Megan Waterman: Murder on Gilgo Beach, Part Two
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I'm Kristen Sevey. This is Murder, She Told. This is part two of Megan Waterman's story. If you haven't listened to part one, I suggest going back and starting with that one first. And just a heads up, this episode contains some language past the 45-minute mark. Here is part two of Megan's story.

The family of Megan Waterman had a funeral to plan. They decided to have Megan cremated, and on January 30th, they had a visitation for friends and relatives at Jones, Rich, and Hutchins Funeral Home in Portland. A memorial service followed that was led by a reverend.

Megan was a natural leader who loved to be in charge. She was always up for an adventure, and she would stick up for those she loved even if it put herself in danger. You couldn't tell Megan anything was a bad idea. We all remember the way she loved to jazz people up. Megan was strong-willed. Her friends loved to follow her in her adventures. Megan's daughter, Liliana, who was five years old, was at the service.

Megan wouldn't be buried until May. The FBI got involved in the investigation and got a search warrant to seize Akeem's laptop. He was in jail, and he had given it to a woman named Ashley, someone he allegedly once cheated on Megan with. The FBI presented her with a warrant, and she turned it over.

Akeem, who also went by Vibe and Mello, made calls to Ashley from prison. In Robert Kolker's book, Lost Girls, he recounted what Ashley had told him. The last time he called me, he told me he was going to kill me and violate me. He said he was going to break my jaw and break my ribs, because it doesn't leave a mark when you break ribs.

In addition to law enforcement, the family was suspicious of Akeem. Lorraine said, She never went out on jobs without him, so he must have laid eyes on the killer. He acted as her pimp, and one of their chief responsibilities is protection.

In late March in Long Island, all remaining snow had melted and the brambles and sandy soil were once again revealed. Suffolk County Police led the largest search to date. There were 150 officers on loan from the New York State Police, the State Park Police, neighboring Nassau County Police, and a busload of recruits.

They brought fire trucks that had long ladders that could extend over the brush, giving officers an aerial view. The FBI sent a helicopter and an airplane to conduct flyovers with high-resolution cameras. They found another female body, bringing the total to five.

Police continued into early April, continuously fighting ticks and poison ivy. And on April 4th, they found three more sets of remains. One of them was connected to the other remains found years prior on a distant part of Long Island. Another was a small Asian man who was dressed in what appeared to be women's clothing. And finally, there was a child, no bigger than a toddler, wrapped in a blanket.

That brought the body count up to eight. After expanding the search over the county border into Nassau County, they discovered two more bodies. One was just a skull, and the other was a partial skeleton. This was the tenth and final body that was discovered by police on Ocean Parkway in the spring of 2011.

The police were stunned to discover so many bodies. They were unsure whether or not they were all the responsibility of one killer, or if there were multiple people using the same area as a dumping ground. The four victims, all found in close proximity to one another that included Megan Waterman, were quickly believed to be the responsibility of one person.

The Bangor Daily News later interviewed Long Island resident Don Gaynor, who said, It makes sense. There's very little lighting. There aren't security cameras of any kind. And when you get down here at two or three o'clock in the morning, you could be the only car on the road for half an hour. It's a very easy place to dump anything that you don't want people to know about. And your chances of getting caught are nil to none.

On May 2nd, Megan's mother, Lorraine, flew from Portland to New York City for a conversation with the other victims' families, moderated by author Robert Kolker. They all sat at a hotel restaurant and shared memories and feelings about their loved ones. Just a couple of weeks later, Megan's ashes were buried in Portland at Brooklawn Cemetery.

The families of the other victims came together again in June for a vigil on Long Island. They visited the locations where the women's bodies had been discovered, placed crosses, and released balloons in their honor. Lorraine said the Suffolk County PD was present and allowed them only 10 minutes at the site. Several camera crews were present, including Dateline and 48 Hours. Melissa Bartholomew's stepfather pounded a cross into the earth.

Choking back tears, he said, At least now there's a marker here. I hope they catch this sick bastard. Fury and Megan's family had reached a fever pitch about Lorraine's continued public-facing involvement. Megan's brother, Greg, and her friend Nikki went down with Lorraine to the vigil in June, and he recalled the drive, saying, She was more concerned with impressing the other families there.

On their return, Greg did explode when he saw that Lorraine had posted on Facebook that the women at the vigil were her, quote, new family. Robert Kolker, when interviewing him a year later, said that he was still furious.

He said, speaking to her as though she were at the interviews, quote, Everyone in your biological family knows how you are, your true colors, and all of these other people don't. You were never a mother to her. You just raised her. By the end of 2011, only five of the victims had been identified, the four women all found in December, and Jessica Taylor, whose torso had been previously found in another part of Long Island.

This case was huge. Richard Dormer, Suffolk County Police Commissioner, told the Associated Press, It's the biggest investigation I've ever been involved in, after a 20-plus career with the Suffolk Police. By December of 2011, there was a website that had been created devoted to tracking the case. A&E had published a two-hour documentary. 48 Hours had featured the case.

A $25,000 reward was being offered by the Suffolk County Police Department, and 1,200 tips had been received. Commissioner Dormer said that the police now believed it could all be the work of a single killer. On December 13, 2011, Lorraine returned to Long Island again to mark the passing of a year from the time that her daughter's body had been recovered.

She was joined by the families of the other victims, as well as the family of Shannon Gilbert, who was still missing. The week prior, some of Shannon's personal belongings had been discovered in a marshy area behind Oak Island Beach Association gated community. They included a purse, ID, a cell phone, and jeans.

At 9.15 a.m., just hours before their vigil, cops, using an amphibious vehicle to slice through thickets and muck, discovered Shannon's skeletal remains. They were about a fourth mile away from where her belongings were discovered. Lorraine later recalled that she saw the coroner's van drive by as she was putting crosses at the gravesite.

The police held a press conference later that day and offered a scenario in which Shannon ran from a client's home in a drug-induced late-night panic, got lost in the dense marshes, stumbled, and drowned. They said, At that time of night, there would be lighting on Ocean Parkway, and it's possible she could see the lights and was attempting to get there. It'd be very easy to get exhausted, fall down, and not be able to move any further.

Shannon's mother was skeptical. Positive identification came shortly afterward, and it was confirmed that there were now 11 sets of human remains in the vicinity of Gilgo Beach. Cops, though, didn't believe Shannon was murdered. The autopsy, eventually released to the family in May, said that the manner of death was undetermined. Shannon's family, however, believed she had been murdered.

Meanwhile, in Maine, Akeem had been charged with a crime under the Mann Act of 1910, which criminalized the transportation of a sex worker over state lines. He was charged under federal law in the District of New York. Just two weeks before he was to be released in April of 2012, he pled guilty and was held pending sentencing. Elizabeth had made it her mission to, quote, keep Akeem behind bars.

In October of 2012, Megan's daughter, Liliana, was just starting kindergarten. She wanted to write a letter to Officer Doug Weed, who had helped her mom when she was a teenager. She wrote, Hi, Officer Weed. It's me, Lily. Here's a picture of me from school. I hope I get to see you again someday. My mommy lives in heaven now. She's an angel. Nana doesn't lie, so I guess she is.

I'm in kindergarten, and I'm real smart. Nana says you're real nice, and you knew my mommy. She was nice too. I hope you like my picture. Anna says I'm beautiful, just like my mommy. Doug Weed was overcome with emotion reading the letter. His heart broke for little Liliana, who was now living with Muriel, her Nana. He said, if we get the chance, we would adopt her.

Another year came and went without answers. In January 2013, Akeem appeared in federal court again for sentencing. It was reiterated that Akeem refused to cooperate with investigators in Megan's death, but they did say that Akeem was no longer a suspect in her murder. The judge said, "...he didn't kill her, but he certainly put her in the zone of danger."

Hakeem said that he lacked a father figure growing up and was taken under the wing of his co-defendant, Robert Blake, who, quote, taught him the ropes of pimping. He was given a three-year sentence, one year more than what was typical under the sentencing guidelines. In July of that year, Robert Kolker's book Lost Girls was published, which provided an intimate look at the five women who were identified and their families.

Little new information was learned about the case for the following seven years. If they were making any progress, it was invisible to the public. What was visible was a federal corruption investigation into the top brass of the Suffolk police. Save on O'Reilly Brake Parts Cleaner. Get two cans of O'Reilly Brake Parts Cleaner for just $8. Valid in-store only at O'Reilly Auto Parts. O-O-O'Reilly Brake Parts Cleaner.

James Burke spent his entire career with the Suffolk Police. He rose through the ranks to become the chief of police in 2012. He was shepherded through the ranks, in no small part, due to the support of Thomas Spoda, an attorney who began his career as a prosecutor in Suffolk County, and later served for 15 years as the district attorney of Suffolk County.

The same year that James Burke became chief, a man named Christopher Loeb broke into his SUV on December 14th. It's not clear if Christopher knew the vehicle belonged to the chief, or if it was just a coincidence. Soon thereafter, he was arrested at his mother's home on a variety of parole violations.

Police searched the residence and found some stolen merchandise and Chief Burke's duffel bag. The bag contained his gun belt, several magazines of ammunition, a box of cigars, a humidor, a small bag of toiletries, and clothing. But most importantly, sex toys and pornographic videos.

Cops hauled him into the station and shackled him to an eyebolt on the floor of an interrogation room. Chief Burke, quote, barged into the room, punched him, and shook his head violently, even threatening him with a hotshot of heroin. In other words, a fatal dose. Christopher taunted the chief, calling him names inspired by the nature of the porn he'd found in his bag.

The chief then went out of control, screaming at and beating Christopher until one of the detectives present said, Boss, that's enough. That's enough. If you want a deep dive on this whole scandal, I recommend checking out Unraveled Podcast.

The stories about the incident circled around the office, but eventually came to the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in May of 2013. They opened an investigation.

For two years, Chief Burke was able to stymie the FBI's investigation through intimidation and control. But by 2015, federal agents gained the cooperation and testimony of at least 10 officers. In October of 2015, Chief Burke resigned. In December of 2015, he was charged, arrested, and held without bail. And by November of 2016,

He'd pled guilty and was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison.

U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said, "...he abused his authority by brazenly assaulting a handcuffed prisoner. He pressured subordinates to lie to cover up his criminal acts, and he attempted to thwart the investigation into his conduct." With today's sentence, Chief Burke learned that no one is above the law, and that the consequences for such egregious behavior are severe.

FBI Assistant Director in Charge William Sweeney said that Chief Burke not only threatened to undermine the integrity of a federal investigation, but also the reputation of all the Suffolk County police officers who value the laws they are sworn to uphold.

But Chief Burke wasn't the only one caught up in the conspiracy. His pal, District Attorney Thomas Spoda, was indicted in October of 2017, after which he immediately resigned. In December of 2019, Spoda was convicted of conspiracy, and so was the ADA Christopher McPartland, who, ironically, was Suffolk County's top anti-corruption prosecutor.

Newsday, one of the biggest journalism outlets in Long Island, has tracked the case carefully for years, and the fallout continues to this day. Many wondered how the corruption of Suffolk's top brass impacted the investigation into the Long Island serial killer.

The only thing that's known for sure is that the FBI, at some point in the first couple years of the investigation, was kicked out of the investigative team under the direction of Thomas Spoda. Netflix decided to make a movie on Robert Kolker's book, Lost Girls. On the day that the trailer for the film was released, January 16th, 2020, the new Suffolk County Police Commissioner, Geraldine Hart, called a press conference.

She announced the creation of a website, GilgoNews.com, which would be a clearinghouse for information, a way for law enforcement to communicate directly to the public. She also revealed, for the first time since the investigation began, a specific detail about the case.

She explained that there was a black leather belt used on one of the victims. She didn't reveal how the belt was used or on which victim, but she did reveal that it was painted with two letters and published photographs of it. On one side of the belt was finished black leather. On the other side was a rougher unfinished leather with two painted white letters, quite small, perhaps a quarter inch tall, that read H.M.,

or possibly WH. She asked for the public's help in identifying the owner of the belt. An attorney representing one of the victim's families shot back, They had this belt for nine years. Why are they releasing it now? It's nothing but publicity pablum.

That same month, Megan's daughter, Liliana, who is by then 13 years old, spoke publicly about her mother for the first time with the Portland Press-Herald. She said that she wondered what her voice sounded like, or her laugh, and that she was always going to be sad about not getting to know her. The case seemed dormant. It had been nine years, and it was difficult to believe the case would ever be solved.

In April of 2021, Geraldine Hart retired from her post and was replaced by a new commissioner, Rodney Harrison. On February 23rd, 2022, he announced the formation of a multi-agency task force. It included the FBI, the New York State Police, and multiple Suffolk County agencies. And it was this task force that solved the case.

The following month, in March of 2022, they started looking for the owner of a Chevrolet Avalanche, an odd-looking pickup truck with an extended cab and a very short bed. The reason that they were searching for this owner goes back to the abduction and murder of one of the other victims, Amber Costello.

Around 11.30 p.m. on the evening of September 1st, 2010, Amber, who advertised her sex work on Craigslist, was contacted by a potential client. It was three months after Megan's disappearance.

Some sort of arrangement was made and the client arrived at her place. After he entered the home and made a payment, a man, who was in cahoots with Amber, appeared and confronted the client, saying that he was Amber's boyfriend and to get the hell out. The man complied but later contacted Amber over text, saying, "That was not nice, so do I get a credit for next time?"

The next night, the same client contacted Amber again. At around 11:17 p.m., she left her home. She was never seen alive again. It turned out that this so-called boyfriend had gotten a good look at the man and the vehicle he drove.

He described him as white, male, in his mid-forties, with dark, bushy hair. He was quite tall, 6'4 to 6'6, and a big guy. The witness called him an ogre.

He wore distinctive, big oval 1970s-style eyeglasses. But most importantly, he drove a dark-colored Chevy Avalanche. They were even able to narrow to a particular body style: a first-generation Avalanche.

The task force, in 2022, set about trying to find the owner of that avalanche, and though the police have not explained that process in detail, I believe that they most likely did some record searching with New York's DMV. They probably looked for people that lived in Long Island, were in their 40s, were tall, required glasses to drive, and had a dark-colored, first-generation Chevy Avalanche registered in their name.

One of the names on that shortlist was Rex Andrew Heuermann. He had a dark green avalanche, and he met the physical description to a T. Over the following 16 months, police looked deeply into Rex's life, and each stone that they unturned further fueled their suspicions that Rex was the Long Island serial killer. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. Oh!

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Rex Heuermann was married to an Icelandic woman named Asa, and they had a daughter. Asa also had a son from a previous marriage. The four of them spent many years in a small red house in suburban Long Island in the city of Massapequa Park. He lived in the center of a densely developed grid of streets with single-family homes as far as the eye could see. He was 40 miles from Midtown Manhattan, not far from a stop on the Long Island Railroad.

Rex had a business in Manhattan called RH Consultants and Associates, which he established in 1994. He was a registered architect and had an intimate knowledge of the building codes. He would often consult on major building projects as a local expert, helping clients like Target, Nike, and American Airlines navigate local building code.

He had an office space in Midtown near 5th Avenue and West 36. He had people working for him. He appeared to have a successful middle-class lifestyle. Between March of 2022 and July of 2023, police executed over 300 search warrants and subpoenas looking into every aspect of Rex's life.

They got his financial records and discovered a regular payment for a premium version of Tinder. They got Tinder's records associated with that payment, which led them to the discovery of an email address and a name. The name was Andrew Roberts, which he abbreviated Andy, and he used the email springfieldman9 at aol.com.

They got the records from AOL, which revealed that he had created the email back in January of 2011 with the name John Springfield and a burner cell phone that I'll refer to as burner cell number five. And to remove any doubt that Rex was using the account, there were selfies that were discovered that were sent from the email account.

Police discovered an email that was sent to the AOL account in February of 2021 with the image of a sex worker. The sender's email was hunter1903a3 at gmail.com, which I'll call the Hunter Gmail account.

The police then sought records from Google, and it turned out that the IP address that was used to create the Hunter Gmail account matched the IP address of Rex's home in Massapequa Park. The Hunter Gmail account had a new phone number too, which I'll call Burner Cell Number 6. The name used was, again, Andy Roberts. Police sent Google the Burner Cell numbers and asked if there were any other accounts that were linked to them.

which revealed yet another third email address, thawk080672 at gmail.com, which was registered with the name Thomas Hawk. I'll refer to this as the Hawk Gmail account. This is a lot of information, so just stick with me.

With the communication records from the two burner phones and the three email accounts, they were able to piece together a profile of Rex Uerman. He had hundreds of communications with sex workers across all of his devices. He was a regular client.

He was logged into the Hawk Gmail account when he conducted thousands of Google searches, which included many that were related to pornography. He searched many times for sexual depictions of young girls, searching for things like 10-year-old, age 12, 13, preteen, and schoolgirl.

He sought out violence against women, searching for rape, bruised faces, torture, and suffering, with terms like crying and depressed. He also seemed to be interested in power dynamics and helplessness, searching for terms like slave, tied up, and begging. Some of the most egregious combined multiple elements, and some of them are pretty graphic.

The Hawk Gmail account also showed 200-plus searches for things related to the Long Island serial killer investigation.

But this was all recent stuff. Law enforcement had to try and retrieve records that were 12 to 13 years old and link him to the killings. Many of the records that they might want, like the location records of Rex's primary cell phone, were long gone, purged by cell phone carriers. Plus, burner cells 5 and 6 hadn't been used in the commission of the crimes. The burner cell phones that were used in the killings were all different.

I'll call these burner cells 1, 2, 3, and 4. They were able to get his billing records on his primary cell phone that went back to 2007. And with those came some general location data. They compared that location data to the data gleaned from the victim's cell phones and from the burner cells 1 through 4.

For example, Melissa Bartholomew vanished on July 11, 2009. Cell tower records showed that the burner phone used by the killer traveled from Midtown Manhattan to Massapequa. Billing records from Rex's primary cell showed that it, too, traveled from Manhattan to Massapequa.

Six days later, the killer used Melissa's phone to make taunting calls to her family. One of those calls was at 12.40 p.m., and it was placed in Midtown Manhattan. An hour later, at 1.45 p.m., billing records indicated that Rex's primary cell was used to make a call from Midtown.

A month after that, Rex went to Iceland for nine days, August 10th through the 18th of 2009. All activity on Melissa's cell and on the burner cell ceased. On August 19th, the day after he returned, activity on the cells resumed.

At 7.23 p.m., Melissa's cell was used again to make taunting calls to her family. It pinged in Midtown Manhattan, and sure enough, Rex's primary cell was also used to make calls from Manhattan at 7.16 and 7.28 p.m.

Police compared every known location of the killer based upon victim phone records and the location records of burner cells 1 through 4, and in no instance was Rex's primary cell in a different location. Investigators wanted to know if his wife was aware of what was going on, and they soon discovered that all of the killings had taken place while she was out of town.

Asa was in Iceland for a month and 10 days when Melissa was killed. She was in Maryland for five days when Megan was killed. And she was in New Jersey for eight days when Amber was killed. Though there's no guarantee of what she knew or didn't know, it did give her an ironclad alibi. They were unable to confirm her location through cell phone records for the earliest victim in 2007, Melissa Brainerd Barnes, because those records had been destroyed.

The circumstantial evidence was persuasive, but nothing directly linked Rex to the four women. They had no direct proof that it was Rex who purchased and used burner cells 1 through 4. They had no witnesses of the crime or the disposal of the bodies. But now that they had a prime suspect, they could put their forensic evidence to work.

Maureen's remains were bound with three leather belts, and a hair was recovered from one of the buckles. Megan was bound with duct tape, and two hairs were recovered from the tape near her head. Amber was also bound with duct tape, and a hair was recovered from the tape that was near her head. These four hairs were all similar. They were all from a white female, and they did not match any of the victim's hair.

None of the hairs were suitable for the best type of testing, nuclear DNA. But in July of 2022, detectives sent them out for mitochondrial DNA testing by an outside laboratory. Mitochondrial DNA testing can be helpful for establishing someone is part of a very small group of people, or even a family, but cannot be used to determine a unique match beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The lab came back and said that all four hairs belonged to the same group, called the haplogroup, named K1C2. They confirmed that none of the victims' hair belonged to this group. In July of 2022, a detective took 11 bottles from a trash bin that was left outside for collection in front of Rex's home. They took swabs from the discarded bottles and sent the swabs to the same lab.

They generated full DNA profiles based upon the bottles, and they determined that one of the profiles belonged to the haplogroup K1C2, the same as the hairs. The lab concluded that they belonged to the same individual or someone closely related.

Investigators wanted to confirm the lab results with a lab specialized in mitochondrial analysis. In June of 2023, they sent the hairs and the bottles to another lab. They performed the same comparison and concluded that they both belong to a very rare group of individuals that represent only 0.02% of the North American population.

In other words, 1 out of 5,000 people belong to this very rare group, and 4,999 out of 5,000 people could be ruled out as matches. The bottle is believed to be Asa's DNA.

Investigators believed that her hair was transferred to the victims through Rex's actions. But they weren't done. Investigators recovered one single hair from the bottom of the burlap used to wrap Megan's body. They determined it was a white male hair. It was unsuitable for nuclear DNA testing, just like the others. They had sent it in for mitochondrial testing back in July of 2020, and a lab determined it was part of a haplogroup V7A.

In January of 2023, detectives recovered a used pizza box that Rex had discarded in a garbage can in midtown Manhattan. It had some leftover pieces of crust remaining, and from that food debris, they were able to get Rex's full DNA profile.

In April 2023, a detective recovered the white male hair from the first lab and delivered it to the second lab, which, again, specialized in mitochondrial analysis. They ran their tests and determined that Rex and the unknown male hair from Megan both belonged to a very exclusive group comprising of just 0.4% of the population. In other words…

Only 1 out of 2,500 people in North America belong to this group, meaning that 99.96% or 2,499 people out of 2,500 people can be excluded. But not Rex. It was everything that they needed.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office was ready to indict. They took the case to a grand jury, which rubber-stamped the charges. On the morning of Friday, July 13, 2023, Rex Heuermann was arrested near his office in Midtown Manhattan. He was cooperative. Detectives took him to Suffolk County Jail, where he was processed.

The county jail is in a complex of numerous criminal justice buildings, way out on Long Island. Within walking distance was the Suffolk County Court, where he was brought to appear before a judge at 2 p.m. that same day. The district attorney's office, representing the people of the state of New York, charged him with three counts of first-degree murder for the violent deaths of Melissa Bartholomew, Amber Costello, and Megan Waterman. He pleaded not guilty.

At the same hearing, the judge considered whether or not to grant him bail. They outlined the case against him, the witness description of him and his Chevrolet Avalanche, the old burner's cell records, which showed Massapequa and Midtown Manhattan as relevant locations, the timing of his wife being out of town for each of the murders, and the fact that Rex's primary cell was in all of the right places.

They drew the judge's attention to the similarity of all the victims. They were all young petite women who were sex workers. Their remains had missing clothing. They were all bound similarly with belts or tape. They were all found in a tightly clustered group 22 to 23 feet from the edge of Ocean Parkway, near Gilgo Beach. And perhaps most distinctive of all, they were wrapped in a burlap-type material.

They explained his modern habits, soliciting sex workers, searching constantly about the investigation, using aliases, multiple emails, and two burner phones. But most importantly, the DNA evidence.

The prosecution argued, based on the serious, heinous nature of these offenses and the strength of the people's case, we believe that the only means to ensure the defendant's return to court is to remand the defendant without bail.

Accompanying their request was a 32-page document outlining their case against Rex, signed by the deputy chief of the DA's office, Alan Bode. The judge agreed. He ordered that Rex be held without bail pending trial. As Rex was being processed, law enforcement was executing multiple searches. They impounded two Chevy Avalanches. The one that Rex owned back in 2009 and 2010 had been sold to his brother in South Carolina.

Plus, he had a new one in Long Island. They took them both. They searched his workplace, taking computers and other electronics.

They searched two storage units that were in Long Island in Amityville that were both in Rex's name. But the location that they spent the most time was Rex's house, the home that he shared with his wife and kids, the same home where he spent his childhood with his aerospace engineer father, 105 First Avenue, Massapequa Park,

Police kicked out the family and spent 12 days tearing the place apart. The search warrants, later released to the public, named numerous items that they were after. News crews and neighbors were constantly monitoring the search, scrutinizing every item taken to the police van and truck.

Drones operated by news agencies were flown over the property, revealing that a heavy piece of machinery, an excavator, was used to dig up the backyard. Ground-penetrating radar was used to determine if the soil in the backyard was disturbed, helping to guide their digging operations. They found an arsenal of guns, 279 weapons, most of them in a basement vault big enough to walk into.

Rex had 92 illegal firearm permits. Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison called the search productive. The police are now sifting through everything, separating the wheat from the chaff, and will slowly return items with no evidentiary value to the family. Five days into the search, Asa filed for divorce. By the time Asa and the children were allowed back into the home, it was a disaster.

They started documenting the damage, including the destruction of a $3,000 greenhouse, and submitted it to the district attorney's office. Their lives were in shambles. Their father was an accused serial killer. Their privacy was destroyed. Their home was barely recognizable. People wondered, what did they know about Rex's vicious hobby?

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The amount of documentation on this case is undoubtedly overwhelming. The police will turn over to the defense in the discovery phase of the judicial process, mountains of paperwork. It will take many months, probably years, for attorneys to process everything and to argue about what will be admissible at trial.

Rex was only charged with three of the murders. There will likely be at least one more added to his charges, the murder of Maureen Brainerd Barnes. Police have said that he is the prime suspect in that investigation.

It is unlikely that there will be any possible plea on this case. The highest penalty in New York is life in prison. In other states, it might be possible for a defendant to plead guilty in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. But in this case, it seems improbable that the prosecution would accept anything less than life in prison without the possibility of parole.

If Rex doesn't die in jail, by suicide or otherwise, there will be a trial. The victims, sadly, will never tell their stories. They will never have the opportunity to face their killer. But their families will. Though I am relieved that Rex has been taken off the streets and will likely be brought to justice, I can't help but wonder why it took so long.

Amber Costello disappeared on the evening of September 2nd, 2010. But Rex Heuermann wasn't identified as a person of interest until March 14th, 2022. That's 11 and a half years of time. The witness who ID'd the Chevy Avalanche was interviewed by police multiple times early on in the investigation. It appears that Suffolk County PD possibly sat on this crucial information for over a decade.

That being said, there is some confusion over the key witness, Dave Schaller. Dave lived with Amber in a small house, and he helped her with her sex work by being her security. She usually did in-calls, and he would be in the other room, available if anything should go wrong. And on those rare out-calls, he would often drive her and wait for her in the car while she was with her client.

In an interview he did with A&E's documentary team back in 2016 for their series The Killing Season, he reflected on the last night that he saw Amber alive when she did an outcall without his protection. And even weirder, without her phone, the night that she got into a truck with Rex Heuermann.

He told the producers that he walked Amber that night to the edge of the property, but stopped short from walking her all the way to Rex's vehicle. According to Dave, the client was waiting around the corner, out of sight. In the interview, Dave choked up and expressed remorse for not following Amber to the vehicle, for not walking those 10 more feet, for not getting a look at the killer's license plate or his vehicle.

Fast forward to 2023. In the charging documents, the cops explain that they presented Dave a photo lineup of vehicles, and he picked out the Chevy Avalanche. Something isn't adding up. Either he got a good look at the vehicle, or he didn't. Perhaps the police told him to stay quiet about this crucial piece of information.

But this mystery is at the heart of the investigation. Without this link, Rex Heuermann could still be a free man. The charging document also revealed more details about Megan's final moments of life. Rex's wife had left for Maryland on June 4th, and in her absence, Rex planned his next murder.

On Saturday, June 5th, the same day that Megan had checked into the Holiday Inn in Hoppog, Rex activated a new burner cell. He found her Craigslist ad, and he contacted her on his new cell. The last communication on Megan's cell was at 1.31 a.m., just as she was walking out the front door of the hotel where she was caught on security camera.

That final call was with Rex's burner phone. That was the final communication for the burner phone as well. Megan's phone remained on for a while. Police were able to track her cell from Hoppog to Massapequa Park, where Rex lived. The final ping from her cell was 3.11 a.m.,

According to Megan's aunt Elizabeth, her death certificate listed her cause of death as asphyxiation. The New York City Medical Examiner's Office explained that generally meant strangulation or smothering. Though it's not clear if it was while she was alive or after she was dead, Rex used duct tape to bind her, and her body was placed in a burlap-type material.

The state has not yet put forward a theory on how Rex killed Megan and disposed of her body, but I believe that he killed her at his home in Massapequa Park, shut off her cell phone, prepared the burlap at his home, and put her bound body in the back of his truck, drove the short distance to Ocean Parkway, and under the cover of darkness, carried her body through the brambles and dumped it on the sandy soil.

The police released precise coordinates of where her remains were recovered, and it was exactly 22 feet from the edge of the pavement of Ocean Parkway. I believe that Rex got back into his truck and went back to his normal routine, blending in like he had for the 47 years of his life. Today, there's a bike path on the north side of Ocean Parkway. It's new.

Families ride on the fresh tar and admire the views of South Oyster Bay. Ocean breezes create intricate patterns in the expanse of marsh grasses. It's natural beauty, a welcome respite from the concrete jungle. Bicycle tires may even ride over the exact spot where Megan's body was found. Do visitors have any inkling of the horror that happened there?

There is no shrine. There is no plaque. Has the grim history of this place been tarred over as well? Manny Fernandez of the New York Times wrote on April 8, 2011, Each disappearance drew little to no notice. He reminds the reader almost every paragraph how little people cared. But he never quite said who these people were. He wrote, quote,

Living in the margins of society, often trading sex for money with anonymous clients in anonymous places, struggling with drug addiction and estrangement from their families, prostitutes have long been invisible, vulnerable prey for the sick and depraved. Few notice them when they are alive. Fewer still when they are missing or found dead.

After having spent so much time learning about Megan's case, it is apparent to me that Megan's friends and family cared about her disappearance.

They summoned public support, getting articles published in main newspapers over the six months that Megan was missing. They enlisted the support of Lost and Missing and held numerous vigils and rallies in both Portland and Long Island. Hundreds of people attended these rallies in Portland. Hundreds of people that cared.

Perhaps Manny isn't referring to the friends of Megan or the local press. Maybe Manny is referring to the public at large. But did Manny take a poll? How does he, a single reporter, presume to speak for the public? Perhaps Manny is referring to major outlets, like the one he works for, the New York Times.

But nowhere in the article does he apologize on behalf of the Times for not covering the disappearances that were in New York's backyard. Maybe what Manny was really saying is that he didn't care.

Neil Genslinger of the New York Times wrote in December of 2011, quote, It's not just the crimes and the realization of the scope of them, ten bodies so far, that grabs the attention. It's the interviews with parents, siblings, and boyfriends, many of whom seemed jarringly resigned to the sex trade business that sent most of the victims to their death.

It wasn't a local man who murdered the women. They were done in by their own choices. And just as shocking as the realization that there was an active serial killer in the community was the fact that the friends and families still loved and supported them. But hey, at least Neil owns his victim blaming in straightforward language.

Perhaps most importantly, though, is the possibility that the police didn't care. A sister of Maureen Brainerd Barnes, one of the victims, alerted the police right away after her disappearance in 2007. But according to an article in the Daily Telegraph, she said she was told, your sister ran away, and she doesn't care about anyone.

The family of another victim, Shannon Gilbert, fought tooth and nail with the Suffolk police to take her disappearance more seriously, which may have led to the discovery of all the bodies. But perhaps the most glaring issue is this.

Not one news article I found suggested the possible existence of a serial killer in Long Island prior to the discovery of the many bodies, despite the fact that there were numerous missing women in a short period of time in similar circumstance that might lead one to that possible conclusion.

After the discovery of the bodies, national attention turned to the families of the victims, and the families were forced to constantly address the fact that their loved one was a sex worker, constantly having to justify the worth of their existence. Talk show host Geraldo Rivera invited Megan's Aunt Elizabeth to come on, but she withdrew after he continually referred to Megan and the others as hookers.

Headlines in national outlets like the New York Daily News focused in on the salacious details, leading with headlines like, No one notices a missing hooker until it's two missing hookers. And there's more where that came from. Instead of using the women's names, they were hookers, prostitutes, and my personal favorite, prosti. Yeah.

Some articles said nothing about the women's lives but their sex work, and didn't even spare one word of opprobrium for the killer. But these women's lives mattered. Period. So let me be their voice for a moment. Pardon my crass language, but... Fuck you, Rex Huberman. I hope you rot in jail.

Though the family has waited for 13 years, it appears that they're finally getting the justice they deserve. But nothing will fill the hole left by Megan's death. They are only left with memories.

Megan's mom, Lorraine, who has since passed and never got to see this moment, said, Megan was filled with wonderment and curiosity and just a little bit of mischief. Her best friend, Nikki, said, Megan was a fan of the show Jersey Shore. She enjoyed the drama. Allie, her sister, said, In the summertime in Portland, we always used to sing Waterfalls by TLC. We knew every word.

She remembers catching ladybugs and collecting mica, competing to find the biggest piece. She said, "Meghan had a great personality. Everyone got along with her. She was very outgoing." Liliana has few memories of her mother. She was so young when she died. Lorraine remembered breaking the news of her mommy's death. "We told her God needed a beautiful angel. So he took mommy. And now she's a beautiful angel."

When I look through all the photos that we have on Megan's life, I'm struck by her confidence. In one shot, when she was at a difficult age, about 14 years old, she stands with her hands on her hips, a summer tan on her arms, in a gray tank top. She looks directly into the camera with a mischievous grin. She looks unstoppable. Though she had her struggles, I wonder where her life would have led.

When I think of Megan, I think of a life that was taken too soon.

Thank you so much for listening. If you are loving Murder, She Told, I want to encourage you to share it with a friend. If you want to support the show in another way, there's a link in the show notes with options. Follow Murder, She Told on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Head to MurderSheTold.com for a detailed list of sources and photos from this episode and more. Thank you to Byron Willis for his writing and research, and to Brittany Healy for her research support.

If you have a case suggestion or a correction, feel free to email me at hello at MurderSheTold.com. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder She Told. Thank you for listening.