[TENSE MUSIC]
It is a case that has haunted the public
for more than 13 years.
And many feared that the Gilgo Beach murders may never
be solved.
The officer located a body.
And it seemed to be wrapped in burlap,
which didn't make any sense.
The crime scene gets expanded.
I'm called and, "Chief we found another set of remains."
They find another one and another one.
We were dealing with a serial killer.
They're available, they're vulnerable, and very petite.
This killer has a type.
Right.
Does he want the petite body because he
wants to feel more empowered and more in control?
I want the world to know my sister mattered.
I want answers.
I just want answers.
An arrest more than a decade in the making in a serial killer
case that's baffled law enforcement and the public.
59-year-old Rex Heuermann pled not guilty.
I dropped my phone.
I couldn't believe it.
So just who is Rex Heuermann?
An architect who ran a company called RH Consultants
and Associates.
Rex.
Hello.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Good to see you.
When a job that should have been routine suddenly
becomes not routine--
Yeah.
I get the phone call.
Rex Heuermann is a mystery man.
Rex is capable of presenting himself
one way to one person, one way to another person.
My first memory of Rex was that he was very big, imposing,
scary, angry.
He was bullied.
He was bigger than everyone else.
The kids would gang up on him.
And Rex was very smart too.
He is a smart person, very smart.
He liked to shock people.
He was interested in power games.
Rex loved hunting and he loved guns.
Going out, shooting, hunting, that was his passion.
All petite, all bound in burlap bags.
The burlap on the bodies, that points right at a hunter.
It was DNA collected from a pizza slice
he tossed in a Manhattan trash can
that came back as a match with hair found on the victims.
That's where we obtained his full profile from the pizza
crust left in the box.
In terms of speaking to my client, the only thing
I can tell you that he did say as he was in tears was,
"I didn't do this."
Everyone's just trying to put the pieces together.
I want to know what I missed.
I think we all want to know what we missed.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Not far from this quiet stretch of Gilgo Beach
on Long Island, New York, investigators
uncovered the hidden remains of four young women.
The mystery of who they were and how they got here
might have stayed a secret, if not for a woman named
Shannan Gilbert.
In the early morning hours of May 1, 2010,
23-year-old Shannan, working as an escort, called 911.
State police.
Yeah, there's somebody after me.
The call came from a neighborhood
not far from Gilgo Beach.
These people are plotting to kill me.
Shannan starts running--
[RUNNING AND PANTING]
--knocking on doors.
[KNOCKING]
Where are you, Shannan?
She screams.
[SCREAMING]
And then nothing.
Shannan was gone.
Hello?
[HEAVY BREATHING]
Hello?
K-9 searched the area exhaustively
for Shannan Gilbert.
Dominick Varone was chief of detectives at the Suffolk
County Police Department.
Months passed without a sign of the missing woman.
And then in December of 2010, near Gilgo Beach, a police
officer and his K-9 named Blue found human remains.
Everyone assumed it was Shannan Gilbert.
But it wasn't Shannan.
Stunned searchers would go on to discover the remains of four
other women.
The women were identified as Maureen Brainard-Barnes,
Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.
Like Shannan, all were in their 20's, all were online escorts,
all petite.
Three of the four were wrapped in burlap, the kind
you can find in hunting stores.
They became known as the Gilgo Four.
It's really, really hard because I miss her so much.
48 Hours has reported on this case, since 2010.
Over the years, we've secured exclusive interviews
with the family and friends of the Gilgo Four.
Missy Cann will never forget the wintry day
when she got the devastating news.
The detectives came to my house and just said
that Maureen has been positively identified
as one of the victims on Ocean Parkway.
Her sister, Maureen Brainard-Barnes,
a mother of two, was the first to disappear on July 9, 2007.
She was very smart and very creative.
She liked being a mom?
She loved being a mom.
But life as a single mom living in Norwich,
Connecticut was difficult. Missy didn't know it,
but Maureen had turned to escort work
and that July, went to New York City for a weekend
to make money.
[SIREN]
On her way home, she called Missy from Penn Station
in Midtown Manhattan.
[PA ANNOUNCEMENT]
I could hear the commotion from the train station.
From the time that she called me, it was, poof, she was gone.
She reported Maureen missing.
Eventually, officers would tell Missy
that after her sister's disappearance,
someone had used Maureen's cell phone to make
a call from Long Island.
It wasn't known then, but those two locations,
Long Island and Midtown Manhattan,
would become important clues in the hunt for a serial killer.
Nearly two years to the day that Maureen vanished,
24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy went missing in July of 2009,
also from Midtown Manhattan.
Lynne Barthelemy is Melissa's mother.
How often do you think about Melissa?
Every single minute of the day.
It just didn't happen to the girls.
I mean, it destroyed all of our families.
Melissa moved from Buffalo to New York City
to work as a hairdresser.
At some point, she also began working as an escort
and then disappeared.
About a week after she went missing,
Melissa's then 15-year-old sister Amanda
started getting calls from Melissa's phone.
We agreed not to show Amanda's face.
She answers, you know, Melissa, where have you been?
And this voice is saying, oh, this isn't Melissa.
Steven Cohen was the family's lawyer at the time.
He was taunting Amanda.
And he said, do you know what I did to your sister?
I killed Melissa.
All I can say is he's sick.
And he's going to make a mistake and we're going to catch him.
Those calls from Melissa's own phone
may very well have been that mistake.
When police traced them, the calls
placed the person they believe to be Melissa's
killer in Midtown Manhattan.
The following year, Megan Waterman,
the mother of a three-year-old girl, disappeared from a hotel
on Long Island.
And part of you is, like, missing
or it's just like something's always off.
We spoke with Megan's daughter Liliana in 2020.
I would do anything to bring her back, but I can't.
And it just, like, frustrates me so bad.
Megan's family says the 22-year-old
was a creative, but troubled young woman who
loved fashion and was devoted to her daughter.
What would you say to your mom if you could?
I would just want to tell her that, like, I love her.
I just want her to know she has a special place in my heart.
And no one can ever replace her.
Like the other two women, Megan disappeared in the summer.
On June 6, 2010, she was working as an escort on Long Island.
No matter what her job was, she was a person
and she needs justice.
This haunting video from a Holiday Inn Express
is the last time she was seen alive, moments before she
went to meet a client.
Cell phone records later placed her phone
in a Long Island neighborhood called Massapequa Park.
Amber Costello was the last of the Gilgo Four to disappear.
She lived here, just 7 and 1/2 miles from Massapequa Park.
She used to say she was 4' 11", but she wasn't.
She was, like, 4' 9".
I mean, she was small.
Amber's friend and former roommate, Dave Schaller,
spoke with us in 2011.
She was an amazing person.
She really was.
He says Amber was addicted to drugs
and used sex work to support her habit.
But as amazing as she was, was as tormented as she was.
After Amber disappeared, police say Schaller told them
about her clients.
He described one of them as looking like an ogre
and having a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche.
On the night she went missing, Schaller says, a client
offered Amber $1,500 for the night,
six times her hourly rate.
This guy was so relentless.
He called several times.
He was on the phone with her for quite a while each time.
He says the client got Amber, an experienced escort,
to do something she never did, leave without her purse or cell
phone and meet him in his car.
I walked out the front door with her.
She gave me a hug.
She was like, I love you.
And she left.
It was nearly midnight.
Schaller says that when Amber left this house,
she walked down this street and he never saw her again.
Schaller told us that he didn't see the client's face
that night, but suspects he had seen him before.
So this is a guy you might have seen?
Yeah.
This is somebody that I seen.
I might be one of the only people who knows who he is.
It would be more than a decade before Schaller's description
would lead to a break in the case and a prime suspect.
To see a timeline of how the case unfolded,
go to 48hours.com.
[SEAGULLS]
The shocking developments in a murder case gone cold.
My coworker called me and she said,
did you hear what happened to Rex?
And I'm like, no.
A husband, a father, an architect
stood before a judge, charged as a serial killer.
She says it's Rex.
I said, no way.
This house was a main focus and they brought out
a lot of evidence.
I just didn't think it was real.
A Long Island community is still a crime scene tonight.
I even thought to myself, it's crazy
that there's two Rex Heuermanns out there.
Mary Shell and Muriel Henriquez worked with Rex Heuermann
and couldn't wrap their heads around the news.
We never thought he would be that kind of person.
It's shocking.
In July of 2023, nearly 13 years after the Gilgo Four
were discovered, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney
Harrison made the announcement.
Authorities believe Rex Heuermann is the Long Island
serial killer.
Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us, a predator that
ruined families.
The man he calls a demon is a 6 foot 4 architect.
He's charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan
Waterman, Amber Costello, and is the prime suspect in the death
of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
What has my client told me?
He told me he didn't do this.
Heuermann was living about 20 minutes
from Gilgo Beach in Massapequa Park.
The very same town where Megan's phone last
connected with the cell tower.
And Heuermann worked here at his architectural firm
in Midtown Manhattan, just blocks
from where Maureen disappeared.
The same area where several of the threatening
calls to Melissa's little sister were made.
The cause of death with regard to the three victims
is homicidal violence.
A married man, Heuermann lived in this rundown house
and has a daughter and stepson with his second wife, Asa.
Asa, who was born in Iceland, would
take the children to see her family there in the summers.
It was during these trips and others,
police believe, that Heuermann killed the women.
You never got any kind of hint--
No.
--of another life?
No.
Muriel Henriquez worked at Heuermann's company,
RH Consultants and Associates, and spoke exclusively
to 48 Hours.
She recalled a gift he gave her in the summer of 2007.
This is a sweater he asked his wife to bring back
from a trip to Iceland.
Muriel, who says she was touched at the time
by Heuermann's thoughtful gesture,
now wonders if his wife's absence that summer
gave him an opportunity to kill Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who
disappeared on July 9, 2007.
How do you feel about this sweater now?
No, I'm definitely not going to wear this sweater now.
Still, she says she saw nothing alarming about the Rex
Heuermann she saw daily.
A little bit of a nerd, in a way.
He liked to talk about himself, what he knew.
I mean, not a narcissist, but a little bit
of a "I know everything" kind of guy.
Pompous.
She remembers him running to and from job sites,
eating fast food on the run.
Pizza, that was his number one thing.
Police say they found nearly 300 guns in a basement vault.
When she heard that police had recovered almost 300 firearms
from a vault in Heuermann's basement,
she was surprised only by the number.
She knew him as an avid hunter.
Going out, shooting, hunting, that was his passion.
What was it about hunting he liked?
I don't know.
I guess he liked the idea of having a prize?
Stalking prey?
Stalking prey and winning.
He liked to win.
And while she says it never occurred to her that Heuermann
could be dangerous, she does remember a time
when his tracking skills unnerved her.
It was her 40th birthday, and she
had booked a cruise vacation.
Where are you going?
I'm going to be in the middle of the ocean.
You're not going to find me in the middle of the ocean.
He said, oh, yes I can.
Muriel didn't think much of the comment
until the second day of her trip.
There was a white envelope under my door.
It was a note from him.
The note said, I told you I could find you anywhere.
He had photos from hunting trips.
Mary Shell worked with Heuermann in the summer of 2010.
It was the same summer that both Amber Costello and Megan
Waterman vanished.
He would talk about the meat, in particular,
that bear meet could keep in the freezer for months.
Hearing authorities now say that some of the victims
were wrapped in a burlap that hunters often use was chilling.
The burlap really got to me.
Since Heuermann's arrest, Mary has written
about her experience with him.
She's also talked to other former female employees
who said they weren't always treated with respect.
He would have one of them clean the toilet,
if he thought the cleaning person hadn't
done a good enough job.
A woman in the office?
Yes.
He, more than once, commented on women's bodies.
If someone, perhaps, had gained some weight,
that kind of thing,
John Parise grew up with Heuermann.
He says Heuermann was bullied as a child.
I remember meeting Rex when I was in first or second grade.
He was a loner.
Not many friends.
The children were super mean to him, made fun of him
and teased him.
But John says he never saw Heuermann fight back.
He was big enough that if he got upset and started swinging,
he would hurt somebody.
But he never did.
As Heuermann got older, John points out
things didn't get much better.
He was rejected by many girls.
We all go through that awkward stage, growing up.
And it seemed like that awkward stage stayed with him
longer than usual.
Still, he says many in the community
find it hard to believe that Heuermann
is the notorious serial killer, living a double life for more
than a decade.
People were saying, oh, my god, I
can't believe we have a serial killer in our town
and we grew up with and we walked amongst the killer.
Another classmate of Heuermann's, actor Billy
Baldwin, took to social media when the news broke, tweeting,
it was "mind boggling."
Rex, hello.
Hi.
How are you doing?
The awkward Long Island teenager grew up
to be a confident and seemingly successful architect.
Antoine Amira met and interviewed him in 2022.
Born and raised on Long Island.
OK.
Been working in Manhattan since 1987.
There's nothing in my interview that
made me think that this person in front of me
is a dangerous person.
Antoine is a hotel food and beverage
manager in New York, who loves real estate.
He has a YouTube interview show, where
he handpicks guests whom he thinks
are interesting and accomplished.
I'm an architect.
I'm an architectural consultant.
I'm a troubleshooter.
Antoine says Heuermann was well known for his skill
at helping companies and individuals get
building permits.
When a job that should have been routine suddenly
becomes not routine--
Yeah.
I get the phone call.
Gotcha.
Correct.
What really stood out for me was he was very, very, very smart.
And known, says Antoine, for his ability
to find loopholes in the rules.
He was pleased when he was doing it.
That he could--
That he could outwit the system.
That's it, folks.
That was Rex.
But Antoine says he remembers it was hard to get Heuermann
to crack a smile.
It's--
Selfie time.
Not even during the signature sunglasses
selfies he takes with every guest.
One, two, three.
Ah!
Can you smile?
That is.
If police are right, Rex Heuermann
was able to hide a life as a serial killer.
And if he did, his habit of eating pizza on the go
would turn out to be his undoing.
[RAIN FALLING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For more than a decade, after the discovery
of the Gilgo Four, Rex Heuermann's name never
appeared on a suspect list until a new task force
was formed with Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney
Harrison and Suffolk County DA Ray Tierney.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
In February of 2022, we formed the task force.
And then a mere six weeks later, Rex Heuermann
was identified for the first time.
A suspect in six weeks?
So how did they do it?
It turns out that buried in the original case files
were a number of critical clues that the new task force was
finally able to connect.
Remember Amber's roommate, Dave Schaller?
She's like, I love you.
She gave me a hug.
And she left.
He had told police about one of Amber's clients
and his vehicle.
Just a large, built man and that he
was driving this first-generation Chevy
Avalanche.
A first generation Chevy Avalanche
with a description of an ogre-like man
and the make and model of his truck.
Police took a closer look at Amber's phone records
from 2010.
Schaller had told them that before Amber disappeared,
there was one particular client calling incessantly.
He called several times.
He was on the phone with her for quite a while each time.
Police back then knew the client was using a burner phone.
That's a prepaid phone that anyone can buy and use
anonymously.
And they knew that Maureen, Melissa, and Megan had all
been in contact with burner numbers
right before they disappeared.
In 2012, with the help of the FBI,
they determined that most of those
calls connected to cell towers inside a small area
of Massapequa Park.
They called it The Box.
So how large an area is that box?
It's a couple of blocks within Massapequa Park.
The new task force began the search
for a large, built man who also lived in that small area
and owned a Chevy Avalanche at the time of the disappearances.
Was there a a-ha moment, when all of a sudden
his name came up?
Once we were able to attach the Avalanche inside
of that Massapequa box, which then attached
to Rex Heuermann, that was a moment where we said,
OK, there's something here.
The task force now had a prime suspect.
And when they looked at Heuermann's personal cell phone
records, they found that his phone
was in the same area as those burner phones
when they were used to contact a victim in Massapequa Park
or in Midtown Manhattan.
It was always consistent.
Tierney says this was also true for those awful calls
Melissa's family got from that man
using her phone back in 2009.
He said, do you know what I did to your sister?
And he said, well, I killed Melissa.
The task force says that it confirmed that Heuermann does,
in fact, use burner phones.
Investigators say he had two different burner
numbers in 2022.
And they say they watched him put money
on one of those accounts here.
And according to court papers, the team also documented
three email accounts using fake names, including
John Springfield, Thomas Hawk, and Hunter1903.
And all linked to those burner numbers.
And prosecutors say that Heuermann was using a burner
phone to send these selfies to solicit and arrange
for sexual activity.
One of those accounts linked to Heuermann, prosecutors wrote,
was used to conduct quote, "thousands of searches
related to sex workers, sadistic, torture-related
pornography, and child pornography."
There was a lot of torture porn and depictions of women
being abused, being raped, and being killed.
Investigators also say that while they
were busy watching Heuermann, Heuermann
was trying to watch them, conducting searches on the task
force and the Gilgo victims.
Not only pictures of the victims,
pictures of their relatives, their sisters, their children.
And he was trying to locate those individuals.
The circumstantial evidence was building.
But investigators also had physical evidence
from the Gilgo Four, including one male hair
that was found in the burlap used
to quote, "restrain and transport Megan Waterman's
body."
and they wanted to see if they could link it to Heuermann.
Police tailed Heuermann.
And when he threw out this pizza box in this trash can
here in Midtown Manhattan, they pounced.
The pizza, which was obviously very significant--
Tierney says that Heuermann's DNA
that was found on that pizza crust
was consistent with a DNA profile
from the hair found with Megan Waterman's body.
And that DNA profile is only found in 0.04 percent
of the population.
That was a remarkable day.
It was the weekend and you get the report and you read it.
And then you read it again and then you read it a third time.
And then you read it a fourth time.
And then you start making calls.
With the DNA, the search histories, and the burner phone
evidence, the team felt it was time.
When we decided to take down the case, it was a sudden decision
and we did see him contacting a number of sex workers using
a burner phone, which obviously is concerning.
Plainclothes officers arrested him around the corner
from his office.
I don't think he had any clue.
I don't think he had any clue that we were on to him.
Police spent 12 days looking through Heuermann's home,
pulling those guns out of the basement,
and digging in the backyard.
They say it will take some time to comb
through what they have now.
And they were tight lipped about what they found.
Has the search been fruitful?
Great question and the answer's yes.
Can you elaborate on fruitful?
You said yes, it's fruitful?
There have been items that we have taken into our possession.
That makes it fruitful.
And one more big piece of evidence
taken into possession, a first-generation Chevy
Avalanche Heuermann once used.
And it was sitting on property he owns in South Carolina when
they recovered it.
We were able to seize that Chevy Avalanche pursuant to a search
warrant, and we're certainly going to analyze that.
But there were female hairs found
on some of the victims' bodies that
don't belong to the victims.
So who do they belong to?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
What do you make of the evidence against Rex Heuermann?
Join the conversation now on social media.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
After Rex Heuermann's arrest, his quiet neighborhood
in Massapequa Park was overrun by investigators and media,
focusing intense scrutiny on the ramshackle home
and its remaining residents, his stepson, Christopher Sheridan,
daughter, Victoria Heuermann, and his wife of more
than 25 years, Asa Ellerup.
Their life, going forward, is always
going to be the wife or the children of suspected
serial killer.
That's what it's going to be from now on.
Attorney Bob Macedonia represents Asa Ellerup,
who has since filed for divorce from Heuermann.
He says she was as stunned as anyone by the accusations.
She had no idea any of this was going on.
The allegations are shocking.
Nobody wants to think that they've
been living with and sleeping next to a serial killer
for the past 25 years.
As it turns out, Asa may have inadvertently
helped focus the investigation on her husband.
Investigators say they've identified
strands of female hair that were found on two of the victims.
One hair on Waterman comes back to his wife--
or the DNA profiles are consistent.
And then the DNA profile from Costello
is consistent with the wife.
Although prosecutors have evidence that Asa was out
of town when those murders occurred,
they will have to explain how those hairs got on the victims.
Suffolk County DA Ray Tierney says
it could be as simple as transfer.
You live at home with a spouse, a little bit of your hair falls
on your shoulder as well as your spouse's.
Then you go out and you interact with a third party
and that hair gets on them.
Asa Ellerup has not been charged or named
a suspect in any of the murders.
You don't believe that Rex Heuermann's wife was
involved in this in any way?
There's no evidence to indicate that, no.
Along with the public scrutiny of Asa,
there's also been support from people
that perhaps know all too well what she's going through.
Kerri Rawson, the daughter of serial killer Dennis Rader, who
named himself BTK, tweeted "Asa and her kids are also victims."
I can tell that they are going through hell.
And from Melissa Moore, the daughter
of Keith Jesperson, a serial killer known
as the Happy Face Killer for taunting authorities
with letters signed with a happy face.
She reached out immediately to myself
and we put her in contact with Asa.
At a press conference, Macedonia announced
Moore set up a GoFundMe page for Asa, which raised over $50,000.
Money he says will largely go to medical bills.
Asa is battling breast and skin cancer.
And because Rex Heuermann was the sole provider
for the family, Macedonia says she will soon
lose her health insurance.
Asa would like me to express her thanks
for the support she's received.
She's going through a very difficult time.
Asa's children have also paid a heavy price.
Her daughter Victoria, who worked for her father
at the architectural consulting firm, and her son Christopher
are both now unemployed.
Asa struggles to support them, says
Macedonia, while she's also trying to figure out
how to start over.
How is she getting through every day?
Honestly?
Yeah.
Minute by minute.
She has no one else to turn to at this time.
Family and friends have been hesitant to have her come over
because they don't want the media attention.
She gets followed wherever she goes.
For the moment, she and her children
continue to live in the house in Massapequa Park, which
the family says was excessively damaged during the police
search, seen in these photos provided by Asa's attorney.
It's a daily reminder of the unimaginable crimes
her estranged husband is charged with
and the investigation that continues into what else
he may have done.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Rex Heuermann, awaiting trial, is
locked inside a Suffolk County Jail in a 60 square foot cell.
He denies killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman,
and Amber Costello.
Their voices now silent as the sand
where they have been ruthlessly discarded.
How sure are you, as you're sitting here now,
that Rex Heuermann is the Long Island serial killer?
So we're just at the beginning stages of this case,
but we would not have brought this indictment if we
weren't confident in our case.
He took away somebody's mother, somebody's daughter,
somebody's sister.
And not just one person, multiple individuals.
Heuermann is currently the prime suspect
for the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
And for investigators, an obvious question
still hangs heavy.
If Heuermann is a killer, are there other victims?
I mean, isn't there a real concern
that there may be other victims out there?
Always.
Who's to say that there's not more bodies out there
that we need to investigate?
In 2011, police did find other bodies along Ocean Parkway
after finding the Gilgo Four.
There is victim number 5, Jessica Taylor, an escort
who went missing in 2003.
Another set of remains police called Jane Doe
number 6 is now identified as Valerie Mack,
also working as an escort.
Number 7, to investigators surprise,
they found a toddler girl.
Number 8, an Asian male dressed in women's clothing.
Number 9, a female skull belonging
to Karen Vergata, an escort who disappeared in 1996.
Number 10, female remains from a victim cops
nicknamed Peaches because of a tattoo on her torso.
Although her remains were found six miles away,
police say DNA confirms Peaches is the mother of that toddler.
None of those victims has been linked to Heuermann.
Is it that you can't connect him yet
or you believe he probably isn't the person who
killed these other individuals?
I don't know.
Investigations also spread to Las Vegas and South Carolina,
where Heuermann owns property, with detectives there
taking a fresh look at cases of missing women.
And then there's Nikki Brass.
I remembered him because, one, he's massive.
And how many massive, like, 6 foot 5 architects
work in Manhattan and live in Massapequa?
You're going from brown and blonde.
Now a hairdresser, Nikki claims she may be one that got away.
She told us she used to work as an escort.
And while we could not substantiate her story,
Nikki claims she can't shake her memory of the night she says
she was solicited for sex by Rex Heuermann
and says she fled the restaurant where they met.
I had never gone anywhere and, like, felt fear.
My gut was telling me I needed to get away
and I've never had that before.
Nikki says what she found most disturbing is
that Heuermann himself brought up those bodies bound
in burlap by Gilgo Beach.
He wanted to, like, really get into it.
Like, he asked me how I thought they
could get rid of the bodies without being
caught in that area.
And I said, I've never been over there.
I've never even seen Gilgo Beach.
And his response was, well, it's really dark and desolate.
I'm John Ray and I'm the lawyer.
Nikki is now represented by John Ray,
an attorney who is also representing Shannan Gilbert's
family.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
In December of 2011, investigators finally
found Shannan here in the marsh not far from Gilgo Beach.
But they don't believe she was murdered.
It's an unfortunate incident.
But right now, we believe that she just ran into the marsh
and unfortunately, drowned.
A former investigator told us that he believes
Shannan was high on drugs that night
and says her death was an accident,
something John Ray just can't believe.
While he doesn't think Shannan was a victim of Heuermann,
he does believe she was murdered and points to that 911 call.
[SCREAMING]
It absolutely makes no sense that she's
found where she is except that someone else put her there
or killed her there.
While questions remain about Shannan's last hours,
there's no question she's the reason
so many families may finally be getting answers
they have long waited for.
We spoke to her sister Sherre in 2011.
If my sister didn't make that 911 call,
I don't think that these other women would
have been recovered either.
Now investigators hope that with an arrest,
they can give the victims' families, who stood with them,
a sense of justice--
[SOMBER MUSIC]
--and of peace.
I've gotten to know the families and I'm inspired by them
and I'm impressed by their patience.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
A local legend has it that this place, Gilgo Beach,
was named for a skilled fisherman
called Gil, these silver-gray waters once
his secret hunting ground.
Today, this beach area is better known
for a relentless hunter of human prey, a serial killer whose
chilling presence can still be felt in the ocean air.
Four students connected by friendship, then by tragedy.
Xana's family speaks for the first time.
She just was always fun.
She was uplifting.
Kaylee's parents believe the killer was there before.
He had to know when people were coming, people were going.
48 Hours, next on CBS and streaming on Paramount+ Plus.
[MUSIC PLAYING]