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Watch Killing Grounds The Gilgo Beach Murders Season 1 Episode 4 online in HD on Dailymotion (2026).
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00:12During the analysis of a hard drive recovered from the basement of the suspect, the task force
00:17discovered a word document titled HK2002-4. It was found in unallocated space, which means it
00:28was erased but we were able to forensically retrieve it. The planning document is effectively
00:34a blueprint of how to be a serial killer. So look at it in real life. It's horrible.
00:41This is highly disturbing. His whole being is devoted to sex, torture, murder in the worst way
00:51that a human mind could imagine. This whole thing is insane. It's like you couldn't literally ask for
00:57any more of a confession.
01:14The planning document is extraordinarily damning. What the investigators found was that it was
01:20created, not downloaded from the internet, it was created by the user. And investigators believe
01:26that the exclusive user of that device was Rex Howerman sometime between 2001-2002. This is right
01:34after Valerie Mack is murdered. It's particularly critical for the prosecution because it establishes
01:41the intent and the mindset of the perpetrator. The intent is crucial to establish premeditation.
01:49It begins with a four-category section with underlying headings. Based on the experience of investigators,
01:56they believe that supplies, references, the tools necessary to actually execute the murders,
02:01problems, specifically details, the things needed to avoid apprehension. DS is a reference to dump site,
02:09where the bodies would effectively be disposed of. And TRG is a reference to the targets. The target section references
02:19Megan with a question mark. Also, small is good. It's important to note that the known victims thus far are
02:27all small, petite women.
02:30When we first got access to this planning document, it was very disturbing. To the point that when I reported
02:36it, I did a disclaimer to the viewer to please be ready for what you're about to hear. You may
02:43not want to hear this.
02:44Supplies. Supplies. Booties. Acid. Rope. Hairnets. Problems. DNA. Bloodstains. Foot shoe prints.
03:02The document very clearly lays out. Dump site one, Mill Road. Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor's remains were found close
03:11to Mill Road.
03:13Post-event. Destroy file. Change tires. Burn gloves. Have story set. As I read this, I have to say, it's
03:25strange. There's so many misspellings here.
03:29Rex is well-educated. An architect. He didn't spell well. He would make me listen to this tape recorder when
03:39he would have me do proposals.
03:41You know, it obviously didn't spell well. Use heavy rope for neck. Light rope broke under stress of being tightened.
03:53Light rope broke under stress.
03:57That's disturbing because he's now speaking, allegedly, that this happened. He's learning.
04:06Who fucking hurt him that he had to do that to people? He was hunting them. He literally planned all
04:13that.
04:15More sleep and noise control equals more playtime.
04:20He was not interested in just killing them. There was more that he had planned. And where were they for
04:27that time?
04:32When you look at the planning document, it talks about, for lack of a better word, a staging area, an
04:38area where the victim would be brought.
04:41And with regard to that, it talks about hanging plastic from either the ceiling or the walls and how it
04:48was better to use pushpins as opposed to tape because tape leaves adhesive marks on the wall and the ceiling.
04:57Authorities returned to search the house about a year after the initial search.
05:01That search was likely prompted from the details provided in the planning document, specific to the use of pushpins and
05:08tape.
05:09So they were specifically looking to see evidence of that.
05:15Where in a house that you share with your wife and two children could you conceal a crime like this?
05:27One summer, I worked for a lot of different architects.
05:31I was freelancing and Rex said, hey, I've got some work for you.
05:36He asked me to come to his house to measure it because he was going to do some renovations.
05:45So I took the train out to Massapequa Park.
05:50And he picked me up at the train station.
05:56Here's the front door.
05:59You enter in here and here's the living room.
06:05We actually measured the whole first floor and the basement together.
06:10The kitchen is right here and the stairs leading down to the basement.
06:15When you go down the stairs, it was finished.
06:19There was carpet, there was a sofa, and there was a little bar.
06:25You know, it was a hangout area.
06:27So you can see how he would say, hey, why don't you come down, sit on the couch, you know,
06:33have a drink and just hang out, you know, just chill out.
06:37Even then, the women walking down those stairs had no idea what was about to come.
06:45We were kind of working our way around the perimeter of the room, probably 10 feet away from the sofa.
06:51But it was this area I'm calling the vault.
06:56So he was standing literally, his back was to the door of the vault.
07:03And he said, you can't go in there.
07:08I always remembered that because, I don't know, something struck me when he stopped and said that to my face
07:18in such a stern voice.
07:20It really kind of caught me off guard.
07:23The vault would have offered a level of privacy and, to some degree, a level of noise cancellation that would
07:31have provided an ideal environment for the components of this crime.
07:37When we executed the search warrant in the house, we went back to the basement.
07:43And using infrared lighting, we were able to establish a cordoned off area where we saw this adhesive tape had
07:50been placed.
07:52It really just reiterated what that planning document specifically talks about with regard to staging areas.
08:00From the pictures that we've seen from the house raids, what I realized in the last year and a half
08:09is that there's a staircase that's in the vault that leads out to the backyard.
08:18So he had access from this room to the backyard.
08:26If you look at all the aerial photos of his house, you can see the basement doors.
08:30They're directly underneath his kitchen, directly in line with the stairs that go down to the basement.
08:37He was able to move things around in a discreet way.
08:50It becomes apparent that there's a high possibility that these women, that he may have held them for a period
08:57of time, in a room where he was able to hang a drop cloth, where he was able to test
09:05all these different torture methods on them.
09:09And they probably knew they were going to die because no one could help them.
09:13And it's very scary for me to look back on those times and think how close I was to somebody
09:20so evil.
09:25In July of 2003, he allegedly took Jessica Taylor, got together with her on a Monday night and dumped her
09:38body on a Friday night.
09:40So he had her at the house for those four days.
09:48On his Blackberry schedule, you can see that he has appointments at the DOB, the Department of Buildings, meaning, allegedly,
09:58Jessica Taylor was still in the house and he would go off to meetings.
10:06Given the evidence in this case, one of the things that we argue is significant is that with regard to
10:11all of the victims, the defendant's family were out of town during the commission of the crimes.
10:17That would have unfortunately given the defendant unfettered time and access to the victims at a time where, you know,
10:25no one else would be around.
10:30If I went back to his house, I don't think I'd be here right now.
10:34For years, I've told everybody, everybody, I said I went on a date with the go-to-beach killer.
10:41I knew it was him and nobody believed me.
10:44Which, again, goes to show how little people believe things from people in that industry.
10:55I was a felon at a really young age and nobody wanted to fucking hire me at all.
11:01It's at McDonald's, but you can't pay for rent and a kid on McDonald's.
11:05My friend showed me the website sugardaddies.com.
11:10So I ended up becoming a sugar baby.
11:14So I met Rex Hummerman through the website in 2015.
11:19Initially, he wanted me to come to his house.
11:22He was like, why don't you just come over? It'd be a lot more relaxed.
11:26He didn't want to meet in public.
11:28But I got him to agree to go to the steam room in Port Jeff.
11:34When we sat down, we talked, like, basics.
11:37Like, what do you do for a living?
11:39Where do you work?
11:42And then he asked if I knew about the Gilgal Beach killing.
11:45And, like, I'm from here, so of course I have.
11:49The way he talked about it seemed odd.
11:53Honestly, it felt like he was, like, sexually getting off to talking about serial killers in Gilgal.
12:01You know, when someone's blood pressure's high and their face starts turning red and their palms get flushed and they...
12:06That's what he looked like.
12:07It was so weird.
12:10He honestly was in a rush to try to get me to his house.
12:14I was like, I really don't want to be driving at night in an area, I don't know.
12:17That was, like, my polite letdown.
12:19And he was like, why would you drive?
12:22No, no, no, we'd take one car.
12:25He was, like, very aggressive, like, very pushy about it.
12:28And then he seemed, like, angry.
12:30Like, he was mad that I didn't want to go home with him.
12:33It scared me.
12:34I was, like, super uncomfortable.
12:38He had gone through that process with the earlier victims and he hadn't gotten caught yet.
12:45He'd gotten away with it for so long.
12:49He lived his dual life.
12:50He had the front-facing life where he was the architect who worked in the city, had his own business.
12:55And then he had this aspect of his life that he kept secret.
13:03With the literature discovered in his home during the execution of the search warrant,
13:06it seems as if the suspect has a deep fascination with violent crimes and with serial killers in particular.
13:14We know that he was fixated with Mindhunter.
13:17Mindhunter was written by retired special agent John Douglas.
13:21John was a pioneer in establishing the Behavioral Science Unit.
13:25And he is known as being a linchpin in the development of behavioral criminal profiling.
13:31The book Mindhunter provides insight into serial killer behavior.
13:35and techniques used by violent criminal offenders.
13:40John Douglas famously wrote in that book that if you want to understand Picasso, you have to study his art.
13:47If you want to understand the criminal personality, you study the crime.
13:53I think this suspect liked being thought of as an artist.
13:58And it was an art form that he had to perfect.
14:01He was looking at the way serial killers kill and also how investigators go about
14:10tracking down and convicting serial killers.
14:13And he makes it a point to denote certain pages to really pay attention to.
14:18And if you have access to that type of internal information, you can definitely square up how you
14:26execute a series of murders like this to minimize the spread of evidence, including DNA.
14:32The body prep.
14:35The body prep.
14:35The body prep.
14:35Wash body inside and all cavities.
14:39Remove ID marks like tattoos.
14:42Remove marks from torture.
14:44Remove head and hands.
14:48Remove head and hands.
14:49For the other six victims, four of the six were dismembered.
14:55Out of all of those four, not only were they dismembered, some body parts were recovered along Ocean Parkway.
15:02Others were recovered in Epstead Lake Park, Fire Island, Manorville.
15:08Typically, the perpetrators undertake that.
15:11And it's a lot of effort in order to frustrate and confuse investigators and to delay the identification.
15:18That's the key.
15:20Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has always been clear that this investigation is still going.
15:25They're not stopping until they investigate every single lead that they could possibly have related to this case.
15:32And so we knew there were going to be more charges coming.
15:40Today, the district attorney's office filed a superseding indictment charging the defendant with two additional murders.
15:46Those charges pertain to the 1993 murder of Sandra Castilla and the 2003 murder of Jessica Taylor.
15:56The task force believes that the planning document was utilized by Uriman to methodically blueprint and plan out his kills
16:04with excruciating detail.
16:07We allege that this document evinces the defendant's intent in committing the charged crimes.
16:13I did not suspect that Sandra Castilla was going to be connected to him.
16:20That wowed me. I was suspecting Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.
16:26The reason is we have known for years, because police have said, that Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack most likely
16:34had the same killer.
16:36Sandra Castilla kind of came out of nowhere, but the significance of that cannot be understated.
16:41There were two hairs from Sandra Castilla's remains that are of particular significance in this case.
16:48One was a female hair that was recovered from the victim's right arm, and one was a male hair that
16:54was recovered from a tape lift of one of the shirts that the victim was wearing that was pushed above
17:01her head.
17:02They found a female hair on her right arm that did not belong to her.
17:08They believe it closely matches who they call witness three.
17:13Witness three is the woman that Rex Herman was living with in 1993.
17:18From a defense standpoint, I don't know what strategy I would use to explain that away.
17:26The totality of the evidence is extraordinarily damning.
17:37Good morning. It looks like there's just so much discovery that's forthcoming.
17:43You see here, the interns here have a box of, I don't know how many terabytes are in there,
17:49but these are things that were disclosed this morning, and that's just on top of all that we've received to
17:55date.
17:56I think it's fair to say that it's an unprecedented type of case.
18:01Michael Brown is his lawyer. He's a good lawyer. Michael tried his first jury case against me, and he beat
18:08me.
18:08I stood in front of you folks a year ago, and I said he wants his day in court. He
18:14still wants his day in court. He wants his trial.
18:16If I were Michael Brown, I know what I would do, and I would start to look directly at the
18:23DNA evidence and pull it apart.
18:26The strongest piece of evidence that they claim they have is a hair.
18:30DNA evidence is science, but the great mistake that people make is that science is the voice of God. It's
18:39not.
18:39There are thousands and thousands of people just on Long Island that potentially could be donors for those hairs.
18:48And then I would cast reasonable doubt on whether or not he was guilty.
18:53You have a search warrant when Rex was arrested in July of last year, and now the 10-month-later
18:58search apparently is going to yield three or four times the amount of discovery that the first search yielded.
19:05Does that make any sense to you?
19:07I would also attack the way the police conducted the entire investigation and pick the police apart.
19:13There were numerous leads that came into the Suffolk County Police Department suggesting that Chief Burke was involved in this.
19:20Mike Brown, he's always been clear that Rex had nothing to do with any of this.
19:27Any piece of evidence, he's going to rip it apart.
19:31It all goes into the narrative. It's any piece of the puzzle that they can take and they can fit
19:38and they can argue that it's Rex Eurman, they've done that.
19:41And things that don't work for them, you don't hear about. We talked about surveillance.
19:47A year and a half of poll cameras at his house.
19:51The defense have made a very good point that all that was captured on that film was Rex coming home,
19:58playing with his dog, talking to his wife, nothing out of the ordinary.
20:04I mean, I think probably what he was saying about the poll cam is we don't see him murdering anyone
20:08else in the poll cam,
20:09which means he didn't commit these other, you know, I think that's, that's, that's what he's saying.
20:14Eurman has denied tons of media requests.
20:18So it's interesting that the one person he's decided to communicate with is a convicted serial killer,
20:25the happy face killer.
20:28I try to explain to other killers that are arrested and I write to them, I tell them how the
20:32system works.
20:33Mm-hmm.
20:34If you're arrested, it means that the prosecutor has enough evidence to take you to court and prove you guilty.
20:39I've recently got a letter from Rex Eurman from the Long Island serial killers,
20:44and I admit, I told him the same thing.
20:48Isn't that kind of an admission of guilt?
20:51Why is he writing to another serial killer?
20:54Is he seeking advice?
20:56I think so.
20:56Have you had a chance to review the bullet at Bestow that they talked about last month?
21:03You've already made that assumption that he's the one who drafted it and he's the one who created it.
21:09I don't know that. I don't know that.
21:11You have a document that's attached to a bail package from a computer they claim was in his home
21:17that's 23 years old, but that's all I know.
21:20The experts of the medical examiner's office, and these are folks who are experts in their field,
21:27they said that those hairs were unsuitable for nuclear DNA testing.
21:34Now all of a sudden, magically, we have a company in California that says,
21:40no, we're able to do nuclear DNA testing.
21:42I don't understand how the Suffolk County Crime Lab said it's unsuitable,
21:47and within a month or two, we have some magician on the West Coast that says it's my client.
21:52We're looking forward to trying this case.
21:56In 1993, and certainly at the time the bodies were discovered in 2010, the capability to produce
22:01full mitochondrial and nuclear DNA profiles from rootless hairs just didn't exist.
22:05The capability just wasn't there.
22:07Since then, technology and science have substantially evolved,
22:11and we can now get a DNA profile from a rootless hair through nuclear DNA testing.
22:19The profile that returned excluded 99.96 percent of the North American population.
22:26Rex could not be excluded.
22:30Even with DNA, believe it or not, you can't have 100 percent.
22:37There's too many variations.
22:40We have here, these are the, from the indictment, the list of all the breakdown of the DNA, right?
22:49Sandra Castilla, 99.96 percent of North American population can be excluded, but not Rex Heurman.
22:5999.98 percent, 99.96 percent, nothing here is 100.
23:06And so what the defense is going to try to say is that this is not a match.
23:14Sandra Castilla increases the potential victims associated with the subject, and there are likely more.
23:21It showed he was likely killing as early as 1993, and most likely well before that.
23:27The brutal nature of Sandra's murder, as well as how the body was disposed of,
23:33and posed, and mutilated, suggests to investigators that this was not his first time.
23:40New information as the investigation continues into the accused Gilgo Beach serial killer.
23:45Police in both South Carolina and Las Vegas, where he owns property,
23:50are reviewing unsolved cases for any possible connection.
23:55There is extremely strong possibility that he's responsible for a number of other deaths
24:02in other areas of the country.
24:05There is a woman in South Carolina who says,
24:08I know that face. It was the last face I saw with my mother before I never saw her again.
24:16South Carolina's Sumter County Sheriff's Office posting this photo of Julia Ann Bean.
24:21Bean's adult daughter telling authorities the last time she saw her mother,
24:25she was with a man driving a vehicle similar to one that's now been linked to Heurman.
24:31I didn't know that he went down to South Carolina, that they had property there,
24:36because he had me paying the taxes for it.
24:39The FBI recovered a vehicle that matches Heurman's SUV linked to the case,
24:44and now investigators are searching property in Chester County, South Carolina.
24:48If you could catch the gate open, there's tarps, there's all kind of weird stuff.
24:52He's got, like I said, a deuce and a half military army vehicle in there, or he did.
24:56I think that every missing person's case that involves a woman in this country should be looked
25:04at. Cameron Bean telling NBC News, I saw her the night before my graduation.
25:09She didn't come, which was definitely something that was out of character for her.
25:14Prior to identifying a suspect, you're limited in terms of the victims that you'll tie that suspect
25:19to. After the suspect was arrested, you look at the suspect's behavior, their lifestyle,
25:25their travel patterns, and that drives you to look at potential other victims that were outside
25:31of the jurisdiction of Suffolk County and outside of New York. We don't know yet if Rex Howerman will
25:38be charged with their murders. Heurman and his wife own a timeshare condo at Club de Soleil on
25:44Tropicana Avenue and Lindell Road. Property records show they bought it in 2005 for $17,000.
25:52In Las Vegas, he has a condo that's right behind a sex worker establishment.
26:00Sources tell 13 Investigates Metro has a number of cold cases involving sex workers. We've asked how
26:06many of those unsolved crimes there are, and we are still waiting for that information.
26:10I've spoken to a mom out there. Her daughter, she's from Canada. Her daughter had gone to Vegas to
26:15be a sex worker, and she's never heard from her since. And she waits with bated breath at the phone
26:23that Rex Howerman may have killed her daughter.
26:26The defendant did spend time in Alaska as well as Atlantic City, as well as other places. And if any
26:33of
26:33those jurisdictions have any information that they need from the task force, we have provided it.
26:38We're going to continue to provide it. I guarantee you that if they start looking
26:43into disappearances and time frames when he was there, there's going to be bodies all over the
26:48country. If you think that he was just killing on Long Island for 30 years, there's no chance in hell
26:52that's going to be true. Recently, we learned from Suffolk police that they're still receiving tips.
26:57They're up to about 7,000 tips. We're going to concern ourselves with what's happening here on Long
27:03Island and remain supportive of those investigations. But because I lack the jurisdiction,
27:08we'll leave those investigations up to those other places.
27:16One of the more heartbreaking things about this case is that the duration of it and the time that
27:21it's taken to apprehend a suspect and the time that trial will inevitably take is that so many of
27:27these families have suffered incalculable loss that most people could not live through and they have
27:33not been able to see justice be done. This is dorky, but I kept it.
27:43This leaf blew in front of me and every time I moved, it blew towards me.
27:47So I figured it was meant for me to take it. So I took it and it's been in this
27:51box ever since.
27:51The families have waited for years, sometimes decades to find out what happened to their loved
27:58ones. And not all of them are still here today. Megan Waterman's mom, Lorraine, died in 2022,
28:06only months before Rex Herman was arrested. She died without knowing who may have killed her daughter.
28:16Mary Gilbert passed away in 2016. In the beginning, I wanted to pretend like it's not my life. After my
28:26mother's passing, I have gotten a lot more involved because I feel like I have to now. I have to
28:34participate in what my mother did. She spoke a lot for Shannon and justice for Shannon. So I believe that
28:43I have to do the same thing. These families always held out hope that they would find
28:52who did this to their loved ones. And they died, some of them, without ever knowing what happened.
29:00The family members who are still alive are carrying on the torch, showing up to hearings involving Rex
29:08the police. And they are trying to determine to make sure that there is justice.
29:15We don't know where this will end, but this case drags on. And because there's so many victims,
29:22it's taking a long time for the case to go to trial. So it's a painful process for many of
29:30the family
29:30members. They are committed, however, to seeing this through to the end. They want the truth
29:37about what happened to their loved ones.
29:43So, Lynn, we don't know exactly what's going to happen today.
29:49You've been to the courthouse they were going to so many times, right?
29:53I have.
29:53Probably, probably lost count, right?
29:56This is the first time I'm going to see the defendant, though.
30:00My guess is he's not going to look at any
30:04one who was sitting there except maybe the judge.
30:08If he's smart.
30:13I think it's very important, don't you, that the family members come?
30:17I do. We all need to be there to support each other.
30:21Yes.
30:22And any new victims' families.
30:25Let them all see that we're all here for them.
30:28Yeah, exactly.
30:30And that you're here.
30:31Because nobody can feel this except us.
30:33Exactly.
30:34I mean, you can say that you feel sorry or...
30:37Yeah.
30:38But you just don't know.
30:41I don't think there's ever going to be any closure.
30:47Well, at some point, hopefully...
30:51I mean, there may be justice.
30:52...a little less painful.
30:54Exactly. That's how I feel. Exactly.
30:56And no one else will be hurt.
31:01That's so, so important.
31:19Gender violence.
31:22That makes the families very angry and very upset.
31:27We see horrific things happening to women all over the world.
31:31The bottom line is, this accused man thinks he's powerful, hurting the vulnerable.
31:38It's just tragic.
31:41Doesn't think about family members.
31:44Doesn't think about anyone except himself.
31:47We go now to Long Island, where suspected Gilgal Beach serial killer, Rex Hewerman, has been charged with a seventh
31:53murder.
31:54Suffix DA today said that parts of Valerie Mack's dismembered body were first found in Manorville back in 2000.
32:00That's when prosecutors recovered a strand of hair DNA has now traced back to Rex Hewerman's daughter.
32:08That courtroom audience included the parents of Valerie Mack, as well as family members of some of the other alleged
32:15victims of Rex Hewerman.
32:16It was silent when he came into the courtroom.
32:19So for that reason, it was particularly startling when he yelled, not guilty.
32:27Family members let out an audible gasp when Hewerman decided to enter his own not guilty plea.
32:34He certainly has a right to say not guilty.
32:37He can say it until he's blue in the face, but really what matters is what the evidence shows.
32:43So we'll have to wait and see.
32:46How did you feel about this morning?
32:49It was very emotional.
32:51I didn't expect to feel that way when I saw him for the first time.
32:55So it was like feeling it for the first time all over again.
33:01But, you know, he's sitting alone in his cell, most likely.
33:05That's all he's got.
33:06That's all he's got.
33:06That's all he's got.
33:19Here in New York, the judge in the case of accused Gilgo Beach killer Rex Hewerman
33:24is expected to announce whether key DNA evidence can be used during the trial.
33:29The type of testing has never been used before in a New York courtroom.
33:35We're in Riverhead, Suffolk County, for a big hearing.
33:39The judge's decision today is monumental for months.
33:45Rex's attorney, Mike Brown, put up every expert that he could find that would argue that the use
33:51of this DNA technology was too new and should not be allowed in the trial.
33:57This evidence is critical because without it,
34:01prosecutors have what is a circumstantial case.
34:06If the judge doesn't allow this in, there is a chance that a jury could find Rex Hewerman not guilty
34:13because of it.
34:14If this is all tossed, if the judge says, look, it's just too new to bring into this trial,
34:19I mean, that's going to be really damaging for the prosecution.
34:26Breaking news out of Long Island.
34:28A judge making a major ruling surrounding DNA evidence in the Gilgo Beach murder case.
34:38The court's decision is that the question hairs with regard to the nuclear DNA testing
34:46that has been deemed admissible by the court.
34:50This decision marks a significant step in forensic DNA analysis.
34:57The science was on our side, and that's why, that's why we won.
35:02Could you say anything about the trial?
35:04This was very aggressively and effectively litigated.
35:09We're hurtling towards the trial stage.
35:12How did Rex Hewerman react to this decision, which would allow the nuclear DNA to be used as evidence
35:17against him?
35:18He was disappointed. We believe it's not scientifically reliable, but the judge has issued a fried decision
35:25saying this is acceptable. We don't like it. We don't agree with it, but he's the umpire.
35:30Mike, do you anticipate him taking a plea?
35:33A plea?
35:34A guilty plea.
35:35I stood in front of you folks from day one. Everything we're doing is catered and directed
35:39towards a trial. So what we do is we fight. He has maintained that non-guilty plea. We go for
35:45it.
35:47All right, guys? Okay, thanks.
35:49Even though Mike Brown said today there's no plea deal, and I think that that was a legitimate,
35:55genuine response, you never know what is happening in a case.
36:02This decision today was a huge blow to the defense and a big win for prosecutors.
36:10Can you speak for the victims' families? How are they feeling today?
36:14I think they're feeling relieved, and I think they're happy and pleased with the decision.
36:19I think these families understand that while their loved one isn't here,
36:25they potentially have who was responsible for hurting them.
36:31Now begins the process of holding that alleged person accountable and to be a witness to this process,
36:40to justice.
36:44A lot more is going to come out in the trial, isn't it?
36:47Yeah. I think the DA is releasing this level of evidence to rattle this cage,
36:51and to, and hopefully to prompt a plea deal. That's what I hope for,
36:56because I hope the families don't have to go through the emotional tumult of a trial.
37:03There were people behind the scenes for a number of years working on this investigation to try to bring
37:10them justice, and I'm glad that there's finally progress.
37:17But we still have a ways to go.
37:23We have victims where there are no suspects that have been charged with those murders,
37:28and those investigations remain very active and ongoing.
37:35When I said I wanted to practice law to a cousin of mine who was a lawyer in Philadelphia, he
37:42said,
37:42why? I said, because I would like to help win justice. He said, there's no justice.
37:50All you can do is mitigate the injustice.
37:58We've helped to remove some of the fear against the powerful person who has hurt them in their lives,
38:06and now the fear is on the other side. The fear is on the side of the perpetrator, because the
38:12fear
38:13is now he doesn't know what the survivors are going to do.
38:19Maureen, I owe her my life. And if I can't help her, I can probably help others that are just
38:26like us.
38:32So that they're not afraid to report something bad, so that they're safe
38:44from those kind of situations happening.
38:49I think that there is still a pattern of behavior in law enforcement who I have the utmost respect for,
38:57but I do think that there is dismissing that still goes on with women who disappear.
39:05The family members and the friends who went to police made a fatal error that shouldn't be a fatal
39:11error. They told them the truth. They told them what these women did. The second that law enforcement
39:19hears that these women have issues, their cases get pushed to the side for the cases of the wealthier,
39:29the more put together, the ones of the families that have the ability to pay for lawyers.
39:38And I think there will always be questions about things that we may not get the answers to,
39:47like Shannon Gilbert. I'm not sure that we will ever know the truth about Shannon Gilbert.
39:55I can definitely tell you, over the years, I have gotten so cold because of this. The stuff I've heard,
40:05it just, it makes you cold. It does.
40:13Every person that walks in and says, I'm worried about where she is, should be treated as if it was
40:20the officer's own sister, mother, aunt, cousin. I hope that the department, and I think they have,
40:30has learned some lessons about what works and what doesn't work. Look, this idea of a task force is,
40:37is so smart. I mean, I would love to see more investigations like this.
40:44Part of our motivation was we wanted to let everyone know that the lives of these young women mattered,
40:53and that if you engage in this type of conduct, eventually you're going to be held to account.
41:00I definitely want people to be held accountable for my sister's death. And not just my sister,
41:10but as far as this happening to other women.
41:17This isn't just about murder. This has roots deep in the culture,
41:24and how some men see women. Women in this country and in this world are not safe.
41:30It's not just in that kind of work. Women are not safe.
41:38Maureen was a mother of two amazing children, and they will forever be without their brother.
41:45I think that these victims, family members, are standing up,
41:51becoming fighters for change for other women.
41:56Amber would have accomplished her goals. She wanted to work when I was.
41:59She wanted to be a veterinarian. Maureen, she was a good mother.
42:04She would definitely be proud of her daughter and her son.
42:08Melissa would have been 39 years old this year.
42:12She should have been able to get married. She should have been able to have children.
42:18She should be here to share her laughter and her love.
42:23The whole world deserved more of her.
42:27I'm sick and tired of being angry.
42:32I always say first we cry.
42:36And then we fight.
42:38And then we fight.
43:03And then we fight.
43:25We fight a man who has fallen down.
43:33So that's when it turns out.
44:02Transcription by CastingWords
44:15CastingWords
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