Episode 10 Transcript- The Mysterious Death of Shannan Gilbert & The Gilgo Beach Homicides
[Amanda] Hey Podcast Listeners, I’m Amanda, and this is New York’s Dark Side.
[Intro Music]
[Amanda] Here we are, I’m back with another new episode. Before I dive in, I just want to give a quick shout out and thank you! Thank you for your patience, I’ve had a lot going on and I apologize for being late with this episode drop, but also thank you because New York’s Dark Side Podcast is #5 on FeedSpot’s Top 10 Best New York Crime Podcasts! This whole ride has been amazing, I’m so happy and the show is there because of your support and tuning in to the show. Let’s keep this going! Help support the show by giving us a follow, and sharing with your friends, family, coworkers, random street people… I’m going on a road trip here in a couple of weeks, don’t worry, I’ll be taking you all with me, I have some road trip episodes planned to record on location. It’s going to be super fun. But I mention that because as I go, I’m going to be plastering flyers promoting the show along the way, so if you’re in a rest stop bathroom between New York and Arizona, and you see a flyer for New York’s Dark Side, you’ll know I was there too. Let’s dive in-
[Amanda] I’m not going to lie; this is not the episode I had planned to release next. I have three other episodes in the works- one dark history, one true crime, and one paranormal episode with some special guests that we’ll be filming on location in a local haunted mansion. But there has been some light shed on a case in New York that’s making headlines that for some families of the victims may soon bring some closure. Today’s episode is on a case that has plagued Long Island for a few decades- the case of the Gilgo Beach Homicides. This case is so heartbreaking and has brought me to tears several times in the writing of this episode. My heart goes out to all the victims and their families, I can’t imagine the pain and torment have been through. I honestly don’t really remember hearing about this case until news broke a of the arrest of a suspect in the case, Rex Heuermann, who is currently in jail without bond and maintaining his innocence. I’m linking all my sources for this episode in the show notes and on the webpage for this episode.
[Amanda] On May 1, 2010, in the early morning hours, a chilling 911 call would be placed by a young woman named Shannan Gilbert. Shannan was a college student who was working as an escort, with dreams of becoming a writer and actor. Shannan had started out escorting for an agency, but she and her driver, Michael Pak decided to cut out the middleman and go independent after Shannan had booked some clients on Craigslist and found success from it. According to her driver, Michael Pak in an interview that I was able to stream on the A&E Long Island Serial Killer episode, Shannan almost didn’t take the call that night, but the money had been too good to pass up- she had been offered $450 for two hours. The client was in an area they were unfamiliar with which was why they were hesitant to book this client, but they got into the car and made the long trip to Long Island from New Jersey. The client lived in the gated community of the Oak Beach Association. The client, Joseph Brewer, met them at the gate, let them in and led them to his house. Pak waited in the car, and a while later, he was retrieved by Brewer because Shannan he said was freaking out and he wanted her to leave. Pak went into Brewer’s house. At this point, Shannan is on the phone with the 911 operator, who is struggling to find out where Shannan is calling from. The full 911 call was released in 2022, I was able to listen to it on YouTube… it’s just…. absolutely haunting. Shannan sounds confused, like she doesn’t really know what’s going on. She pleads with the 911 operator for help but doesn’t seem to know where she is, she ends up telling the operator she’s “around Jones Beach”. Pak describes Brewer grabbing her and “trying to push her out of his home” and said that Shannan freaked out saying that “they were trying to kill her”. Shannan does seem to recognize Pak, she does talk to him during the call, but at one point asks, “why are you doing this to me”? The full 911 call would last for about 23 minutes. There are periods of silence as the 911 operator tries to get Shannan to respond to her… There are periods where Shannan is clearly running, you can hear her feet hitting the pavement on the road, you can hear a lot of background noise and her breathing. There are periods where she’s saying “help me, help me, help me” repeatedly, and parts where she’s screaming. During the call, you can also hear the operator speaking to someone about the call, and she’s transferred to another operator who also tries to get Shannan to respond to her. Shannan runs through the community where she is seen by residents who heard her yelling for help. She knocks on the door of another residence, where Gus Coletti would speak with Shannan and try to get her to come into his home to assist her. He’s interviewed on the LISK documentary episode as well and would say that when he saw a car following her, Gus stopped the car, which was being driven by Michael Pak, and told Pak that he was going to call the police, which he did. In his call, he tells the 911 operator that there was a young woman running around asking for help and she was being followed by a black suburban which matched what Pak was driving that night. Shannan would run through the neighborhood to another home, the home of Barbara Brannan. Brannan would also call 911 that night and report that a young woman was knocking on her door, seemed frightened and was asking for help and that she wasn’t going to let the girl in. Now, I’m going to stop here, because as I was reading through the comments on the 911 tapes, there was quite a bit of hate toward Barbara for not letting Shannan in, which to a degree I get but I also think it’s unwarranted. Let’s be real here, most of us, while we can easily say we would have done something differently had we been Barbara, don’t know what we would do in that situation. The world is a scary place anymore. There are cases where people are used to pose as victims to lure good Samaritans into dangerous and fatal situations. But this stuff happens and it terrifying. Barbara was protecting herself and her elderly mother who she tells the 911 operator is also in the house with her, she had a right to not open that door. There’s no guarantee that Shannan would have come into the house had Barbara even opened the door to offer her refuge, she had already run away from Pak, who she knew and had arrived with and from Gus who had offered to help her. Barbara does call a trusted male neighbor, who comes over to look for Shannan, and at that time there was no trace of Shannan or Pak. Police arrived at the scene about 20 minutes after Gus placed his call to them and were unable to find Shannan or Michael Pak.
[Amanda] Now, this case starts out wild with the details of the 911 call and Shannan’s behavior, but it only gets wilder the more I investigated it. In that Long Island Serial Killer documentary, Shannon’s mother Mari and sister Sharre would be interviewed. They didn’t initially know that Shannan was missing but they would be contacted by her boyfriend stating that he hadn’t seen her in a few days. They stated that when they tried to file a missing person’s report, because Shannan lived in New Jersey, they were sent by the Long Island Police Department to New Jersey to file the report there. Now, I’ve thankfully never had to file a missing person’s report, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me… if we know where she went missing from because the family had talked to Michael Pak at this point and had heard from him about the events at Oak Beach Association, why would they be sent to New Jersey. Maybe I’m just being skeptical it because of another family’s experience trying to file a police report that we’ll get to later in the episode. If anyone knows if that’s normal procedure, please let me know. What we do know, is two days after Shannan disappeared, Shannan’s mother Mari would receive a call from a man named Peter Hackett. Dr. Peter Hackett called Mari and said that he “ran a home for wayward girls” and that Shannan was under his care. Now, at this first phone call, the Gilbert’s didn’t know that Shannan was missing. Her boyfriend, who Shannan had met at the escort agency, where he had worked as a driver, would contact Shannan’s sister after this, and ask if they had seen her because she hadn’t been in contact with him for a few days. Hackett would call Mari a second time in the days after Shannan’s disappearance but would later deny making these phone calls. Hackett is just… a strange dude, we’ll talk more about him in a bit.
[Amanda] Now apparently, it would take investigators MONTHS to connect Shannan’s 911 call to the Oak Beach resident’s calls. This is, according to one source, due to a procedural failure because when Shannan told the operator she was “around Jones beach” this statement caused her call to be transferred to another state, rather than the local 911 operators that Gus and Barbara had spoken too. Now Gus, the good Samaritan neighbor who had tried to help Shannan and placed one of the 911 calls would tell the documentary crew of that Long Island Serial Killer episode that he wasn’t questioned until August, four months after the night Shannan disappeared. This case… is just so frustrating and heartbreaking. After that, I’m not sure what police were doing to move Shannan’s case forward. Mari Gilbert talks in her interview about launching her own investigation into the client’s her daughter had. She couldn’t stop thinking that Shannan was near Oak Beach.
[Amanda] Fast forward a bit to December 11, 2010, we’re now 7 months after Shannan went missing. On this day during a routine training exercise, a Suffolk County Police officer, John Malia and his K-9 Blue came across human remains on Ocean Parkway. This is about 3 miles from the Ocean Beach Association. On December 13, 2010, the remains of three more women would be found. They were not well hidden. They were wrapped in camouflaged burlap like hunters use and left above the ground about 500 yards from the roadway. Shannan’s family had gotten a phone call that they had likely found her body, however they would be both relieved and heartbroken to find out that she had been ruled out as being one of the bodies found as none of the remains had a distinct feature that would have identified Shannan- Shannan had a metal plate in her jaw from an assault by her boyfriend. The remains of the four victims would be identified as Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes who have become known as the Gilgo Beach Four. We’re going to talk about each of them.
[Amanda] Maureen Brainard-Barnes was the first victim of the Gilgo Beach four. In 2007, Maureen was a young mother just trying to get by. Her sister was interviewed in the Long Island Serial Killer documentary, stating that Maureen had been trying to find work but was struggling. She had gotten recruited into the escort service after being contacted by someone on MySpace inquiring if she wanted to start modeling. She worked as an escort for a while and was trying to move away from that lifestyle. This is an element that really bothers me listening to and reading about this case. There seems to be so much emphasis on the fact that these victims worked in the sex industry, a trade that has been around since the dawn of mankind, but they were so much more than that and it seems like all of them were trying to get out of it. Maureen had placed many applications to various businesses around her home in Norwich, Connecticut but wasn’t finding any success in landing different employment. A week before her disappearance, she received an eviction notice from her apartment where she was living with her two young children. She booked some clients on Craigslist and went to New York to try to earn some money. This is just so heartbreaking to me. It brings me back to when I was that struggling single mom just trying to get by, hoping I had enough to make my bills, sometimes I didn’t. It’s not easy out there… Sometimes it feels like it’s only getting harder. I remember a time years ago when I was grocery shopping with my son, and I had to put bananas back because I didn’t have to enough money to buy bananas. It took me a long time to get to where I am now and I’m incredibly grateful, but I sympathize for these women, and I completely understand why these, and many other women chose this path. We know now based on court records Maureen was contacted by a burner phone on July 6, 2007, and that there were 16 total interactions between Maureen and the burner phone between the 6th and her disappearance on the 9th. On the night of July 9, 2007, Maureen had booked a client outside of her normal working locations. After a couple of days of not being able to get in contact with Maureen, her brother and brother-in-law went to New York and started looking for her. A missing person’s report was filed on July 14th. Maureen’s sister expressed frustration with the police based on the way they handled her disappearance due to her lifestyle, stating that it took them 2 ½ years to add Maureen to the missing persons database. Maureen’s cellphone pinged in Midtown Manhattan near the 59th Street Bridget around 11:56 p.m. on July 9th. On July 12th, two outbound calls to her voicemail would be made from her cell phone near the Long Island Expressway.
[Amanda] Melissa Barthelemy was the second victim of the four, but the first set of remains that had been found on December 11, 2010. Melissa hailed from Buffalo, NY and had moved to New York City with the dream of earning enough money to move back to Buffalo and open her own hair salon. She started out working at a hair salon in the city, but a year after her move she told her family she had stopped working at the salon as she wasn’t making enough money and had started working at a topless night club. During her last visit with her family, her family would describe noting a change in her behavior. On the night she disappeared, she told her boyfriend she might head out to Long Island and would return in the morning. Her boyfriend would contact family to alert them that she was missing. Melissa had confided in her younger sister that she had been recruited into an escort service. She was working for a man who would set up dates for her on Craigslist, and this man had put her in the hospital on 3 different occasions with head trauma and a collapsed lung. The family tried to file a police report multiple times, they were hung up on and treated poorly. They ended up hiring an attorney to help them file the police report, and he even had difficulty getting the police to the report. He would state in the A&E documentary that he had been told that the police wouldn’t take missing persons reports for prostitutes until they had been missing for 10 days. I’m sorry, but this shouldn’t be a thing…. [Amanda] This narrative that people in the sex trade, which again has been around since basically the advent of mankind, are lesser people needs to stop. They are people and they matter, what happens to them matters, a lot of times they’re victims and it needs to be investigated just like every other case. This whole thing is so infuriating. Sorry, I’m trying not to cry. We know now that Melissa had been contacted by a burner phone on July 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 10th 2009. Heuermann’s wife traveled to Iceland on July 8th, 2009. Melissa was last seen on July 10th, 2009 in New York City. The burner phone that had contacted Melissa was traced to Massapequa Park and Midtown Manhattan on July 10th. Later that day Melissa’s phone was traced from Midtown Manhattan to Massapequa Park. Her phone was used to check her voicemail on July 11 and 12th. Seven days after Melissa was last seen, her sister Amanda would receive a call from Melissa’s phone. Seven days after Melissa went missing, her sister Amanda would get a call from Melissa’s cell phone. When she answered it, there was a man on the other end. She spoke to him, asking about Melissa. He would call her again on July 23, August 5, August 19, and August 26. These calls would be described as violent, where he was describing violent and sexual acts that he had performed. He would call multiple times, by the third time, the police had set a trace and the trace was coming from the middle of Manhattan near the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 8th Ave and from near Penn Station in very crowded areas that did have surveillance cameras, however there were many people around and most of them had a cell phone to their ear. These calls would be important in the arrest that occurred on July 13, 2023. In the final call to Amanda, the then unidentified man would tell Amanda that he had killed Melissa and was going to watch her rot. This statement is just so chilling given that while the bodies were wrapped in burlap, they weren’t really hidden in any other manner, they weren’t buried, they were just left on top of the ground. There’s a potential that the killer was returning to the bodies to visit them.
[Amanda] Megan Waterman was last seen on June 6, 2010. In 2009, she was living in Portland, Maine with her family. Megan had a three-year-old daughter at the time of her disappearance, who she loved and was described as trying to give her the best of everything. Her mother…. Was interviewed on the A&E documentary said that Megan had been approached by a man from New York who recruited her and started trafficking her for sex. Another man took over and is believed to be her pimp and she would go with him to New York where he would continue to traffic her. On June 4, 2010, Heuermann’s wife traveled to Maryland. On June 5, Megan was contacted by a newly activated burner phone. There were multiple contacts between Megan and the burner phone on the 5th and the 6th. Megan was seen on surveillance video leaving the Holiday Inn in Hauppauge, NY, she left her purse and cell phone behind in the room. This was the last known sighting of Megan. The burner phone was traced to Massapequa Park in the vicinity of Heuermann’s home around 3:11 AM. Heuermann’s wife would return from Maryland on June 8.
[Amanda] Amber Costello would go missing on September 2, 2010. Her sister had started working for an escort service and was finding a lot of success in that, which led Amber to also enter the escort service. Amber decided to work out of the Long Island area and work independent of an agency, where as her sister had been working for a licensed escort service when she started out. Amber had posted some ads on Craigslist and found success that way, so her sister also joined her. While they were making a lot of money, they didn’t have the protection and security that an escort service would offer. Unfortunately, Amber and her roommate she was living with at the time of her disappearance started getting involved with drugs, which her sister said led to her taking calls that she wouldn’t normally take leading to riskier situations. What we know now is that on August 28, 2010, Heuermann’s wife traveled to New Jersey. On September 1, Amber would be contacted by a burner phone. The burner phone was traced to West Amityville and Massapequa Park. A short time later, the phone was traced to West Babylon, where Amber lived. According to witnesses, it was pretty routine for Amber to work with a man who would pretend to be her boyfriend to scam clients. The man working with her would pretend to be her boyfriend and freak out on the client. On this day the man who came was described as a large, white male, approximately 6’4 to 6’6, in his mid-forties, with dark bushy hair and big oval style 1970s type eyeglasses. The man was driving a first generation Chevrolet Avalanche which was parked in Amber’s driveway when he came. When he was approached by the man pretending to be Amber’s boyfriend, he reported stated he was just friends with Amber and would call her later. Later Amber would receive a text message from the same burner phone stating “that was not nice so do I get credit for next time”, the text came from Massapequa Park. She would be contacted later by the burner phone five more times, and she reportedly told the witness that the man wanted to see her again but didn’t want to come back to the house because of her boyfriend. The burner phone would be traced to Midtown Manhattan, Massapequa Park, and West Babylon. Amber would leave her home to meet this man, leaving her phone behind, on September 2, 2010. A witness would state they saw a dark colored truck pass the house coming from the direction Amber has walked. Heuermann’s wife would return from New Jersey on September 5.
[Amanda] Unfortunately, the remains of the Gilgo Beach Four were not the only remains to be found in this area. On March 29, 2011, remains were found consisting of a skull and hands These would later be confirmed to the be remains of Jessica Taylor, an escort who had come from Washington DC to New York City a few days prior to her disappearance. Her body, missing the head and hands, had been found on June 26, 2003, in Manorville, NY by a dog walker near a Long Island Expressway overpass. She had been identified by a tattoo of a red heart with an angel wing that said, “Remy’s Angel”. The tattoo had been sliced multiple times by the killer, likely to hide her identity, but they were able to put it together and make it identifiable. Jessica had last been seen in Manhattan, near the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a week before her body was found. The discovery of Jessica Taylor’s remains on the Ocean Parkway launched another search. On April 4, 2011, three more sets of remains were discovered. One set belonged to a female toddler that was approximately 2 years old and “Likely not Caucasian” according to the Suffolk County site, a second belonged to a Transgender woman that is listed as a John Doe Asian Male with poor dental health on the Suffolk County site- there’s a composite sketch of her likeness on the Suffolk County website for this case linked in the show notes. She’s believed to have been between 17-23 years old and had been likely killed 5-10 years before her remains were found. One source I found mentioned that the remains were dressed in women’s clothing, which is why she’s believed to be a transgender woman, and she likely was linked to the sex trade as well, though that is not listed on the Suffolk County site. The third set was partial remains of a female. The partial remains would later be identified as belonging to Valerie Mack. Valerie Mack was an escort working out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her body had been found in 2000, in Manorville, NY about a mile from where Jennifer Taylor’s body would be found in 2003. Her identity was discovered in 2020 using genetic genealogy. On April 11, 2011, two more sets of remains are found seven miles west of Gilgo Beach in Nassau County. One set of remains belongs to a Jane Doe called “Peaches” who has a tattoo of Peaches on her torso, while her identity is still unknown, she has been linked through DNA to be the mother of the toddler that was found on April 4th. The second set, known as Jane Doe #7, gave evidence that the killer has likely been active since as early as 1996. Back in 1996, a couple walking through Davis Park on Fire Island came across a pair of severed legs wrapped in plastic. When the sets Ocean Parkway remains were discovered, a former police officer who was familiar with the 1996 event called Suffolk County Police and suggested they run a DNA test, that would ultimately match the legs to the remains of Jane Doe #7. Just one more quick note before I move on, on the Suffolk County Government’s website for this case, there is a section labeled as evidence where they have pictures of a leather belt found at the scene with the initials either “HM” or “WH” depending on how you look at the belt. There are also pictures of gold jewelry that were found on the remains of the toddler.
[Amanda] After hearing again from police that none of these victims were Shannan, Mari Gilbert did not give up hope. She described in the Long Island Serial Killer launching her own investigation. She and her friends would comb through the client list in Shannan’s notebooks where she had their contact information written. Mari describes them as being wealthy and important people around Suffolk County. Shannan Gilbert’s skeletonized remains would be found some 19 months after she disappeared not far from the Oak Beach Association, lying face up in some brackish water. If you watch the movie Lost Girls on Netflix, it focuses on Shannan’s case. It really focuses in on Peter Hackett being the perpetrator for Shannan. I mentioned he’s a strange guy, and there’s some speculation on the way the case was handled that lead to speculation online regarding police cover up and flawed investigation, I’ll get to that in a little bit as well. According to one source I found Peter Hackett used to work for the Suffolk County Police Department but would testify under oath in this investigation that he was fired from that position because he was using a work issued cell phone to claim he was at work when he wasn’t. He also had a documented habit of inserting himself into situations he wasn’t involved in or to give himself more credit for things than he had. In a VICE article I found, it discusses Hackett working for the police department when Flight 800 malfunctioned and blew apart in 1996 and scattered the remains of the 230 passengers around Long Island. Hackett greatly exaggerated his involvement in the investigation which was a source of embarrassment for the department. After one of his depositions by the Gilbert’s family attorney, John Ray who is now representing a few of the victims’ families, when asked by reporters for Crime Watch Daily if he had anything to do with Shannan or any of the other victims’ cases, Hackett appeared to fake a medical episode claiming that his defibrillator went off because the light was in his eyes from the reporters’ cameras. He clutches his chest and fake falls to the ground. When they start to call 911, he begs them not to, jumps up and starts grabbing at their equipment to find out where they’re from, then gets in his car and drives away just fine. I did find the clip for that on Facebook, and I’ll link it in the show notes. Mari Gilbert would file a wrongful death lawsuit against Peter Hackett, which unfortunately would not make it to court. On July 23, 2016, Mari Gilbert arrived at the residence of her daughter Sarra, who had called her for help stating she was hearing voices. When Mari entered the residence, she was stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife by Sarra, then beaten and sprayed with a fire extinguisher. Sarra had a long-standing history of mental illness and had been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia. She had been arrested previously after Mari had turned her in for drowning a family pet and had lost custody of her son to Mari. Sarra was found guilty of murder in 2017 and sentenced to 25 years.
[Amanda] There’s still ongoing dispute between Suffolk County Police and Sharre Gilbert on whether Shannan’s death is connected to the others, even though the search for her led to the discovery of the other remains. Her cause of death in her autopsy was ruled as undetermined. The Gilbert family attorney, John Ray, had retained an independent medical investigator to conduct another autopsy of Shannan, who found that her hyoid bone was deformed. He did not have access to Gilbert’s soft tissue, it had been boiled away soon after the initial autopsy, so he wasn’t able to make a definitive determination of her cause of death. He did feel that homicide could not be ruled out as a cause of death for a few reasons according to the source material. She was found face up rather than face down, which he felt meant she had not drowned. Her belongings were not directly with her, they had been strewn around the area, which suggested she had been carried to the location she was ultimately found.
[Amanda] John Ray, the attorney for the Gilbert family and some of the victim’s families, was quoted in a source as believing that there was police cover up and poor investigation practices into the Shannan Gilbert case, which is still unsolved as of the recording of this episode. One source I read cited concern that Former Police Chief John Burke may have deliberately slowed down the investigation into Shannan’s case. Burke ended the FBI’s involvement with the Long Island Serial Killer case in February of 2012 shortly after he took the position. On December 14, 2012, a man named Christopher Loeb, a man who was on probation, was arrested for violations of probation at his mother’s home in Smithtown, New York. When they conducted a search of the residence, they discovered multiple stolen items, which included items stolen from John Burke’s police issued SUV. These items included his gun belt, ammunition, a box of cigars, a humidor, and a canvas bag that contained clothes, toiletries, and other items. One source would describe Loeb telling investigators that those other items included hard core porn and sex toys. However, according to a statement from the United States Attorney General’s office, Burke was allowed to enter the Loeb residence while the search was being conducted, and he took the canvas bag, which means it didn’t go into evidence. He didn’t stop there though. He then drove to where Loeb was being interrogated at the Fourth Precinct of Suffolk County’s Police Department in Smithtown. Burke entered the interrogation room and began to assault Loeb, who was handcuffed and chained to the floor, punching, and kicking him in the head and body. This is… fucked up. During this assault, one of the detectives involved allegedly told Loeb that he was going to rape his mother according to one source, and Burke allegedly threatened to murder Loeb with a hot shot- which is a fatal dose of tainted heroin that might appear to be self-inflicted. Burke then worked with others to cover up the assault, pressuring detectives that had witnessed it to stay quiet. An investigation by the FBI and US Attorney general’s office would open an investigation into the assault in 2013. Burke called detectives to SCPD headquarters in Yaphank NY and was able to get detectives to agree to a false episode of events. One of these detectives would even falsely testify under oath in the pretrial hearing denying that the assault on Loeb had happened. Burke would end up being charged and sentenced to 46 months in prison of Obstruction of Justice and Assault.
[Amanda] Geraldine Hart, who became Suffolk County Police Commissioner in 2018, would tell 48 Hours in an interview that the FBI leaving the case in 2012 did hinder the investigation into the Long Island Serial Killer. The FBI would rejoin working on the case in 2015. This is just my opinion… if he covered up all of that, I have no doubt there’s potential for other cover up. Some of the speculation online regarding cover up in the Shannan Gilbert case has to do with Burke working with Dr. Peter Hackett in the Suffolk County Police Department. They knew each other. The assault case was not the only crime John Burke has a tie to. I haven’t looked too much into this case yet, but one source I read cited that John Burke was the key witness in another Long Island murder case, the murder of 13-year-old John Pius Jr when Burke was 14 which led to the conviction of 4 high school aged boys. His testimony would implicate them in bullying and then murdering Pius Jr by stuffing rocks down his throat which asphyxiated him. The prosecutor in that case would later become Suffolk County district attorney and would play a key role in Burke becoming police chief years later. It is worth noting however that both the Suffolk County District Attorney and the FBI would decline to comment on any abuse of power in connection to the Long Island Serial Killer case by Burke. Suffolk County Police do not believe there is a connection between Shannan Gilbert’s case and the Long Island Serial Killer. They’ve maintained that Shannan died because of a tragic accident occurring when she became lost in the marsh where she was found and potentially drowned.
[Amanda] So where are we now with this case? I mentioned in the beginning, there has been an arrest of a suspect Rex Heuermann. There’s still a massive investigation ongoing as of the recording of this episode as they continue to search for evidence connecting him to the victims. Here’s what we do know. I’ve already mentioned the cell phone data. When the Gilgo Beach victims were found, they found female hair that didn’t match the victims on three of the four bodies. One of the sets of remains didn’t had a male’s hair on it. The hair was sent for testing at a lab separate from the Suffolk County Crime Lab. On July 31, 2020, the hair was submitted for further DNA analysis which generated a DNA profile. Heuermann was identified as a suspect in Amber’s case in March of 2022 after being linked to the truck seen passing her apartment, that Green Chevrolet Avalanche that had been parked in her driveway. Heuermann had a Chevrolet Avalanche registered to his name. They began investigating cell phone records and credit card history as well as other things at this point. They were able to tie purchases made by Heuermann with his American Express card at the same time in the same locations of those burner phone calls to the victims. They were also able to track credit card purchases at the same locations at the time where voicemails were checks and calls were placed to Melissa Barthelemy’s family. Heuermann also had a tinder account that was linked to one of the burner phone’s phone numbers that was paid by his American Express Account. When they searched the email, they found selfie photos that appeared to have been taken by Rex Heuermann. They also found another burner email account that had conducted searches for sex workers, torture pornography, videos depicting sexual acts toward children, searches for serial killers, searches on the disappearances and murders of the Gilgo Beach 4, as well as podcasts and documentaries regarding the investigation of the case. In July of 2022, a DNA profile was received from the three female hairs found on the remains of three of the Gilgo Beach victims. Also in July of 2022, an undercover detective retrieved 11 bottles from the trash in front of the Heuermann home and DNA swabs were taken from those bottles. On January 26, 2023, at this point Heuermann was under surveillance by authorities, and they retrieved a pizza box from the trash thrown out by Rex Heuermann and were able to get a swab of the leftover pizza crust for DNA comparison. In March of 2023, they received results of the DNA from the bottles that had been recovered from the Heuermann home’s trash and matched one of the mitochondrial DNA profiles to the three hairs to the three hairs found on the remains, believing that they belonged to his wife. On May 19, 2023, Rex Heuermann is seen on camera purchasing minutes to one of the burner phones. One June 12, 2023, they received confirmation that the male hair found on the victim matched the pizza swab through mitochondrial DNA profiles. On July 13, 2023, Rex Heuermann is arrested in connection to three of the four Gilgo Beach murders. Up until his arrest he was using burner phones to contact sex workers. His wife filed for divorce on July 19, 2023. He’s been charged with first degree murder and is being held without bail at Suffolk County correctional facility. According to a Fox News article, Rex Heuermann has gotten the attention of Dennis Radar, the self-named BTK or Bind Torture Kill serial killer, who says he has a lot in common with Heuermann- being that they were both fathers, husbands, and lived undetected in a neighborhood for prolonged periods of time, and they were taken down in similar fashion through DNA and digital footprints. This is still a developing case as investigators are continuing to search not only in New York, but also South Carolina and Nevada for connections to move potential victims. I’ll be continuing to follow and may do some update episodes as more comes out.
[Amanda] This was… an extremely difficult case to investigate. I’m glad that finally decades later there seems to be some real progress in the pursuit of justice for these victims and their families. I hope that maybe we’ll be able to identify the victims that to this day still are unknown. If you have any information regarding the death of Shannan Gilbert, the Gilgo Beach Four Victims, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, or our yet unidentified victims please call 1-800-220-TIPS. You can also go to the website www.gilgonews.com where you can submit a tip online on the website for the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation.
[Amanda] Please don’t forget you can follow the show on your podcast platform of choice for updates when new episodes drop. You can also follow the show on the New York’s Dark Side podcast Facebook page, on Twitter and Instagram @NYDarkSidePod. You can email me at nydarksidepodcast@gmail.com. The full list of sources will be in the show notes and on our website www.nydarksidepodcast.com. I hope you keep listening… I hope you're having a safe and happy summer and tolerating this massive heat wave that seems to be rocking the country. And most of all, I hope you stay curious.