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

For early access and ad-free episodes, check out our Patreon, Apple Premium and Spotify subscription memberships. 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, and 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. He'd walk up to parked cars, jiggling their door handles in the hopes of finding them unlocked. 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, he saw Christopher's car. When he got back home, he took the bag down to the basement. Inside were a number of items. There was a box of cigars, a humidor, toiletries including lubricants, some sex toys and several pornographic DVDs. There was also a gun belt with two Glock 9mm magazines, handcuffs and a whistle. Later that same morning, Christopher's parole officer showed up unannounced at the Smithtown home where Christopher lived with his wife. 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 were also there. Others who'd remained at the property were undertaking a search. One of those present was Suffolk County's then-Chief of Police, James Burke. The 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 to fucking steal from me? You want to fucking steal from me? Different people were recovered along Ocean Parkway in the spring of 2011. Suffolk County Police Department was facing a case of mammoth proportions. However, the victims' 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 Dormer arguing publicly with 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 Dormer being affiliated with a political rival of Spoter's. As Dormer 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 Pius. Johnny 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 street, his throat asphyxiating 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. This 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 name 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. One of them was that one of the boys was the victim of a car accident. The other was that one of the boys was the victim of a car accident. Thomas Spoter began seeking out other adolescents who might be able to act as witnesses, and landed 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. All four teenagers were convicted, though many held doubts about their guilt. And from that time on, Thomas Spoter 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 sergeant at age 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 Spoter, who was by then working in a private practice, offered to represent Burke. Burke'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 Vice described Burke as a sex-obsessed narcissist. There were rumours that he would shake down drug dealers for their contraband, and then pocket them for his personal use. Throughout every scandal, Thomas Spoter had his back. In 2002, Thomas Spoter became Suffolk County's district attorney and hired Burke to work in his office overseeing investigations. It seemed obvious to the rest of Spoter's staff that Spoter 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 a decade later in 2012, right as Suffolk County was facing its biggest crime in a generation, the Gilgo Beach case. It 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 Spoter 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 this way. But it was likely that he still had a record 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. The 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 caught in duct tape or burlap that was used to bind the women. And at least two of the victim's 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 later be characterised as a complete ethical freeloader. 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. In 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 number one ally, Thomas Spoter, also prioritised 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 at Duffelberg was his. He was an outsider and resisted many of his investigative efforts. He left the job of police chief in 2018 after being elected as district attorney. Sini 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. She was one of two victims who'd had some remains discarded along Ocean Parkway, and the rest of her body left in a wooded area of Manorville, 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 5 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 a 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 offences. She was also thought to sometimes work in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Now, 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. It was evidence that had been kept under wraps – a leather belt that had been used to bind Maureen Brainard Barnes. It was a distinctive belt due to the fact that one end had been embossed with the owner's initials, H.M. or W.H., depending on the angle you looked at it. Chief Hart shared photos of the belt with the public in the hopes somebody would recognise it. Unfortunately, no leads resulted, and the case continued to stay. It was a case that would eventually stagnate. The tide finally turned in 2021, when a new district attorney was elected in Suffolk County. Ray Tierney campaigned heavily on the platform that he wanted the Gilgo case solved, and met with some of the victim's family members. After 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. Harrison 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 Gilgo 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 digitised. 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 digitisation. He and D.A. Tierney also wanted a special task force to be dedicated entirely to the investigation. Chief 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, investigators from numerous agencies, from the state police and Nassau 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 watching. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. Shortly after the bodies of the Gilgo Four were identified in early 2011, investigators interviewed those who had been closest to them, including Dave Schaller, the housemaid and good friend of Amberlyn Costello. Amber had been the last of the four women to go missing, disappearing after an appointment with a client on Thursday September 2 2010, roughly three months before her body was found. At the time of her murder, Amber had been living in West Babylon, a town in Suffolk County in Dave Schaller's residence. Detectives 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 work 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 foot 4 and 6 foot 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 oval eyeglasses. Dave 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. Amber agreed to meet the client down the street, possibly because he'd told her he didn't want to see her angry boyfriend again. Dave had escorted Amber as far as the letter box, then turned to see the same dark-coloured 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 set about searching for his vehicle registration. They found nothing, and the lead went nowhere. Journalist Robert Kolker reported that a source told him the Chevy Avalanche had likely been miscategorised 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 and his vehicle, the Suffolk County detectives hadn't passed this tip on to Dave. Dave said he'd seen the car in the middle of the street, and that he'd seen the vehicle in the middle of the street. The police said he'd seen the vehicle in the middle of the street, and that he'd seen the vehicle in the middle of the street. The task force searched for first-generation dark green Chevrolet Avalanches in a private, subscription-based vehicle database that was more comprehensive than New York's DMV records. He got a hit immediately. At the time of the murders, a green Chevrolet Avalanche had been registered to a man living in Massapequa Park in Nassau County. Two of the victim's phones had pinged cell towers in this same suburban neighbourhood after they'd gone missing, and the man's home was at the centre 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 November of 2011, the Avalanche had purchased the Avalanche. In 2012, more than a year into the Gilgo Beach 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 the Avalanche had purchased the vehicle's ownership and registration to his brother, who lived several states away in South Carolina. he was a perfect match to the physical description Dave Schaller had given. He had the same tall, hulking build, was white with a dark mop of hair, wore large eyeglasses, and would have been in his mid-forties 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 Heuermann. Born on September 13 1963, Rex Heuermann was born and raised in Massapequa Park, a leafy, middle-class neighbourhood on Long Island's south shore. His father, Theodore, was an aerospace engineer who served in the United States Air Force during World War Two. Heuermann 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. Heuermann desperately wanted to follow in his father's footsteps by joining the Air Force, but he had dyslexia, which presented an obstacle. Theodore was disappointed by this. Heuermann'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 Heuermann was 12 years old, his father died. His mother continued to raise her children in the same Massapequa Park home on First Avenue, a modest, wood-panelled, ranch-style house. Rex Heuermann'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 sixth grade, trying to beat him up, but were stopped by a teacher. In addition to facing physical attacks, Heuermann was on the receiving end of verbal insults, with one classmate telling the New York Times: "He 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, Heuermann'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 stagehand. He didn't socialise, and amongst some of his peers, he developed a reputation for having a mean streak. One thing at school that Heuermann 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 "RH Consultants and Associates". His job was to oversee renovations to ensure they followed the proper building codes. That same year, Heuermann 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 Massapequa Park to his office near Penn Station. Two years later, in April 1996, he married Asa Elrup, who was one month his junior. Asa had been born in Iceland, but was put up for adoption along with her little brother. Her brother stayed in Iceland while Asa 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. Asa struggled with having been adopted, feeling unloved, unwelcomed, unwanted, and like a perpetual outsider. When she was 16 years old, she was sexually assaulted by a boy in her neighbourhood. Struggling in the aftermath of the assault, Asa attempted suicide. She later left high school and began working at a 7-11. Her life would change when she met Rex Heuermann. Their paths first crossed when they were both 18 and Heuermann was at college. Asa was attracted to Heuermann's six-foot-four 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 Asa gave birth to a son named Christopher, who had developmental disabilities. Asa wanted to leave her husband, and when he made it clear he wasn't going to make it that easy for her, she reached out to Heuermann for support. The two became romantically involved and in November of 1995, Asa and Christopher moved into the Massapequa Park residence with Heuermann. A few months later, Asa 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 Asa, Heuermann was a saviour 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, Asa 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. Rex Heuermann enjoyed woodworking, which he'd learnt 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 Heuermann residence 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 while trick-or-treating at Halloween. Sometimes, Heuermann 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. He wasn't someone who invited neighbourly conversations. When the task force responsible for the Gilgo Beach investigation identified Rex Heuermann as a person of interest in March of 2022, they set 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 last been seen with Amberlyn 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 Heuermann's wife had been out of the country on some significant dates. On Wednesday July 8 2009, Asa Elrup and her children flew to Iceland for a five-week vacation. Two days after they left, 24-year-old Melissa Bartholomew went missing after meeting up with a client. Asa's cell phone billing records also placed her out of state in June 2010 when Megan Waterman went missing. Asa's phone records also placed her out of state in June 2010 when Megan Waterman went missing. Asa had purchased season tickets for the Six Flags Amusement Park and taken her children to ride the roller coasters there. Heuermann suffered from motion sickness so hadn't accompanied his family. Knowing that Asa had been away when three of the victims were killed, giving Heuermann the house to himself, bolstered the detectives' suspicions. They also obtained cell phone and credit card billing records for Heuermann, which gave them general information about his locations on the same date. Again and again, they saw that Rex Heuermann's phone had been pinging off the same cell towers as the burner phones used in the crimes, at the same time. Not once was there an incident where the burner phones were found to be in a different area from Heuermann's phone. His cell also corresponded to the location of the phones belonging to Maureen Brainard Barnes and Melissa Bartholomew, which the killer had used to check the victim's voicemail and make taunting calls to their loved ones. On June July 10 2009, the last day that Melissa Bartholomew was seen alive, both her phone and Heuermann's phone were in Massapequa, then travelled together towards New York City. Later, they travelled 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 4 Penn Plaza, less than half a mile from Heuermann's office. Heuermann's phone placed him in the same location. In every subsequent call to Amanda from Melissa's phone, both that phone and Heuermann's were always in the same place in New York City at times when Heuermann was in his office there. Amanda 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 Heuermann had flown to Iceland on Tuesday August 10 to join his family on their holiday. There was no activity on Melissa Bartholomew's phone while Heuermann was overseas. He returned home on Wednesday August 18. The very next day, activity for Melissa's phone resumed and Amanda received another call. Investigators also discovered that Rex Heuermann 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. Heuermann's verified phone had been used to log into the phone, but it was not used to log into the phone. 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 Hulman had taken of himself, posing in front of a bathroom mirror, then sent to his prospective date. A search warrant for one particular email account revealed that Hulman 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, Hulman had also made more than 200 searches about active and known serial killers, the specific disappearances of the women known as the Gilgo Four, and the investigation into their murders. He looked up podcasts and documentaries that had covered the now notorious case, and googled Melissa Bartholomew's sister, referring to Amanda, whom he'd tormented via phone calls years earlier. He read articles about the recently formed task force that was devoted to solving the Gilgo murders, and researched how cell site analysis was used to solve crimes. In addition to looking into Hulman'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 Gilgo Four: Maureen Brainard Barnes, Megan Waterman, and Amberlyn 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. Maureen's hair had been found on the remains of three of the Gilgo Four. Investigators were eager to test his DNA. Five hairs had been found on the remains of three of the Gilgo Four. On Thursday July 21 2022, an undercover Suffolk County detective went to Rex Hulman'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 Hulman 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 drank an energy drink throughout the journey. When she disembarked at Massapequa 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 Arsa Elderup's mitochondrial DNA profile. Two were left on Megan Waterman's body, the third was on Maureen Brainard Barnes. A fourth hair stuck to duct tape around Amberlyn Costello's head was consistent with Victoria's. Investigators believed the hairs had been inadvertently transferred by Hulman from the family home onto the women's remains. The lone male hair had been recovered from the bottom of the burlap that had been used to wrap Megan Waterman's body. Shortly after launching the investigation into Rex Hulman, 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 Hulman 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 the police station. They were 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. On 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 Hulman for 16 months. He was now 59 years old, but was still actively pursuing sex workers via burner phones 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 known murder had been committed more than a decade earlier in 2010, there was always a chance that he might be biding his time before killing again. By July, the team was ready to make an arrest. Just before 8:30pm on Thursday July 13 2023, Rex Hulman 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, Hulman 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." A little over two hours later in Massapequa Park, Rex Hulman's family heard a loud banging on the front door of their house. "FBI. Open up. Called a loud voice." The late intrusion was a shock to Asa and her daughter Victoria, who were still waiting for Hulman to return home. Asa let the agents inside and they asked her, "Do you know why we're here?" "My husband's guns," Asa asked. Hulman 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. The two women were stunned and disbelieving. Asa and Victoria were told that their home was now considered a crime scene. 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 Hulman'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 Nassau counties, the FBI, and the state police. Asa and Victoria were told that they had never seen Hulman in person. Asa and Victoria were told that she had never seen Hulman in person. 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. Tents were set up outside and there was a steady stream of officers removing belongings from the home. Tools 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 Huermann 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 Huermann 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 stairs and was soundproofed. Huermann kept the vault locked at all times and his family members were only allowed in there under his supervision. Investigators suspected that he had taken his victims back to his home and held 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 Huermann'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 room that had been used as a bedroom. It also appeared that while the exterior of the Huermann house had been left to slowly fall into disrepair, several renovations had been completed inside the home. Investigators learnt that while his family was away in Iceland in July of 2009, Rex Huermann had remodelled one of the bathrooms. This renovation also coincided with the murder of Melissa Bartholomew, who died in 2009. Huermann 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 bathtub 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 Huermann's arrest to announce that a suspect in the Gilgo Beach murders had finally been apprehended. Huermann had only been charged with three of the murders at this stage, those of Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman and Amberlyn Costello. Investigators were seeking more evidence relating to the murder of Maureen Brainerd Barnes and the other victims who had been killed during the 1990s and early 2000s. For that, they needed to work on the timelines when each crime was committed. It would ultimately emerge that Asa Elrop and her children had also been away during the period in July 2007 when Maureen Brainerd Barnes had gone missing. In addition to searching Huermann's home and office, investigators had obtained warrants to search some storage units in the community that had been used for the murder of Maureen Brainerd Barnes. They had 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. Asa had taken the kids there for a holiday from July 6 to July 20. Huermann had joined them for the second week of the vacation, arriving on July 13. Maureen had gone missing on July 9. Investigators now had evidence that on each occasion that one of the Gilgo Four had been murdered, Rex Huermann had his home entirely to himself. Maureen's last known location was Penn Station, which was just a few blocks away from Rex Huermann'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 Huermann's grandfather, William, who died in 1964. Tied in the buckle of the belt was a hair which was 7.9 trillion times more likely to have come from Asa Elrub than from a random, unrelated person. About six months after Rex Huermann's initial arrest, he was officially charged with the murder of Maureen Brainerd Barnes on Tuesday, January 6 2016 2024. But investigators believed he was responsible for more murders than those of the Gilgo Four. There were still six other victims they suspected he was responsible for. During the raids of Huermann's home and office, 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. Huermann 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 Amberlyn Costello's back page ad mere hours before his first encounter with her on September 1 2010. But not all of Huermann'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 Bartholomew. Investigators believed he'd used the software to remove any evidence that he'd viewed her online advertisement. Huermann's devices were handed over to forensic experts who might have been able to identify the victim. Huermann's might be able to recover some of the deleted information. During the analysis of a hard drive taken from Huermann'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 Huermann 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. Beneath the word problems was a long list, that included DNA, tyre marks, bloodstains, 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 a number of items on this 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. Huermann 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 wall. He would then set up a stage and a holding area where the victim would be bound to a table. This setup 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 tyres, 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 body prep 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 Huermann's lists, made investigators more certain than ever he was responsible for more of the victims. The case file will be back shortly. Jessica Taylor was one of two victims whose partial remains were found near Gilgo Beach 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 Manorville. 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 a different killer was behind Jessica's murder, others suspected that her murderer had also killed the Gilgo Four. 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. Probably because he realised that cell data allowed investigators to track a device on the ground. So, he'd just changed his methodology over time. After the news reported that Melissa Bartholomew's killer had taunted her younger sister with phone calls, he ceased doing that as well. The planning document Rex Heumann had written up for the years 2002-2004 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 as the killer's mother. She was 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. Heumann'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. Heumann had stayed at the hospital for the rest of her life. Heumann stayed home to work. Further forensic analysis of Heumann's devices revealed that on July 28 2003, two days after Jessica was found, he'd accessed an article about the case headlined 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 Heumann owned. He later deleted that online activity and searched for a new Chevrolet Avalanche in bright blue or white, despite his dark green vehicle being just one year old at 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 lying on. Although it was believed that the body had been found, and 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 Rex Heumann. The other victim recovered in both Manorville and Ocean Parkway was 24-year-old Heumann. He was also identified as a 12-year-old Valerie Mack, who had 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-calf down, where she'd had a tattoo of her son's name. Investigators would find these dismembered remains more than a decade later along Ocean Parkway. It had long been thought that whoever killed Jessica Taylor had also killed Valerie Mack. Rex Heumann'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 Suffolk County Police Department and 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 Heumann had listed 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 Heumann's body. Heumann's daughter, Victoria, who would have been just three or four years old when Valerie was murdered. Investigators had enough to charge Rex Heumann with the murders of Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack. If they were his earliest victims, then Heumann 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 GilgoNews.com website. GilgoMurders.com On Saturday November 20 1993, two hunters made their way through a wooded area of Southampton in southeastern Suffolk County along the Afflearn-Hampton shoreline of Long Island. About 25 miles east of Manorville, along a hamlet called North Sea, they discovered the remains of a young woman. She was lying on her back with her arms 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. Multiple stab wounds and cuts were visible across her face, torso, breasts, left thigh and genitalia. The victim was identified as 28-year-old Sandra Castilla. Originally a 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 Gilgo Beach 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 Heumann was identified as a suspect in the Gilgo case, another man named John Bittrolf was convicted of killing two sex workers in Suffolk County in 1993 and 1994, respectively. Thinking he might be responsible for Sandra's murder as well, investigators had the three hairs found on her body tested. Mitochondrial DNA profiles were extracted from the hairs, ruling out John Bittrolf as a contributor. After the Gilgo task force identified Rex Heumann 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 Heumann. The female hairs were a match to a woman Heumann had lived with between 1991 and September 1993, years before he married his wife, Asa. At the time of Sandra's murder in November 1993, Heumann was living alone in the childhood home where he'd grown up. He purchased it from his mother the following year. This meant that Rex Heumann had started killing at least seven years earlier than previously believed, shortly after his 30th birthday. The timing also placed Heumann's offending within a notable period in Long Island's history. Serial killers Joel Rifkin and Robert Shulman 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 Shulman continued killing until 1995. It was an unusual time for Heumann, who had a substantial concentration of serial killers with similar victim profiles in the same place and time. By the end of 2024, Rex Heumann had been charged with murdering seven women. Investigators strongly suspected he was guilty of killing an eighth, Fire Island Jane Doe, whose skull and teeth were located near Gilgo Beach in 2011. Those 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 via 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 persons report was filed at the time. Almost exactly two months after she went missing, Rex Heuermann married his wife, Arsa Elrup, in Sweden. Law enforcement, the media and the public were overwhelmed by the extent of Rex Heuermann's offending and wondered how many more murders he might have been behind. As well as looking at other unsolved Long Island cases, investigators considered whether Rex Heuermann 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. Heuermann also owned about 18 acres of land nearby. Shortly after arresting Heuermann, police seized the vehicle and searched it, looking for evidence of the crimes. Nothing of note was recovered, but Heuermann'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 Heuermann's crimes. Back in Long Island, some women who'd met Heuermann 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 Heuermann's arrest, a woman named Nikki Brass posted on TikTok about an encounter she'd had with him in 2015. Nikki had been working as an escort on Long Island at that time when she met Rex Heuermann online. They met up for a date at a restaurant in Port Jefferson, almost an hour from Heuermann's home in Massapequa Park. Nikki was immediately struck by how enormous Heuermann was. They chatted for a little bit, then Heuermann asked Nikki, Are you into true crime? Nikki replied that she was and followed serial killer cases closely. Have you heard about the Gilgo Beach killings? Heuermann 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. Heuermann speculated about how the killer disposed of the bodies without being seen, adding that he lived near Gilgo Beach and it was very quiet. He invited Nikki back to his place, but she got a bad feeling and ended the date. She texted a friend to come and meet her, saying, Questions still remained about the victims along or nearby Ocean Parkway whose murders Heuermann 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 Doe, an African-American mother and daughter whose remains had been strewn eight miles apart from one another. While Baby 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 20 miles northwest of Gilgo Beach. That victim had been dubbed Peaches after a tattoo on her left breast. Investigators 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, Tatiana Dykes. 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 Dykes. He was married with two sons, but the two had an affair. Leading to Tanya conceiving Tatiana. Shortly after Tatiana was born, Dykes 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 Tatiana 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. But, police had questioned Andrew Dykes in 1997 after Tanya and Tatiana went missing, and he denied having a relationship with Tanya. Following Tanya and Tatiana's identification, investigators said they weren't sure whether their case was linked to the Gilgo Beach serial killings. Then, almost eight months later, on December 5, 2025, DNA evidence found on Tanya's remains led to Andrew Dykes being arrested and charged with homicide. The now 66-year-old man wasn't charged with killing Tatiana due to a lack of evidence, but investigators believed he was responsible for both deaths. Dykes has pleaded not guilty, and as of the release of this episode, is still awaiting his trial. The identification of Tanya Jackson and Tatiana Dykes left only one Gilgo 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 shirt. They were wearing pants, a bra, and a blue-ribbed, short-sleeved shirt. Aged between 17 and 23, Asian Doe was 5 foot 6 inches tall. Some believed that this victim's profile made them less likely to have been killed by Rex Heuermann. But Heuermann's digital footprint suggested otherwise. When trawling through Heuermann's online searches, investigators found that he had looked for Asian escorts in Manhattan as well as trans women. 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 slim man with a boyish or androgynous appearance. This led to speculation that Asian Doe may have been one of Rex Ullman's victims after all. On Monday September 16 2024, the Suffolk County District Attorney and the Gilgo Beach 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 person. As of the release of this episode, Asian Doe has not been identified. The final remains a waiting 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 Gilgo Beach 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, pointing in part to her official autopsy, 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 as 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. Robert Kolker, who wrote… wrote the acclaimed book Lost Girls about the Gilgo Beach case, described Marie as willing to challenge the authorities in ways that some of the other women's families were reluctant to. She 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 20 years in prison. 25 years to life. Marie died before the arrest of Rex Heuermann, preventing her from seeing some of the resolutions she had fought so hard for. Rex Heuermann 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 trialled, the police were unable to find any evidence to prove his guilt. The police were unable to find any evidence to prove his guilt. 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. This 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 Heumann's distinctive physical appearance that had been crucial to his suspect description and identification. Heumann has never admitted to killing Asian Doe, which hasn't prevented many from believing that he is responsible for that crime as well as other cold cases. Asian 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 Heumann 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 Heumann'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 Vergara, who had only been in prison for a year. Heumann was sentenced to life in prison for the first time in a year. 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 Heuermann and mourned their lost loved ones. Jasmine Robinson, a cousin of Jessica Taylor, told Heuermann, You chose small women because you're nothing more than a weak, disgusting coward. Valerie Mack's parents said that although justice had finally been done, the damage Heuermann had inflicted on their family was irreparable. Amanda Funderburg, the younger sister of Melissa Bartholomew who had received taunting phone calls from Heuermann 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 still? Was she 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 Heuermann 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. Don't forget. But Heuermann 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 robbed of my youth, robbed of my young adulthood, and I still feel robbed 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 Cairn, the sister of Maureen Brainard Barnes, cried as she recalled the day when she learnt her sister had been murdered. She described being plagued by survivor's guilt and endless what-ifs, wondering if somehow Maureen could have been saved. It has taken me years to learn that Maureen Brainard Barnes is still alive. I've been 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 Maureen, who she described as a rare soul, intelligent, and intelligent. A statement was read aloud on behalf of Amberlyn Costello's sister, Kim, in which she credited Amber with lighting the match that led to Huelman's eventual downfall. Amber had gotten the better of Huelman 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 narcissist Rex Huelman. Huelman, prompting him to seek revenge against Amber the following night despite having already been seen by Dave. This allowed a witness to pass along crucial details to police which were key to identifying Huelman. A statement was also read on behalf of Sandra Castillo'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 argument was read aloud on behalf of Amber. A statement was read aloud on behalf of Sandra Castillo's sister, Ruth, who had been waiting decades for justice for her sister, Ruth, who had been waiting decades for justice for her sister. After eventually learning the truth of what had happened to her mother, Liliana was tormented by knowing that Megan had only been doing escort work to provide a better life for her. Megan's mother had died in August of 2022, almost a year before Huelman's arrest. She never got to see the capture of her daughter's killer or witness him being brought to justice. Megan's aunt, Elizabeth Meserve, spoke instead. Elizabeth said Megan had been repeatedly victimised, first by the man who trafficked her, and then by Rex Huelman, who had access to Megan because of what her pimp had done. I'm certain my niece fought as hard as she possibly could to come back to her daughter, who she loved with every fibre of her being. She described Megan as funny, strong, and devoted to her family and friends. Elizabeth also used her platform to talk about the ways the families had been re-victimised by others after Huelman. 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 shone 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. Elizabeth had also felt re-victimised when she learnt that Huelman's family would be receiving more than a million dollars for participating in a documentary series on the case. As she saw it, they were profiting from the crimes committed by their patriarch. Maureen's sister Missy agreed with Elizabeth and the two women have formed the Gilgo Victims Committee with the intention of revising New York's criminal law. As it currently stands, criminals can not 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 Huelman'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 were not the victims. When journalist Robert Kolker wrote his definitive book about the case, he titled it Lost Girls as a nod to the way society had failed them. In her statement, Elizabeth Meserve addressed this aspect of the case and how Huelman had deliberately selected victims he saw as disposable. She pointed out that the legacy of the eight women he murdered would go well beyond what he ever could have anticipated, stating, "The prisoner's plan 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." In her statement, Elizabeth Meserve said, "We will never forget what we have done. We will never forget what we have done. We will never forget what we have done." Thank you.