I Built a $210,000 Restaurant in Boracay for Her, The Lease Was in Her Boyfriend’s Father’s Name

I Built a $210,000 Restaurant in Boracay for Her, The Lease Was in Her Boyfriend’s Father’s Name

…

That’s where I met her.

She worked at a little smoothie stand near the main beach path.

29 years old.

And I want to be honest about how it happened, because it wasn’t some seduction.

I was a regular customer for weeks before I ever said a real word to her.

She wasn’t flirty.

She didn’t light up for foreigners the way some of the girls on that island did.

She’d make my drink, remember that I liked less sugar by the third time, and go back to her book.

That’s what got me.

She read actual books, paperbacks in English.

And one afternoon, I asked her what she was reading.

And we talked for an hour while her stand sat empty.

She told me she was from Auckland, the mainland province right across the water.

Her father had passed when she was young.

Her mother sold vegetables at a public market.

She had a younger sister still in school that she helped support.

She was working the smoothie stand while trying to save enough to maybe start something of her own one day, a small food business because she loved to cook and everyone in her family said she had the gift.

She didn’t ask me for anything.

When I offered to buy her dinner, she hesitated, actually hesitated, and told me she wasn’t looking for a foreigner and didn’t want me getting the wrong idea.

That hesitation did more to win me over than any amount of sweet talk ever could have.

The ones who chase you, I’d been warned, those are the dangerous ones.

The one who makes you work for it, who tells you no first, that’s the real one.

That’s what I believed.

That’s what I wanted so badly to believe.

We dated for almost a year before anything serious.

And in that whole year, she never once asked me for money, not for rent, not for her sister’s tuition, not for her mother.

When I found out her mother’s market stall had flooded, I offered to help and she refused, flat out refused, told me it wasn’t my problem to fix.

I practically had to force a small amount into her hands and she paid it back the next month from her own wages.

Do you understand what that does to a man who came to this country braced for a scam? It disarmed me completely.

Every wall I’d built came down brick by brick because she was tearing them down for me by asking for nothing.

She talked about food constantly, her dream restaurant, what she’d serve, how she’d decorate it, the kind of place where tourists and locals would both feel at home.

And I listened.

And somewhere in there, I stopped hearing it as her dream and started hearing it as ours.

I had the money sitting there doing nothing.

She had the talent and the vision and the work ethic.

Boracay was crawling with tourists with money to spend.

It wasn’t a fantasy.

It was, on paper, one of the smartest things I could do with my savings.

That’s how I justified it to myself.

This wasn’t a gift to a girlfriend.

This was an investment in a business, in a future, in us.

We got married about 14 months after that first conversation at the smoothie stand.

Small ceremony on the beach.

Her mother came, her sister, a handful of her cousins, and two expat friends of mine.

She cried during the vows and I believed every tear.

For the first time since I was a young man, I felt like I had a home and a partner and a reason to get up in the morning.

And almost immediately we started planning the restaurant.

Now, here’s where I need you to pay close attention because this is the part that cost me everything.

And it happened so smoothly I never felt the knife go in.

I knew the law.

I’d read it a hundred times on those expat forums before I ever got on the plane.

A foreigner cannot own land in the Philippines.

A foreigner can’t hold a majority stake in certain businesses.

Everybody online had a horror story about a guy who put a house in his wife’s name and lost it all in a breakup.

So, I was cautious.

I said we needed to do this properly, with contracts, with the business structured the right way.

And she agreed completely.

In fact, she was the one who found the location, a beautiful beachfront spot, and she was the one who told me the landlord preferred to lease to locals and that it would go much smoother if the lease was handled through family.

She said her uncle, an older, respectable man with connections on the island, would hold the lease on our behalf.

He knew the landlord.

He could get a better rate.

He’d sign the paperwork and everything would be protected within the family.

I met him once briefly, a well-dressed man in his late 50s, warm, called me his brother-in-law, shook my hand for a long time.

Everything about it felt legitimate.

I was so focused on avoiding the obvious trap, putting things in my wife’s name, that I walked straight into a different one and thanked the people holding it open for me.

We’re only getting started, and I know this part is hard to hear, but before I tell you what that man actually was to her, do me that favor again.

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The money went out in stages, which is exactly why I didn’t feel it all at once.

The lease deposit and the first year up front.

Renovations on the space because beachfront in Boracay doesn’t mean finished.

A full commercial kitchen with equipment I had shipped in because the local stuff wasn’t reliable.

Furniture, signage, permits, the endless permits, each one requiring a little more cash handed to a cousin who knew a guy at the office.

Staff wages before we’d earned a single peso.

The hand-painted sign alone cost more than I want to admit.

By the time the doors opened, I had put in a little over $210,000, nearly everything I had.

And I did it gladly because every time I hesitated, she’d remind me it was ours.

That she was working 18-hour days to make it succeed.

That I was building us a legacy.

And she did work.

I’ll give her that.

The restaurant actually did well for the first several months.

Tourists came.

The food was genuinely good.

She was there constantly, and I was proud.

So proud.

Standing at the back watching my wife run the beautiful thing my life’s savings had built.

I told myself I was the luckiest man on that whole island.

The first thing that felt off was small.

Her uncle started coming around more, and every time he did, there was a young man with him.

Late 20s, good-looking, quiet, always introduced as the uncle’s son helping with deliveries.

My wife barely acknowledged him in front of me, which I now understand was the tell.

Nobody ignores a person that deliberately unless they’re working very hard at it.

But at the time I thought nothing of it.

Family helping family.

That’s what I’d come here for.

Then it was the phone.

She’d always left it lying around, screen up, nothing to hide.

Sometime after the restaurant took off, it never left her hand.

Face down on the table, into the bathroom with her, under the pillow at night.

When I’d walk into the office at the restaurant, she’d end a call fast and slide the phone into her apron.

I’d ask who it was, and she’d say a supplier, a vendor, her sister, and I believed her because why wouldn’t I? A woman running a busy restaurant is on the phone all day.

That’s not suspicious.

That’s just business.

Then it was the money in the register never quite matching what the restaurant was clearly making.

When I raised it gently, she got defensive in a way she never had before.

Told me she was handling the finances, that I didn’t understand how cash businesses worked on the island.

That I should trust her the way she’d always trusted me.

And I backed off.

Because I didn’t want to be the paranoid old husband who couldn’t let his wife run her own kitchen.

We’re a little past halfway through this and I want to stop for just a moment to thank you for being here.

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The thing that finally cracked it open was a birthday.

It was the young man’s birthday, the uncle’s so-called son.

My wife closed the restaurant early one evening.

Told me it was for a private family event and that I should rest, that I’d been working too hard and deserved a night off.

It was thoughtful.

It was so that I felt guilty.

But an hour after she left, I realized I’d left my reading glasses in the restaurant office, and I walked back to get them.

The lights were low.

Through the window, I could see maybe 15 people inside my restaurant and a cake on the center table lit up with candles.

And my wife was sitting in that young man’s lap, feeding him a bite of that cake, laughing in a way I hadn’t seen her laugh in a long time.

He kissed her.

Not on the cheek.

And the whole room clapped, comfortable, easy, like they’d all seen it a hundred times.

Because they had.

I was the only person on that entire island who didn’t know.

I didn’t go in.

I stood in the dark outside the restaurant I had paid for and watched my wife celebrate with the man she actually loved, surrounded by her family, eating cake off plates I had bought.

And the older man, the uncle, was standing right there beaming at the two of them like a proud father.

Because that’s exactly what he was.

He wasn’t her uncle.

He was the boy’s father.

The lease to my $210,000 restaurant was in the name of my wife’s boyfriend’s father.

I went home.

I didn’t confront her that night.

I needed to understand how deep it went first, so the next day I did something I should have done before I ever signed a thing.

I hired a local lawyer, and I pulled the actual lease.

And there it was in black and white.

The property was leased to the older man, full legal control for a term of 10 years.

My name appeared nowhere.

My wife’s name appeared nowhere.

Every improvement I’d paid for, the kitchen, the build-out, all of it, legally belonged to the leaseholder the moment it was installed.

I had spent my life savings renovating and stocking a building that a stranger controlled completely, and I had no recourse, none.

I’d handed the money over willingly.

There was no fraud on paper because on paper I was just a generous man who liked to give gifts.

When I finally sat her down and told her what I’d seen and what the lawyer had found, she didn’t cry the way I expected.

She sat down slowly, put her head in her hands, and then she told me the truth.

And the truth was worse than the affair.

She’d been with him for years, since before she ever met me.

He was the love of her life.

The problem was he had no money and no way to build anything.

And then a foreigner started coming to her smoothie stand, a kind, lonely, careful man with savings.

And she saw not a husband, but a way to build the life she wanted with the man she already had.

The whole thing, the hesitation, the refusing my money, the year of asking for nothing, all of it was patience.

Patience was the strategy.

They waited me out.

They let me build the entire restaurant, and the day the lease terms were finalized in his father’s name, my usefulness was essentially over.

I asked her why she even married me.

She looked at me and said, “Because you were the one who could pay for it.

He couldn’t.

You could.

” It was never a cruel voice.

That’s what haunts me.

It was matter-of-fact, like I was slow for not having understood the arrangement all along.

We’re almost at the end, and I want to ask you one last time, if this story has meant anything to you, please subscribe to the channel, hit that like button, and turn on the notification bell so you’re here for the next one.

There are men out there right this minute signing papers they don’t understand for women they trust completely, and these stories are how we look out for each other.

Your click sends this to one more of them.

I left the island.

I walked away from the restaurant, from the marriage, from all of it.

Because there was nothing to fight for and no court that would take my side.

I’m told the place is still open.

She still runs it.

It does well.

Sometimes I think about tourists sitting at those tables, eating good food under that hand-painted sign, having no idea the whole thing was built on one lonely man’s life savings and a lie that lasted 3 years.

Here is what I need you to take from this.

So, it wasn’t all for nothing.

First, protecting yourself from the obvious trap can walk you straight into the hidden one.

I was so afraid of putting things in my wife’s name that I let them put it in a stranger’s name, and I felt safe doing it.

Never sign anything you don’t control just because it’s structured through family.

In this country, family is not the same as loyalty to you.

Second, when a person refuses your money for a year, it is not always character.

Sometimes it is a down payment on your trust, and they intend to collect the full balance later.

Patience can be love.

It can also be a strategy, and by the time you can tell the difference, the money is already gone.

Third, the loneliness that brought you across the world is the same loneliness that will talk you out of every warning sign.

I saw the young man.

I saw the phone.

I saw the register.

I explained every single one of them away because I could not afford, in my heart, for it to be true.

And last, when it costs you everything to check something, that is exactly when you must check it.

The one time I refused to look, the day I stood outside that window, the truth was already lit up on a birthday cake in a room full of people who all knew before I did.

I’m 62 now.

I have less money than I’ve had since I was a young man.

I’m not going back to Michigan.

There’s nothing there for me, but I have my freedom, and I have the truth, and I have this story, and if it reaches even one man before he signs that lease, then something good came out of it after all.

Hi there.

I’m Gemma Bath, and you’re listening to True Crime Conversations.

Just a few weeks ago, an American serial killer was sentenced to life without parole.

It brought to an end a case that spans decades.

A case we covered in detail on this podcast in 2024, when there were only charges involved.

To recap, in 2011, a total of 11 human remains were found on or around Gilgo Beach on Long Island, New York.

In 2023 and 2024, one man was charged with murdering seven of them.

His name is Rex Heuermann, and he was a local architect who hid in plain sight for years before his eventual arrest in July 2023.

He’d been using up to 100 burner phones to lure women, mainly sex workers, before torturing them, killing them, and burying them.

Some were dismembered.

The women were aged between 20 and 34, and they were killed between 1993 and 2010.

Their names were Sandra Costilla, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Bartholomew, >> >> Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.

We now know of an eighth victim, Karen Vergata, killed in 1996, who Heuermann admitted to murdering earlier this year.

To understand more about the evidence police found that led them to Heuermann, how they caught him, and more about the victims, I suggest dipping back into our original episode.

It’s linked in our show notes.

But in the meantime, we asked our original guest, Alexis Linkletter, who has a podcast called Unraveled, unpacking this case in detail, to come back on our show and fill us in on the latest from court.

Here she is.

Alexis, last time we spoke, it was October 2024.

At that point, Rex Heuermann had been charged with six murders.

And then, a few months after our interview, there was a seventh murder charge.

Were you expecting that momentum to continue because there were 11 bodies found in and around Gilgo Beach? >> I was expecting that momentum to continue.

I had always been of the mind that all of the remains found along Ocean Parkway were connected to Rex Heuermann.

Um but in the months that followed, I discovered that I was wrong about that.

>> Can you tell us a bit about that because two of the three remaining murders that we have an attributed were attributed to someone else.

>> Correct.

So, there were two victims who had long been unidentified and they were known as Peaches and Baby Doe.

And they were linked genetically in, I believe, around like the early um the early side of like the 2010s, um they were able to link them genetically and confirm that they were a mother and daughter.

Now, the remains were found really far apart from each other.

The mother’s torso was found in an area close to New York City where her appendages were found along Ocean Parkway.

And the toddler was found along Ocean Parkway about 250 ft from the remains belonging to a woman named Valerie Mack who Rex Heuermann was charged with.

Now, a little while after um Rex Heuermann was charged with that seventh victim, these two victims were identified as Tanya Jackson is the mother and Tatiana Dykes is the baby.

And not long after that, um the neighboring county to where the Long Island serial killer case basically is unfolding, which is called Suffolk County, the neighboring county in a different jurisdiction, charged a different man with the murder of Tanya Jackson who was known as Peaches.

Nobody has been charged for the baby.

Um and presumably I mean we think obviously they believe if this man killed the mother they killed the child as well.

So it was a big shock to everybody familiar with the case.

I don’t think anyone was expecting that.

Um I’m still in shock over it because there are so many coincidences tied to where these remains are found.

I find it really hard to believe that two different people would have chosen such precise locations for this.

>> And then the the third victim known as Asian Doe no one has been charged over that death.

>> No one has been charged with the death of Asian Doe.

There is a renewed push once again to try to figure out who they are.

Although when I was attending in court the plea hearing for Rex Heuermann.

So when he pled guilty there was a giant press conference afterwards and one of my colleagues asked the district attorney whether or not the DA believed that Rex Heuermann could be responsible for the murder of Asian Doe.

And the district attorney has sort of like an interesting personality but he said this to my colleague.

He said it doesn’t matter what I believe it matters what I can prove.

And it kind of made us feel like they believe he did that.

They haven’t proven it yet and especially because in these batches of evidence that the district attorney was sharing with the public along the way, you know, over the three years since he’d been arrested to go along with all the new indictments there are many many Google searches that have been provided to the public that Rex Heuermann made and a lot of them were about Asian victims.

And a lot of them were about Asian trans victims, which many people believe that Asian Doe was living their life as a woman because they were biologically male but found in women’s clothing.

>> Originally, Human was going to trial.

That was what we’ve been waiting for.

He’d plead not guilty.

It was shaping up to be enormous.

The sheer scope of you know, the number of victims, the years he was active, the evidence.

Can you kind of help paint that picture because at one point his defense team wanted five different trials? Like this was going to be huge.

>> It was going to be huge because with every new arrest, I mean, with every new indictment they made, you know, he was indicted for the murder of a woman named Sandra Castilla.

She was murdered in 1993.

Prior to that, the earliest victim we all thought that he was responsible for was 1996.

So, the timeline of when he was murdering kept broadening.

And so did the MO.

Um a lot of these victims were dismembered.

Some of them were not.

Um with Sandra Castilla, the woman that he was indicted for the seventh victim, um she had sharp force injuries and was left in the woods, not where any of the other victims were found.

For a long time everyone thought a different serial killer was responsible.

So, for that reason, we’re talking so many geographic areas, so many different MOs.

And his attorney did attempt to sever the trials into five separate trials.

He attempted several times to get evidence thrown out because the evidence against him is vast as well, but there was new DNA technology that was used in a lot of this DNA analysis.

So, it was going to be huge.

That’s why I mean, it took 3 years, all of the pre-trial hearings.

It was going to be a massive trial and it was going to be complicated, but the evidence against him is overwhelming.

So, I think he saw the writing on the wall.

>> Did you think Huermann was going to change his plea? That that is something that he would do? >> Um my instinct was no, but I heard early on from a source that he was considering that because I was of the the mind that well, what does he have to lose? You know, we don’t have the death penalty in New York State.

So, why not? Why not sit there through the attention and the media circus and soak all of that in.

I didn’t see a downside for him.

But, the more I’ve unders- gotten to know sort of his life through interviews with people who knew him and I’ve you know, developed a friendship with Rex Huermann’s wife wife’s attorney.

His name is Bob Macedonia and I talked to him quite frequently.

I realized that people like Huermann are much more on a spectrum than I believed initially.

And that he did appear to do this to spare his own family further embarrassment because a lot more evidence was going to be paraded out publicly had he gone to trial.

And I think a lot of that was going to make things look way worse.

So, weirdly, I mean, I didn’t think men like him were capable of caring about their families.

But, it seems to some degree he is or at least he’s capable of making these decisions to control a narrative around him.

>> Because in the last year or so, we have learned a lot more about Huermann’s wife and daughter in particular because they spoke to a documentary, right? What did you learn about them seeing that? [clears throat] >> Wow, so I was in that documentary um and I was fascinated.

You know, we have never seen the aftermath of an arrest of a serial killer who was living a double life that up close and personal before.

And that deal for them came together so quickly.

So, we really saw them in shock at first in total denial.

Um So, what I’ve learned about that family is that his wife had no idea.

Their marriage was very traditional as far as like their gender roles.

She didn’t ask questions.

He was the breadwinner.

He went to the city.

He commuted about an hour and a half each day.

He had kind of a separate life in Manhattan.

And because he sort of had control of their household and relationships, he would buy her a ticket to go somewhere and say you’re going on this trip, bring the kids.

And he was doing these things when she wasn’t home.

Um it’s hard to believe that someone could hide that much from their spouse and children, but it seems he has.

And the timeline fits together where he murdered a woman days before he married her.

And he was murdering far long before he married her.

So, in my opinion, I think he chose her cuz he knew he could get away with this with the type of personality she had.

>> Well, he certainly has been hiding in plain sight for decades, so that wouldn’t be a surprise.

>> No.

>> Can you talk us through how news of this plea deal played out? How close to trial was he? And how did you find out it was happening? You said you had a bit of an inkling.

>> Oh, yeah, I knew beforehand.

I had heard from a source long before, probably, you know, 6 months before it actually happened.

And I asked, you know, the DA at one of the court appearances about it, you know, during one of the press briefings afterwards, and then people started asking about it, saying, “Oh, is that really on the table? Is that really going to happen?” And then the rumors kept circulating.

Um so, I knew.

And the trial, I think, was going to take place I mean, they were talking about 2026, but I mean, it’s hard to know.

I mean, the judge was getting impatient with all of the the pre-trial um hearings.

But, you know, probably probably a handful of months out the trial was set to start.

>> Did we know that he was going to admit to an eighth victim as part of that plea deal? >> We suspected it.

>> Right.

>> Um we didn’t know for sure until we were there until it happened.

But, everyone suspected that he murdered Karen Vergata.

That’s the woman he admitted to killing and, you know, that was part of the deal.

I always believed that he was responsible for her murder.

So, a lot of us who followed the case suspected that, but we weren’t sure till that day.

>> Can you tell us what the actual plea deal that he agreed to was? >> Yeah, so he [snorts] admitted to the victims he was charged with killing, seven of them, and then he admitted to Karen Vergata, who he was just accepting responsibility for.

And in return, he is receiving three consecutive life sentences.

He cannot be prosecuted any further for any of these eight victims.

However, he can be prosecuted if any other murder victims are linked to him in the future, like when his DNA is put in CODIS.

If there are any other hits, he can be prosecuted for any other any other crimes, which again makes me think that the district attorney believes there are more victims.

And what’s odd and what really ruffled some feathers was that part of this deal was that he is to cooperate with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, which means he’s going to be interviewed by the FBI, and he part of the deal is that he’s supposed to be completely candid and honest.

But, a serial killer doesn’t care about deals or what their their commitments.

We can never know whether he’ll be telling the truth.

And I think that bothered a lot of people, too, because he’s fascinated by the FBI.

They found a copy of Mindhunter in his house and his planning document.

He was taking notes from Mindhunter.

” And if you’re not familiar, Mindhunter was written by a former FBI agent named John Douglas, who basically was a founding member of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit and coined the term serial killer.

So, a lot of people think that Rex Heuermann’s very excited by this and it’s giving him some narcissistic validation.

>> It’s hard because I can see why people would be upset by that.

But then on the other side, we do need to learn from people like this so that we can catch them in the future and stop them in the future.

>> Yeah, there is value in it, I think, especially because serial killers like Rex Heuermann are very rare.

>> Mhm.

>> There are other kind of serial killers, you know, there used to be more, you know, but because of technology, serial killers operating through digital means like Rex Heuermann was, bringing women into his house to murder them.

I mean, that’s not really happening anymore.

Um the most recent serial killer prior to his arrest was, I think, the Golden State Killer and he stopped murdering in 1986.

But then, you know, he murdered 10 people and then it was cold, right? And they didn’t know who he was.

But for people to be murdering into 2009, 2010 the way he was, it’s highly highly unusual now.

So, I think, yeah, I think the FBI wants to understand like the compulsive nature of his crimes because he didn’t really have the self-preservation and the the self-control to stop when he should have.

>> And the fact that he got away with it for that long, given the world we live in and how connected we are and, you know, the internet, it it is quite unbelievable, really.

>> It’s really disturbing.

It’s really disturbing and, you know, because he stopped in 2010, it really would have been impossible.

You know, now with the way our phones are cameras are everywhere tracking, I think it he really got lucky in that time period because he was using burner phones and he was using, you know, sock puppet emails, you know, fake email accounts.

But that’s still now, I feel like if someone was doing that right now, they’d be caught.

So, it’s unusual.

>> Which is good, we should say.

>> Yes, we That’s very good.

>> Up next, Alexis takes us inside Houlihan’s plea hearing, describing the atmosphere in the courtroom and what he said during the proceedings.

You arrived at the court for the plea hearing at 4:45 am to be there while it all unfolded, which means you did get to see everything.

What was that experience like? What was that room like when you walked into it? >> So, for the sentencing or for the plea hearing? >> Plea hearing.

>> So, the plea hearing, um, it was a really it was strange.

Like, it was more intense than the sentencing.

It was a longer day.

It was really stressful.

And people were there for I mean, we were there for like hours and hours and hours.

Um, it was Yeah, it was intense, you know, it was strange It’s It was strange that he was admitting it.

It’s just it’s all just very shocking.

I still can’t believe that he did it and they caught him and he admitted it.

>> Did he verbally admit it in that hearing? >> So, what he did was he provided an allocution and sometimes allocutions are the deal that is made is that they’re going to go into detail about what they did there on the spot.

It’s my understanding that prior to his plea, he did what was called a proffer, which you basically admit everything.

Um, it can’t be used against you in court.

It’s just for it to strike a plea deal.

But in court, he did an allocution with yes or no answers or one-word answers.

So, the DA would ask, you know, did you do this? Did you cause the death of Megan Waterman or Melissa Bartholomew on this date? Yes, he would say, and then they would say, by what means? And he would say, strangulation.

And they did that eight times in a row.

Um but he wasn’t required to go into any further detail.

He really just admitted that he did it and said how he did it.

>> And the families were all there to hear that? How did they react? >> I’m not sure all the families were there.

Um you know, it’s very emotional.

You know, I I still I don’t know how the families do it, you know, sitting close to a man who took the life of your daughter or sister.

It’s like the thought’s unbearable.

Um the families are strong and do everything with grace.

So, there are things that are said, you know, um especially during the sentencing.

It was a lot of things were said by the family in the room.

Um but yeah, no, it was it’s devastating to witness, you know, and you don’t wish it on anyone.

>> The plea hearing was obviously the first step.

Then we had the sentencing.

Did you, as someone that has worked on this case for so long, did you think that that plea hearing gave you or anyone there closure? >> Um no, I don’t think I don’t think closure is possible, you know? It’s like with something so senseless, um and something so pathetic I mean, he’s so pathetic.

It’s like he’s this giant man targeting small women to feel powerful and in control.

And it’s what he did wasn’t hard.

What he did was cowardly, you know? So, I think it’s just I can’t imagine closure is ever going to be had.

It’s like we don’t know the rest of it.

We’ll never know, but I think for the families, it’s like for them it was a demarcation line, like, I’m done with you.

I’m going to be focusing on my loved one’s memory, and now I don’t have to think about you anymore cuz you’re going to going to be in a cage.

>> After court, there were a huge number of press conferences.

His defense, his wife, who we hadn’t really heard from, the DA.

What stood out to you the most from that flurry of press conferences? >> So, his wife, Alissa Rurup, did address the media.

You know, she hasn’t done much of that.

And what I thought was really interesting is like the second she was done, she had a prepared statement that she read from.

And immediately reporters were questioning again, how could you not know? How did you not know what was happening right in front of you? And there is still so much suspicion looming over her.

And what I want to keep conveying is that, you know, it’s unbelievable for people that she couldn’t have known.

But clearly she didn’t, because if the district attorney had evidence that she had knowledge or or was involved, he would have delighted in charging her.

So, they have gone every over every shred of evidence.

Her cell phones, her computers, there’s just no indication that she knew.

And I I think what I don’t think she should be blamed for not knowing, but I do think that she do is scare people.

Um that you could be living with someone lying to you to that degree.

I mean, she was.

And she’s not the first woman to be duped by a serial killer like this.

>> Well, she really is a form of a victim in all of this, too.

She’s had her life ripped to shreds as well.

>> She has, and you know, she starts as a victim, right? And then for every decision she makes since the arrest, it’s hard to blame her for all of it.

You know, the shock, trauma, desperation, processing this.

I don’t know that my decisions would be sound.

I don’t know that I would be able to trust my instincts about anything.

Um people think her participating in the documentary that the optics were poor there.

Maybe they were.

But maybe she was out of options.

It’s just really hard to judge her after the shock and trauma of these revelations that she was exposed to.

>> Let’s talk a bit about the sentencing that only happened a week ago from when we’re talking.

>> Yeah.

>> I want to start with Herman because we did hear briefly from him.

You mentioned the word cowardly before.

I feel like that kind of needs to be repeated again here with what he said, right? >> Yeah, so everyone was wondering whether or not he would speak because the defendant is often given that opportunity.

And when he said yes, everyone was surprised and he he began to speak and the judge yelled at him.

The judge was very intense and told him to stand up.

So then there was this like awkward 5 seconds where he’s like trying to stand up and he began speaking and he said something to the effect of, you know, and I’m paraphrasing, “My words have no meaning.

I am responsible for the words that were said today.

I’m going to leave it there.

” And he sat back down and the judge looked at him sort of annoyed and said, “You know, I know you’re probably sorry for what you put your family through, but are you a little sorry for what for murdering these innocent women?” And he sort of was like, “Yeah.

” But it was so hollow and strange.

It’s like, why say anything at all? I couldn’t understand.

>> Did he look remorseful at all? >> No, he does not care.

This man could not care less.

>> Yeah.

>> It’s not funny at all.

It’s just this man doesn’t care.

He would have done it a million more times.

After he murdered Melissa Bartholomew, he called to torture her family.

Like this guy loves hurting women.

And this guy does not feel bad about it.

It doesn’t matter that he has a daughter their age of when he was killing them.

It doesn’t matter that he’s married to a woman.

He doesn’t care.

>> In the sentencing, we also had the chance to hear from the victims.

That’s their chance to stand up and tell this man what they’ve done to their lives in the form of a victim impact statements.

Was that emotional hearing from so many family members in that courtroom? >> Yeah, it was unbelievable.

Um it was it was long, too.

It was, you know, I think there were about 16 total.

And yeah, some some made you like want to give them a high five cuz they just said the exact right thing that you know just hit him where it hurts.

You know, these men are narcissists.

Um so, one of the victims’ cousins, her name is Jasmine Robinson, basically went over the planning document that Rex Heuermann had written in 2000 about like, “Don’t leave DNA behind.

Don’t leave hair behind.

” And she’s like, “Well, you didn’t do that.

You couldn’t do that.

” And totally just like mocked him.

And you could tell he was getting like so mad.

Um but every single one was compelling.

Some made you cry.

Some made you furious for how articulate they were in explaining just the devastation um what this had done to their lives.

You know, Megan Waterman’s daughter spoke, and it’s just she lost her mom when she was two, and she is left with this like, “What Who would I have been? What would I have my my life have been like had I not had my mom ripped from me?” And I think that’s a really valid um question, and it’s so unfair.

>> I read that there was even applause when he was taken from the room.

>> Oh, there was more than that.

There was applause.

Um, there was applause.

There were screams from the family saying, “I can’t wait till you get raped in jail.

” Then they all started chanting ogre as he was walking out of the room.

And it was the whole thing was intense like that.

It was like the energy the entire hearing.

You know, one of the victims, um Melissa Bartholomew’s sister who received the calls the taunting calls that were made from her sister, her murdered sister’s phone, cuz he had her phone.

That’s how he called her family.

So, first it’s hope, right? She’s missing and now she’s calling me.

And um she said something like, “It’s been 17 years since we spoke.

” And then she’s like demanded that he look at her cuz he’s just been looking ahead like a coward.

Um there were a lot of intense moments during her during her impact statement, but it was very almost primal.

I don’t know how to explain it.

>> Is this over for you now? Do you think knowing that he is behind bars, he’s been sentenced with eight murders is this over for you? Because you know, we don’t know how many more there are out there.

You’ve been working on this case for so many years.

What does this mean for you? >> I don’t think it’s ever going to be over.

I think it’s part of who I am um because it’s not just about this killer and these victims, it’s about the way women are treated.

It’s about violence against women.

It’s about sex workers, the demonization of them and not the clients or the men who push them and force them and traffic them and make them do sex work, which is what was happening for the majority of these women, right? So, it’s never going to be over.

I’m always going to be speaking out about that.

And as long as there are victims I believe are connected to him like Asian Doll who haven’t seen justice I’ll always be monitoring and tracking.

Um, I wish I could do more.

You know, it’s kind of contingent upon what investigators do whether there’s any story left here.

So, I do feel like though this law enforcement team that has brought him to justice is phenomenal and I’m I’m sure they won’t stop if they believe he’s responsible for more.

But, it’s also not done for me because I have a book coming out about the case early next year.

So, I’m going to be probably talking about it for a while because like I said the implications it’s not him.

It’s society, you know, and I think that’s what I’m going to be talking about a lot.

>> Thank you so much Alexis.

We really appreciate your updates.

>> Of course.

>> Thank you to Alexis for joining us on this episode.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Thanks so much for listening.

I’ll be back on Thursday with another true crime conversation.