You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley and
I'm Bill Thomas. Continue in our coverage of the list case that's Long Island
serial killer for anybody who is not currently following the news, and we've had
a couple of different stories to talk about today. Bill, what are you
making of all of this coverage on the Long Island serial killing case? Were
you aware of this case before it became so big in that he was a
couple of weeks ago. I've been following this case for years, and folks
that we knew, Billy Jensen and others had also been covering this case in
quite some depth, and I always thought that this was a case that was
overdue for additional attention. Of course, law enforcement in Suffolk County had been
a complete disaster and had really failed the people of Suffolk County and Nassau County
for that matter, in terms of moving this case forward. And it's only
finally with the establishment of the new task force and new leadership both at the
District attorney level and at the chief level for the Suffolk County Police Department,
where were finally able to see significant progress made in this case. It's fair
to say that I have been following this case for several years at a minimum,
and I was familiar with it because I had a number of friends introduce
the book Lost Girls by Robert Kulker to me. Sadly, it has been
sitting on my shelf for quite a while because I have far more books than
I can actually get to at any given time, and this wasn't something that
was immediately on my radar. Now, of course, that we are covering
in this case. I have pulled that book off my shelf and it has
been given sort of premo status, and that is something that I'm looking forward
into delving into. I had somewhat of the same issue with Lost Girls.
I had also watched several television series about the case, which were quite interesting
and it's very tragic. You've got eleven people, including nine women, one
man, and a child, found scattered along the Long Island coast and seemingly
no answers. There were a lot of questions, is this one serial killer?
Is it two? Could Long Island actually have two competing serial killers operating
at the same time. Certainly the arrest of Rex Huerman has got this case
moving forward again. Like you, I found myself reaching for Kolker's book Lost
Girls, pulling it off the shelf and moving it to the top of the
to be red pile. We should mention a couple of things before we start
talking about these stories. Now, at the time that we are recording,
these are breaking news stories. But the time this gets to you our listeners,
they will not be breaking news stories anymore. They will be a couple
of weeks old. Because we are going through the process of building a lot
of content as I get ready to go back to school. So I would
call this a true crime news update, except by the time it gets to
you, the news will not be news anymore. It will have been several
weeks past. Just please be aware of the limitations and know that it's news
when we recorded it, it just won't be when you hear it. And
the second thing that we want to mention is in our episodes in which we
read the bail application for Rex Herman, we had theorized as to the identities
of the two forensic laboratories that did some of the work in this case.
We had posited that one of the labs was AUSTRAYA and one of the labs
was Authorm. In the time since, the New York Times has outed our
friends at AUTHRAM as being one of the labs that did do the work.
So, in case you have not heard or have not seen the New York
Times coverage, it has been confirmed that one of those two forensic labs mentioned
in the bail application is our friends at Authorm Labs. And again, all
we can say to them is great job, guys, Please keep it up.
You're doing amazing work. I'd be willing to bet you an ice dinner
that the hair work done was done by Austraia, because they are the leading
hair lab in the country and have developed highly innovative techniques just in the last
few years allowing them to extract nuclear DNA from the shaft of hair. I
am ninety nine percent certain, although they have not yet been outed in the
media coverage. And remember this case will ultimately probably go to trial. A
lot more information will come out in the coming months about who else's work this
case, but I would say very strong chance that Astraia Labs in California did
the hair work. Yeah, I agree with you. So we have three
stories that we're going to get into today with regard to the list case.
That is going to include reporting from The New York Times, from People magazine,
and from CNN, and we will encode links to all of that in
our show notes as we go. So, the first big development in the
case is that prosecutors have identified the human remains that we're found in twenty eleven
year. Gil Go and so Authorm did the work on this, and they
have identified the victim that was known as Fire Island Jane Doe. They have
identified her as Karen of Vergata, a thirty four year old escort from Manhattan
who went missing on Valentine's Day in nineteen ninety six. I was interested to
note that there was no missing person's report filed on her after she disappeared.
I find that sad and upsetting. Her legs were found. I hate the
idea of disarticulated bodies. I think that's one of the reasons why I was
weird about this case. I hate the idea of remains and disarticulated bodies.
Her legs were found in a black trash bag on Fire Island in April of
nineteen ninety six, that is two months after her disappearance in February, and
her skull was found on Tobey Beach around the same time that the remains from
ten other individuals were found there, including the victims now known as the gil
Go four, so that set around two ten. This is a terrible story
and a terrible aspect to the Gilgo Beach story so far, which is that
for a number of these earlier victims, their bodies were cut up and distributed
in various places, sometimes as far apart as forty miles. And this is
one of those situations with Karen Bergata, where her legs were found in a
black trash bag, as you said, on Fire Island, hence the Fire
Island Jane Doe name. And then it's not until two ten that the rest
of her remains were found as part of the ongoing search for victims near Gilgo
Beach. Cause of death has not been listed in her case. I'm assuming
it's going to take a little bit longer to find that out the list.
Suspect Rex Hereman has not been named as a person of interest in her death,
I would say yet. I'm hoping they're going to find a way to
link him to more of these victims, but as of this moment, they
have not named him as a person of interest, and no other suspect has
been named as a person of interest in her murder at this time. It's
interesting to note that the DNA profile was created in October twenty twenty two for
the Task Force buy Athram. They've been working on it for a couple of
months. Authram did the science the DNA extraction, and then I believe the
FBI Forensic Genetic Genealogy team did the actual searching of databases to determine Misforgota's identity.
So we don't have a whole lot more in this case, but it
is our hope that as the investigation continues to unfold and Athrim continues to do
its work, I'm sure they're doing more of it than just this. I'm
hoping that means that more and more, as more and more victims will be
identified and we can start giving names to some of the disarticulated bodies that were
found all up and down the Long Island shore. I do know that to
be the case, and they are continuing the work. As far back as
October twenty twenty two, they believe they may have found the family group for
Peaches, one of the other unidentified victims, and they were looking at a
family in the Atlanta area, if I'm not mistaken. However, it's a
complicated family tree, so tracing back to individuals who might be able to provide
a current DNA sample for that family has been I would say slow going because
it's a very complicated family tree, is how it's and put to me.
We are very hopeful though that with the excellent work that Authram is doing and
with the help of Austraia of course, and the FBI labs that more victims
names are going to come out here fairly soon, and that that process will
continue until all of the individuals and Voltier are identified. We wanted to turn
to a happier story related to the Long Island serial killings, and that is
that is a report that came in from People Magazine. The good folks over
there who have reported I think this is about as happy a story as you
can possibly get in relation to a serial killing case. The article that we're
referencing for this from People Magazine, it is titled daughter of Happy Face Keller
starts go fund me to help Go Go Beach suspect's wife. For anybody who's
been around in the true crime space or been to crime Con, you probably
recognize the name Melissa Jesperson Moore. Melissa Moore is the daughter of the Happy
Face Keller Keith Jesperson. If you know that name, it may be because
you watched the TV series Dark Minds starring m William Phelps. Keith jess Person
was the serial killer known only as a raven during that TV series. Melissa
jess Person Moore has spoken freely both at crime Con and on her own platform
about the trauma that's carried by families of serial killers. Of course, she's
in a very good place here to talk about what Rex Herman's family may be
experiencing. In a twenty fifteen interview for the TV series Twenty twenty, Melissa
Moore stated that relatives of killers are secondary crime victims. In her interview,
she said, we carried the shame and we want to remove that. I
feel in a sense that I'm related to my father, but I didn't cause
the pain. But knowing that my father caused some pain causes me pain.
Got to be a pretty complicated emotion, I would imagine. Sometimes I'll hear
people express a real lack of sympathy for people like Melissa jests person more.
I struggle with this one a little bit, but I do understand that Melissa,
or any family member of a killer, they're not responsible for what their
relatives have done, whether they're the daughter or son, or father or mother,
for that matter, any relative. How incredibly difficult and painful this must
be, it is such a strange position to be put in, and I
think that is a secondary branch of the club that nobody wants to join.
Nobody wants to be the victim or the family member to a victim of a
murder, but certainly I can't imagine what it is like to be the center,
daughter or as you mentioned, mother or father of a serial killer.
So Melissa more launched to go fund me for the family of LISK suspect Rex
Heireman. Those are his ex wife or soon to be ex wife, I
should say, Asa aller Up fifty nine and her two adult children, and
those are the beneficiaries. I went to check on the go fundm earlier today.
They surpassed their first goal of twenty five thousand dollars and they're headed towards
the fifty thousand dollars mark right now. And I did go ahead and put
a link up on our mind Over Murder page for anybody who's interested in taking
a look at the go fundm. It does contain some information from Melissa Moore
and some discussion about why she actually started the go fundmate. This is in
part a response to the media coverage of what Rex Hereman's family came back to
after that intensive twelve day police search on their home. The pictures that I
saw after that search were really disheartening because they came home to a mess beyond
their imagining. I absolutely could not believe how utterly trashed the place was.
Now. I understand they're looking for evidence in a series of homicides. I
get that, but it looked like the whole entire place had been ransacked beyond
belief. In a statement two People magazine, miss Ella Up said, quote,
I had three cats, litter boxes were a struth thrown on top of
everything. My pictures were thrown all over the place. My couch was completely
shredded. I don't even know if there's any parts to the couch left.
So it's looking just based on those photos that Assa and her children are having
to essentially start over, start from scratch, rebuilding even basic household needs.
I guess, honestly. One thing that I had never really taken into consideration
as part of a search for clues and evidence is what that must do to
the house when you have a crew in there searching for evidence for twelve solid
days. I don't know if that had ever crossed my mind, Bill hit
it cross yours? No, I don't think so. I do understand how
the house could effectively be dismantled, though, because they were really taking a
close look, and with this suspect being an architect and having lived in that
house for decades, that's actually the house I believe he grew up in,
and there was a concern that there could be hidden evidence, So that required
a tremendous amount of destruction, I would say, in order to look into
every nook and cranny of that house. I want to quote from Melissa's go
fund page, she says, quote today I have an opportunity to use my
voice to help Asa, who isn't in a place to speak about the terror
and horror she and her family are experiencing at this moment. Well, people
may assume Asa has the funds to start a new life. The assumption is
just that the funds are to support ASA and she can direct on what is
the highest priority basic needs for herself and adult children, to restore the home
as a whole, as evidence collection, damaged or destroyed, many critical household
items, divorce costs, and any other needs she may have that is not
listed here. It looks like she's really trying to make sure that Assa and
her two kids have everything that they might need so that they can escape from
this previous life with Rex. Huerman and start something brand new. Understand that
people may not be as sympathetic as they might, but I think if you
step back a little bit, as much as we might be shocked by this
horrible series of crimes and the recent arrest of Rex Huerman, as far as
we can tell, investigators don't believe that Asa, his wife, has any
role in this series of murders whatsoever, nor do his children, who are
both adults at this point. I hope that we can all look at this
and realize that these people, the wife, the two children, are victims
too. Absolutely. I think that's a great place to leave that on.
And then our third story with relation to the Long Island serial killer today is
one that I had not heard about. I think that's largely because I have
not yet had a chance to read Robert Kolker's book Lost Girls. But the
reporting from CN here was truly excellent, and I was really, I don't
want to say I was happy to read the story. I was moved by
this story, and it definitely continued this idea that a crime does not just
happen to one person, it happens to whole families. It causes concentric circles
to ripple outward from it. We're going to quote from a story from CN
titled Unintended hero A mother's quest to find her daughter led to the eventual arrest
of the suspect in the Go Go Beach serial killings. This particular piece from
CN, this is a longer piece than what I normally expect from them,
delves into the mother of Shannon Gilbert. Her name is Maury Gilbert, and
she worked very hard as the family member of a first game missing person the
name murder victim to bring attention to her daughter case, and ultimately she herself
was murdered very tragically by another of her daughters. But I want to get
into this very interesting story that came out of Shannon Gilbert's case. So for
anyone who's not familiar with Shannon Gilbert, she went missing on May one,
twenty ten, at the age of twenty three. Her remains were not found
until December of twenty eleven. At the same time that Shannon's remains were found,
the remains of the other victims in the Gilgo four killings were found as
well. So on the morning of her disappearance, Shannon had traveled with her
driver from Manhattan to meet a client at the client's home in Oak Beach,
Long Island. Bill, are you familiar enough with Long Island to tell,
like, what is the relationship between Oak Beach and Gilgo Beach? Are they
near each other? Yeah, They're quite close. They're along the same stretch
of coastline. Okay, Shannon went to meet a client. Shannon was,
like many of the other victims, a sex worker. I'm going to quote
from CN here about the circumstances around Shannon's disappearance. Quote. Gilbert appeared irrational
at some point, and the man contacted the driver, and this man would
be the client she was going to see. According to a Suffolk County Police
online summary of the gil Go Beach homicide investigation, she fled on foot and
approached two homeowners in the area before she vanished. At some point or another.
When she was attempting to flee, we're not sure from what she made
a nine one one call during which she screamed, they're trying to kill me.
However, an analysis by the FBI and a psychiatrist of the nine one
one called Gilbert mate at the time found that her death was not consistent with
her being the victim of violence or of a violent offender. I feel like
we need to take a second and talk about that. I'm not sure where
that came from. If someone makes a nine one one call saying they're trying
to kill me, why wouldn't you. I'm just concerned and curious. Why
would that not be seen as a matter of concern to someone. If someone's
trying to kill me or I think someone's trying to kill me and I'm screaming
it into the phone, why would they say that's not consistent with her being
the victim of violence? I don't know. And then, of course,
as the story continues, not just this story, but the coverage in general,
Suffolk County police seem to believe that Shannon Gilbert was not ultimately a murder
victim, which I think is ludicrous. You're listening to Mind over Murder.
We'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at
Mind over Murder. Yeah, it's very frustrating and upsetting to me. Now.
Granted, okay, I guess I had to say, maybe we need
to. Both Shannon's driver and the man that she was visiting were investigated and
cleared of any involvement in her death. At that point, the investigation into
Shannon's disappearance just seemed to dry up. As you said, Bill, any
particular reason why that might be. I think this is where you just have
to condemn that previous administration in Suffolk County in the strongest possible terms. I
don't think they did a good job on any of these investigations, which is
one of the reasons why this case dragged on for more than a decade.
I think one of the reasons why this case didn't move forward is because these
victims were sex workers and they were not taken seriously. One of the key
players involved was quoted as saying that it was a good thing that this killer
or killers were focusing on sex workers, because that meant that everybody else was
safe. Talk about treating these young women as disposable. To this day,
Suffolk County has insisted that Shannon Gilbert's death was accidental, which I find extremely
hard to understand, particularly since doctor Michael Boden, who's been a guest on
our podcast, was asked by the family to conduct a private autopsy, and
his finding core He thought that Shannon Gilbert had not died of exposure out there
in the marsh, but had actually died as a result of homicidal violence.
She's a murder victim, and yet it appears that the folks in Suffolk County,
at least for the last decade or more, have blithely gone about their
business thinking, oh, she had some sort of psychiatric break down and headed
off into the marsh where she died from exposure. It's ludicrous. Shannon's mother,
Marie really went about putting pressure on the police to take her daughter's disappearance
seriously. She said exactly what you did, Bill, that the investigators in
the case were just dragging their feet and taking their time on it because the
victims in the case were sex workers. I'm going to quote from Robert Kulker
here. He is the author of Lost Girls, which is the book of
record so far on the Long Island serial killer case, and he had this
to say about Mari. Of all the family members, Mari was the one
who got the most out of the police, forced them to do things they
otherwise wouldn't, and she didn't just make a lot of noise. The experience
of fighting on behalf of her daughter, Shannon transformed Mari too. Mary was
the one with the most provocative personality. She was the one who, when
things started to get quiet, would stand up and make some noise and make
sure the police responded. They remind people that they were real human beings at
stake here and that this was not just a Hannibal lecture movie. I know
that sounds like somebody else. I know, ga noise to remind the police
that hey, we're still here. I have no idea what you're talking about.
So in twenty sixteen, Mary Gilbert and her family's lawyer held a press
conference to announce the results of an independent autopsy, as you mentioned, performed
by doctor Michael Boden, which found that Shannon's death was consistent with homicidal strangulation,
but there still was no definitive cause of death listed. And as we
talked about with doctor Boden a few weeks ago, he feels very strongly and
I'd have to agree that his job, the job of the medical examiner,
is to this firm and cause of death and provide as much information as possible,
not necessarily to please the police. And as he said, medical examiners
do work very closely with the police, but they to be careful that their
findings are not influenced by those close working relationships. He wasn't able to say
definitively what the cause of death was, but he did believe that she was
murdered and that it wasn't a matter of her wandering off into the Martian dying
of exposure. So Marie Gilbert has maintained over the years that her daughter was
the victim of a homicide. Rather, unfortunately and ironically, Marie herself became
a homicide victim. In July of twenty sixteen. Marie Gilbert was murdered by
her daughter, Sarah. According to a forensic psychologist, Sarah was suffering from
acute symptoms of schizophrenia at the time that she killed her mother. Sarah actually
invited her mother to her home because she said she was hearing voices. She
stabbed Marie two hundred and seventy seven times with a fifteen inch kitchen knife,
bludgeoned her to death with a fire extinguisher, and then sprayed the fire extinguisher
foam into her mouth to drown her. I cannot imagine anything more awful and
or more tragic, terrible story, and as you mentioned that ripple effect,
Kristen, this is an extreme and very sad example of how Shannon's death led
to our sister's mental breakdown and then ultimately to their mother, Mari's death.
Yeah, the longtime attorney for their family, John Ray, stated that Sarah
was driven mad quite substantially by the death of her beloved sister. She looked
up to Shannon as a demigod, and she was broken hearted by what happened,
and it was all simmering in that mind all the time. Just terrible,
awful, tragic circumstances here see, and actually referred to them as Hamlet
like circumstances, which points to the for their reference. On the morning of
Maury's murder. The other there are four sisters in the family, all with
s names, so that makes us a little more complicated. But Sherry stated
that on the morning of Maury's murder, Sarah called her and told her that
she was hearing voices referring to her mother as the devil and a bad god
and directing her to kill her mother. Absolutely horrible. The youngest sister,
Stevie, testified for the prosecution at her sister's trial, stating that Sarah's relationship
with her mother was strained at that point. Her mother had obtained custody of
Sarah's son following an incident in February twenty sixteen in which Sarah drowned a puppy
in front of her child, So clearly this was a long ongoing, long
standing mental issue that needed to be taken care of. But she was described
as having been mentally and emotionally disturbed by the death of her sister. So
ultimately, Sarah was sentenced to twenty five years to life in prison for the
murder of her mother. Her lawyer tried for the insanity defense, but the
jury ultimately said, we have no doubt the defendant suffers from a debilitating mental
illness that blurs the line of fiction and reality, and we are certainly sympathetic
to the difficult life circumstances she has endured. The proof, however, reasonably
supports the jury's finding that at the time of the killing, defendant had the
substantial capacity to know and appreciate but the nature and consequences of her conduct,
and that such conduct was wrong. Since that time, the two remaining members
of the Gilbert family, Sherry and Stevie, have been the ones to carry
the torch as you will, with Shannon and her case. So Sherry,
who was the second oldest daughter, posted on the Facebook page praying for Shannon
Gilbert with regard to Rex Human's arrest, the time effort in dedication my mom
and I put into this case wasn't wasted. I wished, hoped, and
prayed for this day. I'm glad I'm still alive to see it. I
hope that some consolation and many people actually feel that Shannon deserves credit for sparking
the investigation into the Go Go Beach four and the Long Island serial killings,
because had she not called nine to one one that night, this case might
have never moved forward, and those bodies might still be out there along Ocean
Beach Boulevard with no one looking for them. Exactly. I'm gonna let Robert
Kulker, the author of Lost Girls, have the final word on this one.
He said, quote, Mari understood that one way of finding at least
a shred of meaning in the loss of her daughter was that her disappearance led
to the discovery of those four women several months later, and that without Shannon
there would be no case and there would be no search for the killer.
Exactly as she said, Bill, which means that Shannon herself is the unin
pended hero and the title of the CNA article, but I would also argue
that her mother, Marie was also a hero as well and trying to keep
her daughter's case alive and active. I'm just sorry that Mary's not alive today
to see finally some small degree of justice moving forward in her daughter's disappearance and
murder. Yeah. Absolutely, there are so many facets to this case,
Long Island Serial Killer Case or gil GO four, and we are going to
continue to explore those. We hope that you've enjoyed our reporting so far.
We've had our three episodes, and we've also had our delightful interview with Joe
jack Alone, who is a expert on the list case, and we're looking
forward to bringing you more coverage of stories related to this case as it continues
to unfold over the next couple of months. Bill any funnel words on the
subjects. No, I think that covers it. That's going to do it
for this episode of Mind Over Murder. If you like what we're doing here
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Over Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions.
Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by
Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is
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Murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.