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 Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. 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 Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly and
I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by Joe Jackaloone, former commanding officer
of the Cold Case Squad in the New York Police Department and author of the
Cold Case Handbook. Joe, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for
having me, guys, Joe, We're so excited to have you. We've
been talking about having you on for what seemed like months, and now we
feel like there's no time like the present, so we really appreciate your taking
the time. No problem. So before we get into a discussion with you
on the Long Island serial killer slash Go Go Beach killer, however we're referring
to him these days as well as talking about your new books, start by
telling us about your background with the NYPD. Okay, I got on in
the New York City Police Department in nineteen ninety two. I got promoted a
sergeant relatively quick nineteen ninety nine, and I worked in i Worke start off
of the Bronx and I went to Brooklyn Noll Out therefter, I got promoted
and I ended up into the Denctive Squad one ten, precingcan Queens, and
then eventually worked my way into the cold case squad in the Bronx. And
yeah, no, it was a good career of the out. I think
it'll be eleven years this October, so it's it's gone by quick. Most
police officers serve for what twenty years? Is that a fairly typical career that's
changed now So when my group got in, there was still twenty years.
Now I believe it too. They have to do twenty five before they can
leave. Wow, would you have stayed longer? If you could have,
I would have stayed longer. But like everything else, the boss makes or
breaks your job. And got tired of my boss. So it became one
of those things where, just like a lot of other people, it's just
the boss makes or breaks things, and after a while you just can't deal
with it anymore. When you have that opportunity to leave, you know,
you just look for that door. And then you moved into a whole second
career now as a college professor and consultant. What other hats do you wear?
Yeah? Actually I was teaching while I was still working. So I've
been at John Jay now. This January will be eighteen years. So I
always kid my students. I'm like, you guys are struggling to get through
your four years. I'll be this is my fourth BA. You didn't want
to think about it. So if I could do four, you could do
I could do four of these, you could do one. It's just one
of those things where teaching has been something I wanted to do alsough I was
able to do it, and at a college level too, and at John
Jay it's been pretty nice. It's fellow teacher here, So thank you very
much for all that you do. I know it's not easy. I do
it with high schoolers, but I imagine college is maybe a little bit more
difficult. Yeah, it's like over the years, there's, like everything else,
you get your own feel for things. So when you first thought out,
when you don't know exactly what to expect. But at John Jay you're
dealing with most of the kids want to do some sort of law enforcement work,
so it makes things easy. So you're not trying to I'm not teaching
the math, that's the first of all. I can't do math. But
I'm not teaching the math and English and all those other subjects they don't want
to take. I'm teaching them the actual core courses that they want to take.
So my job is actually pretty easy because they want to hear the stuff.
They want to learn about this. Then they want to read, and
they want to get in and get involved in it, so it's it's been
easier. Are the students that you're teaching at John Jay are they working full
time in law enforcement or are they transitioning to full time work. What's a
typical student if there is such a thing. The majority of the undergraduate students
are younger adults, so they're going through their college years nineteen twenty twenty one.
Many of them want to do some sort of law enforcement work, whether
it's at the local level, state or federal. We even have a lot
of people that want to become lawyers. That's their fault, but that's what
they want to do it that's fine, but I always kid them, but
it is what it is. Right. If they want to do forensic science,
if they want to do all of those kinds of classes, that's the
kind of things that we encourage. It's actually been a great program and it
makes a more well rounded student because you have, like I said before,
you have kids that want to do this. It's kind of interesting. But
we do have older cops that they want to go back to school and get
their degree, finish it up. So you do have a couple of them
sprinkled through, but the overwhelming majority I just refer to them as kids because
all of those are much older than them, so I can't afford to call
them that. But it's it's exciting in a way because I remember when I
was that young in anticipating working and you can see many of them. That's
kind of looking it, right. We know that you just wrote a book,
the called case Handbook, and we're going to ask you to talk a
little bit about that. But I am curious, are you going to use
your own book in your college course? Because I can't think of anything cooler.
Really. Actually, yeah, this was my second book, right,
So I actually I spent my pandemic months whatever it was, I spent them
writing, right. So this year I had the fourth edition of my first
book come out, The Criminal Investigative Function, a gude for new investigators.
And I'll tell you a quick funny story that's now when it's fourth edition.
When I was teaching the investigations class, I used to complain to my fellow
in Disruptors. I used to say, every book that they have, it's
all kind of academic. There's really nothing near about how to solve the case.
And they got tired of hear me complains of one of the finals,
Well, just write your own damn book already. So I said, all
right, challenge accept it. So I wrote it. It really took off.
It's written in an easy format to read, right. The kids really
like it. There was a number of professors that have been using my textbook
not only in John Jay but across the country and for a number of years
New Jersey I used it for their police promotional exams as part of the Civil
Service test. WOW. So that was a kind of a nice validation for
me. And then this book I had actually started writing during the pandemic.
The Cold Case Handbook is based on my experiences that I had and then watching
what's been happening in the public eye over the last few years in policing,
because I watched it very closely and knowing that the cold cases were going to
suffer even more during what I refer to as the Great Resignation and retirement.
So we've had this issue for a long time about cold cases. It's getting
worse, not getting any better, and the problem that we deal with is
going to it's going to become exponential. I wrote this book not only for
the cops, but I also wrote it for family members and for those true
crime advocates out there, because listen, the way things are going and policing,
the future really lies within the general public on trying to help close these
cases. Because there are not going to be enough cops. It discontinues,
so That was one of our questions, Joe, is the Cold Case Handbook
your brand new book? Is it something that civilians can read and understand?
Absolutely, it's not full of cops speak. It's of course, it's geared
towards the law enforcement executive generally because he or she is the one that really
can make the changes within the department, and I call for a lot of
those changes. There is a lot of talk about reform, and I try
to tell people that the work reform is not synonymous with good. A lot
of the reforms that people have demanded and requested have not really been not only
good for the police department, but it hasn't been good for the general public.
The reforms that I'm calling for in this guide would help not only the
police department, but help the victims' families and changing mindsets. And one of
those things is about being more transparent with these cases in regards to when outsiders
are trying to get access to these things, instead of denying everything with a
blanket. Where this case is still under investigation, Come on, this case
is thirty years old. It's not under investigation. For any of us who
want to buy your book, and I am one of them. Where do
we go to find your book? Can we find it at Barnes and Noble.
Do we order it through John Jay? Do we order it through you?
They can get it through Amazon, but the publisher is Blue three sixty
Media, and if you buy it directly from Blue three sixty, they'll give
you the electronic copy included in it for another dollar or two, whatever it
is. I've gotten a lot of good feedback already from this book. I've
had actually a couple of universities as as a matter of fact, I'm going
out to Indiana to speak at Purdue University about this. So yeah, they're
having their second Cold Case Symposium. I'll be going out there in Hamburg.
So it's sooner rather than later. And I'm heading to of course, I've
got my fourth invite to Crime Con. I'm going next week. I'm going
down to the mid Atlantic Cold Case Homicide Investigators Association about So I'm doing a
lot of traveling with this, but I'm excited because I can actually get a
chance to speak to the people who are actually involved in doing this. Because
the obstacles that you deal with are the executives in the police departments, and
that's an end the organization, but great feedback from your peers, and now
people are adopting the book for use in training classes, college programs and so
on. Yes. Absolutely. I've actually got a couple of people that I
don't even know on LinkedIn, So I got the book. This is great.
I'm going to start using it at work. I have had cold case
investigators and all those other things that come up. So when you get that
kind of validation, you think that it might have hit a good spot because
you don't know how these things are going to land, right, you don't
know there are there aren't a lot of textbooks out there about how to solve
the cold case. There's a couple, and I hate calling it the textbook
because it's you get that word textbook and you just think of, oh my
god, phonics and all those other kind of things. It's really that's why
one of the that's why I wanted to call it a handbook. Right,
it's easy to read. It's and it's easy to read because I write,
and I probably at a fifty sixth grade level, So everyone read it's.
I tell people, listen, I'm no genius. If I could do this,
anybody can do it. It's like everybody is an expert on something.
It just so happened that this was my line of work, and I decided
to try to spin it into something that could actually help other people. If
you think about it, everyone is an expert on something. I don't care
if it's parenting or whatever. You have something that you could write your own
book or e book, whatever you want to do, and put it different
spin on things and give people thoughts and ideas that they might not have thought
about before. I said, Bill, I think we need to get to
work on our own books. This is true. And at the same time,
Joe, you are modest to a fault here. You're talking about a
thirty year career so far working in the cold case field. So you bring
a lot of expertise to this. And I know you joke about your writing
proficiency or whatever, but you have the nuts and bolts on the street,
shoe leather, whatever cliche we want to go with, experience that most of
the rest of us will never have. Yeah, the practical side of things
is always a good thing. And I've got myself in trouble in the past
on this, even in some of the news guests. Just for instance,
I did a interview with one of the news agencies, and the Anthony Brian
Coolberger is out there. He's studying all the stuff that make him a better
criminal. I'm like, he's wearing an orange jumpsuit, right, probably not.
Yeah, So this is the kind of stuff that sometimes I get a
little too snarky on some of these things. Sometimes I try to make the
host laugh too. It's just it's been a fun pride, right, So
I get a chance to talk about things that I've accomplished and was able to
learn. Right, That's basically what it is. You learn about these things.
And I got into the behavioral aspect of why criminals do a lot of
things too, which helped me in my career. And then working with the
detectives in the Coldki squad. I mean there was only four detectives in myself
when I first got into the Bronx, and then shortly thereafter one of them
got promoted. It was just me and three detectives and we had thousands of
open cases. We learned how to cherry pick things, we learned how to
look for those solubility factors. We learned how to do more and less that
we were qualified to do everything with nothing. It was one of those battles
that you learned from dealing with district attorneys. Oh about god, I can
give to tell you stories of fits like that, and I'm sure even when
we get to Loyal serial Killer, I'm sure there were fits that the police
department had with the district attorney, because that's just the way it is.
Case Long Island serial Killer is certainly the case on everybody's mind right at the
moment. So I do want to go ahead and turn to that. When
did you first hear about the Long Island serial killer case? As soon as
the news broke Just like everybody else, it happened practically in my backyard at
the time. I was living in Wanta, which is the gateway to Jones
Beach. And of course, just like everybody else, when you have something
like this that starts to develop over a few days, you're talking about a
major, major crime and in certain aspects, but Long Island has dealt with
a number of serial killers we daman back to the seventies. I think I
counted about five. I don't know if it's if it's the salt water,
I don't know what it is over there, but I guess it was from
the cold case aspect too, so I was really drawn to this case from
the beginning, and I learned a lot about the different aspects about what was
going on, and of course was able to give my input in a lot
of media routlets about it too, which kept me sharp on it. So
when the time came and the news finally broke twelve with thirteen years later,
I had everything to be known. So it was a good fit. So
this happened in your backyard, but that was not in an area where you
were working as an active duty police officer. You were a suburban Long Islander
commuting into New York City and working full time for the NYPD. The NYPD
was were they assisting in any way in those early stages of the what became
known as the Long Island serial killer case. Yes, they had just pulled
the plug, so to speak, so when this was finally started to break,
But yeah, New York City was helping out because they were actually tracking
the phone calls to Melissam Bartholomey's sister from the suspect who had her phone.
So this was an important aspect that it was a public information. It was
out in the public that this suspect was calling her, so they had tracked
him down to Penn Station area where they lost him. They lost a signal
and everything like that going way back when they added an idea that this person
was in Manhattan near Penn Station, which is on thirty fourth, and they
know that the phone pinged in Massapequa. You know they had that information way
back when. Why do you think the original investigation stalled out when it did,
Because it is looking like they had all of the information that was needed
to catch this guy and have had it for quite a while. What do
you think caused the investigation to stall out so early? I know we only
have a short time on a podcast, but there are a lot of oh
my god. When you look at the two heads of the three headed monster
out in Suffolk County, when you're dealing with James Burg the police chief,
and Thomas Boda, the district attorney. Both of these men were committed to
felonies, were both were convicted, and they both went to jail. When
you want to find out why this case ended up in a drawer or the
back of a filing cabinet, I don't think you have to look much further
than those two. One of the things that really disturbed me about the district
attorney than Tom Spoda, was his public fight with then police Commissioner Richard Dormer.
Now Richard Dormer, I thought made a mistake in the beginning when he
said that we might be dealing with a serial killer. That was a big
mistake. Saying that. I was the first time I've ever heard of police
commission to come out and say those words. They would always come out and
say we have a pattern killer, or we have something that might that might
be a pattern right, because using the word serial is that's oh my god,
that's a no no, because it just brings out every media agency in
the entire world and turns the heat up on you. And that's exactly what
happened. The fight between the two of them about how many killers were involved,
I thought was really damaging to the case. So the police Commissioner Dormer
was saying one and the district attorney was saying more than one. And it
was unusual for the district attorney to even publicly say anything like that because the
police are the ones who are involved in that. And yes, I'm going
to be biased in certain things when it comes to the police. But the
police are the ones who are investigating this. They know a lot more than
the district attorney does. They haven't presented any case to him because they don't
have a case or a person to put in front of him. So I
would lean towards what the police were telling me initially about the case. I
watched these press conferences really carefully, and I always look for that pop speaker,
and I always look for certain words and certain phrases that they use or
don't use, and then I try to interpret exactly what's going to happen,
not to to my own home. But I am correct most of the time.
But I was a firm believer in one killer from the beginning, and
I'm sure we'll get into that somewhere during the podcast. While we're there,
let's stay there for a second. Over the years, Joe different investigators,
and there's been a lot of coverage in the media, including some thoughtful coverage.
It wasn't all just sensational crazy stuff. There were some serious discussions about
could Long Island be dealing with two or maybe even more killers depositing these victims
Many former sex workers along this kind of stretch of Beach, and we had
body parts showing up in a number of different places. Now, the way
you're talking today in twenty twenty three, you sound like you're still thinking this
could be one individual killer. Yeah. I had this initially in my first
interviews ten years ago, and I'm sticking with it. And I'll tell you
why. People said he cut up bodies in the beginning, and these girls
were all found intact, and I say, okay, let's take a look
at this for a second. First of all, if you look back,
the first case was in nineteen ninety six, Peaches Hempstead Lake State Park.
Her torso was found in a bucket. The rest of her was found in
Gilgo Beach in two thousand and eleven, and then also her baby that the
baby Doe initially that was found out in Gilgo. Now, DNA come back
to Peaches. We just don't have a name for Peaches yet. But I
believe that's coming real soon because the FBI had put out a request for information
regarding Peaches, kind of like on the down low, but they did it
through Twitter, which was which was ironic, but a lot of people didn't
catch that. But I think that's coming next. But anyway, then they
have of course, you have Fire Island Jing Doe, which was in nineteen
ninety six, where parts of her legs were found in Fire Island and the
rest of her was found in Gilgo. And then you have the manner of
cases Valerie mac and Jessica Taylor whose torsos were found in Manorville and the rest
of their bodies were found in Gilgo. Gilgo is point or ground zero for
all of this stuff. And through my research and through my history, I've
looked for other cases or other instances where serial killers have used the same dumping
ground and it's rare, but coming from a kid from growing up on Long
Island, you don't know Gilgo Beach or that area exists unless you live there,
and it's it was one of those things that because people are saying it
might be transit working transy, it might be working on the boats, the
fishing boats, I'm like, no, you have to know, you have
to live there. There used to be and nobody talks about this when actually
I haven't heard about this about any other podcast, so this might be the
first time we'll bring it up. There used to be an old inn there
called the Oak beach In, but that was turned into a bar restaurant,
Oh yeah, I don't know if you remember, and ordering ads for it
on the alternative rock station, which is very big in the eighties and nineties
on Long Island, and you could hear it in New York City where I
was living. So the Oak beach In I think is interesting in the aspect
of is there any connection between any of the people that we know about in
this case, including those that they're originally from the Shannon Gilbert case, because
remember, without Shannon you don't have any of these things. The issue that
comes down to is the police need to now figure out first of all,
deal with Maureen Braintt Barnes, and then as the fourth of the guil go
for and then work on the other cases. Getting back to my theory on
why I still think it's one killer. Whoever was responsible for those deaths,
meaning Peaches and Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor and Fire Island Jing dope. He
cut them up for a specific reason. He picked those girls up off the
street, he had to whatever he want to refer to them as street walkers,
prostitute whatever, they sex workers, whatever is the correct term these days.
I'm an old dog, so it's tough for me to come up with
the right vernacular. He picked these women up off the street, which him
in a bad position in respect of somebody might have seen somebody get in through
car, maybe one of the girls, another girl saw and maybe there was
a pimp that might have seen something, which ends up being the case anyway
with one of the other girls. The issue that comes down to is there
was a huge risk that he had to take, so he made great lengths
to make sure that the bodies could not be identified. He try to scrape
both the tattoos. He cut off hands, cuts off heads to make things
really difficult, and they were hidden for a long period of time. Now
let's turn to the gil Go four much later on. He's using new technology.
He's using websites which you work anonymously. The main website was Backpage.
It doesn't exist anymore, and I believe Craigslist might have been another one.
And here's the other issue. He was using bernaphones, now we know for
sure. So he thought he was pretty much anonymous, using the Internet,
using websites, using bernofhones. There was no need for him to dismember anybody.
I haven't heard anyone else say this before, and I've been reading and
watching a tremendous amount of coverage. I haven't heard anyone say this. This
is just my working theory, right So if I was in this is what
I would be thinking. That we've had a serialcula that's evolved not so much
from a psychological standpoint, but from a technology standpoint, and that has enabled
him to get away with this for so many years is because of his use
of technology and not so much the old fashioned way of pulling up on a
street corner and getting somebody to come into your car. Can we drill down
a little bit on the street corner aspect, because you're covering something that I,
again I haven't heard anyone say before. Where would these face to face
pickups, if you will, of sex workers be taking place? Back then,
Kristin and I don't live on Long Island. Most of our listeners don't
either, Obviously some of them do. Where would those contacts have been taking
place? Are they happening in New York City or are they happening on Long
Island? What The interesting part of it is that some of the girls came
in through Penn Station, which would then create another tie to our suspect because
his office, you're there, so Penn Station seems to be a common area
where some of the girls came in from, and then where he goes from.
There was the thing that really nobody else was really talking about is where
did these murders happen? And that's a key thing because I said this before.
I do not believe that anybody was killed in his house, and I
don't believe that anyone any of them were killed in any of the hotels.
None of that happened. Was just too much of a risk as far as
I'm concerned, especially in massive peak with Park. My god, you're telling
me in a nosy neighborhood like that that people looking out the window your wife's
on vacation, they say you're bringing young women paraying through your house. That
nobody would have said something by now, no way, hose And these are
small lots in the houses are quite close together. Oh yeah, and everybody
knows everybody's business. You heard it, you heard people talking about it.
It's just one of those kinds of kind of things on Long Island. I
just don't see that as being a viable option for him. I think it's
just too much. You're dealing with somebody who has been very careful. You
don't do the stuff where you live. Even though rex Hueerman wasn't considered an
odd ball and sort of an off putting character, his neighbors still knew who
he was, and they still recognized him and had interacted with him any number
of times. Yeah, there was a couple of people that they really didn't
have a lot of nice things to say about him. There was people that
say that they wouldn't let their kids go trick to treating there. It was
Listen, we don't know for sure because we don't live there. We don't
know the man, so it's difficult to say in that respect. But I
always say there's one in every neighborhood right when you're growing up that people say
stay away from. That's just one of those things. One if our listeners
made a very interesting and astute comment about the fact that this guy is apparently
a quite up and coming architecting yet his house is a total shambles. Might
that be because he doesn't want anybody coming in doing contracting work fixing it up.
I'm wondering what your take is on why is an architect living in such
a dump, like, why are the shoemaker's children going barefeat And that's the
exact quote I used on Twitter that day when the case program like the shoemaker's
kid go shoeless? I said, we're staring at an architect's house where two
by four is are holding up the front porch from falling down. And from
what some of the photos we saw online, he actually did some pretty good
work in the architecture world. Right. It was a lot of photos on
his website before they took it down. You know, it's just an interesting
aspect the deal is with him, and like we've seen what other killers is,
he really doesn't attention to himself, right, Everybody says quiet and that
to people. That's why these guys, they don't send flares up in the
air and say, hey guys, I'm a serial killer. This is what
I do. Oh, he's so quiet, he's always he's such a nice
guy, everybody. That's the kind of thing you always get from cases,
because they don't want to draw attention to themselves. That's what makes it.
That's what lets them get away with this stuff for so long, hiding in
plain sight, as they like to say exactly. You're listening to Mind over
Murder. We'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back
here at mindover Murder. Talk a little bit about what law Enforstman maybe missed
the first time around. Let's go back to that for a second. Why
do you think that Lawn firstmant missed that tip about the Chevy Avalanche from Amber
Costello's roommate, because it really seems to me like that was definitely a tooting
point here. How did that get overlooked? It could have come from some
sort of bias where they got information from somebody that they might have viewed as
a pimp or as a prostitute and that kind of stuff, and they just
dismissed it. Right, So we don't condone that kind of behavior. That's
one thing that we've had with There was a lot of complaints about the initial
stages in this investigation that the police weren't taking it seriously because they were sex
workers involved amiss and they really what's the big deal kind of thing? Those
were some allegations that we heard about, and if that's the case, that
might have played a part in that per se. The other issue is that
I've been I've had cases where they tell you, yeah, he was driving
an x UV. See, thanks for the tip. So is everyone else
on Long Island. Yeah, that's that's that also is part of the problem.
I know. I take what people say publicly after the fact with a
grain of salt. Sometimes I told them this ten years ago. Well,
I'd like to see the exact investigative report, if one was written, exactly
what was said and what was written down, because they keep on referring to
it as oh I told them as a first generational avalanche. I wouldn't know
if it was a first generation pickup truck or whatever. Come on, I
can't get that specific with cars, and so I'm a little skeptical on some
of that stuff. It appears as if they had the digital evidence, the
phone evidence, and they had the forensics, the DNA, but they just
couldn't do anything with it until some of the technology changed. They did have
enough in the case to start this. So if they did have meaning the
police, if they did have a description of just an avalanche. In New
York State, they have something called the Lawman Search, which is run by
the state police, where you can ask them for every avalanche green avalanche,
whatever. If we gave a color even that are registered to Long Island,
you would get thousands of them and then try to narrow it down to a
specific So if I was doing this, I know it's easy to Monday Morning
quarterback these things. But we had cell phone pings in Manhattan, we had
cell phone pings in Massapequa. I would have asked for avalanches in Massapequa and
see where that would have let us because we know we had phone records that
got there and people that oh, yeah, Joe, great you able to
do this after you know all this stuff. But now this is what you
talk about when you're dealing with experience. You have some things to work with
and just ask for. So you might have gotten a couple of hundred even
in Massa Peak or Massapequa Park, right because it's it didn't really specify which
one because there's two different towns, Massa Peak or Massapequa Park. People will
realize that there's a almost eight million people that live on Long Island. It's
a lot of There are a lot of people that live and it's on Long
Island, not in Long Island. I go crazy when people say, are
you in Long Island. No, we live on Long Island. People have
to remember, for those of us that don't live there, it's a gigantic
place too, very large, over one hundred miles long, and eight million
people live there. So it is we're picking an island somewhere in the middle
of the ocean, and we're saying, okay, we have let's say five
hundred or five thousand people live there. This is a densely populated suburban area,
even urban at the end, closest to New York City. Correct,
and think about a Manhattan it's got I think nine million people, give take
a few. So you're talking about the equivalent of Manhattan population that live along
Long Island. And here's the other thing that we're watching the news coverage room.
People who don't live in New York City area or Long Island, Brooklyn
and Queens are on Long Island, right. Okay, they just fall under
the jurisdiction of New York City. But there are technically four counties that make
up Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk. There's no imaginary
river that cuts Natsau up. That's just a pet peeve of mine. But
it tries me crazy when they hear national news things talk about this like it's
like it's like Brooklyn and Queens aren't on Long Island. People are looking and
I guarantee you there'll be people looking at maps so as they're listening to this,
going no way, he's rolled. Brooklyn and Queens is in New York
City, yet it's governed by New York City. It's not in New York
City technically in regards to land mask and these areas are immediately adjacent. And
as we talked about, this is a very densely populated area. It may
get more spread out as you move further along to the east, right on
the other end of Long Island, and now you're out because we have close
proximity to New York City. So Nasaur is more populated than suff because of
the commute. But a lot of people over the last I guess ten or
fifteen years that migrated further east to Suffolk County because it was cheaper to live,
and then they just stick with the longer commute. Now there is the
long railroad that can get you to work without having to drive on the lie
cut a bid, but it's just one of those things. It's a very
densely populated location. And when you talk about tying the potential killer to some
physical locations, they knew that cell phone calls had been placed from the area
near Penn Station, which is by the way where people that ride the Long
Island Railroad come into New York City. So millions of people ride the train
each year, and hundreds of thousands of people commute into New York City and
come in near Penn Station. But then you also mentioned Massapequa and Massapequa Park.
Cell phone calls had been sent and received from Massapequa, so they knew
that was potentially a place where this killer was associated. Yeah, they call
it the box, right, So when the Commissioner, Rodney Harrison, talked
about it, he referred to it as the box, and that box was
Massapeko Park where the cell phone tower was. Now you got to remember too,
ten years ago, eleven years ago, when this was all happening,
they might have been maybe one or two cell towers. There's probably four or
five now, right. That's why it wasn't as specific, I don't think
as you could get today. So when they just say massa Peak where I
think it just covered the mass of peak was in that respect. But I've
also been vocal about those phone calls that they were making. They were trying
to keep them on the line, allegedly. I'd like to know if they
tried, if they recorded those phone calls. They've made no mention of that.
Over the They recorded the phone calls between the suspect and the system,
so that would be another interesting aspectivis. One thing we do know is that
Suffer County kept all of this stuff close to the vest, including the hair
fibers and all the other forensics that they have. This was all a shock
to all of us because they've made zero mention of any in the last twelve
years. I reread some articles this morning in preparation for this discussion, and
a fact jumped out at me that I don't think had registered with me before,
which is I didn't realize that when he was calling the victim's sister,
the sixteen year old sister, basically torturing her on some level, abusing her,
calling repeatedly and making these horrible phone calls, I didn't realize law enforcement
was listening in on those calls. I don't know if they were listening in
they were tracking them, right so part of tracking is listening. My thing
is did they record them? We don't know. Remember this is pure speculation
on my part, but if I had a guess, I would say it's
probably a seventy five to twenty five percent chance that they recorded them. For
what it's worth, I found an article from twenty fifteen in the New York
Post, not always the most accurate newspaper ever, but in that article they
are my favorite dedicated New Yorker I can tell. In that article, which
is from twenty fifteen, they they said that law enforcement was listening in on
those calls, So I'd be real surprised if they weren't recorded. Yeah,
and WHI should be another interesting thing because now you can you have voice technology
and everything else that goes along with it. This is what's going to make
those other cases more difficult because none of this stuff exists with them. Remember
we're talking about mid nineties kinds of cases. Cell phones are still in the
very infancy stage. Internet was just starting. I think you were still doing
dial up with AOL going back in ninety five ninety six, so for those
old enough to remember, the real struggle about getting on the Internet. But
so they are definitely at a disadvantage for those cases. You were mentioning that
Suffolk County was holding a lot of things close to the vest. What is
the advantage if any of an investigative agency holding back clues or withholding information.
Is there some reason Suffolk County was doing this or was this just them not
wanting to share invest negative details. It's really part of very investigating. Every
police department's playbook. You don't give out certain details because there's only things that
the killer would know and we don't want to put those things out there.
And actually the district attorney rate Tyranny, spoke about that, said that they
pretty much knew he was watching and reading what was going on the case.
I guess they had already served warrants on his Google searches and all those other
things at the time before the arrest, so they knew exactly what he was
doing, so that they prevented any additional information getting out. People said,
what's the big deal. It is a big deal because you will have people
come forward and try to clean responsibility for things that they didn't do, and
it just ties you down with a lot of extraneous tips and everything else that
goes along with it. It was really not transparent all the entire investigation,
and it goes hand in hand with what was happening in Suffolk County at the
time. There were federal investigations of your two top law enforcement agents in the
entire county. It's you can understand why none of this stuff actually ever came
out because they didn't want anything coming out of it, because they didn't want
to anymore eyes looking into these things. I can't help but think that it
might have been helpful if they had released, for instance, the videotape of
Amber Costello in the lobby of the hotel. I think it's one thirty in
the morning or something, and it's the last time she's seen alive. One
thing that really jumped out to me was when they released the information about the
belt buckle, and they showed the belt buckle, which could be interpreted a
couple of different ways with the very stylized letters, but it did look like
initials or symbols of some sort. I think those things might have been helpful,
and it might have been a smarter play to release that information much earlier.
What's your take on that. Yeah, the idea is try to get
if you have certain things that the public could help you with, try to
identify this thing. So if you show a video of somebody you know twelve
years later, listen, people like myself are getting older now. We don't
remember what we did twelve hours ago. Let alone if we saw something in
a hotel when I was traveling through going on eat somewhere, you got to
remember two. Even though Long Island is not New York City, pretty much
people are trained to mind your own business, so to speak, too,
so they don't tend to get involved in other people's things. And unless there's
something really egregious, kind of people just put the blind design and keep on
walking. The video to me was not really helpful in a lot of aspects.
The Shannon Gilbert tape that they fought for a decade to release the nine
one one tape, My god, when I find when I couldn't, when
I was like, oh, when they finally released it, I thought it
was going to be some groundbreaking thing. It didn't help out at anything.
If anything, had caused more confusion or more questions to be asked. So
there were a couple of real head scratchers about why they held out certain things.
The only thing that moving forward, If you notice when the new administration
took over, they really didn't do a data dump either, right, because
within a few weeks of this real investigation, they actually found exactly what they
were looking for. So they came out with basically zero. At that point,
they went totally dark and then boom, rab it out of a hat
a few a year and a half later. But why do you think,
for example, the new task force with FBI participation, again which I think
actually was probably helpful, why do you think it only took them six weeks
or so to identify a potential suspect. Well, part of the whole thing
about cold cases, and I discussed this at length and in a couple of
different venues and even in the book, is about getting a fresh set of
ice into the case. Not only that, when you have a motivated boss.
Right, you had the new police Commissioner, Rodney Harrison comes in and
in his first day that he is named the police commissioner, he's in Gilgo
Beach introducing himself and saying that this case is priority number one. You had
a new district attorney that came in that was voted in, and he said
that this case was priority number one. So here you have the total opposite
of what you were dealing with for a decade. You now have two men
that are on the same page who made this case of priority, and then
opening up not only to the FBI, but the state police, national bringing
everybody in and creating this pass force where you're pretty much taking these cops and
investigators or taking their lead from their bosses. Right their bosses are saying,
do this, find this, get me the information, get me the evidence,
and let's put this thing together. When you have a situation like that,
and I don't care if it's in a police department or in a boardroom
or CEO of some major corporation, if the people that are working for that
individual are inspired by them, you get good things that come out of it.
And if you treat people right, you're going to get even more out
of them. And this is something that even in police departments or any organization,
I still can't believe they don't get the message right. If you treat
the people that work for you the right way, they'll move mountains for you.
There are some people that still don't get that message, and I scratch
my head, what would you be looking for in the other locations where rex
Hureman had connections. We know he has a property in South Carolina, he
has a time share in Las Vegas. Is he going to be hiding things
their bodies, other things? Like what do you think the odds are that
there's going to be evidence to be found in those other locations. I don't
know, per se right, because they're mentioning now they're trying to tie him
to New Jersey with the four cases over there, we've heard now his name
mentioned and everything, but the Jimmy Hoffert case for Suffolk County, they're just
worry about your own little fife them over there and let the authorities in those
other places. But look, they have his DNA now right, So if
there's any of those cases that they have come, have DNA that they can
be traced back to something, whether it's blood, seamen or the body fluids
or fingerprints or what have you. They have it now right. They have
his fingerprints, they have its DNA, So you're going to let them do
their job in that respect. For Suffoc County, job number one is to
deal with Maureen brained Bard's case and tie him to the fourth and then the
other cases if there is evidence. I think out of all of them,
the most likely that they could probably come up with some sort of hopefully with
forensics, is the Peaches case because she was stuffed in a bin, wrapped
in clothing, there was a belief tape and everything else like that too,
So they might get lucky in that one too. And you sometimes it's better
be lucky than good. And your thinking is you think some of the other
approximately seven cases in this Long Island serial killer series could be tied back into
this killer. Well, like I said, I find stick with my theory
from the beginning that there's one killer. Now you have to let the evidence
prove yourself. So you have a starting point, you have a suspect,
you have as DNA, you have all those other things. Does do any
of those cases provide an opportunity? Is he willing to talk about any other
cases? We haven't heard about anything that too. We've known from other serial
killer cases that they have taken deals to take certain things off the table.
But see, this is where I don't This is where I get all my
email people. Not the death penalty, but the death penalty. Right now,
New York has the death penalty on the books. They'll just never use
it. This might be a case where they can use this as a bargaining
chip, saying, you know what, you're gonna be the first person we're
gonna put up for the death penalty unless you want to make a deal on
something. Tell us what you know, if anything, about these other cases.
So that's a way to go. But I know people are going to
be like, oh my god, the death penalty then so hard should come
on At this point, it's about using it as leverage, so to make
people feel better. I keep seeing people saying and these are not necessarily experts,
these are armshare detectives. They keep commenting that New York does not have
the death penalty. Oh, we have murder first degree still on the books.
Oh, it's on the books. They haven't removed it yet. They'll
never use it. They've declared it as unconstitutional, but it's still on the
books. Just listen, New York State. You don't you're not allowed to
use polygraphs as part of any type of investigation except for it to get information
out and stuff like that. So there are things that you can do.
The issue that comes down to is I don't think when Governor Pataki came in
the nineteen nineties and signed the death penalty back into law, and if you
look at today's New York Peter law, murder first degree is still there up
until that point. Like when I was a rookie copy when I came on
in nineteen ninety too, the top charge in New York State was murder two
because murder one came with the death penalty. It's been labeled unconstitutional. That's
the thing that that people will say they don't have it, or they have
it, but can they use it as the other question. Listen, when
a cop gets killed, this talk about the death penalty, if they're gonna,
if the prosecutors are going to go for it, So it's there.
That was one of the most prominent uses of murder one that I remember was
when a police officer was killed by a suspect. So there's I think there's
eighteen different ways that you can get charge of murder first degree. So you
can kill a police officer, corrections officer in their duties, a judge,
a district attorney, if you killed more than one person over a period of
time, aka serial killer, it's something that's on. It's there. You
could have a lawyer. Of course, tell us why they don't. They
won't use it until then. Murder first degree is still on the books.
When you go back to school in the fall, do you fully expect to
be asked about this case by your classes? The ironic part last semester,
for so the spring semester, the turn paper was who is the Long Island
serial Killer? Really? And yeah? And actually what happened was if I
know this is going to sound like a shameless plug, but if you go
to my Twitter feed about a day or so after the arrest, I copied
and pasted an email I got from one of my former students. That's it.
I don't know if you heard this or not, but the paper,
the research paper that you gave is they rested a guy today for the Long
Island serial killer and he went on and on about this, and I,
of course I cut his name off and everything like that, and I just
posted the email on there. That's the kind of stuff that makes teaching worthwhile
when you can actually hit this thing. So what I do is my I
teach the investigations class, so I always try to keep a I was using
Low Island serial Killer for the last semester because it's believe it or not,
many kids that didn't know about it, because you remember, some of these
kids were babies when this case was finally broke, and they really hadn't heard
much about it. And so I now I have to find another case.
Wait, was anybody close, like in anybody in their discussion of who the
Long Island serial killer was? Did any mad I'm close to saying professional guy
from Manhattan, Like I said, I wasn't even close, right, So
I don't expect them to be that close. But I guess to give them
the idea of doing some research, learning about the case, trying to do
their own profile kind of thing and developed that kind of skill was the goal
of the research project, right, So it puts a different spin on the
usual boring research topic thing that you do. And so they're like, Oh,
what's your mind is on the history of what is yours? I'm trying
to find out who the low and serial killer is. I thought it was
this kind of a little more of a cat and mouse kind of thing,
and the kids really liked it. If I could use If I could use
that for my class, my kids would love research paper is a whole lot
more right. I mean, I love that. I'll phot it to you.
Yes, there's a couple of things I've done with my students. I've
dead back and I've also used movies like Mister Brooks. I teach a class.
So you have you seen Mister Brooks with Kevin Costner. Yes, yes,
I love it's another one. I had them dealing with the whole twist
and turns, and I won't it's this case, somebody's never seen it.
I don't want to give away the ending, but there's lots of twists and
turns and that kind of stuff. So I'll make them watch the movies.
Or at the time when remember when serial podcast came out, I had them
listen to that and then try to find out if ad Non was guilty or
not guilty, I thought, And they really liked that stuff. Oh I
really like that stuff. Thank you both for not giving away the ending to
mister Brooks. I've never seen the movie and I just thought, I watch
it, you'll like it. It's great. Oh my gosh, Yeah,
Jeff, please send me all that stuff. That sounds tremendous. I can't
do it, of course, in a public high school, but boy,
it would give me some great ideas for my own teaching. Yeah. No,
there's lots of different things that I try to do. Like one of
the things when I first became a teacher at eighteen some one years ago,
I said, I don't want to be like the teachers I had, or
some of the teachers that I had. It's like the old thing when go
forbid. You grow up in an environment where you had an abusive parent,
right, and some kids grow up to be abusive, and then some kids
grow up and say, I'm never going to be abusive. So I looked
at my education the same way. I had some teachers that were real jerks,
and I had some teachers that were really good. I said, I'm
not going to be the jerk I'm going to do. I'm going to change
that. We make change by saying I'm not doing that, and then you
know, taking your own little spin on things. But it's teaching is good.
It's something that I think a lot of people can definitely put their expertise
in there. I encourage anybody to do that too well. So, Joe,
in addition to going back to school, what is next for you?
Yeah, so school starts in the three weeks of Campully. I'm just as
bummed out as the kids are. Yeah sheez. So yeah, I got
school. So I have a couple of trips coming up. Like I said,
I'm going to Indiana, I'm going to crime Con. Yep, I'll
be there. Yeah, we'll hook up down that time for sure. And
actually last year was also the first year. In April I did the Long
Island their first kind of prime con kind of thing and they call off the
Hampton's who done it? Yeah, I was invited to do the speaker on
that. I actually they ended up putting me into two different things. And
the ironic part as we were supposed to do a series on the Long Island
serial killer, Wow do a Paddle? It got canceled because some politics got
in the way. It would have been interesting now that this case broke a
few months later, but that'll be I think I'm coming back to that in
April too. So the next couple of months, I got some trips and
I'm thinking about maybe writing another book. So let's see. People say it's
easy to write one book, two books is difficult. Three books has unheard
of, unless, of course, you change Patterson and you have you can
bang these things out on a weekend. Yeah, yeah, thank you for
taking a shot at James Patterson, because honestly, he's got enough ghostwriters.
Oh my god, how he does it? He does this is how he
does write the books. Other people do the books forever. I think he
writes an outline and hands it to them and says, go to it.
Yeah. I guess if you get to a certain point, you can do
that too. We hope that you'll get to that point. Although I think
you are. Your focus on practical application of the work that you have done
is so incredibly beneficial, and I think you're hanging it forward in a really
meaningful way with books like the Cold Case Handbook. That's the kind of writing
I ended up doing, right. I always wanted to be a writer kind
of thing. I always had that thing I could write a book. I
used to belong to the stuff and called the longand writers Guilt. And we
started out out of the Border's bookstore. That's how old I am. Right
to meet. Yeah, we would meet like once a month and we would
get there and critique of the people's stuff, which I highly encourage people.
So if you're not faith of heart, though, right, don't do it
if you can't take rejection. This is not People say Joe, what do
you think and then never spoke to me again. I always tell people when
they ask me what do you think? I go ask somebody else, all
right, because the last doozen people don't talk to me anymore. But it's
there are a lot of different things I gotta tell people. Oh, I
like to write a book, so I go just write it. Then I
want to be a writer, right, But I do have a fiction book
in me. I know I have a fiction book in me, but it
is extremely difficult to get something like that published. So that's the tough thing.
But I'm waiting for somebody to tell me I can't do it, and
then I'll do it because I like when people say you can't do it.
I'm like, okay, I can't. You like a challenge? Yeah,
I love it. Jo, Thank you so much for spending time with us.
We really appreciate it and we are looking forward to seeing you at Crime
Con. Sounds great. Thanks for having me, Guyson. That's going to
do it for this episode of Mind of a Murder. 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
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