Gilgo Beach Murders

We take a closer look at the Gilgo Beach serial killings, the current family dynamic and the recent plea to the murders of eight women. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the first episode of Real Talk with Stacey Kelley. Each week I will discuss a major news event that captures my attention. I will be discussing it from a different lens as both a former journalist and a former law enforcement spokesperson. I'll go behind the scenes to the real issues. So let's dig in with our first episode. On a dark, moonless night among a stretch of houses near an isolated beach road in May of 2010, a 911 call came in from a frantic woman. She sounds terrified. She says someone is chasing her and they are trying to kill her. And then she disappears. Shannon Gilbert had been a sex worker who had met a client at a house on a beach in Long Island, New York. If not for Shannon Gilbert, the ten bodies discovered on the search for her, the dumping grounds of Rex Heuermann may have still been out there piling up with more bodies. Ten bodies to date and eight victims he pleaded guilty to in April. All but one of the eight were killed in his home, but it's highly unlikely he would have stopped killing between 2010 and his arrest three years ago in 2023. Highly unlikely. But he would have had to find a new dumping ground. The current one had been discovered. Originally dubbed the Gilgo Four for the original four bodies found, Shannon Gilbert's death officials have not officially ruled as foul play. They think she may have gotten disoriented in the marsh and couldn't find her way out. Maybe., she seemed pretty scared of something. But it is her disappearance that led to the discovery of the graveyard out on an isolated stretch of road near Gilgo Beach in Long Island, New York. It was her disappearance that led to the discovery of what happened to ten other missing people. In effect, she gave closure to ten families. Serial killers, once they start, don't stop killing. They have to do it, and he was getting proficient at it, even making himself lists on how to improve and incorporate more playtime, think torture. The only time generally a serial killer stops killing is either they died, they're incarcerated for another crime, or for some reason they physically can't. Even if he briefly stopped after the bodies were found, there's a lot of years between 2010 and his arrest in 2023. According to a documentary, he told a therapist he quit quilling after 2010 because he was no longer getting gratification from it. That's extremely unlikely. Just because he said it doesn't make it true. Whether he did or didn't remains to be seen. Most serial killers have many more victims than just the ones they were caught on, and they almost never cop to the others that are out there. He has a home in South Carolina as well, and there is a victim who was last seen with a man matching his description. That was in 2017. What's also striking about this case is the large hulking nature of his body frame. He would have stood out. His victims all petite and all sex workers. There's a reason he picked them. One, they don't generally make the news. Two, they are in very high risk jobs, and often when they disappear, no one is looking for them. Many are estranged from family and friends, and they are living in the street, and that's just an easier target. Sad, but that's the reality. Now people are jumping on the wife and daughter saying, How could they have not known? Well that's just it. The devil almost never comes in looking like the devil. I mean if they did, no one would go off with them. He was taking them back to his house when his family was out of town, and he was torturing them, killing them, and dismembering them in the kill room of his basement, his childhood bedroom. A new documentary has his wife, now ex -wife, admitting she is sleeping in that room, apparently as a means of some solidarity with the victims, in order to say she's sorry, her own type of penance. She's not the one who needs to atone for his crimes. Frankly, she should sell that house and move. As dilapidated as it is, he grew up in this home and he never changed it, even though he was an architect. And this home would still fetch a likely higher than normal price because of its association. There are plenty of strange people out there who just love this kind of thing, and owning a serial killer's house would be at the top of their list. Strange but true. I wonder about the connection between him and his mother and that house that he never wanted to leave. And he never changed it, and then he killed in that basement. Reports have said he bought the home from his mother in 1994 and left it largely untouched. One of his murders dates back to 1993, and another the month or so before he married in 1996. He's been described as a mama's boy, but others have said it was a strange relationship and that his mother was very controlling. His father died when he was twelve. Was he always evil? Or did something happen to him? After a new police task force was formed in 2022, they began re-examining all the evidence in the cold case. His vehicle, the green Avalanche truck, the pings off cell phones and towers surrounding the victims, an eyewitness who described the truck and an ogre like man driving it. There weren't many trucks like that in the area of New York, and they long suspected he lived in Massapequa, not far from the dumping grounds. They began to follow him, and on an evening in Manhattan they watched him throw a pizza box with half eaten crust inside a trash can on a busy New York street near his office, and they retrieved it. They got a DNA match to one of the victims, and the rest, as they say, is history. He made so many mistakes, honestly. He drove his own vehicle, he's very distinctive looking. He dumped the bodies near his home. He killed in his home. He put lists on how to be more proficient at killing on his computer. He researched the Gilgo Beach killings to gain insight as to how close the investigation was after the bodies were discovered. But until you have a suspect, none of that would matter. He was flying under the radar. Once he was narrowed down, it all matters. What struck me about his plea deal was the smirk on his face. He seemed to be enjoying it, not sorry at all. He still thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the room. And this is not unusual. You see this a lot in courtrooms. I remember the case of Bart Corbin, the Gwinnett dentist who murdered his wife and earlier his college girlfriend. His eyes in court black and soulless. I've seen it on other killers in court, like a shark's eyes, dead and cold, almost black, kind of like their souls. I watched one man get up and applaud the jury after they found him guilty of two murders. One juror had been crying up until that point. She snapped her head back, and all the tears stopped. I hope after that day she never doubted for a second she made the correct verdict. Once they are caught, the mask always drops, and you can see it if you are looking. The mask would most assuredly drop with their victims soon after they are taken as well. The FBI as part of the plea will talk to him to try and see how his mind works. They'll study him, they'll learn from him. He enjoys this. And they will tolerate his cat and mouse games, even pretend to understand him and befriend him, all to try and learn more about how to catch the next one. It's not a job I'd want. It's sitting next to evil. But here's the thing. He told his family eight months before the plea that he committed the crimes, and that was his only remaining avenue of any control he had left to keep the full details of the torture these poor women went through out of the public domain that the trial would bring. They weren't just strangled, they were tortured, likely for long periods of time, their screams going unheard. Initially, his ex wife was still in complete denial. She was having a hard time coming to terms with it, and frankly, she was only hearing what she wanted to hear. And maybe that was to keep herself together psychologically. I mean, we really don't know what's going on in someone else's brain. He left his first wife because he couldn't control her, according to the documentary. When they asked Asa, his most recent ex-wife, if she believes he chose her because he could control her, she immediately says no. It was because he loves her. That's important to her to hold on to, at least in that moment, and it seemed obvious that she had to hold on to that. What stood out to me were the jaw dropping phone calls between him and his family on that recent documentary. Initially, multiple calls show what could have been any family calling from any business trip, checking in with the hello dear and good night dears. And her responses very cheery. It's creepy. Even after he confesses to her, she still seems to want to believe he didn't plan it. It just happened. And she can't seem to let him go. He tells his daughter he made the planning documents in an attempt to help him not to act on it. That's among the biggest BS he said to her. He did the documents to become better at it, nothing else. He told his daughter he never even saw the women he killed as human. That's probably the truest statement he made. But finally, finally, the mask drops on a call between him, the therapist, the ex wife, the daughter, and the stepson, who by all news accounts has some type of developmental disability, making it harder for him to fully understand all that is going on. So when the therapist asks a pointed question to the family and they don't answer, you hear his anger as he snaps at the son. Here's the rundown. The therapist asks the ex-wife, did she get clarity? She's trying to answer, and then it flips to the son, and he says he doesn't really know what else to say. And here you hear the mask drop and you see the flash of anger addressing the stepson. You know what you need to do. You need to take charge because you know how to talk best out of everybody sitting there. You know how to talk about how you feel, you start, because you know the other two sitting there are just gonna sit there staring at each other for at least a good twenty minutes before either one of them say anything. That about sum it up. All three look down and say nothing. My guess they've heard this tone before. My guess they've been conditioned by him to do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants it, and above all, to comply. They just don't see how conditioned they have been, at least not yet. Hopefully with therapy they can break away, but it will likely take years to undo all the damage. Frankly, his ex wife should cut all remaining ties. She was in court for his plea, but if she's smart, she will stop sleeping in that basement, sell that house, and get out. It is beyond my understanding how you would put yourself in the room where all that violence occurred and sleep there night after night after night. Self-flagellation and it's not her burden to carry. The families are generally just as much victims as those who were killed. Get away from the evil that is tied to that house, tear it down, move on, sell it, start over, do something. The longer you stay attached to it, the more it brings you down. Let the light back in and move as far as you can away from that home. That would be my advice to her. You don't have to pay for his sins, but that doesn't seem to be the path she is on after listening to her interviews and reading them in recent days. It appears she's still trying to understand that side of him that caused him to kill and what made him do it. At least that's clear from the documentary that just dropped. She says in the car to her lawyer after hearing her husband tell her he killed them, that she still doesn't look at him any differently. Someone says, but there's a whole side of him you didn't know. Her response is chilling. No, but that's a new side to get to know. And then she adds the only way to get to know that person is to go visit him. Why would you want to, honestly? She's still his victim and she doesn't even realize it yet. There's nothing to know. The monster does what it does because that's who it is. It's who he was when he married her, with one murder occurring around the same time as the marriage. She just didn't see the monster. And maybe that's because he didn't want her to initially, and now she can't see what's been in front of her the whole time. He's still pulling the strings, and he will as long as she allows it. She admits she now sees there is a side of him that's evil, but she's still wanting answers as to why. The answers will never come. He will use that to toy with her like a cat plays with a mouse before it destroys it. As long as she wants to know, he has the power. Rex Heuermann is expected to be sentenced June seventeenth to three consecutive life terms plus a hundred years. He will die in prison. This is Real Talk with Stacey Kelley. Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe to never miss an episode. Next time I'll be talking about the shooting at the White House Correspondence Dinner. Join me then.