A modern Jack the Ripper haunted Long Island for decades, targeting sex workers while authorities failed to act. Discover how Rex Heuermann evaded capture for so long despite leaving victims along Ocean Parkway. From corruption within Suffolk County PD to public apathy toward the victims, this chilling case exposes how prejudice and incompetence allowed a killer to continue his reign of terror until a DNA breakthrough finally brought him to justice.
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00:00Serial killers may feel like a long-gone specter of the 70s and 80s,
00:04but the ongoing prosecution of Long Island's Rex Huerman proves that the danger is still very real.
00:10And most terrifying of all, he nearly got away with it.
00:14You have someone who's been potentially living in Long Island, refining his techniques,
00:19and going after women, basically with impunity, right under everyone's nose.
00:25Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're investigating the shocking true story of the Long Island serial killer.
00:31Not one, not two, but three more sets of remains.
00:35A modern Jack the Ripper, Rex targeted young women engaged in sex work primarily between the 90s and 2010s,
00:42and has since been charged in the deaths of seven victims.
00:45But what makes this case so viscerally unsettling is just how long he managed to remain undetected.
00:51We got 10 unsolved murders, and there were no leads, no suspects, no persons of interest.
00:57Netflix's documentary series Gone Girls, the Long Island serial killer,
01:01positively identifies the key factors that delayed his comeuppance, each compounding like a sickening gut punch.
01:08Despite the determination of the victims' loved ones to find the perpetrator,
01:12it seemed as though they were the only ones looking.
01:16You're a very weak man. You prey on small, innocent girls. We're going to get you.
01:22Here are the downright disturbing reasons why the Long Island serial killer was provided a fertile hunting ground for decades,
01:28and exactly who might have enabled his abominable streak.
01:35The search for one missing woman, Shannon Gilbert, led to the discovery of a dumping ground
01:40that had effectively turned Long Island's Ocean Parkway into a mass grave.
01:44This is the one place I didn't think anything bad could happen.
01:48And it's the one place it did.
01:50In 2010, skeletal remains were identified off the shoulder of the scenic roadway.
01:55But they didn't belong to Shannon, and neither did the next three sets of body parts police uncovered.
02:00The proximity of the bones to one another, along with the fact that they'd been bound in burlap,
02:05immediately triggered alarm bells that this was likely the work of one lunatic.
02:10As media descended on the story, the serial killer theory stuck.
02:14Word rapidly spread around the island that a madman was at large,
02:18generating a sense of hysteria that sleepy Suffolk County was no longer safe.
02:22That is, only if you're a sex worker.
02:25The victims of these homicides were engaged in a high-risk business,
02:29and these homicides appear to us to be directly related to that business.
02:34As the Gilgo Four were ID'd, the commonalities became blatant.
02:38Amber Lynn Costello, Melissa Bartholomew, Maureen Brainerd Barnes, Megan Waterman.
02:44These young women all had one thing in common.
02:46They had engaged in prostitution, a key term that became deeply stigmatized throughout the investigation.
02:52The police laughed at her and said, you know, don't worry, she's a prostitute, she'll turn up.
02:59Public sentiment began to shift from, lock your doors,
03:02to, as long as you don't participate in that line of work, he won't come after you.
03:07Like I was saying, if you're not a sex worker, you don't have anything to worry about.
03:11This attitude permeated the county, echoing throughout the greater New York area
03:15and reinforcing a primitive sense of disdain for sex workers.
03:19While it was undoubtedly tragic that these young women had lost their lives,
03:23there was a worrisome sense of collective relief that these victims supposedly brought it on themselves.
03:28I think that it was very comforting when we found out that he was targeting a specific group of women
03:32from a specific website, so that it made it something that was removed from us.
03:37Six more sets of scattered remains, including those of a toddler,
03:40were found the following year, until remnants of Shannon were finally unearthed.
03:44Although her death remains a mystery and has not been linked to the Long Island serial killer case,
03:49it would take 13 years for an arrest and the other slayings to occur.
03:53So why did it take over a decade to crack the case?
03:56That's 30 years where he might have been harming other people, killing God knows how many people.
04:02A crooked investigation.
04:04The elements along the brush, such as the salt water and harsh sun,
04:08had stripped the crime scenes of key information.
04:11There wasn't a real lot of things of forensic value left at the scene.
04:16Most of the remains were eventually identified, but three does remain unaccounted for to this day.
04:22Although the story made global news in the early 2010s, it quickly went cold.
04:26Under pressure to issue a response, police offered the public nothing.
04:31I can't comment on how they're working the case because they're not working the case.
04:36Despite having a precise location where Shannon was last seen alive,
04:40search teams failed to check the marsh because it was deemed wasteful and inhospitable to their efforts.
04:45I showed them what direction she went in, and that was the last I saw of her.
04:52And quite frankly, the last we saw of the police department too.
04:58This is even more egregious when considering that Suffolk PD is one of the highest paid forces in the country.
05:04To dedicate that amount of resources when it was just a mystery as to what happened to her,
05:10it was just not something that we did.
05:12When they finally did look there, they found her.
05:15And so emerged a trend of the local jurisdiction failing to adequately deliver on their oath to serve and protect.
05:22Because sex workers are less likely to come forward and speak with police,
05:26investigators should have made greater attempts to reach out to that community.
05:29Yet they ignored these valuable people who could have helped thread the story together.
05:34In fact, they even began to neglect important collaboration with the victim's mothers as well.
05:39Have you gotten any updates from police, from investigators?
05:43Honestly, Suffolk County Police Department have not talked to me.
05:47I am at the point right now of setting up a PayPal account to try to get donations to hire a private investigator myself.
05:55Time continued to tick on with no true lead standing out.
05:58The immediate rush of interest dissipated,
06:00and a periodic column reminding local newspaper readers that there were no updates became the rule.
06:06For most people, it's just a story. And for us, it's our life.
06:11Internal politics further tainted the investigation.
06:14The retiring commissioner and DA, Tom Spoda, disagreed on even the most basic principles of this case,
06:20such as whether or not one person was responsible for the murders.
06:24Serial killer dumping bodies along the stretch.
06:26Well, you know, I'm not going to say that, but certainly we're looking at that.
06:30And the decision to appoint Inspector James Burke as chief of department was a controversial one.
06:35He had more than a dozen internal affairs complaints against him.
06:40To put that underqualified, scandal-plagued officer at the top of one of the largest jurisdictions in the United States was a completely shocking move.
06:52In fact, he'd been recommended for the role by Spoda,
06:55who had his own blemished track record of forcing dubious confessions in order to get convictions.
07:00Incredibly, Spoda had worked with Burke in a 1979 murder case
07:04to develop a shaky eyewitness testimony that served as the key to scoring another series of convictions.
07:10This case sets the relationship up between Jimmy Burke and Tom Spoda for the next 30 years.
07:17With Burke heading the Gilgo Beach investigation,
07:19Suffolk County PD isolated itself from the neighboring county, state police, and even the FBI,
07:25turning away analysis that was underway because it was deemed irrelevant.
07:29Detectives were also obstructed from providing information to the FBI's behavioral science unit
07:35to assist with the analysis, the profiling of the killer.
07:40And that was the doing of Tom Spoda and James Burke.
07:45Directives were even sent out stating that if a member of service was contacted by an external agency,
07:51they were to immediately notify their supervisor.
07:54It began to feel as if the urgency to contain all information regarding the case was a power grab at best,
07:59and a cover-up at worst.
08:01And so the conspiracy theories began to pile up.
08:04The police this, and the district attorney that.
08:06The first 20 times I would sort of wave it aside saying,
08:09this is a murder case, I don't want to talk about conspiracy theories.
08:13But then after a while it became clear that these weren't theories.
08:15One of the most shocking speculations to surface was that Burke himself could be responsible for the murders.
08:21It was revealed that he'd hired several escorts while the investigation was ongoing,
08:26with one woman even describing that interaction at a press conference.
08:29He seemed to like to choke me.
08:31In response, Burke quickly lawyered up, with none other than Tom Spoda at his side.
08:37Another popular theory centered Burke's attempts to slow the investigation
08:41as a means of stifling the ultimate discovery that a close friend of his was the killer.
08:45Regardless of whether one subscribed to these theorems,
08:48it became clear why the efforts to resolve the case stagnated.
08:52All the cops amongst ourselves would say, it's a joke, he doesn't care about that.
08:56He would call them misdemeanor murders, where they really weren't important.
09:00They're not a high priority. They're just prostitutes.
09:03In 2015, Burke was arrested for violently assaulting and threatening the life of a petty offender.
09:08While looking into those who defended Burke during that investigation,
09:12Spoda was also taken down for obstruction of justice.
09:15Rather than focusing on that case,
09:19Burke and other top investigative minds in law enforcement
09:23were totally consumed with just trying to keep him out of prison.
09:28The Suffolk County Commissioner changed hands multiple times over the next several years,
09:32each chipping away at formerly ignored data in the investigation.
09:36Finally, in 2023, a breakthrough put the rumors to rest and pinpointed the prime suspect.
09:44Police narrowed the search for the killer by tracing cell phone pings on burner phones
09:48that had been in touch with victims.
09:50They identified a pattern of travel for these devices from midtown Manhattan
09:54to a residence in southern Long Island.
09:56Through eyewitness testimony of the suspect's physical description and vehicle,
10:00police had a new name, Rex Heuermann.
10:03Rex Heuermann. I'm an architect. I'm an architectural consultant.
10:07I'm a troubleshooter. Born and raised on Long Island.
10:10Okay.
10:11Been working in Manhattan since 1987.
10:14They began to surveil him and uncovered an alarming trend in his behavior
10:18that perfectly lined up with the killer's.
10:20After discarding a pizza box, his DNA was swabbed from the half-eaten crust
10:24and matched to evidence found at the crime scenes.
10:27A smoking gun.
10:28Was outside his architecture firm last night around 8.30.
10:31And as he left his offices, detectives were seen following him near 5th Avenue and 35th Street.
10:37During his younger years, he spent a lot of time working at the Parks Department
10:41and as a ranger at the Suffolk beaches.
10:43So his knowledge of the area's blueprints provided all the intel he needed
10:47to kickstart his nefarious career as a serial killer.
10:50The married father of two had spent his entire life living in that same dilapidated home
10:55in the quaint suburb of Massapequa Park.
10:58While neighbors felt he was odd and kept to himself.
11:01He creeped a lot of people out just by his size and the house.
11:05The discovery that a monster had been living among them
11:07sent shockwaves throughout the community.
11:09Rex's co-workers at his New York City architecture firm were just as rattled.
11:14Think back at all the times you were with him.
11:17Alone.
11:18Working with him for so many years.
11:20You know, it just brought me chills.
11:23Rex's family was also clueless about his double identity.
11:26As he found time to be both a family man and a prolific murderer.
11:30In a bizarre twist, his wife Asa quickly filed for divorce
11:34but continues to maintain his innocence.
11:36Nobody wants to believe their family member, their dad, their husband
11:40would be capable of these kind of crimes.
11:44Though a trial date has yet to be set,
11:46the case of who was responsible appears to be effectively closed.
11:49However, the case of why it took so long to stop Rex remains unresolved.
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12:10Gone Girls
12:11So why the title?
12:12Why Gone Girls?
12:14Well, the young woman who disappeared at the hands of Rex were effectively gone.
12:18Gone from this world, gone from social consciousness.
12:21Nobody wanted to look for her sister.
12:25They couldn't even get Maureen's name onto the list of missing persons,
12:28the national database.
12:30A 2020 thriller similarly titled Lost Girls
12:33is inspired by the efforts of Shannon's mother Mary
12:35to link the grieving families together
12:37and raise awareness for their missing girls.
12:40The police failed us.
12:42They failed every one of our girls.
12:44Time and time again,
12:46the narrative that these women were just escorts
12:48dominated the conversation
12:50and their humanity was stripped away.
12:52You guys all put out there prostitutes and hookers.
12:56They were just like anybody else standing here with me.
12:59They're still human beings.
13:01Do not use prostitute or hookers because they were not that.
13:04That's what the police are saying.
13:06This grim public mindset also bled into the ethos of the police department.
13:10Between deep-seated corruption and misprioritized agendas,
13:14the case continued to slip out of the jurisdiction's hands.
13:17It was always one excuse after another.
13:19We don't have people. We're on a budget.
13:21We can't afford overtime.
13:23And finally, they agreed to look for her.
13:26Almost eight months later.
13:28The troubling realities of which unsolved murders are properly investigated
13:32as well as exactly who is considered worth looking for
13:35are both deeply telling.
13:37There's a lot of coverage when a teacher goes missing.
13:40When your next-door neighbor who's a mother of three goes missing.
13:45But there's very little coverage when a woman who's a sex worker
13:49falls off the grid.
13:51By failing to resolve the case as swiftly as possible,
13:54officials also failed the victims, their families, the greater community,
13:58and in a sense, the entire world that watched on.
14:01Maureen was not just a sex worker.
14:04Not just one of the Gilgo Four.
14:07She was somebody's friend.
14:09She's, you know, somebody's sister.
14:12Somebody's mom.
14:14This dangerous precedent that one victim is worth less than another
14:17not only enables serial killers to pick off the low-hanging fruit,
14:21but deeply violates the ethics of a department designed to safeguard citizens.
14:25So with justice hopefully around the corner,
14:28there's still another layer to this case that needs to be settled.
14:31Accountability for the botched investigation,
14:34assurance that this can never happen again,
14:36and a shift in sentiment that these women and others like them deserve better,
14:39that they should never remain gone.