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All right, welcome to Psychopedia. I am your co-host, Ted Sinatra, here with my co-host... Investigators Later. And we have a special, I think it's very special, re-release, revisit of The Gilgo Murderer, part one and two, which you put together in about 36 hours. Remember I had to touch grass because I was losing my mind?
That sounds like it's a joke, but it's not. That was the real situation. I had to go in my backyard and lie in the grass. 36 straight hours of research. I went to Gilgo Beach. Yeah. Yeah, it was intense. And the fact that we're from Long Island doesn't, you know, it kind of makes it a little bit more, it's like the hometown. We got to do it right. You know what I mean? Way by way, I mean. You were cheering me on. It was appreciated. I was happy for you and for me, but you turned it around so fast. And you said at the end of episode two,
that this is a moving puzzle. Things are coming out all the time. And over the past year, there have been little things here and there like- They found this, they found that. They're looking into his house. But Rex Hortyman has now been charged with two additional murders on top of the murders he did that they already know about. Correct. As well as another one this past January. So I feel like it's a good time to-
share an update, which I promised to do. So I want to keep to my word. Here we are. Yeah. So we're going to have an update. She's going to have an update, but also I went back and listened to part one and part two. I forgot almost everything. Good for you. It was, I mean, it's, it was very good. So if you haven't listened to it yet, you're about to, and if you already have, cause we put it out about a year ago, just buckle up and get ready to pick up on things that you didn't pick up on because I went back and listened and there was a lot that I don't remember. A lot of interesting information that
And a lot of funny jokes by me.
that were even surprising to me on the re-listen. So you're about to go into part one and part two, but just know that if you've already heard it, you're ready for a re-listen. It's worth a re-listen. Exactly. Okay. I'm going to share this update now. Let's go. All right. So as you will go on to hear in part one and part two, Rex Hoyerman, a now 60-year-old New York City architect who lived on Long Island, New York, basically in our backyard, was arrested on July 14th, 2023 in connection with the infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings on Long Island.
Initially, he was only, I put that in quotes because every charge is a life, but only charged with the murders of three women, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amberlynn Costello. Then in January 2024, Hoyerman faced additional charges for the murder of Maureen Brainerd Barnes, who was last seen in 2007. Yep, I remember that.
But another massive development occurred just this past Thursday, June 6th, 2024, which is three days before the recording of this update. Because on that day...
Hoyerman faced new murder charges for two additional women, Jessica Taylor, whom we discussed during our initial coverage of this case, and Sandra Costillo, who was previously unconnected to the Gilgo Beach case, as law enforcement believed that she'd been killed by a carpenter who lived in the area, a man named John Bittroff.
who was convicted of murdering two other women whose bodies had been found on the same part of Long Island. Wow. But Bittroff was never charged with Costilla's death due to a lack of evidence, and he does insist, in spite of his guilt for other murders, that he's innocent of this murder. Yeah. Anyway, her inclusion in the case indicates that prosecutors now believe Hoyerman was killing women for much longer.
What a nightmare this guy is. Mm-hmm.
The all caps document features multiple checklists with tasks to complete before, during, and after the killings. What does all caps document mean? Like he put every single thing in all caps. Oh, because he's like old. All caps because he's a vision issue. I can't figure it out. Just shift lock it. Everything will be capitalized. All or nothing.
The worst is when you type up like half a page and you look up at your screen for the first time and caps locks go on. Yeah. That's rough. Yeah. Among the dozens of entries written are reminders to do things like clean up.
clean the bodies and destroy evidence to get sleep before hunt and have story set. These are notes he's leaving to himself. I mean, I make calendar invites to myself to like make a doctor's appointment. So I get it, I guess. Okay. Kind of. Very different. Yeah, very, very different. Thank God. One section titled,
Things to Remember appears to highlight lessons that he learned from previous killings, this is what prosecutors maintain, such as using heavier rope and limiting noise in order to maximize quote-unquote playtime.
A body prep checklist was also discovered on this all caps document. And it included, among other items, a note to remove head and hands from his victims. Obviously, presumably to mess with being able to identify the remains, should they be discovered. Yeah, I mean, isn't that something you would be able to just remember? I mean, that's... I mean... Whatever. Whatever.
Yeah. These people, he's an engineer, right? He's an architect. Architect. So funny he made a blueprint, first of all. Second of all, it just goes to show you, you can be very smart in one area of your life and just absolutely inept at it.
Absolutely. Or multiple other ones. Yeah, that's a good point. In court, Hoyerman stood silent as his lawyer, Michael J. Brown, indicated that he was still reviewing new details pertaining to these new charges. But prosecutors, however, revealed the following gruesome details.
Sandra Costilla, who was discovered partially nude back in 1993, had numerous sharp force injuries to her face, torso, breasts, thigh, and vaginal area, similar to those found in Hoyerman's collection of pornographic images.
Jessica Taylor, who had worked as an escort, was last seen in 2003 near the Port Authority bus terminal and was discovered dismembered in Manorville with a mutilated tattoo that actually helped to identify her. By us, right? By us, yeah. Okay.
Hoyerman pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder charges in connection with killing Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla during the hearing on this past Thursday and was ordered to be held without bail. I just want to leave off this update, and I know everybody's about to jump into part one, so we're going to keep this, you know, just about the update. But as always, I want to honor and remember the victims that are involved, and we do have a little bit of information on Jessica Taylor. So her mother...
Elizabeth Bashil was at the courthouse for Thursday's court hearing, and she held up childhood photos of her daughter and had a statement prepared to read to reporters that her attorney read for her, which described Jessica as being loving, compassionate, and so funny. She also indicated, and this broke my heart, that she would have made a great mother.
My darling daughter, you will never be forgotten. The statement said, you will forever be in our hearts. And the last time she saw or heard from her daughter was 2003. Right. Did she know she was dead or was her body found? It just wasn't linked. Her remains were found. Exactly. Terrible. Yeah, exactly. Now there's just a formal charge. But it's like, you got to live it twice. I'm sure she lives it every day, but like, this is a big thing to come up. Yeah. And probably bittersweet.
She knows now, but like she's still gone. And that's what trials and the justice system really is. It's like you want that justice for the victims, but it's absolutely re-traumatizing many times. Oh, yeah. For the families or the survivors. If I make a mistake, I don't ever want anybody to bring it up ever again. Yeah. I don't even want people to bring up stuff I posted on the internet. I'm like, that was a day ago. I can't relate to that guy anymore. Right. Imagine something so heartbreaking. No, no, no. So anyway, that is the update.
big deal in the world of the Gilgo Beach case. And I hope that, you know, everybody goes on to learn a little bit if they haven't already listened. And as Tank said earlier, if you have already listened and you're going to re-listen, I hope that you learn something new and remember that, you know, the victims were innocent, all of them. Oh yeah. Yeah. And even with that update going into part one and part two, there's so much more there.
If it was just these three, it would be like, put him in jail for life, obviously. But there's so many others. Whatever. This guy sucks, Rex Horryman. Yeah, very complex case. We don't claim him as one of our own, being Long Islanders. Oh, no, no, no. He's a different dimension, this person, that I could never even imagine visiting. Yeah. So...
As you get into these cases, part one and part two, in part one, the intro ends at about the nine-minute mark. So if you just want to skip through it, we've already told you how much work she did, and there's some funny stuff in there, but you don't have to. Whatever. It's not a big deal. And on part two, it's at the eight-minute mark. So if you want to get right to the details of the case, skip to those two timestamps and dig into it. There's a lot to uncover. Yeah. And...
be fascinated by at the end of the day. That's what this is. And as always, if anything else comes out in this case, we will update you accordingly. We'll probably update on Instagram or Patreon. So Instagram at psychopediapod, patreon.com slash psychopediapod.
And by the way, there is a new Slaterpedia out, which is a huge deal for us. That's an extra true crime case that you have not heard us do before, in addition to the Tankopedia, in addition to the other stuff. But first things first, listen to part one and part two, and we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening. Bye.
All right, welcome back to another episode of the Psychopedia podcast. I am your co-host, Hank Sinatra, here with my illustrious, hardworking, diligent, psychotic co-host. Investigator Slater. I'm going to call you Slater from now on, by the way. Okay. Just because in the DMs on Instagram, it's too hard to type out Investigator Slater. You can do INV Slater.
If you wish. But I'm fine with Slater. It's my name. Slater's cool as hell. Yeah, it is. I like it. That's why I kept it. Sorry, Mr. Dave. I remember you told me you guys were going to mix your names together. Yeah. Well, we still talk about giving the kids Slater, giving them my last name. Yeah. But now they're like a little older. It's weird. Yeah. Like we should have done it when they were born. I feel like we missed that window. Yeah.
So speaking of kids, you haven't seen your kids in three days. Yep. Correct? Yep. Investigators later, by the way, bonus episode. Yeah, baby. Very rare that we do a bonus episode, but I believe that just being in a space that we're in and in the geographic location that we're in,
I mean, could not do it. I completely agree. I sacrificed my family, my health. I thought I had a brain bleed yesterday. She literally had to go outside and touch grass. I did. In order to reconnect with her physical self because she was off in the clouds. I was off in the research. I was so enmeshed in this case that
that I honestly thought I was having an aneurysm. Well, let's call out one specific portion of this. You went to Gilgo Beach. Yes, sir. Also, we are live from Gilgo Beach right now recording. I don't know if you guys hear the wind and the surf and the...
the, the ghosts, but, uh, we're at Gilgo Beach right now, but you really went to Gilgo Beach just to what? To like, I wanted to lay eyes on everything that I was researching and I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to really immerse myself in it beyond just words on a computer screen and court transcript. You're so close. Why not? I'm so close to it. And also, you know, I keep reading all of these descriptions and all of these like various locations and
This is a marshy area. This is a grassy area. This is a four-lane highway. And I'm familiar with the area, obviously, because it's essentially in our backyard. But I really wanted to, first of all, pay my respects to the victims, given the fact that we're so close. And we don't really get to do that too much, like physically go and pay our respects. So
So that was one driving force. And also it just felt like real investigative journalism, being able to be on the scene. I thought it was going to be swarming with like news cameras and other people doing this. And I was like, we got to go. There's going to be like traffic on the bridge to get there. Yeah, there was no one there. Literally not even a person. No, come on people. This is a...
crazy time to be alive in terms of this case. In the video you posted, there was one person sitting essentially in the water? Yeah. There's so many rocks between the sand and the water, and that person had...
a chair set up in the middle of the rockiest part of the beach. Very strange. One more thing about the video. Obviously, I saw the video. You posted it on our PsychopediaPod Instagram. A choice you made to wear incredibly small sunglasses. Shut the fuck up.
I'm just wondering why you would wear sunglasses that were so comically small for your face. Can I tell you something? It was the camera angle. Was that a face visor or were those sunglasses? Because it looked like a COVID fucking screen that people used to wear. Fuck off, man. This is me. These are my fashion choices. You don't like the pit bull ears. You didn't like what I wore to the live video recording with Mark Normans last week. What are you talking about? You said I looked like I was going to a rock concert and you were poking fun at me.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess if you want to make things up, you could be mad about things I never said. It's literally in the episode recording. I said you looked like you were going to a Rocksteady reunion. Do you know what Rocksteady is? No. Admittedly, no. Rocksteady is the most famous slash infamous b-boy, b-girl crew in the world. So it was a compliment. Yeah. I stand corrected and I apologize. What is it to be a woman? You.
You can't win, Tank. And hear things wrong and get mad. You were mean to me in my dream. So you're saying you liked my sunglasses. I'm just making a joke about it. They weren't that big in reality. It was the camera angle, honestly. Yeah, sure. They were the height of you. They were like dinner plates on my face. They were the height of you. I could see the soles of the kilt in your glasses in the reflection.
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.
My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be.
So, Gilgo Beach, just one more quick thing I want to say. Have never in my life, I'm 42 years old. Obviously, when I was a kid, this didn't happen, but I think I learned about Gilgo later on. Have never heard the term Gilgo Beach and not thought Dildo Beach. I may or may not have said the same thing. You did? Yes.
Like Gilgo, dude. And also, there's a Lord of the Rings. Bilgo? Goggins? Bilgo Frappuccino. No, what is his name? Bilbo Baggins. Ah, there it is. Bilbo Baggins. My brain sees Gilgo Beach and I see Bilbo Baggins. Gilgo Goggins. Gilgo. I'm a mess. Yeah.
And I struggle with words and pronunciations, as you know. There is one word that is dominant when it comes to the vowels, an ill and an O at the end, and it's dildo. Not Gilgo and not Bilbo. I agree with you. Although they're close, second and third. Or Gilgo is just for us. But anyway, Gilgo Beach Murders, fucking wow. Wow.
They arrested Rex Hoyerman from Massapequa. Massapequa Park, yep. I know you're going to go through all this. We are going to go into it. And also, it's going to be a two-parter. For those of you who, like, it's too much to shove into one. Guys, I almost had an actual aneurysm doing this case. That's how much there is to sift through and to process and for me to try to explain in terms that aren't going to be overwhelmingly confusing. Yeah.
So in order to do that and to give this case the respect it deserves, we got to break it up into two parts. So that's what we're going to do. So you can take a little intermission in between episode one and episode two. I think we're probably going to put them out around the same time. So don't worry about having to wait. But like, just for the sake of Slater's sanity, two parts. And without further a-gilgo...
Man, I'm pretty good. Like I didn't plan to say that. It just came out. Just top notch. This case, I reserve it for real, you know, examples of this word. You said it. It's a doozy. It is a doozy. So without further ado,
Bilbo, let's get into the case. Okay. And before I actually get into the case itself, I have to put this out there. There's literally new information dropping about this case by the hour, which is another reason why I could not shut off because every time I checked, there was new information.
So just keep in mind that even by the time this gets released, which will be very soon after recording, there's going to be more. And you're going to obviously start from the beginning. We're starting from the beginning. Here we go. Ding, ding. Wait, wait, hold on. I'm so sorry. Patreon.com slash psychopedia podcast. The first episode is coming out...
Maybe it's out already. Maybe it's coming out. Like, I don't know, but it's close. And it is us revisiting the feed me, fuck me, kill me case from a separate vantage point. And basically we start off talking about Orthodox Jewish people. And by the end of it, it's me trying to make a case for the existence of God. So if you can just fill in the blanks there, it's a fun time. It is. So patreon.com slash psychopedia pod is going to be filled with stuff like that. We're, you know, just getting started.
populating the page. So before we get into this, go there. And then at the end of the episode, we're going to read some Patreons names. And I mean, there was already people there. There's nothing there. It's like watching a blank screen. So for those of you watching a blank screen, thank you. Engaged. Well, thank you. Yeah. All right. So rewind. Here we go.
In the early hours of May 2nd, 2010, an 86-year-old man named Gus Coletti was in the midst of shaving in the bathroom of his wood-framed house located in a quiet gated community off Suffolk County's Ocean Parkway in Oak Beach, Long Island. His plan for the day was to drive upstate to attend a car show with his wife, Laura, so he was up and going before the sun even came up to prep for his big day.
Suddenly, Gus heard an urgent pounding on his front door, prompting him to turn off the sink, put down his razor, and investigate the source of this unexpected disruption. Yeah. Upon opening the door, Gus came face-to-face with a young brunette woman in visible distress. She was screaming for help while tightly gripping a cell phone in her hand. Just to geographically set the table here for people, Ocean Parkway is like a road you take
Only pretty much to go to the beach. Absolutely. So if you live there, like you're way out of the way. It's remote. You're not expecting any visitors. No. And this was also a gated community as well on top of that. Yeah. So reacting quickly to this girl who's at his door screaming, Gus assured the woman that he would go call the police. But surprisingly, this just prompted the frantic woman to immediately flee from his house, tripping on the porch steps in her haste to get away. Yeah. Gus.
Gus watched as the woman continued to run down the street while banging on all of his neighbors' doors as she passed by their houses, only stopping once for a brief moment to look at the approaching headlights of a black Ford Explorer. As the black Ford Explorer drew closer to the woman, she sprinted across the street and disappeared further into the darkness along a further secluded road inside the community called Anchor Way.
Gus, as well as one of the neighbors who lived on Anchor Way, both called the local police. But by the time they arrived to investigate this truly bizarre scenario, both the terrified woman and the black Ford Explorer had vanished.
The frantic, screaming woman running through Oak Beach was 24-year-old Shannon Gilbert. And while Shannon's experience certainly serves as a focal point of this case, its significance extends far beyond her individual story. And this is in 2010, right? Correct. That's kind of after it started, correct? Yes.
Yes. Okay. But this is when it landed on the radar of law enforcement. Otherwise, it was just bodies strewn without... Yeah. Undiscovered. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's right. Okay. So I know very little about this case, but I'm from Long Island. I know a little bit. Right. Like, I'm gonna...
I'm about to learn with y'all. But honestly, good for you because you realize that by starting in 2010, we haven't started from the very, very beginning, but we can't because the very beginning was unknown until this happened. So this was the catalyst for the, whatever the search. Yes, exactly right.
Authorities delved further into the investigation into the source of Shannon's terror and her subsequent disappearance that night. And when they did, they made a series of other gruesome discoveries. Yeah. And that's what you have heard. What they discovered were the decomposed remains of four women bound by camouflage burlap around their heads, midsections, and legs. And they were discarded along Ocean Parkway between Gilgo Beach and Cedar Beach on Long Island. Okay.
Again, just to illustrate how remote it is, you could like dump a body there and have it not be found for... A decade. Yeah. Of note was the fact that none of the remains belonged to Shannon Gilbert. This shocking finding then led to many other horrifying discoveries, which officially set in motion a search that has spanned over a decade for a serial killer in Suffolk County on Long Island, New York, which is home sweet home to Tank and I. Mm-hmm.
So this case reminds me of a domino effect. So think of Shannon, or at least this is how I process it, as the first domino to fall, right? Then that led to the chilling discoveries of four sets of remains. Wait, Shannon Gilbert just disappeared? Yes. During that whole knocking on the door thing? That's right. At this point in the case, she just disappeared.
So she knocks on the door, she runs, they see the Ford Explorer, cops come, they both disappear. And then they're like, hey, we should look around here. Basically. Okay. Yep. And there's definitely a lot of heat that the Suffolk County Police Department received for not reacting fast enough when she disappeared originally, which we will get into. But for the purpose of where we are right now in this case, which is the very, very beginning. Yeah. When they went to look for Shannon Gilbert.
they found four sets of remains belonging to other women. Wow. They were not expecting that. At all. Obviously. Right. So. This is the best podcast we've ever done, by the way, this episode. Ever. Yeah. Ever. I'm already enthralled. I love it.
So I was saying it's like a domino effect. So Shannon, for me, is like the first domino. She fell. It alerted authorities to the four sets of remains belonging to other women. And then upon discovering those remains, they found even more. Yeah. So it's like this domino effect, right? Today, we are discussing, if it wasn't obvious...
the infamous case of the Long Island serial killer, also referred to as the Gilgo Beach murders, which took place in our backyard and has recently hit the headlines once again in a massive way, but we're not getting to that yet. Okay, you gotta wait.
Let me just say, I'm putting this disclaimer out and Tank, I told you to take 35 shots of espresso and an ADHD pill right before recording. I wasn't kidding. But I want to alert our listeners that I have to lay the foundation for this case. And in doing that, there's going to be a lot of facts and a lot of details and a lot of dates and a lot of moving parts.
So it gets crazy, but I need everyone to stick with me. And I want respect where respect is due for the fact that you're just listening to it, trying to keep up with it. As a listener, me too, you created this document that we're working off of.
In three days, mind you. It was less than three days if you want to be accurate. I do want to be accurate. So we talked about this Friday evening. Yeah, and it's Sunday. And it's Sunday morning. So go to patreon.com slash psychopediapod so Slater can quit her job and we can get her just criming full time. Oh my God, I would just be able to bang these out. You would last ostensibly if you just did true crime all the time. I feel like your brain would explode 18 months into it.
Nah. I'm willing to take that bet though. It wouldn't explode. It would probably grow. I'm saying this is who I am. Yeah. Okay. So there's a lot of twists and turns and I just want to encourage our listeners to stick it out and to stick with me even if it gets a little confusing. And go back if you have to. And go back. And listen, I do that all the time. Me too. With podcast documentaries, I pause, I rewind. It's okay to do that too.
So now we're going to start with the night before Shannon running through the development in Oak Beach screaming. Okay. So this puts us now on May 1st, 2010. Okay. Okay.
Shannon, who was a sex worker, was being chauffeured by her driver, Michael Pack, to a client's home located in the aforementioned gated community. My God, I forgot about that aspect of this. It was not uncommon for Michael Pack to drive Shannon to her John's and to wait for her in his black Ford Explorer as he served as both her driver and her bodyguard.
At 2.20 a.m., which again was May 1st, Shannon and Michael were granted access to enter the gated community as Shannon's John, client, opened the security gate from inside his home. Per usual, Michael waited in the car and Shannon entered the home.
However, the events that transpired after Shannon exited Michael's car on that fateful night were anything but ordinary and wound up leading to a decades-long saga marked by mystery, fear, and immense heartache. And what did you refer to sex workers as in a previous case, like the less disappeared or something like that? That's exactly right, which of course we're going to touch upon here. Absolutely. But yeah, the sex workers are a demographic that are considered less disappeared,
Not by me, obviously, but just by society. Law enforcement receives a lot of criticism for not taking their disappearances as seriously as they would say a 25-year-old middle-class white girl. The Roy family would call them an NRPI, no real person involved. Yep. You're talking about succession? Yeah. Yeah. Just a fucked up way to treat people. Horrible and inexcusable.
Although much still remains unknown about the events of that particular night, so the night on which Shannon arrived at her John's house, there are certain pieces of information that we can confirm as being accurate. Okay. An unemployed financial advisor named Joseph Brewer, who went by Joe, who was Shannon's client from Craigslist, opened his door that night to allow Shannon inside. So, Joey?
Joe is the client. Shannon is the hired sex worker. Yeah. Shortly after he lets her in, both Joe and Shannon leave the house together to run an errand, possibly, perhaps likely, to buy drugs. Oh, God. I was just thinking like, hey, why don't you come over? Give me one hour. We got to go to Target. We got to, like, who hires a sex worker to go do errands? I mean, I feel like he should have maybe have had his supply ready, but here we are.
They were gone for only about 15 minutes before returning back to Joe's house and going inside. Then two and a half hours after that, Joe exited his house again, this time without Shannon, to alert Michael, the driver, to the fact that Shannon was inside his house absolutely freaking out. And he asked Michael to come inside the house and to remove her. Yeah. So at 4.51 a.m.,
Shannon, who was still flipping out, crouched behind his couch, screaming, made a call to the police. And on this police call, she is heard saying, they're going to kill me.
At that point, Joe threw his hands in the air, metaphorically, went upstairs and left Michael to handle the situation and to ensure Shannon's departure from the house. He basically said, fuck this, you deal with it and left. She's bugging out. We did too much coke. However, when Michael attempted to calm Shannon down and to try to convince her to leave with him, she then accused him of trying to kill her and said she wasn't going anywhere with him.
Here's what's really chilling. In a moment of brief clarity in the midst of her otherwise agitated behavior, Shannon suddenly turned to Michael and pleaded, don't leave me. Becoming increasingly perplexed and suspecting that Shannon might have been experiencing a drug-induced reaction, Michael decided to leave her inside the house and just to wait for her in his car. At 5.14 a.m.,
Shannon's call to the police ended, which was 23 minutes after it started, at which point she abruptly fled from Joe's house and began running frantically to other homes in the gated community, including the nearby residence of Gus Coletti, the aforementioned 86-year-old man who was in the middle of shaving. At
At 5.15 in the morning. Right, because he was getting ready to drive upstate to a car show. So he was up and going early. Oh, okay, all right. All right? She pounds on his door. She screams for help. He opens the door, says he's going to call the police, and she takes off into the night and was never seen alive again. If it wasn't clear from my comment, I'm not an early riser. I can't even imagine waking up at 5.15 to shave. But if you're going somewhere, I guess you got to do it. With that said, in defense of...
The cops, being a sex worker aside, just for the sake of argument, someone calls you in a drug-induced psychosis, either you're going to go make sure they're okay, which they're probably not, or you're not going to take the call that seriously. So this is either a crazy coincidence that she had a drug-induced paranoid psychotic episode and then got killed, or there's something else happening. Yeah. But, I mean, just to play devil's advocate,
Should law enforcement be making any type of judgment call? Right. You hear somebody calling for help, you respond. Yeah. Yeah. Even like you said, even if it was a drug-induced paranoid... They need to be taken care of. They need help. Yeah. Now, at the time of her disappearance, Shannon's family didn't even realize that she had gone missing. And they didn't find out for two days.
Pop quiz numero uno. Oh, we're doing pop quizzes with this episode? Did you want to not do our token signature move? I am just very interested in finding out what happened. Okay. But pop quiz me, hot shot. Pop quiz, hot shot. How did Shannon's mother, Mary, learn about the shocking disappearance of her daughter, which happened two days earlier? A, she just happened to see it on the New York One website. Whoa. B, ghostbusters.
Whoa. The craziest option is that a man posing as a psychiatrist called her mom.
That is the correct response. Wow. Now, aren't you glad we did a pop quiz? Yeah. Dr. Charles Peter Hackett, who goes by Peter, called Mary on May 3rd, 2010, again, two days after Shannon's disappearance, to indicate that Shannon had come to see him on the night of her disappearance.
According to Mary, Dr. Hackett claimed to have been running a home for wayward females in the same community where Shannon's client Joe lived and that Shannon had come to see him for help that night. Really? Mary asserts that Dr. Hackett indicated to her that he had to give Shannon a strong sedative to help calm her down that night as she was distraught, although he didn't say what she was distraught about.
When asked why or how he even got Mary's phone number, Dr. Hackett replied by saying that he obtained Mary's phone number from Shannon's driver, Michael, when the community went out looking for her after she disappeared. Yeah. He claims that he was just trying to be supportive by calling Shannon's mother. Yeah. And phone records do confirm that Dr. Hackett was in fact in contact with Shannon the night of her disappearance. Wow.
Now, Dr. Hackett was kind of a big deal in Oak Beach. He was the former head of the Suffolk County Emergency Medical Services when the TWA Flight 800 airplane exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 40 miles away from Oak Beach in East Moriches. Do you remember when that happened?
1996. No. Oh my God. I felt the ground shake. Really? Yup. In my home. I was with my parents. We were watching X-Files. I lit, we all felt the ground shake. What time was it? It was in the evening, 8 31 PM. You know what? I was probably in my room moshing to Pantera, so I wouldn't have felt any shaking in the ground because I was creating it. You weren't watching X-Files with your parents? No.
I was air drumming to VOD in my room trying not to cry. Oh, I was just going to say you're so fucking cool, but maybe not. No, 16 years old? Oh, I became a raging alcoholic. Shortly after. With the mindset of...
the 16-year-old tank. Aw. Yeah. Okay. It's okay. So this guy, Dr. Hackett, was in charge of the Suffolk County Emergency Medical Services around the time that this, or exactly at the time that this flight went down. Yeah. It was just a big deal in eastern Long Island. Yeah. Okay.
I bring up Dr. Hackett's involvement in assisting with the plane crash because some sources allege that he made himself seem far more integral to the rescue effort than he truly was, and that he was really just a glutton for attention and the limelight. Yeah. So according to the author Robert Kolker, who wrote a book about this case called Lost Girls, an Unsolved American Mystery, and there's also a Netflix movie made about the book.
which was made about the case, called Lost Girls. All right. So according to this author, Dr. Hackett aggressively put himself in the center of things whenever anything headlining was going on.
As indicated in the book, there are stories about Dr. Hackett having his own police radio. And anytime there was any type of emergency call within reach of where he lived, he would hop in his car and drive over and insert himself right in the middle of things. Oh, that's annoying. Yeah. And I can confirm that there are people like this that exist because Dave, who is a volunteer firefighter, who is my husband, says that people show up
all the time. When they ask how, the people will tell them that they heard the signal. So they're intercepting. So there's just like regular people going to try and help? They're not even trying to help. They're just inserting themselves. Yeah. Either to watch or in this case, Dr. Hackett allegedly to make himself important and to insert himself in the middle of it. I did the opposite of that recently. What? You ran the other way?
No, I was going into Rite Aid, I think, and I saw an old woman fell.
And her face was like all bloody. I felt so sad for her. Oh my God. But there was like four people around her. Okay. And I was like, what am I going to add to this? The reason I bring it up is because I wanted to go say, hey, everybody. I got this. I got it. I'll take care of her. I'll be the hero here. But I was like, she's okay. And obviously my inclination was to help, but the discipline of, you know, knowing that was not necessary was like, okay. But that takes a level of like...
You know what I mean? Which I'm commending you because you saw that she was being taken care of and you're like, I'm just going to add fuel to the fire here. I'm going to add to the hoopla. It's not going to be helpful. I'm going to do nothing. Exactly. But you did nothing because everything was already being done. Yes.
So the point here is that Dr. Hackett may not have actually been involved at all in Shannon's disappearance. Oh. Okay. But because he has this way about him of wanting to be in the middle of everything, he takes it upon himself to call Mary Gilbert, Shannon's mother, and to suggest like he was more involved than he really was, like a little bit of a blowhard type. Yeah. So this is just information for you to keep in your mind. Yeah.
Mary, however... Is that all information for me to keep in my mind? I'm sorry. I just, I don't need that right now. I'm trying to tell a story here. Mary remained convinced that Dr. Hackett was one of the people Shannon had been referring to in that 911 call she made when she said, they're trying to kill me. Yeah, so he inserted himself and implicated himself.
Speaking of the 911 calls, let's circle back to them. Okay. On the night of Shannon's disappearance, there were three 911 calls made. One made by Shannon herself. One made by a woman who lived on Anchor Way. And one, of course, made by Gus, the neighbor. But first, pop quiz. You cool with this? But first, let me take a selfie. Yes. Okay. You remember that song? Yeah, I do. I thought it was about you.
How long did it take the police to arrive at Oak Beach following Gus's call? Okay. A, 11 minutes. B, 32 minutes. C, 45 minutes. 11 minutes? No.
32 minutes? Nope. Well, then by my deductive reasoning, I have to assume that it's 45 minutes. Well done. Yeah. At 6.10 a.m. the next morning, so after Shannon had already gone missing, which was a full 45 minutes after Gus called the police. And Gus was the last person to call the police. They finally arrived, yes. Yeah.
They did not even conduct a full search of the neighborhood because all the police really had in terms of witness statements was a woman running down the street knocking on doors, basically. And when they heard from Gus that the woman took off after he said that he was calling the police, they just ended up chalking up the whole incident as a domestic disturbance that resolved itself. Yeah. And they left. Yeah. And is this Suffolk County Police or Oak Beach? It's Suffolk County. Okay. So you may be wondering, dear listeners...
What about the call that Shannon made in which she said, they're trying to kill me? Where was the police presence following that call? Yeah. And I know you just, you touched upon that, right? Well, no one was ever dispatched to Oak Beach in response to Shannon's call. Yeah. And by the way, that is coming from a position of retrospect where
Where like, if you're a cop, I guess maybe you're like, oh, we showed up here and this chick's done a bunch of cocaine with one of her Johns. Like, you know, I can't believe we came out here for this. But like, if you receive a call where someone is screaming frantically, they're trying to kill me. I mean, how do you not drop everything and run out there and just make sure like that's your whole raison d'etre.
Your whole reason for being. That was cool. Whatever you just said. That's French. Okay. Oui, oui. Yeah, oui, oui. Yeah, I mean, that makes zero sense to me. But I'm sure there's going to be a lot of that. Well, even worse is the fact that no one in law enforcement even made the connection that the call they received from a girl crying for help, claiming that people were trying to kill her, was the same girl that Gus and the other neighbor called the police about.
How? No one made the connection.
Because when dispatch asked Shannon on the phone where she was calling from, she mistakenly said Jones Beach rather than Oak Beach. Shannon was really from Jersey City in New Jersey, and she probably just got confused about her location. I would get confused. I still get confused. I get confused driving to your house when there's a fucking road blocked off for whatever reason. I would not know, gun to my head, if you drove me down there, if I was at Tobey, Gilgo, Jones...
Or... Capture East State Park. I would have no idea. Yeah. But because of that error, supposedly, police were never sent out to investigate. But the cops didn't go, wow, that's crazy. We have a girl who's being threatened to be killed in Jones Beach and Oak Beach. No. Unbelievable. Like they didn't say, wow, that's probably the same person. And listen, I love our cops. I love our first responders. But in terms of this...
in the case, this is not a great look for them. Yeah. In fact, the entire summer elapsed without a concerted extensive search effort to find Shannon. So the entire summer went by after she went missing. Did she, she went missing that night? Yes.
Fucking you got some explaining to do. Okay, here we go. Yeah. Well, as mentioned, we touched upon this. Sex workers are frequently marginalized and dehumanized given their line of work, which often leads authorities to disregard their safety. Yeah. There's unfair prejudices and stereotypes surrounding sex workers, and that can unjustly diminish their value and
Yeah. Yeah.
truly inexcusable. But finally, on December 11th, 2010, so think of the time from May to December, the Suffolk County Police Department's Missing Persons Bureau finally deployed Officer John Malia to search for Shannon with his trained cadaver dog, a German Shepherd named Blue. Now, I just want to mention one thing. I know that the book and the Netflix documentary,
suggests that Officer John Malia happened to be driving with his dog and his dog had a poop. So he let the dog out and then the dog made the discovery that we're going to go on to discuss. But in my research, he was deployed by the police department to go look.
I just like to point things out when I'm not 100% sure or when there's conflicting sources. So you found that, but you're saying the Netflix documentary got it wrong. Right. But there's also, obviously, the Netflix documentary has been deconstructed and obviously people poke holes in the documentary because it's Hollywood. So they're going to take some creative liberties. I would go by the sources that I used in researching this case.
But I'm just putting it out there because it's out there. All right. So the dog named Blue, who's a cadaver dog, and Officer John Malia are out. And amidst thick brush and a light blanket of snow along the side of the four-lane ocean parkway on Gilgo Beach, Blue picked up a scent that led him to a burlap bag in the marsh. Inside the bag, Officer Malia discovered decomposing skeletal remains.
Incredibly, they did not belong to Shannon Gilbert. Rather, they belonged to 24-year-old Melissa Barthelome. Melissa was also a sex worker who lived in the Bronx, New York, and went missing in July of 2009.
While searching for additional evidence, law enforcement then went on to discover three more sets of skeletal remains in close proximity to Melissa's remains, all wrapped in burlap and presenting similarly. And I described this earlier. They had burlap wrapped around their heads, their midriffs, and their legs. Those burlap
Those remains were later identified as belonging to 25-year-old Maureen Brainard Barnes, 22-year-old Megan Waterman, and 27-year-old Amber Lynn Costello, all located roughly within 500 feet from each other. Wow.
So five bodies so far. Four. Four bodies. They have not found Shannon yet at this point. Yeah. And just like Melissa, as well as Shannon, these women were all sex workers who used Craigslist to advertise their escort services. And they were all wrapped up the same way, which is an M.O.? Yes, sir. Very good. I wasn't sure if it was a signature or an M.O. Very good. Signature is when you leave the faucets running, right? Yes. When you're the wet bandits from Home Alone. Right.
So after the discovery of the four sets of remains belonging to Melissa, Megan, Maureen, and Amber, they had henceforth become known as the Gilgo Four.
But before we continue with the details of the case, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge, remember, and honor the victims as individuals because they are truly only ever referred to as the Gilgo Four or as murdered prostitutes. But these are not throwaway people who are in any way less worthy of being remembered, honored, and mourned. So let's just take a moment to do that.
Maureen Brainard Barnes was 25 years old and lived in Norwich, Connecticut. She's described by her sister as being free-spirited and artistic. Maureen spent the work week in Manhattan before taking the Amtrak train back to her home in Connecticut on the weekends to be with her 11-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.
A friend reported Maureen missing to the Norwich Police Department before the investigation was taken over by law enforcement in New York. Maureen is believed to have been the first victim in the Gilgo Four.
Melissa Bartholomew was 24 years old and lived in the Bronx, New York. She was 4'10 tall and had tattoos of the word blaze and focus on her back. Melissa had a mother and a sister who loved her dearly and who reported her missing. Although she was the first victim discovered, Melissa is believed to have been the second victim in the Gilgo Four. Megan Waterman was 22 years old and lived in Scarborough, Maine.
Megan had a three-year-old daughter and family who loved her and reported her missing. Megan is believed to have been the third victim in the Gilgo Four. Amber Lynn Costello was 27 years old and lived in West Babylon, Long Island. She was originally from Clearwater, Florida, and struggled with a heroin addiction. Amber had the word chaos tattooed on her neck, as well as the name Margaret on her leg.
Amber is believed to have been the fourth victim in the Gilgal Four. Getting back to the case. And again, Shannon, at this point, was not yet found. Yeah. But her disappearance launched all of this. Yeah. So she's a pivotal character. Sure. In this.
We're now on January 25th, 2011. Following all of these devastating discoveries, the Suffolk County Police officially announced that they were looking for a serial killer. So between May, the phone call, December, the discovery, and January, this is all taking place. Yes, exactly right.
Police began their investigation by looking for... Hold on, hold on. But the disappearances of the sex workers go back to when? 2008 or 2000? Exactly. So we're going to get into basically when the remains were found in 2011. Yes. But the girls had gone missing way before that. When was the earliest disappearance? 2008? It's in my notes here and we will get to it. But there's so many dates, I don't want to get it wrong. Okay. Okay.
So police began their investigation by looking for a link between the Gilgo Four, perhaps a mutual client that they may have all been hired by, obviously at separate times. So the police decide that they're going to troll through all of the girls' phone records as well as the Craigslist ads that they posted.
Craigslist employed encryption to conceal real email addresses and clients were able to also hide their IP addresses as well, rendering it impossible to trace the geographic origin of online correspondences between clients and escorts.
Has anyone checked on Craig during this to see how he's handling it? I'm serious. What? Because he built that website to like help people sell furniture and have like garage sales and now... Yeah, but you know damn well there's so much more that went down on Craig's list. Oh, yeah. I'm just wondering, Craig, this is not your fault. Honestly, in all of my hours of research, I never thought about Craig once. Well, that's why I'm here. Okay. Okay.
Still, police were confident that the girls had all gone to meet the same client, albeit at separate times, and that this was someone they had each known and trusted to some degree. Must have. Especially since there hadn't been any of their purses or cell phones or anything found around them.
However, I mean, it's completely possible that the killer could have just removed those items from the girls. Like, just because their bodies were found without their personal affects doesn't mean that they didn't have their personal affects with them when they went to meet the presumed killer. Oh, for sure. Right? Yeah. So law enforcement also discovered a significant clue that helped them link back to a potential suspect. Pop quiz.
Okay. What was this clue? Oh, boy. A, a partial fingerprint left on the burlap sack wrapped around Maureen. Okay. B, phone records indicating that someone had been using Melissa's cell phone after she went missing. Mm-hmm. C, CCTV footage on Ocean Parkway showing the same car crossing the bridge on the night of each girl's respective disappearance. Ooh.
Phone records. Yes. Yes. Very good, you son of a bitch. Yeah. You son of a Bilbo. It's not Bilbo. It's Gilbo. You're going to screw me up. No, Bilbo Baggins. Oh, okay. Bilbo Beach. Melissa's cell phone was being used by a man, presumably the killer, who called Melissa's little sister Amanda after Melissa went missing multiple times using her phone to taunt Amanda that
asking her really vulgar questions like, are you a whore like your sister? Oh, fuck that. This man would always keep his calls under 90 seconds, always between the hour of 5.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m., and would always call from a heavily populated area so that when police would try to trace the cell phone pings,
There would be loads of people teaming in that same area. So the calls would come from areas like Times Square, Penn Station, Madison Square Garden. All of the calls fit that pattern to a T. Yeah. Except for the last one made. During that call, the man said to Amanda, I finally killed your sister and I'm watching her body rot. Wow.
And when police traced the call, they placed it as coming from Massapequa Park on Long Island, which is located 15 miles away from Gilgo Beach. Yeah. Remember this and keep it on ice for part two. Okay.
Fucking media idiots.
As a result, the suspect became aware that the police were honing in on him and he never called back again. Wow. So the police had their man, allegedly, and then they lost him.
The investigation stalled until spring when on March 29th, 2011, the police found another skull, hands, and a forearm on Ocean Parkway. March 2011? Yes. Okay, so January thing, February, media leaks, March, find another one. Right.
These remains were found about three quarters of a mile away from where the Gilgo 4 had been found. But the remains did not fit the same MO as the others.
This body had clearly been dismembered while the Gilgo Four had been left intact. These remains were not wrapped in burlap and some parts were missing entirely from the scene. But the most chilling aspect of this discovery was the fact that these remains matched a torso that was discovered in 2003 in Manorville, which is a totally different location on Long Island. Very far. The remains were identified as belonging to Jessica Taylor,
who was a sex worker that used Craigslist to conduct her business. Sure. Just a few weeks after that discovery, so on April 4th, 2011, three more body parts were discovered. What fourth? October 4th? April. April 4th, okay. A skull, hands, and a foot. So these bodies are just popping up left and right. Yeah. At this point. Yep. Three more? Yep.
Three more body parts. Oh, body parts. Right. And guess what? What? The remains belonging to that victim also had a torso that was separately discovered in Manorville.
similar to Jessica Taylor. Wow. Now, for a while, those remains could not be identified. And those parts belonging to that victim was only ever referred to as the Manorville Jane Doe. But then in 2020, with advancements in DNA technology, law enforcement was able to establish a genealogy profile that was provided to the Suffolk County homicide detectives who, together with federal agents...
knew to focus their efforts in the areas of New Jersey where they believed Manorville Jane Doe to have had connections. So basically, law enforcement conducted interviews with potential relatives while collecting their DNA samples. And this is in 2020. Yes. So let's just go back for a second to say, yeah, you guys blew it.
From 5 a.m. to, you know, May 2nd to December. But they fucking... Picked it up. Oh, yeah. In a very big way. Well, they opened up a new task force. They had a new police commissioner. Wow, they did a task force for this? Oh, yeah. We're going to get into that. Okay. So just with respect to this Manorville Jane Doe and the new technologies that were developed in 2020 with respect to DNA analysis...
The short of the long is they were able to identify the Manorville Jane Doe as being 24-year-old mother and sex worker Valerie Mack, who was from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. Okay.
So in addition to Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack, whose torsos were both found in Manorville, police then discovered many other additional sets of remains belonging to the following unfortunate souls. An unidentified female toddler between the ages of one and three.
Wow. Yeah.
You see how tricky this case is? And an unidentified woman with a distinctive tattoo of a peach on her left breast who was later to have been discovered as being the mother of the unidentified toddler found in Suffolk County. So there's body parts showing up left, right, and center with matching body parts that were found up in other locations years earlier. So essentially he got lazy. He or they. Yeah.
I am shot. Percentage-wise, how far into the case would you say we are? 5%? I'm just kidding. No, no, no, no, no, no. You're doing great. I wish you guys could see Investigator Slater's face right now. Her eyes are like, she's engaged fully. I am juiced. You're like a fighter pilot right now. I really feel like one.
That's what those enormous sunglasses were about in the video. Oh, yeah. Protecting us. So now we're up to 10 discovered victims that I'd like to quickly summarize. Yeah. The Gilgo Four, Melissa, Maureen, Megan, and Amber, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack, whose torsos were found in Manorville,
The baby girl, the baby girl's mother, who was not found with the baby girl, by the way. Yeah. The unidentified female and the unidentified Asian male. No Shannon Gilbert still. Correct. Very good. That was my next line. I was going to say of note. Yeah. Still undiscovered is Shannon Gilbert. Yeah.
So I want to be sure that everyone understands the various locations where the victims were found. And I'm going to share a map when this case comes out on our socials to help out with this. Okay. Because Long Island is exactly that. It's an island and it's long. Right? Real creative name, by the way. I mean, they could have done better. Like if I came up with that, I'd be fired from podcasting. We're going to call this episode... Long Island. Episode of crime. So...
This episode's called Bad Stuff. Shit happens. Yeah. So imagine you're looking at land from the vantage point of being in the Atlantic Ocean. All right? Okay. In front of you is a strip of land containing three separate beaches.
To the left is Jones Beach. The middle is Gilgo Beach. And the right is Oak Beach. Well, you're talking about looking at Long Island from the south. Yes. I was picturing east. So south of Long Island to the left is Jones Beach. Then Gilgo. Gilgo. Then Oak Beach. Right. Okay. And you and I are very familiar with Jones Beach. How many concerts have you gone to? And all the fuck way out is Matterville. Yes. Pretty far. Very far. Yeah. Yeah.
For the purpose of this case, it's far. Yeah. On the left, which is Jones Beach, the partial remains of the woman with the peach tattoo was discovered. Keep in mind, this is something I didn't mention, her torso was found in a plastic bin at Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, Long Island. Wow. In the middle of the island, Gilgo Beach, is where the remains of the Gilgo 4 were discovered. Wow.
A little bit to the right of the Gilgo Four was the Asian man. To the right of him was Jessica Taylor. Even further to the right of Jessica was Valerie Mack, as well as the baby girl.
Valerie and the baby girl were so far to the right that they were almost on Oak Beach. Again, we will share a map on Instagram. But still in Gilgo. Still in Gilgo. But barely. Yeah. There are those who believe that more than one killer is responsible for all of these killings and that there's one killer for the Gilgo Four and a different killer for all the others. The Gilgo Four were organized, intact, clean,
Yeah.
Following the discovery of all the remains, forensic profilers, criminologists, and serial killer experts developed a profile for the Long Island serial killer in April of 2011. They were like, this has to be a cop. Well, they had that line of questioning, which we're going to get into, or line of thought. Here's the profile that they developed.
The killer was most likely a white male in his mid-20s to mid-40s who was married or had a girlfriend and would have most likely killed his victims during specific times in which his wife and or girlfriend and or children would not have been present, i.e. a summer break. Very shocked that this was a white male.
It always is somehow. I know, I'm joking. I'm kidding. This man is well-educated, well-spoken, financially secure, has a job, and owns an expensive car or truck. He may have sought treatment at a hospital for poison ivy infection given the location of where the bodies were discovered. As part of his job or interests, he has access to or a stockpile of burlap sacks. This man lives or used to live on or near Ocean Parkway on the south shore of Long Island.
He will seem like your average Joe. Because he knows it so well. Exactly. He will be persuasive and rational enough to convince these women to meet him on his terms. He has demonstrated social skills and may even be charming. He's also a sexual sadist.
So this is the profile, okay, back in 2011. Wow. Pop quiz. Knowing what we know about the various crime scenes, what category of killer does the Long Island serial killer fall into? I'm going to bomb this one, but go ahead. A, disorganized killer. B, organized killer. C, mixed. Disorganized killer. It's a trick question. The first of its kind on Psychopedia. Why would you do that?
We don't know yet if there's one killer or multiple. So you can't put a square peg in a circle hole.
Like you can't label this guy just yet. Yeah. Right? The Gilgo Four were clearly the work of an organized killer while the rest weren't. Well, I thought it was disorganized because some were organized, some were not, and you'd have to give him the lowest common denominator. What about mixed though? I said mixed as an option. I thought you were making it up. Oh, okay. I mean, I usually do. I was lost. I knew that that one was going to suck for me. It did. It was a trick question, so I kind of played with you a little bit on that one. PQ.
If we're talking about the Gilgo Four, we have us an organized killer. Historically, organized killers are likely to possess above average to average intelligence, attractiveness, are married or living with a domestic partner. They're employed. They're well-educated, skilled, orderly, cunning, and controlled.
They may be charming, often using their communication skills to seduce and deceive their victims. Additionally, organized killers plan and premeditate their crimes, leaving little evidence at the scene. They may display psychopathic tendencies, but still understand right from wrong and are therefore not considered insane. They typically show no remorse. Capturing organized killers is...
And speaking of the killer or suspect being someone who potentially had knowledge of police methods, there was an individual who many thought could very likely have been the Long Island serial killer. And I also want to say one quick thing because I'm putting it out there as many people would.
would agree with me that there could be more than one killer. But around this time, it was largely considered to just be one killer known as the Long Island serial killer. Yeah. In case that's confusing for anyone. I remember them calling him the Craigslist killer too. Yeah. I think that didn't stick, but yeah. Yeah. So this person that many people felt could have been connected or could have been the killer was none other than former Suffolk County Police Commissioner James Burke. Yeah.
Burke served as police commissioner from 2011 until his resignation in 2015 following an incident where he assaulted a man who stole a blue duffel bag from his official police vehicle. And inside the bag...
Was a stash of violent porn, handcuffs, a whistle, and a dildo. Yeah, Loeb. Do you have the name of the person? Yeah, Christopher Loeb. Christopher Loeb, yeah. Who I knew, by the way. Did you? I met him a couple of times. He's from the area and a friend of mine was a friend of his. And when I met him, he was clean at the time and he was fine. And then I remember I probably met him in like...
2009 maybe. Wow. He was doing great, doing work, working with this person that I knew and then all of a sudden I remember hearing that he stole something from a cop's car and like almost got fucking killed at the station. Yep. And I was like,
Chris? That's him. The guy with the fucking hammer? Like the worker guy? What was he doing? Yeah. And he was like, oh, he was a bad drug addict. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? He was in a bad spot. When you met him, he was okay. But then I also trained with a guy who was involved in the whole police thing on the police side, which was hard to manage because this guy was such a sweetheart. And when I read the book,
King Jimmy or whatever it's called, Jimmy the King, they described this guy that I knew, that I trained with, as like this overbearing, muscular, intimidating person. I was like, this book is bullshit. Yeah. This book is like sensationalizing. That's what I was saying about the Netflix documentary. Yeah. It's on a documentary. I'm sorry. The Netflix movie. The guy that I know, I'm not saying he couldn't have been involved in it, but he was...
A sweetheart guy. And I just remember every time it would come up, he would be like, yeah, I'm fucking, I got involved in this case and it's like a fucking nightmare. I might go to jail. Oh, wow. Holy crap, man. Yeah. But also keep in mind that sometimes people show you one side. For sure. And Burke, are you going to talk about the thing that happened in Smithtown or no? With the kid? Yeah. Tell me, maybe, I don't know. You can, you can go for it.
So I remember being in Catholic school, elementary school. It was a school in Comac, Smithtown area. And I remember hearing this story about a kid who got killed in the woods by having, being beaten and then having rocks shoved in his throat. And I just remember being like devastated learning this in like third or fourth grade. Yeah. So James Burke was also involved in that murder.
When he was younger. So something happened where a kid saw someone steal a motorcycle and then because he witnessed it, they went and killed this kid. Oh my God. And James Burke was involved in that also. So this whole Jimmy the King book is about him just being a piece of shit. Jimmy the King being James Burke. James Burke, yeah. And King is like a joke. It's like Jimmy the asshole. Right, sure.
He, yeah, he was very, very corrupt to say the least. Yeah. So just going back to your friend, Christopher Loeb. Yeah. So I know he's not really your friend. I get it. Yeah. Your best friend. The guy you just had dinner with.
Who you were with when he broke into the vehicle. So the porno that was in Jimmy Burke's bag that Christopher stole from his cop car. Yeah. Apparently showed a masked man torturing a sex worker. Yeah. Prior to becoming Suffolk County police chief, Burke was also caught having sex in his patrol car while in uniform with a sex worker who was using crack cocaine.
And there's a whole thing with Thomas Spoda, who was a politician on Long Island, and they kind of like came up and helped each other be corrupt. Part of the drama, for lack of a better word, about this case is that the timing of when this case was heating up is also a time in which there was a lot of corruption in the police force. This case is so good. Yeah.
So additionally, James Burke became Suffolk County Police Chief shortly after the remains of the victims were discovered on Gilgo Beach. Yeah. There's this podcast called Unraveled, which is about this case, the Gilgo Beach murders. According to that podcast, just weeks after entering office...
James Burke shut the FBI out of the investigation into the Gilgo Beach serial killer. Yeah. He was never officially considered a suspect in the case, though. But his actions raised suspicions as he was definitely coming across as very shady for keeping the FBI out and for having a history with sex workers and for having this
violence against Christopher Loeb and all this other stuff that you just mentioned that he was connected to. And let me tell you a quick story, pause that, about a friend of mine who also was a casualty of this guy, James Burke. Not a casualty, like an indirect. His life was forever changed in a negative way. A friend of mine, won't mention his name. He was on his way home from work. I worked with him at a restaurant. He was the DJ. He was on his way home from work and he hit somebody on
On Vets Highway, right outside of this club, which used to be called Wall Street, and it was a bunch of different fucking places. Yeah, I know it. Around the time, there was a ton of construction going on on the road. So you know those big orange cones that are like almost like barriers? Mm-hmm. He thought he hit one of those. Turns out, a kid, young 20-ish, I don't know the exact age, ran out onto Vets Highway at like 4 o'clock in the morning wearing all black.
And he hit him and he didn't realize it. So he went home, got home, saw blood on his car, was like, what the fuck happened? Went back to the scene and was charged with like leaving the scene of a hit and run where there was a casualty. But because there was so much corruption going on with the cops at that time, my friend's father-in-law was an ex DA in Suffolk County.
So they were like, fuck this kid. We're not showing him any leniency, even though a normal person probably would have been acquitted or like at least found guilty of a lesser charge. Was he drunk, by the way? No, there was, I mean, he was coming home from work. It was four o'clock in the morning. So there was assumptions, but there was never any proof. And I don't know him to be a drinker anyway. So anyway, he gets the book thrown at him hard. And listen, the family of the kid who was murdered,
made it so, and I actually kind of understand, like, yeah, my son was murdered. Not murdered, my son was killed. Sure. So we want justice and we want whatever. But the reason he got so much time is because of his association, familial association with a cop. Mm-hmm. Then when he got to jail...
They found out that his father-in-law was a DA and everybody in the jail was like, he was basically like a cop in the jail. Right. Even though he wasn't. It was just the worst case scenario. And he purports, and I kind of tend to believe the fact that that happened at that time because of all the shit that was going on with Burke. Wow. Yeah.
Wow. So they were going very hard on anybody related to the police. Police corruption infiltrates everywhere. It's like a drop of ink in a glass of water. And he did hit the person. Obviously, there should have been some consequences, but he got sentenced to like seven years, which is a lot for an accident. Yeah. It was a complete and total accident. Right, right. That's really sad all around. Yeah.
So the police corruption, going back to this case, delayed the investigation in very significant ways. Yeah. Now, regarding additional suspects in this case, so James Burke, you know, a lot of people felt that he should have been viewed as an actual suspect, right? Yeah.
I got a pop quizzy for you. Okay. Fizzy quizzy. Which of the following people actually had two meetings with the FBI and Homeland Security regarding a potential new suspect in the Gilgo Beach murders? Yeah. When I say new, this was still, I don't mean this just happened. I just, around the time of this actual case. Who met with the FBI and Homeland Security twice? Right?
regarding a potential suspect. Please don't say Jay-Z. A, former New York Mets player, Darryl Strawberry. Whoa, I was kind of joking. B, former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani. C, my dad, Mr. Slater. Oh, your dad. Yes, what?
Yeah.
So I talked to them a little bit about the case, which of course everybody on Long Island knows about, especially recently. And my dad just drops in casual conversation that he met with the FBI and Homeland Security twice because one of his clients claimed to have known who the Long Island serial killer was. At the time, his client indicated that the killer was a boat washer.
So basically Long Island, lots of beaches, lots of boat shows. Yeah. He purports that if you follow these boat shows that happen, you can see that sex workers would turn up dead or missing in the area every time there was a boat show. Wow.
Nothing panned out. Yeah. But my dad. Yeah. It's cool. Shout out to Mr. Slater. Cool. And lest we forget about Shannon Gilbert, who is the only victim so far discussed in this case who had not yet been found at this point in the investigation. And Shannon is the reason why this whole investigation even started. But finally, in December of 2011, which was one year later,
police finally decided to drain the marsh in Oak Beach that bordered Dr. Hackett's house and Anchor Way, which is where she was seen running the night of her disappearance. Yeah. On December 13th, which was the same day that many of the other victims' families decided to hold an anniversary vigil.
What happened? Well, we actually had time for you to explain to me how the fuck they drain a marsh, but we're not even going to go there. I just have to let it go. You have to. Yeah. I can explain it off air because I don't know that anybody else would find that interesting, but we can discuss. Okay. Pop quiz. Do you need me to repeat the question? No. Okay. A, Shannon's driver, Michael Pack, showed up to watch the marsh being drained and was immediately apprehended.
Whoa. B?
Yes. Shannon's remains were in fact discovered in the marsh. On the day they were going to have the anniversary vigil. For the victims that had been found along Gilgo Beach, yes. Yeah. Well, they can do it on the same day next year. They can. Oh, God. Shannon was found on Oak Beach, closest to the toddler girl, but farthest away from all the other victims. She was found on Oak Beach, closest to the toddler girl,
She was discovered lying face up in the marsh and they also discovered her belongings, which included her jeans that were unripped and evidence to have been self-removed. Oh, they were off? They were off. Okay. It was around this time that it was discovered that Shannon struggled with bipolar disorder and
And the theory put forth by law enforcement was that her mental health struggles combined with drug use on the night of her disappearance caused her to experience a fatal episode during which she ran into the marsh and died. Drowned. The cause of death couldn't exactly be determined, but they think it was likely caused by drowning in the six to eight inches of water. But this is debatable because she was found face up. Essentially, though, the official cause of death that the law enforcement went with was
was that she died due to exposure to the elements. Okay. However, it is crucial to highlight that Mary Gilbert had an independent autopsy conducted of her daughter. And during that autopsy, the medical examiner determined that Shannon's remains displayed injuries consistent with homicidal strangulation.
And that's how the Gilgo Four were determined to have been killed. Yeah. Her hyoid bone, which is a little U-shaped bone in the neck, was missing. Now, that could have been a result of animal activity, given how long she was in the marsh decomposing. Yeah. Or it could have been indicative of strangulation, meaning that it was broken, it detached, and then disappeared. Yeah. Also...
there were apparently no drugs found in Shannon's system, although it's debatable as to whether or not the drugs would still be detected in a tox report after all this time. However, following the findings of the independent autopsy, while holding a photo of her daughter Shannon, Mary Gilbert addressed reporters and said the following thing. "'This is my daughter Shannon. "'She was not perfect. "'No one is perfect, but she was loved.'"
Despite the strong disagreement from Shannon's family, it was still ultimately concluded officially that her death was unrelated to any of the Gilgo Beach murders. It was considered a tragic and inexplicable event that coincidentally occurred around the same time and in close proximity to the other killings. However, Shannon's family never stopped believing that Dr. Hackett strangled her and disposed of her body in the marsh.
They even filed a wrongful death suit against him. Speaking of Shannon's family, specifically her mother, Mary, pop quiz. Which of the following statements is true regarding Mary Gilbert?
A, she tracked down Dr. Hackett, who by that point had moved to Florida, and started a public smear campaign to sink his business. Remember, he was a psychiatrist. Yeah. B, she ended up marrying Geraldine Hart, the first female police commissioner appointed in 2018 in Suffolk County. C, she was killed by her daughter, Sarah Gilbert, in 2016. Oh, my God.
Was she killed by her daughter? Yes. I think I remember that. This piece is just insane. There are so many twists and turns. Not that this is necessarily relevant. Where was she killed? Where? Well, she lived upstate. Okay. So she was stabbed to death by her 27-year-old Sarah, who was suffering from a psychotic episode after going off for schizophrenia medication. I think I barely remember that. Yeah. So now...
We have the 10 victims, four of whom are the Gilgo Four, plus Shannon Gilbert. Yeah. But Shannon Gilbert, for better or for worse, whether we agree or not, is now separate. Right. From the investigation. And guys, something massive happened two days ago, like a fresh break in the case that us Long Islanders have been frothing at the mouth over. Yeah.
But you're going to have to listen to the next episode to hear about it because we have to break this up. It's too much. It's too much. You just gave us a lot of information. You got to chew on it for a little bit. Sit with it.
digest it, maybe listen again. I mean, I'm fully on board. Yeah. I feel like I could recite this case back to you. I would love you to do that. I am 100% joking. There's a 0% chance of that happening. But before we close out and go to the next, you know, next episode, I just want to give a little love to the people who are on Patreon.
Again, at this point, for no reason, because there's nothing there. So, Zachary Cravat. What up, cuz? I think that's your boy. Jessica for Dinkum, Kadriai Alcorn, Janelle Somerville, Tony Wormald, and I'm going to leave it on this one, Maude Wang, whose contribution is in...
or something. I don't know what, where you're from, Maude, but welcome to the Seaman Demons Patreon. And we'll just see you at the next episode. We're going to take a quick intermission, go take a break, take a walk, read a book or something like just decompress. And then when we get back.
We're going to find out what the whole impetus for doing this case was because there was a huge break in it, like you said. So we will see you on the next episode. And thanks for listening to all of this. Yeah.