1 00:00:01,080 --> 00:00:07,200 You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas. 2 00:00:07,759 --> 00:00:12,039 I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now 3 00:00:12,080 --> 00:00:16,000 trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other 4 00:00:16,079 --> 00:00:20,239 victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway 5 00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:24,640 murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together 6 00:00:24,679 --> 00:00:28,440 with Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a 7 00:00:28,519 --> 00:00:32,439 researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social 8 00:00:32,479 --> 00:00:37,759 media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner 9 00:00:37,799 --> 00:00:48,520 in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind of a Murder. I'm Kristin 10 00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:53,520 Dilley and I'm Bill Thomas. We're joined today by author Robert Kulcher, here 11 00:00:53,560 --> 00:00:59,119 to talk about his New York Times bestselling book Lost Girls, an Unsolved American 12 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:02,000 mystery. Bob, thank you so much for joining us on Mind ever Murder 13 00:01:02,079 --> 00:01:04,719 today. It's great to talk with you both. Thank you. Go ahead, 14 00:01:04,799 --> 00:01:08,480 me start off by telling us a little bit about your professional and educational 15 00:01:08,519 --> 00:01:14,480 background. I grew up in Maryland and went to college in New York and 16 00:01:14,719 --> 00:01:18,200 stayed there. I've been a New Yorker for over thirty years. I've been 17 00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:22,480 a journalist for thirty years, mostly in magazines. More than half that time 18 00:01:22,519 --> 00:01:25,879 I was a staff writer at New York Magazine, writing future stories and cover 19 00:01:25,959 --> 00:01:30,200 stories, a lot of crime stories, a lot of narrative stories about complicated 20 00:01:30,239 --> 00:01:36,959 subjects. Lost Girls actually evolved from a cover story about the Long Island serial 21 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:40,840 killer case that I wrote back in twenty eleven. Then the book came out 22 00:01:40,840 --> 00:01:44,359 in twenty thirteen. Since then, I've written another book, Hit in Valley 23 00:01:44,439 --> 00:01:47,920 Road, that was a number one bestseller and an Oprah book. And I 24 00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:53,239 like to go back and forth between magazine stories and books. It's a dream 25 00:01:53,319 --> 00:01:57,200 career, so I'm very grateful to be able to do it. When we 26 00:01:57,280 --> 00:02:01,400 talk about Lost Girls, the book and this case, where do you find 27 00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:06,879 yourself coming down in terms of referring to this case by name? Are you 28 00:02:06,959 --> 00:02:10,120 going with Gilgo Beach? Are you going with Long Island serial Killer? It's 29 00:02:10,159 --> 00:02:14,840 the most amazing thing. The entire time I wrote the book, people were 30 00:02:14,840 --> 00:02:16,879 saying Long Island serial Killer. I called it a long Island Serial Killer. 31 00:02:16,919 --> 00:02:21,080 Then shortly after the book was published, people started to shorten it and call 32 00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:25,319 it LISK. There's a fine documentary series called The Killing Season with some nice 33 00:02:25,319 --> 00:02:29,319 people who run it, and they suddenly it's all LISC lisk list, and 34 00:02:29,879 --> 00:02:32,360 that was interesting. And then the second list arrest happens. It's the Gilgo 35 00:02:32,439 --> 00:02:37,400 Beach murders and the Gilgo Beach Killer, which I hadn't seen in such high 36 00:02:37,439 --> 00:02:42,159 circulation before. So I'm happy to go where the wind blows and go Gilgo 37 00:02:42,159 --> 00:02:46,879 Beach Killer. At this point we had noticed the same thing because people referred 38 00:02:46,879 --> 00:02:49,800 to it as Long Island Teio killer, and we know people that are written 39 00:02:49,800 --> 00:02:53,240 about it and covered the case on podcast. And then with the arrest, 40 00:02:53,560 --> 00:03:00,159 we find ourselves stumbling to describe the series of murders accurately. Now people are 41 00:03:00,240 --> 00:03:06,520 almost talking about them as if they're separate events. We've got four were four 42 00:03:06,560 --> 00:03:10,240 women who have been at least potentially linked directs humor men, and they're being 43 00:03:10,280 --> 00:03:15,599 referred to as the gil Go Beach four. It's almost like Long Island Serial 44 00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:21,120 Killer or LISK is a separate case. Any thoughts on that those four sets 45 00:03:21,159 --> 00:03:23,719 of remains were always set apart from the others. They all were, They 46 00:03:23,719 --> 00:03:28,080 were very particular compared to the others that were found, but there was a 47 00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:30,800 constant debate about whether they should be a separate case or not, or whether 48 00:03:30,919 --> 00:03:36,439 it's all one potentially one killer. In fact, there was a huge breakdown 49 00:03:36,479 --> 00:03:39,759 from the very beginning between the commission police commissioner at the time and the district 50 00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:43,759 attorney at the time about whether there was one killer or more than one killer, 51 00:03:43,800 --> 00:03:46,159 and that was one of the first reasons why the case centered paralysis in 52 00:03:46,199 --> 00:03:51,280 my opinion. But it interests me now that there's an arrest that this becomes 53 00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:54,080 the gil Beach killer, and these other murders are often the ether, and 54 00:03:54,120 --> 00:03:59,080 it's anyone's guests whether they will be tied too. It's a tough one because 55 00:03:59,120 --> 00:04:01,280 you have so many they're victims to account for, some of whom have been 56 00:04:01,319 --> 00:04:04,439 identified and some of whom still have not, which is just stunning to me 57 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:09,479 that someone in New York City could be an identified in a murder case like 58 00:04:09,520 --> 00:04:13,159 this for ten years. It's interesting to think that we need to be that 59 00:04:13,199 --> 00:04:16,000 specific with our killers because there are so many of them, and certainly there 60 00:04:16,040 --> 00:04:19,439 is more than one. Long Island serial killer. There was Joel Rifkin from 61 00:04:19,480 --> 00:04:25,160 another generation, who is far more prolific than it appears. Rex Herman was, 62 00:04:25,519 --> 00:04:27,959 so, if you want to get scholarly about it, maybe it makes 63 00:04:27,959 --> 00:04:30,959 sense to be more specific with your titles. How did the gil Go Beach 64 00:04:31,040 --> 00:04:35,759 cases actually come onto your radar? I was on staff at New York Magazine. 65 00:04:36,079 --> 00:04:40,279 I had lived in Brooklyn. I had a car, which meant that 66 00:04:40,360 --> 00:04:43,040 it was pretty easy for me to get out to Long Island. I had 67 00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:46,160 done some Long Island stories in the past before this, there were crime stories, 68 00:04:46,480 --> 00:04:49,959 and when those first four remains, when the gil Go four were found 69 00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:54,639 in December twenty ten, my editor turned to me and said, this looks 70 00:04:54,639 --> 00:04:58,920 like it's for you, and I resisted. I was probably intimidated by such 71 00:04:58,959 --> 00:05:02,680 a competitive story because it was already national news. But also I was jaded 72 00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:05,279 and I was skeptical. I thought, they're going to solve this case in 73 00:05:05,279 --> 00:05:09,000 twenty four hours. Just a year and a half earlier, there had been 74 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:14,680 a Craigslist killer in New England who murdered one person and the police found him 75 00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:17,439 within forty eight hours. So I thought, for people who the police say, 76 00:05:17,519 --> 00:05:21,240 or sex workers, that's for digital trails from Craigslist. They're going to 77 00:05:21,319 --> 00:05:26,120 find this guy before I even get in my car. But also I had 78 00:05:26,680 --> 00:05:30,240 that wasn't the only incorrect assumption I made. I also was dead wrong about 79 00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:34,759 something else, which was when I learned that these four women were supposedly escorts. 80 00:05:35,079 --> 00:05:38,480 I thought, we're never going to learn a thing about these women. 81 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:43,879 At the time, I subscribed to the cultural stereotype that had been part of 82 00:05:44,360 --> 00:05:46,839 even good true crime shows like The Wire, where they found a bunch of 83 00:05:46,839 --> 00:05:50,639 dead bodies and it propels the plot in motion, and we assume those people 84 00:05:50,639 --> 00:05:54,600 were trafficked, and that we don't know their names and we'll never learn from 85 00:05:54,639 --> 00:05:58,279 them again. I assumed that these women lived off the grid, that they 86 00:05:58,279 --> 00:06:01,639 were outcasts from their families, that they were lost long before they were lost. 87 00:06:02,040 --> 00:06:05,199 But in fact, the only reason they were lost is because we decided 88 00:06:05,199 --> 00:06:08,680 they were lost. They had families, they had people who loved them, 89 00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:11,879 people who wanted the police to look for them when they went missing, people 90 00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:15,600 who were frustrated by the lack of efforts made by the police, people who 91 00:06:15,680 --> 00:06:18,639 had trouble even getting their names onto the registry of Missing persons, and only 92 00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:23,360 when it became a big serial killer case. Did suddenly law enforcement have a 93 00:06:23,439 --> 00:06:27,759 vested interest in trying to solve their cases. It became interesting to me how 94 00:06:27,800 --> 00:06:30,720 wrong I was at first, And it became more interesting to me once I 95 00:06:30,759 --> 00:06:32,759 met the families, how much they had to talk about with one another, 96 00:06:33,240 --> 00:06:36,959 not just about their lost loved ones and the lives that they led, but 97 00:06:38,079 --> 00:06:41,720 about the struggles that all of the families had faced. They all were from 98 00:06:41,759 --> 00:06:46,120 different towns within striking distance of New York, places like Portland, Maine, 99 00:06:46,120 --> 00:06:48,839 and Buffalo, New York, and Wilmington, North Carolina, Grout in Connecticut, 100 00:06:48,879 --> 00:06:53,639 and Jersey City, New Jersey. And these are all places that never 101 00:06:53,680 --> 00:06:57,879 really recovered from the Big Crash of two thousand and eight, places where people 102 00:06:57,879 --> 00:07:00,879 were still struggling, Places where a young person didn't have the entry level job 103 00:07:00,879 --> 00:07:05,839 opportunities that their parents or grandparents have. And it's a time where sex work 104 00:07:05,920 --> 00:07:09,720 is changing. You don't have to walk down the street, you don't have 105 00:07:09,759 --> 00:07:12,639 to be under the control of a pimp, you don't have to be a 106 00:07:12,680 --> 00:07:15,879 social outcast to be a sex worker, And if you work on Craigslist, 107 00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:18,600 you don't have to work full time. In fact, most people don't, 108 00:07:18,920 --> 00:07:23,720 and you can make far more money than you would make at the Dunkin Donuts 109 00:07:23,839 --> 00:07:27,560 or at the Walmart. It's not even close. And it's time after time. 110 00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:30,720 As I researched these women's lives, I saw people who were experiencing economic 111 00:07:30,759 --> 00:07:35,439 shocks of a certain sort. Maybe they're facing eviction, and they see in 112 00:07:35,480 --> 00:07:39,480 a way to make money quickly. They see it as a means for social 113 00:07:39,480 --> 00:07:43,079 mobility. To me, that is the opposite of the stereotomic type. To 114 00:07:43,120 --> 00:07:46,920 me, the stereotype is somebody who is leading a life of drug addiction or 115 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:50,240 is traumatized from a life of abuse, and falls into this work because they're 116 00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:56,360 desperate and addicted. If substances became a problem for some of these women, 117 00:07:56,399 --> 00:07:59,759 it happened later, it happened after, and that was interesting to me too. 118 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:03,639 And then abuse was way inconsistent. Some of them had been abused, 119 00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:05,560 and then others had not, but their sisters had, and yet they were 120 00:08:05,560 --> 00:08:09,959 the ones who became escorts. I just became more and more interested in how 121 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:13,399 surprising their lives were, and I thought this could be a potentially small but 122 00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:16,120 special book, a book that could come out with or without a killer. 123 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:20,639 I was a little worried the publisher would force me to wait until there was 124 00:08:20,680 --> 00:08:24,360 a killer, but I was very pleased and grateful that my editors and my 125 00:08:24,439 --> 00:08:28,000 publisher, HarperCollins, they subscribed to the same idea I had, which was 126 00:08:28,399 --> 00:08:33,080 a sort of off the beaten path true crime book that was as much about 127 00:08:33,120 --> 00:08:35,960 the ways of life of all of the women and their families and the media 128 00:08:37,039 --> 00:08:41,159 maelstrom that engulfed them after the case happened as it was about about the search 129 00:08:41,200 --> 00:08:43,840 for the killer. And so I was. I thought it would be a 130 00:08:43,879 --> 00:08:50,639 very small, but potentially highly regarded book. And what surprised me was that 131 00:08:50,759 --> 00:08:56,000 within a year or two, unconventional, socially minded, high minded true crime 132 00:08:56,480 --> 00:09:01,720 suddenly became everyone's favorite thing. Serial happened, and making a murder happen, 133 00:09:01,879 --> 00:09:07,759 the jinks happened, streaming happened, and suddenly multipart documentaries happened, and then 134 00:09:07,799 --> 00:09:11,720 finally podcasts happened. And to the extent that Lost Girls had a life for 135 00:09:11,919 --> 00:09:15,759 many years after it was published, it was because it hit that wave and 136 00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:18,600 rode that wave with so many other really excellent works of true crime. And 137 00:09:18,639 --> 00:09:22,559 I think that's why the movie got made too, because it was time. 138 00:09:22,799 --> 00:09:24,679 The world was ready, particularly with me too. The world was ready for 139 00:09:24,799 --> 00:09:28,440 a story about listening to women, about women who had been forgotten. It 140 00:09:28,519 --> 00:09:35,399 is a very sensitive portrait, and it definitely opened my eyes to what it 141 00:09:35,440 --> 00:09:39,960 is like for women who work as sex workers, because it isn't something that 142 00:09:41,039 --> 00:09:43,440 I had given it a ton of thought too. But as I'm sitting here 143 00:09:43,480 --> 00:09:48,399 reading this, I'm going, Wow, this is heartbreaking in a lot of 144 00:09:48,440 --> 00:09:52,840 ways. I really appreciated the sensitivity and the warmth that you gave to these 145 00:09:52,879 --> 00:09:56,360 women. And it's very clear that you spent a lot of time with the 146 00:09:56,399 --> 00:10:01,000 family members of the victims. Are you still close with them, especially now 147 00:10:01,039 --> 00:10:05,240 in light of the recent arrest? Are you still talking with them? Is 148 00:10:05,279 --> 00:10:09,320 this relationship that you've continued to cultivate over the years. There are a few 149 00:10:09,320 --> 00:10:13,879 who I'm send happy texts back and forth with over time. There's some who 150 00:10:13,919 --> 00:10:18,519 I haven't really seen since the Last Girls movie came out, but I've just 151 00:10:18,600 --> 00:10:24,159 hit the like button when they've done something on Facebook. It was a horrible 152 00:10:24,159 --> 00:10:26,320 time in their lives when I was talking with them, and for some of 153 00:10:26,360 --> 00:10:30,960 them, talking with someone who ran in to write a book was the last 154 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:35,120 thing they wanted to do after they had already taken time off from minimum wage 155 00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:39,679 jobs to go down to New York to be interviewed for forty eight hours or 156 00:10:39,759 --> 00:10:43,039 dateline. They didn't understand and didn't necessarily want to be a part of it. 157 00:10:43,120 --> 00:10:46,200 I traveled where they were. I tried to see them whenever I could, 158 00:10:46,600 --> 00:10:50,879 And I was witnessing them as the case was still fresh on Long Island, 159 00:10:50,919 --> 00:10:54,279 as there was news coming basically every day, and I was watching their 160 00:10:54,320 --> 00:10:58,360 reactions, and I think that that's a traumatic time for them. And I've 161 00:10:58,360 --> 00:11:03,519 been talking with enforcement people recently since the arrest, and they've talked with some 162 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:07,000 of these family members recently, and they talk about how they seem very normal 163 00:11:07,200 --> 00:11:11,399 until you start talking about the nitty gritty of the case, and then it's 164 00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:13,320 like a film covers over them and they stiffen up, and it's like they 165 00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:18,960 go back to that time when the case was fresh. So I'm not out 166 00:11:18,120 --> 00:11:22,879 barbecuing with them these days. No. Also, I appreciate what you said 167 00:11:22,919 --> 00:11:26,879 about the book's warmth and it's compassion. It's a very tricky thing. I'm 168 00:11:26,919 --> 00:11:31,080 a consider myself a traditional journalist, not an advocacy journalist. I didn't want 169 00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:35,879 to write a book that sort of turned these women into angels, or carry 170 00:11:35,919 --> 00:11:37,840 the flag for them, or to beat the drama and say who will speak 171 00:11:37,879 --> 00:11:41,600 for these women? I will. I wanted to do a book that was 172 00:11:41,879 --> 00:11:46,840 anthropological, that kind of looked very carefully and sensitively at the lives of these 173 00:11:46,840 --> 00:11:50,360 people, left it led and perhaps a non judgmental way, but not in 174 00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:54,440 a way that turned them into a different kind of trope, like the poor 175 00:11:54,519 --> 00:11:58,759 innocent lot babe in the woods who gets killed by a hannibal lector monster. 176 00:12:00,399 --> 00:12:03,279 I didn't want to fall into that trap either, and I end up towards 177 00:12:03,279 --> 00:12:05,279 the end of Lost Girls just coming out and saying it like they weren't angels 178 00:12:05,279 --> 00:12:09,679 and they weren't devils. They each got involved in escort work for different reasons, 179 00:12:09,679 --> 00:12:13,320 but they were deeply personal reasons to each of them. One of them 180 00:12:13,360 --> 00:12:18,559 wanted to win a way back into her family, and another one wanted to 181 00:12:18,679 --> 00:12:20,600 have a close relationship with her sister, and another was in love with her 182 00:12:20,639 --> 00:12:24,960 boyfriend and thought that they could build a family together with their money. It's 183 00:12:24,960 --> 00:12:31,039 just everybody's reasons were different. When I read these sort of deep dives of 184 00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:35,759 the biographies of the women that you focus on. I do see a through 185 00:12:35,840 --> 00:12:41,039 line though, of some terrible choices and drug addiction and abuse, and even 186 00:12:41,080 --> 00:12:46,960 a mix of escort work with providing drugs, cocaine and other drugs to their 187 00:12:48,080 --> 00:12:50,759 john's. Don't you think that's part of the mix. For a lot of 188 00:12:50,759 --> 00:12:54,919 these women, the idea of being your own boss is attractive, and the 189 00:12:56,279 --> 00:13:01,000 escort work puts you for a brief period. It's occurred to me as the 190 00:13:01,080 --> 00:13:05,919 center of attention. You're the star and so and for someone leading an otherwise 191 00:13:07,279 --> 00:13:11,759 humdrum life where you're under it all the time. Maureen Brainard Barnes in Connecticut, 192 00:13:11,799 --> 00:13:13,919 who always is having trouble paying the rent and is always having trouble keeping 193 00:13:13,919 --> 00:13:16,639 a job. To be able to go down to New York and stay in 194 00:13:16,639 --> 00:13:20,120 a hotel room and walk around Times Square and see the lights, and then 195 00:13:20,159 --> 00:13:24,120 go see men who want to see her, who want to give her money. 196 00:13:24,679 --> 00:13:28,720 You can tell yourself a story, and I wanted to make sure that 197 00:13:28,720 --> 00:13:33,279 that aspect of things really appeared in the book. With Drugs. The bleakest 198 00:13:33,279 --> 00:13:39,720 story becomes Amber Costello, who really is a tragedy that began years before she 199 00:13:39,759 --> 00:13:43,960 even came to New York. Her parents essentially are deteriorating because of health problems 200 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:48,399 standing from their own addictions. All she has in life is her big sister, 201 00:13:48,639 --> 00:13:52,240 Kim. Kim is an escort. Amber becomes an escort, They travel 202 00:13:52,559 --> 00:13:58,759 together, they do everything together, and eventually addiction follows. By the time 203 00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:03,960 she's in Babylon Long Island, the addiction is in full effect. She actually 204 00:14:03,960 --> 00:14:07,039 she came to Long Island to go into rehab. Her sister paid for it, 205 00:14:07,039 --> 00:14:11,200 but then she came out and the boyfriend who she met there, the 206 00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:13,960 two of them went right back into it. And so yes, the sex 207 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:18,120 work at that time is fully sustaining the drug habit. And there's really gruesome 208 00:14:18,159 --> 00:14:20,639 detail and lost girls about the lives that they were living in Long Island before 209 00:14:20,679 --> 00:14:26,200 she disappeared. And this is the this gets so bleak that when she does 210 00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:31,279 disappear, no one, not even her sister, goes to the police because 211 00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:35,480 they don't think they'll be taken seriously, and also because they don't want to 212 00:14:35,519 --> 00:14:39,320 draw attention to the lives that they're leading. And that's as bleak as it 213 00:14:39,360 --> 00:14:41,759 can get. It seems to me, as the English teacher in the room, 214 00:14:43,159 --> 00:14:46,200 I do want to ask about your writing process? Because I ask this 215 00:14:46,320 --> 00:14:50,519 if every author that we have on the pod, because I think that in 216 00:14:50,559 --> 00:14:54,399 some way it will probably help me teach my own students. Can you tell 217 00:14:54,519 --> 00:14:58,000 us a little bit about your writing process and how that process is informed by 218 00:14:58,039 --> 00:15:03,279 your vocation as a reporter. I'd never written a book before Lost Girls. 219 00:15:03,320 --> 00:15:07,240 I had written magazine stories. Those stories, A lot of them were narrative 220 00:15:07,240 --> 00:15:09,240 in nature, and a lot of them involved interviewing people who were in difficult 221 00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:15,200 life situations and telling their stories. And I understood that to talk chronologically with 222 00:15:15,240 --> 00:15:18,360 those people was interesting and helpful. Didn't even didn't just help with writing, 223 00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:22,279 it also helped create a cogent way of thinking about their lives. And so 224 00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:26,480 I thought, I talked myself into thinking this would be easy. I thought, 225 00:15:26,559 --> 00:15:28,639 this will be like five magazine stories about five women and their families, 226 00:15:28,639 --> 00:15:33,240 and then a six magazine story about the case and Bibbity Bobby boo. There'd 227 00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:37,399 be a book, maybe a small book, a very short book. Then 228 00:15:37,440 --> 00:15:39,639 I would be done. And of course it wasn't that easy. I had 229 00:15:39,679 --> 00:15:43,759 just enough of an advance to afford to take six months off of work from 230 00:15:43,799 --> 00:15:48,639 New York Magazine without us. So that and so I outcome prooved the book 231 00:15:48,639 --> 00:15:50,600 for myself. I said, even if the book sinks like a stone and 232 00:15:50,960 --> 00:15:54,080 nobody reads it, I won't have lost any money and I will have had 233 00:15:54,080 --> 00:15:58,799 a good experience working on something that I thought was interesting. So that's how 234 00:15:58,840 --> 00:16:00,840 I was able to go to sleep at night for the first six months. 235 00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:04,840 And the book was due in a year. So for six months I stayed 236 00:16:04,840 --> 00:16:08,679 on the clock at New York Magazine, and I took little side trips here 237 00:16:08,720 --> 00:16:11,840 and there to all the hometowns, and I interviewed everybody I could, and 238 00:16:11,840 --> 00:16:15,840 I racked up hours and hours of audio, and I didn't really look at 239 00:16:15,840 --> 00:16:18,639 the audio, and I had an extravagance, which is I paid to have 240 00:16:18,679 --> 00:16:22,639 all the audio transcribed because I thought that if I had to sit and transcribe 241 00:16:22,639 --> 00:16:26,480 at all, not only would it take a month, but also I probably 242 00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:29,960 wouldn't be the same person at the end of it, because it's I find 243 00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:33,799 it to be rather demoralizing to sit and listen to my own voice talking to 244 00:16:33,799 --> 00:16:37,720 people. So six months go by, and I have six months left before 245 00:16:37,720 --> 00:16:41,080 the book is ready, and I have all this transcribed interviews and that's when 246 00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:44,879 the clock starts. That's when I take off work and I sit down and 247 00:16:44,919 --> 00:16:48,919 I created six buckets, one for each woman and her family and one for 248 00:16:48,960 --> 00:16:53,000 the investigation. And I looked at a calendar and I sharted out how much 249 00:16:53,000 --> 00:16:56,639 time I would divide it up, how much time I would spend trying to 250 00:16:56,679 --> 00:17:00,600 write the sloppiest, worst possible draft version of each of these stories. And 251 00:17:00,679 --> 00:17:03,880 I went to work, and the time pressure kept me from stopping. My 252 00:17:04,279 --> 00:17:07,000 motto was don't just keep going. So if I had a problem with the 253 00:17:07,160 --> 00:17:10,799 section, I would just make a little mark, sing you're gonna have to 254 00:17:10,839 --> 00:17:12,680 come back to this, and then just keep just kept going. But the 255 00:17:12,720 --> 00:17:17,279 real thing that kept me courage as I was working on it was that I 256 00:17:17,359 --> 00:17:19,799 already had an idea for what the book would look like. I was influenced 257 00:17:19,799 --> 00:17:23,759 by the Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, which is really two books in one. 258 00:17:25,039 --> 00:17:27,400 I hear you say, yeah, the first part of the book is 259 00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:30,680 the prelude and to the crime, and the second is the aftermath, and 260 00:17:30,759 --> 00:17:34,480 so I thought that that would work here. You'd have a part one that 261 00:17:34,559 --> 00:17:38,279 is the lives of the women from the moment they are born, to the 262 00:17:38,319 --> 00:17:44,480 moment that they disappear, and then Part two would be everything that happened after 263 00:17:44,519 --> 00:17:48,519 their bodies were found, the blow by blow of the media maelstrom, the 264 00:17:48,559 --> 00:17:52,759 trauma of the families coming together and finding each other, the police dysfunction, 265 00:17:53,079 --> 00:17:57,640 the rumor mill, the conspiracy, theories of who've done it, and then 266 00:17:57,680 --> 00:18:02,400 finally, as an ending, where they all met are now and how they 267 00:18:02,440 --> 00:18:04,240 looked toward the future. And so I knew that it was going to look 268 00:18:04,279 --> 00:18:07,559 like that, and that kept me going as well. But as I wrote 269 00:18:08,119 --> 00:18:12,039 just I had lots of unanswered questions. I didn't know if I was writing 270 00:18:12,200 --> 00:18:17,640 a pulp detective book like I was, if I was writing an Elmore Leonard 271 00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:22,759 novel that was nonfiction it was something grizzly and tough, or if I was 272 00:18:22,799 --> 00:18:30,039 writing something intellectual and removed and anthropological and that would read like a sociological study 273 00:18:30,079 --> 00:18:33,440 of these people. I didn't know which way I was going. I couldn't 274 00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:36,440 figure out what the voice was going to be, and so I decided to 275 00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:41,000 just hit the gas and be as explicit and tough as possible, and then 276 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:44,480 I could always dial it back. And that's what I did. But somewhere 277 00:18:44,480 --> 00:18:48,000 in there. There was a second question I realized, which was, how 278 00:18:48,039 --> 00:18:52,359 on earth are you going to not just differentiate these women for readers, but 279 00:18:52,519 --> 00:18:56,359 lead the reader through and around these worlds. And so I had lots of 280 00:18:56,480 --> 00:19:00,119 chapters where I was the intermediary. Say, a chapter begins, it's going 281 00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:03,960 to talk about Megan Waterman. The chapter begins with me saying, I'm sitting 282 00:19:04,000 --> 00:19:07,960 on a park bench talking to Megan Waterman's mother. But it's been six months 283 00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:11,119 since her daughter's been found, and she lives in Portland, and this is 284 00:19:11,119 --> 00:19:14,319 what her life's seen, this is the story. She tells. Things like 285 00:19:14,400 --> 00:19:17,440 that that got me through the first draft. But then when I handed into 286 00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:19,880 my editors, they immediately said, you don't need to be in this book 287 00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:26,400 so much, and I immediately was relieved. I was so psyched because what 288 00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:29,519 I said to them was, so you think I have enough? I have 289 00:19:29,599 --> 00:19:33,039 enough? Without me said yeah, you've learned enough about each of these women 290 00:19:33,079 --> 00:19:37,000 that you don't need to be in it. And that was extremely encouraging, 291 00:19:37,759 --> 00:19:41,640 and so the rewrite became about finding new ways to start those chapters. So 292 00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:45,599 you then found yourself pulling back a little bit, and there wasn't so much 293 00:19:45,599 --> 00:19:48,759 of I'm sitting here on a park bench on a sunny all day or whatever. 294 00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:52,359 Yeah. I was going in with the impression that the world I was 295 00:19:52,400 --> 00:19:56,200 describing was so alien to most readers that they would need someone to hold their 296 00:19:56,200 --> 00:20:00,519 hand and take them through it. But a sen Actually, what I learned 297 00:20:00,599 --> 00:20:04,000 was that wasn't necessary at all, and I was really happy about that. 298 00:20:04,119 --> 00:20:08,000 I am not the sort of magazine writer who puts myself in stories, and 299 00:20:08,079 --> 00:20:11,480 so it was an uncomfortable place to be in anyway. So I was like, 300 00:20:11,559 --> 00:20:14,960 great, I show up in the book at the moment that I show 301 00:20:15,039 --> 00:20:18,519 up in the chronology, when the case is when the families have surfaced and 302 00:20:18,559 --> 00:20:22,319 the media is paying attention to them and somebody wants to get to know them 303 00:20:22,319 --> 00:20:23,880 better. That's when I am there as a fly on the wall. But 304 00:20:23,880 --> 00:20:29,599 you don't learn about me. I'm just part that allows for scenes where it's 305 00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:33,119 just me and one person, one on one talking about things, that allows 306 00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:34,799 for those scenes to appear in the book. But it's not like it's me 307 00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:40,759 as a character, it's me as an interviewer. You didn't Truman Campodia exactly 308 00:20:41,359 --> 00:20:48,359 exact exact same fly. It really is just a wonderful piece of writing. 309 00:20:48,519 --> 00:20:51,880 Honestly, Bob, it's amazing. Well, thank you. I was. 310 00:20:52,039 --> 00:20:57,119 I thought that the biggest challenge would be to try to understand women who I 311 00:20:57,160 --> 00:21:00,960 was never going to meet through the eyes of the people who knew them, 312 00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:06,079 And at first I thought it might not be possible. But then I realized 313 00:21:06,079 --> 00:21:08,000 that the women were in their twenties, that they weren't sixteen, They had 314 00:21:08,079 --> 00:21:11,279 lives independent of their families, and so I thought of I could talk to 315 00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:15,240 hopefully more than one, but at least one person who really knew them well 316 00:21:15,559 --> 00:21:18,799 in their adult lives, and I was lucky enough to talk to more than 317 00:21:18,839 --> 00:21:22,799 one for each of them, then I would have a fully dimensional view of 318 00:21:22,839 --> 00:21:26,279 who they were. And I decided that I would try to solve the answer 319 00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:29,680 why did each of them become a sex worker, Why did they become an 320 00:21:29,759 --> 00:21:33,400 escort? Why did they make the decision that their cousin or their sister never 321 00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:37,720 did. What was it about it for them? And I had trouble finding 322 00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:41,279 the answer to that question for each of them, because even as I interviewed 323 00:21:41,279 --> 00:21:44,240 people who knew them well, at no point did any of those people say 324 00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:47,480 to me. And that's the day I remember that she looked at me and 325 00:21:47,519 --> 00:21:49,319 she said, you know what, I'm going to advertise on Craig's list. 326 00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,079 That just never happened. There was no moment where it happened, and so 327 00:21:53,279 --> 00:21:59,200 I changed the question. I realized that the way to understand anyone in fiction 328 00:21:59,319 --> 00:22:02,839 or in nonfiction is to find out what they want out of life, what 329 00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:06,400 they want, And so I sat down and I did some thinking based on 330 00:22:06,440 --> 00:22:08,359 all my interviewing. What does Maureen want, what does Megan want, what 331 00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:11,519 does Shannon want? What does Amber want? What does Melissa want? And 332 00:22:11,559 --> 00:22:15,880 what they wanted? We're all different things. I talked before about Shannon being 333 00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:19,920 alienated from her family and wanting to get back in. In the book, 334 00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:23,559 I talk about Melissa wanting to be successful and not to lead the life that 335 00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:27,559 her mother, who had her when she was sixteen, led. She came 336 00:22:27,599 --> 00:22:32,039 to New York for a whole different life, and Maureen wanted to pay for 337 00:22:32,079 --> 00:22:34,079 her rent so that she wouldn't be evicted, so that she could prove that 338 00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:37,880 she could have custody of her son. It goes on, and Amber wanted 339 00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:41,039 to be close to her sister Kim, who I talked about a moment ago 340 00:22:41,759 --> 00:22:45,279 everybody had something different, and that suddenly was to me was the key to 341 00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:51,160 understanding these people as individuals and not as plot devices in a true crime story. 342 00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:55,480 You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back after this word 343 00:22:55,519 --> 00:23:03,480 from our sponsors. We're back here at Mind over Murder. One process question. 344 00:23:04,039 --> 00:23:07,359 You're talking to a number of different people, and even listening to you 345 00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:11,880 describe the process, I get how you're talking about these women as younger, 346 00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:18,519 really girls growing up. Also talk to people that were more of their contemporaries, 347 00:23:18,559 --> 00:23:21,640 that were their friends, that were able to tell what they were up 348 00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:26,079 to pretty close to the moment they disappeared. Were any of these people resistant 349 00:23:26,119 --> 00:23:30,640 to the idea that you were going to plunk down a digital recorder and record 350 00:23:30,759 --> 00:23:36,720 the conversation. Did you encounter much resistance because some of this is a painful 351 00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:41,920 and some of these people are involved in illegal activity, particularly the friends and 352 00:23:41,039 --> 00:23:45,920 associates. Did anybody say I don't want to be recorded or you had to 353 00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:52,039 do the traditional reporter's notebook approach. That's a very interesting question because while it's 354 00:23:52,079 --> 00:23:56,960 certainly true that a lot of people resisted being interviewed at first, and I 355 00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:00,240 just kept asking and kept moving, kept on moving through the book, and 356 00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:04,359 eventually, through gentle positive pressure, people agree to be interviewed. But once 357 00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:07,480 I actually sat down to be interviewed, nobody flinched at the tape recorder. 358 00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,920 And that's something that I've noticed over the years. I first was a reporter 359 00:24:11,279 --> 00:24:15,519 working on news stories in like nineteen ninety two or nineteen ninety three, and 360 00:24:15,559 --> 00:24:18,680 it was terrifying to take out a tape recorder because you would think that the 361 00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:23,920 person would completely freak out and it would spoil the entire encounter. Quite often, 362 00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:26,200 you wouldn't want to do it. You just sit there with your notebook. 363 00:24:26,279 --> 00:24:30,519 But the reality TV era has changed it all. It's changed everything, 364 00:24:30,559 --> 00:24:33,319 and I'm sure podcasting has changed it as well. It's just it's a different 365 00:24:33,319 --> 00:24:37,160 time now where I can't remember the last time someone has been upset about having 366 00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:40,559 a tape recorder out. In fact, they're upset of you don't. They're 367 00:24:40,559 --> 00:24:42,039 like, what, you're not going to record me? Because everybody thinks that 368 00:24:42,079 --> 00:24:45,279 they're going to get recorded. It's a night and day change. And of 369 00:24:45,319 --> 00:24:48,039 course, the other night and day change is that recording is so much easier 370 00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:53,519 now you're not flipping tapes and buying new tapes and god, it was horrible 371 00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:59,039 changing batteries in the whole nine yards. Yeah, exactly. It was like 372 00:24:59,079 --> 00:25:03,359 a like this own age. Talk to us a little bit about Mary Gilbert 373 00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:07,240 and her murder at the hands of her daughter Sarah. When and how did 374 00:25:07,319 --> 00:25:11,039 you hear about it? And what was your emotional response to it? Such 375 00:25:11,079 --> 00:25:15,680 an awful turn of events, really a real tragedy. Most tragic of it 376 00:25:15,759 --> 00:25:18,559 all was that the life that Mary had been leading in the years since since 377 00:25:18,559 --> 00:25:22,079 Shannon's death had really been, in many ways the life ship that she had 378 00:25:22,079 --> 00:25:26,720 hoped to lead, an exemplary life where she was really caring for the people 379 00:25:26,759 --> 00:25:29,759 around her. That wasn't always the case with Mary. She was a really 380 00:25:30,039 --> 00:25:33,720 erratic person and had her own personal problems. Not I don't mean to be 381 00:25:34,039 --> 00:25:37,920 oblique here, I'm not talking about substances or anything like that. But just 382 00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:41,759 as a personality, she was she could, she was a handful, but 383 00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:45,160 with her daughter Sarah, she was a caregiver. She cared about her, 384 00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:48,519 and she cared about Sarah's son as well, who was in the mix. 385 00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:53,759 Sarah had mental health problems. Sarah had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and Sarah's mental 386 00:25:53,759 --> 00:26:00,680 health took a nose dive after Shannon's body was finally found and her relationship completely 387 00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:03,720 disintegrated. She was on her own. She had psychotic breaks, more than 388 00:26:03,799 --> 00:26:07,519 one. She had meds that she was supposed to be on. There was 389 00:26:07,559 --> 00:26:11,119 a son that she was supposedly taken care of, and she was taking okay 390 00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:17,079 care of him, but she became more and more angry with her sister Shari, 391 00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:21,799 and also with Mary, particularly with Mary, and one day Mary came 392 00:26:21,799 --> 00:26:26,079 and visited and was murdered by Sarah. Sarah, you could say that she 393 00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:30,160 was psychotic, she also was planning it, so she ends up getting convicted 394 00:26:30,519 --> 00:26:33,640 of murder at the insanity defense doesn't work. It rarely works in the United 395 00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:37,400 States, actually, but it didn't work for her. So she's in prison 396 00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:41,119 now and Mary is gone, and it's just awful. It was July. 397 00:26:41,799 --> 00:26:45,000 It was basically the same time of year as when I first went this year 398 00:26:45,039 --> 00:26:48,720 when I heard that rex Hreman had been arrested for the murders. So it 399 00:26:48,799 --> 00:26:52,599 was weird that way, like the same weather, the same like stuff I 400 00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:57,079 was doing outside and the call come. The call came when I learned about 401 00:26:57,079 --> 00:27:02,680 Mary. I was really brought low, and immediately on the phone and Facebook 402 00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:06,559 and email and texting with everybody involved in the case. And at that point, 403 00:27:06,599 --> 00:27:08,400 actually I was on the phone with Liz Garbass, to the director of 404 00:27:08,519 --> 00:27:11,799 the Lost Girls movie, because even then she was still she was trying to 405 00:27:11,799 --> 00:27:15,920 develop it as a movie, and she had met with Mary just a few 406 00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,440 months earlier and was ready to make a movie about Mary and her life. 407 00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:23,000 And suddenly Mary was gone. It was a real shock. It's something you 408 00:27:23,079 --> 00:27:26,599 highlight in the book. In the latter part of Lost Girls, you talk 409 00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:33,160 about the fact that Mary really seemed to find purpose in life following shin and 410 00:27:33,559 --> 00:27:38,640 disappearance and then ultimately her body being recovered. That seems to just make that 411 00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:44,200 losing her that much more profound a loss, I think for all of us, 412 00:27:44,279 --> 00:27:48,559 because I don't think she had great purpose in her life prior to losing 413 00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:52,359 her daughter. I think the best way of explaining this is to talk about 414 00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:56,680 the relationship with another daughter, Shari, who if you read Lost Girls, 415 00:27:56,759 --> 00:27:59,920 really is at odds with Mary. Towards the end, she's really angry with 416 00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,440 her, and Mary is alienating the people around her. It's a tough time, 417 00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:06,920 but also Sharie is upset with Mary for falling short in a lot of 418 00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:11,599 ways as a mother. I want to focus on that because that changed after 419 00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:15,319 Lost Girls came out. In the years before Mary's death, she mended fences 420 00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:18,680 with Shari. She worked hard to take care of Sarah as well, and 421 00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:22,759 she worked hard to try to keep the police focused on shin and s death 422 00:28:22,759 --> 00:28:26,599 and to get the nine one one tape released, and to get the auto 423 00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:30,599 second autopsy done, and to get the remains away from the possession of the 424 00:28:30,599 --> 00:28:33,640 police department so that she could have a proper burial. She had real challenges 425 00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:37,279 towards the end of her life, and she was rising to those challenges and 426 00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:42,000 repairing her relationships with people. And that's the tragedy I think. So let's 427 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:47,599 shift gears for a minute here. What would you say, especially given the 428 00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:51,160 fact that now we've finally seen an arrest in this case, what would you 429 00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,839 say were the biggest missteps in this case on the side of law enforcement and 430 00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,960 investigators if you had to name the biggest couple, because it seems like there 431 00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:04,200 were a lot of missteps, what would you say some of the biggest ones 432 00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:08,160 were before it was a serial killer case, there were. The world we're 433 00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:12,000 in was a world where when these women were leading, were at risk in 434 00:29:12,039 --> 00:29:15,839 their lives, that nobody was really coming in to help them or support them, 435 00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:21,279 and when they disappeared, nobody was really working over time to find them. 436 00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:25,400 If they finally was a murder case, suddenly the media was paying attention, 437 00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:27,839 but the police, some of them were resentful they had inherited. Suddenly 438 00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:32,680 it's like a not just one cold case had crash landed in their backyard, 439 00:29:32,759 --> 00:29:36,200 four of them had. And then they found more bodies, six more bodies, 440 00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:38,920 ten cold cases, and then the whole riddle of Shannon Gilbert and eleventh 441 00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,319 problem. They're sitting there with eleven problems, none of which they think are 442 00:29:42,319 --> 00:29:45,920 going to get solved anytime soon, and everybody's mad at them, and they've 443 00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,319 got other work to do, and they're annoyed. Part of this annoyance is 444 00:29:49,359 --> 00:29:53,400 apathy towards sex workers, and part of it is misogyny, and part of 445 00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:57,640 it is class because god knows, if these women had been high school cheerleaders 446 00:29:57,759 --> 00:30:02,599 or college students or but workers in Manhattan who had gone missing, it would 447 00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:06,400 be a very different story. Lots of different pressure involved to try to solve 448 00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:11,359 the case. In terms of police work, it wasn't just apathy or misogyny. 449 00:30:11,079 --> 00:30:15,240 There was a tip that we now know about, a witness statement that 450 00:30:15,359 --> 00:30:19,640 somebody who saw an individual and a car the night before Amber Castella disappeared, 451 00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:22,559 someone who was big enough to look like an ogre and who drove a car 452 00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:26,720 that looked like a Chevy Avalanche. This tip went nowhere early on, and 453 00:30:26,759 --> 00:30:30,359 then it sat in the case file. No one worked on it at all, 454 00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:34,200 No one talked about it at all for more than ten years until until 455 00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,759 a year ago. And then suddenly it pinpointed our suspect. If that tip 456 00:30:37,839 --> 00:30:41,559 had gone somewhere twelve years ago, then they would have had that suspect that 457 00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:47,519 much sooner. There was resistance to innovation. There was cell tower technology where 458 00:30:47,519 --> 00:30:51,279 they could have tried to match up the movements of the various burner phones that 459 00:30:51,279 --> 00:30:53,319 were used to contact the women. This, to me, I would think 460 00:30:53,319 --> 00:30:56,880 would be the first thing you would want to do in a case that's based 461 00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:00,720 on technology, like a Craigslist case. They didn't want to do it. 462 00:31:00,759 --> 00:31:04,240 They were resistant to it. The FBI offered help to expand their work that 463 00:31:04,279 --> 00:31:08,480 they had done early on. In it and the Suffolk County authorities resisted it. 464 00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,319 They wanted to do their own thing to complete my list, which is 465 00:31:12,359 --> 00:31:17,640 already really long list. There's corruption. There's police corruption because at the beginning 466 00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:22,319 of twenty twelve incomes a new Chief of Department in the Suffolk County Police Department, 467 00:31:22,319 --> 00:31:26,240 a guy named Jim Burke, who is a known quantity, a problematic 468 00:31:26,279 --> 00:31:29,960 figure for years. He had been working for the DA and now he was 469 00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:33,079 over in the police force again after being away, and he turned the place 470 00:31:33,119 --> 00:31:37,559 into the KGB. He had people followed, he had people wire tapped, 471 00:31:37,559 --> 00:31:40,599 He went after his enemies, He beat up a witness and then tried to 472 00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:44,599 cover it up. It was a misery for four years he was involved in 473 00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:48,759 the department and it was just a shocker there that happened. But the shocker 474 00:31:48,799 --> 00:31:52,680 for the Gilgo Beach case is that he kept the fbiway. That the FBI 475 00:31:52,799 --> 00:31:56,559 was there, ready to do work, and he didn't want the FBI looking 476 00:31:56,559 --> 00:32:00,440 over his shoulders, so he kept them away. The lack of cooperation, 477 00:32:00,759 --> 00:32:06,920 particularly with the FBI, and I don't mean to attribute the recent success with 478 00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:13,440 the Arrastobrex human strictly to the FBI, but It's pretty striking that six weeks 479 00:32:13,559 --> 00:32:19,039 or so after a new task force is formed with a high level of cooperation 480 00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:24,039 between Suffolk County, New York State Police, FBI, and other agencies. 481 00:32:24,519 --> 00:32:31,319 It can't be lost on anybody that six weeks after this new team energized working 482 00:32:31,359 --> 00:32:37,960 together, cooperating, there all of a sudden making progress, significant progress, 483 00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:43,640 including the tip regarding this so called ogre and the Chevy Avalanche. He was 484 00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,799 a very distinctive physical figure and the truck was a very unique vehicle, and 485 00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:53,599 they knew they should be looking for that truck and that individual in Massapequa or 486 00:32:53,599 --> 00:33:00,200 Massapequa Park. Once they actually put the team together that weren't playing politics and 487 00:33:00,279 --> 00:33:06,480 weren't covering up corruption, the case started moving forward. I think that's accurate. 488 00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:09,079 I'm starting to get a more detailed view of how that went down. 489 00:33:09,599 --> 00:33:14,880 The corruption then did a couple of years before this new administration came in, 490 00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:19,400 there was an interim period where they did do some significant work on the cell 491 00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,799 tower stuff, and they even limited the area even better, and they had 492 00:33:22,839 --> 00:33:27,160 an even more narrow list of possible homes where a killer might live. They 493 00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:30,559 still didn't have a suspect though, and that's because it's not just that nobody 494 00:33:30,599 --> 00:33:34,279 was acting on the tip about the Chevy Avalanche, it's that people didn't even 495 00:33:34,599 --> 00:33:37,519 know it existed anymore, and it disappeared into the case file. The file 496 00:33:37,559 --> 00:33:42,680 wasn't even searchable, it wasn't digitizable. At the beginning of twenty twenty two, 497 00:33:43,039 --> 00:33:45,920 there's a new Police Commissioner, Rodney Harrison, and there's a new District 498 00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:47,960 Attorney Ray Tierney, and they both have done work in New York and they 499 00:33:49,079 --> 00:33:52,720 both worked on gang cases, and they both understood how important cell tower technology 500 00:33:52,799 --> 00:33:58,039 is because it puts people in places without meeting witness statements. And so they're 501 00:33:58,039 --> 00:34:00,359 ready for a task force. And it's not the FBI that helps, it's 502 00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,799 the state police as well state troopers. And it's a state trooper on the 503 00:34:04,839 --> 00:34:08,679 task force who does a different kind of search for the Chevy Avalanche that turns 504 00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:14,159 up a guy, Rex Hreman, who's huge like an ogre, who lives 505 00:34:14,159 --> 00:34:19,519 in massive people park and not incidentally has ninety seven gun permits. So it 506 00:34:19,639 --> 00:34:22,360 suddenly becomes someone they can look at. They don't just have all this cell 507 00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:27,599 tower data which they've assembled in recent years. Now they have somebody to square 508 00:34:27,639 --> 00:34:30,000 it against. But it is amazing. As you said, the task force 509 00:34:30,079 --> 00:34:34,840 began February first, I believe, twenty twenty two, and I think they 510 00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,760 found the Chevy Avalanche attached to Herman on March fourteenth, so no time at 511 00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:43,639 all, about six weeks I think, from the time they got started just 512 00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:46,960 after the beginning of the year. Credit to everybody who worked on this thing, 513 00:34:47,079 --> 00:34:51,800 but of course it was all sitting there waiting to be discovered. I 514 00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,159 know we hear a lot of cliches about fresh eyes, but I think fresh 515 00:34:54,199 --> 00:35:00,679 eyes, fresh enthusiasm, a new team with all this talent. Six weeks 516 00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:05,920 later, they've actually got strong leads which led them directly to a suspect. 517 00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,199 Yeah, and I think there's a frustration there amongst some of the people who 518 00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:14,440 immediately preceded this group, because they did some good things too. They identified 519 00:35:14,559 --> 00:35:17,000 an additional victim, Valerie Mack, who had been anonymous up till then, 520 00:35:17,039 --> 00:35:22,000 and gave her family information that they sorely wanted for years, and they made 521 00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:25,480 pieces of evidence public. And there were things they did, and as I 522 00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:30,480 said, they refined the geographic area where cell signals were paying and there was 523 00:35:30,559 --> 00:35:35,519 hope, but there was no suspect. There was the suspects that they were 524 00:35:35,519 --> 00:35:37,840 going after. None of them panned out, and you can't have one without 525 00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:42,960 the other. So when the arrest was made back in July, what was 526 00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:47,800 your response, was Rex Heureman in any way what you expected when you pictured 527 00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:53,039 the perpetrator in these cases. When I learned that he lived in Massapega Park 528 00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:59,199 and commuted to Manhattan, I thought that certainly kids. But when I learned 529 00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:01,679 that he had a family, that surprised me. And when I learned that 530 00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:07,480 he had a public facing job where he was. He wasn't a landscaper gardener 531 00:36:07,599 --> 00:36:12,119 like Joel Rifkin. He wasn't bopping around in his truck not talking to anyone 532 00:36:12,159 --> 00:36:15,119 all day long. He actually talked to people and had to impress them and 533 00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:17,800 went over their business. And some of these people were powerful people in New 534 00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:22,639 York City that he had to be a consultant for. I wasn't expecting that. 535 00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:27,400 And it's not like he was some super charmer like a Ted Bundy figure. 536 00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:31,559 But he was public. He was gregarious and ambitious, and then he 537 00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:35,639 went home and had a wife and two children. The first you wonder, 538 00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:37,599 how do you find the time, How do you manage a life to be 539 00:36:37,639 --> 00:36:40,360 able to do this? And then you think, clearly he found a way. 540 00:36:40,559 --> 00:36:45,320 And then you learn about a vaults down in his house with not just 541 00:36:45,559 --> 00:36:49,519 ninety seven guns, but two hundred eighty guns, and it starts to become 542 00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:53,199 something really gothic going on there in that house. The sixty four thousand dollars 543 00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:59,880 question, maybe do you think that Rex Human is responsible for the other victims 544 00:37:00,039 --> 00:37:02,159 in the Long Island serial killings. I'd like to give you an answer, 545 00:37:02,159 --> 00:37:10,079 but I need one second. The dog here is eating a napkin. Bob 546 00:37:10,079 --> 00:37:13,280 went into the table for a second, and I was like, I don't 547 00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:15,199 know what's going on there, but we'll give it a second. I saw 548 00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:20,360 the I actually saw that beautiful dog. Oh, I didn't see the dog. 549 00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:22,519 And now I saw the dog in the background, and I was like, 550 00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:27,920 I think he just grabbed something off the counter. Really, I thought 551 00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:30,239 I saw it, And I was like, tonight, I'm not sure. 552 00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:34,880 I'm not always looking at the screen, of course, I'm looking at the 553 00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,760 questions and other things. I think it's grabbing something off the counter. Now, 554 00:37:39,119 --> 00:37:43,400 that's funny that it was in the background. We'll take that part out, 555 00:37:45,199 --> 00:37:47,119 all right. So you would you would asked about more so, I 556 00:37:47,159 --> 00:37:52,079 think that's a great question. One of the first things I certainly thought was, 557 00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:55,679 how does somebody who apparently is responsible for three or four women on the 558 00:37:55,679 --> 00:38:01,280 beach continue to live his life for another twelve years after those bodies are discovered. 559 00:38:01,679 --> 00:38:06,400 How does that person not try something else, not hurt someone else? 560 00:38:06,519 --> 00:38:08,840 How does he just stop? And I think it's going to be pretty dreadful 561 00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:13,719 to learn exactly what kind of life he was leading in that time and before 562 00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:17,000 that time? Was this his first was Maureen Brainerd Barnes in two thousand and 563 00:38:17,079 --> 00:38:21,239 seven, really his first victim? That we have a lot left to learn 564 00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:24,719 about him. I'm no profiler, but it seems odd to me that he 565 00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:28,519 would stop being interested in this sort of thing and just turn it off. 566 00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:32,679 When you've finished your book and turned it in that is the first edition of 567 00:38:32,679 --> 00:38:37,199 the book, because now you've added an afterward. Did you think someday, 568 00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:42,199 I think this case is going to be solved or did you always think it 569 00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:45,360 was going to remain as a terrible unsolved part of Long Island history. I 570 00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:51,199 had really placed myself in the lane of focusing on the victims. In fact, 571 00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:53,199 I started to get to a place where I thought our culture thinks too 572 00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:57,280 much about Hannibal Elector. I enjoyed the silence of the lamps as much as 573 00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:00,519 anyone, between that and Dexter and everything else, Like we sit and romanticize 574 00:39:00,519 --> 00:39:05,360 these people and that they're just They're all like Joel Rifken, They're just disturbed, 575 00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:07,639 gross people who need to be put away. But I'm not going to 576 00:39:07,679 --> 00:39:12,400 think about it. And I had skepticism about whether the Long Island authorities would 577 00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:15,559 ever have any headway. The only thing, the only silver lining I thought 578 00:39:15,599 --> 00:39:19,760 of at the time, over the years was that a lot of these cases 579 00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:23,000 do tend to get solved ten or fifteen years later. All over the country, 580 00:39:23,039 --> 00:39:27,000 you hear about it ten or fifteen years later, something shakes lose, 581 00:39:27,079 --> 00:39:31,519 somebody's life situation changes, they tick somebody off, they die, or a 582 00:39:31,599 --> 00:39:36,760 witness suddenly changes their mind. Something happens, and that I think that's in 583 00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:40,840 fact, really what happened here at administration changed and the corrupt culture started to 584 00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:45,840 wither away, and suddenly there was cooperation with other agencies. That's what changed 585 00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:50,079 in this case. What is next for you in terms of projects, I 586 00:39:50,159 --> 00:39:52,519 know you've had a lot of success with Lost Girls. You had a ton 587 00:39:52,599 --> 00:39:57,760 of success too with Hidden Valley Road, which actually is in my classroom at 588 00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:00,320 this very moment on my bookshelf. It's next, what else? What else 589 00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:04,599 can I put another Robert Kulker book on myself? I would love to write 590 00:40:04,599 --> 00:40:07,239 another book. At the moment, I have a lot of magazine work going. 591 00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:09,960 The books are always really big gambles, and I need to do what 592 00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:13,880 I did with Lost Girls, which is outcome proof them. In my head 593 00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:17,519 think this will be worth putting a couple of years into, and so it's 594 00:40:17,639 --> 00:40:22,400 tricky there. I usually have to kiss a lot of frogs before finding another 595 00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:27,880 book. But in the meantime, I have just handed in a draft of 596 00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:30,760 a time New York Times magazine story about the gil Go case to try and 597 00:40:31,159 --> 00:40:35,559 chime in with the rest of the world. Perhaps that'll be the last thing 598 00:40:35,639 --> 00:40:37,480 I do in it. Perhaps not. And then I'm thrilled to have a 599 00:40:37,559 --> 00:40:42,440 nice relationship with the Times magazine now where I can write about any number of 600 00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:46,079 different subjects. I've written about a plagiarism case and about a family with dementia. 601 00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:50,920 It's a thrilling career where I can have a lot of variety and jump 602 00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,440 around, but I do keep coming back to families. I do end up 603 00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:58,760 writing about families in crisis, families facing challenges. I did it with Lost 604 00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,320 Girls and with my other book as well, And so I imagine it's going 605 00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:07,039 to take me somewhere new before long. Do your publishers and editors call you 606 00:41:07,119 --> 00:41:10,360 up and say, do you Bob? It would be great if you wok 607 00:41:12,079 --> 00:41:15,840 or I think I'm feeling the pressure more than they're like, you can't hurry 608 00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:19,159 love. They get it. They understand that it has to be a good 609 00:41:19,199 --> 00:41:22,199 idea too, so they've seen it before that it takes some time. Do 610 00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:29,280 you know roughly when your New York Times magazine article will appear? I don't, 611 00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:32,039 but it has I assume it'll be sometime in late September or in the 612 00:41:32,039 --> 00:41:36,400 month of October. It won't sit around for long, so it's not going 613 00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:39,039 to wait until the trial or anything like that. So Fall twenty twenty three, 614 00:41:39,079 --> 00:41:43,039 it's coming. It's coming soon, we hope, Yeah, I hope 615 00:41:43,039 --> 00:41:47,559 so. And then is Hidden Valley Road getting the Netflix treatment or is that 616 00:41:47,599 --> 00:41:51,880 one going to remain purely in book for him? It was in development for 617 00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,480 a while and that one. I wasn't creatively involved in the Lost Girls movie 618 00:41:54,519 --> 00:41:59,519 that I was with developing a Hidden Valley Road miniseries, and I really enjoyed 619 00:41:59,519 --> 00:42:04,039 working on I really grew and developed as a writer trying to work with a 620 00:42:04,079 --> 00:42:07,199 screenwriter. It was really a thrill for me. And at the moment it 621 00:42:07,199 --> 00:42:10,559 hasn't been picked up. These things go up and down and have different lives. 622 00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:15,480 Lost Girls went to three different studios before Netflix finally made it. You've 623 00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:19,440 got to kind of divorce myself from the outcome with that one and hope for 624 00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:25,400 the best. The book is Lost Girls and Unsolved American Mystery. And where 625 00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:30,079 can our listeners look for this amazing book? Lost Girls is still in print, 626 00:42:30,159 --> 00:42:35,079 which means it's everywhere. You could buy it on the internet or you 627 00:42:35,079 --> 00:42:37,519 could buy it in your bookstore. And it does have an afterward about Mary 628 00:42:37,519 --> 00:42:43,360 Gilbert and perhaps one day when the case against Rex Herman proceeds in court, 629 00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,320 milbe another thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Mind Ever 630 00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:50,719 Murder. We really appreciated talking to you. I really like talking to you 631 00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:52,719 guys. Thanks so much. That's going to do it for this episode of 632 00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:57,840 Mind Ever Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next 633 00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:12,719 time. Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. 634 00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:17,039 Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is 635 00:43:17,079 --> 00:43:22,559 by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder 636 00:43:22,679 --> 00:43:28,960 is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media. You can follow us on Facebook, 637 00:43:29,159 --> 00:43:31,880 Twitter, or Instagram. You can also follow our page on the Colonial 638 00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:37,679 Parkway Murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter 639 00:43:37,840 --> 00:44:00,440 at Bill Thomas five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder on