CAPTURED: Gilgo Beach Killer

That's when we released this episode. to the fan club, who always get episodes early and ad-free. And, by the way, hint, hint, our merch store is going to be opening this Wednesday, August 2nd. to the fan club. They always get early access as well, so you might want to get in there if you've been waiting and always miss it.

Now, throughout and in the show notes, I'll give you plenty of resources if you want to get lost in the rabbit hole of this case. But if you just need a high level of how we got here and what led to the July 13th, 2023 arrest of Rex Heuermann in New York City, buckle up, because here we go. This is your official update on the Lisk investigation.

13 years ago, one of the most infamous serial killing cases in recent American history started with one young woman, Shannon Gilbert. When Shannon set off on her own after graduating high school early, something in her said she was going to be someone. People were going to remember her. And she was right, but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of starring Shannon Gilbert being lit up with bulbs on some Broadway theater marquee, her name has been memorialized in headlines alongside words like missing, serial killer, and chilling 911 call.

I'll tell you right now, I still don't know if Shannon's case is at all related to what happened to the other victims out on Long Island. But I believe that even in death, Shannon Gilbert was too big and too bright not to make a lasting impression. And it's because of her that we're here. Shannon had taken to sex work as a means of getting by back in 2010.. And in the early morning hours of May 1st, 2010,, she had her driver, Michael Pack, take her out to meet a client out in this gated community of Oak Beach on Long Island.

For a couple of hours, everything was fine. The client, Brewer, and Shannon even left for a quick 15 minutes and came back. But at around 4.50 in the morning, the client came out of the house and told Michael that he needed to get Shannon out of there. She was freaking out. And this was turning into more trouble than it was worth.

Can you trace where I am? Driver's out there. Driver's right there. Let me talk to him. Can you trace where I am?

They couldn't trace where she was because Shannon was calling from a cell phone. For over 20 minutes, Shannon can be heard talking to at least two men in the background, and then sometimes the operator. Now those two men are thought to be Brewer and Michael Pack. And how she starts, kind of what you heard, is sounding somewhat calm. She keeps asking, why, over and over again, although it's not clear why she's asking why.

But as the call goes on, she gets increasingly more panicked. She insists that they're trying to kill her, but doesn't specify who they are. It's difficult to hear everything, but at times you can make out the client and Michael in the background, trying to get her out of the house. Michael even chuckles at times, saying she's acting crazy and compares her to a character in a movie he saw once. There are even moments when Shannon sometimes accuses Michael of being in on it, whatever it is, but then other times she asks him to take her home.

But anytime he tries to get her to leave with him, she refuses. Toward the end of the call, Shannon does leave the house on foot and she can be heard running on the call. She first makes it to a neighbor's house, Gus Colletti, and he tries asking her what's wrong and if she needs help, but she doesn't really respond and she eventually just runs off. Which, it's worth noting, actually contradicts what he had said in the press for a really long time. He used to say that he brought her in and that she ran off when he was going to call police, but now that the 911 call has been released, that's not actually what happened.

Once she runs off, Gus in turn calls 911 himself and tells them about this interaction and that he saw a guy in a black SUV, presumably Michael, looking for this girl who was just at his door. We know Shannon made it to at least one more house because another neighbor named Barbara Brennan called 911 too. She said a girl was banging on her door asking for help, but she was too scared to answer. Shannon eventually disconnected from 911 and vanished. Maybe because of the illegal nature of the trip, Michael Pack didn't report her missing and her family didn't know she was unaccounted for until a couple of days later, when a doctor in the neighborhood named Peter Hackett called Shannon's mom to tell her that he had taken her in as part of some wayward home for girls that he ran.

She was obviously suspicious as hell about this and reported her daughter missing, but the report wasn't taken with the seriousness it deserved. There were no massive search efforts, no national news coverage. All Shannon really got in the months after she went missing was a single officer, John Malia, doing training exercises with his sniffer dog, Blue, along Gilgo Beach. He admitted to multiple news outlets that he never expected to really find anything, but it was worth looking in that area right around where she went missing, because no one else had. They'd go out when they had time, a couple hours here and there.

Usually they found a whole lot of nothing. But Officer Malia was determined to comb the entirety of the beach. Might as well when you have a dog to train, right? Well, if you ask me, Blue should have graduated from his training on December 11, 2010.. That was the date that Blue hit on the first set of remains found on Gilgo Beach.

Teams were brought out to collect the remains and to do additional searches just in case. According to a bail application filed by Suffolk County, two days later, they found another set of remains and then another and another. The four victims were Megan Waterman, Melissa Bartholomew, Amber Costello, and Maureen Brainerd Barnes. According to that same bail application, the four women all shared a similar profile, white, petite sex workers in their 20s who used the Internet to engage their clients. And even in death, the way they were found was similar.

Each were placed close to one another and within 22 to 33 feet off the parkway. Quote, each of the four victims were found similarly positioned, bound in similar fashion by either belts or tape, with three of the victims found wrapped in a burlap type material. End quote. Another line in the application reads, all had missing clothing and personal possessions. All had been killed by homicide.

All had contact shortly before their disappearances with a person using a burner cell phone. Now, it's worth noting here that previous reporting talked about the burlap and connected it to the kind that you might see in a nursery, like for plants. That's actually something we talked about in our 2018 LISC episode. But at the press conference, that was corrected. The commissioner said he doesn't know where that came from and it took on a life of its own.

The burlap was really the camouflaged kind, used for hunting and was likely used to help conceal the remains. As winter hit, additional searches were put on pause. But make no mistake, everyone knew there would be more searches, because they still didn't have an answer to the question that started this whole thing. Where was Shannon Gilbert? Surely she was out there, somewhere with those other women.

In the spring, the searches resumed. And this is when the case went from strange to historic. It's one of those do-you-remember-where-you-were moments, because I can recall the news reports at the time. Body after body being found. And with each, the mystery deepened and the crime scene widened.

Because some of the remains they found along this beach would link back to cases they already had dating back to the 90s. So here's what they found. On March 29, 2011,, partial remains of a woman named Jessica Taylor were found. There at the beach, it was just her skull, a pair of hands, and a forearm that were located. But back in 2003, they had found her torso in the nearby town of Manorville.

On April 4, 2011,, there were three additional victims found. The first, Valerie Mack, was only recovered in part. A skull, a pair of hands, and a right foot were found in a plastic bag near the parkway. But her torso, too, had been found way. back in 2000,, also in Manorville.

In another spot, they found the remains of an intact toddler wrapped in a blanket with no signs of trauma. And yet in another location, they found the complete skeletal remains of an Asian male dressed in women's clothing. Both the toddler and the Asian male are still unidentified as of this recording. On April 11, 2011,, remains of two more victims were found. But again, these were not complete.

remains, just more parts. The first was just a skull of someone who is still unidentified. Some call her Fire Island Doe because her legs had been found on Fire Island back in 1996.. The second were upper and lower extremities belonging to someone police call Peaches. And they call her Peaches because the remains found along the beach were linked through DNA to yet another torso that had been found all the way.

back in 1997 in Hempstead Lake Park. The woman had a tattoo of a peach with a bite taken out of it located on her left breast. Now, the way this unfolded was not so linear. It took weeks and months, and in some cases years to make the DNA connections to other cases or to give names to some of these victims who were previously known as Does. But Fire Island Doe, the Asian male, the toddler, and Peaches are the only four still unnamed.

But if they can find out who Peaches is, they'll know who the toddler is. And that's because subsequent DNA testing found that the toddler was Peaches' child. Now, back in the day, and mind you, the day was like five minutes ago before there was an arrest, but back then no one could agree. Were all these deaths the work of one killer or multiple killers? On the one hand, you had this remote stretch of land.

What are the odds? two or more separate killers were using this as a dumping ground without coming across one another? And I guess I don't know that they never found something that the other left, but it was just odd. Again, what are the chances? But on the other hand, the Gilgo Four seemed so distinct, so close together.

Burlap used in three of the disposals, bound in similar ways, same demographics, same look about them. The other cases are kind of all over the map, literally and figuratively. There is dismemberment in some of the cases. Different genders, races, ages, spread from one end of the beach to the other, without any rhyme or reason to the outside observer. But then, just when you convince yourself it is unrelated, you swing the pendulum back.

But the Gilgo Four were literally in the middle of the other victims. And before you try and argue a theory about more than two perps, let me just tell you that Peaches and her child were found on opposite ends with the Gilgo Four between them. And if you want, there is a place where you can get lost in a spiral here. Many people think that this is a sign that Peach's killing was more personal and that she might hold some kind of significance or some kind of key to answers. Many of us thought we would die looking for answers or debating theories on the number of killers.

Because for a solid decade plus, nothing happened. And it turns out that was because of some pretty serious corruption within the police department. Again, you want another place where you can get lost for days? Look up the former Suffolk County Police Chief, James Burke. The podcast Unraveled, Long Island's serial killer, is a great place to start.

Dude was actively keeping the FBI out of this investigation when they wanted to help. And it seems like he was just sitting on evidence that could have progressed this case forward sooner. Why? I'm not 100% sure. I think we still have to wait it out and see.

The most innocent explanation, which actually isn't innocent at all, is that Burke was afraid progressing the case or bringing the FBI in would uncover all of his shady and illegal dealings with drugs and sex workers, some out on the very beach where these other ones were found. The most sinister explanation was that he was somehow involved, or knew who was, and was using his position of power to cover it up. But the truth will always come to light. And Burke has been found out for at least some of the illicit activities he took part in. According to a Daily Mail article, he was, quote, jailed in 2016 after pleading guilty to a civil rights violation arising out of an assault on a local man by the name of Christopher Loeb in 2012, while he was serving in the top job, end.

quote. Now that guy Loeb made some wild claims on the Unraveled podcast about seeing a snuff film from stuff that he took out of Burke's vehicle, thought maybe Burke was potentially involved in making it with a young sex worker, but that's never been substantiated. Now, in addition to Burke, the New York Times reported that the longstanding DA went down too, because apparently those guys were in cahoots, and he covered for Burke along with the freaking top anti-corruption prosecutor. So you know, if those guys are all in on something together, the system was f***ed. But one thing I want you guys to hear is that it's not all doom and gloom.

There will always be bad people who get into positions of power. I wish we could stop it. I wish we could change it. They will sneak through. But for every rotten apple, there are some really good ones.

And I don't think departments should hide their flaws, because it takes a lot of good people to right the wrongs, to turn the ship around, all the metaphors for doing the right thing, even when it's hard. So how were they able to change it? How could it have happened sooner? What can we learn? Those are all the questions everyone should be asking, because if we just pretend it didn't happen, no one can learn from it.

So I hope, when this is all over, Suffolk County will do just that for every department out there who wants to do the right thing. So fast forward, a little. In the time when Suffolk County was getting their house in order, that's when they started using genealogy to ID some of the unknown victims. And they also made a really big deal of releasing some new evidence in 2020.. It was a photo of this black leather belt that they were super cagey about.

It had the initials WH or HM, depending on which way you looked at it, engraved into the leather. And they put a picture of part of it out there, hoping someone might recognize it. But in the years that followed, we pretty much got crickets as far as any investigative developments. All right, newbies, you're caught up. CJ Oldtimers, here's what's new.

So fast forward to January 2022.. After cleaning up Suffolk County, the DA's office put together a task force comprising of, quote, investigators, analysts, and prosecutors to work jointly with law enforcement partners from the Suffolk County Police Department, New York State Police, Suffolk County Sheriff's Office, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. They began reviewing everything, and within six freaking weeks, they had a suspect. Six weeks, y'all! And the thing that has some people up in arms is the fact that what they used to hone in on their suspect, they had right in front of them all along.

There isn't any new information, no new evidence, but we know why, right? It wasn't because they were dumb. It was because the investigation was being thwarted from the top down, or at least that's the only explanation I have been able to come up with. But again, we're here now. They cleaned house, got the task force together, and when they started reviewing the cases, there was a significant lead in Amber Costello's disappearance.

Remember, she's one of the Gilgo Four that was first found. Before she was abducted and killed, it's believed that Amber and someone that she knew had an interaction with her killer. You see, she had this ruse that she was known to use where she would try and trick clients out of money. Basically, after she would collect her fee, a man working with her would barge in, kind of act like a boyfriend or a mad boyfriend, usually scaring the client off. Well, shortly before her disappearance, she was contacted by someone using a burner phone.

He came to her home, and this guy showed up and freaked out on cue. But the client said that, oh, this is all a misunderstanding. I'm just friends with Amber. Just let her know. I'll call her later.

Well, this guy ended up texting her later, saying that what happened wasn't nice, and he thought he should get credit for the services he paid for but didn't receive. So she ended up making plans to see this guy later. that same day. When she walked out of her home that final time, she left her phone behind, and that was it. She wasn't seen again until she was found on the beach.

But there was a witness. I'm assuming that guy who was in her house, the one who helped her pull off the ruse. And that witness remembered who she went to see. Per the bail application, quote, that client was described as a large white male, approximately 6'4 to 6'6 in height, in his mid-40s, with dark bushy hair and big, oval-style 1970s-type glasses. A witness described him to police as appearing like an ogre.

Furthermore, a witness noticed a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche parked in the driveway of the residence, end quote. So they started by just checking vehicle databases. Rex Huriman, at first, was just a name on a list of people who owned this very specific car in 2010.. He lived just across the bay from where the bodies were found, a short, 20-some minute drive. He was tall, white, and heavy set.

But he was also a family man, married with two kids, and had a seemingly thriving business in Midtown Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan was a key word for investigators, and you didn't need to have access to the case file to know why that was important. One widely reported aspect of the case was that after Melissa Bartholomew went missing in July of 2009, and remember, she would have been the second of the Gilgo Beach four to have disappeared, her own cell phone was used to check her voicemail and to make taunting calls to her family. In at least one of the calls, quote, the male caller admitted killing and sexually assaulting Ms. Bartholomew, end quote.

They have the records from all of the burner phones used to contact the victims. Now, they were kind of useless, without more to go on, because the whole point of a burner is that it's not linked to any one individual. People who use them think they're hiding, and they are, in a way, but this is going to be the case. that makes people second guess their anonymity, because even burner phones show a location. Now, the calls from Melissa's cell were made from Midtown Manhattan, which at the time didn't do a whole lot to narrow down a suspect pool, because Midtown is bustling.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people pass through that area every single day. But know an area that's a little more off the beaten path? Massapequa Park. The burner phone used to contact Melissa before she went missing was shown to have traveled from Massapequa Park to Midtown Manhattan. Then, later that evening, Melissa's phone traveled from Midtown back to Massapequa Park.

In Megan Waterman's case, after she was last seen alive leaving a Holiday Inn, her phone traveled to none other than Massapequa Park. Guess where Mr. Rex Heuermann lives? You got it. Massapequa Park.

But don't think I'm done yet. After this long, Suffolk County was going to need an airtight case to nail this guy, and they put in the work. So they went about tracking Rex's own cell, the one that's registered to him under his business's name, during the times of the Gilgal Beach killings. Now, they couldn't get exact locations because by now those didn't exist, though they did in 2010,, but again, here we are. So the next best thing was getting the billing records, which showed general location information for his cell.

They obtained all of these and compared them to the location. records from the burner phones, and it, quote, showed numerous instances where Heuermann was located in the same general locations as the burner cell phones used to contact victims Bartholomew, Waterman, and Costello, as well as the use of Brainerd, Barnes and Bartholomew's cell phones when they were used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared. Significantly, investigators could find no instance where Heuermann was in a separate location from these other cell phones when such a communication event occurred. For example, on July 10, 2009,, the last day Melissa Bartholomew was seen alive, both the burner phone and defendant Heuermann's phone were in the area of Massapequa and traveled together toward New York City. Thereafter, both Ms.

Bartholomew's phone and Heuermann's phone traveled eastbound toward Massapequa. On July 14, 2009, at approximately 7.15 p.m., cell site records indicate the burner phone used to contact Ms. Bartholomew prior to her disappearance had activity in Manhattan. On this same date, between approximately 6.58 p.m. and 7.22 p.m., billing records from Heuermann's cell phone also showed call locations in New York City.

Following Ms. Bartholomew's disappearance, on July 17, 2009,, at approximately 12.40 p.m., a mail caller used the Bartholomew phone to contact Ms. Bartholomew's family. The Bartholomew phone was located in New York City at the time, specifically attached to a cell tower located at 4 Penn Plaza, which is approximately 2,372 feet, or 0.45 miles, from Heuermann's then-office space, which at the time was located at 19 West 36th Street, New York, New York. On this same date, at approximately 1.45 p.m., billing records from Heuermann's phone also showed a call location in New York City." Now, the bail application goes on to list more and more and even more instances when the burner phone or a victim's phone were in the same place at the same time as Rex's phone.

I'm going to link out to the application in the source list so you can see it for yourself. It is detailed, meticulous, even includes maps, so you're going to want to see it. So, for anyone who's thinking, maybe he's just the unluckiest guy in the world and there are a lot of people in Manhattan. Eh, wrong. I'm only on page 17 of the 32-page bail application, so get comfortable.

They also went and obtained Rex Heuermann's American Express records, which show billing to Google Play for Tinder. So, they go to Tinder, subpoena in hand, asking for the account associated with that billing information. What they got was a profile for someone named Andrew Roberts. Andrew is Rex's middle name. That account was linked to a known burner phone number ending in 1697, and the email springfieldman9 at AOL.com, which they found out from AOL, was established on January 15, 2011..

The email was registered to the name John Springfield and another burner phone ending in 2671.. Now, this isn't mentioned in the bail application because you get into a little bit of speculative territory here, but isn't it interesting that he sets up this email and Tinder profile within literal weeks of the Gilgo4 being discovered? Like, maybe whatever he was doing before, however, he was meeting sex workers or engaging in sex, was now off the table for him. Now, in addition to the burner phone ending in 2671, accessing that email address, they also have Verizon records that show Rex used his own cell phone to access the springfieldman9 email in December of 2022.. Any question now that Rex is connected to that email, connected to the burner?

Okay, fine. I'll give you more. A search warrant conducted on the fictitious springfieldman9 AOL account further revealed selfie photographs that appeared to have been taken by defendant Rex Heuermann of himself and sent to other persons to solicit and arrange for sexual activity, further linking Heuermann to the fictitious email account and the burner cell phone 347-304-2671 used to establish the account. Now, investigators then wanted to see if these two burner numbers were linked to anything else out there on the interwebs, so they served a subpoena to Google, which surfaced two more fake emails. One of them is hunter1903a3 at gmail.com, and springfieldman9 was set as the recovery email for this new one, and when the user accepted the terms and conditions, it logged the IP address for where they accepted.

Rex Heuermann's house. It was his home IP address. The other email they found was thok080672 at gmail.com. This was also linked to the 267 burner, and this one wasn't connected to a dating app, or at least that's not what's listed in the bail application. This email seems to be where Rex hid some of the darkest parts of himself.

This email, quote, was used to conduct thousands of searches related to sex work, sadistic, torture-related pornography, and child pornography, end quote. The application lists some examples, though I'm sure this isn't the full list. And then there are other searches, even more specific to the investigation authorities. we're eyeballs deep in. Those other searches were about the Long Island serial killer.

Here are just some of the search terms listed. Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the Long Island serial killer? Long Island serial killer update 2022.. Eight terrifying active serial killers we can't find. Megan Waterman.

Melissa Bartholomew. Maureen Brainerd Barnes. Redacted name of relative of Melissa Bartholomew. Redacted name of relative of Megan Waterman. In Long Island's serial killer investigation, new phone technology may be key to break in case.

And here's another quote. The Thawk email account was also used to search for a number of podcasts and or documentaries regarding this investigation, as well as repeatedly viewing hundreds of images depicting the murdered victims and members of their immediate families. Significantly, defendant Heuermann also searched for and viewed articles concerning the very task force that was investigating him. End quote. I wonder if he knew they were getting close, or maybe he thought he was the smartest man alive, because not even reading about how cell technology could be his undoing got him to cool it.

Those two phones, the burners ending in 2671 and 1697, were still being used to contact sex workers in 2023 while they were surveilling him. Like legit, they have surveillance footage of Rex going into a cell store on May 19th, 2023, to add more minutes to one of the phones. By this point, investigators had to have been getting antsy. I mean, sure, maybe the fact that he was using the same burner phones for the past couple of years was good news, because in the Gilgo cases, it seemed like once a victim was killed, that burner was tossed, so maybe he hasn't done anything else. But that didn't mean he wouldn't, and that wasn't a chance they wanted to take.

But they were waiting on one more final thing before they would move in for an arrest. DNA.

You see, what we never knew was that hairs had been found on the Gilgo Beach victims, hairs that didn't belong to the victims themselves. Now, they'd been recovered back in 2010 when their bodies were examined, and learning about the hairs, we learned something else substantial as well. Maureen Brainerd Barnes was restrained with three leather belts. Now, it's not explicitly stated, but a little deduction indicates that the black leather belt shown to the public in 2020 with those initials was one of the ones used to bind her, and it was in one of the belt buckles that they recovered a single female hair. Megan Waterman had also been bound, but not with belts, with clear or white duct tape, which notoriously attracts and keeps anything, and it kept two female hairs near the tape on her head, but again, not hers.

In Amber Costello's case, she too was wrapped in clear or white duct tape, and inside a piece of tape in the burlap that she was wrapped in, there was another female hair. Now, it's not explicitly stated when the task force sent the hairs off for testing, but preliminary results were back by July 2022. All of the hairs found on the three different victims were from the same woman, but it's not like they had a full profile, nothing. you could plop into a database or try to hunt down using genetic genealogy. They needed a specific person's DNA to compare them against.

Now, since Rex was already on their radar, they had an undercover detective. collect bottles discarded outside his home, and don't hold your breath, because this isn't CSI. Results took another seven months to get, but it was worth the wait, because the lab concluded that DNA from the bottles taken from Rex Heuermann's home indicated that a woman living inside that home was the same woman that the hairs belonged to, or technically it said she couldn't be excluded, but like 99-point-something-something of the population, could. Now, police believe that those hairs belonged to Rex Heuermann's wife, but don't go thinking this is a Ken and Barbie killer situation. When they looked at travel records for the family, investigators found that at the time of Megan and Amber's killings, Rex's wife was out of town and could not have participated.

She likely knew nothing of her husband's double life, and her hair was most likely found on the victim simply because she shared a residence with Rex. But now you're probably asking, how is there DNA from her and not from him? Well, I told you, sit back, take a chill pill, I'm getting there. There was DNA from him as well. Not a lot, but enough.

At the bottom of the burlap Megan was wrapped in, there was a single male hair found. They started analysis on this one, I know, back in 2020.. They didn't have anything substantial for comparison until years later, and on January 26, 2023, they had an undercover detective follow Rex, and when he threw away a pizza box in Manhattan, they collected it and swabbed the crust for DNA. By June 12, 2023, the results were in. 99.96% of the North American population could be ruled out as being the contributor of the hair, but based on Rex's DNA from the pizza crust, he cannot be excluded.

So, with all that evidence in hand, Rex Herriman was arrested on July 13, 2023 in Manhattan and charged with three of the four Gilgo Beach murders. The one he wasn't charged with is Maureen Brainerd Barnes, though he was named as a prime suspect in her case. It seems like maybe as of right now they don't have the same concrete evidence to tie him to hers, or maybe they were excluding one for the time being, in case something happened with the others and this allowed them another chance, or maybe there's something shown to the grand jury that made them not confident in charging him with Maureen's murder, yet. I don't know. Either way, he has been charged with six counts of murder, basically a first-degree and a second-degree murder charge for each victim, Melissa, Megan, and Amber.

It's been reported that the first thing Rex said when he was arrested is,

At first, I took that to mean that he was worried about how his family might find out, but the more that has come out about this man, the more I wonder if he was excited, if he wanted to know, if everyone was talking about him, if he would be the thing. people were Googling the way he had Googled for so long. And they have been. It seems like the whole world wants to know who this guy is and how he lived a double life for so long. Me, I don't spend a ton of time thinking about that.

It's been proven time and time again that it's totally possible. I think our very first Crime, Junkie Life Rule, was that you don't really know anyone ever. What I've spent most of my time thinking about and digging into is what other crimes could he be responsible for? Is it really just the Gilgo Four? What about the other six victims found along the parkway?

There was nothing in the bail application that even mentioned the other victims, and I've read into this both ways. Option one, there really were two or more killers all along. I mean, the bail application is so detailed. His trail is so easy to follow. The other Long Island victims were killed before the Gilgo Four, so I wouldn't expect him to have been more sophisticated.

Although maybe he was? Option two is that he is responsible for all of them, but authorities were just focused on getting him off the streets, and they arrested him on the cases that were the strongest as of right now. Something we theorized in our 2018 episode was that maybe after dismembering the victims and dispersing them, he realized that the body parts weren't being found on Gilgo Beach, and so he stopped with the dismemberment and just left them there intact. Maybe the fact that in the older cases, the victims were killed in a time when technology wasn't so prevalent actually worked to his advantage, because they didn't have the digital footprint that they did with the Gilgo Four. Just because the bail application doesn't mention anything else doesn't mean they don't have anything else.

And really, maybe there is a third option, where he's only responsible for the four of the ten on Long Island, but those four aren't his only victims. Back in our 2018 episode, On Lisk, we discussed another set of four women who were found in Atlantic City. All of them were placed behind a rundown motel, all of them were missing their socks and shoes, and all of them were positioned facing east. These women were known to or believed to have engaged in survival sex work, just like the Gilgo Four. They were found in 2006, and Maureen Brainerd Barnes, the first of the Gilgo Four, was killed in 2007..

Now those cases were kind of looked at, and they were said not to have been connected a while back by authorities. But since Rex's arrest, police say that they're going back over any cases that could be linked, just to be sure, especially after finding out Rex owned property near his brother in South Carolina and a timeshare in Las Vegas. Now it would be great if we could throw his DNA into a database like CODIS and see what pops, but that's actually illegal. I've been seeing people get surprised or upset by this, but I don't expect my crime junkies will be too shocked. You guys know how the system works.

You have to be convicted of something before that DNA goes into CODIS. Them's the rules. But that doesn't mean they can't connect him to other cases by other means. After his arrest, authorities searched at least two storage units rented by Rex, and they spent 12 days searching his home. They were seen removing tons of stuff from the house itself.

According to what ABC7 reported, the DA said they found a, quote, tremendous amount of information. Some of the most notable things that people are talking about is this, like, creepy glass-encased doll, and what appears to be a painting of a woman's face after she's been beaten. And the real thing everyone is talking about right now is the vault, or the soundproof room, as some outlets are reporting it. It was a cement room in his basement with a steel door that is reported to have held almost 300 guns, about two-thirds of which weren't permitted. Now, there was a press conference held last Tuesday, on July 25th, when they concluded the search, and it was strange.

One question kept getting asked over and over again. Reporters there kept asking if there was a mattress found inside the vault. But the DA wouldn't answer. He just said it was big enough to walk into, and, just like the rest of the house, a house that Rex had lived in as a child, it was cluttered. The DA did confirm, though, that no human remains were discovered, either in the house or in the yard which they excavated.

Another thing which was asked at the press conference, and something that has been speculated a lot about, is whether Rex kept and police found trophies from any of the victims. Now, trophies is the word that people keep using, but I actually want to make a clarification here. I was recently listening to another podcast, The Freeway Phantom, and former FBI profiler, Jim Clemente, was interviewed, and he made an important distinction. He said, quote, There's a difference between souvenirs and trophies. Souvenirs are something that he keeps privately to himself to remind himself and encourage the fantasies that he will have as he's reliving these experiences, these offenses.

Trophies are something you show off. For example, a trophy might be a necklace that you take from a victim and give to somebody in your life so you can see it every day. It's much more insidious. So if they find out that maybe he gave his wife or daughter something from the women to wear, or he kept stuff out and displayed in the house, that's a trophy. If police were to find a stash of items hidden away for just him, that is a souvenir.

But whether it's a souvenir or a trophy, the only question really left is how many were there? How many? on Long Island alone? Four? Ten?

What about Shannon Gilbert? I always come back to Shannon because she makes this case stranger than fiction. Officially, her case was closed and labeled death by misadventure. There was talk that she had drowned in the marsh or that she died of hypothermia because some of her clothes had been removed and found in the marsh with her. In the last couple of years, her 23-minute 911 call has been released in full.

And my friend Michael Whelan, who does a podcast called Unresolved, actually had a consulting firm who worked with the Gilbert family lawyer. And he shared with me some analysis they did, as well as Shannon's autopsy report and a second opinion by Dr. Michael M. Badden, the former chief medical examiner and former chief forensic pathologist of the New York State Police. Now, I want to go over the report first because, according to their analysis, quote,

This contradiction has led to the additional theory that Shannon somehow drowned in the marsh that morning. However, a review of the tide records for Oak Beach on the morning in question show that Shannon would have entered the marsh during the low tide point of the day. According to www.tidesforfishing.com, the tide height in Oak Beach was recorded as being less than one inch around 6 a.m. on May 1, 2010.. End quote.

Now, if we go to Dr. Badden's conclusion, after reviewing the material, it reads, quote, It is my opinion, based on the circumstances of Shannon's death and on the materials I have reviewed, that there is no evidence she died of a natural disease, of a drug overdose, or of drowning. There is insufficient information to determine a definite cause of death, but the autopsy findings are consistent with homicidal strangulation. End quote. We don't know nearly enough about Rex Heuermann yet to make any connection to the other Long Island victims or Shannon, but there's clearly some shady stuff happening out in that area, a twisted web that was wound from the top down, and it may take a while to fully untangle.

When they do, I wonder who else will be put under the spotlight. The attorney representing Shannon Gilbert's family thinks that there are more people involved in the killings out on Long Island. Particularly, he believes a woman is involved. He's made some claims recently, which haven't been substantiated by any big outlets, a lot of the gossip outlets, so take it with a grain of salt, but I talked to people who have worked with him, and they say he's a credible man. Now, what he's told these outlets, though, recently, is that he got a heads up about the arrest and two names were mentioned.

And he also said that he'd been getting taunting calls from a man and a woman. starting in January. He told the U.S. Sun, quote, they play news reports from the Shannon Gilbert case from sometime around 2011 or 2012 and make noises in the background at the same time. Then they say some nasty things or weird things to let us know that, whoever it was, they wanted to make sure we connected the call to the Gilgo situation.

One time they called us, and I had just gotten home at 9 o'clock, and we were eating a late dinner, and the phone rang. And they said, I hope you're enjoying dinner. Then this person, a few seconds later, said, I hope you enjoy your pizza. Within seconds, our doorbell rang. And we live up in a dark area, up on a hill.

There was this guy delivering three pizzas, and we didn't order the pizzas. So we called the Pizza Hut, where they were coming from, we called the police, and the Pizza Hut person who took the order said it was a woman with a man in the background pretending to choose toppings that had made the call, end. quote. Is it related? Is it a cruel hoax?

We've seen worse before. There is still a lot that is going to come out. This marks a new chapter in the Long Island serial killer case. And I'm telling you, it's the season of justice, and this is just the beginning.

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