Original subtitles

Translated By The_Proffs

Translated By The_Proffs

[***]

REPORTER: Out here along Ocean Parkway,

where the body count just keeps on rising.

The so-called "Gilgo Four"

were all petite women,

all under five foot five, and they were all sex workers.

We have a serial killer on our hands.

The only word that really came to mind was monstrous.

It's the perfect tabloid story.

But it turns into something much bigger

than a simple, like, serial killer case.

REPORTER: After years of controversy

surrounding guns and a sex worker,

the Suffolk County Police Chief resigned today.

This whole part of the story is so extraordinary.

ALGAR: The investigation pretty much slows to a crawl

for almost a decade, shockingly.

Find this killer before he strikes and murders

someone that you love.

McGARVEY: And then, after 13 years,

this bombshell drops out of seemingly nowhere.

REPORTER: A suspect now under arrest in connection

to the unsolved Gilgo Beach murders.

SHEEHAN: I remember thinking, "Oh, shit.

Who would have suspected that that guy was the killer?"

He basically was the person that lived next door.

But the most mysterious figure in this whole thing is the wife.

SHEEHAN: The idea that the wife didn't know anything

about what he was doing is hard to believe.

She has not talked to any of us. We can only speculate.

[***]

Does everybody really believe everything they hear?

[***]

[PHONE DIALING]

[***]

RYDER: So, the early Gilgo case starts with Shannan Gilbert.

Shannan showed up as a sex worker to a house on Oak Beach.

She ran from that residence and then called 911.

And when she fled, she knocked on two other doors.

She ran into that mucky bramble area

on the swampy side of the street

where she disappeared.

My name is Patrick Ryder. I am the Police Commissioner

for the Nassau County Police Department.

Which is right next to Suffolk County,

where Gilgo Beach is here on Long Island.

Ocean Parkway runs west to east.

It'll take you from Jones Beach,

which is about 40 miles from Manhattan,

all the way east to Oak Beach, where Shannan was last seen.

Along that roadway

on the right and left side, it's all bramble.

You can't see the beach.

There's high dunes to protect it

from, obviously, the tides.

And right in the middle is Gilgo Beach.

Gilgo, in the summer during the day, very busy area.

[***]

But at night time,

you could pull over on the side of the road,

shut your lights off, and nobody'll see you.

If you're in tight to the bramble area,

nobody will see your car.

It's that dark in some areas at nighttime.

As detectives, nothing is harder

than when someone comes in to report a missing person.

I'm a cop, but also I'm a parent.

Parents are parents. You know, you want results

knowing that, "Listen, that's my child out there."

My name is Rick Tirelli. I grew up on Long Island,

and I'm a former New York City Homicide Detective.

Shannan was a sex worker who disappeared in Oak Beach,

just seven miles east of Gilgo Beach.

REPORTER: Shannan Gilbert went missing on May 1st of last year

after she ran screaming from a client's home at 5 a.m.

It's the last she was seen alive.

TIRELLI: John Mallia, who was a K-9 police officer,

was looking for Shannan's body.

He's out there in the bramble in the cold December weather.

And he ends up finding something.

But it's not Shannan.

REPORTER 1: We're live on Gilgo Beach.

An extensive search that goes on

for a good mile along the bay here.

You can see crime scene investigators behind me.

REPORTER 2: A K-9 unit on a training exercise here

uncovered the first body.

MALLIA: The dog gave me an indication.

At that point, I saw the skeletal remains of a body.

REPORTER 2: When search teams returned to the same location today

to look for more evidence, they found instead

three more bodies stuffed in these brushes.

The thing with Gilgo is

everyone on Long Island and friends of mine

who worked on other serial killer cases knew it was big.

You start to wonder like, like,

"Where's this guy going? What's going on?"

RYDER: So once we start uncovering bodies,

you start getting the concern,

"How did these happen? Who are our victims?

What is the commonality? What can we do to solve this?"

REPORTER 3: Out here along Ocean Parkway,

where the body count just keeps on rising

and the grisly mystery just deepens as police excavate

an apparent serial killer's dumping ground.

TOULON: The commonality amongst the four women

that were originally found was they were all bound.

They were all Caucasian.

They were relatively, uh, small in height and small in frame.

And I thought I've seen it all,

have dealt with all types of crimes.

But when it came to Gilgo Beach,

to have a serial killer of this magnitude.

You know, I've been a resident of Suffolk County for 33 years,

and I wanted to make sure we had a hand in solving this.

RYDER: We look at it from a personal standpoint.

There's a weight on everybody's shoulders

of an unsolved homicide,

but none more than a serial killer.

Find this killer before he strikes, and hurts,

and murders someone that you love.

[***]

ALGAR: Once the word came down that there were four bodies there,

I drove from New York City as fast as I could

all the way out to Gilgo Beach.

It was December.

It was absolutely bone-chilling that day.

I've been a reporter for 20 years.

So when a story on a case like that,

your question is, "Are they related or are they not?"

If they are related, you drop everything else,

and you devote yourself to finding out how they're related.

Four bodies in one place.

The assumption is serial killer.

And once that phrase comes out,

there are no other stories at that point.

And the peace and beauty of Fire Island was shattered.

A very different papacy.

MURPHY: I grew up on Long Island,

and I've been a reporter for more than four decades.

From Gotti to Gilgo, I've covered it all.

I will be the first to tell you

that I am a wannabe police detective.

And when a case is unsolved, I wanna know why.

The Gilgo Four were found in very thick bramble, thick brush,

just in about 30 feet

on the westbound lane of Ocean Parkway.

They were all naked, and they were all bound.

Three of them with tape, and one was bound with belts,

and three of them were wrapped in burlap.

We're asking ourselves all these questions:

"How did they die?

Where were they killed?"

It could take weeks or months to identify the four bodies

found over the past couple of days.

I'm Shannon McGarvey. I'm an investigative writer.

I've been working on the Gilgo case

for the better part of a decade.

The so-called "Gilgo Four" were all petite women,

all under five foot five, and that was chilling.

Within a week, there was no indication

that there was a person of interest,

never mind a suspect in this case.

How long has this been going on?

Who are the victims?

Were they dumped all at once?

Anything is possible at this point

because there's so many unanswered questions.

These questions started coming out in the beginning

and just really fueling the media frenzy around the case.

SHEEHAN: I've been a field reporter for theNew York Post,

going on 14 years, and I've seen some of the most horrific shit

that anybody has ever seen that people shouldn't see.

FITZGIBBON: I've covered crime.

I've covered courts, police

for almost four decades.

We are the blue collar paper on Long Island.

The everyday New Yorker reads the New York Post.

What sells is this hunger for the sensational.

You don't get more sensational than a serial killer.

A lot of it is the monster among us.

The fact that my neighbor could be this horrific killer.

It just captures the imagination. Always has.

You know, from Jack the Ripper on down.

I don't think it's a coincidence that four bodies

ended up in this area.

We're looking at that, that we could have a serial killer.

So it becomes very obvious

to the police commissioner at the time.

We have a serial killer on our hands.

And then fast forward about a month later...

REPORTER: We are following some breaking news

out of Long Island, New York.

The medical examiner in Suffolk County identified the remains

of all four bodies found last month.

The Gilgo four are identified and we learn that

they're Maureen Brainard-Barnes,

Melissa Barthelemy,

Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.

REPORTER 1: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a mother of two,

was working as a Craigslist escort in Manhattan,

and disappeared in July 2007.

REPORTER 2: After placing an ad on Craigslist,

Melissa vanished in July 2009.

REPORTER 3: Megan Waterman went missing in June

after agreeing to see a client

on Long Island through Craigslist.

REPORTER 4: Amber, a sex worker,

was murdered around September 2nd, 2010.

It really made me sick.

If there were many more bodies out there, we want to find them.

It's one of the most intense cases I've ever covered.

People should be on very, very high alert.

How sadistic is this person?

DORMER: These young women were abused and raped and killed.

What is he capable of?

...how another body found in the same area.

He's a monster.

[***]

REPORTER 1: It started as an effort to find clues

in the case of a missing woman, Shannan Gilbert.

I'd like to report that we found human remains.

REPORTER 2: Four bodies wrapped in burlap, dumped alongside Ocean Parkway.

REPORTER 1: That search has turned into a gruesome murder mystery,

with evidence that suggests a serial killer is on the loose.

We're looking at that, that we could have a serial killer.

REPORTER 2: These grim discoveries mark the third serial killer murders

involving prostitutes here on Long Island

in more than two decades.

Long Island has a notorious history

for really disturbing murder cases.

REPORTER 2: An unknown woman was found murdered in a pickup truck.

And serial killers.

We had the Amityville Horror, Ronald DeFeo Jr.

REPORTER 1: It remains one of Long Island's most disturbing crimes.

Six members of the DeFeo family

were gunned down in their Amityville home.

MURPHY: Back in the early '90s,

Joel Rifkin had graveyards all over the place

where he would dump parts of bodies.

REPORTER 2: The landscaper is suspected of being involved

in the deaths of 18 women,

several of whom were sex workers.

MURPHY: We had Robert Schulman.

REPORTER 2: After he fatally assaulted them,

he took a knife and a saw and cut off their limbs.

Have anything to say at all?

Then there was John Bittrolff.

REPORTER 1: Bittrolff is facing charges

for two murders and is a suspect for a third.

Three women were beaten, suffocated,

and found undressed in distinct poses.

So there's a rich history of serial killer activity

and gruesome murder on this relatively isolated island

in New York City's backyard.

I've covered it all,

and I've never seen a serial killer case

like the Long Island serial killer.

It's sort of on another level.

This guy, whoever it was,

was eluding the authorities,

and really confounding not only the reporters,

but the community.

CANN: Why did you pick her?

How did you pick her? How did you get her?

You know, did my sister cry? Did she beg? You know?

Did she say, "Please, please?" Like, "I have kids." Like...

I'm afraid that they'll never find this person

and he'll continue to keep on killing girls.

And it's a horrible feeling.

It is true. As the case progresses, as time passes on,

he may get sloppy.

He may make mistakes.

But he hasn't done that up until now.

[***]

RYDER: So...

when you're an investigator,

your job is to give that family relief.

Your job is to speak for the victims.

Your job is to comfort the families of those victims.

You also have a job to solve it.

Let me first thank everybody

for coming on such short notice.

What is now very clear

is that the area in and around Gilgo Beach

has been used to discard human remains for some period of time.

TIRELLI: In the beginning, I think

that the Suffolk County Police Department,

and the agencies that were working with them

took a lot of good investigative steps to try to find this guy.

MURPHY: The first year of the case, the FBI was involved.

Chief Dominick Varrone

was the head of the detective bureau in Suffolk County.

He said he had meetings with Geraldine Hart,

an FBI agent here on Long Island.

They were actually starting to work with the cell phone data

that they were able to get from the victims' phones.

Maureen Brainard-Barnes was last seen alive

on July 9th, 2007.

But three days before, she started getting

a series of phone calls from a burner phone.

Then, three days after Maureen Brainard-Barnes disappears,

there are two outbound calls made from her cell phone

near the Long Island Expressway in Suffolk County.

Melissa Barthelemy disappeared on July 10th 2009.

About a week before she vanished,

her cell phone was contacted by a burner phone.

And then on July 10th, the day she went missing,

that burner phone traveled

from Massapequa Park on Long Island to Midtown Manhattan.

And then later that evening...

Melissa Barthelemy's cell phone traveled

from Midtown Manhattan out to Massapequa Park.

The next day, Melissa's phone pings at a cell site

in Massapequa at 1:43 a.m.

So there are important clues here that detectives

are picking up on at this early stage.

First, the killer is using burner phones

as part of his MO.

Secondly, investigators now know

that there's three general areas where the story is unfolding.

Nassau County, where Massapequa is.

Suffolk County, where Gilgo Beach is.

And Midtown Manhattan.

Now, Gilgo Four investigators dig deeper and reexamine a clue

from the original investigation into Melissa's disappearance

almost two years earlier, in April 2009.

Within a week of Melissa Barthelemy's disappearance,

her teenage sister starts to receive

a series of very sick and twisted calls

from a man that's using Melissa's cell phone.

She was just 15 years old when she received a phone call

she says, "was straight out of a horror movie."

There are some diary entries

that Melissa Barthelemy's teenage sister Amanda made.

Have you figured out who this is?

No. Where's my sister?

Are you gonna be a whore like your sister now?

No. Where is my sister?

She's dead. I killed her.

They're very taunting and angry words. He obviously enjoys it.

And he's sick in the head. I'm scared of my own protection.

ALGAR: Now, in 2011, during the Gilgo investigation,

an FBI team that was working on the case,

they were able to track these calls to a degree.

Investigators were able to triangulate

the phone calls made from Melissa's phone

to her sister, Amanda.

The caller kept them brief, and there was an early theory

that he knew that if you stayed on the line

for a certain amount of time, you could get a precise trace.

He seemed cognizant of that and ended the calls early.

And we're wondering what's going on here.

How sophisticated is this guy?

Does he have a law enforcement background?

Does he know how to cover his tracks?

We're asking ourselves all these questions

because they're not finding the guy.

ALGAR: Still, they were able to track the phone calls.

To Times Square,

Madison Square Garden

and Massapequa Park.

So, there was finally some solidity

to the origins of this person.

Once this information was released,

and you had two zones of interest.

Massapequa and Manhattan.

We were asking ourselves,

did this person live in Massapequa

and live some quiet suburban life there?

And did he commute into Manhattan every day?

FITZGIBBON: We reported this April 10th, 2011

and asked the question, "Did her murderer

work in Midtown and commute from Long Island?"

MURPHY: So, detectives now have a general idea

of where the killer traveled to and from,

and then they learn more.

Shortly after the bodies were identified in January of 2011,

police went to the home of Amber Costello.

One of the Gilgo Four.

And they interviewed her roommate, Dave Schaller.

McGARVEY: In the days leading up to Amber's disappearance,

Amber and Dave had been running a ruse in the house

where Amber would invite a John over

and Dave would bust out in the middle of the meeting

and pretend to be an outraged boyfriend.

Thus scaring the John away.

And then Amber pockets the money.

That's the ruse that they run on a very particular client.

The day before Amber disappears.

MURPHY: On September 1st, 2010,

this client accesses her Backpage ad.

The investigators check Amber's cell phone records

and see that a burner phone

between Massapequa and Amityville

contacts Amber Costello.

Not long after that,

the burner phone travels toward West Babylon,

where Amber Costello lives.

[***]

This client...

shows up.

He's in the house.

And apparently pays his money.

McGARVEY: Dave busts out.

Runs the client off.

And Amber pockets the money.

But this time...

...the client continues to contact her.

He sends a text message.

[PHONE CHIMES]

"That was not so nice.

Do I get credit for next time?"

Within two minutes of that text being sent,

the cell site indicates that

the burner phone is in Massapequa Park.

So the next night, this same burner phone

pings in Midtown Manhattan.

Then it pings in Massapequa.

And then it ends up pinging where Amber Costello lives.

The next night, Amber Costello tells her roommate,

Dave Schaller, that she's going to see this same client.

And of course, she never came back.

ALGAR: Schaller told police that this client resembled an ogre,

and he was around 6'4" inches tall.

This guy was so relentless, he called several times.

This is somebody that I've seen.

I might be the one of the only people who knows who he is.

MURPHY: He was described as this hulking man

who looked like an ogre.

He wore these sort of large glasses. He had bushy hair.

Equally significant, Schaller says

that he was driving a unique vehicle.

A dark green, first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche.

MURPHY: By the end of 2011...

All within the first year of the case.

[PHONES RINGING]

Just think about what the investigators already have.

A description of the killer.

The make and model of his car.

And a pretty good idea of the area where he travels...

Between Long Island and Manhattan.

ANNOUNCER [OVER PA]: Penn Station.

Clearly, he is very knowledgeable

about the Gilgo Beach area.

It's very deserted. It's very desolate.

Which implies that he either works in that area

or he lives in that area.

Investigators were actually closer to targeting a suspect

than they ever had been.

ALGAR: So the obvious question is

why didn't investigators take the next step?

Why does this case continue to drag on for another decade?

And in that time, does the killer become more emboldened?

Hunting and killing and stalking without any fear of reprisal?

How many more women have to die before he's caught?

[***]

REPORTER: These mothers, stepdads,

aunts and other relatives gathered for a vigil

in remembrance of three young women

whose remains were discovered and identified in this area.

ELA: We have a lot of questions that we want answers to.

You know who you are.

You know what you did to these women.

Somebody out there knows something.

Somebody had seen something.

Don't be afraid.

You turn this person in,

you're gonna save another human's life.

BARTHELEMY: You're a very weak man.

You prey on small, innocent girls,

and we're gonna get you.

McGARVEY: As the families of the Gilgo Four

are gathering for their daughters,

something honestly unbelievable happens.

Shannan's body's discovered.

REPORTER: The woman they've been looking for, Shannan Gilbert.

Police believe they have finally found her remains.

DORMER: We believe that Shannan Gilbert

ran into that area the night that she disappeared.

And looking at the terrain,

it's very easy to get engulfed with water

and fall down and not be able to get out of there.

So we surmise that that's what happened to Shannan.

McGARVEY: Law enforcement said that she had drowned.

But the official autopsy report

listed her death as undetermined.

And I think even at one point, said death by misadventure.

It seemed to be victim blaming.

And you have to ask yourself,

is it because she was a sex worker?

REPORTER: These women were reportedly prostitutes or escorts,

and how does that affect an investigation?

I'll be very frank about it.

Will it get the exact same amount

of close attention and manpower

that say a missing schoolteacher in Central Park might get?

The reality is they will not.

Let's face it, they have sex with strangers for money.

McGARVEY: The subtle message that

was coming out during this time

was like, "If you don't wanna get killed,

don't be a sex worker."

They were all beautiful women.

They weren't just prostitutes, as everybody is saying.

RYDER: It's been spun a lot of different ways.

I don't care what your occupation is,

what your race, religion, gender is.

You're a victim of ours, we'll give you everything we got.

We are driven by a passion to give victims closure.

TOULON: I can tell you the original investigators had one goal.

Bring the person who has killed those women to justice.

RYDER: They're women.

They're women that were murdered.

They're victims.

But sometimes these things take time.

They're not done overnight.

ALGAR: So law enforcement has all of this information

about these women all the way back in 2011.

And remember, they also had solid information

about the man who targeted and killed them.

RYDER: Their profile told them the killer was a big man,

kind of a recluse.

Who either drove a Chevy Avalanche

or had access to one.

He probably lived in a middle-class community

on Long Island.

The man had a job.

He likely commuted every day,

like thousands of people in Nassau County do

every day to Manhattan.

McGARVEY: And then at the end of 2011,

with all of this forward momentum on the case,

there was an election. Which means new appointments.

There was a changing of the guard in Suffolk County,

and a new Chief of Police comes in.

A guy named James Burke. And everything changed.

James Burke inherited the Gilgo Beach case

when he became Chief of Suffolk County Police in 2012.

TIRELLI: Jimmy Burke was a friend of mine.

Jimmy was actually one of the smartest men I've ever met.

But he had these demons in him.

McGARVEY: Before he was appointed,

an anonymous letter was even written

about this guy warning Suffolk County

not to appoint him as Chief of Police.

ALGAR: Burke's unquenchable taste for prostitutes

and his aggressive sexual appetites,

his presence at swingers parties,

those tales were not rare.

But he seemed to be invincible to scrutiny

or discipline or punishment.

MURPHY: Now he's taking over.

He's the new sheriff in town.

And he basically does whatever he wants.

James Burke decided to remove several members

from the task force that were working

to try and solve this case.

ALGAR: He wanted his own regime.

He wanted to get rid of anyone

who might have any competing loyalties prior to him.

There were the Chief of Detectives, Dominick Varrone,

who had 40 years on the job,

had tremendous institutional knowledge...

was simply taken off the case. He wasn't even debriefed.

TOULON: And then there's Geraldine Hart,

FBI Supervisory Agent for Long Island.

The Gilgo Beach investigation is perhaps the most well-known

and complex that this department has ever undertaken.

She was also removed from the task force by James Burke.

Why is that important? It's important because

the people who had been investigating Gilgo

up until that point did not relay their findings

to the next group of Burke's personnel

who would take up the case.

Removing a partner like the FBI who has vast resources,

especially the forensic capabilities that they had,

tragically, it makes it harder for this case to be solved.

ALGAR: One of the theories at the time

was simply that the Suffolk Police

wanted credit for cracking it,

as opposed to federal investigators.

So perhaps a case of hubris.

These are people encroaching on our investigative territory.

So let's keep them at bay.

Once this case is solved,

we want to be able to raise the trophy for our department

that will benefit Burke's career and all those around him.

It turns out, though, that's not the reason why he did it.

My name is Alexis Linkletter,

and I am an investigative journalist,

podcaster, and I'm from Long Island.

This case essentially fell into my lap between 2012 and 2013

when Chris Loeb, a guy I went to high school with,

a guy I'd known since seventh grade,

essentially found himself at the center of this insane story.

REPORTER: After years of controversy

surrounding guns and a sex worker,

the Suffolk County Police Chief resigned today.

MURPHY: James Burke was arrested

for the cover up of an assault on a suspect, Chris Loeb.

REPORTER: Christopher Loeb of Smithtown, was taken into custody

for stealing belongings from Burke's department-issued car,

which was parked outside his home.

That wouldn't necessarily have been particularly interesting,

except for what was found inside the duffel bag.

Which was sex toys, pornography, and other just strange items

that you wouldn't expect a Police Chief to have

in his department-issued SUV.

LINKLETTER: After this happened, Chris is brought back

to Suffolk County Police Headquarters,

and he's chained to a floor.

He's beaten for hours.

He's taunted by James Burke

and several of his subordinate officers.

REPORTER: Burke has now pled guilty to federal charges

of assaulting a suspect and conspiring to cover it up.

FITZGIBBON: This whole part of the story is so extraordinary.

One has to ask, how much did the Burke scandal

impact the Long Island serial killer investigation?

It has a huge impact because

it happens during this critical period,

where the original Gilgo investigation

actually had made some very good progress.

ALGAR: Remember, Suffolk County investigators

had this profile of an ogre

who lived somewhere in Massapequa Park.

Who works somewhere in Midtown Manhattan.

Who either once owned

or still owns a Chevy Avalanche.

And because of this corruption in the SCPD,

he's been given this five-year grace period to live his life.

Did this person continue to commit murder?

What if they moved away from Long Island?

I had pretty much given up hope at this point.

Will investigators ever find the Long Island serial killer?

[***]

[***]

ALGAR: So, after James Burke is ousted

as Suffolk County police chief in 2015,

the investigation into the Long Island serial killer

pretty much slows to a crawl for the next three years.

But in the spring of 2018, the Suffolk County Executive

selected Geraldine Hart as the Police Commissioner.

Ironically, Geraldine Hart

was a former FBI Supervisory Agent

for Long Island who was actually removed from the Task Force

originally by then Police Chief James Burke.

MURPHY: All of a sudden, we hear

there's going to be a press conference

about this piece of evidence never seen before.

I would first like to introduce

Suffolk County Police Commissioner

Geraldine Hart.

Today we are releasing a significant piece of evidence

found at one of the crime scenes along Ocean Parkway.

A black leather belt.

Embossed with the letters HM or WH was recovered

during the initial stages of this investigation.

We believe that the belt was handled by the suspect

and did not belong to any of the victims.

There have long been questions.

What size is the waist of the belt?

It wasn't long after that the police release a video

of Megan Waterman, one of the Gilgo Four.

MURPHY: Megan Waterman is last seen

leaving the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge, Long Island.

She's in the lobby at the desk.

And then she just walks out that door.

And vanishes.

ALGAR: At this point, there is now a steady

dispersal of new evidence from the new regime

in Suffolk County police headquarters.

They created enough momentum at this point

to start to spur some questions if they were closing in.

Did they have a suspect?

Are they releasing these items to perhaps get a reaction...

from the person who's on their radar?

There was this big rev up

which really made us feel like they were about to solve it.

But then, it just dropped off again.

And it was quiet again.

[***]

MAN: With a serial killer like this, the thrill is in the kill.

What really drives him is not sex

but rather the power over another human being.

TOULON: But it's not really until 2022 when everything changed.

You have Ray Tierney

that's elected as a District Attorney.

One of the first things that Ray Tierney said to me was:

"I wanna work with the sheriff's office on every case possible,

including Gilgo.

And then a few months later,

Rodney Harrison is now selected as the Police Commissioner.

REPORTER: Rodney Harrison's career with the NYPD leads to a new role

as he steps in as the commissioner

of the Suffolk County Police Department.

This is a bittersweet moment for me.

TOULON: Rodney Harrison, who is a former chief of police

with the New York City Police Department,

was also chief of detectives.

A wealth of experience when it comes to investigations.

He came into this building...

And said to me, he met with my staff, he goes:

"We're gonna work collaboratively on everything,

and there's not gonna be any silos."

We will not rest until we bring those accountable to justice.

That solving this serial case

is gonna be very, very important to me.

He announced the creation of a task force

dedicated solely to the Gilgo case.

And he used language that we had not heard

in a very long time.

TIRELLI: Now remember, the early investigation

turned up a lot of clues.

There was a lot of meat on the bone.

Now, he's doing the legwork. It's a puzzle.

You're putting pieces in,

and at the end, you assemble a puzzle.

About a year after they found the bodies,

Suffolk County PD had two specific areas

that were of great interest to them.

REPORTER: Cell data traced the killer's calls to New York City.

And also to Massapequa Park in Long Island.

Now, the task force and the FBI reexamined

the cell phone data from the time of the murders.

There's an area of a confluence of cell phone towers,

and that was mapped out.

They called it the box.

One box was in Massapequa on Long Island,

and one box was in Manhattan.

Somewhere in this area, it's a possibility

that the killer lived within Massapequa's box.

But so did 500 other families.

FITZGIBBON: But it's not as if police didn't have

some very specific clues to work with.

Back in 2010, Amber Costello's roommate, David Schaller,

had given investigators a description

of both the suspect and his vehicle.

MURPHY: Dave Schaller remembered this hulking man

that came into the house on September 1st, 2010

who looked like an ogre.

[KNOCKING ON DOOR]

He was described as being between 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-6.

And then when he ran out of that house, the vehicle was seen.

And apparently, this vehicle was a first generation

dark green Chevy Avalanche.

It was an unusual vehicle.

I don't wanna Monday morning quarterback anyone.

But if I get a specific vehicle...

without a plate, what we do is we'll run a search.

So the state police plug that Avalanche in,

and they give you every Avalanche that color

in Massapequa, Nassau County, whatever you give them,

and they'll give you all those cars.

So police conduct a search for that particular vehicle.

They overlay it in that zone of interest

in Massapequa.

And they get a hit.

[***]

ALGAR: In March of 2022,

for the first time since 2010,

13 years after the Gilgo Four were discovered,

Police have a name.

And they now have a suspect.

FITZGIBBON: And what's the best way

to confirm that he's the man?

DNA.

In 2010, investigators found five hairs

on three of the victims.

Because the bodies were exposed to the elements,

those hairs were degraded.

So you couldn't use

traditional DNA analysis on them.

At the time, investigators could only determine that

four of the hairs were female, one was male,

and they were all Caucasian.

MURPHY: In 2010, the technology was not advanced enough

to identify whose DNA was on those hairs.

But by 2022, DNA technology had finally advanced enough

where investigators could pull a profile from the hairs.

TOULON: The problem, however,

was the suspect had never been arrested.

And so, if the suspect has never had

any interaction with law enforcement,

his fingerprints or any DNA has never been in our system.

RYDER: So, once they had a target,

they went after collecting family DNA.

TOULON: One of the things that you have to think about

when you're surveilling someone and you need DNA, you know,

you wanna get a DNA that's discarded.

MURPHY: But to get the samples, you have to get creative.

First, investigators pose as sanitation workers,

and show up at the house,

and start collecting bottles outside the home,

and they do DNA swabs.

Then one day, the suspect

walks out of his Manhattan office,

and he's holding a pizza box,

and he throws it in the garbage can.

The investigators take the box out,

and they swab the pizza crust and the napkin,

and they send that to the crime lab.

It was very important to connect that pizza crust, or that DNA

to the DNA at the crime scene

to conclusively link the suspect to the crimes.

MURPHY: As they're waiting for the results to come back,

subpoenas are issued,

and they're searching his personal cell phone records.

They're trying to connect the dots

between his regular cell phone and the burner phones.

TIERNEY: We executed over 300 subpoenas, search warrants

pertaining to this individual.

We were able to identify

seven separate burner phones that he used.

We compared his personal cell site records.

If the personal phone would bounce off a cell tower,

it was always consistent and in close proximity

with the target phones.

MURPHY: All this occurs over the course of a year.

Investigators now have cell phone data

that puts burner phones, and the suspect's cell phone,

and some of the victims' phones together.

And then the DNA results come back.

And they have enough to make an arrest.

So now, it's time to close in on him.

At least 10 investigators from the Gilgo Beach Task Force

who've been watching this guy for the last year

are in position outside the suspect's office

in midtown Manhattan, ready to move in.

And finally, here he comes.

[***]

They box him in so he can't escape.

After nearly 13 years.

ALGAR: After all of the turmoil

in the Suffolk County Police Department.

And now, this moment of redemption in the investigation.

This architect, father, stepfather, husband,

is arrested as the Gilgo Beach serial killer...

whose name we learned is Rex Heuermann.

[***]

REPORTER 1: We wanna begin right now with breaking news out of New York.

REPORTER 2: A major development in a long unsolved case

is revealed by investigators.

REPORTER 3: Police have arrested a suspect in the murders on Gilgo Beach.

McGARVEY: After 13 years,

this bombshell drops out of seemingly nowhere,

and it just cracks the case wide open.

REPORTER 2: You can see the suspect walking down Fifth Avenue

when a group of agents swoop in and make the arrest.

REPORTER 1: They corner him so he can't escape.

Charged with killing three women,

Rex Heuermann is also the primary suspect

in the death of a fourth.

SHEEHAN: I remember thinking, "Oh, shit.

Who would've suspected that that guy was the killer?"

The old thing: "It's right under your nose."

It's right in front of you. You can't see it sometimes.

So the Nassau County Police Academy,

which has the Intel Center at the time, was on Second Avenue.

We were two blocks from the actual house,

literally around the corner.

It's like, "Jeez, I passed that block a thousand times.

I worked out of that building.

I drove past it a dozen times, you know, easily.

TOULON: The fact that he was the devil that walked amongst us...

He made you scratch your head,

like, "Wow, how did this happen?"

Because he basically was the person that lived next door.

FITZGIBBON: It doesn't take long to figure out a serial killer is gonna be

the front page of the New York Postthat day.

It's the perfect tabloid story.

Who is Rex Heuermann?

What's his family situation like? What's his background?

REPORTER 1: Rex Heuermann, a longtime resident

of Massapequa Park, Long Island.

REPORTER 2: A 59 year-old architect

who's also a husband and a father.

Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us.

A predator that ruined families.

SHEEHAN: At the exact same time,

there is a media circus at the courthouse.

There's a media circus breaking out in front of his house.

REPORTER: Residents of Massapequa Park were shocked to discover

that Rex Heuermann had been living just a few houses away.

To know that something like this is going on,

or someone is living 'em in this community, it's crazy.

FITZGIBBON: We're scrambling to get any information we can.

Who is this guy? What's his background?

Shocking. You know, it's scary, too.

SHEEHAN: The rest of the houses in this neighborhood

are middle-class homes.

His looks more like a house of horrors,

and he's an architect.

Neighbors told us that they wouldn't let

their kids trick or treat at that particular house.

The guy was odd. I kept him at arm's length

because I really didn't wanna be close to him.

REPORTER 1: This is the house that police

have been swarming this morning,

105 First Avenue in Massapequa Park.

REPORTER 2: Using heavy equipment and forensic K-9 units,

police combed through the home's backyard.

REPORTER 1: Officers in hazmat suits going into the house.

So clearly, they're in there to do

some sort of forensic activity.

REPORTER 3: Police are looking into whether the victims

were ever inside the residence.

REPORTER 4: Authorities uncovered more than 200 firearms

in a vault located in the basement

of Rex Heuermann's home.

It was a big gun vault. It was a huge gun vault.

The guy had 300 guns in his house.

The neighbor was describing it as a soundproof locked room.

Years ago, I've seen a bunch of guys carrying this

incredibly heavy object in there.

And I said, "Wow, that's heavy rocks."

And he said it was an iron door for the basement.

FITZGIBBON: The whole speculation is he's butchering these people

in his own basement.

That he had a killing vault.

We have obtained a massive amount of evidence,

as well as trace evidence,

including blood, DNA, and hair fibers.

It's not like TV. It's going to be a while

for the analysts to do their job.

Remember, these crimes weren't committed at Gilgo Beach.

So the question is,

did Heuermann commit these crimes in his house?

REPORTER: Did the family know about his actions?

And are they assisting investigators?

As this unfolds, we'll learn more information

about what the family knew.

SHEEHAN: The idea that the wife didn't know anything

about what he was doing is hard to believe.

The most mysterious figure in this whole thing

is Asa, Rex's wife.

Because we don't know what her role is,

what her motivation is.

Nobody's opinion is that they have a bead on Asa,

on whether she was involved or not.

It's kind of like a big question mark,

because Asa has not talked to any of us.

We can only speculate.

As the days tick by, the other reporters were desperately

trying to report this story, and find her and talk to her.

But it was like a black hole.

[***]

ASA: How could you not know?

How could you not know

that your husband was a serial killer?

Known what? My husband was home here.

He's a family man.

They're telling me that he's been soliciting sex

from sex workers. What?

I don't have sex with my husband?

I don't satisfy him.

He comes home and eats my dinner.

It's not good enough?

[SCOFFS]

No, it's...

I don't believe my husband did this.

[***]

[***]

Translated By The_Proffs

Translated By The_Proffs