November 17, 2025 • 35 mins
Through the heartbreaking stories of The Gilgo Four a damning pattern emerges. In revisiting old interviews Josh reveals how every clue needed to catch the Long Island Serial Killer was hidden in plain sight within these four women's cases, yet somehow slipped through investigators' hands. Was this oversight due to corruption or something far more nefarious?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
New episodes are released weekly absolutely free, but you can
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(00:27):
Hunting the Long Island serial Killer. The views and opinions
expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals
participating in the podcast and do not reflect those of
Tenderfoot TV or iHeartMedia. This podcast contains subject matter which
may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
In this episode, we'll be talking about these victims in
very graphic terms. These details are crucial for proving the
mistakes and missed opportunities that could have led to the
perpetrators capture sooner. These individuals deserved to be remembered not
by the details of their deaths, but by the fullness
of their lives. They are Shannon Gilbert, Rain, Brainer Barnes,
(01:12):
Megan Waterman, Melissa Bartholemy, and Amberlyn Costello. In December of
twenty fifteen, federal agians arrested Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke,
this stunning downfall being just the latest black eye in
(01:33):
the county's long history of police corruption.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Investigators say that Chief Burke tortured a prisoner for stealing
a Duffel bag.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Out of the chief's suv.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Federal prosecutors accusing the fifty one year olds of using
his power to assault prisoner Christopher Lobe.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
I got chold, I got paunch, I got slapped, I
got kicked.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Burke had beaten an addict and petty thief named Christopher
Loeb in a Suffolk County station house had the misfortune
of breaking into the Chief's suv and stealing his gym bag.
Unfortunately for Burke, the gym bag contained his gun belt,
sex toys, and nasty porn, which sparked a new wave
of lurd speculation, including claims that the porn was a
(02:17):
snuff tape and rumors that maybe Burke, the Chief of Police,
was actually the Long Island serial killer.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
One of the allegations is that in the duffel bag
that was stolen from James Burke was a snuff film
film like that not somethingly going to go buy on
the local porn.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Shop without question.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Jimmy Burke is a criminal or.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
So, let me ask you something. Do you think that
Burke is lisk? Well?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The contents of the gym bag seemed trivial in retrospect.
What wasn't trivial was the fact that Burke, as well
as the Suffolk County District Attorney and even the head
of their anti corruption unit, had all orchestrated a massive
cover up. And while none of this had anything to
do with the List case, it revealed at least one
truth behind all those rumors that yes, Suffolk County was willing.
Speaker 7 (03:12):
To obstruct justice to protect its own.
Speaker 8 (03:15):
Once at the height of power in Suffolk County, he
is now heading to prison.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Under the Plea deal, Burke will serve up to fifty
one months, a fraction of.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
The thirty years he faced. His crashing fall from grace
has county wide implications.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
The damage and the cost of this corruption and abuse
of power is incalculable.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
But that's as far as we'd gotten in twenty sixteen
when the Killing Season was released. But now that Rex Human,
the alleged killer, has been caught, we can finally get
to the questions we've been waiting so long to ask
exactly how did this corruption affect the list case? And
did it prevent the Suffo County PD from catching Lisk sooner?
(03:57):
But what's so surprising and downright shocking is when you learn,
as we did, just how close they actually came to
catching Lisk a decade ago, far closer than what law
enforcement has publicly stated. So close and you might even
call it criminal. I'm Josh Deemon, and this is monster
(04:19):
hunting the Long Island serial killer. While many questions still
(04:51):
remain in the death of Shannon Gilbert, her disappearance set
off a chain of events that I covered something far
more terrifying than anyone could imagined. One of the most
gruesome and baffling serial killer cases in decades, the case
that will be remembered alongside the Green River Killer, the
Grim Sleeper, or the Golden State Killer.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
Breaking news out of New York the arrest of US
suspected serial killer.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
This was an infamous case from over a decade ago
that really captured the nation's attention.
Speaker 9 (05:22):
The most notorious predator in New York since the Son
of SAMD.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
But what makes this case so unique is how Lisk
bridges two worlds, that being the Golden Age of cerial
murder from the nineteen seventies to the nineteen nineties in
the world of today. And that's because Rex Huerman has
been walking the streets for more than thirty two years
since his first allege killing, and like so many of us,
(05:48):
he seems to be a product of this perverse fascination
we all have with serial murder that some say was
reignited with the release of Silence of the Lambs ninety one.
Speaker 7 (06:02):
What does he do this man?
Speaker 8 (06:04):
You see he kills me?
Speaker 7 (06:08):
No, that is incidental.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
What needs does he serve by killing?
Speaker 10 (06:14):
Anger, social acceptance, sexual frustrations.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
No, he cuts Rex was just twenty seven back then
and just two years shy of that alleged first murder.
But since then Rex has become far more calculating because
we know he studied and he planned, absorbing decades worth
of serial killer books in true crime shows, fine tuning
(06:43):
his methods but also adapting incorporating technology to become a
predator of the modern age.
Speaker 6 (06:51):
This killer went shopping on the internet for the perfect victim,
and he found it.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
In his seminal book Lost Girls, author Robert Kolker wrote
about how the internet has played a dark hand in
the list case.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
The women who are targeted by this killer were representing
something new out there in the world of prostitution. They
were using the Internet, and that might have given them
a false sense of security. But the Internet has made
life different for John's as well. They can remain more
or less anonymous on the Internet, and they can maintain
this hobby even you know, and hide it from their
nearest and dearest.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
As Kolker explained, it wasn't just the anonymity of the
Johns that made this case so difficult to solve. It
was also the anonymity of the victims. Of the ten
bodies discovered along Ocean Parkway, the police quickly identified the
first four found in December of twenty ten, but if
the six bodies found months later, they can only id one,
(07:49):
that being Jessica Taylor, aged twenty, and for years, the
rest would remain nameless, including the baffling case of an
Asian male found dressed in women's clothing, and maybe the
most troubling victim of them all, a toddler.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
Known only as baby Dough.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Now, each victim has their own story thrown rabbit hole,
but first we'll start where the investigators started and.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
We're following more breaking news.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
Suffoc County Police releasing new info about the women known
as the Gilgo four, all.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Victims in the Long Island serial killer case.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
The first women were found along Long Island South short
women known as the Gilgo.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
For discarded in a similar fashion.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
They were placed roughly five hundred feet apart, each wrapped
in burlap. The press had dubbed them the Gilgo four
and the nickname Stuck. Four women each wrapped in burlap,
their arms and legs bound in tape, were in one
case leather belts, presumably so they could be carried from
a vehicle pulled off on the side of the highway.
(08:53):
They had all been placed between twenty to thirty feet
into the bramble. It's assume the killer did this with
the intention of returning to baskin whatever horrors he had committed.
It's also believed in choosing this stretch of road, the
killer was intimately familiar with Ocean Parkway.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
We're all creatures of habit and he knew the area.
Speaker 11 (09:17):
He knew where to put these bodies.
Speaker 12 (09:18):
He felt comfortable where there's no cars coming back and forth.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
This is really the perfect place.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
To disguise something.
Speaker 13 (09:26):
No one's going to see you doing it, and no
one's going to see what you've done.
Speaker 14 (09:30):
Is this somebody local that happens to know that's a
very deserted area at a certain time of night, So
it makes you a little concerned that this predator could
possibly be living amongst us in one of the beach communities.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
But what no one knew back then was that one
of these four women would be the key to catching Lisk.
It's a story that unfolds over a decade later, but
first the stories of these women who were more than
just a nickname. They were Melissa bartholemy Megan Waterman, Amberlyn Costello,
and finally Maureen Brainerd Barnes, the first of these four
(10:04):
women to disappear. Maureen had vanished from Penn Station on
July ninth, two thousand and seven, which is why my
partner Rachel and I were there filming for the Killing
season at that exact same time, eleven thirty pm on
a Monday night in July.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
All right, let's take a look around. Is there a
smoking section around here?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I got that later?
Speaker 4 (10:30):
And what about the exits? She could have gone out
here to smoke? Probably, right, this is where I would go.
Speaker 15 (10:39):
So this is Penn Station where Maureen brainer Barnes was
last seen on July ninth, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Maureene needed money, and she needed it quick. If she
could just make eleven hundred by the end of her
stay and keep her from getting evicted and keep her
ex from gaining custody of her child. Maureen had taken
the trained down from her home in Groton, Connecticut, and
spent the next four days taking in calls with clients
at a hotel in Midtown. On Monday night, July night,
(11:10):
she checked out of that hotel and walked to Penn Station,
where she called her sister, Melissa.
Speaker 16 (11:17):
She called me from her cell phone at Penn Station.
Speaker 7 (11:20):
Okay, so Monday.
Speaker 16 (11:21):
Night, Yes, she was taking a train home.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
In twenty fifteen, as part of the Killing season, we
interviewed Melissa about what she thought happened to her sister
that night.
Speaker 16 (11:34):
She said she had to walk out to go have.
Speaker 7 (11:36):
A cigarette, and do we know what happened after that?
Speaker 16 (11:39):
I think she was stocked by someone that she knew
before as a client. So anywhere from eleven thirty to twelve,
I'm assuming she got taken.
Speaker 15 (11:51):
That's the security camera. There, there's police cars everywhere.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
In returning to Penn Station, Rachel and I wanted to
understand whether Maureen had been abducted by Lisk or was
it more likely that she went with him willingly.
Speaker 15 (12:08):
As you can see, it'd be pretty difficult to snatch
somebody this area.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
I don't think someone could be taken that easily.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Maybe he made some offer she couldn't refuse.
Speaker 15 (12:17):
If he was using his own phone, they would know,
But if he was using a burner phone that could
have worked.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
We now know there were in fact, sixteen quote interactions
between a burner phone and Marine's cell all made within
the four days before she vanished. Another clue comes from
a two thousand and seven police report that only recently
came to light, revealing a witness who swore that Marine
called her just after her sister to say that she
(12:47):
was going to meet a client out of Long Island
and that she would call her after.
Speaker 15 (12:53):
This station is Penn Station.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
We had always believed that Maureen had taken the train
from Penn Station to some unknown stop out on the island,
but we now know her cell phone registered its final
ping in Manhattan near the fifty ninth Street Bridge, Yet
there's no way her cell phone could get a signal
while it was traveling underground, which means it's far more
(13:18):
likely that she did go out to smoke before either
getting into a taxi or possibly a vehicle driven by Lisk.
But maybe most chilling were the calls that came three
days later on Sunday, July twelfth, two calls from Marine's
cell phone to her voicemail, But detectives don't think the
(13:39):
caller was Marine. They think it was Lisk, listening to
her messages to see if anyone was worried as to
why she hadn't called after meeting her client. But the
only thing detectives knew for sure was that cell phone
tower data put the caller somewhere near the Long Island Expressway,
in an area known as Islandia, less than thirty one
(14:01):
from Kilgo Beach.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
The mailbox is full. I cannot accept any messages at
this time.
Speaker 12 (14:06):
Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Nearly two years after the disappearance of Maureen Brainerd, Barnes
list would strike again when Melissa Bartholow, me, a Buffalo native,
disappeared in the summer of twenty ten while filming The
Killing Season. Rachel and I went to Buffalo to speak
with Melissa's family, but most importantly with Amanda, her sister.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
My name is Amanda.
Speaker 16 (14:39):
I'm Melissa's little sister.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
All right, we're going to do that again.
Speaker 17 (14:43):
I'm Amanda, and I'm Melissa's little sister.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
With the age difference between you two nine years.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
By the time Melissa was twenty four, she had already
spent three years on the mean streets of New York,
but now she was finally leaving her pimp behind. Using
craigslisten Backpage, Melissa now had her own clients and her
own apartment in the Bronx. On July tenth, two thousand
and nine, the neighbors saw Melissa outside that apartment waiting
(15:09):
for a cab to take her to the city. According
to her friend, she had just booked a thousand dollars
out call on Long Island. The night before. She texted
with Amanda, who was about to fly down from Buffalo.
But then Melissa vanished, no calls, no texts. As her mother,
Lynne told us, she and her husband Jeff started calling
(15:30):
hospitals and police. Then one week later, their phone rang.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Melissa had been missing a while, her phone rang and
came up on the call, her idea that it was
melissawhere like, oh my god. So Amanda answers it and
she's expected to hear her sister's voice, and it was
a guy.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
It's believed that Lisk, using Melissa's cell phone, called Amanda
five times over a six week period, with each call
becoming increasingly more graphic, as he described to the fifteen
year old in detail how he sexually assaulted her sister.
Yet the calls always ended before they could be traced.
(16:12):
Sitting with Amanda, it was obvious the emotional scars from
these calls ran deep.
Speaker 17 (16:18):
Something I have to hear in my head.
Speaker 10 (16:20):
I don't like saying it out loud.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Later, her stepfather, Jeff, revealed to us what the caller
had said.
Speaker 9 (16:27):
The first call, he said to her, are you a
horror like your sister? I heard you're a half breed.
Speaker 7 (16:35):
The last one he.
Speaker 9 (16:35):
Said, he finally murdered her, and he's going to watch
your body rot and he might come and show her
someday personally.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So why Amanda was there some clue as to why
he called this sister? More so, how did he know
such specific details about Amanda? For example, that she was biracial,
A chilling thought when you consider that Amanda was about
to visit her sister New York in less than a week.
Speaker 11 (17:03):
Any reason why he didn't call anybody else and only
called you.
Speaker 16 (17:07):
You're asking me the same questions I asked myself every day.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
You know, you may be the key I know.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Unfortunately, while police were unable to trace the exact location
of the calls to Amanda, they knew that they had
all pinged off towers in neither Times Square or more importantly,
Madison Square Garden, a clue that we discussed with Lynn
because of a strange connection to the previous victim, Maureene
(17:35):
Brainerd Barnes.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
Okay, so Marine calls her.
Speaker 11 (17:39):
Sister, right, which is interesting because the calls they came
into Amanda, one of them came from a cell phone
tower at Madison Square Garden and in the basement a
Madison Square Garden is Penn Station.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Investigators theorized the multiple connections to Penn Station meant that
this location was somehow significant in the killer's life. But
the most important clue was in the timing of the
calls made to Amanda. The first set of calls made
between eleven twenty nine am and twelve forty pm suggested
the killer.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
Had a job, an office job, and.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
These terrifying calls were made during his lunch hour. The
second set of calls, from six forty two pm to
seven twenty three pm, were all made at the tail
end of the evening rush hour, leading police to believe
they were hunting a commuter, one who made that daily
trek from somewhere on Long Island to an office in midtown.
(18:37):
A commuter who probably went back and forth every day
on the Long Island Railroad, whose main hub was in
Penn Station.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
As you leave the train, please step over the gap
between the train and the platform.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
The biggest question was where on Long Island. From Melissa's
cell phone.
Speaker 11 (18:57):
Records, she made two calls to her voicemail from two
motels in Massapequa.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
Can you tell me about those?
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Just that they were access That's all we knew. There
was a lot of calls in and out from Massapequa.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
We now know there were actually three calls to Melissa's voicemail,
but they didn't come from a motel like Maureen. There
wasn't Melissa calling. We also know there are at least
five interactions between a burner phone and Melissa's phone, all
from Massapequa, but maybe the most telling clue coming on
the early morning of July twelfth, at exactly one forty
(19:34):
three am, just after Melissa leff Manhattan, when her cell
phone ping to a tower in Massapequa. What was obvious
is that the numerous mentions of Massapequa suggested an important clue,
a possible location connected to this killer, a theory further
corroborated by his next victim, Megan Waterman, is head station.
Speaker 15 (19:57):
This is the train two Masapequa.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Meghan Waterman was similar to so many stories we'd heard,
young women hardened by dysfunction who were desperate to believe
the promises of a Romeo pimp. In Meghan's case, this
was Aquen Cruz, a Brooklyn nite who lured her into
a world of drugs and sex work.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Cruse often brought.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Megan down to Long Island, where she took in calls
at the hotels that thought of the Expressway. While there,
she would often call to check in with her daughter,
until those calls stopped. On June fifth, twenty ten, the
last image we have of Megan was captured by a
lobby surveillance camera at one thirty one am walking out
(20:38):
of the hap Hog Holiday in Express and down an
access road before disappearing into the darkness.
Speaker 17 (20:46):
I went to the holiday and Express only went to
I couldn't handle it.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
In twenty fifteen, we interviewed the rain Ella, Meghan's mother,
who revealed an interesting detail about her daughter's Deay disappearance.
Speaker 17 (21:02):
Where she went missing.
Speaker 7 (21:03):
It's pitch black.
Speaker 17 (21:05):
Megan comes across as a tough person, but Megan's afraid
of the duck. She would sleep with her bedroom lighter
on and her TV gone at night. There's no way
she would go down there. Megan is petrified of the dock.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Rachel and I went to that holiday and to walk
down that same access road where Megan disappeared.
Speaker 15 (21:28):
One of the biggest mysteries is was she just walking
because she was just going down to this convenience store
or did.
Speaker 7 (21:37):
She actually have a call that night.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Well, some reports suggested that Megan was going to a
store to grab cigarettes or candy. We can now safely
assume she was going to meet Lisk.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
I think he called her up and said, Hey, I
want to see you tonight and TN I'll pick you up.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Just the access road just walked up.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
The thing that we do know is she wasn't picked
up in the parking lot close to that front door.
Speaker 10 (22:06):
She was not picked up at the front door.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
The security camera probably sees that area, right, Yeah.
Speaker 15 (22:11):
So there was at least the intention to disguise himself
from being seen.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
But what's important about all these details is that we're
reaching that critical moment when the victim is getting into
the killer's car, the contact point. That's when his chances
of getting caught skyrocket, usually from an eyewitness account or
from a video camera. Obviously, that's why Rex allegedly picked
up Meghan away from the motel. But what he didn't
(22:39):
know is that the camera's outside the holiday and didn't
even work. But we also learned something else from Megan's mother.
Speaker 17 (22:47):
She had to have seen him before this. I heard
a let a god down. Why do you think that
because she doesn't go aside just meet it anybody. She
had to have met this person to let her guard
down enough to walk out of the hotel at one
fifteen in the morning.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
We now know detectives learned early in the investigation that
Megan was going out and out call with the same
white male she had met the day prior, one who
had paid her a lord sum of money. They also
knew that Megan's cell phone had pinged at three eleven
AM to a disturbingly familiar location, Massapequa Park. In twenty eleven,
(23:32):
the FBI began mapping areas where the victim's cell phones
and the killer's burner phones had both pinged, creating two
geographical boxes. One so called box was in midtown Manhattan,
where they believed the killer worked, but the other was
in an area of Long Island where they believed the
killer might live.
Speaker 13 (23:53):
And they looked at an area of a confluence of
four cell towers, and they realized that this had significant
because the perpetrator of these crimes was probably located within
this area, and that was mapped out. That was called
the box, and it was an area in Massapequa Park.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Back in twenty twelve, investigators were already honing in on
Lisks location, somewhere it seemed within the Massapequa Park area,
But in truth, there were thousands, if not tens of
thousands of men who lived within their box. What they
needed was just one more piece of the puzzle, one
(24:33):
more clue that could lead them to their killer, a
clue that the Gilgo Beach Task Force would later find
buried in the case files of Lisk's final victim, Amberlin Costello.
(25:00):
Amber craved family more than anything. After a difficult childhood
in North Carolina, one riddled with family separation and sexual abuse,
Amber turned to drugs to numb the pain. Amber's older sister, Kim,
was the first to move to Long Island, but Amber
quickly followed. In less than a year, she was sharing
(25:23):
a house with Bijorn Boardski aka Bear, whom she met
in rehab, and Dave Shaller. With Kim as a constant fixture,
Amber had found her family, and together they bonded over heroin.
As Kim tells us, Amber's return to sex work was
to be expected, but what wasn't expected was how easy
(25:44):
to become. With Craigslist and a new site, Backpage.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
She posted her ad and I swear to God. Within
thirty five minutes that phone was ringing off the hook.
I couldn't believe it, and I started posting two. We
had a sister's you know a We made a lot
of money this summer, made a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Of money using sex work as a means to get
their fix.
Speaker 7 (26:04):
The sisters asked Dave to keep them safe.
Speaker 8 (26:09):
I protected her.
Speaker 11 (26:10):
You know.
Speaker 8 (26:11):
Most of times I would leave and go take a
drive of something, and then if something happened, they would
call me and I come back to the house. I
let her do things at my house, which I regret,
I really do.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
It was Amber who did most of the work, operating
out of their house in North Babylon, with Dave always
close by. His constant presence was one reason why Amber
almost exclusively did in calls, except for that night on
September second, twenty ten, when she received an unusual request
(26:43):
for an eight hour out call. More So, the caller
asked Amber to leave behind our belongings all in exchange
for fifteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
He was going to drive her into the city that
night to get dope. And I never told her about
the whole story. I don't really go into that much,
but that was part of the deal, was that this
guy was going to travel to the city though, and
that's why I thought she was comfortable with him.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Amber left the house with nothing but the clothes on
her back, no cell phone, no overnight bag. Dave walked
her to the edge of the property gave her a
hug and said call me later. She said she would,
then disappeared around the corner. It was the last time
Dave ever saw Amber alive.
Speaker 8 (27:26):
All I had to do was walk like a fucking
ten feet and I would have seen this guy's car
like ten more feet. That's the thing that foks me up.
Ten feet. That's I could have seen a license play something.
Speaker 16 (27:38):
You know.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Ten feet fucking killed that girl.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Dave never saw the car that night, but later he
discussed a number of clues he'd never discussed with anyone before,
at least publicly. And remember this was back in twenty fifteen,
eight years before Rex was arrested, and based upon more
recent interviews that he's done clues he's never mentioned since.
Speaker 8 (28:05):
You know, honestly, I think that there's like two or
three guys that I think that could be the one
that did it. I think about it for years. There
was one guy who was stalking her, Like we'd get
in the car to go somewhere and her phone ring
and it would be this fucking freak following us around
and shit, and he was cool and telling her. He's
(28:26):
like yeah, He's like I see you. You're wearing pink
got pink shirt, blue shorts. This guy was doing the
shit for like for a while.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
The stalker line definitely peaked our attention, as did the
taunting calls, which sounded similar to the calls made to Amanda,
Melissa's little sister.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
There was another one guy pulled up saying that he
was going to skin her alive. There was one guy
who came there. He was a monster. He was like
sixty eight sixty nine fucking monster of the dude, and
I wound up fighting with him and went through my
front door all over the friggin stairs onunted the lawn.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
The fight with this angry John broke out after Dave
and Amber had tried to trick him in an age
old scam when they ran on numerous clients that summer, Dave,
pretending to be Amber's angry boyfriend, would threaten and chase
to John out of the house so that Amber wouldn't
have to have sex while still keeping the Johns money.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
He was just this beast of a man and he
was driving a green h what town was I think
called green Avalanche, a Chevy Avalanche truck. White white dude,
old though like probably like you know, like fifty years
old monster. I mean literally like six foot nine, three
hundred fucking pounds. There was only like a couple of
weeks before, right before she disapeared, that that guy was there.
(29:42):
I told the cops about everybody.
Speaker 17 (29:43):
You know.
Speaker 8 (29:44):
It was either like there was like three guys that
were like you know that she's seen a bunch of times,
the one dude that was stalking her, the one dude
who came back and said he was going to skin
her alive. And then that guy, that monster an avalanche. Yeah,
quick question. Do you ever hear his voice? Yeah? I
can hear his voice. Yeah, yeah, I can.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
I can.
Speaker 8 (30:06):
He's flipping the funk out. And that guy I remember,
I can hear his voice. I can hear all their voices.
Those guys, I can see their faces, you know, if
they if they have a catches Kayan and it's I
say it though I've said it a thousand times, I'm
gonna be like, you know, I'm gonna know, I know
I am, I know I am.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
What we didn't know back then was buried in Dave
Shaller's interview was the clue that broke the list case,
the clue that led police to finally identify after more
than a decade, Rex Hureman, the alleged Long Island serial killer.
Speaker 17 (30:42):
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Thank you all for coming.
Speaker 12 (30:45):
I'm standing here with Miguilbo Task Force to announce the
indictment of Rex Yereman. The murders of these young women
went unsolved until today.
Speaker 13 (30:59):
The significant break in the case was that Chevy Avalanche
that was used during the Amber Costello crime.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
This case is over.
Speaker 13 (31:08):
We're going to convict him and we're going to hold
him responsible for what he did.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
He had a green Chevrolet Avalanche, a Chevy Avalanche. It
was a tip about this Chevy Avalanche that led to
the arrest of Rex uwer.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
Miners, the witness who says that the killer drove a
first generation Chevy Avalanche.
Speaker 10 (31:28):
Investigators had a description of a Chevrolet Avalanche in their
case files since twenty ten. David Shalard spoke with homicide
detectives more than a decade ago.
Speaker 7 (31:39):
The Green Avalanche.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
The clue we now knowe Dave Shalard gave to Suffolk
County detectives over ten years ago, the same clue he gave.
Speaker 13 (31:48):
Us a Chevy Avalanche.
Speaker 7 (31:51):
How many of those are out in master Pequa.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
The clue that could have solved one of the most
notorious serial killer cases in decades, and I'm sitting right
there in front of me.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Many red flags were missed. If I call it evidence.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
The clue that had been there all long. It was
my chick's moment and I missed it. That's a hot lead.
Speaker 11 (32:13):
How do you get burned?
Speaker 7 (32:14):
What was going on?
Speaker 10 (32:15):
Out of Long Island?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Ready to keep listening? Remember you can binge the rest
of the season right now with an iHeart True Crime
Plus subscription available exclusively on Apple Podcasts Plus. You get
exclusive bonuses and ad free listening. So head to Apple
Podcasts search iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. Hunting
(32:55):
the Long Island serial Killer is a production of tenor
Foot TV and iHeart, hosted, written and executive produced by
me Josh Zemon, produced and written by Caitlin Colford, Donald
Albrighton Payne Lindsay Or executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV.
Matt Frederick and Trevor Young are executive producers on behalf
(33:18):
of iHeart Podcasts. Original music by Alex Lasorenko, David Little
and makeup and Vanity set Our Supervising producer is John Street,
Editing and writing by Daniel Lonsberry. Additional voiceover provided by
Rachel Mills. Additional production provided by Ghost Robot, Sound design,
(33:41):
mix and master by Daydon Cole. Cover design by Byron McCoy.
Interns Arnetta Fontinat, Shelby Hanson, Alec Walker and Fox Williams.
A and A Television Networks LLC. Audio from the Killing
season used under license Copyright twenty twenty five. A and
(34:01):
E Television Networks LLC, All rights reserved. Special thanks to
the team at United Talent Agency, the Nord Group, Brad Abramson,
Todd Leebowitz, Rich Perrillo and Jigsaw Productions, Rachel Mills, Zachary Mortensen,
Jen Beegle, David Baker, Joe jack Alone and Evan Krause,
(34:23):
as well as the teams at iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV.
Find us on social media at Monster Underscore pod. For
more podcasts like Monster Hunting the Long Island serial Killer,
search Tenderfoot TV in your podcast app, or visit Tenderfoot
dot tv and if you want to keep following my
(34:44):
Hunt for the Long Island serial Killer or a deeper
dive into my other true crime content. Join me on
YouTube at Sinister with Josh Zeman
New episodes are released weekly absolutely free, but you can
binge the entire season now with iHeart True Crime Plus
exclusively on Apple Podcasts. You'll also get ad free listening
and exclusive bonus episodes. So head to Apple Podcasts, search
Iheartrue Crime Plus and subscribe. Today you're listening to monster
(00:27):
Hunting the Long Island serial Killer. The views and opinions
expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals
participating in the podcast and do not reflect those of
Tenderfoot TV or iHeartMedia. This podcast contains subject matter which
may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
In this episode, we'll be talking about these victims in
very graphic terms. These details are crucial for proving the
mistakes and missed opportunities that could have led to the
perpetrators capture sooner. These individuals deserved to be remembered not
by the details of their deaths, but by the fullness
of their lives. They are Shannon Gilbert, Rain, Brainer Barnes,
(01:12):
Megan Waterman, Melissa Bartholemy, and Amberlyn Costello. In December of
twenty fifteen, federal agians arrested Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke,
this stunning downfall being just the latest black eye in
(01:33):
the county's long history of police corruption.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Investigators say that Chief Burke tortured a prisoner for stealing
a Duffel bag.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Out of the chief's suv.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Federal prosecutors accusing the fifty one year olds of using
his power to assault prisoner Christopher Lobe.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
I got chold, I got paunch, I got slapped, I
got kicked.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Burke had beaten an addict and petty thief named Christopher
Loeb in a Suffolk County station house had the misfortune
of breaking into the Chief's suv and stealing his gym bag.
Unfortunately for Burke, the gym bag contained his gun belt,
sex toys, and nasty porn, which sparked a new wave
of lurd speculation, including claims that the porn was a
(02:17):
snuff tape and rumors that maybe Burke, the Chief of Police,
was actually the Long Island serial killer.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
One of the allegations is that in the duffel bag
that was stolen from James Burke was a snuff film
film like that not somethingly going to go buy on
the local porn.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Shop without question.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Jimmy Burke is a criminal or.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
So, let me ask you something. Do you think that
Burke is lisk? Well?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
The contents of the gym bag seemed trivial in retrospect.
What wasn't trivial was the fact that Burke, as well
as the Suffolk County District Attorney and even the head
of their anti corruption unit, had all orchestrated a massive
cover up. And while none of this had anything to
do with the List case, it revealed at least one
truth behind all those rumors that yes, Suffolk County was willing.
Speaker 7 (03:12):
To obstruct justice to protect its own.
Speaker 8 (03:15):
Once at the height of power in Suffolk County, he
is now heading to prison.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Under the Plea deal, Burke will serve up to fifty
one months, a fraction of.
Speaker 5 (03:23):
The thirty years he faced. His crashing fall from grace
has county wide implications.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
The damage and the cost of this corruption and abuse
of power is incalculable.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
But that's as far as we'd gotten in twenty sixteen
when the Killing Season was released. But now that Rex Human,
the alleged killer, has been caught, we can finally get
to the questions we've been waiting so long to ask
exactly how did this corruption affect the list case? And
did it prevent the Suffo County PD from catching Lisk sooner?
(03:57):
But what's so surprising and downright shocking is when you learn,
as we did, just how close they actually came to
catching Lisk a decade ago, far closer than what law
enforcement has publicly stated. So close and you might even
call it criminal. I'm Josh Deemon, and this is monster
(04:19):
hunting the Long Island serial killer. While many questions still
(04:51):
remain in the death of Shannon Gilbert, her disappearance set
off a chain of events that I covered something far
more terrifying than anyone could imagined. One of the most
gruesome and baffling serial killer cases in decades, the case
that will be remembered alongside the Green River Killer, the
Grim Sleeper, or the Golden State Killer.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
Breaking news out of New York the arrest of US
suspected serial killer.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
This was an infamous case from over a decade ago
that really captured the nation's attention.
Speaker 9 (05:22):
The most notorious predator in New York since the Son
of SAMD.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
But what makes this case so unique is how Lisk
bridges two worlds, that being the Golden Age of cerial
murder from the nineteen seventies to the nineteen nineties in
the world of today. And that's because Rex Huerman has
been walking the streets for more than thirty two years
since his first allege killing, and like so many of us,
(05:48):
he seems to be a product of this perverse fascination
we all have with serial murder that some say was
reignited with the release of Silence of the Lambs ninety one.
Speaker 7 (06:02):
What does he do this man?
Speaker 8 (06:04):
You see he kills me?
Speaker 7 (06:08):
No, that is incidental.
Speaker 6 (06:10):
What needs does he serve by killing?
Speaker 10 (06:14):
Anger, social acceptance, sexual frustrations.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
No, he cuts Rex was just twenty seven back then
and just two years shy of that alleged first murder.
But since then Rex has become far more calculating because
we know he studied and he planned, absorbing decades worth
of serial killer books in true crime shows, fine tuning
(06:43):
his methods but also adapting incorporating technology to become a
predator of the modern age.
Speaker 6 (06:51):
This killer went shopping on the internet for the perfect victim,
and he found it.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
In his seminal book Lost Girls, author Robert Kolker wrote
about how the internet has played a dark hand in
the list case.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
The women who are targeted by this killer were representing
something new out there in the world of prostitution. They
were using the Internet, and that might have given them
a false sense of security. But the Internet has made
life different for John's as well. They can remain more
or less anonymous on the Internet, and they can maintain
this hobby even you know, and hide it from their
nearest and dearest.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
As Kolker explained, it wasn't just the anonymity of the
Johns that made this case so difficult to solve. It
was also the anonymity of the victims. Of the ten
bodies discovered along Ocean Parkway, the police quickly identified the
first four found in December of twenty ten, but if
the six bodies found months later, they can only id one,
(07:49):
that being Jessica Taylor, aged twenty, and for years, the
rest would remain nameless, including the baffling case of an
Asian male found dressed in women's clothing, and maybe the
most troubling victim of them all, a toddler.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
Known only as baby Dough.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Now, each victim has their own story thrown rabbit hole,
but first we'll start where the investigators started and.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
We're following more breaking news.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
Suffoc County Police releasing new info about the women known
as the Gilgo four, all.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Victims in the Long Island serial killer case.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
The first women were found along Long Island South short
women known as the Gilgo.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
For discarded in a similar fashion.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
They were placed roughly five hundred feet apart, each wrapped
in burlap. The press had dubbed them the Gilgo four
and the nickname Stuck. Four women each wrapped in burlap,
their arms and legs bound in tape, were in one
case leather belts, presumably so they could be carried from
a vehicle pulled off on the side of the highway.
(08:53):
They had all been placed between twenty to thirty feet
into the bramble. It's assume the killer did this with
the intention of returning to baskin whatever horrors he had committed.
It's also believed in choosing this stretch of road, the
killer was intimately familiar with Ocean Parkway.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
We're all creatures of habit and he knew the area.
Speaker 11 (09:17):
He knew where to put these bodies.
Speaker 12 (09:18):
He felt comfortable where there's no cars coming back and forth.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
This is really the perfect place.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
To disguise something.
Speaker 13 (09:26):
No one's going to see you doing it, and no
one's going to see what you've done.
Speaker 14 (09:30):
Is this somebody local that happens to know that's a
very deserted area at a certain time of night, So
it makes you a little concerned that this predator could
possibly be living amongst us in one of the beach communities.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
But what no one knew back then was that one
of these four women would be the key to catching Lisk.
It's a story that unfolds over a decade later, but
first the stories of these women who were more than
just a nickname. They were Melissa bartholemy Megan Waterman, Amberlyn Costello,
and finally Maureen Brainerd Barnes, the first of these four
(10:04):
women to disappear. Maureen had vanished from Penn Station on
July ninth, two thousand and seven, which is why my
partner Rachel and I were there filming for the Killing
season at that exact same time, eleven thirty pm on
a Monday night in July.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
All right, let's take a look around. Is there a
smoking section around here?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I got that later?
Speaker 4 (10:30):
And what about the exits? She could have gone out
here to smoke? Probably, right, this is where I would go.
Speaker 15 (10:39):
So this is Penn Station where Maureen brainer Barnes was
last seen on July ninth, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Maureene needed money, and she needed it quick. If she
could just make eleven hundred by the end of her
stay and keep her from getting evicted and keep her
ex from gaining custody of her child. Maureen had taken
the trained down from her home in Groton, Connecticut, and
spent the next four days taking in calls with clients
at a hotel in Midtown. On Monday night, July night,
(11:10):
she checked out of that hotel and walked to Penn Station,
where she called her sister, Melissa.
Speaker 16 (11:17):
She called me from her cell phone at Penn Station.
Speaker 7 (11:20):
Okay, so Monday.
Speaker 16 (11:21):
Night, Yes, she was taking a train home.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
In twenty fifteen, as part of the Killing season, we
interviewed Melissa about what she thought happened to her sister
that night.
Speaker 16 (11:34):
She said she had to walk out to go have.
Speaker 7 (11:36):
A cigarette, and do we know what happened after that?
Speaker 16 (11:39):
I think she was stocked by someone that she knew
before as a client. So anywhere from eleven thirty to twelve,
I'm assuming she got taken.
Speaker 15 (11:51):
That's the security camera. There, there's police cars everywhere.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
In returning to Penn Station, Rachel and I wanted to
understand whether Maureen had been abducted by Lisk or was
it more likely that she went with him willingly.
Speaker 15 (12:08):
As you can see, it'd be pretty difficult to snatch
somebody this area.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
I don't think someone could be taken that easily.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Maybe he made some offer she couldn't refuse.
Speaker 15 (12:17):
If he was using his own phone, they would know,
But if he was using a burner phone that could
have worked.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
We now know there were in fact, sixteen quote interactions
between a burner phone and Marine's cell all made within
the four days before she vanished. Another clue comes from
a two thousand and seven police report that only recently
came to light, revealing a witness who swore that Marine
called her just after her sister to say that she
(12:47):
was going to meet a client out of Long Island
and that she would call her after.
Speaker 15 (12:53):
This station is Penn Station.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
We had always believed that Maureen had taken the train
from Penn Station to some unknown stop out on the island,
but we now know her cell phone registered its final
ping in Manhattan near the fifty ninth Street Bridge, Yet
there's no way her cell phone could get a signal
while it was traveling underground, which means it's far more
(13:18):
likely that she did go out to smoke before either
getting into a taxi or possibly a vehicle driven by Lisk.
But maybe most chilling were the calls that came three
days later on Sunday, July twelfth, two calls from Marine's
cell phone to her voicemail, But detectives don't think the
(13:39):
caller was Marine. They think it was Lisk, listening to
her messages to see if anyone was worried as to
why she hadn't called after meeting her client. But the
only thing detectives knew for sure was that cell phone
tower data put the caller somewhere near the Long Island Expressway,
in an area known as Islandia, less than thirty one
(14:01):
from Kilgo Beach.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
The mailbox is full. I cannot accept any messages at
this time.
Speaker 12 (14:06):
Goodbye.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Nearly two years after the disappearance of Maureen Brainerd, Barnes
list would strike again when Melissa Bartholow, me, a Buffalo native,
disappeared in the summer of twenty ten while filming The
Killing Season. Rachel and I went to Buffalo to speak
with Melissa's family, but most importantly with Amanda, her sister.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
My name is Amanda.
Speaker 16 (14:39):
I'm Melissa's little sister.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
All right, we're going to do that again.
Speaker 17 (14:43):
I'm Amanda, and I'm Melissa's little sister.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
With the age difference between you two nine years.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
By the time Melissa was twenty four, she had already
spent three years on the mean streets of New York,
but now she was finally leaving her pimp behind. Using
craigslisten Backpage, Melissa now had her own clients and her
own apartment in the Bronx. On July tenth, two thousand
and nine, the neighbors saw Melissa outside that apartment waiting
(15:09):
for a cab to take her to the city. According
to her friend, she had just booked a thousand dollars
out call on Long Island. The night before. She texted
with Amanda, who was about to fly down from Buffalo.
But then Melissa vanished, no calls, no texts. As her mother,
Lynne told us, she and her husband Jeff started calling
(15:30):
hospitals and police. Then one week later, their phone rang.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
Melissa had been missing a while, her phone rang and
came up on the call, her idea that it was
melissawhere like, oh my god. So Amanda answers it and
she's expected to hear her sister's voice, and it was
a guy.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
It's believed that Lisk, using Melissa's cell phone, called Amanda
five times over a six week period, with each call
becoming increasingly more graphic, as he described to the fifteen
year old in detail how he sexually assaulted her sister.
Yet the calls always ended before they could be traced.
(16:12):
Sitting with Amanda, it was obvious the emotional scars from
these calls ran deep.
Speaker 17 (16:18):
Something I have to hear in my head.
Speaker 10 (16:20):
I don't like saying it out loud.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Later, her stepfather, Jeff, revealed to us what the caller
had said.
Speaker 9 (16:27):
The first call, he said to her, are you a
horror like your sister? I heard you're a half breed.
Speaker 7 (16:35):
The last one he.
Speaker 9 (16:35):
Said, he finally murdered her, and he's going to watch
your body rot and he might come and show her
someday personally.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
So why Amanda was there some clue as to why
he called this sister? More so, how did he know
such specific details about Amanda? For example, that she was biracial,
A chilling thought when you consider that Amanda was about
to visit her sister New York in less than a week.
Speaker 11 (17:03):
Any reason why he didn't call anybody else and only
called you.
Speaker 16 (17:07):
You're asking me the same questions I asked myself every day.
Speaker 7 (17:11):
You know, you may be the key I know.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Unfortunately, while police were unable to trace the exact location
of the calls to Amanda, they knew that they had
all pinged off towers in neither Times Square or more importantly,
Madison Square Garden, a clue that we discussed with Lynn
because of a strange connection to the previous victim, Maureene
(17:35):
Brainerd Barnes.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
Okay, so Marine calls her.
Speaker 11 (17:39):
Sister, right, which is interesting because the calls they came
into Amanda, one of them came from a cell phone
tower at Madison Square Garden and in the basement a
Madison Square Garden is Penn Station.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Investigators theorized the multiple connections to Penn Station meant that
this location was somehow significant in the killer's life. But
the most important clue was in the timing of the
calls made to Amanda. The first set of calls made
between eleven twenty nine am and twelve forty pm suggested
the killer.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
Had a job, an office job, and.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
These terrifying calls were made during his lunch hour. The
second set of calls, from six forty two pm to
seven twenty three pm, were all made at the tail
end of the evening rush hour, leading police to believe
they were hunting a commuter, one who made that daily
trek from somewhere on Long Island to an office in midtown.
(18:37):
A commuter who probably went back and forth every day
on the Long Island Railroad, whose main hub was in
Penn Station.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
As you leave the train, please step over the gap
between the train and the platform.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
The biggest question was where on Long Island. From Melissa's
cell phone.
Speaker 11 (18:57):
Records, she made two calls to her voicemail from two
motels in Massapequa.
Speaker 7 (19:03):
Can you tell me about those?
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Just that they were access That's all we knew. There
was a lot of calls in and out from Massapequa.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
We now know there were actually three calls to Melissa's voicemail,
but they didn't come from a motel like Maureen. There
wasn't Melissa calling. We also know there are at least
five interactions between a burner phone and Melissa's phone, all
from Massapequa, but maybe the most telling clue coming on
the early morning of July twelfth, at exactly one forty
(19:34):
three am, just after Melissa leff Manhattan, when her cell
phone ping to a tower in Massapequa. What was obvious
is that the numerous mentions of Massapequa suggested an important clue,
a possible location connected to this killer, a theory further
corroborated by his next victim, Megan Waterman, is head station.
Speaker 15 (19:57):
This is the train two Masapequa.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Meghan Waterman was similar to so many stories we'd heard,
young women hardened by dysfunction who were desperate to believe
the promises of a Romeo pimp. In Meghan's case, this
was Aquen Cruz, a Brooklyn nite who lured her into
a world of drugs and sex work.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Cruse often brought.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Megan down to Long Island, where she took in calls
at the hotels that thought of the Expressway. While there,
she would often call to check in with her daughter,
until those calls stopped. On June fifth, twenty ten, the
last image we have of Megan was captured by a
lobby surveillance camera at one thirty one am walking out
(20:38):
of the hap Hog Holiday in Express and down an
access road before disappearing into the darkness.
Speaker 17 (20:46):
I went to the holiday and Express only went to
I couldn't handle it.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
In twenty fifteen, we interviewed the rain Ella, Meghan's mother,
who revealed an interesting detail about her daughter's Deay disappearance.
Speaker 17 (21:02):
Where she went missing.
Speaker 7 (21:03):
It's pitch black.
Speaker 17 (21:05):
Megan comes across as a tough person, but Megan's afraid
of the duck. She would sleep with her bedroom lighter
on and her TV gone at night. There's no way
she would go down there. Megan is petrified of the dock.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Rachel and I went to that holiday and to walk
down that same access road where Megan disappeared.
Speaker 15 (21:28):
One of the biggest mysteries is was she just walking
because she was just going down to this convenience store
or did.
Speaker 7 (21:37):
She actually have a call that night.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Well, some reports suggested that Megan was going to a
store to grab cigarettes or candy. We can now safely
assume she was going to meet Lisk.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
I think he called her up and said, Hey, I
want to see you tonight and TN I'll pick you up.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Just the access road just walked up.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
The thing that we do know is she wasn't picked
up in the parking lot close to that front door.
Speaker 10 (22:06):
She was not picked up at the front door.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
The security camera probably sees that area, right, Yeah.
Speaker 15 (22:11):
So there was at least the intention to disguise himself
from being seen.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
But what's important about all these details is that we're
reaching that critical moment when the victim is getting into
the killer's car, the contact point. That's when his chances
of getting caught skyrocket, usually from an eyewitness account or
from a video camera. Obviously, that's why Rex allegedly picked
up Meghan away from the motel. But what he didn't
(22:39):
know is that the camera's outside the holiday and didn't
even work. But we also learned something else from Megan's mother.
Speaker 17 (22:47):
She had to have seen him before this. I heard
a let a god down. Why do you think that
because she doesn't go aside just meet it anybody. She
had to have met this person to let her guard
down enough to walk out of the hotel at one
fifteen in the morning.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
We now know detectives learned early in the investigation that
Megan was going out and out call with the same
white male she had met the day prior, one who
had paid her a lord sum of money. They also
knew that Megan's cell phone had pinged at three eleven
AM to a disturbingly familiar location, Massapequa Park. In twenty eleven,
(23:32):
the FBI began mapping areas where the victim's cell phones
and the killer's burner phones had both pinged, creating two
geographical boxes. One so called box was in midtown Manhattan,
where they believed the killer worked, but the other was
in an area of Long Island where they believed the
killer might live.
Speaker 13 (23:53):
And they looked at an area of a confluence of
four cell towers, and they realized that this had significant
because the perpetrator of these crimes was probably located within
this area, and that was mapped out. That was called
the box, and it was an area in Massapequa Park.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Back in twenty twelve, investigators were already honing in on
Lisks location, somewhere it seemed within the Massapequa Park area,
But in truth, there were thousands, if not tens of
thousands of men who lived within their box. What they
needed was just one more piece of the puzzle, one
(24:33):
more clue that could lead them to their killer, a
clue that the Gilgo Beach Task Force would later find
buried in the case files of Lisk's final victim, Amberlin Costello.
(25:00):
Amber craved family more than anything. After a difficult childhood
in North Carolina, one riddled with family separation and sexual abuse,
Amber turned to drugs to numb the pain. Amber's older sister, Kim,
was the first to move to Long Island, but Amber
quickly followed. In less than a year, she was sharing
(25:23):
a house with Bijorn Boardski aka Bear, whom she met
in rehab, and Dave Shaller. With Kim as a constant fixture,
Amber had found her family, and together they bonded over heroin.
As Kim tells us, Amber's return to sex work was
to be expected, but what wasn't expected was how easy
(25:44):
to become. With Craigslist and a new site, Backpage.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
She posted her ad and I swear to God. Within
thirty five minutes that phone was ringing off the hook.
I couldn't believe it, and I started posting two. We
had a sister's you know a We made a lot
of money this summer, made a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Of money using sex work as a means to get
their fix.
Speaker 7 (26:04):
The sisters asked Dave to keep them safe.
Speaker 8 (26:09):
I protected her.
Speaker 11 (26:10):
You know.
Speaker 8 (26:11):
Most of times I would leave and go take a
drive of something, and then if something happened, they would
call me and I come back to the house. I
let her do things at my house, which I regret,
I really do.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
It was Amber who did most of the work, operating
out of their house in North Babylon, with Dave always
close by. His constant presence was one reason why Amber
almost exclusively did in calls, except for that night on
September second, twenty ten, when she received an unusual request
(26:43):
for an eight hour out call. More So, the caller
asked Amber to leave behind our belongings all in exchange
for fifteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
He was going to drive her into the city that
night to get dope. And I never told her about
the whole story. I don't really go into that much,
but that was part of the deal, was that this
guy was going to travel to the city though, and
that's why I thought she was comfortable with him.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Amber left the house with nothing but the clothes on
her back, no cell phone, no overnight bag. Dave walked
her to the edge of the property gave her a
hug and said call me later. She said she would,
then disappeared around the corner. It was the last time
Dave ever saw Amber alive.
Speaker 8 (27:26):
All I had to do was walk like a fucking
ten feet and I would have seen this guy's car
like ten more feet. That's the thing that foks me up.
Ten feet. That's I could have seen a license play something.
Speaker 16 (27:38):
You know.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Ten feet fucking killed that girl.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Dave never saw the car that night, but later he
discussed a number of clues he'd never discussed with anyone before,
at least publicly. And remember this was back in twenty fifteen,
eight years before Rex was arrested, and based upon more
recent interviews that he's done clues he's never mentioned since.
Speaker 8 (28:05):
You know, honestly, I think that there's like two or
three guys that I think that could be the one
that did it. I think about it for years. There
was one guy who was stalking her, Like we'd get
in the car to go somewhere and her phone ring
and it would be this fucking freak following us around
and shit, and he was cool and telling her. He's
(28:26):
like yeah, He's like I see you. You're wearing pink
got pink shirt, blue shorts. This guy was doing the
shit for like for a while.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
The stalker line definitely peaked our attention, as did the
taunting calls, which sounded similar to the calls made to Amanda,
Melissa's little sister.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
There was another one guy pulled up saying that he
was going to skin her alive. There was one guy
who came there. He was a monster. He was like
sixty eight sixty nine fucking monster of the dude, and
I wound up fighting with him and went through my
front door all over the friggin stairs onunted the lawn.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
The fight with this angry John broke out after Dave
and Amber had tried to trick him in an age
old scam when they ran on numerous clients that summer, Dave,
pretending to be Amber's angry boyfriend, would threaten and chase
to John out of the house so that Amber wouldn't
have to have sex while still keeping the Johns money.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
He was just this beast of a man and he
was driving a green h what town was I think
called green Avalanche, a Chevy Avalanche truck. White white dude,
old though like probably like you know, like fifty years
old monster. I mean literally like six foot nine, three
hundred fucking pounds. There was only like a couple of
weeks before, right before she disapeared, that that guy was there.
(29:42):
I told the cops about everybody.
Speaker 17 (29:43):
You know.
Speaker 8 (29:44):
It was either like there was like three guys that
were like you know that she's seen a bunch of times,
the one dude that was stalking her, the one dude
who came back and said he was going to skin
her alive. And then that guy, that monster an avalanche. Yeah,
quick question. Do you ever hear his voice? Yeah? I
can hear his voice. Yeah, yeah, I can.
Speaker 11 (30:05):
I can.
Speaker 8 (30:06):
He's flipping the funk out. And that guy I remember,
I can hear his voice. I can hear all their voices.
Those guys, I can see their faces, you know, if
they if they have a catches Kayan and it's I
say it though I've said it a thousand times, I'm
gonna be like, you know, I'm gonna know, I know
I am, I know I am.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
What we didn't know back then was buried in Dave
Shaller's interview was the clue that broke the list case,
the clue that led police to finally identify after more
than a decade, Rex Hureman, the alleged Long Island serial killer.
Speaker 17 (30:42):
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Thank you all for coming.
Speaker 12 (30:45):
I'm standing here with Miguilbo Task Force to announce the
indictment of Rex Yereman. The murders of these young women
went unsolved until today.
Speaker 13 (30:59):
The significant break in the case was that Chevy Avalanche
that was used during the Amber Costello crime.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
This case is over.
Speaker 13 (31:08):
We're going to convict him and we're going to hold
him responsible for what he did.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
He had a green Chevrolet Avalanche, a Chevy Avalanche. It
was a tip about this Chevy Avalanche that led to
the arrest of Rex uwer.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
Miners, the witness who says that the killer drove a
first generation Chevy Avalanche.
Speaker 10 (31:28):
Investigators had a description of a Chevrolet Avalanche in their
case files since twenty ten. David Shalard spoke with homicide
detectives more than a decade ago.
Speaker 7 (31:39):
The Green Avalanche.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
The clue we now knowe Dave Shalard gave to Suffolk
County detectives over ten years ago, the same clue he gave.
Speaker 13 (31:48):
Us a Chevy Avalanche.
Speaker 7 (31:51):
How many of those are out in master Pequa.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
The clue that could have solved one of the most
notorious serial killer cases in decades, and I'm sitting right
there in front of me.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Many red flags were missed. If I call it evidence.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
The clue that had been there all long. It was
my chick's moment and I missed it. That's a hot lead.
Speaker 11 (32:13):
How do you get burned?
Speaker 7 (32:14):
What was going on?
Speaker 10 (32:15):
Out of Long Island?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Ready to keep listening? Remember you can binge the rest
of the season right now with an iHeart True Crime
Plus subscription available exclusively on Apple Podcasts Plus. You get
exclusive bonuses and ad free listening. So head to Apple
Podcasts search iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. Hunting
(32:55):
the Long Island serial Killer is a production of tenor
Foot TV and iHeart, hosted, written and executive produced by
me Josh Zemon, produced and written by Caitlin Colford, Donald
Albrighton Payne Lindsay Or executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV.
Matt Frederick and Trevor Young are executive producers on behalf
(33:18):
of iHeart Podcasts. Original music by Alex Lasorenko, David Little
and makeup and Vanity set Our Supervising producer is John Street,
Editing and writing by Daniel Lonsberry. Additional voiceover provided by
Rachel Mills. Additional production provided by Ghost Robot, Sound design,
(33:41):
mix and master by Daydon Cole. Cover design by Byron McCoy.
Interns Arnetta Fontinat, Shelby Hanson, Alec Walker and Fox Williams.
A and A Television Networks LLC. Audio from the Killing
season used under license Copyright twenty twenty five. A and
(34:01):
E Television Networks LLC, All rights reserved. Special thanks to
the team at United Talent Agency, the Nord Group, Brad Abramson,
Todd Leebowitz, Rich Perrillo and Jigsaw Productions, Rachel Mills, Zachary Mortensen,
Jen Beegle, David Baker, Joe jack Alone and Evan Krause,
(34:23):
as well as the teams at iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV.
Find us on social media at Monster Underscore pod. For
more podcasts like Monster Hunting the Long Island serial Killer,
search Tenderfoot TV in your podcast app, or visit Tenderfoot
dot tv and if you want to keep following my
(34:44):
Hunt for the Long Island serial Killer or a deeper
dive into my other true crime content. Join me on
YouTube at Sinister with Josh Zeman
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