SERIAL KILLER: The Gilgo Beach Murders

Summary

Clues Podcast Episode Summary: "SERIAL KILLER: The Gilgo Beach Murders"

Release Date: June 25, 2025
Hosts: Morgan Abshur and Kayla Moore
Produced by: Crime House, Powered by PAVE Studios

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Introduction to the Gilgo Beach Murders

In this gripping episode of Clues, hosts Morgan Abshur and Kayla Moore delve deep into one of America's most notorious and chilling serial killer cases—the Gilgo Beach Murders. The duo explores the intricate web of disappearances, the subsequent discoveries, and the eventual apprehension of the suspected killer, Rex Heuerman.

---

Early Disappearances: Maureen Brainerd Barnes

July 2007 marked the beginning of a troubling series of events with the disappearance of Maureen Brainerd Barnes, a 25-year-old single mother from Norwich, Connecticut, who was involved in sex work in Manhattan. Desperate to secure $3,000 for court-ordered expenses and potential custody hearings for her five-year-old son, Maureen, along with her friend Sarah, traveled to New York City.

On Monday, July 10, 2007, Maureen failed to appear for her court hearing, leading to growing concerns among her family. Despite exhaustive searches and multiple police reports, Maureen's case went cold due to the stigma associated with her profession and the authorities' reluctance to prioritize her disappearance.

Kayla Moore shares:
"No one recognizes her. Days go by, there's no sign of Maureen... authorities simply dismiss her case because she was a sex worker."
[Timestamp: 05:17]

---

Subsequent Missing Persons and Police Inaction

Two years later, in July 2009, Melissa Bartholome, a 24-year-old cosmetologist from Buffalo, disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Long Island. Despite her family's efforts, including the discovery of her phone and a threatening call from an unidentified man, police continued to overlook her case.

Similarly, other women such as Megan Waterman and Amberlynn Costello vanished between 2010 and 2011. Each disappearance highlighted a pattern: sex workers on the margins of society were targeted, and their cases were consistently dismissed by law enforcement.

Morgan Abshur emphasizes:
"Like this woman was just trying to keep a roof over her head... this is not something she would miss."
[Timestamp: 08:51]

---

Discovery of Victims and the Serial Killer Theory

In December 2010, a breakthrough occurred when a cadaver dog located skeletal remains on Gilgo Beach, leading investigators to identify four victims: Maureen Brainerd Barnes, Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. These remains were found bound and wrapped in burlap, suggesting foul play and pointing towards a single perpetrator—a potential serial killer.

Kayla Moore notes:
"All of these victims were probably killed by the same person... Long Island is dealing with a serial killer."
[Timestamp: 32:28]

Despite identifying these victims, Shannon Gilbert, the first missing woman discussed, remains unaccounted for, adding another layer of mystery to the case.

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Police Missteps and Leadership Challenges

The investigation stalled due to ineffective leadership. In early 2012, Police Chief Jim Burke took over, dismissing the serial killer theory and hindering the investigation by refusing FBI assistance and neglecting critical clues like burner phone data.

Morgan Abshur laments:
"We have multiple murdered women. And, like, what?"
[Timestamp: 49:09]

Burke's tenure was marred by misconduct allegations, including snuff film inquiries and internal affairs complaints, further derailing the case.

---

Reinvigoration of the Case and Identification of Rex Heuerman

In 2022, under the new leadership of Commissioner Rodney Harrison, the investigation received renewed vigor. A dedicated task force was formed, leading to the pivotal identification of Rex Heuerman. By meticulously analyzing cell phone data and surveillance footage, investigators linked Heuerman to the murders.

A critical piece of evidence came from a pizza crust tossed by Heuerman, which allowed forensic teams to obtain his saliva, facilitating a DNA match with previously unattended hair samples from victims.

Kayla Moore reflects:
"It's so heartbreaking to see that that's all it took to put this together..."
[Timestamp: 54:45]

---

Arrest and Evidence Against Rex Heuerman

On July 13, 2023, Rex Heuerman was arrested and charged with the murders of three of the original Gilgo Four. Further investigations connected him to additional victims, including Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, and Sandra Castilla, spanning incidents from 1996 to 2011. The discovery of a detailed manifesto and extensive digital evidence—including 350 electronic devices and 300 firearms—cemented the case against him.

Morgan Abshur states:
" DNA technology they used was actually pretty new... but it's pretty concrete for me."
[Timestamp: 66:33]

Despite the mounting evidence, Heuerman has pleaded not guilty, and debates around the admissibility of certain DNA technologies continue to loom over the impending trial.

---

Ongoing Investigations and Unresolved Questions

While Heuerman's arrest marked a significant milestone, Shannon Gilbert's fate remains unresolved. Found in December 2011 with ambiguous circumstances surrounding her death, her case continues to puzzle investigators and the public alike.

Moreover, additional victims, such as Tanya Denise Jackson and her daughter Tatiana Marie Dykes, have been identified, although connections to Heuerman remain inconclusive.

Kayla Moore highlights:
"Shannon has become a major focal point... she's the unintentional hero of this whole story."
[Timestamp: 73:39]

---

Conclusion and Call for Justice

As the episode concludes, Clues emphasizes the importance of persistent investigation and community support in solving such heinous crimes. Hosts Morgan Abshur and Kayla Moore express their commitment to following the case closely, urging listeners to contribute any information that might aid in achieving justice for the victims.

Kayla Moore asserts:
"There will always be someone out there who cares... we're all out here searching for the truth and justice."
[Timestamp: 76:03]

---

Notable Quotes

• Kayla Moore:

  • "No one recognizes her. Days go by, there's no sign of Maureen... authorities simply dismiss her case because she was a sex worker."
    [05:17]

• Morgan Abshur:

  • "Like this woman was just trying to keep a roof over her head... this is not something she would miss."
    [08:51]

• Morgan Abshur:

  • "We have multiple murdered women. And, like, what?"
    [49:09]

• Kayla Moore:

  • "All of these victims were probably killed by the same person... Long Island is dealing with a serial killer."
    [32:28]

• Morgan Abshur:

  • "DNA technology they used was actually pretty new... but it's pretty concrete for me."
    [66:33]

• Kayla Moore:

  • "Shannon has become a major focal point... she's the unintentional hero of this whole story."
    [73:39]

• Kayla Moore:

  • "There will always be someone out there who cares... we're all out here searching for the truth and justice."
    [76:03]

---

Final Thoughts

The Gilgo Beach Murders represent a haunting chapter in America's true crime history, highlighting systemic issues within law enforcement and the devastating consequences of societal neglect. Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, Clues sheds light on the relentless pursuit of justice for the victims and their families, serving as a testament to the enduring fight against unsolved crimes.

Listeners are encouraged to stay engaged with the case's developments and support ongoing efforts to uncover the full extent of Rex Heuerman's crimes.

---

For more updates and discussions, follow Clues Podcast on Instagram @CluesPodcast and YouTube @CluesPod. Submit any tips related to the Gilgo Beach Murders to 1-800-244-88477 or via Nassau County Crime Stoppers.

Transcript

[Kayla Moore]

Foreign.

[Morgan Abshur]

This is Crime House. They realize that many of their last phone conversations occurred with someone who was using a burner phone.

[Kayla Moore]

And before he leaves, he says to her in a very calm manner, quote, I'll see you.

[Morgan Abshur]

All of these victims were probably killed by the same person, which raises the terrifying possibility that Long island is dealing with a serial killer. Hi, guys. Welcome back to clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore some of the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm Kayla Moore and I'm going to be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files released on these cases.

[Morgan Abshur]

And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Abshur. I tackle everything on the Internet from Reddit to blogs and look at the pieces that add up or don't.

[Kayla Moore]

Each week on Clues, we're going to talk about how even the smallest pieces of evidence, like cell phone pings, a rogue hair, or even a pizza crust, which we'll talk about today, can lead to groundbreaking discoveries and may even bring long awaited justice at Crime House.

[Morgan Abshur]

We value your support. So please be sure to share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow clues to help others discover our show.

[Kayla Moore]

Today we're going to talk about maybe the most notorious modern American serial killer. A man who operated in the shadows for decades, abducting young sex workers and then discarding their bodies on a brushy strip of sand in Long Island. A man who would come to be known as the Gilgo Beach Killer.

[Morgan Abshur]

Over the years, the victim's families and friends called in to alert the authorities about their missing loved ones. But many of those tips fell by the wayside because of what these victims did for work. It wasn't until 2010, two decades after the killings began, that police had their first solid suspect. And while the Gilgo Beach Killer purposefully targeted people on the margins of society just to stay under the radar, he underestimated how hard their loved ones would fight for their justice. More on the case and the clues that defined it, right after a quick break.

[Kayla Moore]

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[Morgan Abshur]

Head to your DSW store or visit DSW.com today. Before we get into today's episode, we just had our face on a bus.

[Kayla Moore]

We did have our faces, which is maybe the coolest thing that's ever happened.

[Morgan Abshur]

Insert picture here.

[Kayla Moore]

But you. So you went to London to go.

[Morgan Abshur]

See it, y' all. I flew over there. I'm like, my face is on a bus. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Yeah. So I, I went over there, did a quick little trip, bought my, my vintage sweater here.

[Kayla Moore]

That looks really good. Thank you. Vintage bought in London.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

And it's a good find.

[Morgan Abshur]

Can you smell it?

[Kayla Moore]

I can't, no.

[Morgan Abshur]

Oh, thank God.

[Kayla Moore]

But you did say it smelled bad.

[Morgan Abshur]

You guys, I don't know if we have a lot of vintage shoppers out there listening, but it is hard sometimes it's hard to get that mildew, musty smell out of vintage clothes, no matter how cute they are. You just deal with it.

[Kayla Moore]

I recently bought. No, I didn't buy it. I found my grandmother's old wedding dress. It's silk from 1943.

[Morgan Abshur]

That's amazing.

[Kayla Moore]

And the care process for just an old piece of silk was insane. Like, if you're really into. I don't know if we have listeners that are really into, like, vintage and antique shopping, but garments are so finicky.

[Morgan Abshur]

Especially silk.

[Kayla Moore]

Especially silk.

[Morgan Abshur]

Shall we get into this one?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. We have a really big one that we're covering today.

[Morgan Abshur]

This case is a lot. It's big, it's intense.

[Kayla Moore]

Currently unfolding.

[Morgan Abshur]

Currently unfold.

[Kayla Moore]

A lot of what we're talking about is alleged. So if you are a lawyer coming for us, please know that we are saying alleged a lot in this podcast.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

And for anyone who's watching this podcast on YouTube, you're going to see some photos that'll help you paint a picture of this case. And if you're listening, you're going to be able to find those same photos on our socials, which is at Clues podcast on Instagram.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, And I will just say there will be a follow up for this one. Depending on how things go, depending on what you guys think. At the end of the day, we, we might have to do a live reaction outside the courthouse with this trial happens. I am like beyond very eager passion throughout this case.

[Kayla Moore]

All right, let's get into it.

[Morgan Abshur]

Let's do it.

[Kayla Moore]

Okay, so there's a lot of different places where you could start this story, but for the sake of the show, I want to start today in July of 2007 with a woman named Maureen Brainerd Barnes. A little bit about Maureen. She's 25, she's a single mom, she lives in Norwich, Connecticut. She has a lot of money problems. Things are not going very well, and her landlord was actually threatening to evict her. And on top of all that, Maureen has a court hearing that's going to affect the custody of her five year old son. And it's scheduled in just a few days. Basically, she needs about $3,000 to help cover all these costs and then she should be somewhat. Okay. So Sometime around Friday, July 6, 2007, Marine and her friend Sarah make the 135 mile trip into Manhattan. And Maureen calls her sister Melissa that night and she tells her who she's with, but she's not that honest with her sister about exactly what's going on. So her sister Melissa thinks that Marine is a model, but in reality, she and her friend Sarah are actually sex workers. There's a couple different ways to be a sex worker in New York, but they typically find their own clients, mostly through Craigslist, which you cannot do this today, but at the time you could use Craigslist to like solicit sex work. And they always work together in order to keep each other safe. So the plan for the two girls, Sarah and Marine, is to spend the entire weekend in New York and then try to make as much money as possible just so that Marine can get that $3,000 she needs and then go home and kind of start working on the issues that she has. So the two of them get this hotel room and over the course of the weekend they do get some decent business. But then Monday comes around and Maureen counts all the money that she's made and she's still short that $3,000. She just needs like a little bit more. And at that point, Sarah tells her that she's going to go home, but Marine is like, I have to stay. Like, I. I just have to do a little bit more work. And at some point that day, Marine calls her sister Melissa again and asks her to come pick her up and give her a ride home from New York City. It's a pretty long drive, it's 135 miles. So her sister Melissa isn't like able to do that for her that day. So Marine says, never mind, it's fine, I'm just going to take the train. Don't worry about it. The next day though, Tuesday, July 10, Maureen doesn't show up to her court hearing. And Melissa also can't get a hold of her. So Sarah tries calling her. Sarah also cannot get a hold of her. And that's when they both get this feeling that something is wrong. Maureen is not the type of person to miss a court date like this. So Sarah feels obligated to tell Melissa the truth about what they were doing in New York for work. This is basically the first time Melissa learns that her sister was involved in sex work. And, and it really scares her because now she realizes that Maureen could be in a lot of danger. So she ends up sending their brother and her husband into New York to search for Maureen. And they scour the neighborhood where she and Sarah stayed the previous weekend. They even walk around and start showing people pictures of Maureen. But no one has seen her. Like no one recognizes her. Days go by, there's no sign of Maureen. No phone calls, no text, nothing. But Melissa is like not ready to give up yet. She contacts numerous police precincts in the area. She wants to get some help from the cops. But every time that she tells someone that her sister was working as a sex worker, they tell her they can't help. It's like they'll be interested in what she's saying. And the second she's like, oh yeah, also my sister was a sex worker. They're like, she probably left on her own accord. We can't do anything beyond frustrating.

[Morgan Abshur]

Like this woman was just trying to keep a roof over her head. Three year old daughter, I believe at the time, like it was a custody hearing coming up or it relation to her child. Like this is not something she would miss.

[Kayla Moore]

No. Of course Melissa can't even get Maureen's name into the national missing persons database. They just will not recognize her as a missing person.

[Morgan Abshur]

Beyond frustrating.

[Kayla Moore]

So two more weeks go by, there's no progress. No one is willing to help out with this case. But then one day, Sarah ends up getting a phone call and she checks her phone and it's coming from a blocked number, which she's a sex worker. Not very unlikely to get a call from a Block number. So she picks up, but when she starts talking to the person on the other end, she hears that there's this man's voice, kind of what she was expecting. She doesn't recognize the voice. This is not a client that she's talked to before. And he doesn't give his name, but there's something really. She describes him as being so calm and like, pretty well spoken. He asks her if she knows an escort named Marie from Connecticut. And that was Maureen's alias. Before Sarah can say anything to this guy, he starts describing Maureen in like really specific detail. He says that she's short, she has blue eyes, she. He even knows about this tattoo that she has on her right arm. So Sarah tells this guy, actually, if you know Maureen, she's missing, do you know, do you know anything about what's going on? Do you know where she could be? And the caller says that she's actually not missing. She's at, quote, a whorehouse in Queens. Like I said at the beginning, they work for themselves. It's not really like Maureen to be at a brothel like that. So Sarah immediately is like, I don't. I don't think she is. So she tries to get more information just to see if she can figure out whatever is happening, but the guy quickly hangs up on her. And after that, she never hears from that guy. He does not call her back, but Sarah feels like she has to go tell Melissa, Maureen's sister, what happened. And Melissa ends up telling the police this. And even after they get this weird phone call, the police still won't help. They just don't do anything about this. So there's no investigation that gets launched into Maureen's case. It not at least not one that's like, meaningful in any way. And so Maureen's case just starts to go cold. Everyone in her life has to just deal with the fact that she apparently vanished into thin air. Okay, so Fast forward to two years later, July 2009. There's a 24 year old woman named Melissa Bartholome who moves to New York City from Buffalo. She just got her cosmetology license and she wants to open her own business. And this is a really sad fact I learned about this case. But her family remembers Melissa meeting this guy named Johnny. And her family basically gets this very bad feeling about Johnny right away. He does not seem like a good guy. But he tells Melissa that he essentially has the tools to be able to help her open her own business. So she gets involved in this guy. Turns out that's not what happened at all. And it's believed that Johnny got or forced Melissa into sex work. That when he took her to New York with him, that's like, what he was having her do. And I. There's a lot of sad stories that come out about Melissa and her friends at this time. Like, I was reading about how one of her closest friends was actually this girl who was kidnapped when she was 15 and forced into sex work.

[Morgan Abshur]

Wow.

[Kayla Moore]

And was just like, taken one day somewhere up, like in New York or New England, and was just, like, driven like, a thousand miles south. Has no idea where she ended up. It was just, like, in this house and was part of this ring. And, like, those are a lot of the stories you hear coming out of, like, sex workers in this area at the time. And it's just, like, horrible. So on July 12th of that year, which is almost two years to the date that Maureen was last seen, Melissa's landlord's daughter sees her outside of her building. It kind of looks like she's waiting for someone, maybe a friend, maybe a client. And after that sighting, Melissa doesn't come home that night. That's the last time she was seen. Weeks go by, no one hears from her. So her sister Amanda starts getting, like, really worried about what's going on. I'm not sure exactly how much Amanda knows about what Melissa does for work. And so maybe she wasn't assuming that something really bad happened to Melissa yet because she doesn't call the police right away. But then, a week after Melissa was last seen, Amanda also gets a call from Melissa's cell phone. So she picks it up. She's probably ready to yell at her sister for not contacting her for over a week now. But when she answers, she hears this creepy voice on the other end that she doesn't recognize. It's a man who is very calm, pretty well spoken. And he starts saying a lot of really racist and sexist things about Amanda, who is mixed race. And he also starts saying all these horrible things about Melissa. And when Amanda asks the man on the phone to tell her where her sister is, thinking that maybe this guy knows something, he says that he's watching Melissa's body rot somewhere. He doesn't say where. He doesn't give any clues. So Amanda hangs up. She goes straight to the police and she tells him every detail about what this guy said over the phone and how her sister's been missing. She even tells him that he sounds white and middle aged. She's able to kind of get a profile of this guy. Just based on their conversation. And at that point, the police actually do offer a little bit of help. They decide to monitor Amanda's phone just in case this guy calls again. So I can't imagine being in this position where you're terrified of this person calling, but you're also praying that he calls back so that the police can get a ping on, like, where he is or who this person is. And over the next few days, he actually calls her seven times, and this ends up being, like, a pretty big clue in the case.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. These cell phone pings were a massive break. The calls actually hit a few different towers, and detectives were able to narrow down a general location between Long island and midtown Manhattan. And for those that are like cell phone pings, what. What are those? So, apparently, how it works is it can work in two different ways. Like, the phone itself can have GPS capabilities, and then they use that actual specific data to, like, determine location. Or you can use cell tower triangulation.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

And depending on where the phone is, what tower it's using to get signal, you'll get a ping, and that's how it pinpoints a spot.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. It's also a lot better today than it was in 2009 when this is happening.

[Morgan Abshur]

Absolutely. So investigators think the caller lives somewhere in the Long island area and then commutes to midtown Manhattan for work. And I just want to give you guys a little bit more about these calls. These calls were intense. They were insane. As you mentioned, Caitlin, like, there were a lot of racist remarks, but, like, this caller knew her name when he first called. Like, it was terrifying.

[Kayla Moore]

Also, like, she was not saved in her sister's phone as, like, sister. So this guy somehow got the information from Melissa that Amanda was her sister, too. So he knew really personal details about everyone.

[Morgan Abshur]

Clearly, I just got the chills. Clearly doing a lot of research and taunting Amanda. I mean, I have some quotes here. Quote, do you think you'll ever see her again? Quote, you won't. I killed her. In one call, the man described in graphic detail what he did to Amanda's sister. It was taunting again and again, phone call after phone call, and really just kind of breadcrumbing her in a weird way. Just like, you know, she's just trying to get an answer about where her sister is. And, you know, there was one quote here from Amanda herself, and she was like, maybe one day he'd tell me where she was.

[Kayla Moore]

Yes. Like I said, about being in that horrible position of, like, I don't want to talk to this man. He clearly did something horrible to my sister, and I need to stay on the phone with him in case he gives me a clue.

[Morgan Abshur]

Anything, anything.

[Kayla Moore]

What a horrible position to be in.

[Morgan Abshur]

And it wasn't until the last final call that he actually did admit that he killed her. So it's like you're taking call after call, just, oh, just such a terrifying situation to be in. And, you know, after a handful of calls, he stops contacting Amanda, which means there's not much for police to go on. It doesn't seem like they're trying very hard to look into anything further.

[Kayla Moore]

Right.

[Morgan Abshur]

And it really seems like the killer is kind of using this to his advantage. And it's not long before another bizarre encounter puts another woman in danger. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.

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[Kayla Moore]

So a year goes by and there's not any similar disappearances in the area, at least that they knew of at the time. But then on April 30, 2010, this 23 year old woman named Shannon Gilbert leaves her home in Jersey City and she drives into Manhattan. She is also an escort. Like Maureen Brainerd Barnes. And her friend Sarah Shannon also works for herself and mainly finds clients on Craigslist. Working for yourself also, from everything I read about, tends to be like a safer way to do this. It seems like one thing that Shannon does to keep herself safe is she has this friend who also works as her driver, who also works as her bodyguard named Michael Pack. So on that day, Shannon and Michael are driving around Manhattan when they get a phone call from a man who says his name is Joe Brewer. Joe saw Shannon's Craigslist ad and he wants to hire her, but he lives in Oak Beach, Long island, and that's about a 90 minute drive from Manhattan. Shannon doesn't have any other business that night, so she figures, why not? I'll go make this trip, I'll make the money. I'm not going to make any money otherwise, so might as well just like do this long trip. When they get there, Michael stays outside of Joe's house while Shannon goes inside. They have like a system set up basically where Shannon can call him if anything happens. They have like signals I'll give each other, like they're very close. And they have all these like safety mechanisms in case anything goes down. Michael is like very much there for her. And then just before 5am, Joe Brewer, the man who hired Shannon, taps on Michael's car window. He comes out of his house and he taps on Michael's car window. And he says something very strange to Michael. He says that Shannon won't leave his house. And Michael's like, what do you mean she won't leave your house? Like she's a working professional. Like, she finishes her job and she leaves like this has never happened before. I'm sorry, let me go see what's going on. So he goes inside and he finds Shannon in the house, completely panicked. Like absolute fear in her eyes. She won't come anywhere near him. She's just begging Michael and Joe to leave her alone. Meanwhile, she has a phone in her hand and she's actually on with 91 1. She's not really making any sense though. There were two phone calls, so either this one or the next one she made was like 23 minutes with 91 1, which is like a very long time to be on the phone with 911. She keeps repeating over and over that someone is after her and that they're trying to kill her. But she doesn't say who and she won't say where she is. And so after about 20 minutes, the local police route the call to New York State Police. And meanwhile, Shannon is getting more and more upset. Like even having Michael there isn't calming her down at all. She won't go near either of the men, not even her friend Michael. And then at one point, she just gets up and runs out of the house screaming. She ends up going to another house that's down the street. She bangs on the door. So one of Joe's neighbors, this man named Gus Coletti, lets Shannon in and he gets her to take a seat in the living room and he's Like, I want to help you. You're safe here. Like, let me go call 911 for you. And he. He goes and he calls 91 1. But when he tells Shannon that the police are on their way, she freaks out again. She jumps up, and she runs away. And at this point, her driver slash friend slash bodyguard, Michael starts looking for her. And he knows a few really important things about Shannon that kind of help us understand maybe what's going on in the situation. He knows that, one, Shannon has bipolar disorder, and she was likely not taking medication for it. And two, he knows that at one point, Shannon and Joe left the house for a little while while in Joe's car, and he believes it was so that they could go get drugs. So Michael thinks that maybe Shannon is having some sort of reaction right now or she could really be in huge trouble. It's hard to tell, but he just knows, like, we have to find her. That's the most important thing right now. And part of the reason he really wants to figure out where she is is because behind this row of houses, where they are, there's, like, this really dense marshland, water up to your neck in parts. It's really not safe to be out in, especially not at night. And eventually, while Michael's looking for her, he does spot Shannon behind one of these houses. And he starts chasing after her, trying to get her to calm down, trying to help. But then, once again, he loses sight of Shannon when she darts behind the houses in the direction of the marsh. A few minutes later, officers from the Suffolk County Police Department show up. But by that point, Shannon is long gone. No one knows where she is. So Shannon's family reports her missing once again. As soon as the police hear this story, once they learn that she was a sex worker, no one seems interested in looking for her. And it's infuriating because they have the exact spot where she was last seen. Like, these other women that they're looking for, they don't really know the exact location they were last seen, but Shannon, it feels like you would just be able to start searching and, like, have a pretty clear idea of, like, the area you need to start, especially because she was by the houses with this, like, huge marsh in the background right there.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, people can only run and walk so fast. Like, it's right there.

[Kayla Moore]

They don't check the marsh for Shannon, though, at all. And so months go by, and again, there's no developments, so police are not really doing anything to look for Shannon. But disappearances keep happening in the area. On June 6, 2010, two months after Shannon Gilbert disappeared, a 22 year old sex worker named Megan Waterman is at a Holiday inn in Hopog, New York. It's a hamlet in Long island, about 50 miles outside of New York City. And at 1:15am surveillance cameras catch Megan leaving a hotel. But she never returns. Her family quickly notices something is wrong because Megan doesn't really ever go a day without speaking to them. So they also contact the police. But just like all of these other cases, they don't get any help the second the police learn that Megan was an escort. And then later that summer, there's a 27 year old sex worker named Amberlynn Costello, and she invites a client to her house in West Babylon, another Long island hamlet. He's only paid for a dance. There's not going to be any sex involved. And normally Amber has these two male roommates, these guys, Dave and Bear. And they similar to how Michael worked with Shannon, like they're also there to keep her safe. She'll have people over to the house, they kind of like keep an eye on everything. But that night they have to step out for a quick errand and they leave her alone. And while they're gone, it seems like this client had a change of mind and decides that he does want to have sex with Amber after all. So he starts grabbing at her while she's dancing. And he doesn't stop when she says no. He's not taking the hint. He's not. He's like really trying to cross a boundary with her. Thankfully, Amber is able to get away from him and she locks herself in the bathroom and calls Dave and Bear, who come rushing back to the house. And when Bear comes in to get rid of the client, he like stops in his tracks once he sees this guy, because this is like the biggest guy he's ever seen. He is over 6, 4. He's built kind of like an ogre. Bear says, like that's a description that we hear a lot, is like ogre. Ish. And eventually the two guys manage to get this client out of there. But they both recognize that this is like a very scary man. And as he's leaving, he has his eyes locked on Amber even as he's walking out the front door. And before he leaves, he says to her in a very calm manner, quote, I'll see you. And then they all watch as he gets into his car. They describe it as a dark colored Chevy Avalanche, probably green. It's a pickup. And then he drives off.

[Morgan Abshur]

Terrifying to be left with that I'll see you.

[Kayla Moore]

I'll see you. Yeah, just like, he's going to be back, or who knows? So Amber's pretty shaken up by this experience, but she does brush it off. And her line of work, you can kind of expect scary things to happen. Interviews I listened to with Dave and Bear. Like, Amber had a lot of very scary experiences. I think she was kind of used to them, and they didn't. They. They definitely rattled her, but I think she just saw it as, like, part of the job.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, you can get desensitized to anything.

[Kayla Moore]

And so a few weeks later, on the night of September 2, 2010, she puts another ad up on Craigslist for more business, and she gets a hit. A client wants Amber to meet him at his parked car somewhere in her neighborhood. Usually, this is not the type of job that Amber would do. She prefers to work at home. It's much safer to have someone come into your space than for you to meet them in their space. Dave and Bear offer to come help if she needs them. But there's something different about this client that seems to make Amber, like, a little bit more comfortable. And part of that seems to be the fact that he's willing to spend a lot more than she's used to. He says he's going to pay her $2,500 for her to spend the next 24 hours with him. For Amber, that's a lot of money. It's more money than she's used to for that type of service. Yeah, she kind of jumps at the opportunity, and she actually leaves her house so fast that she forgets to bring her cell phone with her. Dave and Bear also said that whoever was on the phone with her might have offered. Might have told her to not bring her cell phone. I've heard, like, conflicting reports on this, that there was a chance that he said something like, you can just use my phone. Like, you don't need to bring your phone. You can just use my phone. Cell phone culture in 2010 was a lot different than today. Like, we didn't always have our phones on us all the time. So maybe that is what happened. Regardless of why she didn't bring her phone, that ends up being, like, literally the worst thing she could have done because she doesn't have anything on her that tracks her. She doesn't have anything, any way to, like, contact the outside world. And after she leaves, Dave and Bear do not hear from her. When they call her cell. It's ringing on her table at her house, which also means it's not able to help locate where she is. There's like nothing the cops can do if they even wanted to look at the cell phone. And considering everything that's happened, Dave and Bear start getting a really bad feeling because this is not like Amber. Something has to be wrong. So they go ahead and they file like we've talked about with everyone. They go ahead and they file a police report. And so they don't know who Amber met with, but they remember that he asked her to meet her in his parked car somewhere. And that's like very different from services Amber would normally do. So they realized that if Amber felt safe enough to do this, it would be for a few different reasons. One, maybe because she had met him before and felt comfortable. Or two, maybe he was some sort of professional, like someone who wouldn't. Like there's too much at stake for them to hurt a sex worker. Like, maybe they're a cop. Maybe it's a judge or a lawyer or some sort of business owner, like someone with status. And they start to wonder if maybe that guy from a few weeks ago, the really big guy who Amber already had worked with, even though he was like weird and aggressive, maybe he might somehow be involved in this.

[Morgan Abshur]

Now, Dave and Bear don't know his name, but they do have a description on this guy, which leads us to our second clue. They say that this guy was about 6 foot 8, pound 350, with beady eyes and brown hair. They also say he was driving a dark greenish colored Chevy Avalanche, as you mentioned, but they didn't get the plate when they saw this car.

[Kayla Moore]

But even without the plate, I mean, we've talked about this with other descriptions that like in other episodes. This is so specific of a description like the Golden State Killer, right? It's like a five foot eight white guy who's like a normal weight. And like, how are you gonna find that person? But this is a six foot eight massive guy. Six foot eight in a green truck.

[Morgan Abshur]

And they already know based on cell phone triangulation what area this person could be in.

[Kayla Moore]

Right? A lot of information.

[Morgan Abshur]

Where's the dmv? Also, like, you guys, I'm just so weird. I googled how much of the population is over 6 foot 4. Only 14.5% of men. So.

[Kayla Moore]

So over 6, 7. That's got to be like a fraction.

[Morgan Abshur]

And that's something the DMV would know. Yeah, it's on most driver's license. They don't look into it, but the info does come in handy down the line in the meantime, authorities do start looking for Shannon Gilbert, the woman who ran off into the night. Eight months ago, Shannon went missing in this area of Long island called Oak Beach. So that's where authorities begin their search in that surrounding area. Why it took so long? We're not going to go there. Officers look up and down the entire strip of shoreline, which is packed with this, like, super dense brush. And it's not an easy feat. But within days of starting their search, they do find something. On December 11, 2010, a cadaver dog locates a human skeleton on. On Gilgo beach, about seven miles west of Oak Beach. Which brings us to clue number three. Remains. The skeletons completely intact and wrapped in this coarse fabric called burlap. A clear indication that foul play was involved somehow. Now, officials are pretty sure this is Shannon, except when the remains are brought to the medical examiner's office, investigators discover something else. Shannon has a titanium plate in her jaw, actually, and the remains they found don't. And they definitely confirm it's not Shannon when they go even further and really start looking at dental records. So now the crime lab has to identify who this victim is, and police just keep searching the area. Maybe Shannon is out there still. And two days later, on December 13th, they find three more sets of female remains. They're all about 500ft from each other, not far off the road, basically, like, next to the shoulder. Like, we're going to have an image and you.

[Kayla Moore]

Right off the road.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And when you look at this image and see, you know, where these remains were found and how close to the road they are, it's. It's pretty surprising. But all of these victims were found in a similar manner. They were bound and wrapped in burlap, which. Burlap is often used for camouflage, so it's no wonder they weren't seen by anyone. Yeah, it would blend into all that brush. But it's pretty clear to investigators that all of these victims were probably killed by the same person. Which raises the terrifying possibility that Long island is dealing with a serial killer.

[Kayla Moore]

Yes, and that fact alone kind of makes the authorities start taking the investigation a little bit more seriously now. And the FBI very quickly joins the Suffolk county police in their search. Through a closer analysis, the team of investigators discovered that some of these bodies had small strands of hair left behind on them. So they collect these pieces of hair as evidence, but there's a few issues with them. They're really salty. It was, like, super sunny in the area, which kind of made the hair degrade a little bit. So where DNA technology was at the time, they weren't really able to do anything with these strands of hair, at least just yet. But they hold on to them, hoping that the technology will get better in the future. Still, they use dental records that they have access to, and they're able to determine that none of these bodies are. Shannon Gilbert is still not the woman that they're looking for. But at this point, they found four bodies in the search for Shannon. So the question becomes, who are these women? Because you and I and everyone listening, we know that many women have gone missing in this area. But remember, the police were not really taking down any of these names or missing persons reports. So when they find these remains, they're like, oh, no, how could this have happened? Like, who could have seen this coming? But then all of the families of all the girls that are missing are like, no, obviously, this is what's happening. So the Suffolk County Police Department immediately begins combing through their state missing persons database. That's where they decide to get started. And they can't link any of those cases to the remains they found because of what we've talked about this entire time. None of those women, despite being missing, despite their families reporting them missing, were in the missing person's database. So kind of on their own, the police start realizing, like, well, maybe these women were sex workers and they weren't from the area and they came to Long island to meet clients, and they assumed that because these women were most likely sex workers that their disappearances just weren't reported.

[Morgan Abshur]

And as we all know, that wasn't the case. Think back to Maureen Brainard Barnes, who went missing in New York City a year before that in 2009. She's the one who worked as an escort with her friend Sarah.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

After her disappearance, she, Marine sister Melissa, tried, tried again and again to add her to this national missing persons database, but authorities wouldn't let her. So it wasn't for a lack of family or loved ones or friends or anyone who cared. It was not about not reporting them. A lot of these missing women did have people reporting them as missing. It was more about the authorities not taking these cases seriously enough to even enter them into a database. How pathetic.

[Kayla Moore]

I know.

[Morgan Abshur]

But thankfully, a lot of these families did not give up. They knew that their daughters, sisters, friends are missing. And six weeks later, some of their efforts do pay off.

[Kayla Moore]

I have been loving Catrava. I drink probably a cachava shake every day. And they're not just protein shakes. They're whole body meal shakes. They offer A lot more than just protein. There's like 25 grams of plant protein per serving, 26 vitamins and minerals, 6 grams of fiber. Which fiber is my favorite? 85 plus super foods plus nutrients and plant based ingredients.

[Morgan Abshur]

These shakes are so good. There's five flavors to choose from. Chocolate, vanilla chai matcha and coconut acai. The matcha has surprisingly been my favorite. It's my new go to in the mornings.

[Kayla Moore]

Do you just do it with milk?

[Morgan Abshur]

Oat milk. Oat milk. Because I'm dairy free.

[Kayla Moore]

Okay.

[Morgan Abshur]

And it is so good and it's honestly so satisfying. It's like a little treat for breakfast.

[Kayla Moore]

I've been making mine with. I do coconut water, oat milk, vanilla cachava, then a little bit of banana, a little bit of peanut butter and some yogurt and it's like it's a whole meal. I don't need to go to your place. Oh, it's so delicious.

[Morgan Abshur]

My favorite part about cachava is they have no artificial flavors, no colors, no sweeteners, non gmo, no soy, no animal products, no gluten and no preservatives.

[Kayla Moore]

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[Morgan Abshur]

On January 24, 2011, the Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer holds a press conference alongside District Attorney Tom Spoda. Dormer says that they've possibly identified all four sets of remains. The victims are 25 year old Maureen Brainard Barnes from Connecticut, 24 year old Melissa Bartholome from Buffalo, 22 year old Megan Waterman and 27 year old Amber Costello. Dormer didn't go into a lot of detail as to how they identified their bodies. He does however, say, quote, certainly it has all the hallmarks of a serial killer because of the four bodies all found in the same location. They were all connected through the Internet and the escort prostitution thing. End quote.

[Kayla Moore]

Prostitution thing?

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. Clearly not handled with a lot of grace or dignity there. And not only was it hurtful to the victim's families, but actually, like, some of their families didn't even know up until this announcement and seen it on the news. Melissa's family did not know her body had been found until they saw this press conference. And the news coverage showed a picture of Melissa's skull without the family's consent, which is.

[Kayla Moore]

That's just traumatizing to see as a family member. That's horrible.

[Morgan Abshur]

Are you, like. Are you kidding me? Guys, come on.

[Kayla Moore]

And what's still interesting in all of this is that while Shannon's disappearance did spark the search that led to the finding of these four bodies, her remains still have not been found. They're still looking for Shannon. So the police, at this point, decide to keep moving forward with the investigation and looking for Shannon, because they've found all of these remains in the meantime. And they end up polygraphing Michael Pack, who was Shannon's driver and friend, as well as Joe Brewer, who was the client that hired Shannon the night she disappeared. And as the Cluminati do know, polygraphs are not admissible as evidence in criminal trials. But sometimes they can still be helpful for investigators. And in the end, Michael and Joe both passed the polygraphs, and that was enough to rule them out as suspects, which meant that if Shannon had become a victim of the Gilgo beach killer, if this is what happened, if it's all related to this one killer that's, like, also attacked the other women, they still have no idea who he is. He's still not on anyone's radar.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's very clear at this point, though, police have a way bigger case on their hands. A potential serial killer. And with no leads from Shannon Gilbert's case, investigators start trying to piece together connections between the bodies of the victims that they do have. And that's when they really, really dive into cell phone records, which is clue number four for us. When they compare all of these records from each of the victims, they realize that many of their last phone conversations occurred with someone who was using a burner phone on its own. It's not that weird, since people soliciting sex workers might want to keep their identities and information under wraps. I know we've talked about how Sarah, like, didn't really find it unusual that she was getting a call from a blocked number.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

However, authorities discover that the calls came from burner phones that were all close to a certain area. This little Village called Massapequa park, about a 17 mile drive away from Gilgo Beach. And so investigators really started to hone in on the fact that the killer was probably living in that area.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm sorry, but how many 6 foot 8 men living in Massapequa Park Drive? Green Chevys. And that part always just like kills me.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, absolutely insane to me. But they still don't have a suspect. By the spring of 2011, three months after confirming the identities of those four victims, clearly didn't go down to the DMV like we would have. Kaylin. Yeah, and it seems like the description that Amber Costello's roommates gave to the police just fell through the cracks. But authorities also have another sneaking suspicion. If there were, you know, these four bodies out there that they didn't even know were missing, didn't obviously know were there, maybe there are more. Which is why police continue searching the area around Gilgo Beach. In late March and early April of 2011, investigators actually find six more sets of remains, all alongside that same highway stretch near gilgo Beach. There's 20 year old Jessica Taylor, who went missing in 2003, and 24 year old Valerie Mack, who went missing in 2000. They also find the remains of a woman and her toddler age daughter, as well as another Jane Doe and an unidentified young man. All of these victims were reported missing or matched previously discovered remains from as far back as 1996. Which means if they had all been killed by the same person, he's been operating for at least 15 years.

[Kayla Moore]

That's just so wild. The public starts at this time really thinking that the remains are the work of a serial killer. And some people start calling him the Long Island Serial Killer. Maybe you've seen Lisk be thrown around. Now we know him as the Gilgo Beach Killer, but the police are not as confident in this theory just yet, especially because a lot of these victims were found in slightly different manners. And I wanted actually to take a moment in this script to shout out journalist Robert Kolker. He was covering this case at the time, and he went on to write the book Lost Girls that the Netflix documentary is based on. And he really starts championing the idea at the time that this is the work of one person. Even though some of the MOs are a little bit different, some were found in burlap, some are not. He believes that it's the work of someone who is maybe learning as they go, and it's one person. And that's because he really identifies this pattern in all of the victims. And that's that most of them were sex workers like Marine, Melissa, Megan, Amber and Jessica. They're also all in their 20s. They're also all petite. So was Shannon Gilbert, who, by the way, has still not been found amongst the remains, but is now kind of, at least by the public, starting to be believed to be a victim of the Gilgo beach killer at this time. And now there is even more pressure than ever to figure out who this person is. So the authorities at this point start deciding to work backwards. They start with Amber Costello, who was the last victim to be reported missing. And they go and they talk to her old roommates, Bear and Dave, who end up giving the investigators the same exact description as before. The person who they think maybe has something to do with this, they say, again, he's 6 foot 8, he's 350 pounds. He's got these beady little eyes, brown hair, and he was driving a dark Chevy Avalanche that was possibly green. And at that point, like, you and I are sitting here now being like, that has to be one person.

[Morgan Abshur]

I'm literally shaking my. I can't stop shaking my head.

[Kayla Moore]

Like, I can't go into the dmv. But that would be the fastest DMV trip ever to just like, identify this one person.

[Morgan Abshur]

They said he was ogre looking, like.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

350 pounds, six, eight, like, huge. This is a standout person.

[Kayla Moore]

This person can't walk down the street without being identified.

[Morgan Abshur]

No.

[Kayla Moore]

Without being, like, noticed by people. So.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And this is like the third. Third time they're telling authorities, like, come on, you guys, it's time.

[Kayla Moore]

This is what he looked like.

[Morgan Abshur]

But they.

[Kayla Moore]

I was reading about how at this time, like, Dave and Bear were really viewed as unreliable witnesses because of. They were known to be doing drugs. They were known to be, like, hanging out with girls and like, soliciting sex work for the women. So I think at this time, police didn't think that they were telling the truth.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, not credible.

[Kayla Moore]

And so they dismissed a lot of what they were saying.

[Morgan Abshur]

Frustrating.

[Kayla Moore]

So media pressure starts mounting at this time as the authorities in Suffolk county aren't really doing much. These murders are still going unsolved. Shannon Gilbert is still missing. And members of the Long island press don't understand why. There's just really this one marshy section along this six mile stretch of highway between Gilgo beach and Oak beach that has still not been searched. Especially it's very frustrating because that's the marsh that was behind all those houses where Shannon was last seen, though. Finally In December of 2011, investigators are ramping up their search for Shannon once more. And they finally decide, like, okay, whatever, we'll look at this marsh. And would you believe that within days of looking at this marsh, they find Shannon's wallet, her id, her cell phone, shoes, and her jeans in this marsh. And then that is like this debris trail that is leading to her body.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. On December 13, 2011, one year after the remains of the Gilgo 4 victims were discovered, Shannon Gilbert's body is found in a marshland near Oak Beach. Her body is pretty skeletonized at this point, and she's naked, which is strange because she was wearing those jeans, and it would have been hard for her to get them off in the marsh. And she was last seen kind of running. So that does confuse investigators. The working theory so far is that Shannon was also a victim of the Gilgo beach killer. But in the days that follow, the Suffolk county medical examiner says otherwise, kind of. He determines that Shannon's cause of death is, quote, undetermined. And that's when things change. The Suffolk county police hold this press conference, and they say they actually don't believe Shannon was murdered. Richard Dormer, the same commissioner who gave that last press conference, speaks again, and he says this, quote, this may be just a young lady who ran into the brush in hysterical state, fell down, and expired for some reason, end quote. So they think Shannon was actually just running through the marsh, then fell and drowned in the freezing cold water. But that doesn't really make sense to Shannon's family and many others who were following her case. They don't understand why, even if she was in, you know, a hysterical state for whatever reason, that her genes would be near her body but not any of her other clothes. Where did, like, the rest of her clothing items go? Plus, why would Shannon remove her own jeans if she was running away in fear? So the family actually hired this forensic pathologist named Michael Baden to perform another examination of Shannon's body. Baden is very well known for investigating these high profile murder cases, and he finds something different than that initial medical examiner. He actually finds significant damage to Shannon's windpipe, which tells him that she was actually strangled to death.

[Kayla Moore]

So in what's becoming a very frustrating pattern, this new lead, Shannon's discovery doesn't really go anywhere either. And then things just kind of get worse from there. And that's because in early 2012, just after Shannon's body was found, this new police chief gets appointed, and his name is James Burke, or Jim, as I'm going to Refer to him. So right off the bat, I think it's worth talking about Jim a little bit here, because right off the bat, he's not really super qualified for this position. He ends up jumping four ranks to take the job. And I had a note here that I did the math, and it's like, if you And I just got promoted to being the CEO of this company, like, for no reason, it's a huge jump. He's not really interested in pursuing the theory of a serial killer either. He thinks that there were multiple killers, and he really starts working very hard to shut down any talk of this being one killer. He also starts doing things that actively hinder the investigation. Like, he goes and he tells the FBI agents helping with the case that he just doesn't need them anymore. They're no longer needed, that they're free to go insane. He doesn't want to look into any of the burner phones. He does have the ability and the technology at his disposal to figure out where the burner phones were pinging from, if there was another cell phone in the pocket of the person using the burner phone. And he says, no, that is too invasive to people's privacy for us to look into these burner phones.

[Morgan Abshur]

We have multiple murdered women. And, like, what?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, absolutely. But he was worried about, like, the. The privacy of the people involved. And so, obviously, like, the public starts becoming so furious about this, but there's nothing that anyone can do because Jim is in charge. And I think that there's a few reasons why he wanted to hinder this investigation so much. One, he was suggested for this role by the DA Tom Spoda, who we talked about briefly. And Tom Spoda also did not believe that this was a serial killer, despite what any of the cops were telling him. So maybe because Tom Spoda put Jim up for the job, Jim felt like he needed to appease Tom Spoda and kind of, like, go along with what he was saying. But also, And I think this is probably the most important part of this. Like, Jim Burke was a very strange guy himself. And I think he was trying to keep a low profile, because over the years, more and more of his own transgressions start coming to light. Like, for one, he had over a dozen internal affairs complaints filed against him while he was working this job. Also, I don't know if you saw this in the research, but two separate people had come forward saying that he asked them where he could find snuff films.

[Morgan Abshur]

Is he trying to pull them from, like, captured evidence from people like What.

[Kayla Moore]

Jim went on to explain to this man exactly what he was looking for. And I don't even think I can say it on this podcast.

[Morgan Abshur]

Where's HR So graphic?

[Kayla Moore]

Basically, he wanted videos of women who were killed while they were having sex. And he had specific, like, instances he was looking for. So there was one cop who said that's what he was looking for. But then eventually, this woman who was working at like, a video store, like a. One of those, like, triple X, like, adult video stores. She comes forward and she's like, yeah, Jim used to come in here all the time and ask me for snuff films. And I'm like, this is an above board operation. We don't have videos of people being murdered. So he would just go and rent, like, the second most violent thing he could rent.

[Morgan Abshur]

Okay, that plus the 12 other complaints.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

How did he have a job?

[Kayla Moore]

Well, that's like, the big question that keeps getting asked. And even before he got this job, he had been caught having sex with sex workers in his cop car. Multiple of these sex workers have come forward and said that he was into, like, very severe BDSM to the point where they didn't feel safe. And part of me is like, did Jim really see something of himself in the Gilgo Beach Killer? Like, oh, this is a serial killer who likes to, like, be rough with sex workers and maybe some of them die and he dumps their bodies. And like, that sounds like it could be me one day. So, like, I.

[Morgan Abshur]

It just definitely is giving some, like, deflect. And let's not look further into this in case it's kind of hitting close to home.

[Kayla Moore]

It hits a little too. That's at least what I think is it hits too close for home for him. And so af, like, all of this is going on. And so for years, there's no movement in this case. He doesn't really do anything to further the investigation. And then I did make a note here that In November of 2016, Burke was actually sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for assault and obstruction of justice. Because would you believe this guy beat up a suspect?

[Morgan Abshur]

I'm really not surprised after what I just learned.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, it's horrible. It takes a total, like, toll on the investigation. Nothing moves forward. But then finally, I mean, he goes to prison. So he's no longer in charge of everything.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

And then in 2022, this guy named Rodney Harrison actually becomes the new Suffolk County Police Commissioner. And it finally seems like things are about to turn a corner because he is very committed to Teaming up with other law enforcement agencies to solve this Gilgo beach killer case. And Harrison ends up assembling the Suffolk County DA's office, the state police and the FBI. He puts together this actual task force that is very invested in tackling this case.

[Morgan Abshur]

I love when all these agencies communicate. So they decide to go through all of this evidence they've gathered so far and they actually digitize it. And that's what brings us to our next clue. A very familiar one. The Chevy Avalanche.

[Kayla Moore]

Finally, someone is looking at the Avalanche.

[Morgan Abshur]

Finally.

[Kayla Moore]

Which also, this wasn't like a normal avalanche either. Like, everyone who described it said it was like shorter and longer than most cars. So it was like a very specific, like, edition of the Chevy Avalanche.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, I saw in like, some sources it was like the original Chevy Avalanche.

[Kayla Moore]

Right.

[Morgan Abshur]

Which also kind of like begs this question of like, okay, if a person had this car back, then they still have it? Like, you're kind of playing with this game of like, what if they don't even have this car anymore? Like, it's.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, it's.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's crazy. But in March 2022, that task force came across Dave and Bear's description of Amber Costello's client and this dark colored Chevy Avalanche. They look through DMV records.

[Kayla Moore]

Finally, someone goes to the dmv, what we've been begging for, pull the ticket.

[Morgan Abshur]

And find a man who owns that exact type first generation Chevy Avalanche pickup that was registered to him at the time of these murders. They also find that this person matches the exact physical description that Bear and Dave gave. And remember the cell phone data that indicated where the killer potentially lived? Well, it turns out the owner of the Chevy Avalanche lives in Massapequa park and works in Midtown, where all of those calls, especially the ones to Amanda, the victim's sister, were pinging from. Yeah, and obviously the suspect has a name, which is Rex Heuerman.

[Kayla Moore]

Which also. Victims started disappearing as early as 1996. Once this new task force was assembled, it took them six weeks to find him. It was one. I cannot stress this enough. It was one trip to the dmv. Like, it's really. When you look at all of the evidence and stuff too, it's just like, so heartbreaking to see that that's all it took to put this together and.

[Morgan Abshur]

Think about what this person could have been doing in the meantime.

[Kayla Moore]

Exactly. That is decades of being able to operate when they could have found him so fast.

[Morgan Abshur]

Heuerman is a 59 year old and he works as an architectural consultant. He's also a Husband and father of two teenage kids. On paper, he doesn't seem like an obvious killer. But investigators dig a little deeper and discover that even though Rex has a good job and makes decent money, some things aren't really adding up. Like, on the outside, he lives in this old, dilapidated house, which is actually his childhood home. But apparently the place, like, really creeped a lot of people out, which feels.

[Kayla Moore]

So weird for an architect to live in such a, like, creepy, crumbling home.

[Morgan Abshur]

You would think that's like a representation of you, your skills, your. Your resume. It's like, you know, very forward facing. Yeah, it. It was so creepy. Air quotes to some people that, like, during Halloween and trick or treating, like, people would skip that house. They would cross the road to not go there and, like, get away from it, essentially. I also found a quote from someone who said their friend was an interior designer who did actually consult at the Heman home. And apparently when she went to go measure his basement, there was one door that absolutely refused to let her go in, and so she wasn't allowed to measure it. So definitely some red flags for Rex here. But so far, all this evidence is circumstantial. They need to get something more concrete. They need evidence that really ties him to these cases. And it takes about a year for them to cut through all of the red tape. But in spring of 2023, they do get permission to start tracking him. Detectives look through Rex's emails and learn that he's got a bunch of fake email addresses, and he uses a lot of these accounts to actually elicit sex work. They also find an AOL account that Rex has stored some selfies on, and he uses these selfies to solicit an arrange for sex work. They also find amex records that show these recurring Google pay payments that he made to Tinder that were then linked to a burner phone. They learned that Rex schedules his dates when his wife and kids are out of town or, you know, traveling. But still, none of this is really directly linking him to any of the victims. But they're still following his every move.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, I was reading about how, like, they. They were monitoring him so closely because they figured it was him. So if he even like, used Tinder to go meet up with someone, like, they were gonna be on him. Like, it. It seemed like they were trying to make sure that he wasn't able to do this again while they were watching him.

[Morgan Abshur]

And it pays off because they. They start to get more evidence. You know, on May 19, 2023, two detectives actually see Rex walking into a store in Manhattan to buy extra minutes on a burner phone. But again, they still need that smoking gun, the evidence that says this is our guy. And it's not long before they get it. One day, when investigators are trailing Rex through midtown Manhattan, they see him toss a pizza box just into a trash can. They take it out, and there's crust inside. And luckily, because he didn't eat that crust, they are able to obtain Rex's saliva. Which leads us to our next clue. DNA. Remember Maureen Brainard Barnes, Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello's body had random strands of hair found on them back in 2011. Those hairs, as you said, were too salty, too degraded from the sun, and like the technology we had back then, couldn't analyze them. But not anymore. Investigators can now obtain DNA samples from the hairs and compare them to Rex's, and they're pretty confident it's a match. They look at the mitochondrial DNA, they look at nuclear DNA like they are doing the work, and they can confidently rule out like, 99.96 or something percent of the population. So it is really looking like they. They finally have that smoking gun, but not just for him, because you see some of the DNA also matches his wife's and daughter's DNA. We haven't talked about it yet, but Marine Brainerd Barnes was restrained with three leather belts, and they actually found Rex's wife's DNA under one of those belts. I had to do some research on this because there are a few things this could have meant. Right. Like if you're a pessimist, you might think, oh, my God, his wife was involved too.

[Kayla Moore]

Right.

[Morgan Abshur]

But it could have been that, like, his wife had touched the belt recently.

[Kayla Moore]

Or it was her belt.

[Morgan Abshur]

It was her belt. Some people on Reddit really speculate that, like, maybe he took some of these victims back to his home. I mean, his families, they were out of town, so there's a lot of speculation about how that got there.

[Kayla Moore]

I know one of the belts had initials on it, too, and they were able to confirm that those initials were someone within his family. But they. She didn't say who it was, so it could have been the wife and it was actually her bout, which would have made sense.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. But regardless, they. They feel they have enough now. So on July 13, 2023 officers surround Rex as he leaves his office around 8:30pm that night, and they arrest him and they charge him with the murders of three of the original Gilgo four. He is not granted bail at this time.

[Kayla Moore]

Good. So While Rex is behind bars, the officers spend the next two or so weeks searching his home for any additional evidence they can find. They collect multiple laptops and phones that belong to Rex. And I think they're only able to see his Google search history starting from 2022 onward, because Google doesn't store data longer than that. But they find in just his Google searches, even from 2022, that he had been obsessively following this case and the investigation and all of it. He would Google the victim's names, he would Google the family members. Then he would Google things like, why haven't they caught the Long island serial killer yet? And someone brought up one of the. The officers on the case brought up that, like, they thought one of the, like the. Rex's defense would probably go on to say something like he was a crime junkie, like he was just into true crime. So he googled the case all the time. But with all of the other evidence we have, it does seem like he was just trying to keep up with what was happening.

[Morgan Abshur]

Oh, yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

He would also listen to podcasts about.

[Morgan Abshur]

His case on the subreddit for the Long Island Serial killer. I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the very same subreddit dedicated to this case.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, it seems like he was, like, just looking up all the information he could on it.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, which is. We see that, we've talked about it, you know, on one of our original episodes. Like sometimes people will revisit or return to the scene of things and really insert themselves in the investigation. And this was kind of his way to keep tabs.

[Kayla Moore]

Absolutely. They look at some of his other searches though, and they just get more upsetting from there. He searches for really degrading and violent forms of pornography. He also looks up child sex abuse material. It's again, still not definitive proof that he killed any of the victims, but it definitely does not look good for him. And these Google searches wouldn't have been enough evidence. Even though it is, it does look very bad. But with the DNA evidence and like the belts and all of that, like, things really start coming together and painting a bigger picture. But now authorities want to see if they can connect him to any of the other victims that they found. So finally, almost a year after his arrest in around June of 2024, they're able to link Rex's DNA to Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor, whose remains were both found in the spring of 2011, as well as another woman named Sandra Castilla. Sandra was a 28 year old sex worker who Went missing all the way back in 1993. So at that had been 30 years, which is way longer than they thought he was operating. She also had several strands of hair on her which were kept as evidence. And now investigators and the public are left to wonder who else Rex may have harmed. Since then, there's, like, really upsetting things they learn. Like, Rex would go to Jersey all the time. Rex would also go to Vegas a lot. And I mean, think about how many sex workers are in Vegas and how many CD areas you can go into. And so people start worrying that he maybe has killed people kind of all over the place. And other investigators have come forward and said that we will probably never know the amount of people he actually killed. But it already is so many more than they thought.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And it doesn't get better, you guys. One of the big pieces of evidence we get from searching all of these devices and, like, just to give you guys an idea, investigators actually collected 350 different electronic devices. This included, you know, laptops, computers, cameras, hard drives, mobile phones, GPS devices.

[Kayla Moore]

I didn't realize it was that many.

[Morgan Abshur]

Three fifty.

[Kayla Moore]

Oh, huge amount of stuff to have.

[Morgan Abshur]

I'm going to give you a breakdown.

[Kayla Moore]

Okay. Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

27 computers, 58 internal hard drives, 22 external hard drives, 46 cell phones, 15 types of cameras, dozens of memory cards, USB devices, SIM cards.

[Kayla Moore]

Wow.

[Morgan Abshur]

Hundreds of CDs, VHS cassettes. They also collected 300 guns.

[Kayla Moore]

But I've seen that house. I don't understand how you would fit 300 guns in there.

[Morgan Abshur]

That weird locked room.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, that's true.

[Morgan Abshur]

But as they're combing through all of these hard drives, devices, everything, they actually uncover this word file from 2000, and it's been modified a bunch over the years, very clearly. Also attempted to be deleted, which we're going to refer to this as clue number eight, the document. Investigators haven't disclosed all of the information that's on this document, but it's basically a journal, a manifesto of how Rex planned, prepped, and killed his victims and how to do it more effectively in the future. It has a list of supplies, disposal sites, tips for killing methods, how to get rid of bodies, how to remove trace DNA, how to avoid apprehension from law enforcement, how to get your story straight. You guys, it has headings like supplies, problems, body prep, DNA. Even just, like, reading it and going line by line of, like, what he was putting down and how, yeah, calculated it was. But that's. It gave me chills.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm so impressed with. With Robert Kolker because, remember, he was saying, no, guys, I think this is the same person. I think they're just learning how to do this more effectively and changing their method accordingly. And then we get this document that basically says, yes, that's exactly what he was doing.

[Morgan Abshur]

It demonstrates it.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, he was just learning as he went and trying to get better and better.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, he was clearly adding and changing a little bit, but still kind of having that underlying, you know, MO and the burlap, I think, is a hard thing to like. Like, be like, oh, no, they're not connected. But yet there's camouflage burlap and, again, the 300 guns. Like, Rex was a big hunter. You'd have camouflage burlap as a hunter.

[Kayla Moore]

Right.

[Morgan Abshur]

There's one comment on the subreddit that I just want to read for you guys, and it says, quote, thank God he didn't know how hard drives worked. This guy is a monster who was caught far too late.

[Kayla Moore]

What do they mean by think? Oh, like keeping it on a hard drive instead of keeping it on his computer, because that's how they found it.

[Morgan Abshur]

Like, he deleted the document, but yet investigators were able to, like, recover this.

[Kayla Moore]

He didn't realize you could just, like, recover it. Like a high school kid could just figure out how to recover it. Yeah, technology.

[Morgan Abshur]

When asked his opinion, criminologist Scott Bond said, quote, the thing about his blueprint for murder that stood out to me immediately is his need to document his killings, which demonstrates his grandiosity and desire to bask in the glory of his work. Clearly someone who thinks very highly of himself.

[Kayla Moore]

So highly of himself. And I wanted to add here, because we didn't talk about it, but the cell phones, like, that was one more peace. Because once police had, like, the full picture of everything Rex was doing, they actually saw how sloppy he was. Like, there were a lot more opportunities to catch him than they were taking, especially when it came to the burner phones. Because one thing I was reading about was Rex would go out of his way to get these burner phones, like, supply them with minutes. He had, what, 46 or something, but he kept his normal civilian cell phone on him the whole time. So as they were tracking his data, they would see the burner phone, his cell phone, and then the victim's phone all together at the same point, except for, like, Amber, who didn't have her phone on her. But all the other victims, they were able to find these points where, like, those three cell phones were together, which is, like, incredibly hard to refute that evidence. But he wasn't smart Enough to like, just not bring his own cell phone.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting too. Like in this manifesto, it talks so much about DNA, it even, it even includes hair nets. And yet what got him is the hair found on a lot of these victims. I also just have this weird note that I learned about him that like, pizza was his absolute favorite food. So the fact that the pizza crust is what got him I just think.

[Kayla Moore]

Is like, yeah, you're not allowed to enjoy anything. That's the one that got it for him. As of this recording, Rex Heuerman has now been charged with seven murders, the Gilgo Four, and the three victims he was linked to in June of 2024. At this time, he has not been charged with the murder of Shannon Gilbert, but the investigation into the other potential victims is still ongoing in April of 2025. So last month, a month before Rex's case was still in the pre trial phase. And so because of that, I mean, all of this is alleged. It won't be like confirmed until he's actually charged with all this stuff. He's pleaded not guilty on all counts. He says that was not me. Currently, Rex is being held at the Riverhead Correctional Facility in Suffolk County, New York as he awaits trial. And there is still no date for that trial as of this recording. And I was reading too about like, so they were talking about how good everyone feels about the amount of evidence that they have on him, but they were like, okay, what do we think we're gonna get hung up on? And so the things that they think they're gonna get hung up on are. The DNA technology they used was actually pretty new. And they said that every time that there's like new, new DNA technology in a trial, they, there's a lot of like doubt as to how accurate that technology is. So they think that the DNA actually, there's a chance it'll get thrown out. It's probably not going to, but like the defense will probably try to throw it out because it's new technology and the Google searches, they really are going to try to say that he was just a crime junkie. Following all the, the news on the.

[Morgan Abshur]

Gilgo murder, I, I just feel like there's such. I just like, I'm trying to like see how a devil's advocate would ever, ever spin it. And I just, I can't imagine. I mean, you do have an eyewitness like Bear and Dave that, yeah, this.

[Kayla Moore]

Is the guy we saw spin that by saying they're not trustworthy because that's what the, some of the police thought.

[Morgan Abshur]

I, I really, this is going to be one that we do definitely have to come back and do an update on.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

You know, I'm very curious to know what you guys think of this. I'm fully convinced, like, there's not a doubt in my mind that this is the guy. There's hairs, there's hairs.

[Kayla Moore]

How does his hair get on the body of all those people?

[Morgan Abshur]

Like, yeah, I just, I have no doubt that this is him. But I mean, there's still a lot of theories out there surrounding this case. Most of it does have to do with Shannon Gilbert, since we still don't really know what happened to her. Police, you know, as we said, initially claimed that she drowned in the march. And there's plenty of people on Reddit who think the same thing, but others have an entirely different explanation. There's one Reddit thread, r/rexhubman, and they think that Shannon may have even met Rex before she went missing. Maybe he was a regular client of hers or they brushed elbows at a, you know, sex party. Either way, like, they, they knew Rex had a way of getting fixated on women on I'll see you later. Like, he, when he had a target, it, it was a hunt for him. And so a lot of people, you know, maybe speculate that he was lurking outside that night and maybe that's what triggered her to panic and respond the way she did. Yeah, there's a lot with this case that like, I've just learned. I've gone down the rabbit hole of like the podcast he was on with like this French guy and interesting vibes. If anyone watches it, let me know what you think. There's also interviews with his coworkers that like, there's stories from them that I just find insane. Like he would, he would talk about hunting all the time, why he liked hunting. There was one co worker who, you know, was talking about going on a cruise and he's like, well, where's your cruise? And she's like, oh, you know, the middle of the ocean. You won't be able to find me. And on, like, I don't know what she said in the interview. I think it's a 60 minute interview. She says, like on the second day of her cruise, a note gets slipped under her door and it's a note from Rex that says something like, I told you I could find you.

[Kayla Moore]

Wow.

[Morgan Abshur]

And there's just like thing that he did again and again and again to like, kind of demonstrate how targeted he could Be.

[Kayla Moore]

And did you hear the story of. There was, like, an intern at his company, and he calls him in and he's like, I want to show you something. And he has this video up on his computer. And the intern's like, okay, what is this? And it's a video of a guy in an interrogation room who shoots himself in the head. And the intern just, like, watches this happen. Is like, this is what you wanted to show me. And Rex says something, starts talking about all the guns he has at home.

[Morgan Abshur]

What?

[Kayla Moore]

And it was just, like, so shocking. It was, like, so violent and horrible for this, like, poor kid to watch.

[Morgan Abshur]

Oh, my God.

[Kayla Moore]

Rex owns the company. Like, what are you gonna do? Like, yeah, very bizarre behavior.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, all of his behavior was bizarre. There's a girl who recently shared a video of her experience on, I believe it started on Tick Tock, and then has been interviewed by, you know, the Post and things like that. But she talks about how she was just on a train, like, totally empty train going, you know, somewhere, and a bunch of open seats. She sits down, puts her legs out on the chair in front of her. And then, you know, this big guy comes and sits down right across from her. And so she kind of, like, moves her legs to get more comfortable or something like that, or take them down. And he looks at her legs and says something like, oh, don't worry. You don't have to move your beautiful legs. And, like, she starts recording him, and he's sitting there cracking beer and, like, kind of staring at her. And it was Rex.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. And it's like, on video of.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's on video. It pans to the other train, aisle across, and all the seats that are totally open. And, you know, if you think about Maureen, who likely got on the train after working that weekend because her sister couldn't pick her up, like, yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

Did he meet her on the train?

[Morgan Abshur]

Like, he did?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's just. There's so much behavior that just kind of speaks to. Something's off. And we have this evidence, and it's. It's pretty concrete for me.

[Kayla Moore]

Yes, I agree. So, I mean, one of the biggest loose threads in this whole investigation, though, is what happened to Shannon. And honestly, we might never know exactly what it was that happened to Shannon that night, but she has become a major focal point of the story for a very good reason, and that's because a lot of people call Shannon the unintentional hero of this whole story because she led authorities to all of the other victims. Like, it's because they were searching for Shannon that they were able to find everyone. And in fact, actually, we have an update because In April of 2025, two more of those victims were identified. The mother and child that were found in the second set of remains, often referred to as peaches because the mom had a tattoo. Her name is Tanya Denise Jackson, and her daughter was Tatiana Marie Dykes. But Tanya didn't necessarily fit the description of the other victims. While she was a single mom, she was also a US army vet from Alabama who reportedly worked at a doctor's office. From what we've researched, there's nothing that indicates she was a sex worker. Detectives in Suffolk county's neighboring district, Nassau county, are still investigating what exactly could have happened to the mother and daughter, because also, it was, like, the first child that was found with remains. It's, like, just kind of bizarre. They're not sure exactly if it's, like, connected to Rex.

[Morgan Abshur]

A little more of an outlier.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. And so far, there's not concrete evidence connecting Rex to those two murders. But regardless, they still want to figure out what happened. So if you have any information on them or this case in general, like we said, there's, like, maybe a bunch of other women out there that Rex also killed. Allegedly. Authorities ask that tips be submitted to 1-800-244-88477, or www.nassau county crime stoppers.com. and that's n a s s a u.

[Morgan Abshur]

All the links and everything will be in the description. But that is all we have for this episode. You know, this case file remains open. We don't really have our resolution yet, and we will just have to wait and see what the outcome of Rex Heuerman's trial is. In the meantime, let's just take a cue from the victim's family members and just know that whoever you are, whatever path you choose to take in your life, there will always be someone out there who cares, someone who will fight for you. Friends, family, complete strangers. We're all out here searching for the truth and justice.

[Kayla Moore]

And that's it for this episode of clues. We hope you guys enjoyed getting into this case with us. It's definitely a frustrating one and one that I'm going to be following closely. I mean, both of us are going to be following very closely for new developments. But we want to hear from you guys, like, your thoughts, your theories, all of your feedback. That's really what makes this community so special.

[Morgan Abshur]

Absolutely. At Crime House, we really, really value your support. So please share your thoughts on all of our socials. The YouTube comments like subscribe and follow clues to help others discover the show. And if you want more Crime House bonus content, check out Apple Podcasts.

[Kayla Moore]

All right, Bye guys.

[Morgan Abshur]

By.