You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind of a Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley
and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by Joe jack Alone for We're
committing 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 New York City Please Department in nineteen ninety two. I got promoted a
sergeant relatively quick in nineteen ninety nine, and I worked in I Wor started
off with the Bronx, and I went to Brooklyn there got promoted, and
I ended up into the neck of Squad one and pre Sing and Queens,
and then eventually worked my way into the Cold Case Squad and the Bronx.
And yeah, I know it was a good career. I'll be 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's today 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 and like you guys are struggling to get your four years,
I'll yeah, 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. A 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 year, and it's like everything else, you
get your own feel for things, so when you first thought out, you
don't know exactly what to expect. But at John Jay, you're dealing with
most of the kids won't 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 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 involved in it, so 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 they're
going through their college years nineteen twenty twenty one. Many of them want to
do some sort of law enforce a 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 they want to do it.
This fine, but I always kid them, but it is what it is
right for they want to do forensic science, if they want to do all
of those kinds of classes, that 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 kite an interesting, but we do have older cops that
they want to go back to school and get their degree and finish it up.
So you do have a couple of them sprinkled through, but the overwhelming
majority I just refer to him as kids because well, those are much older
than them, so I can afford to call them that. But it's it's
exciting in a way because I remember when I was that young and anticipating working.
And you can see many of them that's ain't kind of look in the
right. We know that you just wrote a book. They're called case handbook,
and we're gonna ask you to talk a little bit about that. But
I am curious. Are you're 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 or whatever it was they spent them writing, right. So this year
I had the fourth edition of my first book come out, The Criminal Investigator
Function, A Guide 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 instructors. I used to say,
every book that they have, it's all kind of academic. There's really
nothing to hear about how to solve a case. And they got tired of
hear me complains of one of the funds. We just write your own damn
book already. So I said, all right, challenge acceptance. 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 used it for their police promotional
exams as part of the civil service tests. Wow. So that was a
kind of nice validation for me. And then this book. I had actually
started writing the 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 goal cases. It's getting worse, not getting any better, and
the problem that we deal with is 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 at 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's 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 pubmit, 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? Make you 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. At a matter of fact,
I'm going out to Indiana to speak at Purdue University about this. So,
yeah, they're having their respecting Cold Case Symposium. I'll be going out there
in hamber 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. 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 most I got the book. This is great.
I'm going to start using it at work. I had cold case investigators
and all those other things that come up. So when you get that kind
of validation, you think that you 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 a
cold case. There's a couple, and I hate calling to the textbook because
you get that word textbook and all you just think of, oh my god,
phonics and all those other kind of things. It's really that's why I
want 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 probably at
a fifth to sixth grade level. So everyone it's I tell people, listen,
I'm no genius. If I could do this, anybody can do it.
It's like everybody's 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, 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 an interview with one of
the news agencies and asked me, Brian Colberger is out there, he's studying
all the stuff that makes them a better criminal. I'm like, he's wearing
an orange jumpsuit, right, probably because 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 ride, 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 learned 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 Cold Pie Squad, I
mean we all there was only four detectives in myself when I first got into
the Bronx, and then shortly they're after Wing 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 with less that we were qualified to do everything
with nothing. It was one of those battles that you learned from dealing with
district attorneys about God, I can tell your stories of fits like that,
and I'm sure even when we get to longal serial Killer, I'm sure there
with fits that the police development had with the district attorney, because that's just
the way it is. The 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? But as soon as the news broke, just like everybody else,
it happened practically in my backyard at the time, I was living in
Wantau, 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, I'm talking about a major, major crime and in certain
aspects, but Long Island has dealt with a number of serial killers dating 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 said 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 the news finally broke
twelve thirteen years later, I had everything to be known, so it was
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 Melissa Bartholomey's sister from the suspect who
had her phone. So this was an important aspect and 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 to signal and everything again 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 pinned in Massapequa. You know they had
they had that information way back when. Why do you think the original investigations
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 had 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 Jamesburg
the police chief, and Thomas Spota, 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, and 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 within police
commission of 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 gut, that's like, that's a no note 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 were 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 cop speaking, 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 said, 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 gil Go Peach in two eleven, and then also
her baby that the baby dough initially that was found out in gil Go.
Now DNA come back to Peaches. We just don't have a name for Peaches
yet, but I believe that's coming real suit because the FBI had put out
a request for information regarding Peaches, kinda 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 Jane Doe, which
was in nineteen ninety six where pots or legs were found in Fire Island and
the rest of her was found in gil Go. And then you have the
manner of cases Valerie Mack 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 work, it's transy, it might be working on
the boats to 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 it any other podcast, so
this might be the first time we 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 I remember, and entering
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 Yoke 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 are 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 Brandon Barnes and then as the fourth of
the guild, go four 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
Jane Doe. He cut them up for a specific reason. He picked those
girls up off the street. He had to whatever you want to refer to
him at the street Walker's prostage, whatever they sex parkers, whatever is the
correct term these things. 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 getting 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 links 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 hitting for a long period of
time. Now let's turn to the gill go for much later on. He's
using new technology. He's using websites which he worked 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 burnaphones that we
know for sure. So he thought he was pretty much anonymous, using the
internet, using websites, using burnaphones. 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
the game, this is what I would be thinking. That we've had a
serial killer 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, Kristen 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 offices were near 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. Because 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, None of that happened.
It was just too much of a risk as far as I'm concerned, especially
in Massapequa 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 parading through your house. That nobody would have said something by
now, No way, Jose. 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 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 Humorman wasn't considered an oddball 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. It's just one
of those things. One of our listeners made a very interesting and astute comment
about the fact that this guy is apparently a quite up and coming architect and
yet his house is a total shambles. Might not 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 barefoot? And that's the exact quote I use on Twitter
that day when that 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 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 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 draw attention to
himself. Right, Everybody said, it's quiet, and that's just 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 lets them get away
with this stuff for so long, hiding in plain sight. As they like
to say, Yeah, exactly, you're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll
be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mind
over Murder. Talk a little bit about what law enforcement maybe missed the first
time around. Let's go back to that for a second. Why do you
think that law enforcement missed that tip about the Chevy Avalanche from Amber Costello's roommate,
because it really seems to me like that was definitely a two theme 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 in this, 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 suv Gee. Thanks for the tip. So is everyone else
on Long Island. Yeah, and 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 assault. 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. People are, oh, yeah, Joe, great,
are you were able to do this after you know all this stuff?
But now this is what you talk about when you deal with an experience.
You have some things to work with and just ask for it. 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 almost eight million people
at live on Long Island. It's a lot of There are a lot of
people that live in it's on Long Island, not in Long Island. I
go crazy when people say, are you in Long Island? Mill? 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 isn't 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 it. Manhattan's got to think
nine million people, take a few, So you're talking about the equivalent of
Manhattan population that live on Long Island. And here's the other thing that we're
watching the news coverage from 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 nats are off. That's just the pet
peeve of mine. But it tries me crazy when I hear national news things
talking about this like it's like it's like Brooklyn and Queens aren't on Long Island.
People look on guarantee there'll be people looking at maps as they're listening to
this, going no way, he's wrong. Brooklyn and Queens is in New
York City, yet it's governed by New York City. It's not in New
York City technically regards to land mass, 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 you have
close proximity to New York City. So Nasaur is more populated than Suffo because
of the commute. But a lot of people over the last I guess ten
or fifteen years have migrated further east to Suffolk County because it was cheaper to
live, and then they stick with the longer commute. Now there is the
long railroad that can get you there to work without having to drive on the
l Ie Cup of Bit, 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 called it the box, right, So when the Commissioner, Rodney Harrison,
talked about it, he referred to it as the box, and that
box was Massive Peaka Park where that 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. It'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 massive
peak ware, I think it just covered the massive 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 try, if they recorded those phone calls. They no mention
of that. Over they recorded the phone calls between the suspect and the system,
so that would be another interesting aspectivist. One thing we do know is
that Supper County kept all of this stuff close to the best, 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 right. They were tracking them right, so part of tracking is
listening. My thing is did they record them? We don't know. This
is pure speculation on my part, but if I had a guess, I
would say it's probably a seventy 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 favorite dedicated New Yorker I can tell. In that article, which is
from twenty fifteen, they he said that law enforcement was listening in on those
calls. So I'd be real surprised if they weren't recorded. Yeah, and
what 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, right, 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 there are 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 every
investigation, 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, right Tierney, he 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? Is a big deal because
you will have people come forward to try to claim 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 though,
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
more enforcement agents in the entire county's You can understand why none of this stuff
actually ever came out because they didn't want anything coming out of there, because
they didn't want 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 trying
to get if you have certain things that the public can 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 of getting old, and
though 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 somewhere, because
you gotta remember too. Even though Long Island is not New York City,
pretty much people are trained to mind your own business, don't speak too,
so they don't tend to get involved in other people's things. And unless there's
something really agreed, justus kind of people just put the blinders on 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, it 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, rabbit 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 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 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 are
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'll 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, are in 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
Human 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 should be found in there's out their location as 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 they
mentioned and everything, but the Jimmy Hoffock case for suffoc counting, they're just
worry about your own little fiftom over there and let the authorities in those other
places. But look, they have is 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 of the body, fluids or
finger prints or what have you. They have it now right. They have
this thing to Prince. They have it is DNA. So you're going to
let them do their job in that respect. For suffoc counting, job number
one is to deal with Maureen branded Barnes 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
sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. And you're 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. 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 and it is where
I get all my eight mail people. Not it does. But the death
penalty right now New York has the death penalty on the books. They'll 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 gonna
be like, oh my god, the death penalty, that's 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 I'm chair 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, who signed the death penalty back into law,
and if you look at today's New York penal law, murder first degree is
still there up at that point. Like when I was a rookie copy when
I came on in nineteen ninety two, 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 people will say they don't have it. Well,
they have it, but can they use it? As the other question.
Listen, when a cop gets killed, let's talk about the death penalty.
If they're gonna if the projecutors 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 with 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 that it's
there. You can 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 less
semester for so the spring semester, the term paper was who is the Long
Island serial Killer? Really? 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 term paper,
the research paper that you gave us, they rested a guy that they
put 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 because I teach the investigations class, so I always try to keep
a I was using Long Island serial Killer for Less 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, say, 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? Anymail? I'm clothes just the
same 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 just
give them the idea of doing some research, learning about the cage, trying
to do their own profile kind of thing and develop 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 yourn is on the history of what is yours? I'm
trying to find out who the low Own 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, kids would love research paper as a whole lot
more. I love that. I'll vote it to you. Yes, there's
a couple of things I've done with my students get that back. And I've
also used the movies like mister Brooks. I teacher class. So you have
ever seen mister Brooks with Kevin Costner. Yes, yes, it's another one.
I had them doing the whole twist and turns, and I won't this
this case. Somebody's never seen it. I don't want to give away the
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
Seeal podcast came out, I had them listen to that and then try to
find out if ad Non was guilty or not guilty thought and they really liked
that stuff. Yeah, that 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, oh, watch it, you'll like it. It's great.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, Joe, please send me all that stuff
that sends tremendous. I can't do it, of course, in a public
high school, but boy, it would give me some great ideas from my
own teaching. Yeah. No, there's lots of different things that I tried
to do. Like one of the things when I first became a teacher eighteen
someone 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 gouff bid. You grew 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 church and I had some teachers that were really good. I
said, I'm not going to be the jerk I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
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 and encourage anybody to do that too well, said Joe.
In addition to going back to school, what is next for you? Yeah,
so school starts in three weeks. I can't believe I'm just as bummed
out at the kids are. Yeah, yeah, she's 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. See 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 frame con kind of thing they call up
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 in
the ironic pot as. We were supposed to do a series on the Long
Island s cerial Killer 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 don't heard
of a less of couchy James Patterson and you have. You can buy these
things out on a weekend. Hey yeah, thank yeah, thank you for
taking a shot. At James Patterson because honestly, he's got enough ghostwriters.
Oh my god, how he does it do this is how he does?
How other people do the books for him? Yeah, 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 not. Your focus on practical application of the work that you have done
is so incredibly beneficial, and I think you're hang 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 this stuff and called the Long Island Writers Guilt And we
started out out of the Borders bookstore. That's how old I am. Right.
Yeah. We would meet like once a month and we would get there
and critique other peoples 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 dozen people don't talk to me anymore. But it's
there are a lot of different things, like I tell people, Oh,
I like to write a book, so I go just write it. 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 polished. 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 like a challenge. Yeah, I love
it. Joe, Thank you so much for spending time with us. We
really appreciate it and we are looking forward to seeing you. A crime con
sounds great. Thanks for having me, guys, that's gonna do it for
this episode of mind Over 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 Dewey. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership
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and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas.
Five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder one