Rex: The Gilgo Beach Architect | The Rex Heuermann Investigation
Rex Heuermann murdered eight women on Long Island between 1993 and 2010 while working as a Manhattan architect for companies like American Airlines, Target, and Nike. The investigation that should have caught him was obstructed by the very officials running it, with three Suffolk County law enforcement officials eventually going to federal prison for corruption that kept the FBI locked out of the case for years.
This series reconstructs the entire Gilgo Beach case from court filings, cell tower records, DNA evidence, witness testimony, and the public record. Every claim is sourced and cited on NBN.fm.
A 25-episode investigative series from the Neural Broadcast Network.
Rex: The Gilgo Beach Architect | The Rex Heuermann Investigation
The Unidentified Bodies That Don't Belong to Heuermann
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Tanya Jackson, 26, and her 2 year old daughter Tatiana Dykes. An unidentified Asian male dressed in women's clothing. John Bittrolff, convicted of two murders in the same county during the same years. Were multiple serial killers using the same stretch of road?
All sources cited in this episode are available at https://nbn.fm/rex-the-gilgo-beach-architect/episode/ep24.
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NBN is a technology-first media company engineering global IP from the public record. Court filings, forensic evidence, government documents, and primary source journalism, produced through AI-native workflows that let the record speak for itself.
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Tanya Jackson, age 26, her two-year-old daughter Tatiana Dykes.
SPEAKER_01A mother and her toddler found along Ocean Parkway, but conclusively not linked to Rex Huerman.
SPEAKER_00An unidentified biological Asian male dressed in women's clothing.
SPEAKER_01John Bitrolf convicted of two murders in the exact same county during the exact same years.
SPEAKER_00How many killers used Ocean Parkway as a dumping ground? You are listening to Rex, the Gilgo Beach Architect. Before we begin, every document, court filing, and source cited in our investigation is available on the Neural Broadcast Network website.
SPEAKER_01We need to examine the physical evidence recovered during the 2010 and 2011 searches of the barrier island. Specifically, we have to look at the physical remains that Rex Hurriman did not leave behind.
SPEAKER_00Right. Well, to understand the anomalies, we first have to establish the confirmed baseline. We have the data from April 8th, 2026. Rex Hurriman pleaded guilty to seven murders.
SPEAKER_01And during his allocution in court, he explicitly admitted to an eighth victim, Karen Vergata. We have the court record indicating his sentencing is scheduled for June 17, 2026.
SPEAKER_00That sentencing structure includes three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus one consecutive 100 years to life sentence.
SPEAKER_01So that gives us eight established victims tied directly to one perpetrator. But um the physical recovery of remains along Ocean Parkway presents a serious mathematical discrepancy when you look at the total count.
SPEAKER_00Let us trace the timeline of the initial discoveries. According to the CBS 48 Hours Investigation Timeline, a police canine unit discovered human remains near Gilgo Beach in December 2010.
SPEAKER_01Those initial recoveries were four women: Maureen Brainerd Barnes, Amberlynn Costello, Megan Waterman, and Melissa Barthelemy.
SPEAKER_00The forensic profile of these four women was highly specific. It was uniform. All four were petite. They were five foot or under.
SPEAKER_01They weighed approximately 100 pounds. They were sex workers who were contacted through online platforms.
SPEAKER_00Then the scope of the search expanded significantly in May 2011. Investigators located six additional sets of remains along that exact same stretch of road.
SPEAKER_01That brings the total recovery to ten. Those six included Jessica Taylor, who went missing in 2003, Valerie Mack, missing since the year 2000.
SPEAKER_00And Karen Vergata, missing since 1996. Those three aligned perfectly with the established victimology and the physical profile of Hewerman's targets.
SPEAKER_01But the remaining three discoveries fracture the single killer hypothesis entirely. The task force found an unidentified toddler girl.
SPEAKER_00They found an Asian male in women's clothing.
SPEAKER_01And they found partial remains of a woman with a distinctive torso tattoo.
SPEAKER_00Let us stop right there and look at the physical reality of this corridor. Ten sets of remains were found in one localized area.
SPEAKER_01If one man is responsible for eight of them, we have to reconcile the physical evidence of the remaining two sets on the parkway, plus the initial discovery of the tattooed woman's torso found miles away.
SPEAKER_00The presence of a toddler, an Asian male, and remains demonstrating a completely different disposal methodology points directly to multiple distinct actors operating in the exact same geographic space.
SPEAKER_01We need to evaluate the forensic timeline of the woman with the torso tattoo and her child. The methodology here is entirely incongruous with the established baseline for Hewerman.
SPEAKER_00The forensic record for those specific victims actually begins much earlier. On June 28, 1997, a dismembered torso was discovered inside a plastic container in Hempstead Lake State Park, which is located in West Hempstead on Long Island.
SPEAKER_01Because of a distinctive tattoo, investigators referred to this victim as Peaches for 27 years.
SPEAKER_00It took 14 years before investigators located her remaining parts. During that April 2011 expanded search along Ocean Parkway, additional remains belonging to her were recovered in the brush.
SPEAKER_01And during that exact same April 2011 search, approximately 20 miles away from the initial 1997 discovery site in Hempstead, investigators found the skeletal remains of a toddler off Ocean Parkway.
SPEAKER_00In 2015, a DNA analysis confirmed a genetic relationship between the woman found in the plastic container and the toddler found on the parkway.
SPEAKER_01They were mother and daughter, but they remained unidentified until 2024.
SPEAKER_00Let us detail the mechanics of that 2024 identification. The advanced DNA evidence recovered from the scene, combined with genetic genealogy research, finally restored their names.
SPEAKER_01The FBI's forensic experts identified the mother as Tanya Jackson, age 26. The toddler was identified as her daughter, Tatiana Dykes, age two.
SPEAKER_00We have the biographical data detailing Tanya Jackson's life. She was a United States Army veteran. She served honorably between 1993 and 1995.
SPEAKER_01The military records show she was stationed at bases in Texas, Georgia, and Missouri during her enlistment.
SPEAKER_00Following her military service, Jackson became a resident of New York. She lived in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. She was a single mother.
SPEAKER_01Investigators established she was employed in a medical assistant capacity, possibly at a doctor's office. A female friend or neighbor cared for Tatiana while she worked.
SPEAKER_00The critical divergence here from the established Gilgow Beach pattern is the mechanism of disposal and the victim profile.
SPEAKER_01If Hurman meticulously targeted petite female sex workers, a mother and a dismembered toddler in a plastic container do not just deviate from the pattern, they contradict it entirely.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking at the document here, and it specifically says, reading from the Nassau County police statement provided to ABC 7, quote, there's no evidence at this time linking these deaths to Rex Hurriman, and investigators are proceeding as if it's not connected.
SPEAKER_01The forensic methodology corroborates that police assessment. Tanya Jackson was dismembered.
SPEAKER_00Rex Heurriman's documented forensic signature involves transporting intact victims. He wrapped them in burlap camouflage hunting blinds.
SPEAKER_01Furthermore, Tanya Jackson and a two-year-old child do not match the specific target demographic Heurman outlined in his planning documents.
SPEAKER_00Heurman utilized burner phones and online platforms to solicit escorts. The murders of Tanya Jackson and Tatiana Dykes point directly to a different killer, one utilizing dismemberment in plastic containers operating in 1997.
SPEAKER_01We are looking at a completely separate pathology. And we have another set of remains that deviates entirely from the established victimology.
SPEAKER_00In April 2011, during the same expanded search that located Tatiana Dykes, investigators found the remains of a biological male of Asian descent.
SPEAKER_01Forensic anthropologists estimated the age at the time of death to be between 17 and 23 years old.
SPEAKER_00The physical evidence recovered at the scene showed the victim was wearing women's clothing.
SPEAKER_01As of the Suffolk County District Attorney's plea for public assistance in September 2024, that victim remains unidentified.
SPEAKER_00The clothing recovered at the scene indicates this victim may have been transgender or gender nonconforming.
SPEAKER_01The specific victim profile raises a critical sociological question regarding the allocation of law enforcement resources.
SPEAKER_00Marginalized demographics, specifically transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, face disproportionate rates of violent crime.
SPEAKER_01When an individual remains unidentified for a decade and a half, despite being found adjacent to one of the most high-profile serial killer dumping grounds in American criminal history, we must ask how the institutions taft with finding their killers are operating.
SPEAKER_00It suggests a systematic underserving of these populations.
SPEAKER_01If we have an unidentified Asian male, a dismembered mother, and a toddler, all sharing a geography with Rex Heurman's victims, the forensic anomalies along Ocean Parkway force an examination of parallel criminal activity in Suff County.
SPEAKER_00We must review the timeline of John Bitrolf. He was arrested on July 21st, 2014, after his brother Timothy's DNA yielded a partial match to evidence from unsolved homicides.
SPEAKER_01On July 5, 2017, John Bitrolf was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder.
SPEAKER_00On September 12, 2017, he was sentenced to 50 years to life and was remanded to Clinton Correctional Facility.
SPEAKER_01The victims in the Bitrolf convictions establish a distinct pattern of violence against sex workers in Suffolk County. And this occurred during the exact same period Rex Heurman began his murders.
SPEAKER_00Rita Tangrady was a resident of East Patch Hogue. She was known to police as a sex worker. Her remains were found on November 6, 1993, in a wooded area of Suffolk County. She had been beaten and strangled.
SPEAKER_01The second conviction involves Colleen McNamy. Her remains were discovered on January 30th, 1994, in Shirley, New York.
SPEAKER_00She was found beaten, strangled to death, and left naked in the woods near the William Floyd Parkway.
SPEAKER_01John Bitrolf operated believing his victims in inland wooded areas rather than the barrier island.
SPEAKER_00The geographic data shows Bitrolf was a carpenter residing in Manorville. That location is exactly three miles away from where the dismembered torsos of Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor were discovered in the year 2000 to 2003.
SPEAKER_01The forensic overlap between the Bitrolf investigation and the Hurriman investigation centers entirely on the murder of Sandra Castilla.
SPEAKER_00Castilla was a 28-year-old native of Trinidad and Tobago. She was living in Queens, New York, and was the mother of a five-year-old son.
SPEAKER_01She was killed between November 19th and November 20, 1993. Her remains were found on November 20, 1993, near Fish Cove Road in North Sea, Southampton.
SPEAKER_00The pathology report details she had been strangled and suffered 25 post-mortem sharp force injuries.
SPEAKER_01For decades, law enforcement considered John Bitrof the prime suspect in Sandra Castilla's murder.
SPEAKER_00Look at the alignment of the data points. Both Bitrolf and the killer of Sandra Castilla were operating in November 1993.
SPEAKER_01Both targeted women in Suffolk County. Both left victims in wooded areas. Bitrolf killed Rita Tangretti in November 1993. Hewerman killed Sandra Costilla in November 1993.
SPEAKER_00This dual predator reality requires us to evaluate the geography of the Ocean Parkway Corridor. Following the arrest of Rex Hewerman, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney expanded the mandate of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force.
SPEAKER_01The unit is now utilizing state, local, and federal resources to examine other unsolved cases involving human remains throughout the county.
SPEAKER_00This includes conducting further searches in North Sea, Southampton, where Castile was found.
SPEAKER_01What made this specific geography such a magnet for multiple killers?
SPEAKER_00The CBS 48 hours data details the physical terrain of Ocean Parkway, which explains his function as a natural disposal site.
SPEAKER_01Think of it like a naturally occurring vault. The road runs along a barrier island south of Long Island.
SPEAKER_00All the remains were discovered on the north side of this highway. That specific strip of land consists of dense, tick-infested underbrush, poison ivy, and thick evergreens.
SPEAKER_01It is virtually impenetrable on foot.
SPEAKER_00The infrastructure of the parkway provided supreme operational security for anyone depositing remains. There are no security cameras.
SPEAKER_01There are no streetlights. Parking is strictly prohibited on the North Strip.
SPEAKER_00The dense vegetation creates a physical wall that completely obscures any activity taking place just 10 feet off the pavement.
SPEAKER_01It is an architectural bottleneck where someone could pull off the road, step into the brush, and completely vanish from the physical world.
SPEAKER_00We have the forensic proof that Rex Hewerman recognized and exploited this geographic blind spot systematically.
SPEAKER_01Investigators recovered a planning document from his laptop labeled HK 2002-04.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking at the document here, and it specifically says, outlining his categories, quote, problems, supplies, dump sites, and targets.
SPEAKER_01Hewerman researched the terrain and treated it as a structured project.
SPEAKER_00The other killers operating in the same corridor, such as the person who killed Tanya Jackson and her daughter, appear to have simply exploited the environmental cover without the same documented level of premeditation.
SPEAKER_01The physical terrain offered cover from observation, but we must ask what provided the institutional cover.
SPEAKER_00Two serial killers operated simultaneously in November 1993.
SPEAKER_01We must evaluate how many of these cold cases could have been solved if the institutions responsible for investigating them had not been hindered by the systemic failures and corruption documented in prior investigations.
SPEAKER_00The brush hid the remains, but jurisdictional blind spots hid the patterns.
SPEAKER_01The evidence demonstrates that the Ocean Parkway corridor functioned not as the exclusive burial ground of one man, but as a systemic blind spot exploited by several distinct killers. Everything we cited is sourced on the Neural Broadcast Network website.