1 00:00:01,120 --> 00:00:07,280 You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas. 2 00:00:07,799 --> 00:00:12,080 I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now 3 00:00:12,119 --> 00:00:16,039 trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other 4 00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:20,280 victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway 5 00:00:20,359 --> 00:00:24,640 murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together 6 00:00:24,719 --> 00:00:28,519 with Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a 7 00:00:28,559 --> 00:00:32,479 researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social 8 00:00:32,520 --> 00:00:37,799 media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner 9 00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:48,960 in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly 10 00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:53,679 and I'm Bill Thomas. We're joined today by author Robert Kolker, here to 11 00:00:53,759 --> 00:01:00,000 talk about his New York Times bestselling book Lost Girls, an unsolved American mystery. 12 00:01:00,079 --> 00:01:03,159 Thank you so much for joining us on Mind Ever Murdered today. It's 13 00:01:03,200 --> 00:01:06,359 great to talk with you both. Thank you. Go ahead and start off 14 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:11,040 by telling us a little bit about your professional and educational background. I grew 15 00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:15,719 up in Maryland and went to college in New York and stayed there. I've 16 00:01:15,719 --> 00:01:19,200 been a New Yorker for over thirty years. I've been a journalist for thirty 17 00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:23,120 years, mostly in magazines. More than half that time I was a staff 18 00:01:23,120 --> 00:01:26,480 writer at New York Magazine, writing feature stories and cover stories, a lot 19 00:01:26,519 --> 00:01:33,040 of crime stories, a lot of narrative stories about complicated subjects. Lost Girls 20 00:01:33,079 --> 00:01:37,840 actually evolved from a cover story about the Long Island serial killer case that I 21 00:01:37,879 --> 00:01:41,959 wrote back in twenty eleven. Then the book came out in twenty thirteen. 22 00:01:42,439 --> 00:01:45,000 Since then, I've written another book, Hit in Valley Road, that was 23 00:01:45,280 --> 00:01:48,840 a number one bestseller and an Oprah book. And I like to go back 24 00:01:48,879 --> 00:01:53,359 and forth between magazine stories and books. It's a dream career, so I'm 25 00:01:53,439 --> 00:01:59,120 very grateful to be able to do it. When we talk about Lost Girls, 26 00:01:59,200 --> 00:02:02,719 the book and this case, where do you find yourself coming down in 27 00:02:02,840 --> 00:02:07,280 terms of referring to this case by name? Are you going with Gilgo Beach? 28 00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:12,159 Are you going with Long Island serial Killer? It's the most amazing thing. 29 00:02:12,479 --> 00:02:15,120 The entire time I wrote the book, people were saying Long Island serial 30 00:02:15,199 --> 00:02:17,719 Killer. I called it the Long Island serial Killer. Then Shortly after the 31 00:02:17,719 --> 00:02:22,039 book was published, people started to shorten it and call it LISK. There's 32 00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:27,080 a fine documentary series called The Killing Season with some nice people who run it, 33 00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:30,199 and they suddenly it's all lisc, lisk, lisk, and that was 34 00:02:30,199 --> 00:02:34,479 interesting. And then the second this arrest happens, it's the Gilgo Beach murders 35 00:02:34,479 --> 00:02:38,360 and the Gilgo Beach Killer, which I hadn't seen in such high circulation before. 36 00:02:38,840 --> 00:02:42,400 So I'm happy to go where the wind blows and go with gilg Beach 37 00:02:42,479 --> 00:02:46,039 Killer. At this point we had noticed the same thing because people referred to 38 00:02:46,080 --> 00:02:50,159 it as Long Island serial Killer, and we know people that have written about 39 00:02:50,159 --> 00:02:53,719 it and covered the case on podcasts. And then with the arrest, we 40 00:02:53,840 --> 00:03:00,599 find ourselves stumbling to describe the series of murders accurately. Now people are almost 41 00:03:00,639 --> 00:03:06,919 talking about them as if they're separate events. We've got four or four women 42 00:03:07,080 --> 00:03:10,719 who have been at least potentially linked to Rex humermen and they're being referred to 43 00:03:10,719 --> 00:03:15,520 as the Gilgo Beach four. It's almost like Long Island Serial Killer or LISK 44 00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:21,919 is a separate case. Any thoughts on that those four sets of remains were 45 00:03:21,919 --> 00:03:25,680 always set apart from the others. They were very particular compared to the others 46 00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:30,159 that were found, but there was a constant debate about whether they should be 47 00:03:30,199 --> 00:03:34,199 a separate case or not, or whether it's all one potentially one killer. 48 00:03:34,280 --> 00:03:38,319 In fact, there was a huge breakdown from the very beginning between the COmON 49 00:03:38,319 --> 00:03:42,240 Police Commissioner at the time and the district attorney at the time about whether there 50 00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:44,639 was one killer or more than one killer, and that was one of the 51 00:03:44,680 --> 00:03:47,960 first reasons why the case centered paralysis in my opinion. But it interests me 52 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:53,240 now that there's an arrest that this becomes the Gilg Beach killer, and these 53 00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:55,759 other murders are often the ether, and it's anyone's guests whether they will be 54 00:03:55,840 --> 00:04:00,280 tied to. It's a tough one because you have so many victims to account 55 00:04:00,319 --> 00:04:03,039 for, some of whom have been identified and some of whom still have not, 56 00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:06,719 which is just stunning to me that someone in New York City could be 57 00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:12,159 unidentified in a murder case like this for ten years. It's interesting to think 58 00:04:12,199 --> 00:04:15,479 that we need to be that specific with our killers because there are so many 59 00:04:15,520 --> 00:04:18,120 of them, and certainly there is more than Long Island serial killer. There 60 00:04:18,199 --> 00:04:24,319 was Joel Rifkin from another generation who is far more prolific than it appears. 61 00:04:24,399 --> 00:04:27,360 Rex Huerman was, so, if you want to get scholarly about it, 62 00:04:27,399 --> 00:04:30,199 maybe it makes sense to be more specific with your titles. How did the 63 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:35,000 Gilgo Beach cases actually come onto your radar? I was on staff at New 64 00:04:35,079 --> 00:04:39,959 York Magazine. I had lived in Brooklyn. I had a car, which 65 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:42,480 meant that it was the pretty easy for me to get out to Long Island. 66 00:04:42,839 --> 00:04:46,160 I had done some Long Island stories in the past before this, there 67 00:04:46,160 --> 00:04:49,240 were crime stories, and in those first four remains. When the Gilgo four 68 00:04:49,439 --> 00:04:53,879 were found in December twenty ten, my editor turned to me and said, 69 00:04:54,120 --> 00:04:58,600 this looks like it's for you, and I resisted. I was probably intimidated 70 00:04:58,639 --> 00:05:01,680 by such a competitive story because it was already national news. But also I 71 00:05:01,759 --> 00:05:04,959 was jaded and I was skeptical. I thought, they're going to solve this 72 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:08,800 case in twenty four hours. Just a year and a half earlier, there 73 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:14,279 had been a Craigslist killer in New England who murdered one person and the police 74 00:05:14,279 --> 00:05:16,959 found him within forty eight hours. So I thought, for people who the 75 00:05:16,959 --> 00:05:21,079 police say are sex workers, that's four digital trails from the Craigslist. They're 76 00:05:21,120 --> 00:05:25,720 going to find this guy before I even get in my car. But also 77 00:05:25,839 --> 00:05:29,680 I had that wasn't the only incorrect assumption I made. I also was dead 78 00:05:29,720 --> 00:05:33,079 wrong about something else, which was when I learned that these four women were 79 00:05:33,079 --> 00:05:38,199 supposedly escorts. I thought, we're never going to learn a thing about these 80 00:05:38,199 --> 00:05:43,199 women. At the time, I subscribed to the cultural stereotype that had been 81 00:05:43,480 --> 00:05:46,560 part of even good true crime shows like The Wire, where they find a 82 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:50,079 bunch of dead bodies and it propels the plot in motion, and we assume 83 00:05:50,160 --> 00:05:54,199 those people were trafficked, and that we don't know their names and we'll never 84 00:05:54,279 --> 00:05:58,040 learn from them again. I assumed that these women lived off the grid, 85 00:05:58,079 --> 00:06:01,160 that they were outcasts from their families, that they were lost long before they 86 00:06:01,160 --> 00:06:04,639 were lost. But in fact, the only reason they were lost is because 87 00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:08,600 we decided they were lost. They had families, they had people who loved 88 00:06:08,600 --> 00:06:11,279 them, people who wanted the police to look for them when they went missing, 89 00:06:11,639 --> 00:06:14,879 people who were frustrated by the lack of efforts made by the police, 90 00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:17,800 people who had trouble even getting their names onto the registry of missing persons. 91 00:06:18,240 --> 00:06:23,279 And only when it became a big serial killer case did suddenly law enforcement have 92 00:06:23,319 --> 00:06:27,279 a vested interest in trying to solve their cases. It became interesting to me 93 00:06:27,600 --> 00:06:30,639 how wrong I was at first, And it became more interesting to me once 94 00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:32,839 I met the families how much they had to talk about with one another, 95 00:06:33,279 --> 00:06:38,040 not just about their lost loved ones and the lives that they led, but 96 00:06:38,120 --> 00:06:41,720 about the struggles that all of the families had faced. They all were from 97 00:06:41,759 --> 00:06:46,160 different towns within striking distance of New York, places like Portland, Maine, 98 00:06:46,199 --> 00:06:48,839 and Buffalo, New York, and Wilmington, North Carolina, Grouton, Connecticut, 99 00:06:48,959 --> 00:06:53,680 and Jersey City, New Jersey. And these are all places that never 100 00:06:53,720 --> 00:06:57,879 really recovered from the Big Crash of two thousand and eight, places where people 101 00:06:57,879 --> 00:07:00,920 were still struggling, places where a young person didn't have the entry level job 102 00:07:00,920 --> 00:07:05,920 opportunities that their parents or grandparents have. And it's a time where sex work 103 00:07:05,959 --> 00:07:09,759 is changing. You don't have to walk down the street, you don't have 104 00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:12,680 to be under the control of a pimp, you don't have to be a 105 00:07:12,680 --> 00:07:15,879 social outcast to be a sex worker. And if you work on Craigslist, 106 00:07:15,959 --> 00:07:18,639 you don't have to work full time. In fact, most people don't, 107 00:07:18,959 --> 00:07:23,759 and you can make far more money than you would make at the dunkin Donuts 108 00:07:23,839 --> 00:07:27,600 or at the Walmart. It's not even close. And it's time after time. 109 00:07:27,639 --> 00:07:30,720 As I researched these women's lives, I saw people who were experiencing economic 110 00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:35,519 shocks of a certain sort. Maybe they're facing eviction, and they see in 111 00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:39,480 a way to make money quickly. They see it as a means for social 112 00:07:39,519 --> 00:07:43,120 mobility. To me, that is the opposite of the stereotym type. To 113 00:07:43,160 --> 00:07:46,959 me, the stereotype is somebody who is leading a life of drug addiction or 114 00:07:46,040 --> 00:07:50,279 is traumatized from a life of abuse, and falls into this work because they're 115 00:07:50,279 --> 00:07:56,399 desperate and addicted. If substances became a problem for some of these women, 116 00:07:56,439 --> 00:07:59,720 it happened later, it happened after, and that was interesting to me too. 117 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:03,720 And then abuse was way inconsistent. Some of them had been abused, 118 00:08:03,720 --> 00:08:05,560 and then others had not, but their sisters had, and yet they were 119 00:08:05,600 --> 00:08:09,000 the ones who became escorts. I just became more and more interested in how 120 00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:13,480 surprising their lives were, and I thought this could be a potentially small but 121 00:08:13,519 --> 00:08:16,160 special book, a book that could come out with or without a killer. 122 00:08:16,519 --> 00:08:20,680 I was a little worried the publisher would force me to wait until there was 123 00:08:20,720 --> 00:08:24,399 a killer. But I was very pleased and grateful that my editors and my 124 00:08:24,439 --> 00:08:28,040 publisher, HarperCollins, they subscribed to the same idea I had, which was 125 00:08:28,439 --> 00:08:31,840 a sort of off the beaten path true crime book that was as much about 126 00:08:33,159 --> 00:08:37,000 the ways of life of all of the women and their families and the media 127 00:08:37,080 --> 00:08:41,240 maelstrom that engulfed them after the case happened as it was about the search for 128 00:08:41,320 --> 00:08:45,039 the killer. And so I was. I thought it would be a very 129 00:08:45,080 --> 00:08:50,039 small, but potentially highly regarded book. And what surprised me was that within 130 00:08:50,080 --> 00:08:56,919 a year or two, unconventional, socially minded, high minded true crime suddenly 131 00:08:56,919 --> 00:09:01,759 became everyone's favorite thing. Cereal high happened, and making a murder happen, 132 00:09:01,919 --> 00:09:07,639 the jinx happened, streaming happened, and suddenly multi part documentaries happened, and 133 00:09:07,639 --> 00:09:11,279 then finally podcasts happened, And to the extent that Lost Girls had a life 134 00:09:11,399 --> 00:09:15,360 for many years after it was published. It was because it hit that wave 135 00:09:15,679 --> 00:09:18,080 and rode that wave with so many other really excellent works of true crime. 136 00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:22,600 And I think that's why the movie got made too, Because it was time 137 00:09:22,840 --> 00:09:24,720 the world was ready, particularly with me too. The world was ready for 138 00:09:24,799 --> 00:09:28,480 a story about listening to women, about women who had been forgotten. It 139 00:09:28,559 --> 00:09:35,559 is a very sensitive portrait and it definitely opened my eyes to what it is 140 00:09:35,759 --> 00:09:41,120 like for women who work as sex workers, because it isn't something that I 141 00:09:41,159 --> 00:09:43,799 had given it a ton of thought to. But as I'm sitting here reading 142 00:09:43,840 --> 00:09:48,919 this, I'm going, Wow, this is heartbreaking in a lot of ways. 143 00:09:48,480 --> 00:09:54,200 I really appreciated the sensitivity and the warmth that you gave to these women. 144 00:09:54,960 --> 00:09:56,799 And it's very clear that you spend a lot of time with the family 145 00:09:56,840 --> 00:10:01,440 members of the victims, still close with them, especially now in light of 146 00:10:01,480 --> 00:10:05,639 the recent arrest. Are you still talking with them? Is this relationship that 147 00:10:05,679 --> 00:10:09,960 you've continued to cultivate over the years. There are a few who I'm send 148 00:10:11,279 --> 00:10:15,320 happy texts back and forth with over time. There are some who I haven't 149 00:10:15,320 --> 00:10:18,879 really seen since the Lost Girls movie came out, but I've just hit the 150 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:24,559 like button when they've done something on Facebook. It was a horrible time in 151 00:10:24,600 --> 00:10:26,639 their lives when I was talking with them, and for some of them, 152 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:31,600 talking with someone who ranted to write a book was the last thing they wanted 153 00:10:31,639 --> 00:10:35,600 to do. After they had already taken time off from minimum wage jobs to 154 00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:39,480 go down to New York to be interviewed for forty eight hours or dateline. 155 00:10:39,639 --> 00:10:43,279 They didn't understand and didn't necessarily want to be a part of it. I 156 00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:46,799 traveled where they were. I tried to see them whenever I could. And 157 00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:52,120 I was witnessing them as the case was still fresh on Long Island, as 158 00:10:52,159 --> 00:10:54,879 there was news coming basically every day, and I was watching their reactions, 159 00:10:54,960 --> 00:10:58,799 and I think that that's a traumatic time for them. And I've been talking 160 00:10:58,799 --> 00:11:03,000 withlaw enforcement people recently since the arrest, and they've talked with some of these 161 00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:07,639 family members recently, and they talk about how they seem very normal until you 162 00:11:07,679 --> 00:11:11,639 start talking about the nitty gritty of the case, and then it's like a 163 00:11:11,720 --> 00:11:13,960 film covers over them and they stiffen up, and it's like they go back 164 00:11:13,960 --> 00:11:18,840 to that time when the case was fresh. So I'm not out barbecuing with 165 00:11:18,879 --> 00:11:22,399 them these days. No. Also, I appreciate what you said about the 166 00:11:22,440 --> 00:11:28,000 book's warmth and it's compassion. It's a very tricky thing. I'm a consider 167 00:11:28,039 --> 00:11:31,399 myself a traditional journalist, not an advocacy journalist. I didn't want to write 168 00:11:31,399 --> 00:11:35,320 a book that sort of turned these women into angels, or carry the flag 169 00:11:35,360 --> 00:11:37,960 for them, or to beat the drum and say, who will speak for 170 00:11:39,039 --> 00:11:43,759 these women? I will. I wanted to do a book that was anthropological, 171 00:11:43,919 --> 00:11:48,399 that kind of looked very carefully and sensitively at the lives these people left 172 00:11:48,519 --> 00:11:50,840 It led in perhaps a non judgmental way, but not in a way that 173 00:11:50,919 --> 00:11:56,720 turned them into a different kind of trope, like the poor innocent babe in 174 00:11:56,759 --> 00:12:00,960 the woods who gets killed by a hannibal lector monster. I didn't want to 175 00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:03,879 fall into that trap either, and I end up toward the end of Lost 176 00:12:03,879 --> 00:12:05,799 Girls, just coming out and saying it like they weren't angels and they weren't 177 00:12:05,840 --> 00:12:09,960 devils. They each got involved in escort work for different reasons, but they 178 00:12:09,960 --> 00:12:15,720 were deeply personal reasons to each of them. One of them wanted to went 179 00:12:15,759 --> 00:12:18,759 away back into her family, and another one wanted to have a close relationship 180 00:12:18,759 --> 00:12:22,840 with their sister, and another was in love with her boyfriend and thought that 181 00:12:22,919 --> 00:12:26,840 they could build a family together with their money. It just everybody's reasons were 182 00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:33,120 different. When I read these sort of deep dives of the biographies of the 183 00:12:33,159 --> 00:12:35,919 women that you focus on, I do see a through line though, of 184 00:12:37,159 --> 00:12:43,879 some terrible choices and drug addiction and abuse, and even a mix of escort 185 00:12:43,039 --> 00:12:48,600 work with providing drugs cocaine and other drugs to their johns. Don't you think 186 00:12:48,679 --> 00:12:52,720 that's part of the mix. For a lot of these women, the idea 187 00:12:52,720 --> 00:12:58,240 of being your own boss is attractive, and escort work puts you for a 188 00:12:58,279 --> 00:13:01,600 brief period. It's occurred to me as the center of attention. You're the 189 00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:09,360 star, and for someone leading an otherwise humdrum life where you're under it all 190 00:13:09,399 --> 00:13:13,200 the time. Marian Brainerd Barnes in Connecticut, who always is having trouble paying 191 00:13:13,200 --> 00:13:16,360 the rent and is always having trouble keeping a job, to be able to 192 00:13:16,399 --> 00:13:18,519 go down to New York and stay in a hotel room and walk around Times 193 00:13:18,519 --> 00:13:22,679 Square and see the lights, and then go see men who want to see 194 00:13:22,679 --> 00:13:26,600 her, who want to give her money. You can tell yourself a story, 195 00:13:28,320 --> 00:13:31,919 and I wanted to make sure that aspect of things really appeared in the 196 00:13:31,919 --> 00:13:35,679 book. With drugs. The bleakest story becomes Amber Costello, who really is 197 00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:41,960 a tragedy that began years before she even came to New York. Her parents 198 00:13:41,039 --> 00:13:46,960 essentially are deteriorating because of health problems standing from their own addictions. All she 199 00:13:46,039 --> 00:13:50,519 has in life is her big sister, Kim. Kim is an escort. 200 00:13:50,919 --> 00:13:54,759 Amber becomes an escort. They travel together, they do everything together, and 201 00:13:56,080 --> 00:14:01,320 eventually addiction follows. By the time she's in Babylon Long Island, the addiction 202 00:14:01,440 --> 00:14:05,759 is in full effect. Actually she came to Long Island to go into rehab. 203 00:14:05,080 --> 00:14:09,200 Her sister paid for it. But then she came out and the boyfriend 204 00:14:09,399 --> 00:14:11,679 who she met there, the two of them went right back into it. 205 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:16,120 And so yes, the sex work at that time is fully sustaining the drug 206 00:14:16,159 --> 00:14:20,159 habit. And there's really gruesome detail in Lost Girls about the lives that they 207 00:14:20,200 --> 00:14:24,320 were living in Long Island before she disappeared. And this is this gets so 208 00:14:24,480 --> 00:14:28,840 bleak that when she does disappear, no one, not even her sister, 209 00:14:30,399 --> 00:14:33,200 goes to the police because they don't think they'll be taken seriously, and also 210 00:14:33,399 --> 00:14:37,039 because they don't want to draw attention to the lives that they're leading. And 211 00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:39,399 that's as bad as bleak as it can get. It seems to me, 212 00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:45,080 as the English teacher in the room, I do want to ask about your 213 00:14:45,080 --> 00:14:48,840 writing process, because I ask this of every author that we have on the 214 00:14:48,879 --> 00:14:52,399 pod because I think that in some way it will probably help me teach my 215 00:14:52,480 --> 00:14:56,080 own students. Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process and 216 00:14:56,120 --> 00:15:01,000 how that process is informed by your vocation as a reporter. I'd never written 217 00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:05,279 a book before Lost Girls. I'd written magazine stories. Those stories, a 218 00:15:05,279 --> 00:15:09,120 lot of them were narrative in nature, and a lot of them involved interviewing 219 00:15:09,159 --> 00:15:13,039 people who were in difficult life situations and telling their stories. And I understood 220 00:15:13,039 --> 00:15:18,600 that to talk chronologically with those people was interesting and helpful. Didn't even didn't 221 00:15:18,639 --> 00:15:22,360 just help with writing, it also helped create a cogent way of thinking about 222 00:15:22,360 --> 00:15:24,799 their lives. And so I thought, I talked myself into thinking this would 223 00:15:24,799 --> 00:15:28,639 be easy. I thought, this will be like five magazine stories about five 224 00:15:28,679 --> 00:15:31,480 women and their families, and then a six magazine story about the case and 225 00:15:31,720 --> 00:15:35,960 Bibbity Bobby boo. There'd be a book, maybe a small book, a 226 00:15:35,080 --> 00:15:39,679 very short book. Then I would be done. And of course it wasn't 227 00:15:39,720 --> 00:15:43,480 that easy. I had just enough of an advance to afford to take six 228 00:15:43,519 --> 00:15:46,639 months off of work from New York Magazine without us so that and so I'd 229 00:15:46,639 --> 00:15:50,519 outcome proof the book for myself. I said, even if the book sinks 230 00:15:50,559 --> 00:15:54,559 like a stone and nobody reads it, I won't have lost any money and 231 00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:56,840 I will have had a good experience working on something that I thought was interesting. 232 00:15:58,279 --> 00:16:00,320 So that's how I was able to go to sleep night for the first 233 00:16:00,320 --> 00:16:03,840 six months of and the book was due a year. So for six months 234 00:16:03,919 --> 00:16:08,120 I stayed on the clock at New York Magazine, and I took little side 235 00:16:08,159 --> 00:16:11,720 trips here and there to all the hometowns, and I interviewed everybody I could, 236 00:16:11,759 --> 00:16:15,559 and I racked up hours and hours of audio, and I didn't really 237 00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:18,480 look at the audio, and I had an extravagance, which is I paid 238 00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:22,759 to have all the audio transcribed. I thought that he if I had to 239 00:16:22,759 --> 00:16:25,960 sit and transcribe it all, not only would it take a month, but 240 00:16:26,080 --> 00:16:29,360 also I probably wouldn't be the same person at the end of it, because 241 00:16:29,639 --> 00:16:32,879 I find it to be rather demoralizing to sit and listen to my own voice 242 00:16:33,440 --> 00:16:37,240 talking to people. So six months go by, and I have six months 243 00:16:37,320 --> 00:16:41,080 left before the book is ready, and I have all this transcribed interviews, 244 00:16:41,360 --> 00:16:44,279 and that's when the clock starts. That's when I take off work and I 245 00:16:44,320 --> 00:16:48,480 sit down and I created six buckets, one for each woman and her family 246 00:16:48,519 --> 00:16:52,480 and one for the investigation. And I looked at a calendar and I charted 247 00:16:52,519 --> 00:16:56,039 out how much time I would divide it up, how much time I would 248 00:16:56,039 --> 00:17:00,480 spend trying to write the sloppiest, worst possible draft version of each of these 249 00:17:00,519 --> 00:17:03,279 stories. And I went to work, and the time pressure kept me from 250 00:17:03,319 --> 00:17:07,839 stopping. My motto don't just keep going. So if I had a problem 251 00:17:07,880 --> 00:17:10,759 with a section, I would just make a little mark saying you're gonna have 252 00:17:10,839 --> 00:17:14,000 to come back to this, and then just kept going. But the real 253 00:17:14,039 --> 00:17:17,720 thing that kept me courage as I was working on it was that I already 254 00:17:17,759 --> 00:17:19,960 had an idea for what the book would look like. I was influenced by 255 00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:25,519 the Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, which is really two books in one. 256 00:17:25,920 --> 00:17:27,559 I hear you say, yeah, the first part of the book is the 257 00:17:27,559 --> 00:17:32,039 prelude to the crime, and the second is the aftermath, And so I 258 00:17:32,079 --> 00:17:34,799 thought that that would work here. You'd have a part one that is the 259 00:17:34,839 --> 00:17:40,319 lives of the women from the moment they are born to the moment that they 260 00:17:40,359 --> 00:17:45,400 disappear, and then part two would be everything that happened after their bodies were 261 00:17:45,440 --> 00:17:49,119 found, the blow by blow of the media Maelstrom, the trauma of the 262 00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:53,960 families coming together and finding each other, the police dysfunction, the rumor mill, 263 00:17:55,519 --> 00:17:59,640 the conspiracy, theories of who've done it, and then finally, as 264 00:17:59,640 --> 00:18:03,359 an end, where they all are now and how they look toward the future. 265 00:18:03,440 --> 00:18:04,720 And so I knew that it was going to look like that, and 266 00:18:04,759 --> 00:18:10,359 that kept me going as well. But as I wrote Just to I had 267 00:18:10,359 --> 00:18:15,160 lots of unanswered questions. I didn't know if I was writing a pulse detective 268 00:18:15,160 --> 00:18:18,960 book, like if I was writing an Elmore Leonard novel that was nonfiction it 269 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:25,680 was something grizzly and tough, or if I was writing something intellectual and removed 270 00:18:25,720 --> 00:18:30,960 and anthropological and that would read like a sociological study of these people. I 271 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:33,640 didn't know which way I was going. I couldn't figure out what the voice 272 00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:37,519 was going to be, and so I decided to just hit the gas and 273 00:18:37,559 --> 00:18:41,000 be as explicit and tough as possible, and then I could always dial it 274 00:18:41,079 --> 00:18:45,200 back, and that's what I did. But somewhere in there there was a 275 00:18:45,240 --> 00:18:49,000 second question I realized, which was, how OnEarth are you going to not 276 00:18:49,119 --> 00:18:53,759 just differentiate these women for readers, but lead the reader through and around these 277 00:18:53,920 --> 00:19:00,200 worlds. And so I had lots of chapters where I was the intermediary. 278 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:03,160 Say, a chapter begins, it's going to talk about Meghan Waterman. The 279 00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:06,440 chapter begins with me saying, I'm sitting on a park bench talking to Megan 280 00:19:06,480 --> 00:19:10,920 Waterman's mother. It's been six months since her daughter's been found, and she 281 00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:12,000 lives in Portland, and this is what her life, saying, this is 282 00:19:12,039 --> 00:19:15,279 the story. She tells things like that that got me through the first draft. 283 00:19:15,319 --> 00:19:18,880 But then when I handed into my editors, they immediately said, you 284 00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:25,039 don't need to be in this book so much. And I immediately was relieved. 285 00:19:23,359 --> 00:19:27,440 I was so psyched because what I said to them was, so you 286 00:19:27,480 --> 00:19:30,440 think I have enough? I have enough without me, And they said, 287 00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:33,240 oh yeah, yeah, You've learned enough about each of these women that you 288 00:19:33,279 --> 00:19:37,039 don't need to be in it. And that was extremely encouraging. And so 289 00:19:37,079 --> 00:19:41,079 the rewrite became about finding new ways to start those chapters. So you then 290 00:19:41,200 --> 00:19:45,920 found yourself pulling back a little bit, and there wasn't so much of I'm 291 00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:49,519 sitting here on a park bench on a sunny all day or whatever. Yeah, 292 00:19:49,599 --> 00:19:53,240 I was going in with the impression that the world I was describing was 293 00:19:53,279 --> 00:19:56,720 so alien to most readers that they would need someone to hold their hand and 294 00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:02,680 take them through it. But actually, what I learned was that wasn't necessary 295 00:20:02,720 --> 00:20:04,720 at all, and I was really happy about that. I am not the 296 00:20:04,759 --> 00:20:10,039 sort of magazine writer who puts myself in stories, and so it was an 297 00:20:10,079 --> 00:20:11,880 uncomfortable place to be in any way. So I was like, great, 298 00:20:12,160 --> 00:20:15,440 I show up in the book at the moment that I show up in the 299 00:20:15,759 --> 00:20:19,039 chronology, when the case is when the families have surfaced and the media is 300 00:20:19,039 --> 00:20:22,839 paying attention to them and somebody wants to get to know them better. That's 301 00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:25,480 when I am there as a fly on the wall. But you don't learn 302 00:20:25,519 --> 00:20:30,400 about me. I'm just part that allows for scenes where it's just me and 303 00:20:30,599 --> 00:20:33,839 one person, one on one talking about things, that allows for those scenes 304 00:20:33,839 --> 00:20:36,519 to appear in the book. But it's not like it's me as a character. 305 00:20:36,559 --> 00:20:41,039 It's me as an interviewer. You didn't Truman Capodia exactly exactly fact, 306 00:20:41,119 --> 00:20:48,359 same thought it is. It really is just a wonderful piece of writing. 307 00:20:48,519 --> 00:20:51,920 Honestly, Bob, it's amazing. Well, thank you. I was. 308 00:20:52,079 --> 00:20:57,160 I thought that the biggest challenge would be to try to understand women who I 309 00:20:57,200 --> 00:21:00,480 was never going to meet through the eyes of the people who knew them, 310 00:21:02,039 --> 00:21:06,079 And at first I thought it might not be possible, but then I realized 311 00:21:06,119 --> 00:21:08,039 that the women were in their twenties, that they weren't sixteen, They had 312 00:21:08,119 --> 00:21:11,319 lives independent of their families, and so I thought of I could talk to 313 00:21:11,759 --> 00:21:15,279 hopefully more than one, but at least one person who really knew them well 314 00:21:15,599 --> 00:21:18,839 in their adult lives, and I was lucky enough to talk to more than 315 00:21:18,839 --> 00:21:22,839 one for each of them, then I would have a fully dimensional view of 316 00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:26,319 who they were. And I decided that I would try to solve the answer 317 00:21:26,359 --> 00:21:29,559 of why did each of them become a sex worker? Why did they become 318 00:21:29,599 --> 00:21:33,279 an escort? Why did they make the decision that their cousin or their sister 319 00:21:33,200 --> 00:21:37,359 never did. What was it about it for them? And I had trouble 320 00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:40,880 finding the answer to that question for each of them, because even as I 321 00:21:40,920 --> 00:21:44,039 interviewed people who knew them well, at no point did any of those people 322 00:21:44,079 --> 00:21:47,359 say to me. And that's the day I remember that she looked at me 323 00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:51,319 and she said, you know what I'm going to advertise on Craigslist that just 324 00:21:51,400 --> 00:21:53,880 never happened. There was no moment where it happened, and so I changed 325 00:21:53,920 --> 00:21:59,480 the question. I realized that the way to understand anyone in fiction or in 326 00:21:59,559 --> 00:22:03,359 nonfiction is to find out what they want out of life, what they want, 327 00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:06,640 And so I sat down and I did some thinking based on all my 328 00:22:06,720 --> 00:22:10,000 interviewing. What does Maureen want, what does Megan want? What does Shannon 329 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:11,880 want? What does Amber want? What does Melissa want? And what they 330 00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:17,839 wanted were all different things. I talked before about Shannon being alienated from her 331 00:22:17,839 --> 00:22:21,440 family and wanting to get back in. In the book, I talk about 332 00:22:21,519 --> 00:22:25,079 Melissa wanting to be successful and not to lead the life that her mother, 333 00:22:25,240 --> 00:22:29,119 who had her when she was sixteen, led. She came to New York 334 00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:32,920 for a whole different life, and Maureen wanted to pay for her rent so 335 00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:34,799 that she wouldn't be evicted, so that she could prove that she could have 336 00:22:34,880 --> 00:22:38,319 custody of her son. It goes on, and Amber wanted to be close 337 00:22:38,359 --> 00:22:42,440 to her sister Kim, who I talked about a moment ago. Everybody had 338 00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,960 something different, and that suddenly was to me, was the key to understanding 339 00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:51,240 these people as individuals and not as plot devices in a true crime story. 340 00:22:51,799 --> 00:22:55,720 You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back after this word from 341 00:22:55,720 --> 00:23:03,519 our sponsors. We're back here at Mind over Murder. One process question. 342 00:23:04,079 --> 00:23:07,920 You're talking to a number of different people, and even listening to you described 343 00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:12,559 the process. I get how you're talking about these women as younger, really 344 00:23:12,599 --> 00:23:18,559 girls growing up. Also talked to people that were more of their contemporaries, 345 00:23:18,559 --> 00:23:21,799 that were their friends, that were able to tell what they were up to 346 00:23:22,079 --> 00:23:26,240 pretty close to the moment they disappeared. Were any of these people resistant to 347 00:23:26,319 --> 00:23:30,920 the idea that you were going to plunk down a digital recorder and record the 348 00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:36,759 conversation. Did you encounter much resistance, because some of this is a painful 349 00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:41,880 and b some of these people are involved in illegal activity, particularly the friends 350 00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:45,839 and associates. Did anybody say I don't want to be recorded or you had 351 00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:52,920 to do the traditional reporter's notebook approach. That's a very interesting question because while 352 00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,519 it's certainly true that a lot of people resisted being interviewed at first, and 353 00:23:56,559 --> 00:24:00,000 I just kept asking and kept moving, kept on moving through the book, 354 00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:04,119 and eventually, through gentle positive pressure, people agree to be interviewed. But 355 00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:07,480 once I actually sat down to be interviewed, nobody flinched it the tape recorder. 356 00:24:07,519 --> 00:24:11,519 And that's something that I've noticed over the years. I first was a 357 00:24:11,519 --> 00:24:15,079 reporter working on news stories in like nineteen ninety two or nineteen ninety three, 358 00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:18,599 and it was terrifying to take out a tape recorder because you would think that 359 00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:23,680 the person would completely freak out and it would spoil the entire encounter. Quite 360 00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:26,799 often, you wouldn't want to do it. You just sit there with your 361 00:24:26,799 --> 00:24:30,599 notebook. But the reality TV era has changed it all. It's changed everything, 362 00:24:30,599 --> 00:24:33,599 and I'm sure podcasting has changed it as well. It's a different time 363 00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:37,279 now where I can't remember the last time someone has been upset about having a 364 00:24:37,279 --> 00:24:40,680 tape recorder out. In fact, they're upset if you don't. They're like, 365 00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:42,319 what, you're not going to record me? Because everybody thinks that they're 366 00:24:42,319 --> 00:24:45,519 going to get recorded. It's a night and day change. And of course, 367 00:24:45,559 --> 00:24:48,279 the other night and day change is that recording is so much easier now 368 00:24:48,319 --> 00:24:53,559 you're not flipping tapes and buying new tapes, and god, it was horrible 369 00:24:55,279 --> 00:24:59,079 changing batteries in the whole nine yard. Yeah, exactly. It was like 370 00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:03,359 a like this own age. Talk to us a little bit about Mary Gilbert 371 00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:07,279 and her murder at the hands of her daughter Sarah. When and how did 372 00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:11,079 you hear about it? And what was your emotional response to it? Such 373 00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:15,759 an awful turn of events, really a real tragedy. Most tragic of it 374 00:25:15,799 --> 00:25:18,559 all was that the life that Mary had been leading in the years since since 375 00:25:18,599 --> 00:25:22,359 Shannon's death had really been, in many ways the life that she had hoped 376 00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:26,119 to lead, an exemplarly life where she was really caring for the people around 377 00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:30,480 her. That wasn't always the case with Mary. She was a really erratic 378 00:25:30,559 --> 00:25:34,680 person and had her own personal problems. I don't mean to be oblique here. 379 00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:37,400 I'm not talking about substances or anything like that, but just as a 380 00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:42,079 personality, she could she was a handful, but with her daughter Sarah, 381 00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:47,359 she was a caregiver. She cared about her, and she cared about Sarah's 382 00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:51,519 son as well, who was in the mix. Sarah had mental health problems. 383 00:25:51,559 --> 00:25:55,519 Sarah had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and Sarah's mental health took a nose 384 00:25:55,559 --> 00:26:00,839 dive after Shannon's body was finally found and her relationship completely disintegrated, She was 385 00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:06,359 on her own. She had psychotic breaks more than one. She had meds 386 00:26:06,359 --> 00:26:08,839 that she was supposed to be on. There was a sun that she was 387 00:26:08,839 --> 00:26:12,079 supposedly taken care of, and she was taking okay care of him, but 388 00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:18,359 she became more and more angry with her sister Cherie and also with Mary, 389 00:26:18,839 --> 00:26:22,960 particularly with Mary, and one day Mary came and visited and was murdered by 390 00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:27,039 Sarah. Sarah you could say that she was psychotic, she also was planning 391 00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:32,799 it, so she ends up getting convicted of murder. The insanity defense doesn't 392 00:26:32,799 --> 00:26:36,160 work. It rarely works in the United States, actually, but it didn't 393 00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,160 work for her. So she's in prison there and Mary is gone, and 394 00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:42,279 it's just awful. It was July. It was basically the same time of 395 00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:47,799 year as when I first went this year when I heard that rex Hureman had 396 00:26:47,839 --> 00:26:51,599 been arrested for the murders. So it was weird that way, like the 397 00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:56,039 same weather, the same stuff I was doing outside, and the call come. 398 00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,720 The call came when I learned about Mary. I was really brought low 399 00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:04,039 and immediately on the phone and Facebook and email and texting with everybody involved in 400 00:27:04,079 --> 00:27:07,599 the case. And at that point. Actually, I was on the film 401 00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,200 with Liz garbus too, the director of the Lost Girls movie, because even 402 00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:14,079 then she was still she was trying to develop it as a movie, and 403 00:27:14,519 --> 00:27:17,759 she had met with Mary just a few months earlier and was ready to make 404 00:27:17,799 --> 00:27:21,680 a movie about Mary and her life. And suddenly Mary was gone. It 405 00:27:21,799 --> 00:27:26,079 was a real shocks. Something you highlight in the book. In the latter 406 00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:30,240 part of Lost Girls, you talk about the fact that Mary really seemed to 407 00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:37,960 find purpose in life following Shinnon's disappearance and then ultimately her body being recovered. 408 00:27:37,079 --> 00:27:42,200 That seems to just make that losing her that much more profound a loss, 409 00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:45,599 I think for all of us, because I don't think she had great purpose 410 00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:49,759 in her life prior to losing her daughter. I think the best way of 411 00:27:49,799 --> 00:27:55,440 explaining this is to talk about the relationship with another daughter, Sharie, who 412 00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:57,640 if you read Lost Girls, really is at odds with Mary. Toward the 413 00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:02,160 end, She's really angry with her, and Mary is alienating the people around 414 00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:04,880 her. It's a tough time. But also Shari is upset with Mary for 415 00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,960 falling short in a lot of ways as a mother. I want to focus 416 00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:12,599 on that because that changed after Lost Girls came out. In the years before 417 00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:18,319 Mary's death, she mended fences with Shari. She worked hard to take care 418 00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:21,799 of Sarah as well, and she worked hard to try to keep the police 419 00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,680 focused on shin AND's death and to get the nine one one tape released, 420 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,319 and to get the as second autopsy done, and to get the remains away 421 00:28:29,319 --> 00:28:33,119 from the possession of the police department so that she could have a proper burial. 422 00:28:33,599 --> 00:28:34,839 She had real challenges towards the end of her life, and she was 423 00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:41,519 rising to those challenges and repairing her relationships with people. And that's the tragedy 424 00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:45,920 I think. So let's shift gears for a minute here. What would you 425 00:28:45,039 --> 00:28:48,720 say, especially given the fact that now we've finally seen an arrest in this 426 00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:55,240 case, what would you say were the biggest missteps in this case on the 427 00:28:55,359 --> 00:29:00,759 side of law enforcement and investigators if you had to name the biggest couple, 428 00:29:00,039 --> 00:29:03,160 because it seems like there were a lot of missteps, what would you say 429 00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:07,759 some of the biggest ones were before it was a serial killer case. The 430 00:29:07,759 --> 00:29:11,519 world we're in was a world where the when these women were leading were at 431 00:29:11,599 --> 00:29:15,640 risk in their lives that nobody was really coming in to help them. Or 432 00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:19,519 support them, and when they disappeared, nobody was really working over time to 433 00:29:19,559 --> 00:29:23,680 find them. If they finally was a murder case, suddenly the media was 434 00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:27,359 paying attention, but the police, some of them were resentful they had inherited. 435 00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:32,160 Suddenly it's like a not just one cold case had crash landed in their 436 00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,640 backyard, four of them had. And then they found more bodies, six 437 00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:38,319 more bodies, ten cold cases, and then the whole riddle of Shannon Gilbert 438 00:29:38,319 --> 00:29:42,039 and eleventh problem. They're sitting there with eleven problems, none of which they 439 00:29:42,039 --> 00:29:45,480 think are going to get solved anytime soon, and everybody's mad at them, 440 00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,480 and they've got other work to do, and they're annoyed. Part of this 441 00:29:48,519 --> 00:29:53,079 annoyance is apathy towards sex workers, and part of it is misogyny, and 442 00:29:53,119 --> 00:29:56,799 part of it is class because god knows, if these women had been high 443 00:29:56,839 --> 00:30:02,440 school cheerleaders or college students or workers in Manhattan who had gone missing, it 444 00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:06,119 would be a very different story. Lots of different pressure involved to try to 445 00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:10,319 solve the case. In terms of police work. It wasn't just apathy or 446 00:30:10,359 --> 00:30:15,039 misogyny. There was a tip that we now know about, a witness statement 447 00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:19,680 that somebody who saw an individual and a car the night before Amber Castella disappeared, 448 00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,359 someone who was big enough to look like an ogre and who drove a 449 00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:26,400 car that looked like a Chevy Avalanche. This tip went nowhere early on, 450 00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:30,039 and then it sat in the case file. No one worked on it at 451 00:30:30,039 --> 00:30:34,240 all, No one talked about it at all for more than ten years until 452 00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:37,839 a year ago. And then suddenly it pinpointed our suspect. If that tip 453 00:30:37,839 --> 00:30:41,559 had gone somewhere twelve years ago, then they would have had that suspect that 454 00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:47,519 much sooner. There was resistance to innovation. There was cell tower technology where 455 00:30:47,559 --> 00:30:51,279 they could have tried to match up the movements of the various burner phones that 456 00:30:51,319 --> 00:30:53,319 were used to contact the women. This, to me, I would think 457 00:30:53,359 --> 00:30:56,960 would be the first thing you would want to do in a case that's based 458 00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:00,759 on technology, like a Craigslist case. They didn't want to do it. 459 00:31:00,799 --> 00:31:04,279 They were resistant to it. The FBI offered help to expand their work that 460 00:31:04,319 --> 00:31:08,920 they had done early on in it, and the Suffolk County authorities resisted it. 461 00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:12,039 They wanted to do their own thing to find to complete my list, 462 00:31:12,079 --> 00:31:17,319 which is already really long list. There's corruption there's police corruption because at the 463 00:31:17,319 --> 00:31:21,960 beginning of twenty twelve incomes a new Chief of Department in the Suffoc County Police 464 00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:25,640 Department, a guy named Jim Burke, who is a known quantity, a 465 00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:29,880 problematic figure for years. He had been working for the DA and now he 466 00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:33,839 was over in the police force again after being away, and he turned the 467 00:31:33,839 --> 00:31:37,559 place into the KGB. He had people followed, he had people wire tapped, 468 00:31:37,599 --> 00:31:40,519 He went after his enemies, He beat up a witness and then tried 469 00:31:40,559 --> 00:31:44,519 to cover it up. It was a misery for four years he was involved 470 00:31:44,519 --> 00:31:48,240 in the department and it was just a shocker there that happened. But the 471 00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:52,160 shocker for the Gilgo Beach case is that he kept the FBI way. That 472 00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:55,920 the FBI was there, ready to do work, and he didn't want the 473 00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,880 FBI looking over his shoulders, so he kept them away. The lack of 474 00:32:00,559 --> 00:32:05,720 cooperation, particularly with the FBI. And I don't mean to attribute the recent 475 00:32:05,799 --> 00:32:10,920 success with the arresto rex Huermann strictly to the FBI, but it's pretty striking 476 00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:16,839 that six weeks or so after a new task force is formed with a high 477 00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:22,960 level of cooperation between Suffolk County new York State Police, FBI, and other 478 00:32:23,119 --> 00:32:30,720 agencies. It can't be lost on anybody that six weeks after this new team 479 00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:36,480 energized, working together, cooperating, they're all of a sudden making progress, 480 00:32:36,559 --> 00:32:43,000 significant progress, including the tip regarding this so called ogre and the Chevy Avalanche. 481 00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:47,039 He was a very distinctive physical figure and the truck was a very unique 482 00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:52,200 vehicle, and they knew they should be looking for that truck and that individual 483 00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:59,599 in Massapequa or Massapequa Park. Once they actually put the team together that weren't 484 00:32:59,599 --> 00:33:05,519 playing politics and weren't covering up corruption, the case started moving forward. I 485 00:33:05,559 --> 00:33:08,519 think that's accurate. I'm starting to get a more detailed view of how that 486 00:33:08,599 --> 00:33:14,359 went down. The corruption then did a couple of years before this new administration 487 00:33:14,519 --> 00:33:17,839 came in, there was an interim period where they did do some significant work 488 00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,400 on the cell tower stuff, and they even limited the area even better, 489 00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,279 and they had an even more narrow list of possible homes where a killer might 490 00:33:25,359 --> 00:33:29,640 live. They still didn't have a suspect, though, and that's because it's 491 00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,519 not just that nobody was acting on the tip about the Chevy Avalanche, it's 492 00:33:32,519 --> 00:33:37,279 that people didn't even know it existed anymore, and it disappeared into the case 493 00:33:37,319 --> 00:33:40,519 file. The file wasn't even searchable, it wasn't digitizable. At the beginning 494 00:33:40,559 --> 00:33:45,119 of twenty twenty two, there's a new police Commissioner, Rodney Harrison, and 495 00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:47,240 there's a new District Attorney, Ray Tierney, and they both have done work 496 00:33:47,279 --> 00:33:51,599 in New York and they both worked on gang cases, and they both understood 497 00:33:51,599 --> 00:33:55,680 how important cell tower technology is because it puts people in places without meeting witness 498 00:33:55,720 --> 00:34:00,200 statements, and so they're ready for a task force and the FBI that helps. 499 00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:04,599 It's the state police as well state troopers. And it's a state trooper 500 00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:07,920 on the task force who does a different kind of search for the Chevy Avalanche 501 00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:13,320 that turns up a guy Rex Hureman, who's huge, like an ogre, 502 00:34:13,639 --> 00:34:17,840 who lives in massive people park and not incidentally has ninety seven gun permits. 503 00:34:19,039 --> 00:34:22,039 So it suddenly becomes someone they can look at. They don't just have all 504 00:34:22,039 --> 00:34:27,199 this cell tower data which they've assembled in recent years. Now they have somebody 505 00:34:27,199 --> 00:34:30,480 to square it against. But it is amazing. As you said, the 506 00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:34,480 task force began February first, I believe, twenty twenty two, and I 507 00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:38,400 think they found the Chevy Avalanche attached to Hereman on March fourteenth, so no 508 00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:42,920 time at all, about six weeks I think, from the time they got 509 00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:46,440 started just after the beginning of the year. Credit to everybody who worked on 510 00:34:46,519 --> 00:34:51,400 this thing, but of course it was all sitting there waiting to be discovered. 511 00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:53,440 I know we hear a lot of cliches about fresh eyes, but I 512 00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:59,599 think fresh eyes, fresh enthusiasm, a new team with all this talent. 513 00:35:00,159 --> 00:35:05,320 Six weeks later, they've actually got strong leads which led them directly to a 514 00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:08,719 suspect. Yeah, and I think there's a frustration there among some of the 515 00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:13,599 people who immediately preceded this group, because they did some good things too. 516 00:35:13,679 --> 00:35:16,840 They identified an additional victim, Valerie Mack, who had been anonymous up till 517 00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:22,199 then, and gave her family information that they sorely wanted for years, and 518 00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:25,000 they made pieces of evidence public, and there were things they did, and 519 00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:30,840 as I said, they refined the geographic area where cell signals were pinging, 520 00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:34,559 and there was hope, but there was no suspect. There was no the 521 00:35:34,599 --> 00:35:37,079 suspects that they were going after, none of them panned out, and you 522 00:35:37,119 --> 00:35:40,599 can't have one without the other. So when the arrest was made back in 523 00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:45,760 July. What was your response, was Rex Huerman in any way what you 524 00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:52,800 expected when you pictured the perpetrator in these cases. When I learned that he 525 00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:57,760 lived in Massapago Park and commuted to Manhattan, I thought that certainly is. 526 00:35:58,519 --> 00:36:01,000 But when I learned that he had a family, that surprised me. And 527 00:36:01,039 --> 00:36:06,480 when I learned that he had a public facing job where he was. He 528 00:36:06,559 --> 00:36:09,960 wasn't a landscaper gardener like Joel Rifkin. He wasn't bopping around in his truck 529 00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:14,400 not talking to anyone all day long. He actually talked to people and had 530 00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,000 to impress them and went over their business. And some of these people were 531 00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:21,079 powerful people in New York City that he had to be a consultant for. 532 00:36:21,519 --> 00:36:24,960 I wasn't expecting that. And it's not like he was some super charmer like 533 00:36:25,039 --> 00:36:30,559 a Ted Bundy figure. But he was public. He was gregarious and ambitious. 534 00:36:31,039 --> 00:36:34,960 And then he went home and had a wife and two children. At 535 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,159 first you wonder, how do you find the time, how do you manage 536 00:36:37,199 --> 00:36:39,480 a life to be able to do this? And then you think, clearly 537 00:36:39,519 --> 00:36:43,960 he found a way, And then you learn about a vaults down in his 538 00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:46,920 house with not just ninety seven guns, but two hundred and eighty guns, 539 00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:52,400 and it starts to become something really gothic going on there in that house. 540 00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:57,639 The sixty four thousand dollars question, maybe do you think that rex Huerman was 541 00:36:57,679 --> 00:37:01,480 responsible for the other victims in the Long Island serial killings. I'd like to 542 00:37:01,519 --> 00:37:05,360 give you an answer, but I need one second. The dog here is 543 00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:12,840 eating a napkin. Bob went under the table for a second, and I 544 00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:14,880 was like, I don't know what's going on there, but we'll give it 545 00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:19,599 a second. I saw the I actually saw that beautiful dog. Oh I 546 00:37:19,599 --> 00:37:22,639 didn't see the dog. And now I saw the dog in the background, 547 00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,039 and I was like, I think he just grabbed something off the counter. 548 00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:30,320 Really, I thought I saw it. And I was like, I'm sure. 549 00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:34,840 I'm not always looking at the screen, of course, I'm looking at 550 00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:37,280 the questions and other things. I think it's grabbing something off the counter. 551 00:37:39,119 --> 00:37:43,440 That's funny that it was in the background. We'll take that part out, 552 00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:47,800 all right. So you had asked about more so I think that's a great 553 00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:52,320 question. One of the first things I certainly thought was, how does somebody 554 00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:58,119 who apparently is responsible for three or four women on the beach continue to live 555 00:37:58,159 --> 00:38:02,239 his life for another twelve years after those bodies are discovered. How does that 556 00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:07,159 person not try something else, not hurt someone else? How does he just 557 00:38:07,199 --> 00:38:10,159 stop? And I think it's going to be pretty dreadful to learn exactly what 558 00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:14,800 kind of life he was leading in that time and before that time? Was 559 00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:17,840 this his first was mourning Brainerd Barnes in two thousand and seven, really his 560 00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:22,480 first victim. That we have a lot left to learn about him. I'm 561 00:38:22,519 --> 00:38:25,920 no profiler, but it seems odd to me that he would stop being interested 562 00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:30,599 in this sort of thing and just turn it off. When you've finished your 563 00:38:30,639 --> 00:38:34,039 book and turned it in, that is the first edition of the book, 564 00:38:34,039 --> 00:38:38,159 because now you've added an afterward. Did you think someday, I think this 565 00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:42,639 case is going to be solved or did you always think it was going to 566 00:38:42,679 --> 00:38:46,800 remain a terrible unsolved part of Long Island history. I had really placed myself 567 00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:51,920 in the lane of focusing on the victims. In fact, I started to 568 00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:54,360 get to a place where I thought our culture thinks too much about Hannibal Lecter. 569 00:38:54,639 --> 00:38:58,559 I enjoyed the silence of the lambs as much as anyone that between that 570 00:38:58,679 --> 00:39:02,159 and Dexter and everything else, like we sit and romanticize these people and that 571 00:39:02,159 --> 00:39:06,159 they're just they're all like Joel Rifkin, they're just disturbed, gross people who 572 00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:07,280 need to be put away. But I'm not going to think about it. 573 00:39:07,599 --> 00:39:13,519 And I had skepticism about whether the Long Island authorities would ever have any headway. 574 00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,239 The only thing, the only silver lining I thought of at the time, 575 00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:20,719 over the years was that a lot of these cases do tend to get 576 00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:23,599 solved ten or fifteen years later. All over the country, you hear about 577 00:39:23,639 --> 00:39:28,880 it ten or fifteen years later, something shakes loose, somebody's life situation changes, 578 00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:32,920 they tick somebody off, they die, or or a witness suddenly changes 579 00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:37,480 their mind. Something happens, And I think that's in fact, really what 580 00:39:37,559 --> 00:39:42,840 happened here at administration changed and the corrupt culture started to wither away, and 581 00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:45,480 suddenly there was cooperation with other agencies. That's what changed in this case. 582 00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:50,840 What is next for you in terms of projects, I know you've had a 583 00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:53,360 lot of success with Lost Girls. You had a ton of success too with 584 00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:58,679 Hidden Valley Road, which actually is in my classroom at this very moment on 585 00:39:58,679 --> 00:40:02,000 my bookshelf. Next. When else can I put another Robert Kulker book on 586 00:40:02,039 --> 00:40:05,599 my shelf. I would love to write another book. At the moment, 587 00:40:05,679 --> 00:40:08,079 I have a lot of magazine work going. The books are always really big 588 00:40:08,119 --> 00:40:12,199 gambles, and I need to do what I did with Lost Girls, which 589 00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:15,679 is outcome proof them. In my head think this will be worth putting a 590 00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:21,119 couple of years into, and so it's tricky there. I usually have to 591 00:40:21,199 --> 00:40:23,960 kiss a lot of frogs before finding another book. But in the meantime, 592 00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:30,159 I just panted in a draft of a timed New York Times magazine story about 593 00:40:30,199 --> 00:40:32,960 the Gilgo case to try and chime in with the rest of the world. 594 00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:37,360 Perhaps that'll be the last thing I do in it, Perhaps not. And 595 00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:39,840 then I'm thrilled to have a nice relationship with the Times magazine now where I 596 00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:45,119 can write about any number of different subjects. I've written about a plagiarism case 597 00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:49,159 and about a family with dementia. It's a thrilling career where I can have 598 00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:52,039 a lot of variety and jump around, but I do keep coming back to 599 00:40:52,119 --> 00:40:57,440 families. I do end up writing about families and crisis, families facing challenges. 600 00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,719 I did it with Lost Girls and with my other book as well, 601 00:41:00,760 --> 00:41:05,000 and so I imagine it's going to take me somewhere new before long. Do 602 00:41:05,079 --> 00:41:07,679 your publishers and editors call you up and say, g you, Bob, 603 00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:14,000 it would be great if you book or I think I'm feeling the pressure more 604 00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:17,079 than they're like, you can't hurry love. They get it. They understand 605 00:41:17,119 --> 00:41:21,440 that it has to be a good idea too, so they've seen it before 606 00:41:21,599 --> 00:41:25,239 that it takes some time. Do you know roughly when your New York Times 607 00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:30,679 magazine article will appear? I don't, but I assume it'll be sometime in 608 00:41:31,039 --> 00:41:35,199 late September or in the month of October. It won't sit around for long, 609 00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:37,320 so it's not going to wait until the trial or anything like that. 610 00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:42,719 So Fall twenty twenty three, it's coming soon. We hope, Yeah, 611 00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:47,199 I hope so. And then is Hidden Valley Road getting the Netflix treatment or 612 00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:51,719 is that one going to remain purely in book form? It was in development 613 00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:53,920 for a while, and that one. I wasn't creatively involved in the Lost 614 00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:58,760 Girls movie, but I was with developing a Hidden Valley Road mini series and 615 00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:02,320 I really enjoyed working on I really grew and developed as a writer trying to 616 00:42:02,639 --> 00:42:07,679 work with a screenwriter. It was really a thrill for me, and at 617 00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:09,719 the moment it hasn't been picked up. These things go up and down and 618 00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:15,039 have different lives. Lost Girls went to three different studios before Netflix finally made 619 00:42:15,039 --> 00:42:17,559 it. You got to kind of divorce myself from the outcome with that one 620 00:42:17,679 --> 00:42:23,920 and hope for the best. The book is Lost Girls and Unsolved American Mystery. 621 00:42:24,639 --> 00:42:30,440 And where can our listeners look for this amazing book? Lost Girls is 622 00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:34,199 still in print, which means it's everywhere. You could buy it on the 623 00:42:34,199 --> 00:42:37,480 internet or you could buy it in your bookstore. And it does have an 624 00:42:37,519 --> 00:42:43,000 afterward about Mary Gilbert and perhaps one day when the case against Rex Herman proceeds 625 00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:45,920 in court. Mailby another thank you so much for joining us on this episode 626 00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:50,239 of Mind Ever Murder. We really appreciated talking to you. I really like 627 00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:52,000 talking with you guys. Thanks so much. That's going to do it for 628 00:42:52,039 --> 00:42:57,280 this episode of mind Ever Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll 629 00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:10,239 see you next time. Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and 630 00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:16,199 Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our 631 00:43:16,239 --> 00:43:22,159 logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud. 632 00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:28,039 Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media. You can follow 633 00:43:28,119 --> 00:43:31,239 us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can also follow our page 634 00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:36,599 on the Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill 635 00:43:36,639 --> 00:43:40,639 Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas. Five six. Thank you for listening to 636 00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:43,239 mind Over Murder.