May 20, 2024 • 33 mins
Producer Anna is joined by Alayne Katz for a pilgrimage to New York City’s biggest public cemetery…could our girl be there?
If you’re affected by any of the themes in this show please reach out to DNA Doe Project, an organisation we’ve partnered with.
The Girlfriends: Our Lost Sister is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.
For more from Novel visit novel.audio
Listen to our soundtrack and buy the album from Bandcamp. All proceeds go to our charity partner DNA Doe Project.
You can also donate to DNA Doe Project here.
See Raul’s map of missing, murdered and unidentified people here.
To find the Hart Island Project go here.
Follow Carole on social media here:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey listener. In this episode, we'll be talking a lot
about acts of violence and murder, including serial killers. We'll
be talking about grave exhumation too. We're also going to
meet some of the people who freely give up their
time to help bring closure to the families of missing, murdered,
and unidentified people. This is the kind of work our
charity partner, DNA Doe Project does. I'd encourage you to
(00:36):
check them out if you're affected by the themes of
this episode. They work with law enforcement to identify Jane
and John does using genetic genealogy in the hopes of
reuniting the bodies of unidentified people with their families. You
can find them at DNADO project dot org. And as usual,
you're probably going to hear me swearing. It's the habit
(00:57):
of a lifetime, so there's no stopping it. Now. I
want to tell you a story about an island, and
unassuming mile long island in New York with the complicated
buried history. Today, Heart Island is the final resting place
(01:23):
for over one million people. It's the USA's largest public cemetery,
the place where locals are buried if they're unclaimed, unidentified,
or sometimes because their families just can't afford to bury
them closer to home. Back in the early sixteen hundreds,
this land belonged to the Soinoy nation. They were indigenous
(01:46):
to the coastal areas of the Long Island Sound in
modern day New York and Connecticut. But then the Europeans
arrived and massacred the local native communities. Eventually, the Cihinoi
were left with no choice. They sold Hart Island and
(02:08):
fifty thousand acres of other land to a British physician
named Thomas Pell. Since then, it's played host to a
prisoner of war camp, workhouses, a yellow fever quarantine site,
and a psychiatric hospital. That is until it became the
public cemetery it is today, which brings us to our story,
(02:34):
our Jane Doe, our lost sister. When you start out
an investigation like ours, trying to find someone who seemingly
dropped off the map decades ago, it's hard to know
where to begin. You find there's a lot more stumbling
around in the dark than you expected. But occasionally the
(02:55):
stumbles will they turn up something worthwhile, Like a few
months ago when my producer Anna came across a charity
called the Heart Island Project. They make it their mission
to tell the stories of the people who are buried there.
On their website, there's currently seventy five thousand, seven hundred
(03:16):
and eighty three profiles which include everyone's basic burial information.
Friends and loved ones can add anecdotes and photos to
the profiles so that even in death, their loved ones
can be brought to life. And that well, that's something
that the girlfriends can get behind. So Anna called the
(03:37):
charity and asked if they knew where our Jane Doe's
remains could have gone after the medical examiners confirmed that
she was not Gaale CAATs.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
If they didn't know who the torso belonged to, then
it would automatically be buried on hard At because all
human remains that are not released to a private funeral
director are buried on Harde.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Okay, so, without a doubt at some point that torso
was buried on Heart Island.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yes, dear listener, I think we just found our first
real lead. I'm Carol Fisher and from the teams at
Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the girlfriend our Last
Sister Episode three, Lost and Found. After Melinda, the founder
(05:01):
of the Heart Island Project told us that our Jane
Doe is more than likely on Heart Island. We asked
her for some help.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
What I could do is go back and do a
manual search for that time period in the ledgers to
see if there's a torso listed.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
By ledgers Melinda means Heart Islands burial records.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
What is the time frame for the search?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Literally, all we know is that it was in September
ninety eight that she was identified as not Gail.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
It was during the lead up to Bob Berenbaum's trial
for the murder of Gail Cats that the torso was
confirmed not to be Gail, and so the official status
was returned to Jane Doe.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I would search starting September ninety eight through August two
thousand and a female torso wright or black.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
White and watch the edge around thirty okay, obviously unknown.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Melinda agreed to look into it for us. To be honest,
we weren't that hopeful, but she assured Anna that if
our girl was there, she'd find her.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
It's not that common to see it too. Are so listed?
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (06:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Now, it's not common at all.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
With that, Melinda starts diving into the Hart Island paperwork
to see what she can uncover. It's going to take
a lot of painstaking work, individually examining page after page
of handwritten ledgers. It could take weeks, maybe more. So
once again, we're left waiting for an email to come
through that could change everything. In the meantime, Anna spends
(06:49):
night after night in the glow of her laptop screen
trawling the missing person's databases for anything that could lead
us to our girl.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
Torso New New York City nineteen eighty nine and Identified
Bodies Database M case number R eight nine five six
y three. Okay, so nothing comes up on that medical
examining number. Okay, fucking hell, they all look like such
(07:23):
serial killers.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
May Severn horrible?
Speaker 6 (07:27):
I'm gonna Wikipedia the State of New York nineteen eighty
and female missing Persons report.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Oh this is interesting.
Speaker 7 (07:34):
Oh wow, one of them was.
Speaker 6 (07:35):
Found on Staten Island unidentified.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
But Torso, this isn't working.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
And then an email from Melinda and it gets the
gang together on an emergency car.
Speaker 7 (07:54):
Oh what.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
She's clearly excited, but frankly, I don't know what the
fuck's going on. Tell me what it fucking says? Oh
my god, Wait, page two Rowe twelve. Is everyone that
oh wait, I'm on the wrong page. Oh my attached
to the email or some hazy photo copies of the
handwritten Heart Island ledgers. It's pages and pages of names, dates,
(08:18):
locations of death, and burial permit numbers. And there's one
entry in particular that's standing out even to me. Oh,
oh my god, wait, oh my god, wait, wait what
Here's what it says, unknown female, age twenty, date of
permit August twenty fourth, two thousand. Date of death May
(08:42):
twenty first, nineteen eighty nine on Front Street. That's exactly
when and where the torso of our Jane Doe first appeared,
down to the specific street and the date of permit,
basically when the torso was buried on Hart Island was
August twenty four to two thousand, which is the same
year that a certain fuckhead named Bob Berenbaum was convicted
(09:06):
for the murder of Gailcats. Holy shit. But before we
get too ahead of ourselves, Anna phones Melinda to see
what she thinks.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
A match is a match.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
The date of death is correct, and the location is correct,
and you know this person was unidentified.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's a match.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Dare we say it that it's really our girl. After
over a year's worth of investigation, it looks like we
finally caught up with her. And now that we found her,
we don't want to waste any more time, so we're
going to pay her a visit. It's time to go
to Hart Island. They only allow visitors to Heart Island
(10:09):
once a fortnight, so after finding an entry for our
lost sister and the ledgers, we booked the next available
slot to visit. But while we found her gravesite, our
job isn't done yet. She's listed as an unknown and
what we really want to know is who she is.
So we call some experts to ask how we can
go about identifying her.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
It's a simple process to do an exhumation of a
dough and then we just somebody just takes a sample
and we go.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
This is Bob and Tracy from our friends. DNA DOE,
the volunteer run organization that uses genetic genealogy to identify
unknown people. In other words, they test DNA against other
people that they have in their systems to build potential
family trees and connect unidentify fight people with their loved ones.
(11:02):
Now we should be able to get this kind of
DNA information from the medical examiners, but as we heard
in our last episode, they're not being very forthcoming. Luckily,
DNA dough are the next best thing.
Speaker 8 (11:16):
Basically, if you're looking to draw the genealogy route, you
would need to have the sample sent to a lab.
They would create a profile. That profile would then be
uploaded to gen match and or family Tree DNA and
then try to make the identification of who that tour
still belonged to.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Finding our Jane Doe's family would be a dream come true.
But as always, there's a catch, and it's.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Not really expensive.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
It varies with the DNA doo project.
Speaker 8 (11:45):
We tend to offer some funding options for all volunteers,
so we'd volunteer our services. There's also grants sometimes so
there's money available.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
There are options where it's less expensive.
Speaker 8 (11:57):
But typically around five thousand.
Speaker 6 (12:03):
Okay, we'll go find some DNA.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It's easy, right, just go go get it. It's not
that hard, right, just go get it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Shortly after the call with DNA Doe, Anna finds herself
on the edge of the Bronx, standing in the freezing rain,
waiting to board a ferry.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Hi, Hi, how do you feeling.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Next to her, bundled up in a hat and gloves,
is Gail Kat's's sister, Elaine.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Here's the people.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Elaine spent nine years grieving beside Gail's grave when she
believed the torso inside the coffin belonged to her sister.
Elaine has never had the closure she deserves. Gail's body
was never found and it might never be. Even all
these years after our Jane Doe's torso was removed from
Gail's grave, Elaine still feels a connection to this woman.
(12:59):
It's why she's come today so she can pay her respects.
Speaker 9 (13:03):
Good morning to everybody, first and formal, even if this
is your first, second, third trip, we.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Would like to welcome everyone to Hart Island. We would
like this rast our deepest.
Speaker 9 (13:12):
Condolers to you and your family, and we hope there's geperation,
some sort of comfort.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Or clothing together along with the clusters of families holding flowers,
soft toys, and photos. Elaine and Anna board.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
The ferry a second submarine.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
On a nice summer's day, the outside deck is probably
filled with people, but today, with the rough waves and
biting wind, everyone is squeezed inside like sardines. The island
is only a short distance away, but it's obscured from
view by a thick, eerie fog. It feels sort of fitting.
(13:53):
After a fifteen minute ride, the boat suddenly jumps as
it makes contact.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
With the dock on the other side.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
The weather isn't much better off the boat. It's gray
and could probably be described as miserable, but luckily a
lane doesn't mind.
Speaker 10 (14:14):
I want this to have the gloom be fitting and
the cemetery. Yeah, you can probably be a little cold.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
You're not allowed to just walk around Hart Island even
if you were. It's so big and the graves are
so many that you'd probably never find what you were
looking for. So everyone is funneled onto a bus and
dropped off at their pre book destination. The bus itself
is small and crowded. Mourners sit next to each other,
(14:51):
sharing stories of their loved ones. I think they call
it Anna and Eline get off the bus. Waiting for
them is Melinda Hunt from the Hart Island Project. She's
agreed to show them around. Hope you know the times
you it.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
They put a little yellow.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Steak in the shot.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
What's amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And there just a few meters away from the bus
is a small wooden marker in the ground. No tombstones,
no names, no flowers. I'm not sure what we are expecting.
After all this time, she really does feel like a
sister to us, so finding her grave is such a
(15:42):
significant moment. But here she's just another body stacked three
deep in a plot of one hundred and fifty. It's
not the ending we imagined or hoped for. It's honestly
just sad. Standing at the graveside, all three women fall
(16:08):
into silence.
Speaker 10 (16:21):
I am ashamed to admit that I closed the door
on this woman in two thousand. I didn't want to
take on a.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
New challenge.
Speaker 10 (16:35):
But having no closure it kills you. It is a
unbearable burden. When the girlfriends, he said to me, let's
identify the torso, let's identify who is she. Let's bring
(16:55):
closure to another family. Let's open this door. I thought
that was just something that I wanted to be a
part of.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And after a short while, the bus reappears and a
guard gestures for the ladies to get back on board.
And then, after all this lead up and barely a
few words, it's time to go. Everyone else here knows
who they're visiting, but we still have no idea whose
(17:26):
grave that was. We don't even know her name. Anda's
thoughts returned to disinturing the torso for DNA testing. There's
something about having stood in front of her grave that
makes the thought of exhumation no longer abstract but very real.
And this reality, it's not a comfortable one, because our
(17:49):
lost sister has already been through so much, dug up
and reburied over and over. And while our intentions are
genuine and good, maybe she's fine, only at peace here
on this island. But can we really walk away, never
knowing her story, never knowing her name. Just as we
(18:14):
think we're left with no option but to disturb her
once again, we get another email. It's from the New
York City Department of Social Services, which manages Heart Island.
They found some updated ledgers. There's been a development. They
don't understand what it means.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
If you look at cause of death, they've put a
new little entry in there which says disinterred for OCME.
On August sixteenth of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
It says our Jane Doe's torso was disinterred once again,
but this time from Heart Island. In twenty and thirteen,
eleven years ago. She wasn't even there when Anna and
Elaine visited her grave. There's nothing on the ledger to
suggest that she was ever reburied on Heart Island, So where.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
The fuck did she go?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
After learning the bombshell news that our lost sister was
disinterred from Hart Island in twenty thirteen, we're back to
square one again. It says on the ledger that the
torso was disinterred by our old friends, the office of
the Chief Medical Examiner. So we reach out once more
and ask them why. But we do have a theory.
(20:01):
When our lost sister was exhumed from Gail Katz's grave
in nineteen ninety eight, they kept her DNA profile on record.
This is a common practice at the medical examiners, as
it means Jane and John Does can still be identified
years after their cases have gone cold. So if our girl,
an unknown woman, was disinterred on Hart Island, a place
(20:24):
where unidentified bodies are buried, you have to ask yourself
why you wouldn't just disinter a body unless you knew
who it belonged to, or at the very least had
a strong suspicion this suggests to us that not only
could she have been identified, but she could be part
of a criminal investigation, which also means there could be
(20:48):
a suspect in her murder. We've always been inclined not
to center any perpetrator on this show, and we stand
by that decision. But maybe if we figure out who
killed our loss sister, it might lead us to her identity,
which is why Anna finds herself in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Hi, Hi, he saw me looking lost?
Speaker 9 (21:14):
I was right outside A million things real quick.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Anna is meeting a man called Raoul Montero, who, by
the way, can put together a wonderful fruit clatter.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Add a little spread.
Speaker 9 (21:27):
So make yourself at home whatever you need. Nice to
meet you, though, It's.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Nice to Raoul's part citizen sleuth, part victim's advocate. He's
best known online as catch Lisk. Lisk stands for the
Long Island serial killer. That name first appeared in the
media in twenty eleven after the discovery of multiple sets
of remains on Gilgo Beach in Long Island. Tens of
(21:56):
murders in New York and Long Island have been connected
both officially and unofficially to this unknown killer. When we
asked our listeners to write in with your tips on
how we could identify our Jane Doe, the Long Island
serial Killer came up several times as a suspect worth considering,
(22:18):
and that's why Anna has come to see Raoul, someone
who's obsessed with trying to identify lisk and, as his
name says, catch them. Raoul started collecting data of missing
and murdered people and entering it onto a map. His
investigation soon outgrew the Long Island serial Killer, though he
has now logged practically every case in New York since
(22:41):
nineteen fourteen. He even has a marker for our lost sister.
It's the only database we've ever seen her list it on.
Speaker 9 (22:50):
I am breaking seven thousand locations that represent a person,
and it's just never going to be finished.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
For our losses and for the nearly seven thousand other
people on this map, Raoul has outlined what little is
known about them.
Speaker 9 (23:07):
A dark red heart or a dark blue heart represent
an adult male or female that their body has been
found remains have been found. A dark red or a
dark blue icon represent a male or a female adult
that's gone missing.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
It's pretty impressive visually if you want to check it out.
We put a link in the episode description.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
There's also a light color blue and a light color
red on both of those icons that represent miners.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Raoul would be the first to admit that this has
become more of an obsession one did. He finds it
difficult to step away from.
Speaker 9 (23:47):
It's like more people on the map, more information. I
can see it, I can match it, and I can
feel some sort of closure.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Well, I mean, maybe this is the perfect segue for
me to show you some stuff that we have.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
About the Anna pulls out a folder of all the
information we have on our Jane Dough, so the tools
I washed up.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
Nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
We know from the.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
Autopsy report that they believe that the Dough had been
murdered a few months prior, so that would be the
time of death, with it being about February nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Anna starts listing out facts about our lost sister, like
her predicted age and the condition of her body. But
they zero in on where she ended up on the
shore of Staten Island front street Pier number three. This
gets Roul thinking about where she came from.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
You know, where's that water flow at that time?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
If you follow the title path, it suggests that a
body that washes up on that side of Staten Island
could very likely have been dumped upstream towards Manhattan.
Speaker 9 (24:58):
These river will actually open up into the Long Island Sound,
which it's the ties that really predicate where a torso
might go.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
There are two rivers in particular running through Manhattan that
naturally funnel out into Staten Island, the East River and
the Hudson. So that's one lead on to the other one.
The Long Island serial killer. Though his potential killings go
(25:29):
back decades, they only garnered attention in late twenty ten.
Speaker 9 (25:37):
Shannon Gilbert, an escort, was out on Long Island in
Oak Beach to see a client. Within a matter of
hours of being in that house, she ran from there screaming.
She was never seen alive again. During the ultimate search
(25:58):
for Shannon Gilbert, the remains of ten bodies were found.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Most of the bodies found along that stretch of land
near Gilgo Beach and Long Island were female sex workers Jane.
Speaker 9 (26:15):
Those that find themselves tossed aside on some highway on
Long Island, like so many other victims, were ignored for
so many years because you're a minority, because you're a
drug addict, because you're a sex worker, and in that mix,
(26:36):
serial killers prow.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
To this day. Some of the victims found on the
beach have never been identified, and until recently, there was
no perpetrator identified either. For years, the police struggled to
nail a key suspect, but that changed in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 7 (26:58):
Going back over.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
The evidence, the police zeroed in on a witness statement
that describes seeing one of the victims getting into a
Chevrolet Avalanche on the night of her murder. This ultimately
led the authorities to one local man, Rex Hureman. Human's
phone records were examined and he was found to have
used burner phones to arrange meetings with some of the
(27:21):
women whose bodies were found near Gilgo Beach. Finally, police
found an old pizza box thrown away by Hureman and
tested the DNA left on the crust. It matched a
hare found near one of the bodies. Huerman is currently
a waiting trial for four of the murders, although some
(27:41):
suspect that he could be responsible for many more, dating
all the way back to the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
Do you think that there's a chance that all, Jane
Doe could be a lift spectrum.
Speaker 9 (27:56):
I think there's always a chance. You look at early
Liz victims who were dismembered and scattered. We look at
Rex's building permits from the nineties and two thousands, and
he's on Staten Island.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
So the Long Island serial killer sounds like a significant lead.
But he's not the only one. There's another infamous serial
killer that Anna wants to run by Raoul as a
possible suspect when that she came across in one of
her nighttime sleuthing sessions.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
Joel Rifkin, America serial killer who was sentenced to two
one hundred and three years my god in prison for
the murders of nine women.
Speaker 7 (28:43):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
When it comes to New York serial killers, Rifkin rings
a few alarm bells for us. He admitted to killing
and dismembering his first victim in March of nineteen eighty nine.
That's not the only coincidence.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
The head and the legs were found around the time
of the murder, but nobody knew what happened to the Toulso.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
As Anna lays out the similarities between our Jane Doe's
case and Rifkins first victim. She can see Raoul's cogs turning.
Speaker 9 (29:17):
Do you mind if I send a text? Yeah? I
might get something right away.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
What who do you know?
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Raoul won't give Anna a name, but he knows a
detective who was involved in Joel Rifkins's case. He fires
off the text, and not long after a reply comes through.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
She did answer.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
The detective asks for more information, so they sent her
everything we have on our Jane Doe, including the Hart
Island ledger. When Anna leaves, Raoul promises to update her
as soon as anything comes through, which thankfully doesn't take
(29:59):
very long. Later that evening, there's a text from ra Wul.
He forwarded Anna a message from the detective responding to
all the evidence we gave them and our suspicions about
Joel Rifkin. They simply say, there is your answer coming
(30:22):
up next. On the girlfriends our lost sister.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
He said that he could only remember her name as Susie.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
To his horror, Susie suddenly popped up on the couch
in a last stitch effort to salvage her life.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Dear Anne, I've been searching for you.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
For over a year. Is this going to be the
person that we're looking for. Is this the answer?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
The Girlfriends Are Sister is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.
For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show
is hosted by me Carol Fisher, and our chief investigator
is Mindy Shapiro. To find me on social media, search
Carol A. Fisher, That's Carol with an E. The season
(31:20):
is written and produced by Anna Sinfield and Lee Meyer.
Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. The editor is Joe Wheeler.
Max O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is
Dania Suleiman. Production management from Shrei Houston and Charlotte woolf
Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander, Additional engineering
(31:42):
by Daniel Kempson, Music supervision by Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander.
Original music composed and performed by Luisa Gerstein and produced
by Louisa Gristin and Nicholas Alexander. The series artwork was
designed by Christina Linkol. Story of the development by Anna Sinfield.
Willard Foxton is creative director of development. Our executive producers
(32:07):
at iHeart Podcasts are Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etour. Special
thanks to Ali Canter, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson at
iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole
team at w MEE and especial shout out to Vince Hayward,
who's my life partner in True Crime, for taking on
the role of girlfriend's confidante and lead tech support
Speaker 9 (32:59):
Novel
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey listener. In this episode, we'll be talking a lot
about acts of violence and murder, including serial killers. We'll
be talking about grave exhumation too. We're also going to
meet some of the people who freely give up their
time to help bring closure to the families of missing, murdered,
and unidentified people. This is the kind of work our
charity partner, DNA Doe Project does. I'd encourage you to
(00:36):
check them out if you're affected by the themes of
this episode. They work with law enforcement to identify Jane
and John does using genetic genealogy in the hopes of
reuniting the bodies of unidentified people with their families. You
can find them at DNADO project dot org. And as usual,
you're probably going to hear me swearing. It's the habit
(00:57):
of a lifetime, so there's no stopping it. Now. I
want to tell you a story about an island, and
unassuming mile long island in New York with the complicated
buried history. Today, Heart Island is the final resting place
(01:23):
for over one million people. It's the USA's largest public cemetery,
the place where locals are buried if they're unclaimed, unidentified,
or sometimes because their families just can't afford to bury
them closer to home. Back in the early sixteen hundreds,
this land belonged to the Soinoy nation. They were indigenous
(01:46):
to the coastal areas of the Long Island Sound in
modern day New York and Connecticut. But then the Europeans
arrived and massacred the local native communities. Eventually, the Cihinoi
were left with no choice. They sold Hart Island and
(02:08):
fifty thousand acres of other land to a British physician
named Thomas Pell. Since then, it's played host to a
prisoner of war camp, workhouses, a yellow fever quarantine site,
and a psychiatric hospital. That is until it became the
public cemetery it is today, which brings us to our story,
(02:34):
our Jane Doe, our lost sister. When you start out
an investigation like ours, trying to find someone who seemingly
dropped off the map decades ago, it's hard to know
where to begin. You find there's a lot more stumbling
around in the dark than you expected. But occasionally the
(02:55):
stumbles will they turn up something worthwhile, Like a few
months ago when my producer Anna came across a charity
called the Heart Island Project. They make it their mission
to tell the stories of the people who are buried there.
On their website, there's currently seventy five thousand, seven hundred
(03:16):
and eighty three profiles which include everyone's basic burial information.
Friends and loved ones can add anecdotes and photos to
the profiles so that even in death, their loved ones
can be brought to life. And that well, that's something
that the girlfriends can get behind. So Anna called the
(03:37):
charity and asked if they knew where our Jane Doe's
remains could have gone after the medical examiners confirmed that
she was not Gaale CAATs.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
If they didn't know who the torso belonged to, then
it would automatically be buried on hard At because all
human remains that are not released to a private funeral
director are buried on Harde.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Okay, so, without a doubt at some point that torso
was buried on Heart Island.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yes, dear listener, I think we just found our first
real lead. I'm Carol Fisher and from the teams at
Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the girlfriend our Last
Sister Episode three, Lost and Found. After Melinda, the founder
(05:01):
of the Heart Island Project told us that our Jane
Doe is more than likely on Heart Island. We asked
her for some help.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
What I could do is go back and do a
manual search for that time period in the ledgers to
see if there's a torso listed.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
By ledgers Melinda means Heart Islands burial records.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
What is the time frame for the search?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Literally, all we know is that it was in September
ninety eight that she was identified as not Gail.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
It was during the lead up to Bob Berenbaum's trial
for the murder of Gail Cats that the torso was
confirmed not to be Gail, and so the official status
was returned to Jane Doe.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I would search starting September ninety eight through August two
thousand and a female torso wright or black.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
White and watch the edge around thirty okay, obviously unknown.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Melinda agreed to look into it for us. To be honest,
we weren't that hopeful, but she assured Anna that if
our girl was there, she'd find her.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
It's not that common to see it too. Are so listed?
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (06:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Now, it's not common at all.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
With that, Melinda starts diving into the Hart Island paperwork
to see what she can uncover. It's going to take
a lot of painstaking work, individually examining page after page
of handwritten ledgers. It could take weeks, maybe more. So
once again, we're left waiting for an email to come
through that could change everything. In the meantime, Anna spends
(06:49):
night after night in the glow of her laptop screen
trawling the missing person's databases for anything that could lead
us to our girl.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
Torso New New York City nineteen eighty nine and Identified
Bodies Database M case number R eight nine five six
y three. Okay, so nothing comes up on that medical
examining number. Okay, fucking hell, they all look like such
(07:23):
serial killers.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
May Severn horrible?
Speaker 6 (07:27):
I'm gonna Wikipedia the State of New York nineteen eighty
and female missing Persons report.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Oh this is interesting.
Speaker 7 (07:34):
Oh wow, one of them was.
Speaker 6 (07:35):
Found on Staten Island unidentified.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
But Torso, this isn't working.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
And then an email from Melinda and it gets the
gang together on an emergency car.
Speaker 7 (07:54):
Oh what.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
She's clearly excited, but frankly, I don't know what the
fuck's going on. Tell me what it fucking says? Oh
my god, Wait, page two Rowe twelve. Is everyone that
oh wait, I'm on the wrong page. Oh my attached
to the email or some hazy photo copies of the
handwritten Heart Island ledgers. It's pages and pages of names, dates,
(08:18):
locations of death, and burial permit numbers. And there's one
entry in particular that's standing out even to me. Oh,
oh my god, wait, oh my god, wait, wait what
Here's what it says, unknown female, age twenty, date of
permit August twenty fourth, two thousand. Date of death May
(08:42):
twenty first, nineteen eighty nine on Front Street. That's exactly
when and where the torso of our Jane Doe first appeared,
down to the specific street and the date of permit,
basically when the torso was buried on Hart Island was
August twenty four to two thousand, which is the same
year that a certain fuckhead named Bob Berenbaum was convicted
(09:06):
for the murder of Gailcats. Holy shit. But before we
get too ahead of ourselves, Anna phones Melinda to see
what she thinks.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
A match is a match.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
The date of death is correct, and the location is correct,
and you know this person was unidentified.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's a match.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Dare we say it that it's really our girl. After
over a year's worth of investigation, it looks like we
finally caught up with her. And now that we found her,
we don't want to waste any more time, so we're
going to pay her a visit. It's time to go
to Hart Island. They only allow visitors to Heart Island
(10:09):
once a fortnight, so after finding an entry for our
lost sister and the ledgers, we booked the next available
slot to visit. But while we found her gravesite, our
job isn't done yet. She's listed as an unknown and
what we really want to know is who she is.
So we call some experts to ask how we can
go about identifying her.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
It's a simple process to do an exhumation of a
dough and then we just somebody just takes a sample
and we go.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
This is Bob and Tracy from our friends. DNA DOE,
the volunteer run organization that uses genetic genealogy to identify
unknown people. In other words, they test DNA against other
people that they have in their systems to build potential
family trees and connect unidentify fight people with their loved ones.
(11:02):
Now we should be able to get this kind of
DNA information from the medical examiners, but as we heard
in our last episode, they're not being very forthcoming. Luckily,
DNA dough are the next best thing.
Speaker 8 (11:16):
Basically, if you're looking to draw the genealogy route, you
would need to have the sample sent to a lab.
They would create a profile. That profile would then be
uploaded to gen match and or family Tree DNA and
then try to make the identification of who that tour
still belonged to.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Finding our Jane Doe's family would be a dream come true.
But as always, there's a catch, and it's.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Not really expensive.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
It varies with the DNA doo project.
Speaker 8 (11:45):
We tend to offer some funding options for all volunteers,
so we'd volunteer our services. There's also grants sometimes so
there's money available.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
There are options where it's less expensive.
Speaker 8 (11:57):
But typically around five thousand.
Speaker 6 (12:03):
Okay, we'll go find some DNA.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It's easy, right, just go go get it. It's not
that hard, right, just go get it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Shortly after the call with DNA Doe, Anna finds herself
on the edge of the Bronx, standing in the freezing rain,
waiting to board a ferry.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Hi, Hi, how do you feeling.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Next to her, bundled up in a hat and gloves,
is Gail Kat's's sister, Elaine.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Here's the people.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Elaine spent nine years grieving beside Gail's grave when she
believed the torso inside the coffin belonged to her sister.
Elaine has never had the closure she deserves. Gail's body
was never found and it might never be. Even all
these years after our Jane Doe's torso was removed from
Gail's grave, Elaine still feels a connection to this woman.
(12:59):
It's why she's come today so she can pay her respects.
Speaker 9 (13:03):
Good morning to everybody, first and formal, even if this
is your first, second, third trip, we.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Would like to welcome everyone to Hart Island. We would
like this rast our deepest.
Speaker 9 (13:12):
Condolers to you and your family, and we hope there's geperation,
some sort of comfort.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Or clothing together along with the clusters of families holding flowers,
soft toys, and photos. Elaine and Anna board.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
The ferry a second submarine.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
On a nice summer's day, the outside deck is probably
filled with people, but today, with the rough waves and
biting wind, everyone is squeezed inside like sardines. The island
is only a short distance away, but it's obscured from
view by a thick, eerie fog. It feels sort of fitting.
(13:53):
After a fifteen minute ride, the boat suddenly jumps as
it makes contact.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
With the dock on the other side.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
The weather isn't much better off the boat. It's gray
and could probably be described as miserable, but luckily a
lane doesn't mind.
Speaker 10 (14:14):
I want this to have the gloom be fitting and
the cemetery. Yeah, you can probably be a little cold.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
You're not allowed to just walk around Hart Island even
if you were. It's so big and the graves are
so many that you'd probably never find what you were
looking for. So everyone is funneled onto a bus and
dropped off at their pre book destination. The bus itself
is small and crowded. Mourners sit next to each other,
(14:51):
sharing stories of their loved ones. I think they call
it Anna and Eline get off the bus. Waiting for
them is Melinda Hunt from the Hart Island Project. She's
agreed to show them around. Hope you know the times
you it.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
They put a little yellow.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Steak in the shot.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
What's amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And there just a few meters away from the bus
is a small wooden marker in the ground. No tombstones,
no names, no flowers. I'm not sure what we are expecting.
After all this time, she really does feel like a
sister to us, so finding her grave is such a
(15:42):
significant moment. But here she's just another body stacked three
deep in a plot of one hundred and fifty. It's
not the ending we imagined or hoped for. It's honestly
just sad. Standing at the graveside, all three women fall
(16:08):
into silence.
Speaker 10 (16:21):
I am ashamed to admit that I closed the door
on this woman in two thousand. I didn't want to
take on a.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
New challenge.
Speaker 10 (16:35):
But having no closure it kills you. It is a
unbearable burden. When the girlfriends, he said to me, let's
identify the torso, let's identify who is she. Let's bring
(16:55):
closure to another family. Let's open this door. I thought
that was just something that I wanted to be a
part of.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And after a short while, the bus reappears and a
guard gestures for the ladies to get back on board.
And then, after all this lead up and barely a
few words, it's time to go. Everyone else here knows
who they're visiting, but we still have no idea whose
(17:26):
grave that was. We don't even know her name. Anda's
thoughts returned to disinturing the torso for DNA testing. There's
something about having stood in front of her grave that
makes the thought of exhumation no longer abstract but very real.
And this reality, it's not a comfortable one, because our
(17:49):
lost sister has already been through so much, dug up
and reburied over and over. And while our intentions are
genuine and good, maybe she's fine, only at peace here
on this island. But can we really walk away, never
knowing her story, never knowing her name. Just as we
(18:14):
think we're left with no option but to disturb her
once again, we get another email. It's from the New
York City Department of Social Services, which manages Heart Island.
They found some updated ledgers. There's been a development. They
don't understand what it means.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
If you look at cause of death, they've put a
new little entry in there which says disinterred for OCME.
On August sixteenth of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
It says our Jane Doe's torso was disinterred once again,
but this time from Heart Island. In twenty and thirteen,
eleven years ago. She wasn't even there when Anna and
Elaine visited her grave. There's nothing on the ledger to
suggest that she was ever reburied on Heart Island, So where.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
The fuck did she go?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
After learning the bombshell news that our lost sister was
disinterred from Hart Island in twenty thirteen, we're back to
square one again. It says on the ledger that the
torso was disinterred by our old friends, the office of
the Chief Medical Examiner. So we reach out once more
and ask them why. But we do have a theory.
(20:01):
When our lost sister was exhumed from Gail Katz's grave
in nineteen ninety eight, they kept her DNA profile on record.
This is a common practice at the medical examiners, as
it means Jane and John Does can still be identified
years after their cases have gone cold. So if our girl,
an unknown woman, was disinterred on Hart Island, a place
(20:24):
where unidentified bodies are buried, you have to ask yourself
why you wouldn't just disinter a body unless you knew
who it belonged to, or at the very least had
a strong suspicion this suggests to us that not only
could she have been identified, but she could be part
of a criminal investigation, which also means there could be
(20:48):
a suspect in her murder. We've always been inclined not
to center any perpetrator on this show, and we stand
by that decision. But maybe if we figure out who
killed our loss sister, it might lead us to her identity,
which is why Anna finds herself in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Hi, Hi, he saw me looking lost?
Speaker 9 (21:14):
I was right outside A million things real quick.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Anna is meeting a man called Raoul Montero, who, by
the way, can put together a wonderful fruit clatter.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Add a little spread.
Speaker 9 (21:27):
So make yourself at home whatever you need. Nice to
meet you, though, It's.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Nice to Raoul's part citizen sleuth, part victim's advocate. He's
best known online as catch Lisk. Lisk stands for the
Long Island serial killer. That name first appeared in the
media in twenty eleven after the discovery of multiple sets
of remains on Gilgo Beach in Long Island. Tens of
(21:56):
murders in New York and Long Island have been connected
both officially and unofficially to this unknown killer. When we
asked our listeners to write in with your tips on
how we could identify our Jane Doe, the Long Island
serial Killer came up several times as a suspect worth considering,
(22:18):
and that's why Anna has come to see Raoul, someone
who's obsessed with trying to identify lisk and, as his
name says, catch them. Raoul started collecting data of missing
and murdered people and entering it onto a map. His
investigation soon outgrew the Long Island serial Killer, though he
has now logged practically every case in New York since
(22:41):
nineteen fourteen. He even has a marker for our lost sister.
It's the only database we've ever seen her list it on.
Speaker 9 (22:50):
I am breaking seven thousand locations that represent a person,
and it's just never going to be finished.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
For our losses and for the nearly seven thousand other
people on this map, Raoul has outlined what little is
known about them.
Speaker 9 (23:07):
A dark red heart or a dark blue heart represent
an adult male or female that their body has been
found remains have been found. A dark red or a
dark blue icon represent a male or a female adult
that's gone missing.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
It's pretty impressive visually if you want to check it out.
We put a link in the episode description.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
There's also a light color blue and a light color
red on both of those icons that represent miners.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Raoul would be the first to admit that this has
become more of an obsession one did. He finds it
difficult to step away from.
Speaker 9 (23:47):
It's like more people on the map, more information. I
can see it, I can match it, and I can
feel some sort of closure.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Well, I mean, maybe this is the perfect segue for
me to show you some stuff that we have.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
About the Anna pulls out a folder of all the
information we have on our Jane Dough, so the tools
I washed up.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
Nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
We know from the.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
Autopsy report that they believe that the Dough had been
murdered a few months prior, so that would be the
time of death, with it being about February nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Anna starts listing out facts about our lost sister, like
her predicted age and the condition of her body. But
they zero in on where she ended up on the
shore of Staten Island front street Pier number three. This
gets Roul thinking about where she came from.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
You know, where's that water flow at that time?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
If you follow the title path, it suggests that a
body that washes up on that side of Staten Island
could very likely have been dumped upstream towards Manhattan.
Speaker 9 (24:58):
These river will actually open up into the Long Island Sound,
which it's the ties that really predicate where a torso
might go.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
There are two rivers in particular running through Manhattan that
naturally funnel out into Staten Island, the East River and
the Hudson. So that's one lead on to the other one.
The Long Island serial killer. Though his potential killings go
(25:29):
back decades, they only garnered attention in late twenty ten.
Speaker 9 (25:37):
Shannon Gilbert, an escort, was out on Long Island in
Oak Beach to see a client. Within a matter of
hours of being in that house, she ran from there screaming.
She was never seen alive again. During the ultimate search
(25:58):
for Shannon Gilbert, the remains of ten bodies were found.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Most of the bodies found along that stretch of land
near Gilgo Beach and Long Island were female sex workers Jane.
Speaker 9 (26:15):
Those that find themselves tossed aside on some highway on
Long Island, like so many other victims, were ignored for
so many years because you're a minority, because you're a
drug addict, because you're a sex worker, and in that mix,
(26:36):
serial killers prow.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
To this day. Some of the victims found on the
beach have never been identified, and until recently, there was
no perpetrator identified either. For years, the police struggled to
nail a key suspect, but that changed in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 7 (26:58):
Going back over.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
The evidence, the police zeroed in on a witness statement
that describes seeing one of the victims getting into a
Chevrolet Avalanche on the night of her murder. This ultimately
led the authorities to one local man, Rex Hureman. Human's
phone records were examined and he was found to have
used burner phones to arrange meetings with some of the
(27:21):
women whose bodies were found near Gilgo Beach. Finally, police
found an old pizza box thrown away by Hureman and
tested the DNA left on the crust. It matched a
hare found near one of the bodies. Huerman is currently
a waiting trial for four of the murders, although some
(27:41):
suspect that he could be responsible for many more, dating
all the way back to the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
Do you think that there's a chance that all, Jane
Doe could be a lift spectrum.
Speaker 9 (27:56):
I think there's always a chance. You look at early
Liz victims who were dismembered and scattered. We look at
Rex's building permits from the nineties and two thousands, and
he's on Staten Island.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
So the Long Island serial killer sounds like a significant lead.
But he's not the only one. There's another infamous serial
killer that Anna wants to run by Raoul as a
possible suspect when that she came across in one of
her nighttime sleuthing sessions.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
Joel Rifkin, America serial killer who was sentenced to two
one hundred and three years my god in prison for
the murders of nine women.
Speaker 7 (28:43):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
When it comes to New York serial killers, Rifkin rings
a few alarm bells for us. He admitted to killing
and dismembering his first victim in March of nineteen eighty nine.
That's not the only coincidence.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
The head and the legs were found around the time
of the murder, but nobody knew what happened to the Toulso.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
As Anna lays out the similarities between our Jane Doe's
case and Rifkins first victim. She can see Raoul's cogs turning.
Speaker 9 (29:17):
Do you mind if I send a text? Yeah? I
might get something right away.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
What who do you know?
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Raoul won't give Anna a name, but he knows a
detective who was involved in Joel Rifkins's case. He fires
off the text, and not long after a reply comes through.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
She did answer.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
The detective asks for more information, so they sent her
everything we have on our Jane Doe, including the Hart
Island ledger. When Anna leaves, Raoul promises to update her
as soon as anything comes through, which thankfully doesn't take
(29:59):
very long. Later that evening, there's a text from ra Wul.
He forwarded Anna a message from the detective responding to
all the evidence we gave them and our suspicions about
Joel Rifkin. They simply say, there is your answer coming
(30:22):
up next. On the girlfriends our lost sister.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
He said that he could only remember her name as Susie.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
To his horror, Susie suddenly popped up on the couch
in a last stitch effort to salvage her life.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Dear Anne, I've been searching for you.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
For over a year. Is this going to be the
person that we're looking for. Is this the answer?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
The Girlfriends Are Sister is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.
For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show
is hosted by me Carol Fisher, and our chief investigator
is Mindy Shapiro. To find me on social media, search
Carol A. Fisher, That's Carol with an E. The season
(31:20):
is written and produced by Anna Sinfield and Lee Meyer.
Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. The editor is Joe Wheeler.
Max O'Brien is our executive producer. Our fact checker is
Dania Suleiman. Production management from Shrei Houston and Charlotte woolf
Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander, Additional engineering
(31:42):
by Daniel Kempson, Music supervision by Anna Sinfield and Nicholas Alexander.
Original music composed and performed by Luisa Gerstein and produced
by Louisa Gristin and Nicholas Alexander. The series artwork was
designed by Christina Linkol. Story of the development by Anna Sinfield.
Willard Foxton is creative director of development. Our executive producers
(32:07):
at iHeart Podcasts are Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etour. Special
thanks to Ali Canter, Carrie Lieberman, and Will Pearson at
iHeart Podcasts, as well as Carly Frankel and the whole
team at w MEE and especial shout out to Vince Hayward,
who's my life partner in True Crime, for taking on
the role of girlfriend's confidante and lead tech support
Speaker 9 (32:59):
Novel
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