August 9, 2023 • 48 mins
In late 2010 when four bodies were found on Gilgo Beach and the Gilgo Beach serial Killer was discovered. As more bodies were found along the new york ocean parkway the Gilgo Beach serial killer was renamed the Long Island Serial Killer or LISK for short. After 13 years and 8 victims found, Rex Heuermann has been arrested. This is still an active case so comments about Rex are based on personal opinion and statements from police and those close to the case but are not facts proven in court. This episode is current as the publication of this episode but this case is constantly evolving so we will update on socials as we learn more. This episode contains discussion of murder, assault, violence to a minor, and derogatory remarks. If you believe you have information about the case please call 1-800-220-TIPS to speak with the Suffolk County Police Department.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
In late 2010, when four bodies were found on Gilligo Beach, the Gilligo Beach serial killer was discovered.
(00:07):
As more bodies were found along the New York Ocean Parkway, the Gilligo Beach serial killer was renamed to the Long Island serial killer, or LISC for short.
After 13 years and 8 victims found, Rex Heuerman was arrested.
This is still an active case, so comments about Rex are based on personal opinion and statements from police and those close to the case, but are not facts proven in court.
(00:30):
This episode is as current as a publication of it, but as this case is constantly evolving, we will continue to update on social as we learn more.
This episode contains discussion of murder, assault, violence to a minor, and derogatory remarks.
Welcome to Uneasy, a podcast hosted by Lexi and Cecilia.
(00:53):
This podcast is a collection of research based on haunting and mysterious events that will leave you feeling genuinely uneasy. Discretion is advised.
So in May 2010, a woman named Shannon Gilbert disappeared. She was just 24 years old and she disappeared after fleeing clients home.
(01:15):
She was actually running through the street calling 911, telling dispatchers that someone was trying to kill her.
You can hear on the audio, which I will play now, you can hear other voices in the background.
(01:52):
You're driving right now?
No, I'm inside a house.
I'm sorry?
I'm inside a house.
What house?
I don't know. Can you trace where I am?
I'm sorry?
Can you trace where I am?
No, I can't. What's your callback number you're calling from?
Huh?
What phone number are you calling from?
(02:17):
Somebody's after me. Please.
Are you in Suffolk County or Nassau County?
I'm in Long Island.
Where on Long Island are you?
I'm not supposed to.
No.
Yeah, I'm not supposed to.
No.
(02:39):
No.
No, stop, no.
Where on Long Island are you? In Suffolk County, Nassau County?
Huh?
Huh-huh.
Why?
(03:03):
Why are you calling me by my name?
Why?
County, you on the line?
Stop. Please. Stop it, please.
Please stop.
Please, you shouldn't go up.
No, time to go.
Please.
(03:24):
You okay?
Yeah.
(03:55):
Okay.
(04:18):
Okay.
So while they were searching for Shannon in December 2010,
(04:45):
they brought more cadaver dogs out to the beaches to look for her,
and they actually ended up finding four victims within a quarter mile of each other near Gilligo Beach.
These victims were called the Gilligo Four and the Gilligo Beach serial killer was born.
The first victim was found on December 11th of 2010.
(05:07):
A cadaver dog that was brought out located a skeleton in a disintegrating burlap bag,
and this skeleton was identified as Melissa Bartholomew.
I am just like so taken aback by the fact that it was in like a burlap bag as well.
(05:32):
So police decided that the burlap bags were very intentional because they actually camouflaged really well into the sand.
Yeah, I would imagine.
The burlap also held moisture really well, causing the bodies to disintegrate faster.
The bodies were in the burlap bags, but also like the bags were like taped up.
(05:57):
So that's how they were kind of like placed in there and all tied up and then dug into the sand.
So Melissa was known as a missing person because when she went missing, someone kept calling her sister off of Melissa's phone
describing to her how Melissa died and was taunting her.
(06:20):
This was a man's voice and police either had two ideas that it was the serial killer
or someone had grabbed Melissa's phone knowing that she was missing and started taunting her sister just for personal gain.
Yeah, both of those options are so messed up.
Like, I almost want it to be the serial killer more than I want it to be just some random ass person.
(06:45):
I think it's more weird if it's random.
Yeah, it's like if it's a random ass person, you're sick.
Like, yeah, why are you doing that?
So three additional bodies were found after Melissa and these bodies were Megan Waterman, Amber Castello and Marion Bernard Barnes.
(07:08):
Interesting Marion's family also received a call from her phone by a man saying that Marion was dead.
Okay, so that makes me think it's not random. Like it is whoever this killer is.
Yeah.
Huh, that's an interesting part of his MO there.
(07:32):
It was only with these two women though.
Okay.
So the other two never received calls.
And all of these women did have really strong families at home.
Some were mothers, some were sisters, regardless, they had really strong families at home.
They were all known sex workers, but they weren't sex workers that didn't have a family to come home to.
(07:57):
They were just doing it just to make ends meet.
All women were also short, petite and blonde females that advertised on Craigslist.
So he definitely had a type that he was going for.
And Craigslist allowed him to verify that they were his type before he became clients of them because they would post pictures of themselves on the site.
(08:27):
Craigslist is so sketchy.
It's a very, it's an older thing. Like I think I've been on Craigslist like twice in my life.
I always remember, I think Craigslist was like the now Facebook marketplace because I always remember like my dad would be looking on Craigslist for like a new car or, you know, different knickknacks or whatever.
(08:54):
Like literally checking it like every day.
But until I got older, I didn't know that there was such like a dark kind of side to Craigslist that I was kind of like really creeped out to learn, I guess.
You can definitely buy anything on Craigslist, especially back then.
(09:17):
And I do mean anything.
One of these women though actually was banned from Craigslist by the time that she disappeared, leading police to believe that it was actually a regular of hers that had kidnapped her and potentially killed her because she was not able to make any new clients on Craigslist.
(09:41):
So after the Gilligo Four were found, just several months later between March and April 2011, six more bodies were found in the Suffolk County area, which is home to Gilligo Beach.
The first body that was found was a woman named Jessica Taylor.
In 2003, some of Jessica's remains were found in actually another part of town in Suffolk County.
(10:05):
So they were a couple remains that were originally found and then the rest were found in another part when they kept further investigating near Gilligo Beach.
And this hasn't been typical with the other bodies that have been found.
Correct. All Gilligo Four had all of the remains.
(10:30):
So now whoever this is, if we're assuming that all of these at this point are connected, he's changing the way that he's disposing of the bodies.
And this is an older victim.
Did she fit the rest of the profile or was this like totally different?
She did. She was a sex worker. She was blonde, petite.
(10:53):
Okay. She was just older.
All of that.
Yes.
Okay.
So she was murdered and dismembered significantly before the rest of these victims were found.
But in April, we also changed the M.O.A.P. a little bit more when we have a toddler that's found.
I'm sorry. How do you jump to a toddler from like sex workers to a toddler?
(11:19):
I don't think I want to know the answer to that.
I don't think you want to know the answer to that either.
That's disgusting.
Also, a potential male that was appearing as a female or a person going through a gender transition was also found in the area.
And Valerie Mack was found at the time.
She was Jane Doe.
It wasn't until many, many years later that she was identified through genealogy testing.
(11:46):
It was actually in 2016.
So very many years later.
Several of Valerie's means were similar to Jessica's as they were found prior to April 2011, where the rest of the bodies were found.
So she was dismembered just like Jessica and then found in different time periods.
(12:14):
All of these bodies are significantly older than the Gila Go 4 and in Nassau County, which is a neighbor of Suffolk County, two additional bodies were found.
There was a woman called Peaches because she had a tattoo of a Benton Peach on her chest.
And this is where the toddler comes back.
(12:36):
She was actually the mother of the toddler.
Oh, my gosh.
So there's no real story to how the toddler was killed.
But from what I imagine is, sadly, the woman had to take the toddler with her while she was meeting clients and the serial killer did not know until it was.
(13:05):
Too late.
Like he had he had to make a decision that the killer had to make a decision at that point.
Yeah. Oh, that's so sad.
It's also just sad that, you know, a lot a lot of women love the sex work industry.
(13:26):
They, you know, make their money that way.
They feel empowered that way and to each their own.
However, it is sad that you have to bring you're in a situation where you have to bring a child along with you to that kind of work.
And unfortunately, you know, that baby would still be alive if that wasn't the case.
(13:47):
So that makes me a little sad as well.
Yeah. Another Jane Doe was also found that had partial remains that were spread elsewhere.
Since there were several people that were dismembered and found in different spots, police believe that they were dealing with two serial killers.
But this was refuted on November 29, 2011, when police announced that they were just looking for one killer for all 10 victims.
(14:17):
In December 2011, the woman that caused all these bodies to be found, her remains were found, Shannon Gilbert.
She was found near the rest of the victims in a similar way, except the autopsy ruled her death as an accidental drowning caused by drugs.
(14:39):
This was contested by a second autopsy who said that she actually may have been strangled, which was the cause of death for all the other victims.
And Shannon is who we heard the 911 footage from in the beginning, correct?
Yeah. It's just awful that now we're on, what, 11 victims?
(15:08):
10, 11 victims and still nothing.
At this point, nothing has happened. That's a lot of victims.
And some of these date back to the early 2000s. And it's the end of 2011, starting 2012. We're just now finding all these bodies.
That's crazy. And there's nothing. I can't believe I hadn't heard about this beforehand.
(15:32):
I think I looked it up like cold cases, but there wasn't like concrete evidence originally because there are a lot of different styles that the serial killer did have.
So it was more like speculation, like are these connected? Are these not?
(15:56):
And another reason why most people didn't hear about it is because until December 2015, this case went ice cold.
A former police chief of Suffolk County was not eager to find the serial killer when he was in charge.
As a police chief, I would be very interested in that, knowing that there is a serial killer in my backyard.
(16:20):
Yeah. What the hell? That's kind of your job, bro. Like, what do you mean you're not interested in finding who the serial killer is?
Yeah. So he was named. So the former police chief is James Burke.
But interestingly, James Burke had been caught with sex workers in his own police car.
(16:44):
OK, so if you're a lover of the that community, you don't want to find the serial killer that's targeting them.
People speculate that because of his relations with sex workers in that area, he didn't want them to be questioned or like asked about because he didn't want it coming back to him.
(17:12):
He did resign the force in October 2015 because a May 2013 allegation of assault while a suspect was in police custody, a cover up and coercion of a witness came about.
What had happened is a person had broke into James's car taking a duffel bag that was full of James's police equipment, sex paraphernalia and explicit magazines.
(17:40):
So when the robber was caught, he was held in an interrogation room and beaten.
Anytime he spoke, he was beat even more.
And then when he was finally released, the FBI did bring up investigations.
James Burke pleaded guilty to these allegations in February 2016 and a new police chief was put in charge.
(18:07):
Wow. So he was kind of corrupt and just a bad person overall.
Yeah, he also had like no real training to be a police chief, but he knew like people in the courts in the county.
So he was he's like a nepo baby.
Yeah, that's like small town nepo baby.
(18:29):
I don't know if you could say nepo baby.
I feel like it's just like knowing the right people. You know, yeah.
Like having a sex worker in your police car didn't get to add to that.
She like took his gun from him.
And he wasn't fired at that point? No, not even slap on the wrist.
(18:54):
Like that should get you fired. Yeah, that's trifling.
Okay. Locals did believe that because of James's like ability to stay as police chief,
that he could have been covering up for someone that was high ranking within Suffolk County that was actually the serial killer.
(19:16):
And that explains why it wasn't investigated or he was a serial killer himself.
But that was never confirmed. Yeah, definitely is kind of fishy.
I mean, unless he just like was well known in the area and was too prideful to let anybody know that he was involved with sex workers in the area.
(19:37):
And so that's like you said, he was scared that it would come back on him.
But I get the cause for conspiracy here because I mean, there's just too many like connections, I feel like.
So the FBI again in 2015 reopened the case.
(19:59):
And on September 12, 2017, a man named John Bittroff was arrested for several murders in Suffolk County.
He was convicted of the murder of two sex workers and was connected to another sex worker as well and her untimely death.
These murders took place in 1993 and 1994.
(20:21):
Again, many people believed that maybe this John Mayen was now the one responsible for all of the women that were murdered.
But he was only found guilty and only tried for two murders.
It just happened to be sex workers in the same area. OK.
But obviously, they moved on from that and that he wasn't connected to the 10 other victims.
(20:50):
So it truly was like there.
I know at one point you were like, they thought there was two serial killers like there.
There truly was two serial killers, but he was only responsible for two deaths.
Yeah. OK. And these were like he murdered women like before significantly like a decade before the other serial killer.
(21:16):
So we now have another stalemate in the case until January 16, 2020.
The police commissioner of Suffolk County released images of a belt that was found at the crime scene with the letters HW or WH,
kind of just depending on like which way you flip the belt.
(21:37):
So the belt was really large, which led police to believe that they were dealing with a large man.
The belt was found with hair fibers at the scene.
And this now released evidence led Suffolk County to launch a website called GilligoNews.com.
And this is where the department would share news and receive tips regarding that investigation.
(22:02):
Nothing else was heard about the case until July 13, 2023.
The police were still gathering evidence, new technology was coming out each and every day.
And on July 13, 2023, they arrest a 59 year old named Marek Human.
(22:23):
He was walking to his architecture job in Manhattan and he was surrounded by a group of men.
He initially stepped out of the way for this group of men to bypass him to find out they were there to arrest him.
They were part of an FBI task force that was looking into the Gilligo Beach serial killer,
(22:45):
which also took the name at one point as the Long Island serial killer or short LISC, which is just like the acronym for it.
So how did this Rex guy get connected?
So a little bit about Rex first is that he lives in a typical suburban area and he's been an architect for many years.
(23:09):
But before he started his career, he was doing temp work at a beach near Gilligo.
He is about like 6'5". His height does vary based on like different outlets, but he is a big guy, like a big guy.
There's actually a YouTube video that is an interview of him in his Manhattan office.
(23:36):
And he says that he is an architectural consultant and a troubleshooter.
He was born and raised in Long Island and has worked in Manhattan since 1987.
Police were drawn to Rex because he owns a Chevy Avalanche, which is a truck.
One of the Gilligo Four, Amber Costello, had a client with this car.
(24:02):
So the client had purchased sex work from her from Craigslist.
And whenever they were meeting, she had her manager sorts kind of like ended early, acting like it was her boyfriend.
Be like, oh my God, I caught you with my girlfriend. Like, get the f out of here.
(24:27):
And then so the person, her client had like texted her later. It was like, that's not nice.
I want credit towards our next appointment, but I'll still pay you $1,500.
And she was like, oh, I can not like pass that up because like I won't have to work for a couple of days.
(24:51):
I'll meet you again. Oh, I hate that.
And then the last time she was seen, a Chevy Avalanche was driving away from that area.
Okay. I'm starting to see where he's like getting connected.
Yes. So interestingly about a Chevy Avalanche is it's a truck where you can access the bed of the truck without getting out of your car.
(25:21):
So there's like a hatch that pulls down from the inside to get to the outside, which we don't know if it's like came in useful at all for the serial killer.
But it is an interesting characteristic about the Chevy Avalanche.
For sure. I don't think I knew that about that.
Yeah. So they tied this car to Rex.
(25:47):
He kind of fit the build and based on like the description of some like clients, he matched the facial profile as well.
So they ended up digging into Rex's phone records where they his phone records would correspond with burner phones that were used to arrange meetings for three of the four victims.
(26:15):
Damn. It's always the phone records that people don't think will come back and bite them in the butts.
Yeah. Also, his phone records location corresponds with the phones that were used to make those taunting calls to the sister and family of the victims that we talked about earlier.
And also the lack of phone records correspond with what Rex was doing.
(26:40):
So when the burner phones were not used, Rex was like in a different country visiting his wife's family.
And then when as soon as Rex came back, turned on his phone again, the burner phones also turned back on.
Rex's AMX was also located in the same area that the burner phones were used.
(27:01):
And a Selma County prosecutor said in court documents and I quote, significantly investigators could find no instance where Herman was in a separate location from these other cell phones when such a communication event occurred.
So when Rex is there, the phones are there. When Rex isn't there, the phones aren't there.
(27:24):
I mean, I feel like that's kind of like, okay, duh. I feel like the prosecutors just felt like they had to say that to line things out.
But it's also just like, okay, duh. You're not getting burner phones and taking them with you everywhere.
So you're going to leave them at some point if you're using it for something malicious.
(27:47):
But like his phone was never pinged. Like if they were both texting, it would never be like two different locations.
Yeah, okay.
They also linked Rex's phone to an AOL account that he had created.
And that same AOL account was accessed on the burner phone that had contacted the victims, which is like the smoking gun, I feel.
(28:14):
That is the smoking gun. And I'm just so surprised that like, why didn't you make a different AOL account?
Number one, it's an AOL account. The only people, shout out my parents, the only ones I know that still use AOL.
Why not make, like be a better serial killer, make a separate AOL account for your mischievous activities, like your murderous activities.
(28:45):
Like what is wrong with you?
It gets so much better in one second. I'd like to try not to laugh before I say them.
Wait, I just scrolled down and I don't think I can.
So an additional burner phone that was linked to Rex was used in thousands of like Google searches relating to sex workers, sadistic torture related pornography, child pornography.
(29:16):
And just like a bunch of online searches about the victims and the Long Island serial killer.
Police did release some of these searches and I'm just going to pick a couple, Lex, if you want to pick a couple.
Yeah, I mean, it's really just jumping off the page at me that says like FBI active serial killers, serial killers by state 2023, map of all known serial killers, unsolved serial killer cases.
(29:47):
Like it's so bad guys.
Eight terrifying active serial killers we can't find.
In Long Island serial killer investigation, new phone technology may be key to breaking case.
Why can't police solve Long Island serial killer case with new phone technology?
(30:09):
And then we have America's five most notorious old cases.
Why hasn't the Long Island serial killer been caught?
Long Island serial killer update 2022.
Like the list goes on and on and on and also
(30:32):
one way that the male potentially transgendering person was tied back to Rex is he did look up Asian male twink pornography.
So he may have been interested. There's also people of color that have potentially been tied to Rex and he looks has looked up like black women pornography, that kind of thing.
(31:09):
So he did go outside of his stereotypical scope a little bit sometimes.
Yeah, I'm just like, this to me is worse than when I can't even look at you when I say this.
It's worse than when we cover cases where they're like perfect place to hide a body.
(31:32):
How not to get like go to jail for killing someone like this is worse because it's like so repetitive and just like
down to like the wire of like exactly who he is like he is the Long Island serial killer and I'm looking at five lines that all start with Long Island serial killer right now.
(31:59):
Talk about being paranoid and as he's doing this, he's probably just getting more and more paranoid.
And I wonder if he's thinking about the fact that, you know, all of this data is going to be pulled one day and two girls are going to sit down and laugh about it on a podcast.
I just don't understand how people aren't smarter about it.
(32:23):
I honestly have no clue.
Like I cannot. It's not funny, but it is so funny at the exact same time.
I don't know if he even thought that he was going to be caught.
You cannot be.
I don't know. But it had been years.
(32:47):
Yeah, I mean, obviously he was since he murdered people. Yeah, obviously he was sauce about it if he was looking up.
But I feel like this is okay. This is a great example as why police keep the investigation quiet, especially for cold cases until they like have enough evidence to like prosecute someone because they could be Googling updates.
(33:14):
But yeah, I wonder if like if he was getting anxiety about it or it was like an ego boost. Like, oh, they haven't caught me yet. They literally have no clue what I'm doing.
No, to me, this looks like paranoid anxiety.
This doesn't look like an ego boost. This looks like when you think you have a sickness.
(33:35):
Like when you think you're sick and you go to Google and you type in every iteration of your symptoms to try to find what's wrong with you.
Like it looks like a panic search. Just a list of a panic search.
Yeah, like when you're up really late at night and you're like, oh, let me get that.
(33:56):
Like all your intrusive thoughts are running through your head.
Like the last one being in Long Island serial killer investigation, comma new phone technology may be key to break in case.
What is that? What article?
So that it that's a news article that was posted because Suffolk County had put a lot of money in to using phone technology.
(34:24):
They had like set money aside for that. So an article was posted about it. So he searched that article multiple times.
And then that technology used his use to search.
Yes, I love the reference of the criminal minds, the Gila Goa Beach killer criminal minds.
(34:45):
Yeah, I will say there's a really cool like research website kind of. It's like this huge database of like basically all these serial killers and people.
It's kind of like Wiki. People will make like pages and it's called like.
Murderpedia.
Maybe, but it's like related to criminal minds. I've used it before on several cases where it says like.
(35:15):
Where it was referenced in criminal minds, basically like using it as an example for like the profiles they do and stuff.
So I wonder if there's a page for that and he was looking that up.
I know that it was referenced on criminal minds as well as several other TV shows.
Again, this is like a really old case from the beginning.
(35:37):
So there has been a lot of adaptations about the Gila Goa 4 and medium.
So in addition to all the evidence found in his search results, hairs that were also found on the victims were a positive match to Rex's wife.
(35:58):
Whoa, so do we think that like she's connected here or how how would her hairs get there if she wasn't there?
So she was actually like immediately found innocent because she was usually out of town or country when the murders took place.
(36:21):
Maybe she just sheds hair.
She could have just been yeah, her hairs could have been in the truck and the bodies were in the truck.
He could have brought them back to their house.
Like even like I leave hairs on people, you know, and they just like transform.
Yeah, I get told a lot that my hair is just all over the place.
(36:42):
So yeah, but I thought that was really interesting that that was actually their first like concrete like DNA evidence was hers.
But it was definitely a transfer from Rex on accident.
Then there was one male hair that was found on one of the victims and that was confirmed to be Rex's when they took DNA that was left on a pizza crust that the FBI pulled from the trash and tested.
(37:15):
That's like the frickin DC Mansion murder.
I when you said that I was like, wait, we talked about this frickin pizza crust man and really like be exposing these people.
I think there's also another show killer that was caught by pizza crust.
And if you didn't know already all of your trash that's set on the curb is public property.
(37:40):
Thus, police can always like rummage through it.
So this was very illegal.
Didn't even need a search warrant, technically.
So the investigation into Rex like all the DNA evidence tracking his phone, all of that had taken years for them to build evidence on.
They wanted enough evidence, obviously, to charge him with the murder of Gilligo for at least.
(38:05):
But they arrested him in July and only charged him with three of the women's deaths.
Rex was still actively reading articles about the Long Island serial killer planning meetings with sex workers and his wife was about to go out town for a while again.
So it's believed that they just decided to arrest him then to prevent another killing later on the road.
(38:34):
When Rex was arrested, he cried, he said he did not do it, and he asked, interestingly, if it was on the news yet.
Wait.
OK, that kind of gives me the vibe that he was like looking at all that stuff for like an ego boost.
But also maybe he was just like worried that other people were going to find out about it.
(38:58):
Yeah, I don't know.
I was so strange. Twenty five hundred pages of documents and hundreds of hours of surveillance footage was turned over by prosecutors when he was arrested.
And Rex appeared in court on August 1st, 2023 for a pre-trial hearing.
He did plead not guilty and he did not speak during the hearing.
(39:22):
Rex's wife has filed for divorce since he was arrested and she stated that her kids cry themselves to sleep at night.
They have two children, one early 20s and one in their early 30s, and one does have special needs.
Oh, that makes me so sad.
It's just really hard to process in general, knowing that your dad of decades is capable of these things, capable of like looking at really abusive child pornography, killing an infant, killing women.
(39:58):
It's just really, really sad in general. But then I can't imagine how hard it is to process, especially if you don't fully understand.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's hard to process for anybody that you know.
But for it to be your dad, like we've talked about how dads have this like pinnacle in children's minds, right, of being like they're safe space and you know who they go to and look up to and this, that and the third.
(40:32):
And for it to be end up that like your entire vision of your dad has changed.
Especially at the age that they're at where they like, if I found that out now, I would have an existential crisis.
Because you have a better understanding of just like the world around you than you do at the age of like, you know, a teenager or a kid.
(41:00):
Yeah, and like his wife has been with him for what? 30 some years now? Like, while this is all going down, I can't imagine like the guilt she may have or just the, especially the betrayal.
This is awful.
Rex's soon to be ex-wife also said that the neighbors do want their house demolished. The house is Rex's childhood home and he did refuse to update it at any point because he said he wanted to preserve the memories that were left there from his childhood.
(41:35):
His dad did die young-ish.
So he refused to update it. It was kind of like decrepit and like falling apart already. So the neighbors just say that they want it demolished.
When the house was searched, the family did have to leave for two weeks.
The police strategically blocked the house with cop cars so no one could see what they were pulling out of it.
(42:01):
We don't fully know exactly everything that's out of it, but we will know during trial.
We do know they pulled 200 guns out of the house, only which 90 some of them were registered.
That's a lot of guns.
I think it's so interesting that he had that many guns but he strangled all of his victims.
(42:24):
Yeah, that's so many guns. Even just 90 registered guns is so many. But to have 200?
Yeah.
Like that's an armory.
Yeah.
That's insane.
Crazy. He was a hunter and did frequently go on hunting trips, but still that's excessive.
(42:49):
They also pulled out a freezer and they did dig up the backyard looking for trophies. Thousands of dollars.
Barf, barf, barf. I hate serial killers and their trophies. It makes me so sick.
Yeah. Thousands of dollars were recovered in cash from the house and he owed about $200,000 in back tax.
(43:16):
He probably kept all this cash because he couldn't keep it in a bank or they would seize it from him.
One item that they did recover, interestingly, was a baby doll that had striking similarities to his victims.
Nope. No ma'am. See, it's stuff like that that I don't like to know.
(43:38):
It's just whack. It's so disturbing.
It's just some deep rooted weird thing from your childhood that you never went to therapy about and addressed and now look where we are.
Yeah.
Gross.
So police did leave after a couple weeks and the family has now returned to that property.
(44:01):
But New York is not the only state that is now looking at Rex as a potential connection to murders.
Vegas is as well because Rex and his wife do own timeshares and there is at least one woman that went missing and then later found that fits the MO of Rex.
(44:26):
And he has admitted to traveling to a different part of New York to visit his family, taking his Chevy Avalanche to Virginia multiple times to visit his mom, to New Jersey and to Florida.
So there could potentially be other cases that are connected to him.
Most of these travels he did do alone as well.
(44:47):
And it's known that these murders do not coincide with his wife being present.
A woman has come forward and told news outlets that she believes she went on a date with Rex in 2015.
She said that Rex repeatedly talked to her about how he was a true crime fan and specifically mentioned the Gilligo Beach case and how the burlap sacks that the victims were wrapped in were traced back to a man named James Bassett.
(45:19):
Weird.
That's weird that he's talking about the case like that.
But I feel like this is why I believe that if this is true, then those searches might have been an ego boost.
Yeah, I'm starting to see that now.
Mm-hmm.
Huh.
(45:40):
So apparently he said, you know, it could be James Bassett, the aquarium owner, and he the woman that went on date with him said what weirded me out the most was that he was saying all of this and being really creepy about that says, I live right by Gilligo Beach.
(46:03):
So James Bassett was a major supplier of burlap for Long Island at the time.
And that's apparently why Rex said that he was connected because the burlap that they were buried in, James.
James also did commit suicide just days after Shannon Gilbert's remains were found, which could lead people to speculate even further.
(46:31):
The district attorney has requested for additional cheek swabs of Rex Human, which could be caused for multiple reasons.
They could have ran out of DNA or just want more of it to conduct more tests.
A defense lawyer for the suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Human has argued in court filings as of August 8th that the prosecutors have failed to show probable cause connecting him to a DNA sample that was taken from the pizza box outside of his office as the lawyer was trying to convince the New York judge to deny the district attorney's request for that additional cheek swab.
(47:12):
Additional aliases of Rex have also come out.
He has gone by Andrew Roberts through a tender profile and John Springfield was used for his AOL account.
If you believe you have information about the case or about these aliases, any of the potential victims, please call 1-800-220-TIPS to speak with the Sulfolk County Police Department.
(47:45):
Thank you for delving into the dark realms of true crime, murder, and conspiracy with us.
Your dedication to our podcast is truly appreciated.
If you found this episode as spine-chilling as it was thought-provoking, please consider leaving a review.
Together, we'll continue unraveling the mysteries that keep us all a little uneasy.
In late 2010, when four bodies were found on Gilligo Beach, the Gilligo Beach serial killer was discovered.
(00:07):
As more bodies were found along the New York Ocean Parkway, the Gilligo Beach serial killer was renamed to the Long Island serial killer, or LISC for short.
After 13 years and 8 victims found, Rex Heuerman was arrested.
This is still an active case, so comments about Rex are based on personal opinion and statements from police and those close to the case, but are not facts proven in court.
(00:30):
This episode is as current as a publication of it, but as this case is constantly evolving, we will continue to update on social as we learn more.
This episode contains discussion of murder, assault, violence to a minor, and derogatory remarks.
Welcome to Uneasy, a podcast hosted by Lexi and Cecilia.
(00:53):
This podcast is a collection of research based on haunting and mysterious events that will leave you feeling genuinely uneasy. Discretion is advised.
So in May 2010, a woman named Shannon Gilbert disappeared. She was just 24 years old and she disappeared after fleeing clients home.
(01:15):
She was actually running through the street calling 911, telling dispatchers that someone was trying to kill her.
You can hear on the audio, which I will play now, you can hear other voices in the background.
(01:52):
You're driving right now?
No, I'm inside a house.
I'm sorry?
I'm inside a house.
What house?
I don't know. Can you trace where I am?
I'm sorry?
Can you trace where I am?
No, I can't. What's your callback number you're calling from?
Huh?
What phone number are you calling from?
(02:17):
Somebody's after me. Please.
Are you in Suffolk County or Nassau County?
I'm in Long Island.
Where on Long Island are you?
I'm not supposed to.
No.
Yeah, I'm not supposed to.
No.
(02:39):
No.
No, stop, no.
Where on Long Island are you? In Suffolk County, Nassau County?
Huh?
Huh-huh.
Why?
(03:03):
Why are you calling me by my name?
Why?
County, you on the line?
Stop. Please. Stop it, please.
Please stop.
Please, you shouldn't go up.
No, time to go.
Please.
(03:24):
You okay?
Yeah.
(03:55):
Okay.
(04:18):
Okay.
So while they were searching for Shannon in December 2010,
(04:45):
they brought more cadaver dogs out to the beaches to look for her,
and they actually ended up finding four victims within a quarter mile of each other near Gilligo Beach.
These victims were called the Gilligo Four and the Gilligo Beach serial killer was born.
The first victim was found on December 11th of 2010.
(05:07):
A cadaver dog that was brought out located a skeleton in a disintegrating burlap bag,
and this skeleton was identified as Melissa Bartholomew.
I am just like so taken aback by the fact that it was in like a burlap bag as well.
(05:32):
So police decided that the burlap bags were very intentional because they actually camouflaged really well into the sand.
Yeah, I would imagine.
The burlap also held moisture really well, causing the bodies to disintegrate faster.
The bodies were in the burlap bags, but also like the bags were like taped up.
(05:57):
So that's how they were kind of like placed in there and all tied up and then dug into the sand.
So Melissa was known as a missing person because when she went missing, someone kept calling her sister off of Melissa's phone
describing to her how Melissa died and was taunting her.
(06:20):
This was a man's voice and police either had two ideas that it was the serial killer
or someone had grabbed Melissa's phone knowing that she was missing and started taunting her sister just for personal gain.
Yeah, both of those options are so messed up.
Like, I almost want it to be the serial killer more than I want it to be just some random ass person.
(06:45):
I think it's more weird if it's random.
Yeah, it's like if it's a random ass person, you're sick.
Like, yeah, why are you doing that?
So three additional bodies were found after Melissa and these bodies were Megan Waterman, Amber Castello and Marion Bernard Barnes.
(07:08):
Interesting Marion's family also received a call from her phone by a man saying that Marion was dead.
Okay, so that makes me think it's not random. Like it is whoever this killer is.
Yeah.
Huh, that's an interesting part of his MO there.
(07:32):
It was only with these two women though.
Okay.
So the other two never received calls.
And all of these women did have really strong families at home.
Some were mothers, some were sisters, regardless, they had really strong families at home.
They were all known sex workers, but they weren't sex workers that didn't have a family to come home to.
(07:57):
They were just doing it just to make ends meet.
All women were also short, petite and blonde females that advertised on Craigslist.
So he definitely had a type that he was going for.
And Craigslist allowed him to verify that they were his type before he became clients of them because they would post pictures of themselves on the site.
(08:27):
Craigslist is so sketchy.
It's a very, it's an older thing. Like I think I've been on Craigslist like twice in my life.
I always remember, I think Craigslist was like the now Facebook marketplace because I always remember like my dad would be looking on Craigslist for like a new car or, you know, different knickknacks or whatever.
(08:54):
Like literally checking it like every day.
But until I got older, I didn't know that there was such like a dark kind of side to Craigslist that I was kind of like really creeped out to learn, I guess.
You can definitely buy anything on Craigslist, especially back then.
(09:17):
And I do mean anything.
One of these women though actually was banned from Craigslist by the time that she disappeared, leading police to believe that it was actually a regular of hers that had kidnapped her and potentially killed her because she was not able to make any new clients on Craigslist.
(09:41):
So after the Gilligo Four were found, just several months later between March and April 2011, six more bodies were found in the Suffolk County area, which is home to Gilligo Beach.
The first body that was found was a woman named Jessica Taylor.
In 2003, some of Jessica's remains were found in actually another part of town in Suffolk County.
(10:05):
So they were a couple remains that were originally found and then the rest were found in another part when they kept further investigating near Gilligo Beach.
And this hasn't been typical with the other bodies that have been found.
Correct. All Gilligo Four had all of the remains.
(10:30):
So now whoever this is, if we're assuming that all of these at this point are connected, he's changing the way that he's disposing of the bodies.
And this is an older victim.
Did she fit the rest of the profile or was this like totally different?
She did. She was a sex worker. She was blonde, petite.
(10:53):
Okay. She was just older.
All of that.
Yes.
Okay.
So she was murdered and dismembered significantly before the rest of these victims were found.
But in April, we also changed the M.O.A.P. a little bit more when we have a toddler that's found.
I'm sorry. How do you jump to a toddler from like sex workers to a toddler?
(11:19):
I don't think I want to know the answer to that.
I don't think you want to know the answer to that either.
That's disgusting.
Also, a potential male that was appearing as a female or a person going through a gender transition was also found in the area.
And Valerie Mack was found at the time.
She was Jane Doe.
It wasn't until many, many years later that she was identified through genealogy testing.
(11:46):
It was actually in 2016.
So very many years later.
Several of Valerie's means were similar to Jessica's as they were found prior to April 2011, where the rest of the bodies were found.
So she was dismembered just like Jessica and then found in different time periods.
(12:14):
All of these bodies are significantly older than the Gila Go 4 and in Nassau County, which is a neighbor of Suffolk County, two additional bodies were found.
There was a woman called Peaches because she had a tattoo of a Benton Peach on her chest.
And this is where the toddler comes back.
(12:36):
She was actually the mother of the toddler.
Oh, my gosh.
So there's no real story to how the toddler was killed.
But from what I imagine is, sadly, the woman had to take the toddler with her while she was meeting clients and the serial killer did not know until it was.
(13:05):
Too late.
Like he had he had to make a decision that the killer had to make a decision at that point.
Yeah. Oh, that's so sad.
It's also just sad that, you know, a lot a lot of women love the sex work industry.
(13:26):
They, you know, make their money that way.
They feel empowered that way and to each their own.
However, it is sad that you have to bring you're in a situation where you have to bring a child along with you to that kind of work.
And unfortunately, you know, that baby would still be alive if that wasn't the case.
(13:47):
So that makes me a little sad as well.
Yeah. Another Jane Doe was also found that had partial remains that were spread elsewhere.
Since there were several people that were dismembered and found in different spots, police believe that they were dealing with two serial killers.
But this was refuted on November 29, 2011, when police announced that they were just looking for one killer for all 10 victims.
(14:17):
In December 2011, the woman that caused all these bodies to be found, her remains were found, Shannon Gilbert.
She was found near the rest of the victims in a similar way, except the autopsy ruled her death as an accidental drowning caused by drugs.
(14:39):
This was contested by a second autopsy who said that she actually may have been strangled, which was the cause of death for all the other victims.
And Shannon is who we heard the 911 footage from in the beginning, correct?
Yeah. It's just awful that now we're on, what, 11 victims?
(15:08):
10, 11 victims and still nothing.
At this point, nothing has happened. That's a lot of victims.
And some of these date back to the early 2000s. And it's the end of 2011, starting 2012. We're just now finding all these bodies.
That's crazy. And there's nothing. I can't believe I hadn't heard about this beforehand.
(15:32):
I think I looked it up like cold cases, but there wasn't like concrete evidence originally because there are a lot of different styles that the serial killer did have.
So it was more like speculation, like are these connected? Are these not?
(15:56):
And another reason why most people didn't hear about it is because until December 2015, this case went ice cold.
A former police chief of Suffolk County was not eager to find the serial killer when he was in charge.
As a police chief, I would be very interested in that, knowing that there is a serial killer in my backyard.
(16:20):
Yeah. What the hell? That's kind of your job, bro. Like, what do you mean you're not interested in finding who the serial killer is?
Yeah. So he was named. So the former police chief is James Burke.
But interestingly, James Burke had been caught with sex workers in his own police car.
(16:44):
OK, so if you're a lover of the that community, you don't want to find the serial killer that's targeting them.
People speculate that because of his relations with sex workers in that area, he didn't want them to be questioned or like asked about because he didn't want it coming back to him.
(17:12):
He did resign the force in October 2015 because a May 2013 allegation of assault while a suspect was in police custody, a cover up and coercion of a witness came about.
What had happened is a person had broke into James's car taking a duffel bag that was full of James's police equipment, sex paraphernalia and explicit magazines.
(17:40):
So when the robber was caught, he was held in an interrogation room and beaten.
Anytime he spoke, he was beat even more.
And then when he was finally released, the FBI did bring up investigations.
James Burke pleaded guilty to these allegations in February 2016 and a new police chief was put in charge.
(18:07):
Wow. So he was kind of corrupt and just a bad person overall.
Yeah, he also had like no real training to be a police chief, but he knew like people in the courts in the county.
So he was he's like a nepo baby.
Yeah, that's like small town nepo baby.
(18:29):
I don't know if you could say nepo baby.
I feel like it's just like knowing the right people. You know, yeah.
Like having a sex worker in your police car didn't get to add to that.
She like took his gun from him.
And he wasn't fired at that point? No, not even slap on the wrist.
(18:54):
Like that should get you fired. Yeah, that's trifling.
Okay. Locals did believe that because of James's like ability to stay as police chief,
that he could have been covering up for someone that was high ranking within Suffolk County that was actually the serial killer.
(19:16):
And that explains why it wasn't investigated or he was a serial killer himself.
But that was never confirmed. Yeah, definitely is kind of fishy.
I mean, unless he just like was well known in the area and was too prideful to let anybody know that he was involved with sex workers in the area.
(19:37):
And so that's like you said, he was scared that it would come back on him.
But I get the cause for conspiracy here because I mean, there's just too many like connections, I feel like.
So the FBI again in 2015 reopened the case.
(19:59):
And on September 12, 2017, a man named John Bittroff was arrested for several murders in Suffolk County.
He was convicted of the murder of two sex workers and was connected to another sex worker as well and her untimely death.
These murders took place in 1993 and 1994.
(20:21):
Again, many people believed that maybe this John Mayen was now the one responsible for all of the women that were murdered.
But he was only found guilty and only tried for two murders.
It just happened to be sex workers in the same area. OK.
But obviously, they moved on from that and that he wasn't connected to the 10 other victims.
(20:50):
So it truly was like there.
I know at one point you were like, they thought there was two serial killers like there.
There truly was two serial killers, but he was only responsible for two deaths.
Yeah. OK. And these were like he murdered women like before significantly like a decade before the other serial killer.
(21:16):
So we now have another stalemate in the case until January 16, 2020.
The police commissioner of Suffolk County released images of a belt that was found at the crime scene with the letters HW or WH,
kind of just depending on like which way you flip the belt.
(21:37):
So the belt was really large, which led police to believe that they were dealing with a large man.
The belt was found with hair fibers at the scene.
And this now released evidence led Suffolk County to launch a website called GilligoNews.com.
And this is where the department would share news and receive tips regarding that investigation.
(22:02):
Nothing else was heard about the case until July 13, 2023.
The police were still gathering evidence, new technology was coming out each and every day.
And on July 13, 2023, they arrest a 59 year old named Marek Human.
(22:23):
He was walking to his architecture job in Manhattan and he was surrounded by a group of men.
He initially stepped out of the way for this group of men to bypass him to find out they were there to arrest him.
They were part of an FBI task force that was looking into the Gilligo Beach serial killer,
(22:45):
which also took the name at one point as the Long Island serial killer or short LISC, which is just like the acronym for it.
So how did this Rex guy get connected?
So a little bit about Rex first is that he lives in a typical suburban area and he's been an architect for many years.
(23:09):
But before he started his career, he was doing temp work at a beach near Gilligo.
He is about like 6'5". His height does vary based on like different outlets, but he is a big guy, like a big guy.
There's actually a YouTube video that is an interview of him in his Manhattan office.
(23:36):
And he says that he is an architectural consultant and a troubleshooter.
He was born and raised in Long Island and has worked in Manhattan since 1987.
Police were drawn to Rex because he owns a Chevy Avalanche, which is a truck.
One of the Gilligo Four, Amber Costello, had a client with this car.
(24:02):
So the client had purchased sex work from her from Craigslist.
And whenever they were meeting, she had her manager sorts kind of like ended early, acting like it was her boyfriend.
Be like, oh my God, I caught you with my girlfriend. Like, get the f out of here.
(24:27):
And then so the person, her client had like texted her later. It was like, that's not nice.
I want credit towards our next appointment, but I'll still pay you $1,500.
And she was like, oh, I can not like pass that up because like I won't have to work for a couple of days.
(24:51):
I'll meet you again. Oh, I hate that.
And then the last time she was seen, a Chevy Avalanche was driving away from that area.
Okay. I'm starting to see where he's like getting connected.
Yes. So interestingly about a Chevy Avalanche is it's a truck where you can access the bed of the truck without getting out of your car.
(25:21):
So there's like a hatch that pulls down from the inside to get to the outside, which we don't know if it's like came in useful at all for the serial killer.
But it is an interesting characteristic about the Chevy Avalanche.
For sure. I don't think I knew that about that.
Yeah. So they tied this car to Rex.
(25:47):
He kind of fit the build and based on like the description of some like clients, he matched the facial profile as well.
So they ended up digging into Rex's phone records where they his phone records would correspond with burner phones that were used to arrange meetings for three of the four victims.
(26:15):
Damn. It's always the phone records that people don't think will come back and bite them in the butts.
Yeah. Also, his phone records location corresponds with the phones that were used to make those taunting calls to the sister and family of the victims that we talked about earlier.
And also the lack of phone records correspond with what Rex was doing.
(26:40):
So when the burner phones were not used, Rex was like in a different country visiting his wife's family.
And then when as soon as Rex came back, turned on his phone again, the burner phones also turned back on.
Rex's AMX was also located in the same area that the burner phones were used.
(27:01):
And a Selma County prosecutor said in court documents and I quote, significantly investigators could find no instance where Herman was in a separate location from these other cell phones when such a communication event occurred.
So when Rex is there, the phones are there. When Rex isn't there, the phones aren't there.
(27:24):
I mean, I feel like that's kind of like, okay, duh. I feel like the prosecutors just felt like they had to say that to line things out.
But it's also just like, okay, duh. You're not getting burner phones and taking them with you everywhere.
So you're going to leave them at some point if you're using it for something malicious.
(27:47):
But like his phone was never pinged. Like if they were both texting, it would never be like two different locations.
Yeah, okay.
They also linked Rex's phone to an AOL account that he had created.
And that same AOL account was accessed on the burner phone that had contacted the victims, which is like the smoking gun, I feel.
(28:14):
That is the smoking gun. And I'm just so surprised that like, why didn't you make a different AOL account?
Number one, it's an AOL account. The only people, shout out my parents, the only ones I know that still use AOL.
Why not make, like be a better serial killer, make a separate AOL account for your mischievous activities, like your murderous activities.
(28:45):
Like what is wrong with you?
It gets so much better in one second. I'd like to try not to laugh before I say them.
Wait, I just scrolled down and I don't think I can.
So an additional burner phone that was linked to Rex was used in thousands of like Google searches relating to sex workers, sadistic torture related pornography, child pornography.
(29:16):
And just like a bunch of online searches about the victims and the Long Island serial killer.
Police did release some of these searches and I'm just going to pick a couple, Lex, if you want to pick a couple.
Yeah, I mean, it's really just jumping off the page at me that says like FBI active serial killers, serial killers by state 2023, map of all known serial killers, unsolved serial killer cases.
(29:47):
Like it's so bad guys.
Eight terrifying active serial killers we can't find.
In Long Island serial killer investigation, new phone technology may be key to breaking case.
Why can't police solve Long Island serial killer case with new phone technology?
(30:09):
And then we have America's five most notorious old cases.
Why hasn't the Long Island serial killer been caught?
Long Island serial killer update 2022.
Like the list goes on and on and on and also
(30:32):
one way that the male potentially transgendering person was tied back to Rex is he did look up Asian male twink pornography.
So he may have been interested. There's also people of color that have potentially been tied to Rex and he looks has looked up like black women pornography, that kind of thing.
(31:09):
So he did go outside of his stereotypical scope a little bit sometimes.
Yeah, I'm just like, this to me is worse than when I can't even look at you when I say this.
It's worse than when we cover cases where they're like perfect place to hide a body.
(31:32):
How not to get like go to jail for killing someone like this is worse because it's like so repetitive and just like
down to like the wire of like exactly who he is like he is the Long Island serial killer and I'm looking at five lines that all start with Long Island serial killer right now.
(31:59):
Talk about being paranoid and as he's doing this, he's probably just getting more and more paranoid.
And I wonder if he's thinking about the fact that, you know, all of this data is going to be pulled one day and two girls are going to sit down and laugh about it on a podcast.
I just don't understand how people aren't smarter about it.
(32:23):
I honestly have no clue.
Like I cannot. It's not funny, but it is so funny at the exact same time.
I don't know if he even thought that he was going to be caught.
You cannot be.
I don't know. But it had been years.
(32:47):
Yeah, I mean, obviously he was since he murdered people. Yeah, obviously he was sauce about it if he was looking up.
But I feel like this is okay. This is a great example as why police keep the investigation quiet, especially for cold cases until they like have enough evidence to like prosecute someone because they could be Googling updates.
(33:14):
But yeah, I wonder if like if he was getting anxiety about it or it was like an ego boost. Like, oh, they haven't caught me yet. They literally have no clue what I'm doing.
No, to me, this looks like paranoid anxiety.
This doesn't look like an ego boost. This looks like when you think you have a sickness.
(33:35):
Like when you think you're sick and you go to Google and you type in every iteration of your symptoms to try to find what's wrong with you.
Like it looks like a panic search. Just a list of a panic search.
Yeah, like when you're up really late at night and you're like, oh, let me get that.
(33:56):
Like all your intrusive thoughts are running through your head.
Like the last one being in Long Island serial killer investigation, comma new phone technology may be key to break in case.
What is that? What article?
So that it that's a news article that was posted because Suffolk County had put a lot of money in to using phone technology.
(34:24):
They had like set money aside for that. So an article was posted about it. So he searched that article multiple times.
And then that technology used his use to search.
Yes, I love the reference of the criminal minds, the Gila Goa Beach killer criminal minds.
(34:45):
Yeah, I will say there's a really cool like research website kind of. It's like this huge database of like basically all these serial killers and people.
It's kind of like Wiki. People will make like pages and it's called like.
Murderpedia.
Maybe, but it's like related to criminal minds. I've used it before on several cases where it says like.
(35:15):
Where it was referenced in criminal minds, basically like using it as an example for like the profiles they do and stuff.
So I wonder if there's a page for that and he was looking that up.
I know that it was referenced on criminal minds as well as several other TV shows.
Again, this is like a really old case from the beginning.
(35:37):
So there has been a lot of adaptations about the Gila Goa 4 and medium.
So in addition to all the evidence found in his search results, hairs that were also found on the victims were a positive match to Rex's wife.
(35:58):
Whoa, so do we think that like she's connected here or how how would her hairs get there if she wasn't there?
So she was actually like immediately found innocent because she was usually out of town or country when the murders took place.
(36:21):
Maybe she just sheds hair.
She could have just been yeah, her hairs could have been in the truck and the bodies were in the truck.
He could have brought them back to their house.
Like even like I leave hairs on people, you know, and they just like transform.
Yeah, I get told a lot that my hair is just all over the place.
(36:42):
So yeah, but I thought that was really interesting that that was actually their first like concrete like DNA evidence was hers.
But it was definitely a transfer from Rex on accident.
Then there was one male hair that was found on one of the victims and that was confirmed to be Rex's when they took DNA that was left on a pizza crust that the FBI pulled from the trash and tested.
(37:15):
That's like the frickin DC Mansion murder.
I when you said that I was like, wait, we talked about this frickin pizza crust man and really like be exposing these people.
I think there's also another show killer that was caught by pizza crust.
And if you didn't know already all of your trash that's set on the curb is public property.
(37:40):
Thus, police can always like rummage through it.
So this was very illegal.
Didn't even need a search warrant, technically.
So the investigation into Rex like all the DNA evidence tracking his phone, all of that had taken years for them to build evidence on.
They wanted enough evidence, obviously, to charge him with the murder of Gilligo for at least.
(38:05):
But they arrested him in July and only charged him with three of the women's deaths.
Rex was still actively reading articles about the Long Island serial killer planning meetings with sex workers and his wife was about to go out town for a while again.
So it's believed that they just decided to arrest him then to prevent another killing later on the road.
(38:34):
When Rex was arrested, he cried, he said he did not do it, and he asked, interestingly, if it was on the news yet.
Wait.
OK, that kind of gives me the vibe that he was like looking at all that stuff for like an ego boost.
But also maybe he was just like worried that other people were going to find out about it.
(38:58):
Yeah, I don't know.
I was so strange. Twenty five hundred pages of documents and hundreds of hours of surveillance footage was turned over by prosecutors when he was arrested.
And Rex appeared in court on August 1st, 2023 for a pre-trial hearing.
He did plead not guilty and he did not speak during the hearing.
(39:22):
Rex's wife has filed for divorce since he was arrested and she stated that her kids cry themselves to sleep at night.
They have two children, one early 20s and one in their early 30s, and one does have special needs.
Oh, that makes me so sad.
It's just really hard to process in general, knowing that your dad of decades is capable of these things, capable of like looking at really abusive child pornography, killing an infant, killing women.
(39:58):
It's just really, really sad in general. But then I can't imagine how hard it is to process, especially if you don't fully understand.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's hard to process for anybody that you know.
But for it to be your dad, like we've talked about how dads have this like pinnacle in children's minds, right, of being like they're safe space and you know who they go to and look up to and this, that and the third.
(40:32):
And for it to be end up that like your entire vision of your dad has changed.
Especially at the age that they're at where they like, if I found that out now, I would have an existential crisis.
Because you have a better understanding of just like the world around you than you do at the age of like, you know, a teenager or a kid.
(41:00):
Yeah, and like his wife has been with him for what? 30 some years now? Like, while this is all going down, I can't imagine like the guilt she may have or just the, especially the betrayal.
This is awful.
Rex's soon to be ex-wife also said that the neighbors do want their house demolished. The house is Rex's childhood home and he did refuse to update it at any point because he said he wanted to preserve the memories that were left there from his childhood.
(41:35):
His dad did die young-ish.
So he refused to update it. It was kind of like decrepit and like falling apart already. So the neighbors just say that they want it demolished.
When the house was searched, the family did have to leave for two weeks.
The police strategically blocked the house with cop cars so no one could see what they were pulling out of it.
(42:01):
We don't fully know exactly everything that's out of it, but we will know during trial.
We do know they pulled 200 guns out of the house, only which 90 some of them were registered.
That's a lot of guns.
I think it's so interesting that he had that many guns but he strangled all of his victims.
(42:24):
Yeah, that's so many guns. Even just 90 registered guns is so many. But to have 200?
Yeah.
Like that's an armory.
Yeah.
That's insane.
Crazy. He was a hunter and did frequently go on hunting trips, but still that's excessive.
(42:49):
They also pulled out a freezer and they did dig up the backyard looking for trophies. Thousands of dollars.
Barf, barf, barf. I hate serial killers and their trophies. It makes me so sick.
Yeah. Thousands of dollars were recovered in cash from the house and he owed about $200,000 in back tax.
(43:16):
He probably kept all this cash because he couldn't keep it in a bank or they would seize it from him.
One item that they did recover, interestingly, was a baby doll that had striking similarities to his victims.
Nope. No ma'am. See, it's stuff like that that I don't like to know.
(43:38):
It's just whack. It's so disturbing.
It's just some deep rooted weird thing from your childhood that you never went to therapy about and addressed and now look where we are.
Yeah.
Gross.
So police did leave after a couple weeks and the family has now returned to that property.
(44:01):
But New York is not the only state that is now looking at Rex as a potential connection to murders.
Vegas is as well because Rex and his wife do own timeshares and there is at least one woman that went missing and then later found that fits the MO of Rex.
(44:26):
And he has admitted to traveling to a different part of New York to visit his family, taking his Chevy Avalanche to Virginia multiple times to visit his mom, to New Jersey and to Florida.
So there could potentially be other cases that are connected to him.
Most of these travels he did do alone as well.
(44:47):
And it's known that these murders do not coincide with his wife being present.
A woman has come forward and told news outlets that she believes she went on a date with Rex in 2015.
She said that Rex repeatedly talked to her about how he was a true crime fan and specifically mentioned the Gilligo Beach case and how the burlap sacks that the victims were wrapped in were traced back to a man named James Bassett.
(45:19):
Weird.
That's weird that he's talking about the case like that.
But I feel like this is why I believe that if this is true, then those searches might have been an ego boost.
Yeah, I'm starting to see that now.
Mm-hmm.
Huh.
(45:40):
So apparently he said, you know, it could be James Bassett, the aquarium owner, and he the woman that went on date with him said what weirded me out the most was that he was saying all of this and being really creepy about that says, I live right by Gilligo Beach.
(46:03):
So James Bassett was a major supplier of burlap for Long Island at the time.
And that's apparently why Rex said that he was connected because the burlap that they were buried in, James.
James also did commit suicide just days after Shannon Gilbert's remains were found, which could lead people to speculate even further.
(46:31):
The district attorney has requested for additional cheek swabs of Rex Human, which could be caused for multiple reasons.
They could have ran out of DNA or just want more of it to conduct more tests.
A defense lawyer for the suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Human has argued in court filings as of August 8th that the prosecutors have failed to show probable cause connecting him to a DNA sample that was taken from the pizza box outside of his office as the lawyer was trying to convince the New York judge to deny the district attorney's request for that additional cheek swab.
(47:12):
Additional aliases of Rex have also come out.
He has gone by Andrew Roberts through a tender profile and John Springfield was used for his AOL account.
If you believe you have information about the case or about these aliases, any of the potential victims, please call 1-800-220-TIPS to speak with the Sulfolk County Police Department.
(47:45):
Thank you for delving into the dark realms of true crime, murder, and conspiracy with us.
Your dedication to our podcast is truly appreciated.
If you found this episode as spine-chilling as it was thought-provoking, please consider leaving a review.
Together, we'll continue unraveling the mysteries that keep us all a little uneasy.
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