Some residents of a small Long Island town were stunned Friday when one of their neighbors was arrested for the “Gilgo Beach” murders, marking a major development in a case that has haunted the area for over a decade.
Rex Heuermann faces murder charges for the deaths of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Costello, whose bodies were discovered near an isolated, marshy area of Gilgo Beach more than a decade ago.
The victims were all women, and all sex workers.
“This hindered the investigation and the interpretation of the case early on,” said journalist Robert Kolker, whose book about the murders, “Lost Girls," was adapted into a Netflix film. "The people in charge seemed to almost say this was a consolation to the general public that they didn't have to worry about this serial killer."
Kolker joined WNYC host Sean Carlson on "All Things Considered" to discuss the case and how the culture has changed in the years since it first made headlines. A lightly edited transcript of their conversation is below.
Sean: For people who may not know all the details of this case, can you remind us what we knew before today?
Robert: This has been an open serial killer case in the New York area for many, many years. It first went public as a serial killer case at the end of 2011, but the first victims may have disappeared even years before that. This particular arrest surrounds four women whose remains were found around the same time at the end of 2010.
Ever since then, the police have been finding more bodies and there have been no declared suspects, no declared leads, nothing but rumors and conjecture, and the families have been left to wonder for the longest time until today.
Why does this case loom so large for people in Long Island and our area generally?
This is such a densely populated area. You'd imagine a case like this might be able to dwell in the shadows for years and years somewhere else. But in New York City, you know, the media center of the world, it just sort of defies common sense to think that there could be an active and successful and prolific serial killer still around.
And so everyone's amazed that it's taken this long. Also, the victims in this case are all women who made money through sex work. And I can't understate just how much this hindered the investigation and the interpretation of the case early on. It's certainly true that in a lot of these cases, these serial killer cases, the victims are vulnerable people and that often include sex workers.
In this case, the people in charge seemed to almost say this was a consolation to the general public that they didn't have to worry about this serial killer. Meanwhile, people were dead and the families couldn't get any attention until it suddenly became a broadly known serial killer case. And even then, there were no leads for years.
It was incredibly frustrating.
Have you heard from any friends and family of the victims today? How are they reacting?
I've been in touch with victims’ family members. There's a lot of optimism but complicated feelings. And then I saw other family members just now up on the stage with District Attorney Ray Tierney and with Suffolk County Commissioner Rodney Harrison.
It's such a different thing. Ten years ago when I wrote “Lost Girls,” the police were at odds with families. They seemed almost to have contempt for the victims, and now the commissioner, Rodney Harrison, is giving big hugs to the family members and thanking them.
And DA Tierney is talking about how they represent the best in humanity. It shows progress, I think, and that alone is kind of heartening.
So given your reporting background, you are one of the most knowledgeable people about this case. And you just talked about an interesting evolution that's happened over the last few years. Has anything surprised you about today's news?
I think one thing is at this press conference, they're acknowledging the humanity of the victims. They're acknowledging the humanity of the families. They're praising teamwork between different investigative agencies. This is stuff that was not necessarily on the table 10 years ago. It was almost like a finger-pointing exercise and a lot of scapegoating of victims going on 10 years ago.
So I see progress there. You see our whole society actually making small progress with regard to sex work. You talk about these victims, not like they deserve it and not like they are identified by their professions.
You can say in the media now that somebody was killed, who was a daughter, who was a sister, who also made money doing sex work. And that's what happened here. This case is one of the first of its kind where in the digital age people were part-time making money this way, that it didn't necessarily even seem like anything they would be doing for long and yet because they were killed, they became sort of dehumanized.
