[tense music playing]
My friend's dad was a manager at the Gold Club in Philadelphia,
which is a strip club.
I just graduated high school.
I was only 18,
and I started selling shots there over the summer.
[indistinct chatter]
[woman] It was easy money,
and there were a lot of drugs around all the time.
One night, I was approached by a man,
and he was feeding me cocaine.
And he told me that "there's way more where this came from,"
and "there's the opportunity for you to make a lot of money."
He told me that I'd be selling his friend cocaine
and then by the end of it,
I would make money off of that transaction.
My motivation that night was quick money and quick drugs.
So I was like, "Absolutely."
His friend introduced himself as John.
He was a very tall, kind of heavyset, middle-aged man.
And then John and I left.
[sinister music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[woman] Once we were alone and in the car,
he started going off about pedophilic fantasies
and asked me about my young friends,
if I could show him pictures of my young friends,
what's the youngest friend I have.
Inquired about not only just, like, young girls but young boys too.
That's when I realized what this is.
It's not just me selling drugs. It's also me selling sex.
So I was doing everything in my power to just not touch him.
It made me feel quite uneasy.
And then we arrived at the townhome.
[eerie music playing]
When we entered, there was mail on the floor.
There was nothing on the walls. There was no furniture.
But there were two beach chairs, and there was a milk crate turned over,
and then there was the television.
It was playing a porn going on repeat.
[static humming]
[woman] So he says, "Bust out the cocaine there."
"I'm going to go upstairs really quick."
So I'm, like, weighing out an eight ball,
and I could hear him making noise upstairs.
But then I hear some kind of, like, human-sized like scrumpling going on.
[thudding]
[woman] It sounded like someone was moving around in a room.
I was like, "Someone else is here."
[footsteps treading]
[clattering]
Maybe they were trying to get attention.
[suspenseful music playing]
[woman] I'm kind of out of my body at this moment.
Felt like something out of a horror movie.
Whatever it was, it freaked me out.
I was ripped back to my body.
I put everything back in my bag. I had a Taser.
I'm like running towards the door.
He comes barreling down the stairs,
and I grab the Taser, and I put it up to the flesh of his neck.
Everything in me just says,
"This is the moment that you make a decision to possibly save your life."
[melancholy music playing]
[waves crashing]
[somber music playing]
[police siren wailing]
[Kolker] By 2022,
things have really changed in law enforcement in Suffolk County.
Burke and Spota have been prosecuted and convicted,
but the case has been going on for so long
that there's a real question about whether anything new is going to happen.
It's been 12 years since the Gilgo Four were found.
It's been 11 and a half years since all the other sets of remains were found.
The case is still unsolved.
But then there's another changing of the guard.
[invigorating music playing]
[Kolker] Geraldine Hart steps down.
[Hart] When I decided to leave the Suffolk County Police Department,
part of the difficult part of the decision was leaving Gilgo unresolved.
I think the best way to describe it is a puzzle, right?
And there were a lot of pieces put in the puzzle during my time in that office.
But there was the hope that the new commissioner and their team
could put that final piece in.
[Kolker] Rodney Harrison, the new commissioner,
he's an outsider from New York City and knows how cases get cleared,
and that's through collaboration and partnerships.
[reporter] Suffolk County Police Commissioner announces
that he's forming a task force
to get to the bottom of the Gilgo Beach murders.
I put a team together of Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.
We're working with the state police. We got FBI on board.
We even have the sheriffs helping out.
I truly believe that we're going to get down to the bottom
of who committed these crimes.
[Kolker] There is a new district attorney, Ray Tierney.
He's a local guy, and he actually worked
in the district attorney's office early in his career
before Tom Spota was in charge.
[Tierney] I took office January of 2022, and we sort of hit the ground running.
Of course, when we got there, it was about 12 years in the making,
so a tremendous amount of materials.
The first thing we did is,
we started digitalizing all the evidence in the case
so you could make it searchable.
[Kolker] Now that they could actually search for things,
and they started looking at clues and evidence and interviews
that some people hadn't laid eyes on for years.
They hit on something right away.
Police reports from Amber Costello's house shortly after the investigation begins.
- [suspenseful music playing] - [thunder rumbling]
[engine starting]
There was this interaction with, uh, one of her clients
who was described as an ogre,
um, very large individual, 6'4", 6'6",
glasses, uh, kind of bushy hair, uh, and that he was driving
this first-generation, dark-colored Chevy Avalanche.
One of the investigators in the case was able to determine that
that type of generation of Chevy Avalanche was owned by a very large individual,
matching the physical description given.
We knew the killer used burner phones, activated in and around the area
of Massapequa Park and in Midtown Manhattan.
The owner of this Avalanche happened to not only reside in Massapequa Park,
but also worked in and around the area of Midtown Manhattan,
where he picked up some of the victims.
[Hart] All the things that we had in mind of who this, uh, individual would be,
each piece of information, it just kept checking boxes.
Our first meeting in the task force was February 1st of 2022
and March 14th of 2022.
It was the day that the name first came up.
[dramatic music playing]
[dramatic whoosh]
[eerie music playing]
[Tierney] Rex Heuermann.
[sinister music playing]
[Kolker] These guys were able to do in six weeks
what no one else was able to do in 12 years.
They've needed a suspect all this time, and now they finally have one.
[tense music playing]
[Harrison] We started looking into Rex Heuermann's lifestyle.
Started working with the district attorney's office
and taking a look at phone records
and getting subpoenas for a host of other things.
[Tierney] We were able to determine that he resided in Massapequa Park
with his wife and children.
He would go into the city. He worked as an architect.
Then we developed this timeline
with regard to the four murders on the burner phones and then Heuermann.
[Kolker] Up till now, they've sort of traced the different movements
that these burner phones that were in touch with the victim's cell phones,
where they went at different times.
And the plan now was to take Rex Heuermann's phone
and check its movements over time.
And lo and behold, wherever Rex goes, those burner phones go too.
[Tierney] Police department as well as the FBI,
we began surveilling the suspect.
[Kolker] On May 19, 2023,
they watched Rex Heuermann walk into a store in Manhattan
and pay to add minutes to a burner phone.
But they also searched his emails, and the more they found out about him,
the scarier it got,
because they learned he had set up anonymous e-mail accounts
where he was still actively contacting escorts.
[suspenseful music playing]
Which, of course, if you're law enforcement,
you're wondering,
"How much longer can we wait before perhaps something bad happens?"
[Tierney] Up to this point, the investigation was still a secret
because once a person knows that they are wanted,
they certainly could flee, and you feel tremendous responsibility
if somebody else gets hurt, something else happens.
Law enforcement needed to collect
any type of DNA evidence that could link him to these crimes.
[Tierney] We told those surveillance teams,
"If you saw him consume something, drink something, eat something,
and then he discarded that, whatever it was that he discarded,
pick it up." Because we wanted to obtain a DNA sample.
They saw him discard pizza in a pizza box.
They grabbed it, and inside was a pizza crust.
DNA was extracted and analyzed.
We had five hairs recovered from the scene in December of 2010.
So now we had someone to compare those hairs with.
[Kolker] After 13 years of investigation and ten months of following him,
they finally get DNA of Rex Heuermann.
His DNA profile matched the hairs definitively.
[dramatic music playing]
[Harrison] One thing is having a green Avalanche,
but having his DNA attached to the bodies is a game changer.
[Tierney] The balance had tipped in favor of making the arrest.
So we made the decision,
"Let's take him down tonight."
This day has been a long time coming.
[reporter 1] Suffolk Police announced they have arrested a suspect
in the Gilgo Beach murders.
[reporter 2] He was outside his architecture firm last night,
around 8:30.
Then as he left his offices, detectives were seen following him
near 5th Avenue and 35th Street.
[Tierney] Uh, it was very frenzied, very hectic.
[interviewer] Did he seem surprised?
No.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Brodsky] A mug shot popped up.
I said, "Oh my God. That was the guy."
"That was… That was him."
[Schaller] The day that they caught him, a reporter called me,
and she's like, "Are you seeing this?"
I didn't even have the TV on, and I'm like,
"Tell me right now. It's a fucking 6'8" giant ogre."
And she's like, "Dead fucking right, Dave."
She's like, "It's exactly what you said 13 years ago."
[Gallucci] My cell phone was ringing.
Text messages were coming through. I turned on the TV,
and I just remember thinking in that moment, I was so happy.
The families would finally be getting justice.
[Meserve] When somebody's found guilty, that's when it'll be like,
"Okay, we found Megan's killer."
But I think nobody wants to get too hopeful to be disappointed.
[interviewer] If you could say something to him,
what would you want to say?
He already knows he's a monster,
but just that he's not as smart as he thought he was.
[somber music playing]
[Tierney] Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,
and thank you all for coming.
I'm standing here with my law enforcement partners
in the Gilgo Task Force,
uh, to announce the indictment of Defendant Rex Andrew Heuermann,
for the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.
The investigation of Maureen Brainard-Barnes is ongoing.
We are working through forensic evidence, and analyzes that are not completed.
[interviewer] So right now, as we're talking,
he's not officially charged for Maureen.
How important is it for you that that change?
It's important, very important, because I want justice for my sister,
and she deserves justice, whatever justice may look like.
So, I remain hopeful,
like I've always have.
[melancholy music playing]
[reporter] We are in this quiet neighborhood
live in Massapequa Park
that has been turned into a crime scene when police descended this morning.
That's because the suspect in this case lives right on this block.
[police siren wailing]
[man] The doorbell rang about five in the morning,
and I went downstairs, and… And a police officer was there.
And he says to me,
"Excuse me, could you please move one of your cars from the driveway,
and the other one in front of the house?"
I said, "Sure, officer, but could you tell me why?"
And he says to me, "Just turn the news on."
[reporter] Massapequa Park neighbors woke up to the unimaginable revelation,
the decade-long hunt for a serial killer centered here.
[De Villiers] I went, "Oh my God."
"I've lived next to that thing for 28 years."
Somebody from the neighborhood that knows him well,
came up to me and said, "What's going on?" I said, uh, "They got the Gilgo killer."
The first name she mentioned, "Heuermann?"
And I went, "Yeah."
[Kolker] Massapequa Park's like a lot of suburban towns
that are commuter towns to Manhattan.
People who live there, they like it. They're house-proud.
Rex is a married father of two,
living in the same house that he grew up in,
a dilapidated house that he seemed to spend absolutely no time fixing up.
You would assume that he'd know everybody, given that he grew up on the block,
but he never seemed to interact with anyone.
[De Villiers] He creeped a lot of people out
just by his size and the house.
Halloween, we'd buy candy,
and kids, when they reach his house, they would cross the street.
[Kolker] You can imagine when people hear there's been a break in the case
that they wouldn't be necessarily shocked
that it was the loner on the block who didn't take care of his house.
Every time we walked past the house, you'd say,
"Why aren't they fixing this house up?"
"It's the only one in the neighborhood that looks like that."
He used to say that he is an architect.
There was times I thought he was, well, full of shit.
Now I find out the guy has an office near Park Avenue.
[Kolker] Rex Heuermann ran an architecture firm,
but he wasn't the sort of architect who was, you know,
drawing up plans for skyscrapers or for dream houses.
Uh, he was more of an expediter,
the person who can kind of get things done through the regulatory hurdles.
Bonjour. I'm Antoine. Today on the interview, Rex Heuermann,
owner of RH Consultants, a Department of Buildings facilitator.
Let's go meet him.
- Rex. Hi. - Hello.
- How you doing? - Good to see you.
Likewise. I hope you don't mind, I brought my assistant with me, Norman.
[Heuermann] Hello, Norman.
I see it's raining out.
- Yes. - Shall we go through to the table?
- Yes. - Yeah, I know. You said…
My old co-worker called me, and she said, um, "Did you hear what happened to Rex?"
And then she says, "He's the Gilgo serial killer."
And I think I dropped my phone.
Rex, he had his own company, RH Consultants.
I worked with him there for about six years.
I was pretty much his right-hand person.
Think back at all the times you were with him, alone,
working with him for so many years, you know, it just brought me chills.
- Tell us who you are. Stuff like that. - Okay.
Um…
Rex Heuermann. I'm an architect.
I'm an architectural consultant. I'm a troubleshooter.
- Born and raised on Long Island. - Okay.
Been working in Manhattan since 1987.
Rex and I would go to meetings together, we'd drive back to the office together,
just daily stuff.
He said when he was younger,
he was either working in the Parks Department
or working as a ranger for the beach area.
So he seemed to know the ins and outs of that area pretty well.
There was one incident that was a little strange.
[eerie music playing]
[Henriquez] My friend Catherine was an interior designer,
and she went to measure his house one time.
She said when she got to the basement that she was going to go in to measure,
he stood in front of the door and said, "You don't need to go in that room."
"It's just guns I have in there. I have just guns."
And he… That's the one room she said she never got to measure.
She thought, "Why wouldn't he let me in that room? What else is in that room?"
[helicopter blades whirring]
[tense music playing]
[reporter 1] For a fourth straight day, investigators are concentrating
on the home of suspected serial killer, Rex Heuermann.
[reporter 2] For many hours now, police, Suffolk, state police, Nassau police,
they have been at his house, inside his house, taking evidence.
We've seen them remove bags of evidence from the home as well.
Ray Tierney, the DA, filed something like
300 subpoenas and search warrants about Rex Heuermann.
The police spent 12 days searching his home.
They dug in the back, then started taking the guns out one by one.
[Tierney] He had a tremendous amount of firearms down in the basement,
upwards of close to 300, I believe.
He considers himself a hunter. He considers himself a marksman,
so, uh, I think like everything he did, he took it to extremes.
There was no evidence that the guns were used
in the commission of any of the murders,
but we also recovered some personal devices,
uh, computers, laptops,
and although they had been forensically wiped,
we were still able to recover certain pieces of evidence off of that.
[sinister music playing]
[Tierney] We saw what his searches were like.
[keyboard clacking]
[Tierney] They centered around the investigation of Gilgo…
the victims, the victims' families…
as well as a lot of really disturbing
abuse, degradation, and torture of women in pornography.
We got his financial records,
we got the records of the family, we were putting it all together.
[somber music playing]
[Kolker] They've reconstructed the movements of Rex's family.
In the 1990s, Rex Heuermann married Asa Ellerup,
who was a woman from Iceland
who already had a son from a previous marriage.
Then some years later, Rex and Asa have a daughter.
When did he have time alone to do these things, you know?
How did he take women prisoner and also be a family guy?
[Gallucci] The police don't believe the family knew anything
about what Rex Heuermann was doing.
Through looking at credit card records and cell phone records,
they were able to place Rex Heuermann's family out of town
during the time of the Gilgo Four's murders.
Rex's family would go on vacation,
either in Atlantic City, on vacation in Iceland,
stay there for maybe a week, and then he would join them later.
They've reconstructed the movements of Rex's family,
and they were always out of town for long periods
during the exact moments that these women disappeared.
[tense music playing]
[reporter] Asa, Victoria, do you have anything to say
about why you're here today?
[reporter 2] The wife of the man accused of the Gilgo Beach murders
is breaking her silence tonight.
[reporter 2] Asa Ellerup, the wife of the accused serial killer,
declared that her jailed husband is not capable of the crimes.
[reporter 3] She says she knew nothing of this.
He also has two adult children.
They say they're just witnesses to this and watching from afar.
[Kolker] Almost immediately after his arrest,
his wife, Asa Ellerup, filed for divorce.
But then she started coming to his court dates,
and she was issuing statements saying
that she couldn't believe that he necessarily was the killer.
[reporter] After investigators wrapped up
collecting evidence at Rex Heuermann's home,
his wife Asa Ellerup, and her two adult children
returned to a life they no longer recognize.
Don't talk to me.
Don't even say a word.
Wanna take pictures? Go ahead!
It was very surprising to me
that they moved back into the home after the search,
knowing that the murders could have possibly taken place there.
But I also don't know if they had any other option.
The family was seen barbecuing on the front lawn.
[Kolker] They set up camp there and they lived there
even though the place has been ripped apart.
And then they start filing to try to get some of their possessions back,
including Rex's gun collection, which seems a ludicrous thing to ask for.
It's a very eccentric state of affairs.
[reporter] The estranged wife and two children
of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer,
Rex Heuermann, stood quietly as her attorney spoke to the media.
It's a matter of piecing their lives back together
and how they're going to move on.
Nobody wants to believe their family member, their dad,
their husband would be capable of these kind of crimes.
[woman] I woke up one morning to a beautiful sunrise,
and my husband said out of the blue,
"I think my cousin is a serial killer."
My jaw dropped.
[somber music playing]
[Margaret] When Rex was picked up,
the cousins were just in shock and disbelief.
It's hard to reconcile that he was able to disguise himself so well.
He wasn't an outsider in the family.
He was an organizer of the family reunions.
He was called Dear Rex, our Dear Rex.
It's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
My husband was talking on the phone to some of the cousins,
and they started talking about stories of his childhood,
like, "How could this happen?"
"How did this person come out of our family?"
That's when I started hearing more stories about Rex's childhood.
The core of the stories were a lot of rage and anger issues.
It was like walking on thin ice being around his father.
You didn't want to set him off
because God knows how he was going to react.
Rex actually lived in the house that he grew up in as a child.
[man] That house has not changed in 60 years.
Growing up, Rex was a classmate of mine.
He was two years older than me, but I met Rex when I was in second grade.
He was very, very quiet.
Uh, almost too quiet.
Extremely introverted.
I was on the playground, and at that time, um,
he was getting picked on by three or four kids,
and they beat him up.
And, um, he was a big kid, even back then.
He towered over everybody, and he never fought back.
He just took it. He took it and took it.
His father was very, very hard on him.
We would be playing on the block,
and he would be yelling and screaming at Rex.
His mother, for whatever reason,
couldn't leave, you know, this abusive man that everybody was traumatized by.
And so the pipeline of trauma
flows from one generation to the other.
My husband went to stay, actually, at Rex's house
for a family reunion that I didn't go to.
And. he came back and said, "You'll never believe this… This house,
that, you know, my cousin is an architect,
and this house is like, you know, like a scary horror house."
"Everything is falling apart. It's dark."
My husband told me he was… He was really creeped out.
If you're living in a house where you were abused and traumatized,
I don't know, if it were me, I would want to leave that house.
Not only did he stay in that house,
he just kept it like a capsule of time from his childhood.
[tense music playing]
[Tierney] Through our investigation,
the profile that emerges of the defendant is
an individual very much who lived this dual life,
where on one hand, this life that he presented to the public,
and he would go into the city, work as an architect.
On the other hand, this secret life that really only he knew about.
We started to learn more about his travel and life patterns,
which oftentimes brought him to outside jurisdictions.
[reporter] Investigations surrounding suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann
are expanding far beyond the Gilgo Beach area.
His DNA has reportedly been entered into a statewide database
to see if he's connected to any other cold cases in New York.
Also, two locations where he owns property are now wrapped up in this investigation.
[reporter 2] Police in New Jersey, South Carolina, and Nevada
are investigating if he's linked to unsolved murders in those states.
The more you learn about Rex Heuermann,
the more you see that he didn't just stay in Long Island.
You had to wonder if maybe he was on the hook for other murders
all around wherever he went.
Who knows how many cases outside of New York before we're done.
[dogs barking]
[woman] One day, I just randomly went onto,
like, Google News and then saw this person's picture
that was the suspect arrested for the Gilgo murders
and started to have a, like, a visceral panic attack.
[suspenseful music playing]
It was like a PTSD flashback.
[woman whimpering]
[Taylor] After seeing that picture, "This is him. This is the same guy."
[sinister music playing]
[Taylor] I realized I could have died that night.
[melancholy music playing]
[Taylor] Then I thought, "I have to tell somebody."
Like, this is the person.
He is the suspect of multiple murders.
What if there's people missing in the area that I was took?
What if there's people that were taken from the club?
They had just cracked who this person was,
and a lot of guilt started to surface too.
So I started to research a lot, trying to find answers
if this individual had any ties to the area.
Valerie Mack had connections to Philadelphia,
which is where she would work
and she went missing in the early 2000s from this area.
Her body was found on Long Island.
What if Valerie Mack was taken from Philly and brought to Long Island?
This is the map of all of the relevant addresses so far.
It has missing persons, found bodies,
and relevant addresses of the suspect all across the United States.
I absolutely think that there are other victims out there.
Not only bodies that could be found or have already been discovered,
but ones that are missing in other areas of the United States.
[tense music playing]
[boat horn blowing]
[Cann] I'd never been to Long Island before my sister went missing.
I've never had a reason to go before.
[dramatic music playing]
[Cann] It's been, you know, 16 years.
[reporter 1] The suspect in Long Island's Gilgo Beach murders
has been charged with the killing of a fourth woman.
[reporter 2] Today, Rex Heuermann was charged
with Maureen Brainard-Barnes's murder.
[reporter 3] The hair found in the buckle of this belt used to bind Brainard-Barnes
is said to be linked to Heuermann.
[Cann] I had been waiting for this for a long time.
Throughout these years, I have continued to hold on to hope
that one day there would be justice for Maureen
and that whoever took Maureen's life would be held accountable.
Today is another important chapter
in the long pursuit of justice for Maureen.
It has been 16 years since the last time I saw my sister,
16 years since I heard her voice, because 16 years ago, she was silenced.
Thank you.
[melancholy music playing]
[Karnes] Maureen was not just a sex worker,
not just one of the Gilgo Four.
She was somebody's friend.
She's, you know, somebody's sister, somebody's mom.
[girl] I'm here to speak for my mom, Maureen.
I was only seven years old when my mother was murdered.
Her loss drastically changed the trajectory of my life.
There are countless times I needed her and she was not there.
I remember she read to me every night,
and now I can no longer remember the sound of her voice.
The indictment by the grand jury has brought hope for justice
for my mom and my family.
Now we move to the second phase, prosecution of these four cases,
as well as continuing to use the grand jury
to investigate the other cases.
[Gallucci] After ten years of mostly silence,
police started reaching out to women with a history of sex work
to say, "Do you have any experiences that could help this investigation?"
[man] My staff has interviewed 141 sex workers.
So far, we've had 12 women that have claimed interactions with Rex Heuermann.
[Gallucci] They had people coming forward and finally police are saying,
"We trust you."
"The things that happened, we're gonna take them seriously."
And then police were back at the Heuermann house
to do another search.
[reporter] Talk about déjà vu.
We were here back in July and now months later,
we're here as investigators issued another search warrant.
They focused on the basement this time.
So it could have been something they discovered last time.
Maybe there's more evidence they found in the meantime.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Tierney] When we first searched the house,
we recovered his computer
and although it had been forensically wiped,
we were still able to recover certain pieces of evidence off of that.
And utilizing the evidence that we had obtained,
we expanded the investigation
to all the bodies found in and around the area of Gilgo Beach.
[reporter] A developing story here tonight.
Investigators combed a wooded area in Manorville
on Long Island this afternoon.
Another search related to the Gilgo Beach investigation.
[tense music playing]
Police start searching a different part of Long Island, way out in Manorville,
near a set of pine barrens where some victims had been found.
[reporter 1] The remains of two Gilgo Beach victims
were found in Manorville decades ago.
The partial remains of Valerie Mack in 2000
and the partial remains of Jessica Taylor in 2003.
The rest of their remains were later found along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach.
[reporter 2] Law enforcement officials are tight-lipped,
but say this is a joint investigation
between the Suffolk County Police Department,
New York State Police, and the District Attorney's Office.
[Tierney] All of the areas were being searched,
and it's sort of monumental
because there's this active and ongoing case,
but you have this other investigation,
and all of it now is sort of happening at once.
This is the first time police are outright saying there could be a link
between the Manorville victims,
the other victims on Ocean Parkway, and the Gilgo Four,
and is confirmation that they really were looking at all the cases.
Up until this point, police were very adamant
about Gilgo Four being their own case.
This is moving at a rapid pace.
They're expanding the search into North Sea,
which is an area that is about 25 miles east of Manorville
and isn't an area that has been, up to this point,
associated with the Ocean Parkway murders.
[reporter 1] The search has widened to the hamlet of North Sea,
where 28-year-old Sandra Costilla's body was discovered back in November of 1993.
John Bittrolff has been long suspected in her death, but never charged.
We wanted to look at all of these women and put all of these pieces together.
We were working at, like, a breakneck pace.
My goal is to bring closure to as many cases as possible.
[indistinct chatter]
[man] He's walking in now. He's walking in already.
[Tierney] We're here today to announce additional charges
in the case against the defendant Rex Heuermann.
Those charges pertain to the 1993 murder of Sandra Costilla,
and the 2003 murder of Jessica Taylor.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Tierney] With regard to the 1993 discovery of Sandra Costilla,
there were hairs from Sandra Costilla's remains
that are of particular significance in this case, and at that time,
John Bittrolff was excluded as the donor of those three hairs.
Those hairs were retested in 2023 and 2024,
and defendant Heuermann cannot be excluded
as the contributor of that male hair on Costilla.
[Gallucci] John Bittrolff was convicted in 2017
of the two murders in the early '90s,
Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee,
and he was always the prime suspect for the murder of Sandra Costilla.
[woman] I work for the Legal Aid Society of Suffolk County,
and I work within the Appeals Bureau.
And our office represents Mr. Bittrolff on appeal from his 2017 convictions.
He's been incarcerated for approximately ten years.
Sandra Costilla, at the time of the murder,
she was living in Queens,
where she may have been working as a sex worker,
and even though they suspected
that John may have been responsible for her murder,
the physical evidence that was found at her crime scene
was some hair samples,
and they came back to not belong to Mr. Bittrolff,
so he was never charged with her murder.
Even though the district attorney had come out and affirmatively said,
"That we believe that one person killed all three women."
Possible connection between those two murders
and the murder of Sandra Costilla
is under very active investigation at this time.
[Gallucci] All three women were killed within a three-month time frame.
All left in a very similar manner,
but Bittrolff always maintained his innocence.
They find no DNA connecting John Bittrolff to Sandra Costilla,
and so when they find a hair that is later tied to Rex Heuermann,
what does that mean?
Does that mean Bittrolff was not lying all this time?
[Marcoccia] There were also hairs found on Rita and Colleen's body
that had not been tested.
So what do we need to have looked at
to compare to Rex to see if we can tie him to those crime scenes as well?
I requested that the district attorney review Mr. Bittrolff's convictions
based upon their indictment of Rex for Sandra Costilla's murder,
and because of their longstanding theory
that only one person killed all three women.
Their response to me was that Mr. Bittrolff's convictions
are not being reconsidered.
[somber music playing]
[Kolker] Sandra Costilla, 1993.
If Rex Heuermann is responsible for her death,
that means that he spent the next 30 years living in Massapequa Park
at large, under everyone's nose.
That's 30 years where he might have been harming other people,
killing God knows how many people.
He was 29 in 1993, and the next murder that he's charged with
is Jessica Taylor in 2003.
So that's a ten-year gap.
Jessica Taylor was last seen in New York City.
Uh, she was working as a sex worker.
Rex Heuermann was in New York City at that time.
[Kolker] It was amazing and shocking actually
to hear that Jessica Taylor was named a victim of Rex Heuermann
'cause she had been orphaned for so long in this case.
On July 26, Jessica's body was recovered.
At that time, the Suffolk County PD spoke to witnesses,
and the witnesses had observed the night before
a dark-colored pickup truck in that vicinity.
[Kolker] Once again, it's the Chevy Avalanche
that pries this whole thing open for the police.
[Gallucci] For, like, ten years, police have said
there are different MOs with different victims.
But then police release digital evidence
that adds a whole disgusting new chapter.
[dramatic music playing]
[reporter] We're told Rex Heuermann kept a gruesome roadmap of six vicious murders.
This planning document crystallizes and encapsulates his intent
for the commission of these murders.
The planning document was discovered on a hard drive found in the Heuermann house,
and it was a file created in the year 2000 that had been deleted.
Police were able to recover it.
That planning document was jaw-dropping.
He had lists of equipment he needed to use.
Tips for doing a better job the next time.
Everything from, "try to hit the victim a little harder,"
to "try to get some rest so you have more time to torture your victims."
[Gallucci] It makes me think about what these women went through
before they died.
I never considered that there was an element of torture
or, like, this sadistic part
that it sounds like happened before these women were killed.
[Kolker] This is a document written by somebody
who was so determined not just to do it,
but to do it again and again.
As the years go on, he starts to change things up
and get a little bit more organized,
a little better at avoiding detection,
which would explain why he made sure that Amber Costello
didn't have her cell phone with her.
[Gallucci] He has plans for dump sites, which corresponds to the locations
where Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack's bodies were found.
There's also a section
where he talks about getting rid of evidence,
in particular destroying tattoos and removing the head and hands,
which corresponds to the victims later found on Ocean Parkway.
So what seems to be the MO's of several killers
could actually all be one man adapting and evolving.
Is it possible that all of these cases are connected to him?
[dramatic sting]
[waves crashing]
[Tierney] This is the case that matters to Suffolk County
because of the notoriety and the interest that it's garnered,
but to me, it's about the victims and their families,
and what we need to do
is find some small measure of justice for all of them.
[melancholy music playing]
The grand jury with regard to the Gilgo Four is over,
but the case continues, and that investigation has been expanded,
both to the bodies that were found on Gilgo and beyond.
Every person who was tragically murdered in Suffolk County,
uh, they're in play.
This case is not over.
We have to prove it at trial, and we have a lot more to go,
but just to be able to bring it to this point for them
is very, uh, very gratifying.
[Gallucci] From the beginning, I always felt that this was one killer.
And it felt really good to know
that some of the women that I got to know through my research
were finally going to get justice.
I feel like this is what we've all been waiting for
for decades.
[horn honking]
- [woman talking indistinctly] - [Cann] I see them. Hey, ladies.
I think us as families coming together is very important
because you have people that are going through
the same thing as you, that understands.
[Meserve] It's nice that we have each other.
It's very unusual.
You just think, "This could never happen to me,"
and now we're all families that this happened to all of us,
and so you don't feel so alone.
You kind of lived in this bubble,
and then all of a sudden you kind of had this family dynamic
that the only people that knew what we were going through was us.
- We all grieved differently. - Exactly.
[Funderburg] My 30th birthday marks half of my life without my sister.
It's definitely been hard.
It was hard when I found out I was pregnant,
the first thing I thought was,
"I want to share this with my sister," and "He'll never get to meet his aunt,"
and "How am I going to explain this to him one day?"
'Cause nobody deserves to go through what we went through.
I was a little toddler.
[Meserve] I think this connection with family members
has been very helpful for Lily.
That was Megan's daughter. She just turned 17.
[talking indistinctly]
In the beginning, Liliana remembered only trips to the playground with her mom
and the laughing.
She doesn't remember those now,
so it's sad for Liliana that she doesn't have her own memories.
Her friends look at Lily and say…
[gasps] "Are you Megan's daughter?"
- And you look just like her. - All the time.
- Your eyes and your nose.
Your eyes are very dynamic, and your mom had those eyes.
[Meserve] She definitely reminds me of you.
[Gallucci] Some families aren't here to see this justice.
Both Megan Waterman's mom, Lorraine Ela, and Mari Gilbert,
Shannan Gilbert's mother, passed away.
They fought so hard for this moment.
I just wish they were here to see it.
I believe Mari would still be campaigning to have Shannan's death ruled a homicide,
and she would not be convinced that
Shannan's death was disconnected from the others.
It's easier for the police department to say, "It's a cold case. Let it be."
That could happen. We're hoping it doesn't.
I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure it doesn't.
[Cann] Shannan deserves justice.
At the end of the day, we all are here to acknowledge
that without Shannan Gilbert going missing,
our loved ones would have never been found.
[dramatic music playing]
[Gallucci] I think we're at the beginning of the story.
There are dozens of women whose murders are unsolved.
Some of them who worked as sex workers.
A lot of the older cases are cold because people just aren't around,
people moved away,
and a lot of families just kind of lose hope and faith.
They don't feel like the police are gonna do anything,
and they don't know what else to do.
So how many more could there be?
[Funderburg] It was tough not having information for so long,
but you just had to keep the faith
and just pray that something would come one day.
'Cause she would never give up on me, and I could never give up on her.
So, hopefully, justice is just around the corner.
[melancholy music playing]