Case 354: The Gilgo Beach Serial Killings (Part 2/2)

0:00But early access in dad-free episodes, check out our Patreon, Apple Premium, and Spotify subscription memberships. Hopefully everything your operation needs all in one place. Upgrade your shipping operations to stress-proof your biggest sales days and capture every bit of potential revenue. Go to shipstation.com and use code audio and get 30 days free. Hi, this is Brook to Vard from Naked Beauty. I am always looking for ways to elevate our daily rituals. And the colder smart toilet is proof that design changes everything. It's the stunning, sculptural piece that feels like quiet luxury for your bathroom. Totally transforms your daily ritual into something elevated, with customizable cleansing and touch screen controls.

1:03It's functional art that makes your space feel cleaner and more intentional. A modern home deserves a modern toilet. Experience the difference of colder smart toilets. Find more at Kohler.com. Our episodes deal with serious and often-distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. On the night of Thursday, December 13, 2012, 26-year-old Christopher Loeb left his mother's residence in Smithtown, Suffolk County,

2:09and made his way to the neighbouring hamlet of St James. Christopher was someone who was well known to the county's police. He struggled with heroin addiction and was on probation for theft-related felony convictions. He'd begun committing thefts to support his substance use and continued to do so after his release. Christopher would drive around Long Island, then park somewhere and walk up to parked cars, jiggling their door handles in the hopes of finding the mon lot. Sometimes he found electronics, wallets or spare change that he could pocket. That was what he was doing that Thursday night. In the early hours of Friday morning, he attempted to open the door of a GMC Yukon. Upon gaining access to the vehicle, Christopher grabbed a canvas duffel bag he saw lying on the back seat. When he got back home, he took the bag down to the basement. Inside were a number of items.

3:10There was a box of cigars, a humidor, toiletries including lubricants, some sex toys and a several pornographic DVDs. There was also a gum belt with two Glock 9mm magazines, handcuffs and a whistle. Later that same morning, Christopher's parole officer showed up unannounced to the Smithtown home where Christopher lived with his mother. He was promptly followed by several Suffolk County police officers. Seeing their vehicles from his upstairs bedroom window, Christopher bolted. He ran out the back door and made it about half a mile from his home to a wooded area. The police in hot pursuit chased Christopher down and roughly cuffed his hands behind his back before dragging him back to his house and placing him on the couch in the den. Other officers who'd remained at the property were undertaking a search. One of those present was Suffolk County's then chief of police, James Burke.

4:12The canvas bag that Christopher had stolen the night before was given to Burke before it had been processed according to normal evidentiary procedures. According to Christopher Loeb, after he was subsequently taken into custody, James Burke confronted him in an interrogation room that had no video cameras and demanded. You want a fucking steal from me? When the remains of ten different people were recovered along Ocean Parkway in the spring of 2011, Suffolk County police department was facing a case of mammoth proportions.

5:12However, the victim's families were hopeful that it would be solved soon. The department was well-funded and resourced with a homicide clearance rate of 74%, placing it well above the national average. But internal politics had been getting in the way of the investigation from the very start. It began with the then police chief Richard Dorma arguing publicly with the district attorney Thomas Spoter over whether one killer was behind the murders or more. According to journalist Robert Kolker, author of the book Lost Girls, this was partly due to Dorma being affiliated with a political rival of Spoters. As Dorma was scheduled to retire at the end of 2011, Spoter was eager for the next police chief to be someone he could more easily sway. And he already had someone in mind. Thomas Spoter first met James Burke more than 30 years earlier when Spoter was prosecuting the April 1979 murder of a 13-year-old boy named Johnny Piers.

6:21Johnny had gone missing in Smithtown while riding his bicycle and was found the following morning, dead in the grounds of a local elementary school. Stones had been forced down his throat as fixating him. He had been beaten and stomped on and his face was marked with the imprint of a sneaker. The community was horrified by the brutal and senseless murder and the pressure was on to find the killer. Detectives were hopeful of obtaining a confession quickly. At that time, the Suffolk County Police Department's homicide unit was renowned for having a confession rate of 97%, three or four times that of most homicide units in the United States. As author Robert Kolker explains, this extremely high figure is so improbable that it indicates coercion was being used to force confessions, the result of an unchecked police force. Because Suffolk County's police union was wealthy, it was able to donate large sums of money to political campaigns.

7:27This resulted in politicians being reluctant to challenge them, in turn allowing the department to get away with more than it should. The sneaker imprint on Johnny's face convinced detectives that Johnny had most likely been murdered by another teenager. They began speaking to local youths, hoping somebody might know something and named those responsible. Four teenage boys were soon implicated in the murder, with one confessing in the back of a police car. His confession featured some inconsistent elements, however, and probably wouldn't be effective in a courtroom. Thomas Spotter began seeking out other adolescent who might be able to act as witnesses, and to land it on then 16-year-old James Burke, a juvenile delinquent involved in low-level burglaries and drug dealing. Burke willingly provided a story against the suspects, which some have deemed very convenient, and became a star witness in the case.

8:30All 14 ages were convicted, though many held doubts about their guilt. And from that time on, Thomas Spotter became something of a mentor to James Burke. Burke stopped dealing drugs and became a cop. In 1986, when he was 21, he joined the Suffolk County Police Department and began rising through the ranks, being promoted to Sargent had aged 26. Burke had a natural intelligence and a strong knack for being a street cop, but his record was always spotty. He lost his department issued firearm on more than one occasion. In 1993, when Burke was 28, he was accused of smoking crack cocaine and having sex with a sex worker in his patrol car. This led to an investigation by internal affairs, and Thomas Spotter, who was by then working in a private practice, offered to represent Burke.

9:32Burke's punishment for his transgressions was the loss of 15 vacation days. Former officers from the department who spoke to journalist Michael Edison Hayden for vise, described Burke as a sex-obsessed narcissist. There were rumors that he would shake down drug dealers for their contraband and then pocket them for his personal use. Throughout every scandal, Thomas Spotter had his back. In 2002, Thomas Spotter became Suffolk County's district attorney and hired Burke to work in his office overseeing investigations. It seemed obvious to the rest of Spotter's staff that Spotter was grooming Burke to one day become the department's police chief, as soon as he could exert influence over the appointment. That opportunity arrived that decade later, in 2012, Wright as Suffolk County was facing its biggest crime in a generation, the Gilgo Beach serial killings.

10:34It was a huge case that required expertise on subjects such as cell phone data analysis and serial killer profiling. But instead of welcoming assistance from other law enforcement agencies such as the FBI who'd already started working the case, James Burke and Thomas Spotter sent them away. Before leaving, FBI agents handed over all of the work they'd done on the phone evidence. It was well known that the killer had used burner phones to contact his victims, aware that he could be less easily traced to this way. But it was likely that he still had a regular cell phone that he carried with him at the same time. FBI agents had been checking all of the towers that the killer's burner phones had been pinging off and had plans to search cell tower data in Long Island for other phones that had been hitting the same towers at the same time. By doing so, they hoped to come up with a list of possible suspects.

11:36The Suffolk County Police Department didn't continue this work, with Burke reportedly deeming it too invasive. They had other leads they could pursue. There was some physical evidence from the burial sites, including a distinctive leather belt embossed with two initials and several hair strands that had been called inductate or burlap that was used to bind the women. And at least two of the victims loved ones had received taunting calls from the killer. But overall, the investigation into the serial killings didn't appear to be a priority. As Robert Kolker described in his book, Lost Girls, quote, In the years that Burke ran the police department, the Gilgo Room at Suffolk Police headquarters became a place for part-time work, with little urgency dictated from above. Under Burke, the police were in what would it later be characterized as a complete ethical freefall.

12:39In Kolker's words, Burke turned the department into his own personal empire. He ordered officers to follow and watch his girlfriend, her ex-partners and her son. He also punished colleagues he considered disloyal. Every night, drinks were served in his office. Burke's mentor and a number one ally, Thomas Spotar, also prioritized investigating perceived adversaries over the Gilgo investigation. With the police department operating in such close concert with the District Attorney's office, there was even less scrutiny from the outside than there had been before, until that suddenly changed about a year into James Burke's term. When Christopher Loeb went out looking for cars to steal from on the night of Thursday, December 13, 2012, he had no idea that one SUV he stole a double bag from was the department issued vehicle of Suffolk County's chief of police.

13:43It is unclear how police identify Christopher as the culprit, but by the following morning, they were at his mother's home searching the property for the stolen items and placing Christopher under arrest. After Christopher Loeb was transferred to a nearby precinct for questioning, the police aggression towards him only increased. He was handcuffed and chained to the floor of an interrogation room without cameras for 10 hours. Over that period, James Burke and some detectives repeatedly beat and kicked Christopher. One detective threatened to rape his mother while Burke said he'd murder him with a hot shot, an overdose of heroin that would look like an accident. Understanding that Burke was the owner of the double bag that contained various sex toys and pornographic DVDs, Christopher called the police chief a pervert. In response, James Burke punched him in the face. Several days after the beating, James Burke bragged that the incident had reminded him of his old days as a younger cop.

14:50He referred to the other officers who'd helped him as his palace guard. But this was the beginning of the end for James Burke. The FBI had caught wind of the assault against Christopher Loeb almost immediately and opened an investigation into the matter alongside the US attorney's office. They found evidence that Burke had pressured detectives to lie about the assault and instructed them to agree to a false version of events. One of those detectives later lied under oath that Christopher Loeb had not been assaulted. The case finally broke open when an informant had admitted the truth. In December 2015, James Burke was arrested and charged with the assault of Christopher Loeb as well as civil rights violations and conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation. Burke later pleaded guilty to reduced charges and was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison.

15:51Thomas Spoter, whose staff had helped Burke in his attempted cover-up, was subsequently indicted for witness tampering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He too was convicted in a federal court and subsequently sentenced to five years. The entire fiasco had left Suffolk County in complete disarray and still there was more that would emerge about James Burke. After another year dragged on with no developments in the Gilgobach serial killing case, John Ray, the attorney for Shannon Gilbet's mother Marie, hold a bombshell press conference on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Sitting beside him was a woman named Leanne. She was a sex worker based in Long Island who was alleging that James Burke had engaged her services several times between April and August in 2011, the months after the bodies had been discovered on Gilgobach but before Shannon was found at the end of that year.

16:57A former confidential informant, Leanne said that she'd met James Burke at a party in Oak Beach, the same gated community where Shannon Gilbet had gone missing. She claimed that when Burke had been unable to perform sexually, he became angry and aggressive, telling Leanne that she was not a quote, good whore. When a journalist asked whether Burke ever mentioned the Gilgobach case to Leanne, she replied, no, but he seemed to like to choke me. Leanne added that she also had several other Suffolk County cops as clients, despite sex work being illegal in New York State, and she'd seen James Burke grab a woman by her hair and push her to the ground. Attorney John Ray pointed out that now a direct correlation had been made between Burke, violence against sex workers, and the Gilgobach case, via his attendance at an Oak Beach party where sex workers were present.

17:58Following this press conference, speculation by armchair detectives and others who'd been watching the Gilgobach, went into overdrive. Some believed that James Burke was the serial killer himself or knew who the killer was, and that was why he deliberately thwarted the investigation. He was covering up for himself for a friend. Burke's attorneys called this theory preposterous, stating, there is absolutely not one shred of evidence linking him to the Gilgobach case. There was no evidence suggesting that James Burke was a killer, but his relationships with sex workers and habit of using illegal drugs had played a part in his lackluster leadership regarding the Gilgobach investigation. Burke's corrupt behaviour was most likely why he hadn't wanted the FBI involved in the case, to prevent them from discovering what he'd been up to. It was also indicative of his attitude towards the Gilgobach victims.

19:01In the Netflix documentary series Gone Girls, former Suffolk County detective Rob Trotter said, quote, So you have a serial murderer killing prostitutes on Long Island, and your police chief is a guy who patronises prostitutes. You know, all the cops amongst ourselves would say, it's a joke, he doesn't care about that. He would call them Mr. Meena murders, where they really weren't important. They're not a high priority. They're just prostitutes. After James Burke was indicted and left the Suffolk County Police Department in disgrace, an outsider was brought in to be the new chief. Tim Seene was a senior prosecutor from the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan. He brought the FBI back into the investigation, and they resumed their work on the Burnafone data. Celtaua triangulation had allowed them to create rough maps of where the killer had likely been using his burnafones from in Midtown Manhattan and Long Island.

20:08It had long been thought that the killer probably worked in the former and lived in the latter. Using specialized equipment, they were able to refine this data even further, localising to more precise areas. Ultimately, they came up with a radius that had the NASA County suburb of Massa Pequot Park at its centre, as the burner and victims' phones had pinged a Celtaua in that area. Massa Pequot Park also sat directly across the bay from Gilgo Beach, giving someone who lived there greater familiarity with the dump site. There were roughly 500 residents included in this tight geographic zone, and the area was home to less than 1,000 men. If the police could identify which of these men worked in New York City, they might have a short list of suspects. However, the Suffolk County force had butt at heads with Tim Seene since his arrival, seeing him as an outsider, and resisted many of his investigative efforts.

21:12He left the job of police chief in 2018 after being elected as district attorney. Seene was replaced as police chief by Geraldine Hart, the first woman to hold the position, and the former head of the FBI's Long Island Bureau. She had already worked on the investigation, but had been removed from it by James Burke when he decided to exclude all other agencies. Now as police chief herself, Hart decided to utilise genetic genealogy to try to identify the unknown victims found along Ocean Parkway. Genetic genealogy was being touted as a powerful new investigative tool after it led to the identification of the Golden State Killer in California, covered in case 53 of Case File. Geraldine Hart commissioned an outside lab to go over the DNA evidence in the Gilgo case, and in 2020, this led to the identification of Jane Doe No. 6.

22:14She was one of two victims who had had some remains discarded along Ocean Parkway, and the rest of her body left in a wooded area of Manaville, about 45 miles east of Gilgo Beach. Jane Doe No. 6 was identified as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old from Philadelphia who'd gone missing in late 2000. Like all of the other victims, Valerie had been petite, standing five feet tall and weighing 110 pounds. She had lived in a number of foster homes as a child before being adopted by the Mack family. Valerie Mack became a mother to her son when she was 17 and lived for a time with her child's father in New Jersey. She got a tattoo of her son's name on her right ankle. Between 1996, when she was 19 and 2000, Valerie was arrested several times in Philadelphia for sex work-related offenses. She was also thought to sometimes work in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

23:18Now investigators believed she had somehow fallen victim to the Long Island Serial Killer. In the hopes of generating a lead from someone close to the killer, Geraldine Hart went public with a piece of evidence that had been kept under wraps, a leather belt that had been used to bind marine-brain-art barns. It was a distinctive belt due to the fact that one ant had been embossed with the owner's initials, HM or WH, depending on the angle you looked at it. Chief Hart shared photos of the belt with the public in the hopes somebody would recognize it. Unfortunately, no leads resulted and the case continued to stagnate. The tide finally turned in 2021 when a new district attorney was elected in Suffolk County. Ray Teenie campaigned heavily on the platform that he wanted the Gilgokai solved and met with some of the victims' family members.

24:21After he took office at the beginning of 2022, he was joined by yet another new police chief, a veteran investigator named Rodney Harrison, who'd spent years with the New York Police Department, and was the first African-American to be appointed as Suffolk County's police chief. On Harrison's very first day in the role, he visited the site at Gilgokai Beach where the bodies had been found. He was stunned to learn that the case file for the Long Island serial killer case hadn't been digitized. This meant that all of the notes, interview transcripts and witness statements relating to the crime were available in paper form only and couldn't be easily searched. Chief Harrison arranged for everything to be sent to the FBI's headquarters in Quantico, Virginia for digitization. He and D.A. Teenie also wanted a special task force to be dedicated entirely to the investigation.

25:22Chief Harrison's experience in New York City had taught him that collaborating with other agencies could be the key to solving a case. The task force would comprise investigators from numerous agencies, from the state police and to NASA County, as well as Suffolk County Police and Sheriff's Departments and the FBI. It was announced on Tuesday, February 15, 2022. Within a month, they had a massive lead. Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Now that summer's winding down and your schedule's picking back up, the last thing you want is to keep dining out just because you're too tired to cook. Home Chef gives you restaurant quality meals for way less than a dinner out, right as you're getting back into your routine.

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29:33That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash audio. One purchase equals one donated, always. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Case File to continue to deliver quality content. Thank you for watching. At the time of her murder, Amber had been living in West Babylon, a town in Suffolk County, in Dave Schuller's residence.

30:34Detectives visited the house and interviewed Dave. He told them about the days leading up to Amber's disappearance, and how just one day before she went missing, the two of them had carried out a scam that they employed from time to time. A client that Amber had been communicating with showed up to collect her, and after he paid, Dave jumped out pretending to be her angry spouse. This enabled Amber to take the client's money without having to have sex with him. Dave and Amber had done this a few times. Sex were clients were easy to scam because they weren't likely to go to the authorities to report the crime. One thing that struck Dave about the man he and Amber stole from that night was how big he was. The word Dave used to describe him was ogre. He was between 6'4 and 6'6", with a broad build, looming over both of them. A white man in his mid-40s, he also had dark, bushy hair and big 1970s style overly glasses.

31:42Dave also told police that he'd seen the man's SUV parked in the driveway. It was a dark green first generation Chevy Avalanche. The following night, Dave had seen the car again. Amber had made plans to see the same client after he texted her to say, That was not nice, so do I credit for next time. Amber agreed to meet the client down the street, possibly because he told her he didn't want to see her angry boyfriend again. Dave had escorted Amber as far as the letterbox, then turned to see the same dark colored SUV drive past the house a minute later. Dave never saw Amber again. The description of the client and his car were a decent lead, and detectives in 2011 said about searching for his vehicle registration via New York State's Department of Motor Vehicles or DMV records.

32:43But they found nothing, and the lead went nowhere. Journalist Robert Kolker reported that a source told him the Chevy Avalanche had likely been miscategorized by the DMV as it was a kind of hybrid of a car and a truck. Despite having a description of an ogre-like person of interest in his vehicle, the Suffolk County detectives hadn't passed this tip on to hire apps at the department or any outside agencies such as the FBI. For more than a decade, Dave Schaller's information was buried in a file filled with hundreds of documents. Until Monday, March 14, 2022, when the new task force dedicated to the Gilgobage case discovered it in their new digital case file. A member of the state police who was working with the task force searched for first-generation dark green Chevrolet Avalanche's in a private subscription-based vehicle database that was more comprehensive than New York's DMV records.

33:48He got a hit immediately. At the time of the murders, a green Chevrolet Avalanche had been registered to a man living in Massa Peak, Wapark, and NASA County. Two of the victim's phones had pinged cell towers in this same suburban neighborhood after they'd gone missing, and the man's home was at the center of the geographic area where investigators had suspected the killer lived. The owner of the Avalanche had purchased it from a Long Island dealership in 2002. A Google map photograph of the man's house taken in November of 2011 showed the Chevy parked on the street out the front. In 2012, more than a year into the Gilgobage investigation, the man had transferred the vehicle's ownership and registration to his brother who lived several states away in South Carolina. Looking into the man who had originally owned the Avalanche, investigators saw that he was a perfect match to the physical description Dave Shullard given.

34:53He had the same tall, hulking build was white with a dark mop of hair, wore large eye glasses, and would have been in his mid-40s 12 years earlier when Amber went missing. Moreover, he resided in Long Island and worked in Midtown Manhattan, just as investigators had suspected based on the cell phone data. The man's name was Rex Heuleman. Born on September 13, 1963, Rex Heuleman was born and raised in Massapequa Park, a leafy middle-class neighborhood on Long Island's South Shore. His father Theodore was an aerospace engineer who served in the United States Air Force during World War II. Heuleman was one of five children. He had three older sisters and a younger brother. He clashed with his father who could be domineering and critical of his son. Heuleman desperately wanted to follow in his father's footsteps by joining the Air Force, but he had dyslexia which presented an obstacle.

36:02Theodore was disappointed by this. Heuleman's relationship with his mother Dolores wasn't much better. He felt as though she was emotionally unavailable and self-absorbed. He began to act out by doing things like shoplifting. In 1975, when Heuleman was 12 years old, his father died. His mother continued to raise her children in the same Massapequa Park home on 1st Avenue, a modest wood-panelled ranch-style house. Rex Heuleman's school life was even worse than the struggles he'd faced at home. A loner and an outsider who stood out due to his exceptional height and awkward demeanor, he was often picked on by other children. A group of them set upon him in the 6th grade trying to beat him up but were stopped by a teacher. In addition to facing physical attacks, Heuleman was on the receiving end of verbal insults with one classmate telling the New York Times.

37:07He got picked on a lot. He would take it and take it and walk away. I seen him pushed to his limit. As he grew older, Heuleman's physical stature became more imposing but he remained quiet and insecure. When classmates did try to talk to him, he had difficulty holding a conversation. He avoided school sports and other extracurricular activities but did join the drama club where he worked as a stage-hand. He didn't socialize and amongst some of his peers, he developed a reputation for having a mean streak. One thing at school that Heuleman did seem to like was architectural drawing class. After he graduated, he studied architecture at the New York Institute of Technology. He became an architect and then an architectural consultant and in 1994, he opened his own firm on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, calling it our age consultants and associates.

38:13His job was to oversee renovations to ensure they followed the proper building codes. That same year, Heuleman purchased his childhood home from his mother for $170,000, taking over the single family residence on First Avenue. He caught the train every day from Massa Peak, were parked to his office near Penn Station. Two years later, in April 1996, he married Arsor Elrup who was one month his junior. Arsor had been born in Iceland but was put up for adoption along with her little brother. Her brother stayed in Iceland while Arsor was adopted by a family in Long Island and raised in the United States. She maintained a connection with Iceland however and has travelled there regularly with her family to visit relatives. It was a difficult upbringing. Arsor struggled with having been adopted, feeling unloved, unwanted and like a perpetual outsider.

39:14When she was 16 years old, she was sexually assaulted by a boy in her neighborhood. Struggling in the aftermath of the assault, Arsor attempted suicide. She laid a left high school and began working at a 7-11. Her life would change when she met Rex Heuleman. Their paths first crossed when they were both 18 and Heuleman was at college. Arsor was attracted to Heuleman's 6-4 height and thought he was handsome. As she would later tell filmmakers for the documentary series House of Secrets, she fell madly in love with him. But then she met another man who became her first husband. The marriage deteriorated after Arsor gave birth to a son named Christopher who had developmental disabilities. Arsor wanted to leave her husband and when he made it clear he wasn't going to make that easy for her. She reached out to Heuleman for support.

40:16The two became romantically involved and in November of 1995, Arsor and Christopher moved in to the Massa Peak Wapak residence with Heuleman. A few months later, Arsor became pregnant and the couple decided to get married. Their wedding was held in Sweden on April 13, 1996. Later that year, their daughter Victoria was born. To Arsor, Heuleman was a savior who rescued her and her son in their greatest hour of need. Marrying him was the beginning of the life she had always wanted. As the years passed, Arsor still travelled back to Iceland on occasion, typically in the summer months. Her children went with her, but her husband didn't. Construction in New York was often at its busiest over the summer, so he needed to remain at home to work. He would also take advantage of the house being empty to make internal improvements here and there.

41:20Rex Heuleman enjoyed woodworking, which he'd learned from his father and put this skill to good use. Once, he crafted an intricate dollhouse as a gift for his daughter. But despite his career as an architect and his carpentry skills, he didn't maintain the exterior of the home at all. While other houses in the upscale neighbourhood were typically well maintained, from the outside, the Heuleman residents looked increasingly shabby and ramshackle as years passed. Paint faded and peeled from the exterior wood siding, and the shingles on the roof looked worn. The yard was overgrown with weeds, in contrast to the more manicured gardens of neighbouring properties. It became the sort of house parents told their children to avoid wild trickle-treating at Halloween. Sometimes Heuleman could be seen chopping wood in the front yard while scowling. Once, he threatened to slash a neighbour's tyres because he didn't like the way they parked their truck.

42:25He wasn't someone who invited neighbourly conversations. When the task force responsible for the Gilgobach investigation identified Rex Heuleman as a person of interest in March of 2022, they said about obtaining search warrants and subpoenas for cell phone records and other evidence to verify their suspicions. The fact that he'd owned the same distinctive vehicle as the individual who'd alas been seen with Amber Ling Costello gave them strong grounds to go off, as did the location of his home and office. One thing that the task force quickly established via travel records was that Rex Heuleman's wife had been out of the country on some significant dates. On Wednesday, July 8, 2009, Assa, Elrub and her children flew to Iceland for a five-week vacation. Two days after they left, 24-year-old Melissa Bartholome went missing after meeting up with a client.

43:28Assa's cell phone billing records also placed her out of state in June 2010 when Meghan Waterman went missing, and in early September that same year, when Amber went missing. Assa had purchased season tickets for the Six Flags amusement park and taken her children to ride the rollercoasters there. Heuleman suffered from motion sickness, so had an accompanied his family. Knowing that Assa had been away when three of the victims were killed, giving Heuleman the house to himself, bolstered the detective's suspicions. They also obtained cell phone and credit card billing records for Heuleman, which gave them general information about his locations on the same date. Again and again, they saw that Rex Heuleman's phone had been pinged off the same cell towers as the burnafones used in the crimes, at the same time. Not once was there an incident where the burnafones were found to be in a different area from Heuleman's phone.

44:33His cell also corresponded to the locations of the phones belonging to Marine Brain Art Barnes and Melissa Batholome, which the killer had used to check the victims' voicemail and make taunting calls to their loved ones. On July 10, 2009, the last day that Melissa Batholome was seen alive, both her phone and Heuleman's phone were in Massa Piqua, then traveled together towards New York City. Later, they traveled back to Long Island again. A week later, Melissa's phone was used to call her 15-year-old sister Amanda. The caller had been in Midtown Manhattan at the time, with Melissa's phone attaching to a cell tower located at four panplaza, less than half a mile from Heuleman's office. Heuleman's phone placed him in the same location. In every subsequent call to Amanda from Melissa's phone, both that phone and Heuleman's were always in the same place in New York City, at times when Heuleman was in his office there.

45:41Amanda had received a total of seven calls from her sister's killer. One of the later ones was made on Thursday, August 5. After that, she'd heard nothing for two weeks. Travel records revealed that Rex Heuleman had flown to Iceland on Tuesday, August 10, to join his family on their holiday. There was no activity on Melissa Batholome's phone while Heuleman was overseas. He returned home on Wednesday, August 18. The very next day, activity for Melissa's phone was resumed, and Amanda received another call. Investigators also discovered that Rex Heuleman held a number of fictitious identities, including Andrew Roberts, John Springfield and Thomas Hawke. These names were linked to email accounts, a paid subscription to the online dating app Tinder and multiple burner phones.

46:41Heuleman's verified phone had been used to log into these accounts on occasion. When investigators obtained the call records for the burner phones, they found that they had been used extensively and recently to set up appointments with sex workers. A search warrant for one account turned up selfies Rex Heuleman had taken of himself, posing in front of a bathroom mirror, then sent to his prospective dates. A search warrant for one particular email account revealed that Heuleman had made thousands of online searches relating to sex workers, rape, the torture of women, violent sadistic pornography, and even child sexual abuse material. Over a 16-month period, Heuleman had also made more than 200 searches about active and known serial killers, the specific disappearances of the women known as the Gilgoye 4, and the investigation into their murders.

47:41He looked up podcasts and documentaries that had covered the now notorious case, and Googleed Melissa Batholomy's sister, referring to Amanda, whom he tormented via phone calls years earlier. He read articles about the recently formed task force that was devoted to solving the Gilgoye murders and researched how cell site analysis was used to solve crimes. In addition to looking into Heuleman's online and burner phone activities, investigators were eager to test his DNA. Five hairs had been found on the remains of three of the Gilgoye 4, Maureen Brainard Barnes, Megan Waterman, and Dan Berling Costello. Three hairs, including one recovered from a belt used to bind Maureen belonged to one unknown female. One hair belonged to another unknown female, and the fifth hair belonged to an unidentified male.

48:42On Thursday, July 21, 2022, an undercover Suffolk County detective went to Rex Heuleman's home and rummaged through a recycling bin that had been put out for collection. They took 11 bottles from the bin, which were later swabbed and sent to a forensic laboratory for mitochondrial DNA profiling. Almost one year later, on Tuesday, May 23, 2023, investigators followed Victoria Heuleman home from work one day. She was employed as a receptionist at her father's office. Victoria boarded a train at Penn station that was headed to Long Island and a drink and energy drink throughout the journey. When she disembarked at Massapigua Park, she threw the empty can in a bin at the station. The investigators collected the can, which was also sent away for testing. It was found that three of the hairs found at the Gilgo crime scene were consistent with arse-elderips mitochondrial DNA profile.

49:46Two were left on Megan Waterman's body, the third was on Maureen Braynard Barnes. Our fourth hair stuck to duct tape around Amberling Costello's head was consistent with Victoria's. Investigators believed that the hairs had been inadvertently transferred by Heuleman from the family home onto the women's remains. The lone male hair had been recovered from the bottom of the burlab that had been used to wrap Megan Waterman's body. Shortly after launching the investigation into Rex Heuleman, the task force had placed him under field and video surveillance, keeping tabs on all of his activities. One day, while following him throughout Manhattan, undercover detectives watched Heuleman throw a used pizza box into a bin on Fifth Avenue right outside his office building. They retrieved the box, which was then sent to a forensic laboratory for testing. A swab was taken from a piece of leftover pizza crust, then compared to the result from the hair found on Megan Waterman.

50:53On Monday, June 12, 2023, it was found that the two samples had the same mitochondrial DNA profiles at a rate that would exclude 99.96% of the North American population. By the time this result came through, the task force had been investigating and surveilling Rex Heuleman for 16 months. He was now 59 years old, but was still actively pursuing sex workers via burnafones and fake online identities. He also visited massage parlors. In late May 2023, the task force captured footage of him purchasing more prepaid minutes for his burner devices. This was concerning. Although the last to know murder had been committed more than a decade earlier in 2010, there was always a chance that he might be biting his time before killing again. By July, the team was ready to make an arrest.

51:58Just before 8.30pm on Thursday, July 13, 2023, Rex Heuleman exited his office building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and turned left. He wore a pair of beige trousers with a leather belt and a short-sleeved blue shirt and was carrying a satchel over his left shoulder. As he walked towards East 35th Street, he didn't notice the undercover agents following him from behind. Nor did he see the trio of law enforcement officers dressed in suits approaching him until they abruptly cornered him next to some rubbish bins and placed him under arrest. Surrounded from all sides, Heuleman was trapped. His office would be subject to extensive searches over the ensuing days. Amongst the items discovered there was an issue of People magazine from 2016 with the front page headlines, bodies on the beach hunt for the Long Island serial killer.

52:58A little over two hours later in Massa Peak, where Rex Heuleman's family heard a loud banging on the front door of their house. FBI opened up, called a loud voice. The late intrusion was a shock to Asa and her daughter Victoria, who was still waiting for Heuleman to return home. Asa let the agents inside and they asked her, do you know why we're here? My husband's guns, Asa, are asked. Heuleman was a keen hunter and legally owned 92 handguns. A female investigator asked, have you heard about the murders on Gilgo Beach? Asa said she had but knew nothing about them. Your husband, he knows all about it, the investigator said. Asa and Victoria were informed that the agents had evidence their husband and father had murdered multiple women and their home was now considered a crime scene.

54:06The two women were stunned and disbelieving. Victoria was asked whether her father had ever sexually abused her or shown any sexual interest in her. She said that he hadn't. Officers drove Heuleman's family to a hotel and got them a room where they had to stay under police guard. Meanwhile, a search of their property got underway. It was a mammoth raid that would involve officers from Suffolk and NASA counties, the FBI and the state police. In the days that followed, police in hazmat suits, gloves and face masks combed through the house and its yard, while forensic canine officers were sent in to sniff for evidence. Construction equipment was used to dismantle parts of the property, tearing apart the deck and excavating the yard. Tants were set up outside and there was a steady stream of officers removing belongings from the home.

55:06Tools such as swords were removed from the garage. Inside the basement, investigators found several rooms and closets. Behind a solid iron door with a combination lock, they discovered a walk-in vault that held a huge arsenal of firearms far beyond the 92 handguns Heuleman had permits for. He had started building the collection when he was 18 years old. A total of 279 firearms were removed from the property, including antique weapons, long guns, 15 unregistered assault rifles and at least 26 unregistered handguns. Investigators didn't believe Heuleman had used the firearms against any of his victims, but the vault he had specially designed and built for their storage was another matter. It sat directly under the basement's theirs and was soundproofed. Heuleman kept the vault locked at all times and his family members were only allowed in there under his supervision.

56:12Investigators suspected that he had taken his victims back to his home and told them there for a time before murdering them and disposing of their remains. The vault appeared to be a likely place where he would have carried out these crimes as it was soundproofed and secure. In another part of the basement was a room that had been Heuleman's childhood bedroom which still had a bed set up but was very cluttered. It also had a set of stairs leading up to the yard outside, adjoining the rear of that room was a small hidden compartment. It also appeared that while the exterior of the Heuleman house had been left to slowly fall into disrepair several renovations had been completed inside the home. Investigators learned that while his family was away in Iceland in July of 2009, Rex Heuleman had remodeled one of the bathrooms. This renovation also coincided with the murder of Melissa Bartholomey.

57:16Heuleman had torn out everything from the old bathroom, then retiled it and installed all new plumbing. There were receipts from his purchases dated July 12, 2009, two days after Melissa went missing. Investigators suspected the renovation had been done to conceal evidence of her murder. They cut up parts of the vinyl bath tub and the floor tiles looking for traces of blood. It has not been publicly confirmed whether any was found. A press conference was held the day after Rex Heuleman's arrest to announce that a suspect in the Gilgobach murders had finally been apprehended. Heuleman had only been charged with three of the murders at this stage, those of Melissa Bartholomey, Megan Waterman and Dambolin Costello. Investigators were seeking more evidence relating to the murder of marine brain art barns and the other victims who had been killed during the 1990s and early 2000s.

58:22For that, they needed to work on the timelines when each crime was committed. It would ultimately emerge that Arsar Elrup and her children had also been away during the period in July 2007 when marine brain art barns had gone missing. In addition to searching Heuleman's home and office, investigators had obtained warrants to search some storage units, at least. They'd recovered thousands of documents from those units and amongst those records was a credit card statement that featured transactions made in Atlantic City, New Jersey in July 2007. Arsar had taken the kids there for a holiday from July 6 to July 20. Heuleman had joined them for the second week of the vacation, arriving on July 13. Marine had gone missing on July 9. Investigators now had evidence that on each occasion that one of the Gilghoff 4 had been murdered, Rex Heuleman had his home in Tiley to himself.

59:29Marine's last known location was Penn Station, which was just a few blocks away from Rex Heuleman's office. She had been found with a leather belt that was used to bind her ankles and the belt was embossed with the initials HM or WH. The initials WH would be a match for Heuleman's grandfather William, who died in 1964. Tired in the buckle of the belt was a hair, which was 7.9 trillion times more likely to have come from Arsar Elrub than from a random unrelated person. About six months after Rex Heuleman's initial arrest, he was officially charged with the murder of Marine Brain Art Barnes on Tuesday, January 16, 2024. But investigators believed he was responsible for more murders than those of the Gilghoff 4. There were still six other victims they suspected he was responsible for.

1:00:31During the raids of Heuleman's home in Tiley, more than 400 electronic devices had been seized, including phones, laptops and hard drives. Stored on the devices were photos and videos of extreme pornography and violent content dating back to 1994. Heuleman had saved images he'd found of decapitated bodies, women bound with rope, mutilated breasts and child sexual abuse material. There was also evidence that he had viewed Ambling Costello's back page ad mere hours before he's first encounter with her on September 1, 2010. But not all of Heuleman's online and tech activities were accessible. He'd searched online for directions to wipe data from a computer and had purchased software that enabled him to shred digital files. There was evidence that he'd used this software on July 9, 2009, right before he met up with Melissa Batholome.

1:01:34Investigators believed he'd used the software to remove any evidence that he'd viewed her online advertisement. Heuleman's devices were handed over to forensic experts who might be able to recover some of the deleted information. During the analysis of a hard drive taken from Heuleman's basement, investigators recovered a Microsoft Word document that had been deleted titled HK2002-04. The original document was created in the year 2000 and had been named HK2000-03. Investigators suspected that Heuleman had renamed and updated the document over time to refer to impending years. As investigators read the file, they realised it referred to the planning and carrying out of murder. HK stood for the words hunt and kill. There were four columns on the first page with the headings, problems, supplies, DS and TRG.

1:02:42Beneath the word problems was a long list that included DNA, tie marks, blood stains, fingerprints, witness, hair and fibre and other items that could result in a killer being identified. The list for supplies mentioned things like rope, hair nets, police scanner and medical gloves. Investigators believed the column titled DS referred to dump sites. TRG appeared to be a reference to targets. Featuring on that list were the words, small is good. Beneath this first page were more lists that related to planning and preparing for a murder and what to do afterwards. Heuleman mentioned doing reconnaissance, looking out for surveillance cameras and checking the weather well in advance of a murder. Then closer to the event, he would set up a stage and a holding area where a victim would be suspended from the ceiling or bound to a table.

1:03:47This set up was consistent with the sorts of extreme bondage pornography that had been found on his devices. The final column was how he would cover his tracks, by changing car tires, burning and disposing of items and having a story set for where he'd been at the time. Further down the document, a section titled BodyPrap described how to remove evidence from a victim and prevent their identification. Some of the items on this list included, remove ID marks, tattoos and remove head and hands. The year that this document had been written and some of the items featured on Heuleman's lists made investigators more certain than ever, he was responsible for more of the victims. Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors.

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1:07:07Jessica Taylor was one of two victims whose partial remains were found near Gilgobach, while the rest of her body was left in a wooded area about 45 miles away. 20-year-old Jessica had gone missing on Monday, July 21, 2003, and her body was found five days later in Manaville. Her breasts had been mutilated and she was missing her head, hands and forearms. Most of these body parts were found almost eight years later during the extensive search along Ocean Parkway. While some close to the investigation had believed that different killer was behind Jessica's murder, others suspected that her murderer had also killed the Gilgobach IV, he'd just changed his methodology. There were other examples of the killer honing his methods over time. For example, he'd initially not had a problem with victims bringing their cell phones on dates, but eventually began instructing them to leave their phones at home.

1:08:08Probably because he realized that cell data allowed investigators to track a device's general location. After the news reported that Melissa Bartholomew's killer had taunted her younger sister with phone calls, he ceased to do that as well. The planning document Rex Hjörman had written up for the years 2002 to 2004, appeared to confirm the theory that he had changed his methodology over time. This was a man who planned meticulously and adapted along the way. Jessica Taylor had been identified in 2003 by a distinctive tattoo which her killer had tried to remove by cutting it repeatedly. Luckily medical examiners had been able to reconstruct the tattoo. Hjörman's office was also just a few blocks from where Jessica had been known to work, and once again, his family had been out of state at the time of the murder, vacationing with some friends in Vermont from July 20 until July 27.

1:09:11Hjörman had stayed home to work. Further forensic analysis of Hjörman's devices revealed that on July 28, 2003, two days after Jessica was found, he'd accessed an article about the case, headlined, cops seek help in IDing, Man of the Body. The article revealed that about 13 hours before Jessica's body was found, a witness who'd been in the area had noticed a dark coloured Chevrolet Avalanche backed up in the same wooded area, the same kind of vehicle that Hjörman owned. He later deleted that online activity and researched for a new Chevrolet Avalanche in bright blue or white, despite his dark green vehicle being just one year old of the time. Then he deleted that search as well. When Jessica Taylor's body was first examined, investigators recovered a human hair from beneath a plastic sheet she was laying on.

1:10:11Although it was believed that the hair had come from a Caucasian man's head, DNA testing capabilities weren't advanced enough in 2003 to test it further. By 2024 however, significant advances in technology allowed forensic experts to develop a DNA profile from the hair. It overwhelmingly pointed to the source being Räck Hjörman. The other victim recovered in both Manaville and Docean Parkway was 24-year-old Valerie Mack, who would only recently been identified via genetic genealogy. Valerie had been murdered between September and November of 2000, and a hunter's dog had found her body wrapped in garbage bags near the same area where Jessica would be recovered almost three years later. Like Jessica, her breasts were mutilated and she was missing her head, hands as well as her right leg from the mid-carf down, where she'd had a tattoo of her son's name.

1:11:12Investigators would find these dismembered remains more than a decade later along Ocean Parkway. It had a long been thought that whoever killed Jessica Taylor had also killed Valerie Mack. Räck Hjörman's digital devices revealed that throughout 2020 he had access to GilgoNews.com, a website maintained by Suffolk County Police Department to provide updates about the case. Several times he'd visited specific articles about the identification of Valerie Mack. Moreover, the planning document recovered from his hard drive was initially created in the year 2000, the year Valerie went missing. In a section where Hjörman had elisted possible dump sites for human remains, he'd mentioned the specific road where Valerie's body was found. A female hair found in one of the garbage bags that Valerie had been wrapped in came back as most likely belonging to Hjörman's daughter, Victoria, who would have been just three or four years old when Valerie was murdered.

1:12:18Investigators had enough to charge Räck Hjörman with the murders of Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack. If they were his earliest victims, then Hjörman had started murdering women in the early 2000s when he was in his late 30s. But in 2024, he would suddenly be linked to a much earlier case that, until then, hadn't been tied to the Gilgo murders at all. On Saturday, November 20, 1993, two hunters made their way through a wooded area of South Hampton in South Easton Suffolk County along the Afloan Hampton shoreline of Long Island. About 25 miles east of Manaville along a hamlet called North Sea, they discovered the remains of a young woman. She was lying on her back with her arm stretched over her head and her legs apart. Her striped shirt had been pulled up over her torso, exposing her chest. Her lower half was naked.

1:13:21Multiple stab wounds and cuts were visible across her face, torso, breasts, left thigh and a genitalia. The victim was identified as 28-year-old Sandra Castilla, originally an native of the Caribbean Jewel Island Nation Trinidad and Tobago. She had been living in Queens, New York City, when she went missing. The previous year, in 1992, she'd been arrested for jumping a subway turnstile, so police had a record of her fingerprints. Like all of the victims in the Gilgobage case, Sandra had been doing sex work at the time of her murder. Three foreign hairs were recovered from Sandra's body, two from her shirt and one from her right arm. In July 2014, almost a decade before Rex Huleman was identified as a suspect in the Gilgobage case, another man named John Bittrov was convicted of killing two sex workers in Suffolk County in 1993 and 1994 respectively.

1:14:26Thinking he might be responsible for Sandra's murder as well, investigators had the three hairs found on her body tested. Might a condrill DNA profiles were extracted from the hairs, ruling out John Bittrov as a contributor. Two were actually from an unknown woman, the third was from an unknown man. After the Gilgobage task force identified Rex Huleman as a suspect, they requested further testing on the hairs. Sandra Castilla hadn't been found in the same area as any other victim, but there were similarities in her victim profile. They found that the male hair left on Sandra had the same genetic profile as Rex Huleman. The female hairs were a match to a woman Huleman had lived with between 1991 and September 1993, years before he married his wife, Arthur. At the time of Sandra's murder in November 1993, Huleman was living alone in the childhood home where he'd grown up.

1:15:31He purchased that from his mother the following year. This meant that Rex Huleman had started killing at least seven years earlier than previously believed, shortly after his 30th birthday. The timing also placed Huleman's offending within a notable period in Long Island's history. Serial killers Joel Rifkin and Robert Schulman had also been targeting sex workers on Long Island in the early 1990s. Rifkin was arrested just five months before Sandra Castilla was murdered, while Schulman continued killing until 1995. It was an unusual concentration of serial killers with similar victim profiles in the same place and time. By the end of 2024, Rex Huleman had been charged with murdering seven women. Investigators strongly suspected he was guilty of killing in eighth, Fire Island Jane Doe, whose skull and teeth were located near Gilgo Beach in 2011.

1:16:36Those remains had been linked to a pair of severed legs that had been found in April 1996 in a garbage bag on Fire Island. In 2023, Fire Island Jane Doe was identified by a genetic genealogy as a 34-year-old Manhattan woman named Karen Vergada. Karen was believed to have been working as a sex worker when she went missing in mid-February 1996. The last time anybody had heard from her was when she called her father on February 14 to wish him a happy birthday. No missing person's report was filed at the time. Almost exactly two months after she went missing, Rex Huleman married his wife, Arthur Elrup, in Sweden. Law enforcement, the media and the public were overwhelmed by the extent of Rex Huleman's offending and wondered how many more murders he might have been behind.

1:17:37As well as looking at other unsolved long island cases, investigators considered whether Rex Huleman could be responsible for crimes in other states. In 2012, he'd given his Chevrolet Avalanche to his younger brother who lived in Chester, South Carolina. Huleman also owned about 18 acres of land nearby. Shortly after arresting Huleman, police seized the vehicle and searched it, looking for evidence of the crimes. Nothing of note was recovered, but Huleman's connections to South Carolina led to speculation that he might have harmed women there as well. News reports compared unsolved cases in the area to Huleman's crimes. Back in Long Island, some women who'd met Huleman previously came forward to share their stories. A picture emerged of a man who seemed to delight in discussing the crimes he was now accused of. Shortly after Huleman's arrest, a woman named Nicky Brass posted on TikTok about an encounter she'd had with him in 2015.

1:18:44Nicky had been working as an escort on Long Island at that time when she met Rex Huleman online. They met up for a date at a restaurant in Port Jefferson, almost an hour from Huleman's home in Massapequa Park. Nicky was immediately struck by how enormous Huleman was. They chatted for a little bit, then Huleman asked Nicky, are you into true crime? Nicky replied that she was and followed serial killer cases closely. Have you heard about the Gilgo Beach killings Huleman asked? He looked more excited and animated than he had before. He spoke of the Gilgo Four in particular, nicknaming them with numbers and calling them girl number one and girl number two instead of using their names. Huleman speculated about how the killer disposed of the bodies without being seen, adding that he lived near Gilgo Beach and it was very quiet and secluded.

1:19:46He invited Nicky back to his place, but she got a bad feeling and to end at the date. She texted a friend to come and meet her, saying, I think I'm on a date with the Gilgo Beach killer. Questions still remained about the victims along or nearby Ocean Parkway whose murders Huleman hadn't been charged with. Answers would eventually arrive for some. It would take investigators the better part of two decades to identify the victims who'd been known as Peaches and Baby Doh, an African-American mother and daughter whose remains had been strewn eight miles apart from one another. The doe had been left fully intact, initially investigators only recovered her mother's arms and legs, which had been placed in a plastic bag and left near Jones Beach State Park. In December 2016, DNA linked these remains to a torso found in Hempstead Lake Park, about

1:20:4820 miles northwest of Gilgo Beach. That victim had been dubbed Peaches after a tattoo on her left breast. Doctors had released a photo of the tattoo, hoping it would prompt someone who knew her to come forward, but no credible leads resulted. However, investigators eventually managed to identify both the mother and child via genetic genealogy. On Wednesday, April 23, 2025, it was announced that Peaches and Baby Doe were Tanya Jackson, a 26-year-old originally from Alabama and her two-year-old daughter, Tadiana Dix. Tanya had served in the US Army from 1993 to 1995, and while she was stationed in Texas, she met a medical sergeant named Andrew Dix. He was married with two sons, but the two had an affair leading to Tanya conceiving Tadiana.

1:21:48Shortly after Tadiana was born, Dix was transferred to a base in Brooklyn. Tanya relocated to be closer to him, wanting a relationship with the father of her child. At the time Tanya and Tadiana were murdered, they'd been living in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park. Their disappearance had gone largely unnoticed, as Tanya was estranged from her family back in Alabama. Police had questioned Andrew Dix in 1997 after Tanya and Tadiana went missing, and he denied having a relationship with Tanya. Following Tanya and Tadiana's identification, investigators said they weren't sure whether their case was linked to the Gilgogo Beach serial killings. Then, almost eight months later, on December 5, 2025, DNA evidence found on Tanya's remains led to Andrew Dix being arrested and charged with her murder. The now 66-year-old man wasn't charged with killing Tadiana due to a lack of evidence,

1:22:52but investigators believed he was responsible for both deaths. Dix has pleaded not guilty, and as of the release of this episode, is still awaiting his trial. The identification of Tanya Jackson and Tadiana Dix left only one Gilgogo Beach victim who was yet to be identified. Asian Doe was the name given to a victim who was biologically male but found wearing women's clothing, leading to speculation that they had been a trans woman. Unlike the majority of the other victims who were white, Asian Doe's DNA indicated that they were most likely of Han Chinese descent. Investigators believed Asian Doe had been killed via blunt-force trauma around the year 2006 or earlier. They were wearing pants, a bra, and a blue ribbed short-sleeved shirt. Age to between 17 and 23, Asian Doe was five-foot six inches tall.

1:23:55Some believed that this victim's profile made them less likely to have been killed by Rex Huyman. But Huyman's digital footprint suggested otherwise. When trawling through Huyman's online searches, investigators found that he had looked for Asian escorts in Manhattan as well as transgender sex workers. He had also googled the words, Asian Twink tied up porn. Twink is a slang term from the LGBTQ plus community used to refer to a young sling man with a boyish, sure-ran, droginous appearance. This led to speculation that Asian Doe may have been one of Rex Huyman's victims after all. On Monday, September 16, 2024, the Suffolk County District Attorney and the Gilgobach task force released two new high-tech facial reconstructions of what Asian Doe may have looked like. One depicted a more masculine presenting individual while the other showed a feminine presenting

1:24:57person. As of the release of this episode, Asian Doe has not been identified. The final remains awaiting resolution were those of Shannon Gilbert, the woman whose disappearance had triggered the entire investigation and led to the discovery of all the others. Ever since Shannon's body was found in the marsh in Oak Beach, investigators had concluded that Shannon's death was a tragic accident and entirely unconnected to the Gilgobach serial killings. Their theory was that during her appointment with her client Joseph Brewer, Shannon had possibly suffered a mental health episode, leading to her becoming scared and disoriented. Believing that people were pursuing her with ill intent, she fled and became lost in the dense marsh where she died of exposure and or drowning. But Shannon's family and other people connected to the case disagreed with this conclusion,

1:25:58pointing in part to her official law topsy, which listed her death as undetermined. In early 2016, Shannon's family commissioned a second examination by a private medical pathologist. He found that the condition of Shannon's hyoid bone, a small bone in the front of the neck, was consistent with strangulation. However, he too ruled Shannon's cause of death is undetermined, finding that there was insufficient information to determine exactly how Shannon had died. Shannon's mother Marie Gilbert became her fiercest advocate, pushing police to take her disappearance seriously from the start and continuing to speak up for her daughter after her death was said to be an accident. Gilbert Kolker, who wrote the acclaimed book Lost Girls about the Gilgobage case, described Marie as willing to challenge the authorities in ways that some of the other women's families were reluctant to.

1:26:58She spoke up for all of the women involved in the case, pointing out the unfair stigma around sex work and insisting that the case be taken seriously. Marie never accepted that Shannon's death was accidental and arranged for her daughter's second autopsy. Five months after the results of this examination were shared, Marie was stabbed to death by her daughter Sarah on Saturday, July 23, 2016. Sarah suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and said voices had told her to kill her mother. She invited Marie over to her apartment where she then killed her. Sarah was charged with second degree murder and convicted the following year. She is currently serving her sentence of 25 years to life. Marie died before the arrest of Rex Huleman, preventing her from seeing some of the resolutions she had fought so hard for.

1:28:01Rex Huleman initially pleaded not guilty to all of the seven murders he had been charged with. Although the evidence investigators had shared with the public via charging documents had most people accepting his guilt before he had even been trialed, Huleman maintained the support of his nearest and dearest. Arsarell Rupp, his wife of 27 years, could not believe that her husband was guilty of the horrific crimes he was charged with. She saw him as her personal savior and a devoted father. Plus, he told her he didn't do it. Arsarell always took her husband's word for everything, never challenging or doubting him. He was an authority figure in their relationship and she was loyal to him. Huleman had been the family's breadwinner as well as his daughter Victoria's employer. With him gone, they faced financial struggles. Six days after his arrest, Arsarell filed for a divorce which was uncontested by Huleman.

1:29:06It is believed that this was primarily done to protect the family's assets, including their home in Massapequa Park. Arsarell continued to maintain an emotional relationship with Huleman and he called her regularly from jail. Arsarell and Huleman's children appeared in a four-part documentary series titled House of Secrets in which they allowed filmmakers into their home, the same place where Huleman had committed his crimes. In return, they were paid more than a million dollars by the production company G Unit in conjunction with the streaming platform Peacock, a deal that angered many of the family members of the victims. Over the course of several years, Arsarell and Victoria shared their thoughts with the documentary crew via exclusive interviews. Four months after Huleman's arrest, Arsarell stated on camera that she believed the killer had to be a man without children, not a family man like her husband.

1:30:09She couldn't comprehend a father being capable of murder. At the same time, Huleman's defence lawyers and the Suffolk County District Attorney's office prepared for the criminal trial. It was expected to be the biggest trial the county had ever seen, but in the spring of 2025, almost two years after Huleman was arrested, he began to discuss the possibility of a plea deal. From the prosecution's perspective, a plea deal would make the process easier for the victim's families, preventing them from having to hear certain things or having painful details published in the media. As far as Huleman's attorneys were concerned, the evidence against their client was overwhelming. They had tried to have the DNA evidence excluded, but a judge had ruled it was admissible. They had also wanted each murder to be trialed separately, but that request had also been denied.

1:31:10The cases would be far more dimming when lumped together, revealing a broader pattern. Realising the writing was on the wall, Huleman agreed to plead guilty, possibly believing that doing so was the only way he could exert any control over his situation. He wouldn't be facing a reduced sentence by pleading guilty, but he would be dictating the narrative somewhat. As part of the agreement, Huleman would cooperate with the FBI's behavioural analysis unit, providing information that may help them when it came to investigating other serial killers. Once he had another condition, he wanted to meet with his wife and daughter individually prior to publicly pleading guilty, so he could tell them the truth and answer any questions they had before the wider world heard what he'd done. In August of 2025, Huleman's wife and daughter visited him in two separate meetings at Suffolk County Correctional Facility where he was being held.

1:32:13Us's meeting was the first. When she walked into the room where Huleman was waiting, she saw that he looked nervous. Hasse sat down at a table across from her husband and said, So, Mr. Huleman, I understand that you were confessing to me on these murders. Can you please tell me how many of these women did you kill? He replied, eight. Huleman had only been charged with killing seven women. The eighth was Karen Vergara, the woman previously known as Fire Island Jane Doe. Investigators had suspected Huleman was responsible for her murder, but hadn't had the same strong evidence for that case as they had for the others. Huleman told us that all of the murders had been planned in advance with the exception of the first Sandra Castilla. He claimed he had killed her while the two were in the Dodge Ram Charger he don't back

1:33:14in 1993. It had been a spontaneous act committed before he'd become romantically involved with Asa. Sandra was stabbed to death. Karen Vergara was his next victim killed in April 1996, just days before he is and Asa's wedding. Huleman strangled her in his home's basement. He hadn't used the gun vault as investigators suspected. He'd killed her in his childhood bedroom. Asa, who was then two months pregnant, had flown to Sweden for a three week holiday with her son Christopher. Huleman had joined them two weeks in and the couple was married in Sweden on April 13. The six victims that followed all shared the same pattern. They were killed while Asa and her children were away, tortured and strangled in Huleman's childhood bedroom in the basement. Three of the women had been dismembered there as well.

1:34:17He spent considerable time planning each crime, carrying it out and meticulously cleaning up afterwards. Listening to her husband, Asa didn't feel like he expressed any remorse. He cried at times, but she felt as though his tears were for her, not his victims. Asa believed that Huleman deliberately chose a wife who was insecure and wouldn't challenge him. He had been briefly married before Asa and described his first wife as crazy and uncontrollable. In contrast, Asa idolized him, believing every word he said and felt deep gratitude that he had chosen her. Speaking to a psychotherapist who was hired by Asa Elrup's lawyer, Huleman said he'd had dark thoughts about death, mutilation and violent sexual fantasies as a teenager, but provided no explanation as to why these thoughts had started. He claimed he'd stopped killing after Amber Ling Costello because he was no longer

1:35:21experiencing gratification from his crimes. The psychotherapist pushed back against this, pointing out that the discovery of the bodies on Gilgoy Beach three months after Amber's murder, Sean a spotlight on the murders that had been existed before. She believed Huleman had only stopped out of fear of being caught. On Wednesday, April 6, 2026, 62-year-old Rex Huleman appeared in the Suffolk County Court and pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Melissa Bathormy, Meghan Waterman and Amber Ling Costello, and the second-degree murder of Marine Brain Art Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack and Sandra Castell. He also admitted to killing Karen Vagata, whose murder he hadn't been formally charged with. After admitting to his crimes, Huleman concluded, there are no words I can say. The words I would say have no meaning.

1:36:24In response, the judge retorted, I know that you're sorry you got caught. I assume that you're sorry for what you've done to your wife and children. Are you a little bit sorry for what you did to these poor innocent women? Then he continued, you've been described as a very big man, but you're a disgusting and despicable small man if you're a man at all and you're a coward. Then he addressed the bailiffs, stating, alright, get him out of here. Huleman has prompted the families and loved ones of the victims who were present in the courtroom to burst out in cheers and applause. One person chanted, ogre ogre, a reference to Huleman's distinctive physical appearance that had been crucial to his suspect description and identification. Huleman has never admitted to killing Agendot, which hasn't prevented many from believing that he's responsible for that crime, as well as other cold cases.

1:37:28And Doe's murder remains an active homicide investigation. There are also dozens of unsolved murders involving women on Long Island, some of whom were sex workers. Rex Huleman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He received three life sentences for the first degree murder charges and four 25-year-to-life sentences for the second degree murder convictions, all of which will run consecutively. On the day of Huleman's sentencing, the court was packed with family members and loved ones of the women murdered, who were there to represent all of the victims. The exception was Karen Vagada, who had only been in sporadic contact with her father when she was killed, and he had died in 2022 before his daughter's case was solved. The family members berated Huleman and mourned their lost loved ones. Jasmine Robinson, a cousin of Jessica Taylor, told Huleman,

1:38:32You chose small women because you're nothing more than a weak disgusting coward. Valerie Max Perance said that although justice had finally been done, the damage Huleman had inflicted on their family was irreparable. Amanda Funderberg, the younger sister of Melissa Batholomey, who had received taunting phone calls from Huleman when she was just 15, spoke about the questions she'd lived with for a decade and a half. I always wonder if it would have happened if I would have been there, would she still be here? Would she have been spared because you wouldn't have met her or because I would have known where she was going? But those questions don't matter because you still took her from me, from all of us. Noticing that Huleman was staring blankly at the table in front of him, Amanda addressed him directly. You can look at me while I'm talking, she said. It's been about 17 years since we spoke.

1:39:35Don't forget. The Huleman kept gazing down at the table as Amanda shared details of the lifelong trauma she and her family had endured, how the calls he'd made to her caused unspeakable suffering. I was 15, 15 years old. I know you don't care, she added. I was rubbed of my youth, rubbed of my young adulthood, and I still feel rubbed to this day. There were so many years that I didn't want to be on this earth anymore. I would have never taken my own life, but it got to the point where I didn't care what happened to me. I simply didn't want to be here without her. Missy Can, the sister of Marine Brain Arbanz, cried as she recalled the day when she learnt her sister had been murdered. She described being plagued by survivors' guilt and endless what-ifs, wondering if somehow Marine could have been saved.

1:40:36It has taken me years to know the truth. My actions did not cause my sister's death. The guilt is not mine to carry, she said. This burden belongs to Rex and Rex alone. I hope he's forced to sit with the reality and feel even a fraction of the weight the trauma and the pain I've carried for so long. Missy spent time telling the court about Marine, who she described as a rare soul, intelligent and insightful. She had always been Missy's protector. A statement was read aloud on behalf of Amber Lingkostelo's sister, Kim, in which she credited Amber with lighting the match that led to Huymen's eventual downfall. Amber had gotten the better of Huymen when she and her housemate Dave ripped him off the first time he visited. As Kim pointed out, this had likely ignited fits of rage in the Egotistical Narsusist

1:41:36Rex Huymen, prompting him to seek revenge against Amber the following night, despite having already been seen by Dave. This allowed her witness to pass along crucial details to police, which were key to identifying Huymen. A statement was also read on behalf of Sandra Kostelo's sister, Ruth, who had been waiting decades for justice for her sister. Ruth expressed her gratitude to law enforcement for solving her sister's case and the other women's cases as well. She recalled Sandra as a beautiful, intelligent woman with the endless potential, who cherished being a mother to her son. He had been the center of her world and losing her at a young age had caused a reputable damage to him. My heart is with all the families Ruth wrote, and it is my deepest hope that their loved ones will find peace and will honor their lives by living their best lives.

1:42:36And made the children left behind carry on a beautiful legacy of their mothers. Lilliana Warteman, the daughter of Meghan Warteman, shared all of the things she had missed out on by having her mother taken from her. She had been three years old when her mother was murdered and was now about twenty. She had never experienced what it was like to be comforted by Meghan after a bad day, to hear her advice or be guided by her unconditional love. After eventually learning the truth of what had happened to her mother, Lilliana was tormented by knowing that Meghan had only been doing escort work to provide a better life for her. Meghan's mother had died in August of 2022, almost a year before Hulman's arrest. She never got to see the capture of her daughter's killer or witness him being brought to justice. Meghan's aunt Elizabeth Mazzurve spoke instead. Elizabeth said Meghan had been repeatedly victimised, first by the man who trafficked her

1:43:42and then by Rex Hulman, who had access to Meghan because of what her pimped had done. I'm certain my niece Ford is hard as she possibly could to come back to her daughter, who she loved with every fiber of her being. She described Meghan as funny, strong and devoted to her family in France. Elizabeth also used her platform to talk about the ways the family had been re-victimised by others after Hulman. First, by the corruption of former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke and former district attorney Thomas Spoter. Under their watch, key evidence in the case had been ignored and assistance was rejected so that light couldn't be shown on their corruption. If they had done their jobs properly, the case might have been solved a decade earlier. In 2011, investigators already had the crucial information they needed to identify the Long Island Serial Killer.

1:44:42Elizabeth had also felt re-victimised when she learnt that Hulman's family would be receiving more than a million dollars for participating in a documentary series on the case. At She Soared, they were profiting from the crimes committed by their patriarch. Maureen's sister Missy agreed with Elizabeth and the two women have formed the Gilgoye Victims Committee with the intention of revising New York's son of Sam Law. As it currently stands, criminals cannot profit from their crimes by speaking or writing about them, but a loophole allows their families to receive money for the same. Much has been made over the years about the fact that Hulman's victims went unseen by so many for so long. Law enforcement officers initially dismissed their disappearances, and when they were found, they reassured the general public that they had nothing to be afraid of. When journalist Robert Kolkher wrote his definitive book about the case, he titled it Lost Girls

1:45:47as a nod to the way society had failed them. In her statement, Elizabeth Miserve addressed this aspect of the case and how Hulman had deliberately selected victims he saw as disposable. He pointed out that the legacy of the eight women he murdered would go well beyond what he ever could have anticipated, stating, The prison is planned to erase Megan Maureen, Melissa, Amber, Jessica, Valerie, Sandra, and Karen, backfired. Because of his vile and cowardly actions, our loved ones will be spoken of for years to come with love and reverence. Not only by their families and friends, but by millions of people around the world who now mourn their loss.

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1:48:02I hope you see. Search exploreworldwide.com and don't just travel. Explore.