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IMPACT x Nightline S04E26 Monster at the Beach H 264
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00:12Rex Heuermann was a suburban dad and an architect with an office on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
00:21He's kind of dual personality. On one side, he's this family man, and on the other side, he's a terrifying
00:28serial killer.
00:30Rex Heuermann looked like the guy you'd be sitting next to on the train, commuting to and from work.
00:37Rex! Hello! Hi! How are you doing? Good to see you.
00:40Rex Heuermann. I'm an architect. I'm an architectural consultant. I'm a troubleshooter. Born and raised on Long Island.
00:48This man was truly living a double life.
00:51The prolific psychopath, this monster, and his crimes really terrorized Long Island.
00:57He commuted by day. He killed by night.
01:00This guy was huge. He was a monster. He was Frankenstein.
01:04Even his wife and his daughter say they did not know that he was capable of being the killer that
01:10he now admits to being.
01:27Good morning, Judge. Good morning.
01:30Coming out, Judge.
01:33Okay.
01:36Rex Heuermann only needed to take a few steps from the holding cell into the courtroom, and you heard him
01:47before you saw him.
01:48And the shackles behind his back kind of clanked, and the courtroom was hushed, so it was audible.
01:54I think every time Rex Heuermann walks in a courtroom, it's an energy that follows with him because he's this
02:01notorious killer.
02:02Have you discussed this case with your attorney?
02:04Yes, I have.
02:05Today's plea delivers a measure of justice to families who have waited decades for answers.
02:11It almost appeared as if he had a slight smirk on his face, as if he maybe wanted people to
02:17know that he is the Gilgo Beach serial killer.
02:21We thought there was going to be a trial, and suddenly this hard pivot to pleading guilty.
02:26These family members, you know, this guy's about to admit what he did to their loved ones. It was very
02:33heavy.
02:35The chilling turn in court today involving serial killer Rex Heuermann.
02:39Rex Heuermann admitting to murdering eight young women in a string of killing that went unsolved for two decades.
02:46Rex Heuermann tortured, killed, and in some cases, cut up his victims.
02:52That was just something that his disturbed mind wanted to do to these victims before taking their lives.
03:02Families of victims were escorted in. They took seats near the front.
03:06Law enforcement officials who had been laboring over the investigation, some for decades, lined the wall and the windows.
03:15And there's this idea that he's supposed to look away or act away, and it's just never what you expect.
03:21You know, his brain doesn't work like ours. His disposition is never appropriate.
03:27Nobody knew if he would actually plead guilty, and I think everybody was on pins and needles waiting to see
03:33what would happen. Would Rex do it?
03:35District Attorney Ray Tierney starts to ask Rex Heuermann the manner in which he killed these victims.
03:42And one after the next, he just says, strangulation. And when he's asked if he killed each victim, he's like,
03:50yep, yes. I mean, he's unfazed.
03:54Strangulation is such a personal way of killing someone. It's so intimate.
03:58It is tragic to think about, and also terrifying, that this guy who's 6'4", he is huge, would take
04:07these women, tiny, petite women, and strangle them.
04:12And you can only imagine this kind of ogre of a man lifting up this tiny girl and strangling them.
04:17It's terrifying.
04:23The idea that there even was such a thing as the Gilgo Beach serial killings begins with a woman named
04:30Shannon Gilbert.
04:31So Shannon Gilbert was engaging in sex work and ended up going on a call to a neighborhood called Oak
04:37Beach in May of 2010.
04:39And something went wrong during the date, and she ended up fleeing from the house.
04:44State police?
04:46Yeah, they're still going to ask for me.
04:48I'm sorry?
04:49Somebody's after me.
04:51No, stop, no.
04:53While she was fleeing this house, she made a 23-minute-long 911 call, in which she sounds really frantic.
05:02What's your name?
05:03Shannon Gilbert.
05:05Where are you?
05:07I'm in Long Island.
05:09You're going to kill me.
05:12Please stop me, please.
05:14Please stop me, please.
05:16No, what are you guys doing to me?
05:18What are you doing to me?
05:19What are you doing to me?
05:22What are you doing to me?
05:26And then, according to police, she ends up taking off into this marshy area, and she was never heard from
05:35again.
05:36The search for Shannon Gilbert goes on for months.
05:39The area is extremely difficult to search.
05:42It's extremely heavily vegetated.
05:45The terrain is difficult to navigate.
05:47We have Suffolk County officers with police dogs combing Ocean Parkway, looking for Shannon.
05:54And it is in mid-December of 2010 that a police officer with a dog named Blue finds a set
06:02of human remains along the north side of Ocean Parkway.
06:05On December 11th of 2010, he located a set of human remains on the north side off the shoulder of
06:12Ocean Parkway.
06:13The assumption was that it was Shannon Gilbert.
06:16They end up finding, near Gilgo Beach, a body wrapped in burlap.
06:22It seems obvious to Suffolk County law enforcement that this is going to be the woman they've been searching for,
06:27Shannon Gilbert.
06:28But that's not the case.
06:30Who they find is Melissa Bartholomey.
06:35They find the first victim, Melissa Bartholomey, and then the next day, they find another victim, and then another victim.
06:43We were quite surprised the second day when we found the second body, and then we conducted a more detailed
06:49search, and we found the third body, and then ultimately the fourth body.
06:54And in two days, they find four women laid out like trophies.
06:58And I think at that point, once everybody heard that news, the public freaked out.
07:05Suddenly, they realize that there is a serial killer in their midst on Long Island hunting women.
07:13And they're all identified to be young, petite women.
07:16A gruesome find about three miles away near Gilgo Beach, a suspected serial killer cemetery containing four skeletons dumped by
07:25the side of the road.
07:26The first four women found on Gilgo Beach were all sex workers, and they were given the name, the Gilgo
07:32Four.
07:33They were Melissa Bartholomey, Maureen Brainerd Barnes, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello.
07:39Could four murders on Long Island be the work of a serial killer?
07:50My name is Liliana Waterman.
07:52I am the daughter of Megan Waterman.
07:56I was three years old when she first went missing, and when she was found, I was four years old.
08:05Coming to this park definitely makes me think about my mom.
08:08Some of my favorite things to do with her when I was younger was go to the park, spend some
08:12time.
08:13I remember when she first went missing, I would always just ask when she was going to come back, take
08:19me to the park.
08:21So it's nice to come here and just feel like she's with me.
08:26Megan Waterman was a young woman in her 20s from Maine who had been working as a sex worker and
08:34who was reported missing in June of 2010.
08:37So Megan Waterman is actually, her case is the only one in which her boyfriend was prosecuted for bringing her
08:46over state lines for sex work.
08:47So she was not happy to be engaged in sex work.
08:51She was coerced to do so, but that's what she was doing when she disappeared on surveillance footage from the
08:58lobby.
08:58The last place she had been seen was leaving the Haphog Long Island Holiday Inn.
09:05A video camera captures her leaving the lobby of the hotel.
09:11Megan Waterman's remains were found about six months after she was reported missing on the north side of Ocean Parkway.
09:22For me, over all of the last 16 years, it's just been a heavy weight, not knowing exactly who did
09:29it, how it happened, not knowing if I could walk past him someday and not know that it was him.
09:35He is nothing but a serial murderer, callous, cruel, no conscience.
09:44I have no sympathy for him.
09:49Most of Rex Heerman's victims were sex workers.
09:52If they went missing, they just went missing.
09:55There wasn't a very large investigation based on the nature of their work and who they were.
09:59These women were not on the street.
10:01They were using the internet.
10:03They were using Craigslist.
10:04They were using Backpage.
10:06And I think they thought it would be safer.
10:10But what they didn't realize is that the internet creates a whole new layer of anonymity that allows guys like
10:18Rex Heerman to use burner phones to get people into his vehicle and to kill them.
10:28I grew up on Long Island and I grew up going to these beaches on the south shore.
10:32It's like they're the most beautiful beaches on the east coast.
10:35And it was just, you know, a pristine place to go.
10:39How many times have you actually been out to Yoko Beach?
10:42I've probably been here like 15 or 20 times.
10:45I come out here kind of as often as I can.
10:48It just helps you get some greater perspective on what we're dealing with here.
10:54This whole path here didn't used to be here.
10:57So trucks used to be able to essentially pull right up to this.
11:01If you're looking at all this brush and marsh right here, like if you're looking at double bodies.
11:06It's extremely remote at night.
11:07There's no streetlights.
11:08So you would see someone coming from miles away in either direction.
11:12And before this bike path was here, you really could just back your vehicle up to it and do whatever
11:19you needed to do and have no one see you.
11:23After December 2010, when the bodies of the first Gilgo 4 were found, investigators started turning up body parts elsewhere
11:34on Long Island.
11:35More victims and investigators are starting to notice that the remains are similar to the original Gilgo 4.
11:44In the spring, they find the remains tied to seven other victims.
11:51As bodies seemed to pile up in this area, law enforcement had no leads.
11:57The authorities said they never gave up.
11:59They just didn't have the technology to solve the case until years later.
12:05But that left an entire community with all these questions and with all this fear that there's a serial killer
12:12perhaps living among them, which is exactly what turned out to have happened.
12:25Despite the fact of finding bodies along Ocean Parkway, this case went dormant.
12:31But over a decade later, finally, the case is reinvigorated with the creation of the Gilgo Beach Task Force.
12:37In 2022, law enforcement got a new sheriff, a new task force, and they welcomed the FBI and other resources
12:44into this investigation.
12:45And that's when this case really started to move.
12:48So early on, law enforcement knew some things about this killer.
12:51They knew that the killer was contacting the victims through Craigslist and using burner phones to do that.
12:59The killer was also taunting the families with his victims' own phones and burner phones.
13:05So when Melissa Bartholomey disappeared, the family received a number of phone calls.
13:10And it was very strange because they thought it was Melissa's phone because her number had come up.
13:14But when Amanda, her little sister, answered, it was a man's voice.
13:19And he started to taunt her about what he had done to her sister.
13:22We now know that the man on the other end of the line was Rex Ureman.
13:26He had made these calls mostly from Manhattan, either during his lunch hour or on his way home.
13:32He'd always call around dinnertime between 5.30 and 6.30.
13:37He would only stay on the phone for about a minute and a half.
13:40I remember the first call, he said to her,
13:43Are you a whore like your sister?
13:46In tracing those phone calls, law enforcement was able to determine where those phone calls were made from.
13:52And they zeroed in on a couple of areas, one of which was Massapequa on Long Island.
13:58Additional calls came from the Times Square area.
14:01And calls also came from near Port Authority and Madison Square Garden.
14:06Through the analysis of the cell phone data that had been accumulated from this case,
14:12give us an area of Massapequa.
14:15This is the area where we believe the killer may reside.
14:19So that was a primary focus of the investigation.
14:24Law enforcement know the suspect has burner phones that are making phone calls in two locations.
14:29An individual who may take the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan by Midtown and also work in that area.
14:37Thousands make that commute daily.
14:39And so now law enforcement has to figure out who's the one making this commute.
14:43And are they the suspect they're looking for?
14:48In a way, Amber Costello broke open the whole case about her own murder.
14:56Right before she went missing, she had a client come to her home.
15:00And essentially, along with her roommate, they engaged in a ruse with this client.
15:05She did not want to have sex with Rex Heuerman.
15:08And she set up a ruse with another individual to take money from him.
15:13And then this other person would come in and pretend to be her boyfriend so that Heuerman would leave and
15:22she didn't have to follow through.
15:24He ultimately drove off angry.
15:28Rex Heuerman continues to text Amber through the next day.
15:32And it appears he's not that mad because he wants to see Amber again.
15:37And he was sending her texts like, you owe me for next time.
15:41She agreed to meet up with Rex Heuerman again to go on another date.
15:44But then Amber Costello disappears the next day.
15:48Her roommate, a guy by the name of Dave Schaller, tells police that there's a number of Johns that they
15:56should look at.
15:56But one in particular, a guy who had been to the house previously.
16:00He also described this client's stature.
16:03He described him as being sort of ogre-like and very tall.
16:08He had glasses, 6'4", 300 pounds, and that he had gotten into a fight with this guy outside.
16:16And he was very suspicious of this individual.
16:20Also, Dave told police that he drove a Chevy Avalanche, which was a unique vehicle at the time.
16:26But he made one error and allowed his vehicle to be spotted in one instance.
16:33And he drove a distinctive Chevy Avalanche.
16:37Lots of people drive it in the country.
16:39But it's not sold very much in Long Island.
16:44And from that vehicle, investigators were able to winnow down who bought it.
16:52And they used cell phone records to track down who may have been driving it in certain areas.
16:59Ultimately, that leads them to Rex Heuerman.
17:06So, Rex Heuerman really was, in every sense of the word, living a double life.
17:12You know, he was working as an architect.
17:15He had an office in Midtown Manhattan.
17:18He had his daughter working at his office.
17:21You know, seemed like father of the year in that regard.
17:25He had a disabled adult stepson who he basically adopted.
17:28He had a wife at home.
17:30And all the while, every time he sent his family on vacation, he was murdering innocent women.
17:37Rex!
17:37Hello!
17:39How you doing?
17:39Good to see you.
17:40When a job that should have been routine suddenly becomes not routine, I get the phone call.
17:48Rex Heuerman was even profiled in an online video about being an architect in Manhattan.
17:52Rex Heuerman, I'm an architect.
17:54I'm an architectural consultant.
17:56I'm a troubleshooter.
17:57Born and raised on Long Island.
17:59Okay.
18:00Been working in Manhattan since 1987.
18:03Rex Heuerman lived in Massapequa Park, which is a nice community on the south shore of Long Island.
18:10It's not far from Gilgo Beach.
18:13And like so many others in that community, he took the train every day from Massapequa Park into Manhattan for
18:20work.
18:21When it comes to investigating a crime, it's about taking a large number of people and zeroing it down to
18:26just one person.
18:27And so first they have this electronic information in terms of a person going from Massapequa Park into Manhattan.
18:34There's your hundreds of thousands of people.
18:36It started with Chevy avalanches, narrowing them down in that time frame on Long Island, how many green Chevy avalanches
18:44were around on Long Island in the year 2010.
18:49But they also collect information from the Costello case where they know about this ogre-like person who's driving this
18:55green Chevy avalanche.
18:56The Chevy avalanche, and especially the color, is a very unique color.
19:00And I assume that once seeing that Rex Heuerman lives in Massapequa Park, you know, a light bulb goes off
19:07because the killer made a taunting phone call from Massapequa.
19:10That's when they have to get DNA evidence to see who he exactly is, the suspect in this case.
19:15Law enforcement began monitoring him.
19:18When the bodies were first recovered from Gilgo Beach and beyond, there was evidence that was recovered with them, including
19:26a hair that was found on the burlap used to wrap some of the bodies.
19:34They couldn't really do anything with it, though. The DNA technology was not advanced enough.
19:39So they know that there's DNA on these women. The question is finding a match.
19:44They needed direct DNA from Rex Heuerman, and they got it from Pizza Crust.
19:52They followed Heuerman until he abandoned some kind of sample of his DNA that they can take and collect without
19:58him knowing about it.
20:00They see that Rex Heuerman is eating pizza out of a box, leaves it in a trash can, and as
20:05he walks off, they collect that box.
20:07They collect that pizza crust, and they test the saliva on it. And through that connection, they found their man.
20:13Rex Heuerman was arrested in front of his Midtown office. He was on the sidewalk. He had no idea this
20:19was coming. He had no idea he was being followed. And then he was in cuffs.
20:24When police initially recovered the bodies, they were able to find hair samples, some of them female, there was a
20:33male.
20:33Now, when it comes to those female hair, they were able to track what's called the mitochondrial DNA of that
20:39hair and see that it was closely connected to or related to Rex Heuerman's wife and or daughter.
20:45Law enforcement suspected early on that that may mean that these women were killed inside the Heuerman home.
20:56The Heuerman house is weird. It's in this nice neighborhood with manicured lawns. Not huge homes, but all of them
21:06beautifully kept.
21:07And then there's this dilapidated thing where Rex Heuerman lived. And he called himself an architect.
21:14This house is not a looker. And investigators went all over it. And in the basement, they discover a locked
21:23door. And they discover a vault.
21:26They find a locked room in the basement that looks almost like a murder room.
21:30Aza Elorup and their daughter Victoria reportedly got paid to appear in a documentary about Rex Heuerman.
21:39A lot of media, they're calling the vault the kill room. The vault was always locked.
21:48This is the steel door. It had a combination lock.
21:58This is in his basement. It had been his area, his man cave, if you will. And so they weren't
22:04allowed to go in there.
22:05And I think that's what was able to keep it separated out from the rest of the family so that
22:10they wouldn't learn all the terrible things that he was up to.
22:13There was a giant gun vault that had 300 guns. It was an unusual number of guns.
22:20Prosecutors said from the outset, it appeared his wife, his daughter, and his stepson did not know about his deviant
22:29double life.
22:30When the young women were killed, there's evidence prosecutors said that the family was away.
22:39And he took a lot of steps to hold himself out as just a normal dad who worked in New
22:47York City.
22:48And even to this day, his wife has said she did not know he was capable of being the serial
22:57killer he now admits to being.
22:59My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
23:04Their loss is immeasurable.
23:08And the focus should be on them at this time and moment.
23:14I ask that you give some privacy to my family as they navigate through this very difficult time.
23:26How did you not see what he was?
23:30So the search of the house is fascinating.
23:33You know, they really tore this house apart.
23:35And it was a full-scale operation.
23:38I mean, they were digging up the backyard of the house.
23:40They took out, you know, every shred of paper from this house.
23:45And later, Heuermann's family released photos of the aftermath of the search.
23:50You know, they took tiles off the bathroom wall.
23:53They took a panel off the bathtub.
23:55They went through pipes.
23:56They really did not leave a single stone unturned.
24:01When Rex was arrested and they started to go through his computer, they found this planning document.
24:07It's called the Hunt and Kill Planning Document.
24:09This was basically a blueprint for murder created by a guy who liked to make blueprints, an architect.
24:18And it laid out every step of his process.
24:21Rex Heuermann, in this blueprint that he kept, reminded himself almost how to be more efficient with his killing.
24:32One reminder said, hit harder.
24:35Another said, use thicker rope.
24:38Constantly updated with lists of supplies, with locations of dump sites.
24:46What was so terrifying is certain lines that he would use.
24:50Get more sleep for more playtime.
24:53It really made you understand how terrifying this guy was.
25:01Heuermann had a significant collection of violent bondage and torture pornography.
25:06Prosecutors uncovered evidence that they said pointed to Heuermann being in regular contact with at least 60 sex workers, not
25:16under his own name.
25:17They found that he had a Tinder account with an alias of Thomas Hawk and Andrew Roberts.
25:23He was Googling and looking up pictures of the victims' families.
25:28He was visiting the Gilgo Task Force website.
25:32He was watching documentaries about the Long Island serial killer.
25:36He kept this chilling collection of news clippings from newspapers and magazines.
25:44Will the Gilgo Beach killer ever be caught?
25:46He seemed to revel in his own success.
25:52Another clue they find in the house?
25:54Trophies of his murders, including something he kept after he killed Megan Waterman.
26:00Investigators noticed that she had a paper towel stuffed in her mouth.
26:05What's so interesting is that they found this same towel in Rex Heuermann's house.
26:10In fact, the exact same type of towel.
26:12Suffolk County had these paper towels, but they needed more.
26:16And so they sent the paper towels off to the Secret Service.
26:19My name is Meg O'Brien, and I'm a Supervisory Document Analyst with the United States Secret Service.
26:24The evidence I examined was a paper towel that came from inside the victim's throat
26:30and a paper towel that was collected from the suspect's property.
26:36I was asked to conduct a comparative examination to see if any kind of link or association could be made
26:42between the paper towels.
26:43The most unique feature was a defect that was in the letter Y that was in the word bounty printed
26:51on both of the paper towels.
26:53Discovering the defect and the Y, like, that was only visible to me under the microscope.
26:59Using this one clue, this kind of irregular Y in the bounty that they found on both paper towels,
27:05they could then track that back to where it was sold, which was at a BJ's.
27:09In Long Island, that was only made for about a six-month period of time.
27:13And when investigators searched Rex Heuermann's home, they found a square of that same patterned paper towel
27:20and a receipt for the purchase of bounty paper towels from BJ's Wholesale Club within the time frame of 2010
27:28when they were sold.
27:29And to prosecutors, that was more evidence that Heuermann was keeping mementos from his killings.
27:37It was an overwhelming amount of evidence for the case.
27:40Rex Heuermann's defense attorney, Michael Brown, although tried, he lost every single question that he raised.
27:47They had lost multiple legal arguments about trying to keep out DNA evidence or forensic evidence.
27:52And so as he sits there and sees what the prosecution can use against him, all of the information that
27:58they can throw at him,
27:59I think the writing was on the wall and he knew it's time to take a plea.
28:02Now, when this plea was announced, it was also announced that he would be maybe admitting to murdering an eighth
28:11victim.
28:12Now, those who know the case well suspected that it could be Karen Vergata because she's long been associated with
28:19this case as a victim.
28:21Prosecutors never had enough evidence to formally charge Heuermann with Vergata's murder, but they long suspected that he had done
28:29it.
28:30He also admitted that he strangled Karen Vergata to death as well.
28:35She was a Jane Doe for decades, and now we know what happened to her.
28:39So finally, Rex Heuermann admitted to killing Vergata, the Gilgo Four, and the other women found in the area, Sandra
28:46Castillo, Jessica Taylor, and Valerie Mack.
28:49Some of these cases go back as early as 1993, which means he started killing over three decades ago.
28:57As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann is going to have to sit with behavioral analysts from the FBI.
29:04They're going to study the mind of Rex Heuermann and perhaps get a window into this monstrous serial killer.
29:14He's going to cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Behavioral Analysis Unit.
29:20Rex Heuermann's plea deal where he's going to be working with the FBI is very similar to that of Ted
29:25Bundy,
29:25who sat down with the FBI after his conviction to give them information through their behavioral unit.
29:31They're going to interview the defendant, gain insight into his motivations and background.
29:38This is like something out of a movie, like when Jodie Foster played an FBI agent and sat down with
29:44Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.
29:47Why does he place them there, Doctor?
29:49The significance of the moth has changed.
29:53There have even been TV shows made about this, like with Mindhunter.
29:57I told her to shut up.
29:58Did she shut up?
29:59She did what I said.
30:00Then why kill her?
30:02Because a woman, too.
30:03The Behavioral Analysis Unit is the subject of drama, and Rex Heuermann is going to be their next subject.
30:09The reverberations of his crimes will never disappear.
30:13You know, that kind of stuff, the ripple effects never end.
30:16With the pain he's caused people, with the fear he's instilled in the communities that were affected.
30:22Hearing him admit that he killed my mom and all those other girls, it definitely felt like a weight had
30:29been lifted off of me.
30:32Rex Heuermann is pled to eight murders.
30:34There's still one unidentified individual found along Ocean Parkway, that being Asian Doe.
30:40The Asian victim found along Ocean Parkway, I could see why Rex Heuermann would deny that victim.
30:46That victim was born biologically male, but wore women's clothing.
30:50So the suspicion there is that they were a trans woman, and I could see why a man going into
30:55prison would want to deny that victim.
30:58These are things that put a target on your back in prison.
31:02There are other unsolved crimes in Suffolk County, and Heuermann's name will always come up, but authorities believe they have
31:11a guilty plea for eight women, and they say they will never stop the investigation as long as the evidence
31:19presents itself.
31:27I asked the district attorney today if he would meet with any of the family members who wish to meet
31:34with him to learn more about the evidence that maybe has not been public, that they had against him for
31:42their particular loved one.
31:44Obtaining answers is empowering for victims.
31:50There's definitely some things that I want to know more about after all the hearings we had today, things like
31:58why did he choose her, where did all this happen, how did all of this happen, just all those little
32:07small things which nobody really does want to hear, but I think that'll give the final feeling of fully knowing
32:14what happened and knowing what she had to bear through.
32:22question from a restaurant.
32:23?
32:27?
32:28.
32:30?
32:44?
32:45?
32:46?
32:46?
32:46?
32:47?
32:47?
32:48?
32:48?
33:17Transcription by CastingWords
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