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Kalaroga Shark Media. For almost three years, Rex Heyerman said
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nothing through his arrest in July of twenty twenty three,
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through hearing after hearing, through the day. This passed April,
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when he stood up in court and pleaded guilty to
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murdering seven women and then admitted to an eighth he
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had never even been charged with. Through all of it,
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the man the world came to know as the Gilgo
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Beach serial killer kept his mouth shut. Yesterday in a
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courtroom in Riverhead, New York, he finally opened it. And
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I want you to hear what this man chose to say,
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after nearly three years and eight dead women, with the
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whole country listening here. It is, word for word quote.
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I am responsible for all that was said in this room.
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The words I say will have no meaning. That's it.
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That's what he had. Look, I'm going to be honest
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with you. For once in his miserable life, Rex Hoyerman
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was right about something. The words he said had no
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meaning because by the time he stood up to say them,
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eight families had already walked into that courtroom and taken
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it away from him. He doesn't get the last word anymore.
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He hasn't for a while now. He just hadn't figured
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it out yet. Good morning, and welcome to Daily Crime
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and Justice. I'm Garrett Fisher. It's Thursday, June eighteenth, twenty
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twenty six, and today we are doing something we have
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been promising you on this show since last August. We
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are closing the book on Gilgo Beach. The man is
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going to die in a cell, and before he does,
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the people he tried to make invisible got to look
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him in the eye and tell him exactly who he is.
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Let's start with the number, because the number is the
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whole point of yesterday, Suffolk County Judge Timothy Masey sentenced
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Rex Hoyerman to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility
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of parole, followed by four more consecutive terms of twenty
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five years to life. I want to be precise about that,
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because you may see it reported sloply elsewhere. There is
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no parole anywhere in this sentence, not on the front
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of it, not on the back of it. Rex Heyerman
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is sixty two years old and he will leave prison
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in a box. That is the entirety of his future,
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and he earned every day of it. The sentence covers
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the murders of seven women he was charged with, Melissa
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Barthelemy Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, Maureen Brainerd Barnes, Jessica Taylor,
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Sandra Castilla, and Valerie Mack. And it folds in the
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eighth Karen Vergatta, a woman he admitted killing back in
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nineteen ninety six, a murder the state never even had
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him on paper for until he said the words himself.
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Eight women killed by his own admission, by strangulation, some
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of them dismembered, all of them scat along the lonely
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stretches of Long Island shoreline that gave this case its name.
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Now the moment everyone was waiting for his defense. Attorney
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had been hinting for weeks that Hoyerman might finally speak
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at sentencing, and he did. For about ten seconds, he stood,
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He said he was responsible for what was said in
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the room. He said his words would have no meaning,
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and he sat back down. And then Judge Masey did
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something I want to give him credit for. He didn't
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let it slide. He looked at Hoyerman and he asked
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him directly, I assume you are a little bit sorry
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for the eight women. You strangled eight that we know of,
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And Hoyerman said yes, and the room came apart, family
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members shouting back at him, one woman calling out that
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he was no, he was not sorry. People crying, people furious,
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and matse Before he handed down the sentence, looked at
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this six foot four architect who had spent decades presenting
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himself as the harmless dad next door, and he said,
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you've been described as a big man, but you are
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a disgusting and small man. If you're a man at all,
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you're a coward. That's the judge from the bench. And
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when the sentence came down, the courtroom didn't go quiet
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the way courtrooms are supposed to. People cheered, people applauded.
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Somebody yelled justice. As they let him out, you could
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hear the word ogre following him through the room. That's
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the sound eight families make when a thirty year weight
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finally ends he's sorry, he got caught. I want to
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talk about the two men who spoke for the system
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yesterday because they could not have framed this more differently,
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and the gap between them tells you something. First, the prosecution,
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Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has been carrying this case,
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and he was not in a forgiving mood. D When
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the question of Heyerman's remorse came up, all those statements
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that had trickled out since his arrest, through his therapists,
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through his family, through his ex wife, Tierney dismissed every
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bit of it. Nothing this defendant has said since July
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twenty twenty three is meaningful. He said, it's self serving.
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And then he said the line that I think is
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the truest thing anyone said all day. I have no
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doubt this defendant is very sorry. He is very sorry
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he got caught there it is. That's the whole man
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in one sentence. And Tierney pointed to the one piece
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of evidence that I think should haunt anybody who still
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finds this guy fascinating, the planning document. Investigators found it
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in Heyerman's home, a written blueprint for murder. Sections on preparation,
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sections on supplies, sections on DNA, sections on disposing of
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a body. Tierney said it read like a shopping list
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for murder, and that it proved the victims meant absolutely
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nothing to him. They weren't people to Rex Hoyerman, they
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were line items. He made a checklist that's not a mistake.
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That's a choice. You don't accidentally write yourself a to
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do list for killing women. You sit down and you
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plan it, and you do it again, and you keep
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the document. And then there's the other man. Hireman's defense attorney,
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Michael Brown. I'll give Brown this, he did something yesterday
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that I did not expect. Before the sentencing, he turned
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to the families in the gallery and he apologized to them.
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He said, I never met your mother, your daughter, your sister,
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but I've listened to what you've said about them, and
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they sounded remarkable. I'm truly sorry. That is not nothing
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coming from the man whose job was to defend the
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person who killed them. Credit where it's due. But then
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outside the courthouse, a reporter asked Brown whether he believes
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his client actually feels remorse, and Brown's answer was telling.
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He said he doesn't know. He said he's seen what
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he called genuine emotion in Hoyerman at times, and that
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he believes there's a sincerity in his expression of remorse
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and his attempts to understand his crimes. And look, I'm
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gonna let you sit with that one rather than tell
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you what to think. Brown is doing. His job a
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defense attorney looking for the human being inside the monster.
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Is not a flaw in the system. It's the system
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working the way it's supposed to. But I'd ask you
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to hold his words sincerity, understanding his crimes right next
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to Tierney's words he's very sorry he got caught, and
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next to that planning document, and then you decide which
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version of Rex Hoyerman you believe. I know which one
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I believe. I believe the checklist the women spoke. Here's
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the thing about a sentencing like this, The sentence was
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never really in doubt. Hoyerman signed a plea deal in April.
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Everybody in that room knew he was going to die
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in prison. So, yeah, yesterday was never about the number.
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Yesterday was about the one thing this man spent thirty
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years trying to take away from these women, their voices,
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and one by one the family stood up and gave
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it back to them. Melissa kNN is the sister of
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Maureen Brainerd Barnes, one of the original four women whose
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remained started this whole investigation back in twenty ten. Melissa
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stood up and she sobbed, and she talked about survivor's guilt,
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about decades of wondering whether she could have done something
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to protect her sister. And then she said the thing
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that I think a lot of people in that room
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needed to hear out loud. The guilt is not mine
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to carry, she said, and it never was. This burden
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belongs to Rex. She told him. When you took her life,
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you destroyed mine as I knew it. You are a
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coward who prayed on vulnerable, innocent women. And then this
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is the part that stops me, she told him. He
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is no longer the one in control of this story.
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You tried to silence her, she said, and you failed.
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I became your worst nightmare. Your name will never rise
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above the women. Megan Waterman's aunt, Elizabeth Miserve, spoke for her.
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Megan was twenty two. She was working for a pimp
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the night she disappeared, leaving a hotel to meet a client,
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and Elizabeth said it plainly the way you should, because
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Megan was a young woman who was planning to build
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a life for her daughter. Her remains weren't found for
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seven months. Seven months her family agonized over when she
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was coming back to them, and Elizabeth looked at the
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man who took her, and she said, some people called
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him an ogre when they looked at him, but he
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is a cowardly opportunist. She also said something that I
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am not going to let go by, because she's right
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and somebody has to say it. She tore into the
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former Suffolk County officials whose corruption and incompetence let this
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case sit cold for thirteen years. Thirteen years between when
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those bodies were found and when an arrest was finally made.
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Nobody was paying attention to her. Nobody was paying attention
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to any of them because of who they were and
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what they did to survive. And Elizabeth named the cost
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of that out loud, and she was furious about it,
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and she should be. And then there's Melissa Barthelemy's little sister.
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Her name is Amanda Fundenberg. And I need you to
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understand what this man did to her because it is
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one of the cruelest things in a case that is
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wall to wall cruelty. When Melissa disappeared, Amanda was fifteen
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years old, fifteen, and Hayerman took Melissa's cell phone and
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he called her teenage sister not once, and he taunted her.
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He told a fifteen year old child the things he
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had done to her sister, the kind of things I
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am not going to repeat on this show. For weeks,
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every time that phone rang, Amanda was afraid it was
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him again. Yesterday, seventeen years later, Amanda stood in front
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of him and she said, look at me when I'm talking.
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I waited seventeen years and he wouldn't. He stared straight
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ahead the way he stared straight ahead through every single
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one of these statements, never once turning to face the families.
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And she said to him, you don't care. I was
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just fifteen. And the last voice I want to leave
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you with belongs to Violet Swager, who spoke for her cousin,
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Jessica Taylor. Violet went after the thing. This man was
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apparently proudest of that planning document, the meticulous blueprint, and
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she took it apart, line by line in open court.
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She read his own notes back to him. Supplies hair net. Well,
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she said, so much for that, because investigators found his
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hair on multiple victims DNA. You wrote it down twice,
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she said, and you still didn't get it. Remove identifying marks. Well,
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we know you didn't do that because she was identified
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by the tattoo. You couldn't remove you were sloppy. Violet
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told him, you made a whole planning document to kill
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my cousin, and you didn't even do that right. And
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then she said the words, I think this man fears
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more than the cell. You're boring, you're not prolific, you're nobody.
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You chose small women because you are a weak, disgusting coward.
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There's no playbook clever enough to make a man like
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that interesting. He wanted to be a legend. He's a
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line item in somebody else's checklist now. And then Violet
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did the thing that broke my heart clean in half.
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She noted that yesterday, June seventeenth, would have been Jessica
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Taylor's forty third birthday, and she ended her statement to
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her cousin's killer with four words, Happy birthday, jess say
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their names. Rex Hoyerman chose these eight women because he
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believed nobody would look for them. He believed they were invisible.
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That belief is written into his own planning materials. He
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was wrong, and yesterday, a courtroom in Riverhead proved exactly
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how wrong. So let's do what this show always does.
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Sandra Castilla, twenty eight years old, the earliest of them.
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Killed in nineteen ninety three. Valerie Mack twenty four years old,
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Jessica Taylor twenty years old. She would have turned forty
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three yesterday. Maureen Brainerd Barnes twenty five years old, one
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of the four who started the search for all of them,
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Melissa Barthelemy twenty four years old, the one whose teenage
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sister he called to taunt, Megan Waterman twenty two years old,
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a mother building a life for her daughter, Amber Costello
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twenty seven years old. And Karen Vergatta thirty four years old,
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the one he was never charged with, the one who
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waited the longest of all to have her killer say
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her name. Eight women not line items, not invisible, Sandra, Valerie, Jessica, Maureen, Melissa, Meghan, Amber,
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and Karen. Somebody has to say their names, and on
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this show, somebody always will. That's the show today. Rex
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Heyerman is going to die in a prison cell with
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no parole ever for eight women he treated like a
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to do list. The case that haunted Long Island for
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more than thirty years is closed, and the people he
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tried to silence got the last word, every one of them.
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If this episode meant something to you, do me a
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favor and share it. Send it to one person who
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followed this case, who remembers when these bodies were found
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and wondered if anyone would ever be held accountable. Word
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of mouth is how this show reaches the people who
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need to hear these women's names. So tell a friend.
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And here's the question I keep turning over, the one
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I want from you. Hyerman's own lawyer says he sees
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sincerity in the man's remorse. The prosecutor says he's only
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sorry he got caught. After everything you heard today, the
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planning document, the taunting phone calls, ten seconds of carefully