December 20, 2023 • 49 mins
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, sits down with Aphrodite Jones and Joshua Schiffer. Together, they dive into the allegations linking former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke to the Gilgo Beach murders. They discuss how Burke's history of sex crimes and deviancy connects him to prime suspect John Bittrolff, and examine the willful failures in the early days of the investigation.
Listen to previous episodes of the LISK case here:
LISK (Long Island Serial Killer) Panel: A Zone 7 Discussion
LISK (Long Island Serial Killer): Part 2 with Kerri Rawson
LISK (Long Island Serial Killer) Full Panel 2
LISK (Long Island Serial Killer) | Panel 4 with John Ray and Lisa Ribacoff
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum.
- [2:45] Sheryl introduces guests Joshua Schiffer and Aphrodite Jones
- [6:30] Burke's history of sex crimes and corruption
- [13:00] Analysis of the power dynamics in law enforcement
- [15:40] The FBI Killer by Aphrodite Jones
- [17:00] Discussion on the obligations of police to sex workers
- [19:45] “No man's above the law. No woman's above the law. That's the great thing about this country. It's not a perfect system, but I haven't found one better.”
- [23:00] Details of Rex Huerman's internet searches
- [27:00] Insights into the world of sexual deviance
- [33:00] Police protection of Gilgo suspects
- [42:30] "The historical analogy couldn’t be more clear. What’s the most famous worldwide serial killer of all time across all Western cultures? Jack the Ripper. And who did he target? Prostitutes."
- [48:30] "Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." -O.W
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review! How to Leave an Apple Podcast Review: First, Open the podcast app on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. Then, hit the “Search” tab at the bottom right-hand corner of the page and search for Zone 7. Select the podcast, scroll down to find the subheading “Ratings & Reviews”. and select “Write a Review.” Next, select the number of stars you’d like to leave. Please choose 5 stars! Using the text box which says “Title,” write a title for your review. Then in the text box, write the review itself. The review can be up to 300 words long, but doesn’t need to be much more than: “Love the show! Thanks!” or Once you’re done select “Send” in the upper right-hand corner.
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
You can connect and learn more about Sheryl’s work by visiting the CCIRI website https://coldcasecrimes.org
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
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 (00:09):
When I was going for my last interview at the
Crime Commission, I had to do what they called a
psychological with doctor guy. Now everybody had warned me about
this guy, that he was gonna make me wait in
the waiting room from a long period of time, and
then when he finally brought me in, where I sat
was gonna matter. He had a rocking chair, then a sofa,
(00:30):
and then this lazy boy chair. So whatever you picked
to sit on mattered, and he was going to do
this whole profile on you just based on that. And
if you chose the sofa, whether it was to the
far right or far left or in the middle, told
him something else about you. So I thought, I'm prepped.
I'm ready. This guy's not gonna fool me. He's not
gonna get under my skin. They've already told me. He's
(00:52):
gonna make me pick who I prefer, my mom or
my dad, all these things he's gonna throw at me.
But I was still not prepared. He hands me a
brand new yellow legal pad and tells me to write
down every single person I've ever had sex with. In
my mind, I'm like, if my list is too long,
(01:12):
that tells you one thing. If my list is too short.
It's gonna tell him another and if I do my
true list, he's gonna think I'm a liar. So I
used the only gift I truly have, which is my humor,
and I looked right at him and I said, I'm
gonna need some more paper. At that point, he kind
(01:33):
of smiled and took the legal path from me and said, okay,
start to count backwards from one hundred by three. So
I felt pretty confident I was gonna be okay. But
when you talk about sex, people sometimes get uncomfortable. But
I got two guests tonight. They ain't uncomfortable. We're grown,
we are ready, and tonight we are gonna you know,
we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about sex,
(01:53):
We're gonna talk about corruption, and then we're gonna talk
about more sex, and then we might throw in a
little murder, because that's what this is. Tonight. We are
going to be talking about the Long Island serial Killer
in a way that has not been discussed that I
think is prevalent, because when you're an investigator, everything matters,
and if you are not up to speed on the
(02:16):
Long Island serial Killer, we have some other episodes that
experts can bring you up to speed very quickly. But
tonight we're not doing the background. We're going to start
right here from where we are and to help us
break down sex parties, sex workers, police corruption and the
role that these play in the Long Island serial killer investigation.
(02:37):
We have two guests, the one and only Joshua Schiffer,
Georgia State Law School grad, former public defender, now in
private practice. He's a regular on Court TV with Judge Ashley,
and he bases his whole career on Ben Franklin's doing
well by doing good. We have with US TV hosts
(02:59):
and executive producer of investigation Discovery True Crime with Aphroditi Jones.
She's a best selling New York Times author. She was
an investigative reporter with Fox News. She was also a
crime correspondent with America's Most Wanted and y'all know she
has a panage of telling it like it is.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Hey, Cheryl, So nice to be with you tonight.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Hey, Matt, thank you so much, an afrod. I'm just thrilled.
I've got a giant smile on my face seeing you, Matt.
This is just awesome And what a subject this is
as juicy as he guess.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Absolutely, sex love, murder without the loves.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Or a weird kind of love. It's not a love
that I'm down with.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
But clearly yeah, now there's a little.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Population out there where this is real, familiar territory.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, it's called love of nastiness, is what I think
it is.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Hey, I'd watch that show Love and Nastiness. Listen. I
tell people all the time there's no such thing as
a part time serial killer, rapist or child predator. But
there's also no such thing as a part time pervert.
They are constantly researching, hunting parties, hunting people, buying things,
(04:14):
developing their own kits and that sort of thing. This
is something they do all the time. Let me tell
you something. If you have to build a special room
in your house to host any type of hobby, that
tells you right there how involved you are.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
One of the things that you know people need to
understand is this is so far removed from what psychologists
and mental health professionals would consider normal or healthy sexual behavior.
It's shocking now to hear everybody out there is going, oh,
he was just such a quiet, normal guy and nothing
was wrong except we keep fighting out about these things
(04:52):
like visitors to the basement that aren't allowed to go
back there, and some other stuff that just doesn't make sense.
You're percent right. These people that are inappropriately sexually developed
and act inappropriately or criminally when it comes to their
sexual activities, they leave huge trails. It is a time consuming,
(05:13):
lifestyle consuming interest and it's a small percentage of the community,
but it's there. And that's the important part. People know
a lot more about these allegations than they've come out
and talked about. And hopefully, with some good police work,
we're gonna we're gonna get these facts firmed up well.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
And that's the thing I mean, Cheryl, when you talk
about this, no such thing as a part time pervert.
There's no such thing as a part time serial killer.
In this case, you know, you have the serial killer
meets a perverted Suffolk County chief of police who these
(05:55):
two forces collide and ultimately I believe these two many
each other. I believe that this guy Burke, who went
to prison for his sex crimes in this small community
that we're talking about, swingers, perverse sexual orgies, whatever's going
(06:17):
on with these people. They he had the description of
this killer. He knew this killer was a huge giant
of a man. How many people with that description would fit.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That's what I want to know, Cheryl, that's an excellent point.
And I want to say this to both of you.
Both of you, especially in your hometowns, are recognized people.
People know who you are. Aphrodite Jones. If I go
into a restaurant and you are in there, I know
you immediately. Joshua, there are posts and means about your
(06:55):
glasses alone. If I go to try to not and
the two of you are there, we're going to look
at each other and be like, oh, okay, well we're
never going to speak of this because it's the community
is too small. It's too small. There's no way they
didn't run into each other.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Possibly it's my old joke as to why I could
never ever go to one of those clubs, even if
I wanted to, because I'd be afraid I'd turn around
and the mask would come out and be like, hey, Judge, yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Your wife really is nice. I'll see him.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
No, you want to do that exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
So take a city the size of Atlanta, which depends
on where you want to set the boundaries is you know,
a million people, three million people. You're talking about a
community of active sexual swappers that you're going to list
in the thousands because it really is an insular community.
I'm familiar with it, unfortunately, due to some casework, and
(07:56):
I actually did a lot of work in the adult
entertainment space early in my career due to a friend
of mine being an executive in it. And people understand
the money, the popularity, the exclusivity that people will pay
for in order to get involved in some of these activities.
And it boggles the mind that everybody involved in the
(08:19):
sex swapping universe of Long Island wasn't aware there was
a serial killer in their midst. So I'm with you.
These people knew about each other, knew what they were
supposed to be looking out for, and this was a
topic of conversation for over a decade.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, the former chief of Police, James Burke. Now you've
got more than one case that you know, if you're
any kind of investigator, has got to be linked together.
You know it in your gut, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I mean you don't just have all these bodies turn
up on Yoga Beach and there's no connection. Especially three
of them are found on the same day.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Come on, okay, and then you got achieve the police
say into the FBI, nay, we don't need your help. Well,
anybody that looks at that would say, wait a minute,
this guy doesn't want the FBI's help for what reason.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Like I understand a little bit of turf war, but
come on, now, these are federal resources for what is
I guarantee an economically strap police department. They want more bodies,
they want more technology. Why you say no when facing
an ultracomplex, horrific crime that's gripped your community. No, man
doesn't pass the snip the smell test, not at all.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
And here's the thing. Even the judge when this guy
was a later sentenced for his crimes, his sex crimes,
you know, cover up rather of sex crimes, he said,
it was mind boggling to him that this man turned
down the FBI and sent him away. And you know
there's early evidence early he's doing whatever he can to
(09:58):
subvert justice because he's got his own crimes to cover up.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
He sure don't want him in his house, I can
tell you that. And by house I mean police department,
because you know here he starts as a patrolman, in
eighty six, he's promoted to sergeant by ninety one. By
two thousand, he's a lieutenant. I mean, he is going
up the ladder, this guy.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And you never know if he had other people that
he had worked with during those formative years that were
also part of this or showing him the ropes as
to how you hide stuff. You know how much I
love my police. I represent a bunch of them, and
they love nothing more than suing and going after the
bad cops that hurt everybody. And I won't be surprised
(10:41):
if we learned some additional names of people that might
have brushed up against this that are no longer in
law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And you know, when you look at a person's record,
there are some things that are going to stick out
with this guy. And he had some ias where he
violated a person's civil rights, that he obstructed justice, but
if you look at why those rights were violated. Someone
stole a bag from him that he used at the gym,
(11:07):
and in that bag were sex toys and some other items.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The other item, Cheryl, was a video tape of women
who were bound and gagged and being sexually tormented. That's
what was on that video tap that was in that
gym bag.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Now you see how she talks, That's how you know
something is relevant. So yes, absolutely, he doesn't want you
to know the porn that he has, as well as
the viagra as well as the sex toys, because you're
gonna now find something out about me. And what you're
finding out about me is I can't hide it. This
stuff isn't at home in the secret box on top
(11:45):
of the shelf, on the back end of the closet.
This is in my gym bag, in my police car.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
He takes that. You know, that heroin addict that lobed
the young heroin addict and practically beats him to death,
and a subordinate officer or rookie cop system, you got
to stop. I mean, this man was fearless. He felt
he was untouchable.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
He felt he.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Could do whatever he wanted. And I guess it didn't matter.
Harry had whatever he could beat him a pope, and
he did.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
And I think it reflects on one of the problems
with our underpaid officers and undersupport law enforcement. If we
had better funding for law enforcement, we wouldn't end up
with these institutionalized guys that sneak through and never get
called out for their bad stuff. If you want to
get real existential meta on this, this is the perfect
(12:40):
reason why we need to pay police officers double their
salary and make that job aspirational, make it so that
we were fighting would be good cops. Amen.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So in nineteen ninety five, there's an ia where then
sergeant Bert had had a month long relationship with a
convicted prostitute and drug dealer. Now here's the deal, y'all
all know, for years before somebody's ever arrested, there are rumors,
especially in law enforcement. This came to no shock from
(13:16):
the people that he worked with, No because.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
They thought he was already a sociopath, the way he
acted around the office, and you know, you know he
had Later we find out from people who came forward
that he had set up a makeshift makeshift bar in
his office that people were drinking at night. The guy
was using staff members to chase his ex girlfriend and
(13:40):
her exes around and follow and I don't know what
all was going on there. I mean they literally described
him as somebody who was had a reign of terror
in his force. He had twenty two hundred people working
for him. Think about the power that this man wielded,
and it's written the people to and demoted people that
(14:02):
he might.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
And Joshua, I want to ask you a question as
a as a defense attorney. You know when somebody makes
a threat and it's kind of veil, like, oh, I
could just kill my husband, but they're not meaning that.
But he was so specific, he threatened to kill someone
with tainted heroin.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
The inability of the system to identify and appropriately discipline
officers like this is at the heart of the valid
arguments we hear from the anti police, anti law because unfortunately,
these things happen and we see a twenty two hundred
person department that can't rid itself of this cancer. And
(14:45):
that's because of the personal relationships and the fear and
the intimidation. Think about it, if you're that good spouse
that just goes to work, you're gonna go home and say, hey,
my boss was doing all kinds of hinky stuff behind
the back, involved in sex and people, you know, and
he's still got to be there. You don't want to
tell your wife that you will you will. You don't
(15:05):
want your family to worry about that. So it's just
another way that these kind of people hide in plain sight,
and everybody gives him the pass until they finally get
the bandage ripped off with a tragedy like this, and
it's awful, and it's a tiny minority of officers, and
it would be in any industry. We just can't miss
it for.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
What it is one hundred percent well stated.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And that's the thing, you know, Cheryl, I mean, you
have bad apples. And you know, the first book I
ever wrote was called The FBI Killer. It was the
first and only that I know of FBI agent history
who went to prison for a murder. He cupped a
manslaughter plate. He killed his informant, Susan Daniel Smith in
eastern Kentucky, Apple Lasia. And in essence, had he not
(15:53):
failed his polygraph, had he not been pursued by other
law enforcement, he was getting away with that. He was
getting away with that murder one hundred percent. And it
was because he had a partner who kept his mouth shut,
all right when the girl went missing. The young woman
went missing, she was pregnant and threatening him. The partner,
(16:17):
Ron Poole, an FBI agent, knew all about it, and
nobody comes forward. So this is, you know, this is uh,
and that's not that's again it's a it's a bad apple,
it's a bad seed. But those are the kind of
things that we've got to suss out. And in this case,
look what happened. You have all these women who were
(16:39):
murdered in Long Island. I don't care if they're sex workers,
I don't care what they are. These are beautiful young
women who are murdered and discarded and that that cop,
James Burke, has their blood on his hands, in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
The FBI, Alfred Hill, other people, other experts even said
this looks like a cop might be involved. And James Burke,
after he violates somebody's civil rights, he's no longer chief
of police, he gets punished, he gets out. How in
the world does he not know that he is under
(17:20):
such a microscope when he decides to go into a park,
a veterans memorial park there in Susset County and offers
an undercover agent a sex act, exposes himself and then
is arrested again.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
It really is something where since I do so much
mental health, the inability to control your impulses, there's a
legitimate issue and that really it's the only explanation I
can come to.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
But also but also let me and let me introduct
for a second. It's also, in my opinion, he enjoyed
the idea that he thought he could continue to get
away with this in his hometown, his home church.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Absolutely there was some self satisfaction and self soothing of hey,
I'm so smart, I can do this. And I think
that that's something he shares with the suspect in this case,
because it's exact kind of corollary behavior of hey, as
long as I keep all those external optics looking the
same and looking smooth, I can get away literally with murder.
(18:28):
And we see that comfort level with a lot of
these more sophisticated offenders is that they really get comfortable
in their process, and unfortunately it's when they make an
air that law enforcement really has an opportunity to catch them.
And in this case, with everything that's gone together, it
doesn't surprise me that it took so long for an
(18:52):
arrest to be made. My real question is a practitioning
or practicing criminal defense lawyer and a citizen who wants justice,
is what's the effect of this bad police and gonna
be on the prosecution? Is this ham stringing a prosecution
in the way where it can't recover. I'd hate that,
But the best appeals are made on the worst facts.
(19:14):
In this case has horrific facts.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Both of you made an excellent point in Just a Piggyback.
When he's arrested, he asked them, don't you know who
I am?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I am right? Oh my god? Do you know who
I am? He tries to use his former status as
chief of police to say, hey, better keep your hands off.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
You know. I love that, and we see that with
ego all the time. And it's when in any public
corruption investigation anything where you've got someone used to being
cow tawbed too and having their influence in power respect,
it's almost shocking to them that a plebeian would come
up and accuse them of some wrongdoing or demand a
(19:55):
mandatory response. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry, No, man's above
the law. Above the law. That's a great thing about
this country. It's not a perfect system, but I haven't
found one better.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Amen to that, and let's move on now. So he
when he's chief of police, he's got some cases that again,
anybody looking at them with an investigative leans should see
that there's got to be a connection. There just has
to be. He doesn't want outside help, okay, but it
(20:26):
also looks like he's not doing anything to solve these
cases that families have said they went years without hearing
anything from anybody, that nothing was being done, and when
the first bodies are found, it's almost a fluke.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And hopefully some statistical and historical analysis of messages and
orders is going to show his specific disparate treatment of
this file as opposed to other files where he was
pursuing justice and was ordering people to do things. And
I'll be really interested to find out what cases never
got past step one because of his potential involvement. Were
(21:06):
there other complaints involving him, or uh, you know people
that could have been the Long Island serial killer that
he said, whoa, let's let's not pay any attention or
sign any resources to that. That's going to be a
fascinating research project.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And you know, I think when you when you talk
about this, it makes me, it makes me wonder, you're
probably right that he would have stayed away from anything
that's going to point the fingerback at him regarding suspects
within that field with sex workers, with swingers, with you know,
(21:45):
any complaints of a rape. He's going to stay away
from it.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well, you all know how the FBI works. They're going
to interview everybody, and they're going to take those notes
and they're going to file those notes. Will you talk
to ten sex workers? And what if they said, well,
we don't know anything about the killer, but we know
the chief of police.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And it's those investigations that are so easy for another
agency just kind of pushed to the side because it
didn't relate to the suspect that we know. It was
about somebody else, So we're going to put that into
somebody else pile. And I'm not saying it's bad intent,
even though it kind of can look like that. But
when the resources aren't applied, those leads basically never existed.
(22:28):
And for all we know, there were multiple investigatory calls, notes,
reports happening concurrently with this that were specifically disregarded or
pushed to the side, either explicitly or inherently. And I
really hope the FBI gets to the bottom of it
because that would solve a lot of the problems.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Well, I said from day one, I think this thing
is going to be deeper and wider and uglier than
most people. Understand. Let's talk about some of his computer
searches just for a second, and this is Rex Huerman
we're talking about. He looked up things hundreds, now hundreds
of searches on raping, torturing women, child porn, rape porn.
(23:12):
He looked up the Long Island serial killer victims and
their families. He googled other serial killers. He in a
fourteen month period of time, looked up over two hundred
times the Gilgo Beach investigation. I mean, it just goes
on and on, but it gets more. Twisted girls begging
(23:33):
for rape, teen girl begging for rape, pretty girl with
a bruised face, tortured redhead porn, ten year old schoolgirl,
skinny redheaded girl, tied up porn, short fat girl tied
up porn, Asian twink, tied up porn, girl, hogtied tortured porn.
There's a theme. There's a clear, undeniable theme. And I
(23:56):
want to say, again, grown people doing grown people's things
I have no problem with. But I want to be
very clear on one thing. I've been to his home.
I walked up and knocked owned the door. I've seen
it up close and I'm just going to tell the
two of you and everybody listening to me right now.
If Walt McCollum came to me and said, Hey, we're
(24:17):
gonna go to a sex party and it's gonna be
fabulous and there's gonna be people from New York City there,
what I would have in my mind is not that house.
You better be taking me. I'm serious now. I mean
I have known Walt since high school, and if he
rolled me up in front of that house, I'll have
(24:39):
sex with you here in this car, but I ain't
going in that house.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's weird because every architect I've ever known, you know,
their lifestyle manifests their career. They tend to be really
into how design works and appearance. That's just another one
of those incongruities that doesn't land well with me. And
I think it's because he spent so much have his
bandwidth hiding and being someone that no one can find
(25:04):
a research.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Let me let me say this. I was also at
the house, and I was there when the police were
doing the searches. I'm and number one. I talked to
a number of the neighbors and as we know, the
neighbors had no idea what was going on in there
or nor did they know him, They said, you know,
they'd see him walking in the train station in a suit,
(25:26):
never talk to anyone.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The neighbor who lived directly across the street talked to
me and told me that, you know, he would see
strange things like the rex human would be burning stuff
in the driveway, you know. But but it was wood.
It wasn't It wasn't, but it was too much of it.
It just seemed weird, but not to the extent that
(25:50):
boy should check this ass out or the guy out.
But the house was an icere like in the neighborhood.
You look at it and you're thinking, this thing is
like you say, Cheryl's right.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
I mean, that is not what I would have ever
picked for a sex party. Like it just I don't know,
I don't know what I would have in my mind.
I've never been to a sex party, but in my head,
I need the plaza, y'all. I mean, like I need
everything to be perfect.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
But whe shut.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
You know, it's got to have a little something to it,
not something that I think needs to be condemned. And
it just is shocking to me that that would be
hosted there without everybody that attended talking about it. Again,
this is a small world. I ran into somebody that
I knew in Icy Strait's Alaska. I tell my children
(26:45):
all the time, the world is so small. There's no
way you're going to go out there and misbehave and
people do not know it. There's just no way. And
that's before the Internet that was true. So I'm just
telling you now, good luck to the two of y'all,
because there's no way by angels that it is not
going to be for God and country to read about
in about two minutes.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
And it's not just that, it's the fact that there
are then subgroups within these groups. And I firmly believe
that while lots of times this is a solo activity,
I find it very difficult to believe his alleged enjoyment
of all the crimes he committed was a solo activity
because there's so much of an urge to share that
(27:28):
kind of sexual deviancy. I think that the likelihood of
other people being witness to some of this is way
bigger than we're giving credence to. And I think that
explains a lot about what's going on with his wife,
which is just fascinating from a criminal perspective. We literally
have one of the best witnesses slash suspects making a
(27:52):
film now about all this and is that a distraction?
Is that a defense? What is going on with that?
Speaker 2 (27:58):
That's a good question, that is a great question.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I say, let her do it, let her tall that
is state's evidence as far as I'm concarned. Talk it up, sister.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
But you know, she's accused of being a swinger with him,
and she's accused. You know, there are witnesses who have
said that she did take part or she was upstairs
while it was going on in the house, so she
knew something is wrong. She knew something, and she didn't
maybe know he was a murderer, but she knew he
was a perverb and that there were there stuff that
(28:30):
in my opinion, she had to know that it was
sexually twisted and that perhaps violence was involved in the house.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
I think that that dynamic deserves a lot more scrutiny because,
you know, is it a day Bell kind of thing
where it appears that they were kind of coequal together
in their crimes, or is it the dominant submissive where
they're playing this role playing existence that we don't know
the rules of. They could make it up themselves, but
(28:58):
it's a sandbox. You can have all kinds of crazy
relationships about truth and falsity and making things up. That's
how a lot of kind of the extreme sexual universe
can I don't want to use the phrase get away
with it, but justify their activities is by casting it
as fantasy, which is then protected by the First Amendment,
(29:21):
rather than acknowledging the perient nature and absolutely illegal concept
of some of the things they claim to enjoy. Lots
of people don't understand this. It is legal to make
pornography and things that indicate or show illegal acts but
are not real people, and it's delicate First Amendment stuff.
(29:44):
There aren't good answers for it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
You said very clearly, you feel like if you had
ever walked into any of those clubs in Atlanta that
you would quite possibly see a judge. So again, then
the very next Monday, you're going to be in front
of that person you know, objection you're on her, and
they're going to say, well, you weren't objecting Saturday. You know,
you've got this whole Your lifestyle is now a part
(30:08):
of your career, which gets muddied a little bit. I
would think, well, then you might get some you know,
go ahead and sustain you know, they might give you
a little extra because now you're in this subworld that
I don't know anything about, sitting at the prosecution table going,
I can't believe she just let him get away with that,
or she's substaining that motion like that didn't make any
(30:29):
sense to me.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
When I did the Epstein. When we were working on Epstein,
and people kept on asking us about the lists of
pass who's on the path, who flew down there, and
I'm like, man, here the lists, and they're not names,
we don't know, they're super famous people. And we all
thought it was absolutely reasonable that some of these very sophisticated,
lots to lose people would be involved in non traditional
(30:54):
sexual activities. To be very very.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Polite, and here's the thing when you bring up Epstein,
Josh and Cheryl, you know, I went to the Elaine
Maxwell trial in New York and attended the whole thing.
Let me tell you something. I listened to those young
women that now are older women that we're talking about,
how traumatized they were as young women. They seem some
(31:17):
of them to be living in that past still, but
Elaine Maxwell was his john. Both road participated absolutely. If
not for her, these young girls would not have come
to see an old man right themselves. And so the
connection here, I think, is what was the role of
(31:38):
human's wife in making people feel comfortable in that house?
Because that was Blaine Maxwell did for Epstein.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Every prostitution brothel of any size has a house mom.
Every single adult entertainment club in America has a house mom.
If you watch the y s ltrial this month, the
second state's witness was the house mom at the strip
club where one of the crimes occur. Because even though
(32:08):
if you're not familiar with it, for a certain part
of America, this sexual marketplace is part of their regular
daily existence. It's their common courtesy. Think about OnlyFans and
how huge it is, and how celebrities that we never
even thought of exposing themselves make millions of dollars a month.
So the fact that Rex and other people allegedly found
(32:31):
a robust support system, however small but deeply interconnected, that's
not the surprise. The surprise is and the question is
how much did that universe protect criminals when they're murdering
sex workers, because do you expect them to come out
and really participate with questions, answers, admissions. No, they might
(32:55):
have had a relation with that person. A lot of
this stuff is quasi anonymous or fully anonymous, So you
don't want to be bringing, you know, castigation down on
you even by acknowledging that you know about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Well, here's a question for both of you. We had
John ray One not long ago, and he talks about
some of the witnesses that have come forward that have
signed affidavits that said they were at sex parties at
that house, and one of them specifically said that she
was taken there by a NYPD police officer. So if
(33:30):
you've got police at these parties actively participating, they're not
trying to bust this thing up. They're not trying to
stop it or actively protective.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
You know that every city has their poker games. A
lot of those poker games have protection from law enforcement
because law enforcement's either involved or on the take, or
there's some friend of a friend of a friend. The
same as with Purian activities and sex. It is a
well known secret that the best stakehouse is in Atlanta.
(34:01):
Happen to have a population of drop dead gorgeous women
hanging out there during conventions that would love to talk
to anybody from out of town. And they're very nice,
and they make a lot of money providing consensual companionship
to America's movers, shakers, doctors, lawyers, bankers, business people. And
(34:22):
it is an open secret. And Mac, I know, you
know a couple of them restaurants.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
You know where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I sure do, Sugar. Absolutely, it is no question.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
When I go there at eleven o'clock at night what
I'm looking for. And I'd get swarmed if I walked
into I'm at eleven o'clock at night looking like I'm
traveling business.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
But you know, seriously, that's the thing that again blows
my mind. Going back to the former chief of police Burke,
why would you not go out of town unless it
was just ego driven because you could go to Miami, Honey,
Don't nobody know you in Miami. Nobody knows you in
Kansas City, had the time of your life. You know,
grown people can do grown people things.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
But here's the thing. Remember he got caught in the
nineties having sex in his uniform in his police car.
All right, with a sex worker. He enjoyed that domination
over the sex worker, using his position as an authority
(35:26):
in the law, okay, and am using it. He enjoyed that,
So why wouldn't he go out and continue to enjoy
it and continue to throw his weight around even though
he spent time in prison for what he did to
that heroinautic covering up his dirty sexual secrets. Okay, he's
been able to cover that up all these years. He's
(35:48):
been able to keep us from knowing who the serial
killer is that he's supposed to be looking for in
Yogo Beach. So hey, he's still empowered by his own
ego and his own perverse drives, and he's going to
keep doing it right.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Where he's at, absolutely, And I want to throw one
more wrench into this dynamic. And I'm friends with a
lot of law enforcement and their spouses that there's a
little bit of the badge bunny involved, where there is
a natural attraction between some people about you know, my
spouse wears a uniform. And I can tell you many
(36:24):
stories of extraordinarily consensual relations occurring between members of law
enforcement and their paramours that almost all the time are
just laughed off and don't do that again, and don't
get caught, and you know, turn your radio off. But
it's that exact, very accepted dynamic, you know. I think
(36:45):
we all understand that that's part of how attraction works,
is what the other person does for a living. But
the spectrum eventually gets into the dynamic of power and
control and this very unhealthy stuff because clearly this police
officer wanted to or got off on his power trip,
on his power and influence. And there's your problem, y'all.
(37:09):
You can't have that.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Well, looking at Humerin, there is evidence of bisexuality, being
a swinger, going to sex clubs, hosting sex parties, going
to prostitutes, having threesomes, orgies, s and m bondage. He's
got the works. Nothing was off the table with this man.
It would appear just from his Internet searches alone, from
(37:37):
what some of the witnesses are saying that are coming forward.
So again, the idea that you've got a x chiev
of police that could not hide what he was about
and what he was into. I find that extraordinarily unbelievable
that he would not know from other sex workers what
was going on in that house.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
He had to have known about it. I don't know
that he was in the house, okay, but he knew
about it, and he met or knew who this monster was.
Because there's no way you've learned miss somebody that tall
and that big and think, oh no, it has nothing
to do with the suspect that's been described. No, no, no,
no no.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
He knew, my opinion, and to deny it is willful blindness.
And I think we can all show that pretty easily.
There's no way, with the physical description and the importance
the community was placing on dead women being found on
the local beach that he didn't know all about this.
(38:38):
And part of me is really shocked that nothing came about,
you know, even earlier, because now in retrospect we look
at this and we're like, geez, no, wonder those dots
connect super cleanly.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
But you know, you take anything. Let's say that the
chief of police loves fly fishing or peyton or whatever
they may love to do as a hobby. If all
of a sudden, one fly fisherman is killed and shows
up in your area, and then a second, and a
third and a fourth, you should be the main one
coming forward going Wait a minute, we have to look
(39:13):
at this. This is too odd, this is too unusual. Again,
given his hobby of going to sex workers, you would
think the first one that showed up dead, the second
one that showed up dead, the third one that showed
up dead, the fourth that showed up dead, he alone
would have even been saying to other people, what is
going on, Like, we need to get a task force
(39:34):
maybe sublevel to look at this. We need to put
some people under cover out there to see what's going on.
What's the word on the street. One thing I can
absolutely tell you about sex workers is they've got the
pulse of the street. They know they know who's there.
So a lot of times, if we have somebody that
goes missing, or we have somebody that we believe we
(39:56):
may have a serial killer, go ask them who's been here.
Anybody give you extra one hundred bucks to strangle them,
Anybody give you x hundred dollars to act like something
or do something really unusual, they will tell you because
they know who's in your tail.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
It's a sad commentary, but that's actually one of the
most accurate images that we see in entertainment are the
sex workers that really do have that pulse of the
street because they live in all the circles. They speak
dope dealer, homeless guy, just like they speak banker, lawyer, doctor,
and they can function across all those different levels of society.
(40:34):
And because it's such an intimate service that they provide,
they are privy to some outrageous stuff. I worked on
a very prominent brothel case in Land about twenty years ago.
The black book had every important politician and lawyer in
it going back, and it of course got squashed and squished.
But the ladies, they were the best resource for the
(40:56):
drama and they knew everybody's votes on the floor.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Let me say this, and we can't forget this the
sex workers, because it was sex workers who were killed.
And we know about this forever, never decades. You know,
you have people that are just not interested, okay, because
it was a sex worker who was killed. And when
I say not interested, I'm talking about in particular the police,
because hey, who cares about these women anyway? You know,
(41:23):
they asked for it. That mentality, or they put themselves
in a position to be vulnerable. That mentality has been
around from the beginning of time.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
And then you have who's going to believe these sex workers. Okay,
who's going to believe that? Oh yeah, one of them
came forward and said she had dinner with you or men.
She's sure it was him because he was obsessed with
and got very excited by talking about who do you
think how do you think that the gig Beach killer
(41:56):
was able to get those bodies over there to that beach?
You think he brought him in burlap bags that were
camouflaged and that sex where her got scared to death
and did something she'd never done before, which has asked
somebody to meet her in the parking lot. Later continues
to tell people that I think I had dinner with
the Yogo Beast serial killer. No one believed her. Nobody
(42:18):
believed her.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Why the historical and analogy couldn't be more clear. What's
the most famous worldwide serial killer of all time across
all Western cultures.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Jack the Ripper? And who did he target prostitutes?
Speaker 5 (42:34):
Yeah, and they still don't know whether he was a
poor man or an unbelievably wealthy one with a lot
of great suspects coming from that upper echelon of sophisticated individuals,
and the law didn't want to talk to the prostitute.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
What a fascinating analogy to exactly what we're seeing.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
And I don't think Aphrodite you could have said it
any better. And Joshua obviously again I'm agreeing with both
of you one hundred percent. But my point is going
back to Burke for a minute. With his proclivity of
going to sex workers, I again say that he not
only as a chief of police, but as somebody that
(43:14):
frequenting their company, had an obligation to go to them
one on one and say, who has anybody scared you?
Because let me tell you something, I guarantee there's one
or more that had an interaction with Rex Human that said,
(43:35):
I ain't gonna f with that guy. He freaks me out.
He's too weird, he wants something too twisted, he's too violent,
he's too rough. Whatever. When a person who makes their
living dealing with people that want to do something to
them they won't do to their wives or girlfriends, if
she says she's not going to fool with this guy
(43:56):
should have been a red flag and Burke could have
got to him too. Steps.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Let's remember one thing. There are witnesses who saw Burke. Okay,
one of whom has said that he had rough sex
with her and she witnessed him take a woman, drag
her by her hair and throw her to the ground.
So this guy Burke, James Burke, is a twisted pervert
(44:22):
who is sadistic. Okay, he is a sadistic sexual predator,
just like you're mean.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I mean, I have four older sisters. Two were teachers
who were flight attendants, then turn nurses, and I can
tell you, even with the things that they think they
might have been exposed to, they don't know this world.
They don't understand this dark back page back alley. Just
they don't. They don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
The amount of money that flows through adult legitimate businesses,
let alone less than legitimate businesinesses, is absolutely staggering. In Atlanta,
you are more likely to run into someone that works
in or around a perient business than you are an
employee of Coca Cola or Home Depot or NCR or
(45:15):
Mercedes Benz or any of the other giant employers. Because
we're a convention town, we're the biggest social destination for
hundreds of miles, and the downtown area makes a lot
of revenues based on people having a good time. So
people are shocked at the money that flows through with
(45:38):
a winking nod.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
I mean again, you know, I don't have any problem
grown people doing grown people's stuff, making a living, no problem.
But when you get into I'm going to kill somebody
and I'm going to mutilate and destroy and toss out
like trash, and you've got literally achieve a police that
could have by his own contacts. Now that's what I'm saying,
(46:00):
some people that could have found out some information and
he could have had this thing sewn up, I believe
pretty quick, and he chose not to do that.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
The final thought I have is, let's get to the
bottom of not only what has happened to sex workers
and all of these Eleatin women in Yogo Beach, but
the other possible women who have been killed by humormen
in South Carolina, in Las Vegas. I mean, let's put
this whole thing together, and we need a police force
(46:31):
that is not only in New York State, but helped
by the FBI, help by others to make these connections
and understand that these women matter. They matter.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
I kind of got two important takeaways from this. Number
one is the importance, just like Afrida is talking about
where we need a deep dive, We need justice, and
we need to get to the bottom of why so
much didn't happen that should have Considering all these facts
and connections which are now so apparent, how did we
(47:05):
possibly miss these? Where were the checks and balances to
make sure these kinds of crimes couldn't be hidden by
someone on the inside so easily, Because that's really what
it looks like. I find it impossible that this police
officer wasn't well aware of what was going on, and
man sure looks like he might have had some touches
(47:28):
on the file. The other thing is, and this is
the ten thousand foot view, I hope that we can
make something good out of this tragedy and put a
little bit more sunlight into this marketplace that we don't
want to admit exists, and that's the adult universe. We
can't be afraid of it. We have to understand that
(47:49):
it deserves integrity and respect and some sunlight, because otherwise
we allow horrific things to happen. And so I hope
we get a little bit more public recognition that these
people are out there, and that certainly these women who
are working in this you know deserve protection way more
(48:11):
than we do, and we treat them right now.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Aphrodite Jones and Joshua Schiffer, thank you so much for
talking about a topic that's not easy for everybody to
talk about, but in this particular case I think is critical.
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote, everything in the world is
about sex, except sex. Sex is about power, Oscar Wilde.
(48:42):
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is Zone seven.
When I was going for my last interview at the
Crime Commission, I had to do what they called a
psychological with doctor guy. Now everybody had warned me about
this guy, that he was gonna make me wait in
the waiting room from a long period of time, and
then when he finally brought me in, where I sat
was gonna matter. He had a rocking chair, then a sofa,
(00:30):
and then this lazy boy chair. So whatever you picked
to sit on mattered, and he was going to do
this whole profile on you just based on that. And
if you chose the sofa, whether it was to the
far right or far left or in the middle, told
him something else about you. So I thought, I'm prepped.
I'm ready. This guy's not gonna fool me. He's not
gonna get under my skin. They've already told me. He's
(00:52):
gonna make me pick who I prefer, my mom or
my dad, all these things he's gonna throw at me.
But I was still not prepared. He hands me a
brand new yellow legal pad and tells me to write
down every single person I've ever had sex with. In
my mind, I'm like, if my list is too long,
(01:12):
that tells you one thing. If my list is too short.
It's gonna tell him another and if I do my
true list, he's gonna think I'm a liar. So I
used the only gift I truly have, which is my humor,
and I looked right at him and I said, I'm
gonna need some more paper. At that point, he kind
(01:33):
of smiled and took the legal path from me and said, okay,
start to count backwards from one hundred by three. So
I felt pretty confident I was gonna be okay. But
when you talk about sex, people sometimes get uncomfortable. But
I got two guests tonight. They ain't uncomfortable. We're grown,
we are ready, and tonight we are gonna you know,
we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about sex,
(01:53):
We're gonna talk about corruption, and then we're gonna talk
about more sex, and then we might throw in a
little murder, because that's what this is. Tonight. We are
going to be talking about the Long Island serial Killer
in a way that has not been discussed that I
think is prevalent, because when you're an investigator, everything matters,
and if you are not up to speed on the
(02:16):
Long Island serial Killer, we have some other episodes that
experts can bring you up to speed very quickly. But
tonight we're not doing the background. We're going to start
right here from where we are and to help us
break down sex parties, sex workers, police corruption and the
role that these play in the Long Island serial killer investigation.
(02:37):
We have two guests, the one and only Joshua Schiffer,
Georgia State Law School grad, former public defender, now in
private practice. He's a regular on Court TV with Judge Ashley,
and he bases his whole career on Ben Franklin's doing
well by doing good. We have with US TV hosts
(02:59):
and executive producer of investigation Discovery True Crime with Aphroditi Jones.
She's a best selling New York Times author. She was
an investigative reporter with Fox News. She was also a
crime correspondent with America's Most Wanted and y'all know she
has a panage of telling it like it is.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Hey, Cheryl, So nice to be with you tonight.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Hey, Matt, thank you so much, an afrod. I'm just thrilled.
I've got a giant smile on my face seeing you, Matt.
This is just awesome And what a subject this is
as juicy as he guess.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Absolutely, sex love, murder without the loves.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Or a weird kind of love. It's not a love
that I'm down with.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
But clearly yeah, now there's a little.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Population out there where this is real, familiar territory.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, it's called love of nastiness, is what I think
it is.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Hey, I'd watch that show Love and Nastiness. Listen. I
tell people all the time there's no such thing as
a part time serial killer, rapist or child predator. But
there's also no such thing as a part time pervert.
They are constantly researching, hunting parties, hunting people, buying things,
(04:14):
developing their own kits and that sort of thing. This
is something they do all the time. Let me tell
you something. If you have to build a special room
in your house to host any type of hobby, that
tells you right there how involved you are.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
One of the things that you know people need to
understand is this is so far removed from what psychologists
and mental health professionals would consider normal or healthy sexual behavior.
It's shocking now to hear everybody out there is going, oh,
he was just such a quiet, normal guy and nothing
was wrong except we keep fighting out about these things
(04:52):
like visitors to the basement that aren't allowed to go
back there, and some other stuff that just doesn't make sense.
You're percent right. These people that are inappropriately sexually developed
and act inappropriately or criminally when it comes to their
sexual activities, they leave huge trails. It is a time consuming,
(05:13):
lifestyle consuming interest and it's a small percentage of the community,
but it's there. And that's the important part. People know
a lot more about these allegations than they've come out
and talked about. And hopefully, with some good police work,
we're gonna we're gonna get these facts firmed up well.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
And that's the thing I mean, Cheryl, when you talk
about this, no such thing as a part time pervert.
There's no such thing as a part time serial killer.
In this case, you know, you have the serial killer
meets a perverted Suffolk County chief of police who these
(05:55):
two forces collide and ultimately I believe these two many
each other. I believe that this guy Burke, who went
to prison for his sex crimes in this small community
that we're talking about, swingers, perverse sexual orgies, whatever's going
(06:17):
on with these people. They he had the description of
this killer. He knew this killer was a huge giant
of a man. How many people with that description would fit.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
That's what I want to know, Cheryl, that's an excellent point.
And I want to say this to both of you.
Both of you, especially in your hometowns, are recognized people.
People know who you are. Aphrodite Jones. If I go
into a restaurant and you are in there, I know
you immediately. Joshua, there are posts and means about your
(06:55):
glasses alone. If I go to try to not and
the two of you are there, we're going to look
at each other and be like, oh, okay, well we're
never going to speak of this because it's the community
is too small. It's too small. There's no way they
didn't run into each other.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Possibly it's my old joke as to why I could
never ever go to one of those clubs, even if
I wanted to, because I'd be afraid I'd turn around
and the mask would come out and be like, hey, Judge, yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Your wife really is nice. I'll see him.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
No, you want to do that exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
So take a city the size of Atlanta, which depends
on where you want to set the boundaries is you know,
a million people, three million people. You're talking about a
community of active sexual swappers that you're going to list
in the thousands because it really is an insular community.
I'm familiar with it, unfortunately, due to some casework, and
(07:56):
I actually did a lot of work in the adult
entertainment space early in my career due to a friend
of mine being an executive in it. And people understand
the money, the popularity, the exclusivity that people will pay
for in order to get involved in some of these activities.
And it boggles the mind that everybody involved in the
(08:19):
sex swapping universe of Long Island wasn't aware there was
a serial killer in their midst. So I'm with you.
These people knew about each other, knew what they were
supposed to be looking out for, and this was a
topic of conversation for over a decade.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, the former chief of Police, James Burke. Now you've
got more than one case that you know, if you're
any kind of investigator, has got to be linked together.
You know it in your gut, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I mean you don't just have all these bodies turn
up on Yoga Beach and there's no connection. Especially three
of them are found on the same day.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Come on, okay, and then you got achieve the police
say into the FBI, nay, we don't need your help. Well,
anybody that looks at that would say, wait a minute,
this guy doesn't want the FBI's help for what reason.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Like I understand a little bit of turf war, but
come on, now, these are federal resources for what is
I guarantee an economically strap police department. They want more bodies,
they want more technology. Why you say no when facing
an ultracomplex, horrific crime that's gripped your community. No, man
doesn't pass the snip the smell test, not at all.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
And here's the thing. Even the judge when this guy
was a later sentenced for his crimes, his sex crimes,
you know, cover up rather of sex crimes, he said,
it was mind boggling to him that this man turned
down the FBI and sent him away. And you know
there's early evidence early he's doing whatever he can to
(09:58):
subvert justice because he's got his own crimes to cover up.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
He sure don't want him in his house, I can
tell you that. And by house I mean police department,
because you know here he starts as a patrolman, in
eighty six, he's promoted to sergeant by ninety one. By
two thousand, he's a lieutenant. I mean, he is going
up the ladder, this guy.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And you never know if he had other people that
he had worked with during those formative years that were
also part of this or showing him the ropes as
to how you hide stuff. You know how much I
love my police. I represent a bunch of them, and
they love nothing more than suing and going after the
bad cops that hurt everybody. And I won't be surprised
(10:41):
if we learned some additional names of people that might
have brushed up against this that are no longer in
law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And you know, when you look at a person's record,
there are some things that are going to stick out
with this guy. And he had some ias where he
violated a person's civil rights, that he obstructed justice, but
if you look at why those rights were violated. Someone
stole a bag from him that he used at the gym,
(11:07):
and in that bag were sex toys and some other items.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The other item, Cheryl, was a video tape of women
who were bound and gagged and being sexually tormented. That's
what was on that video tap that was in that
gym bag.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Now you see how she talks, That's how you know
something is relevant. So yes, absolutely, he doesn't want you
to know the porn that he has, as well as
the viagra as well as the sex toys, because you're
gonna now find something out about me. And what you're
finding out about me is I can't hide it. This
stuff isn't at home in the secret box on top
(11:45):
of the shelf, on the back end of the closet.
This is in my gym bag, in my police car.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
He takes that. You know, that heroin addict that lobed
the young heroin addict and practically beats him to death,
and a subordinate officer or rookie cop system, you got
to stop. I mean, this man was fearless. He felt
he was untouchable.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
He felt he.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Could do whatever he wanted. And I guess it didn't matter.
Harry had whatever he could beat him a pope, and
he did.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
And I think it reflects on one of the problems
with our underpaid officers and undersupport law enforcement. If we
had better funding for law enforcement, we wouldn't end up
with these institutionalized guys that sneak through and never get
called out for their bad stuff. If you want to
get real existential meta on this, this is the perfect
(12:40):
reason why we need to pay police officers double their
salary and make that job aspirational, make it so that
we were fighting would be good cops. Amen.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So in nineteen ninety five, there's an ia where then
sergeant Bert had had a month long relationship with a
convicted prostitute and drug dealer. Now here's the deal, y'all
all know, for years before somebody's ever arrested, there are rumors,
especially in law enforcement. This came to no shock from
(13:16):
the people that he worked with, No because.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
They thought he was already a sociopath, the way he
acted around the office, and you know, you know he
had Later we find out from people who came forward
that he had set up a makeshift makeshift bar in
his office that people were drinking at night. The guy
was using staff members to chase his ex girlfriend and
(13:40):
her exes around and follow and I don't know what
all was going on there. I mean they literally described
him as somebody who was had a reign of terror
in his force. He had twenty two hundred people working
for him. Think about the power that this man wielded,
and it's written the people to and demoted people that
(14:02):
he might.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
And Joshua, I want to ask you a question as
a as a defense attorney. You know when somebody makes
a threat and it's kind of veil, like, oh, I
could just kill my husband, but they're not meaning that.
But he was so specific, he threatened to kill someone
with tainted heroin.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
The inability of the system to identify and appropriately discipline
officers like this is at the heart of the valid
arguments we hear from the anti police, anti law because unfortunately,
these things happen and we see a twenty two hundred
person department that can't rid itself of this cancer. And
(14:45):
that's because of the personal relationships and the fear and
the intimidation. Think about it, if you're that good spouse
that just goes to work, you're gonna go home and say, hey,
my boss was doing all kinds of hinky stuff behind
the back, involved in sex and people, you know, and
he's still got to be there. You don't want to
tell your wife that you will you will. You don't
(15:05):
want your family to worry about that. So it's just
another way that these kind of people hide in plain sight,
and everybody gives him the pass until they finally get
the bandage ripped off with a tragedy like this, and
it's awful, and it's a tiny minority of officers, and
it would be in any industry. We just can't miss
it for.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
What it is one hundred percent well stated.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And that's the thing, you know, Cheryl, I mean, you
have bad apples. And you know, the first book I
ever wrote was called The FBI Killer. It was the
first and only that I know of FBI agent history
who went to prison for a murder. He cupped a
manslaughter plate. He killed his informant, Susan Daniel Smith in
eastern Kentucky, Apple Lasia. And in essence, had he not
(15:53):
failed his polygraph, had he not been pursued by other
law enforcement, he was getting away with that. He was
getting away with that murder one hundred percent. And it
was because he had a partner who kept his mouth shut,
all right when the girl went missing. The young woman
went missing, she was pregnant and threatening him. The partner,
(16:17):
Ron Poole, an FBI agent, knew all about it, and
nobody comes forward. So this is, you know, this is uh,
and that's not that's again it's a it's a bad apple,
it's a bad seed. But those are the kind of
things that we've got to suss out. And in this case,
look what happened. You have all these women who were
(16:39):
murdered in Long Island. I don't care if they're sex workers,
I don't care what they are. These are beautiful young
women who are murdered and discarded and that that cop,
James Burke, has their blood on his hands, in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
The FBI, Alfred Hill, other people, other experts even said
this looks like a cop might be involved. And James Burke,
after he violates somebody's civil rights, he's no longer chief
of police, he gets punished, he gets out. How in
the world does he not know that he is under
(17:20):
such a microscope when he decides to go into a park,
a veterans memorial park there in Susset County and offers
an undercover agent a sex act, exposes himself and then
is arrested again.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
It really is something where since I do so much
mental health, the inability to control your impulses, there's a
legitimate issue and that really it's the only explanation I
can come to.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
But also but also let me and let me introduct
for a second. It's also, in my opinion, he enjoyed
the idea that he thought he could continue to get
away with this in his hometown, his home church.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Absolutely there was some self satisfaction and self soothing of hey,
I'm so smart, I can do this. And I think
that that's something he shares with the suspect in this case,
because it's exact kind of corollary behavior of hey, as
long as I keep all those external optics looking the
same and looking smooth, I can get away literally with murder.
(18:28):
And we see that comfort level with a lot of
these more sophisticated offenders is that they really get comfortable
in their process, and unfortunately it's when they make an
air that law enforcement really has an opportunity to catch them.
And in this case, with everything that's gone together, it
doesn't surprise me that it took so long for an
(18:52):
arrest to be made. My real question is a practitioning
or practicing criminal defense lawyer and a citizen who wants justice,
is what's the effect of this bad police and gonna
be on the prosecution? Is this ham stringing a prosecution
in the way where it can't recover. I'd hate that,
But the best appeals are made on the worst facts.
(19:14):
In this case has horrific facts.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Both of you made an excellent point in Just a Piggyback.
When he's arrested, he asked them, don't you know who
I am?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I am right? Oh my god? Do you know who
I am? He tries to use his former status as
chief of police to say, hey, better keep your hands off.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
You know. I love that, and we see that with
ego all the time. And it's when in any public
corruption investigation anything where you've got someone used to being
cow tawbed too and having their influence in power respect,
it's almost shocking to them that a plebeian would come
up and accuse them of some wrongdoing or demand a
(19:55):
mandatory response. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry, No, man's above
the law. Above the law. That's a great thing about
this country. It's not a perfect system, but I haven't
found one better.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Amen to that, and let's move on now. So he
when he's chief of police, he's got some cases that again,
anybody looking at them with an investigative leans should see
that there's got to be a connection. There just has
to be. He doesn't want outside help, okay, but it
(20:26):
also looks like he's not doing anything to solve these
cases that families have said they went years without hearing
anything from anybody, that nothing was being done, and when
the first bodies are found, it's almost a fluke.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And hopefully some statistical and historical analysis of messages and
orders is going to show his specific disparate treatment of
this file as opposed to other files where he was
pursuing justice and was ordering people to do things. And
I'll be really interested to find out what cases never
got past step one because of his potential involvement. Were
(21:06):
there other complaints involving him, or uh, you know people
that could have been the Long Island serial killer that
he said, whoa, let's let's not pay any attention or
sign any resources to that. That's going to be a
fascinating research project.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And you know, I think when you when you talk
about this, it makes me, it makes me wonder, you're
probably right that he would have stayed away from anything
that's going to point the fingerback at him regarding suspects
within that field with sex workers, with swingers, with you know,
(21:45):
any complaints of a rape. He's going to stay away
from it.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well, you all know how the FBI works. They're going
to interview everybody, and they're going to take those notes
and they're going to file those notes. Will you talk
to ten sex workers? And what if they said, well,
we don't know anything about the killer, but we know
the chief of police.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And it's those investigations that are so easy for another
agency just kind of pushed to the side because it
didn't relate to the suspect that we know. It was
about somebody else, So we're going to put that into
somebody else pile. And I'm not saying it's bad intent,
even though it kind of can look like that. But
when the resources aren't applied, those leads basically never existed.
(22:28):
And for all we know, there were multiple investigatory calls, notes,
reports happening concurrently with this that were specifically disregarded or
pushed to the side, either explicitly or inherently. And I
really hope the FBI gets to the bottom of it
because that would solve a lot of the problems.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Well, I said from day one, I think this thing
is going to be deeper and wider and uglier than
most people. Understand. Let's talk about some of his computer
searches just for a second, and this is Rex Huerman
we're talking about. He looked up things hundreds, now hundreds
of searches on raping, torturing women, child porn, rape porn.
(23:12):
He looked up the Long Island serial killer victims and
their families. He googled other serial killers. He in a
fourteen month period of time, looked up over two hundred
times the Gilgo Beach investigation. I mean, it just goes
on and on, but it gets more. Twisted girls begging
(23:33):
for rape, teen girl begging for rape, pretty girl with
a bruised face, tortured redhead porn, ten year old schoolgirl,
skinny redheaded girl, tied up porn, short fat girl tied
up porn, Asian twink, tied up porn, girl, hogtied tortured porn.
There's a theme. There's a clear, undeniable theme. And I
(23:56):
want to say, again, grown people doing grown people's things
I have no problem with. But I want to be
very clear on one thing. I've been to his home.
I walked up and knocked owned the door. I've seen
it up close and I'm just going to tell the
two of you and everybody listening to me right now.
If Walt McCollum came to me and said, Hey, we're
(24:17):
gonna go to a sex party and it's gonna be
fabulous and there's gonna be people from New York City there,
what I would have in my mind is not that house.
You better be taking me. I'm serious now. I mean
I have known Walt since high school, and if he
rolled me up in front of that house, I'll have
(24:39):
sex with you here in this car, but I ain't
going in that house.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's weird because every architect I've ever known, you know,
their lifestyle manifests their career. They tend to be really
into how design works and appearance. That's just another one
of those incongruities that doesn't land well with me. And
I think it's because he spent so much have his
bandwidth hiding and being someone that no one can find
(25:04):
a research.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Let me let me say this. I was also at
the house, and I was there when the police were
doing the searches. I'm and number one. I talked to
a number of the neighbors and as we know, the
neighbors had no idea what was going on in there
or nor did they know him, They said, you know,
they'd see him walking in the train station in a suit,
(25:26):
never talk to anyone.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The neighbor who lived directly across the street talked to
me and told me that, you know, he would see
strange things like the rex human would be burning stuff
in the driveway, you know. But but it was wood.
It wasn't It wasn't, but it was too much of it.
It just seemed weird, but not to the extent that
(25:50):
boy should check this ass out or the guy out.
But the house was an icere like in the neighborhood.
You look at it and you're thinking, this thing is
like you say, Cheryl's right.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
I mean, that is not what I would have ever
picked for a sex party. Like it just I don't know,
I don't know what I would have in my mind.
I've never been to a sex party, but in my head,
I need the plaza, y'all. I mean, like I need
everything to be perfect.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
But whe shut.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
You know, it's got to have a little something to it,
not something that I think needs to be condemned. And
it just is shocking to me that that would be
hosted there without everybody that attended talking about it. Again,
this is a small world. I ran into somebody that
I knew in Icy Strait's Alaska. I tell my children
(26:45):
all the time, the world is so small. There's no
way you're going to go out there and misbehave and
people do not know it. There's just no way. And
that's before the Internet that was true. So I'm just
telling you now, good luck to the two of y'all,
because there's no way by angels that it is not
going to be for God and country to read about
in about two minutes.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
And it's not just that, it's the fact that there
are then subgroups within these groups. And I firmly believe
that while lots of times this is a solo activity,
I find it very difficult to believe his alleged enjoyment
of all the crimes he committed was a solo activity
because there's so much of an urge to share that
(27:28):
kind of sexual deviancy. I think that the likelihood of
other people being witness to some of this is way
bigger than we're giving credence to. And I think that
explains a lot about what's going on with his wife,
which is just fascinating from a criminal perspective. We literally
have one of the best witnesses slash suspects making a
(27:52):
film now about all this and is that a distraction?
Is that a defense? What is going on with that?
Speaker 2 (27:58):
That's a good question, that is a great question.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I say, let her do it, let her tall that
is state's evidence as far as I'm concarned. Talk it up, sister.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
But you know, she's accused of being a swinger with him,
and she's accused. You know, there are witnesses who have
said that she did take part or she was upstairs
while it was going on in the house, so she
knew something is wrong. She knew something, and she didn't
maybe know he was a murderer, but she knew he
was a perverb and that there were there stuff that
(28:30):
in my opinion, she had to know that it was
sexually twisted and that perhaps violence was involved in the house.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
I think that that dynamic deserves a lot more scrutiny because,
you know, is it a day Bell kind of thing
where it appears that they were kind of coequal together
in their crimes, or is it the dominant submissive where
they're playing this role playing existence that we don't know
the rules of. They could make it up themselves, but
(28:58):
it's a sandbox. You can have all kinds of crazy
relationships about truth and falsity and making things up. That's
how a lot of kind of the extreme sexual universe
can I don't want to use the phrase get away
with it, but justify their activities is by casting it
as fantasy, which is then protected by the First Amendment,
(29:21):
rather than acknowledging the perient nature and absolutely illegal concept
of some of the things they claim to enjoy. Lots
of people don't understand this. It is legal to make
pornography and things that indicate or show illegal acts but
are not real people, and it's delicate First Amendment stuff.
(29:44):
There aren't good answers for it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
You said very clearly, you feel like if you had
ever walked into any of those clubs in Atlanta that
you would quite possibly see a judge. So again, then
the very next Monday, you're going to be in front
of that person you know, objection you're on her, and
they're going to say, well, you weren't objecting Saturday. You know,
you've got this whole Your lifestyle is now a part
(30:08):
of your career, which gets muddied a little bit. I
would think, well, then you might get some you know,
go ahead and sustain you know, they might give you
a little extra because now you're in this subworld that
I don't know anything about, sitting at the prosecution table going,
I can't believe she just let him get away with that,
or she's substaining that motion like that didn't make any
(30:29):
sense to me.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
When I did the Epstein. When we were working on Epstein,
and people kept on asking us about the lists of
pass who's on the path, who flew down there, and
I'm like, man, here the lists, and they're not names,
we don't know, they're super famous people. And we all
thought it was absolutely reasonable that some of these very sophisticated,
lots to lose people would be involved in non traditional
(30:54):
sexual activities. To be very very.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Polite, and here's the thing when you bring up Epstein,
Josh and Cheryl, you know, I went to the Elaine
Maxwell trial in New York and attended the whole thing.
Let me tell you something. I listened to those young
women that now are older women that we're talking about,
how traumatized they were as young women. They seem some
(31:17):
of them to be living in that past still, but
Elaine Maxwell was his john. Both road participated absolutely. If
not for her, these young girls would not have come
to see an old man right themselves. And so the
connection here, I think, is what was the role of
(31:38):
human's wife in making people feel comfortable in that house?
Because that was Blaine Maxwell did for Epstein.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Every prostitution brothel of any size has a house mom.
Every single adult entertainment club in America has a house mom.
If you watch the y s ltrial this month, the
second state's witness was the house mom at the strip
club where one of the crimes occur. Because even though
(32:08):
if you're not familiar with it, for a certain part
of America, this sexual marketplace is part of their regular
daily existence. It's their common courtesy. Think about OnlyFans and
how huge it is, and how celebrities that we never
even thought of exposing themselves make millions of dollars a month.
So the fact that Rex and other people allegedly found
(32:31):
a robust support system, however small but deeply interconnected, that's
not the surprise. The surprise is and the question is
how much did that universe protect criminals when they're murdering
sex workers, because do you expect them to come out
and really participate with questions, answers, admissions. No, they might
(32:55):
have had a relation with that person. A lot of
this stuff is quasi anonymous or fully anonymous, So you
don't want to be bringing, you know, castigation down on
you even by acknowledging that you know about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Well, here's a question for both of you. We had
John ray One not long ago, and he talks about
some of the witnesses that have come forward that have
signed affidavits that said they were at sex parties at
that house, and one of them specifically said that she
was taken there by a NYPD police officer. So if
(33:30):
you've got police at these parties actively participating, they're not
trying to bust this thing up. They're not trying to
stop it or actively protective.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
You know that every city has their poker games. A
lot of those poker games have protection from law enforcement
because law enforcement's either involved or on the take, or
there's some friend of a friend of a friend. The
same as with Purian activities and sex. It is a
well known secret that the best stakehouse is in Atlanta.
(34:01):
Happen to have a population of drop dead gorgeous women
hanging out there during conventions that would love to talk
to anybody from out of town. And they're very nice,
and they make a lot of money providing consensual companionship
to America's movers, shakers, doctors, lawyers, bankers, business people. And
(34:22):
it is an open secret. And Mac, I know, you
know a couple of them restaurants.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
You know where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I sure do, Sugar. Absolutely, it is no question.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
When I go there at eleven o'clock at night what
I'm looking for. And I'd get swarmed if I walked
into I'm at eleven o'clock at night looking like I'm
traveling business.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
But you know, seriously, that's the thing that again blows
my mind. Going back to the former chief of police Burke,
why would you not go out of town unless it
was just ego driven because you could go to Miami, Honey,
Don't nobody know you in Miami. Nobody knows you in
Kansas City, had the time of your life. You know,
grown people can do grown people things.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
But here's the thing. Remember he got caught in the
nineties having sex in his uniform in his police car.
All right, with a sex worker. He enjoyed that domination
over the sex worker, using his position as an authority
(35:26):
in the law, okay, and am using it. He enjoyed that,
So why wouldn't he go out and continue to enjoy
it and continue to throw his weight around even though
he spent time in prison for what he did to
that heroinautic covering up his dirty sexual secrets. Okay, he's
been able to cover that up all these years. He's
(35:48):
been able to keep us from knowing who the serial
killer is that he's supposed to be looking for in
Yogo Beach. So hey, he's still empowered by his own
ego and his own perverse drives, and he's going to
keep doing it right.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Where he's at, absolutely, And I want to throw one
more wrench into this dynamic. And I'm friends with a
lot of law enforcement and their spouses that there's a
little bit of the badge bunny involved, where there is
a natural attraction between some people about you know, my
spouse wears a uniform. And I can tell you many
(36:24):
stories of extraordinarily consensual relations occurring between members of law
enforcement and their paramours that almost all the time are
just laughed off and don't do that again, and don't
get caught, and you know, turn your radio off. But
it's that exact, very accepted dynamic, you know. I think
(36:45):
we all understand that that's part of how attraction works,
is what the other person does for a living. But
the spectrum eventually gets into the dynamic of power and
control and this very unhealthy stuff because clearly this police
officer wanted to or got off on his power trip,
on his power and influence. And there's your problem, y'all.
(37:09):
You can't have that.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Well, looking at Humerin, there is evidence of bisexuality, being
a swinger, going to sex clubs, hosting sex parties, going
to prostitutes, having threesomes, orgies, s and m bondage. He's
got the works. Nothing was off the table with this man.
It would appear just from his Internet searches alone, from
(37:37):
what some of the witnesses are saying that are coming forward.
So again, the idea that you've got a x chiev
of police that could not hide what he was about
and what he was into. I find that extraordinarily unbelievable
that he would not know from other sex workers what
was going on in that house.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
He had to have known about it. I don't know
that he was in the house, okay, but he knew
about it, and he met or knew who this monster was.
Because there's no way you've learned miss somebody that tall
and that big and think, oh no, it has nothing
to do with the suspect that's been described. No, no, no,
no no.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
He knew, my opinion, and to deny it is willful blindness.
And I think we can all show that pretty easily.
There's no way, with the physical description and the importance
the community was placing on dead women being found on
the local beach that he didn't know all about this.
(38:38):
And part of me is really shocked that nothing came about,
you know, even earlier, because now in retrospect we look
at this and we're like, geez, no, wonder those dots
connect super cleanly.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
But you know, you take anything. Let's say that the
chief of police loves fly fishing or peyton or whatever
they may love to do as a hobby. If all
of a sudden, one fly fisherman is killed and shows
up in your area, and then a second, and a
third and a fourth, you should be the main one
coming forward going Wait a minute, we have to look
(39:13):
at this. This is too odd, this is too unusual. Again,
given his hobby of going to sex workers, you would
think the first one that showed up dead, the second
one that showed up dead, the third one that showed
up dead, the fourth that showed up dead, he alone
would have even been saying to other people, what is
going on, Like, we need to get a task force
(39:34):
maybe sublevel to look at this. We need to put
some people under cover out there to see what's going on.
What's the word on the street. One thing I can
absolutely tell you about sex workers is they've got the
pulse of the street. They know they know who's there.
So a lot of times, if we have somebody that
goes missing, or we have somebody that we believe we
(39:56):
may have a serial killer, go ask them who's been here.
Anybody give you extra one hundred bucks to strangle them,
Anybody give you x hundred dollars to act like something
or do something really unusual, they will tell you because
they know who's in your tail.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
It's a sad commentary, but that's actually one of the
most accurate images that we see in entertainment are the
sex workers that really do have that pulse of the
street because they live in all the circles. They speak
dope dealer, homeless guy, just like they speak banker, lawyer, doctor,
and they can function across all those different levels of society.
(40:34):
And because it's such an intimate service that they provide,
they are privy to some outrageous stuff. I worked on
a very prominent brothel case in Land about twenty years ago.
The black book had every important politician and lawyer in
it going back, and it of course got squashed and squished.
But the ladies, they were the best resource for the
(40:56):
drama and they knew everybody's votes on the floor.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Let me say this, and we can't forget this the
sex workers, because it was sex workers who were killed.
And we know about this forever, never decades. You know,
you have people that are just not interested, okay, because
it was a sex worker who was killed. And when
I say not interested, I'm talking about in particular the police,
because hey, who cares about these women anyway? You know,
(41:23):
they asked for it. That mentality, or they put themselves
in a position to be vulnerable. That mentality has been
around from the beginning of time.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
And then you have who's going to believe these sex workers. Okay,
who's going to believe that? Oh yeah, one of them
came forward and said she had dinner with you or men.
She's sure it was him because he was obsessed with
and got very excited by talking about who do you
think how do you think that the gig Beach killer
(41:56):
was able to get those bodies over there to that beach?
You think he brought him in burlap bags that were
camouflaged and that sex where her got scared to death
and did something she'd never done before, which has asked
somebody to meet her in the parking lot. Later continues
to tell people that I think I had dinner with
the Yogo Beast serial killer. No one believed her. Nobody
(42:18):
believed her.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Why the historical and analogy couldn't be more clear. What's
the most famous worldwide serial killer of all time across
all Western cultures.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Jack the Ripper? And who did he target prostitutes?
Speaker 5 (42:34):
Yeah, and they still don't know whether he was a
poor man or an unbelievably wealthy one with a lot
of great suspects coming from that upper echelon of sophisticated individuals,
and the law didn't want to talk to the prostitute.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
What a fascinating analogy to exactly what we're seeing.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
And I don't think Aphrodite you could have said it
any better. And Joshua obviously again I'm agreeing with both
of you one hundred percent. But my point is going
back to Burke for a minute. With his proclivity of
going to sex workers, I again say that he not
only as a chief of police, but as somebody that
(43:14):
frequenting their company, had an obligation to go to them
one on one and say, who has anybody scared you?
Because let me tell you something, I guarantee there's one
or more that had an interaction with Rex Human that said,
(43:35):
I ain't gonna f with that guy. He freaks me out.
He's too weird, he wants something too twisted, he's too violent,
he's too rough. Whatever. When a person who makes their
living dealing with people that want to do something to
them they won't do to their wives or girlfriends, if
she says she's not going to fool with this guy
(43:56):
should have been a red flag and Burke could have
got to him too. Steps.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Let's remember one thing. There are witnesses who saw Burke. Okay,
one of whom has said that he had rough sex
with her and she witnessed him take a woman, drag
her by her hair and throw her to the ground.
So this guy Burke, James Burke, is a twisted pervert
(44:22):
who is sadistic. Okay, he is a sadistic sexual predator,
just like you're mean.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I mean, I have four older sisters. Two were teachers
who were flight attendants, then turn nurses, and I can
tell you, even with the things that they think they
might have been exposed to, they don't know this world.
They don't understand this dark back page back alley. Just
they don't. They don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
The amount of money that flows through adult legitimate businesses,
let alone less than legitimate businesinesses, is absolutely staggering. In Atlanta,
you are more likely to run into someone that works
in or around a perient business than you are an
employee of Coca Cola or Home Depot or NCR or
(45:15):
Mercedes Benz or any of the other giant employers. Because
we're a convention town, we're the biggest social destination for
hundreds of miles, and the downtown area makes a lot
of revenues based on people having a good time. So
people are shocked at the money that flows through with
(45:38):
a winking nod.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
I mean again, you know, I don't have any problem
grown people doing grown people's stuff, making a living, no problem.
But when you get into I'm going to kill somebody
and I'm going to mutilate and destroy and toss out
like trash, and you've got literally achieve a police that
could have by his own contacts. Now that's what I'm saying,
(46:00):
some people that could have found out some information and
he could have had this thing sewn up, I believe
pretty quick, and he chose not to do that.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
The final thought I have is, let's get to the
bottom of not only what has happened to sex workers
and all of these Eleatin women in Yogo Beach, but
the other possible women who have been killed by humormen
in South Carolina, in Las Vegas. I mean, let's put
this whole thing together, and we need a police force
(46:31):
that is not only in New York State, but helped
by the FBI, help by others to make these connections
and understand that these women matter. They matter.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
I kind of got two important takeaways from this. Number
one is the importance, just like Afrida is talking about
where we need a deep dive, We need justice, and
we need to get to the bottom of why so
much didn't happen that should have Considering all these facts
and connections which are now so apparent, how did we
(47:05):
possibly miss these? Where were the checks and balances to
make sure these kinds of crimes couldn't be hidden by
someone on the inside so easily, Because that's really what
it looks like. I find it impossible that this police
officer wasn't well aware of what was going on, and
man sure looks like he might have had some touches
(47:28):
on the file. The other thing is, and this is
the ten thousand foot view, I hope that we can
make something good out of this tragedy and put a
little bit more sunlight into this marketplace that we don't
want to admit exists, and that's the adult universe. We
can't be afraid of it. We have to understand that
(47:49):
it deserves integrity and respect and some sunlight, because otherwise
we allow horrific things to happen. And so I hope
we get a little bit more public recognition that these
people are out there, and that certainly these women who
are working in this you know deserve protection way more
(48:11):
than we do, and we treat them right now.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Aphrodite Jones and Joshua Schiffer, thank you so much for
talking about a topic that's not easy for everybody to
talk about, but in this particular case I think is critical.
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote, everything in the world is
about sex, except sex. Sex is about power, Oscar Wilde.
(48:42):
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is Zone seven.
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