they didn't do it before?
Speaker 2: You know, I've talked with the before this. I talked
Speaker 2: with the detectives, and they certainly seemed like good guys,
Speaker 2: the detectives that were on it before Burke took over,
Speaker 2: and they seemed like they really wanted to solve the case.
Speaker 2: They had a year to solve it before Burke took over,
Speaker 2: but they just you know, didn't follow up on this
Speaker 2: lead as closely as they should have. And it seems like,
Speaker 2: you know, hindsight's always going to be twenty twenty, but
Speaker 2: it seems like it was a really damn good lead
Speaker 2: when they didn't have many good leads. Now when you've
Speaker 2: got Burke taking over, we know that Burke shut down
Speaker 2: the investigation, kicked the FBI out because he didn't want
Speaker 2: the FED sniffing around his dirty laundry. And we know
Speaker 2: his attitude towards women and his attitude towards sex workers
Speaker 2: in particular wasn't very high, so he did not make
Speaker 2: this a priority. And we didn't hear really anything from
Speaker 2: Burke's administration for a really long time about this case,
Speaker 2: so you know, he really did just shovel it under
Speaker 2: the rug, and then the administrations that followed they just
Speaker 2: didn't put the pieces together but you know, you got
Speaker 2: to give kudos to Ray Tierney and Rodney Harrison. They
Speaker 2: came in and then within six weeks they were able
Speaker 2: to get this name. You know, the one person that
Speaker 2: we haven't heard from really who should be doing a
Speaker 2: victory lap is Steve Blone, and Blone hasn't been because
Speaker 2: Bologne was the one that hired Burke in the first place,
Speaker 2: and Bologne had sat there as this case hadn't been
Speaker 2: solved for a dozen years. And Blogne, for people that
Speaker 2: aren't in New York, Blogne is the chief executive of
Speaker 2: Suffolk County who hired Burke and got this whole thing rolling.
Speaker 1: When we listened to your interview, and at the time
Speaker 1: we're doing the interview, I'll let you characterize the investigation
Speaker 1: back then. And am I mistaken that it did imply
Speaker 1: that Burke himself was a very strong suspect. Is that
Speaker 1: fair to say.
Speaker 2: Burke was a interesting suspect. I wouldn't say he was
Speaker 2: a strong suspect. I don't think they had any strong
Speaker 2: suspects at the time. But the fact that he was
Speaker 2: so close to the investigation and he shut it down,
Speaker 2: coupled with the fact that we were getting all of
Speaker 2: these stories about him being violent and having relationships with
Speaker 2: sex workers and just a lot of bad things about
Speaker 2: this guy that you normally don't see swirling around a
Speaker 2: high profile serial killer investigation.
Speaker 1: And with the chief of Police of Suffolk County exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what we wanted to do, you know, in
Speaker 2: Suffolk County for people that might not know, it's a
Speaker 2: dead end geographically, so you know, there's no like, no
Speaker 2: one never passes through Suffolk County or anything. You're going
Speaker 2: to Suffer County, You're going to Suffolk County, and it
Speaker 2: very much can be set up like a little fiefdom.
Speaker 2: And that's what Burke did. And Burke had this little
Speaker 2: cadre of people that he was able to control. He was,
Speaker 2: you know, under the wing of the DA and he
Speaker 2: really was untouchable and he was able to do whatever
Speaker 2: he wants. So we didn't know anything else that he
Speaker 2: was doing. But we do know that the FEDS, because
Speaker 2: he did go to jail for violating the civil rights
Speaker 2: of Chris Loebe. We should hope that the FEDS looked
Speaker 2: at him very closely. I don't know if they looked
Speaker 2: at him particularly for the murders, but he looked like
Speaker 2: he was definitely somebody to throw in the ring of
Speaker 2: suspects or persons of interest, especially because that he closed
Speaker 2: down the investigation. Why would you do that?
Speaker 1: For me? Having done the interview with you a year
Speaker 1: ago and then seeing the emergence of this Humerorman thing.
Speaker 1: Was Humerman's name? Was it discussed a while ago? Was
Speaker 1: he a suspect a well? Was his name pulled out
Speaker 1: of nowhere lately to indict him? What was their knowledge
Speaker 1: or their suspicion of Humorman years ago? Was there any
Speaker 1: was he even being discussed as a suspect publicly? Now?
Speaker 2: Nobody knew the name Heureman at all? Somebody had him
Speaker 2: at some point, because it sounds like twelve years ago
Speaker 2: they did get the name, or at least you know
Speaker 2: what we still don't know in one of the questions
Speaker 2: that I would like to know is that, yes, they
Speaker 2: had the Chevy Avalanche, they had the description, they knew
Speaker 2: he was from Massapequa. Did they narrow it down at
Speaker 2: that point and get the name and just not do
Speaker 2: anything with it? Were not sure, you know? And who
Speaker 2: knows if they'll ever say that? Now feel in for
Speaker 2: me if you will.
Speaker 1: I mean regardless of the fact that many of these
Speaker 1: women involved that were victims in this case were sex workers.
Speaker 1: Describe to the extent that it exists, their families or
Speaker 1: friends who were exhorting law enforcement and lobbying law enforcement
Speaker 1: on their behalf to find the answers to these killings.
Speaker 1: Did they have family or friends or anyone loved ones
Speaker 1: who were trying to push the police to solve this case.
Speaker 2: They did, Yeah, And the most vocal was Shannon Gilbert's mother.
Speaker 2: And Shannon Gilbert was the one that kicked off the investigation,
Speaker 2: who had the date in Oak Beach with someone and
Speaker 2: then she had gone missing. She's the one that did
Speaker 2: the nine to one one call. Her body was eventually found,
Speaker 2: you know, in the marshes. She's the reason why law
Speaker 2: enforcement started looking at Ocean Parkway to begin with. Her
Speaker 2: family was very vocal, and then the families of the
Speaker 2: other victims were very vocal and really did stay on
Speaker 2: this case continually. You know, You've got movies of the
Speaker 2: week about them and everything, and it really is a
Speaker 2: test meant that these women, they were loved.
Speaker 1: Now, I understand that Hueman contacted some of these families
Speaker 1: and harassed them and taunted them, Is that true.
Speaker 2: Yes, they established he had called one of the victims one,
Speaker 2: and I think this was sort of a missed opportunity.
Speaker 2: He was using burner phones, and with the technology back then,
Speaker 2: who knows if they were able to trace him. But
Speaker 2: he did buy apparently a different burner phone for each victim,
Speaker 2: so he was using different numbers. But he contacted one
Speaker 2: of the victim's sisters and taunted her and said, I
Speaker 2: killed your sister. You want to know what I did
Speaker 2: to her? He called her a half breed and asked
Speaker 2: are you a half breed like your sister? Which we
Speaker 2: thought was a clue, like who you You know, that's
Speaker 2: definitely a term, a disgusting term that somebody older might use.
Speaker 2: It's not really used by younger people now. And he
Speaker 2: has a very distinctive voice when you listen to him,
Speaker 2: it's a Long Island south Shore, Long Island accent, but
Speaker 2: it's also got a lot of bubbliness to it. And yeah,
Speaker 2: he was doing that. He also called the victim's boyfriend
Speaker 2: as well, So he was doing these things to get
Speaker 2: his jolly's off, and he was doing it from midtown Manhattan,
Speaker 2: and he was also doing it for Massapeak very well
Speaker 2: could have been doing it from his home right.
Speaker 1: What comments have the supporters of these victims, as we
Speaker 1: discussed family and friends and so forth, what comments have
Speaker 1: they made in the wake of human's arrest.
Speaker 2: The ones that have talked, not a lot of them
Speaker 2: have talked. Obviously, they're finally happy that the arrest has
Speaker 2: been made, and that's pretty much it. They haven't really
Speaker 2: gotten into anything more. There was a press conference yesterday
Speaker 2: where not really that much was said, just talking about
Speaker 2: how many pages of things that they have against him.
Speaker 2: You know, they really did. This was a very strange
Speaker 2: case to catch a serial killer because they once they
Speaker 2: got his name, and once they realized through the pizza
Speaker 2: crust that it was him, you know, they set up
Speaker 2: a grand jury. So the grand jury was subpoenaing people.
Speaker 2: So the people on that grand jury had to keep
Speaker 2: tight and not tell anybody that they had found the
Speaker 2: goat Long Island serial killer, and they were subpoening a
Speaker 2: bunch of things. So they eventually had a lot of
Speaker 2: information and a lot of things leading to him. But
Speaker 2: the victims of the families, they're obviously just relieved that
Speaker 2: he's been caught. And then they're waiting for the trial
Speaker 2: because unlike the most recent big serial killer case would
Speaker 2: have been Golden State killer of a case where it
Speaker 2: had been a cold case for a long time, this
Speaker 2: guy's pleading innocent, so it looks like it will go
Speaker 2: to trial.
Speaker 1: Now, Hueman doesn't necessarily account for all the victims, and
Speaker 1: you can't assume that everybody that's there was killed by Hueman.
Speaker 1: But when you look back on it now, do you
Speaker 1: have a different take on why Burke slowed down and
Speaker 1: why he stole the investigation?
Speaker 2: No, I think my take is still the same. I
Speaker 2: think the take is that he could and he didn't
Speaker 2: want fed's looking into anything else that he's done. We
Speaker 2: knew he was a bad guy. We knew he liked
Speaker 2: to live his life within pu unity and do whatever
Speaker 2: that he wanted, and he was breaking laws. So why
Speaker 2: have the FEDS sniffing around things that he's doing. You know,
Speaker 2: they were a danger to him, he might say, because
Speaker 2: he's never spoken about this before and he's walking around now.
Speaker 2: He might say that it was ubrous on his part.
Speaker 2: You know, he felt that his key had the right
Speaker 2: guys in order to solve it. But obviously he.
Speaker 1: Didn't Huberman has been charged with four murders.
Speaker 2: Three out of the four, three out of I think
Speaker 2: they haven't been able to get to nail down for
Speaker 2: the fourth one, Maureen. They haven't been able to nail
Speaker 2: down probably physical evidence from him, and there is talk
Speaker 2: that they were waiting even longer so they can get
Speaker 2: the fourth but they felt that he was a possible
Speaker 2: danger to society and they had to rush it. This
Speaker 2: is a guy also, and this is another thing that
Speaker 2: needs to be noted. He was still seeing sex workers
Speaker 2: up until the time that he was arrested. And that's
Speaker 2: another question that I think a lot of people will have.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the big questions is has he
Speaker 2: killed since the gil Go four and if he has
Speaker 2: killed And obviously if they had all of that information
Speaker 2: with the truck and the size and the mess a
Speaker 2: peak when everything to be able to zero in on him,
Speaker 2: that's a big, big problem for the Suffolk County Police Department.
Speaker 2: But also, you know, in between when they identified him
Speaker 2: and when they arrested him, how are they making sure
Speaker 2: that the people that he was going out with and
Speaker 2: the women that he was seeing were going to be safe.
Speaker 2: I mean, did they have him on surveillance twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven. These are questions that we don't know.
Speaker 1: He's been charged. Did he plead not guilty to the guilty? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And where is he now? Is he's not on bail?
Speaker 1: Is he no?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, he's in a riverhead at the jail.
Speaker 1: In the interval since we first spoke to a year ago,
Speaker 1: what else have you noted about this case or other cases?
Speaker 1: Has this become a kind of a I don't want
Speaker 1: to say vocation for you, let alone passion for you,
Speaker 1: But do you find yourself looking into other serial killer
Speaker 1: cases as well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, not for unraveled. I have a book
Speaker 2: coming out called Killers amidst Killers, which is there's a
Speaker 2: type of serial killer now that is really operating under
Speaker 2: the cloak of the opioid epidemic. How So, because you
Speaker 2: have a lot of these bodies of women that are
Speaker 2: on the fringes of society that are showing up that
Speaker 2: might not have a actual cause of death that they
Speaker 2: can find because the bodies are so decomposed or they're
Speaker 2: skeletal that they've actually been murdered and they just chalk
Speaker 2: it off as being an overdose. But you've got these
Speaker 2: men that are killing them. This started with these two
Speaker 2: best friends that were found murdered in Columbus, Ohio in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, and I just started working this case and
Speaker 2: I found eighteen women who had either gone missing or
Speaker 2: murdered in these small towns in Ohio, and then I
Speaker 2: started looking all across the country. Recently, there was you know,
Speaker 2: as early as three weeks ago and were these women
Speaker 2: that were going missing and murdered in the Portland area.
Speaker 2: And you know a lot of people were saying, oh,
Speaker 2: they're just overdoses or whatever. But it turns out they
Speaker 2: have a guy now that is responsible, or at least
Speaker 2: they think is responsible as a person of interest for
Speaker 2: for their murders. This is happening across the country. So
Speaker 2: we've got these bad guys, and we also have this
Speaker 2: fentanyl crisis, and this is where we're going to be
Speaker 2: seeing a lot more of serial killers that fly under
Speaker 2: the radar. I mean, this guy is being looked at
Speaker 2: for four murders that are so recent, but you know,
Speaker 2: nobody's talking about him because it didn't get the same
Speaker 2: press as say the Longnown serial killer case. So those
Speaker 2: are the things that I'm looking at now.
Speaker 1: There's a new administration in Suffolk County. Can you describe
Speaker 1: who that is and do you think this means the
Speaker 1: end of that kind of Suffolk County Police Department corruption
Speaker 1: that's become familiar to us.
Speaker 2: You'd like to think. So, you know, they got a
Speaker 2: guy named Rodney Harrison to run the police department. He's
Speaker 2: from the city, so he didn't come up through the
Speaker 2: ranks of Suffolk County. And you know, obviously he got
Speaker 2: this big win right away. But there's also a lot
Speaker 2: of other problems in Suffolk County obviously, so but with
Speaker 2: him and the DA ray tyranny, they definitely have a
Speaker 2: big win under their belt. Now, Steve Balone, who is
Speaker 2: the county executive, who was the one that you know,
Speaker 2: hired Burke and was really you know, as much as
Speaker 2: he likes to separate himself from the old Guard, he
Speaker 2: really is representative of the old Guard. He is going
Speaker 2: to turn out and we'll see who's going to be
Speaker 2: actually running Suffolk County and see if there's a way
Speaker 2: that you know, we can get a gleanback on Suffo
Speaker 2: County that has been lost for a really long time.
Speaker 1: Massive peak with such a small I mean it's a big,
Speaker 1: small town. I grew up there my whole life. My
Speaker 1: father taught school there. I lived there the all eighteen
Speaker 1: years of my life before I left to go to
Speaker 1: college and so forth. And you wonder have his neighbors
Speaker 1: made any comments, I mean the cliche of you know,
Speaker 1: he was a quiet man, you know. Yeah, have his
Speaker 1: neighbors made any comments about his comings and goings or his.
Speaker 2: Demeanor, you know a little bit, you know. He They've
Speaker 2: said that he was a regular guy. One said that
Speaker 2: he was a little creepy.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: When you originally contacted me, knowing that you were from
Speaker 2: the South Shore, I thought you might have a tip
Speaker 2: where there's this Alec Baldwin, you know, contact me. I
Speaker 2: was like, maybe as a tip. But I think a
Speaker 2: lot of them were surprised when they learned that he
Speaker 2: was an architect because the house was a little ramshackly.
Speaker 2: And there's talk now that the town is going to
Speaker 2: purchase the house because it has become such a tourist
Speaker 2: trap of people going to look.
Speaker 1: At it like the Amityville horror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the Amityville horror exactly.
Speaker 1: People drove by that house and the owners of the house.
Speaker 1: I once had this experience where friends of mine from
Speaker 1: out of town. We were in that area to go
Speaker 1: to the movies or go to the bowling alley or
Speaker 1: something in Amityville, which was the town next to Massapequa,
Speaker 1: and we drove by that house and the people on
Speaker 1: the front stopyel take a picture. They screamed at us. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Long Island has produced a lot of serial killers. You know.
Speaker 2: Obviously Joel Rifkin is considered the one that has the
Speaker 2: largest amount of victim but you've got Robert Schulman. Both
Speaker 2: of them went to the same school district, My school
Speaker 2: districts Meadow. You know, you've got everything from Colin Ferguson
Speaker 2: and the Long Island Railroad massacre, this guy Bittrolf, who
Speaker 2: had killed women in the Manorville area that a lot
Speaker 2: of people were looking at and probably still looking at
Speaker 2: for some of the other victims for Long Island serial killer.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of bad people on Long Island, and
Speaker 2: it's just, you know, the crime's on Long.
Speaker 1: Island's a heavy charge there.
Speaker 2: There is you know what, when you get a lot
Speaker 2: of people, you.
Speaker 1: Know, there's a lot of nice people here too, but.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's certainly a lot of nice people as well.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's like Long Island is an island,
Speaker 1: and I feel like there's an energy on an island.
Speaker 1: This is an island, and you come on to an
Speaker 1: island and the energy field is a little bit different
Speaker 1: and people get a little stranger. Maybe I really don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not qualified to characterize the population of Long Island itself,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad that they have an arrest that would
Speaker 1: even incrementally account for four of these murders, or three
Speaker 1: right now and possibly four. My best to you, Billy,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much. Good luck with your book
Speaker 1: of course, thank you so much. My thanks to Billy
Speaker 1: Jensen and Alexis Linkletter. This episode was recorded at CDM
Speaker 1: Studios in New York City and at Monk Music Studios
Speaker 1: in Easthampton, Long Island. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach
Speaker 1: MacNeice and Maureen Hoben. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our
Speaker 1: social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.