Heuermann's Family Fallout and the Calls That Haunted a Teenager

Someone used Melissa Barthelemy's phone to call her 15-year-old sister for five straight weeks after Melissa vanished. Always under three minutes. Always from crowded Manhattan streets. Always targeting the teenager — never the mother. The calls described what had been done to Melissa in detail no stranger should have known. The burner phone Melissa had connected with on the day she disappeared traveled the exact route between Rex Heuermann's Massapequa Park home and his Midtown office. Hours later, Melissa's own phone followed that route back.

Melissa was a licensed cosmetologist from Buffalo who came to New York chasing a dream of owning her own salon. She was 24. Prosecutors allege Heuermann searched for images of the victims' families online after the killings — their children, their sisters.

Meanwhile, the family Heuermann came home to is fracturing in public. Asa Ellerup watched from the last row of the courtroom as her ex-husband admitted to killing eight women. She walked out into a wrongful death lawsuit naming her and their daughter Victoria as defendants. The suit, filed by the son of victim Valerie Mack, alleges the family profited from a documentary. Victoria has publicly stated she believes her father most likely committed the killings. Asa's attorney has called the allegations reckless.

Retired FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program Chief Robin Dreeke and defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis join the panel to break down the psychology behind the taunting phone calls — what targeting a teenager reveals about the caller's need for control — the legal mechanics of the wrongful death suit and the family's civil exposure after the guilty plea, and the behavioral research on how families of serial offenders process the unthinkable when the evidence becomes undeniable.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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