JARRED HILL:
00:00:13
I mean, this has been going on now for over a decade here, Errol. Looking at some of these twists and turns with this, it all started with Shannan Gilbert. She was working as an escort back in 2010 on Long Island. Early in the morning on May 1st that year, she called 911. Listen to these two clips from that 22-minute phone call.
SHANNAN GILBERT:
00:00:32
Yeah, there's somebody after me.
DISPATCHER:
00:00:35
I'm sorry.
SHANNAN GILBERT:
00:00:36
There's somebody after me. Please, no. What are you going to do to me? What are you going to do to me? Stop it.
PERPETRATOR:
00:00:42
[INAUDIBLE] get them out of here.
JARRED HILL:
00:00:44
After that call, she disappeared. About seven months later, while looking for Gilbert, police found the bodies of four other women near Gilgo Beach. They became known as the Gilgo Four. Six months later, in May of 2011, investigators found six more sets of remains in that area, many of them women who had worked as escorts. But one of the more baffling discoveries was the body of a toddler. Law enforcement later found the child's mother's remains. They confirmed their link using DNA. And then police found Gilbert's remains in that December. Now, the case went cold for more than a decade. So in February of 2022, the local police and district attorney created a new task force to investigate this case. Those efforts ended up paying off. In July of 2023, police arrested Rex Heuermann, an architect who lived on Long Island. At the time, he was arraigned, and ultimately pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed seven women. Court documents, though, revealed that it was actually this pizza crust that ultimately linked Heuermann to the crimes. Police had been tailing him, based, in part, on evidence that a car he owned matched one that a witness had described. When he threw out that pizza box in Midtown Manhattan in 2023, investigators tested it, and they said that the DNA was consistent with the DNA of a man's hair that was discovered on one of the victim's remains. After Heuermann's arrest, investigators spent days searching through his home, digging through his yard. Ended up removing numerous guns from inside the house. It's not clear what the terms of Heuermann's potentially updated plea agreement would be, if any have been agreed upon, but we're definitely going to stay on this story and have any of those details for you.
ERROL BARNETT:
00:02:22
Yeah, I was there on that day in 2023. Jarred, just incredible investigative work. Thank you very much.
