Closing the Cold Case of Robin Lawrence | Full Episode

Closing the Cold Case of Robin Lawrence | Full Episode

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on his background.

-So, here’s
the crime-scene pictures.

There’s a bunch
of contact sheets in here.

You can tell it starts
from the pictures from the outside of the house
and then moves in.

-Cold-case detectives
Melissa Wallace and Jon Long of the Fairfax County
Police Department began reviewing Robin Lawrence’s
murder case in April of 2021.

-That’s like your
worst nightmare.

-Here’s the bedroom.

Obviously, her body’s here,
but you can see.

-They were struck by the sheer
violence of the attack on the 37-year-old mother.

-It looked brutal.

Is that blood on the book? -That’s the reason
why you tell your loved ones to make sure that your doors
are locked at night.

He is the boogeyman.

-On November 20, 1994, Robin’s friend Laurie Lindberg
had entered her home to check on her and saw blood
on the bedroom walls and Robin’s 2-year-old daughter,
Nicole, wandering around.

Alarmed, Laurie called 911 and then rushed the little girl
to the hospital.

Although Nicole
did not appear hurt, she had undergone a liver
transplant after she was born, and her health was fragile.

-Because, of course,
she’s taking immunosuppressive medications.

I mean, this is life-saving
medication.

She needs to have it.

-‘Cause you don’t know how long
she’s been in that house by herself.

-Right.

-Lead crime-scene detective
Mark Garmin was one of the first on site.

-This is what we determined to
be the entry point to the home.

-According
to Detective Garmin, who photographed the evidence, the intruder came through
that window off the back deck — the one Laurie had used
to get inside.

He entered the house
the same way.

-I had no idea what
the scene looked like until I walked around the corner
into the master bedroom.

-Tell me the state that
Robin was in when you saw her.

-Very damaged.

A lot of knife wounds.

Severe gaping knife wound
in her neck.

Unbelievable number of defensive wounds
on her hands, knife wounds in her back,
on her legs.

-He says signs of a struggle
were obvious in the room.

-This is the phone that was
on the floor near Mrs.

Lawrence.

The phone cord was cut.

She was assaulted in the bed and then fought her way
out of the bed and continued to fight
and struggle.

-Garmin says one of the first
things that stood out were bloody tissues
scattered around the house and near Robin’s body.

He believes it was Robin’s
daughter, Nicole, who left them behind,
trying to help her mother.

-Even at that age,
kids know what blood is and blood come
from wounds and cuts, and they know that Mom puts
tissues on them or Band-Aids.

I think she was trying
to stop the blood.

-And there was another
heart-wrenching discovery.

Empty baby bottles had been left
around her mother’s body.

-Having kids,
when they got hungry, they brought you
your baby bottle.

And that’s what I’m thinking.

Nicole would have taken it
to Mom.

-While investigators
process the scene, officers at the hospital ask
Laurie to call Robin’s parents.

-Robin’s dad answered.

I think I said, “Robin is dead.

” But.

what I remember is, um.

Jessie, her mom, m-must have just been in the — or overheard
’cause she was just — just wailing, just a.

sort of primal.

anguish.

-Mm-hmm.

-That was really horrible.

That’s probably the
most horrible thing [Voice breaking] that’s ever
happened to me, is calling.

[ Sniffles ] -Robin’s father,
Robert Warr Sr.

, a World War II veteran
and now 101 years old, says he tried
to forget that call, but one memory
has never left him.

-My granddaughter.

was right next
to where she was murdered.

I’ll never forget that — never.

-He had to break the news
to his surviving children, including his daughter
Mary Warr Cowans and his son Robert Warr Jr.

-After the words
“Robin is dead,” I — it was like.

-.

a nightmare.

-Yeah.

You’re just like —
Your world shattered.

-Mary says
in those first few days, they didn’t have a clear picture of what had happened
to their sister.

-The details were very sketchy and slow to come, and the police asked,
“Well, do you know anybody who had a grudge or something
against Robin?” And, of course,
the answer is, “No.

” -Robin was a gifted artist with a fine arts degree
from Carnegie Mellon University.

After college, she was selected
to mold the first medal for the Martin Luther King Jr.

Nonviolent Peace Prize, which was awarded to Rosa Parks.

-That was a big deal.

And for my parents, who grew up
in Memphis, Tennessee, during Jim Crow and they could not ride
in the front of the bus, they could not go to the zoo
except on Tuesdays, that was a big deal.

-Robin’s father, Robert Sr.

, says his daughter’s
accomplishments were his greatest source
of pride.

-She was a powerful lady
in this world.

Her drawings
are not just paintings.

They are powerful.

-Laurie first met Robin
in ballet class.

-I was like, “Oh, my God,
this woman is beautiful.

” But what was really fun about
Robin was she’s very personable, very fun-loving,
just very down to earth.

-Laurie and Robin shared an
apartment in Washington, D.

C.

, around the time Robin was dating
her future husband, Ollie.

Laurie says they were
a great match.

-Ollie is a very calm
and kind demeanor, and you kind of feel
very confident around him, very at ease with him.

-The couple were married
on New Year’s Eve 1989.

Three years later, they
welcomed their daughter, Nicole.

At the time of her death, Robin
was working in advertising.

Ollie, who was away on
a business trip in the Bahamas, was an executive at an airline.

-I think they had a relatively what I call “normal” [Chuckles] family life.

They were working
on doing home improvements, getting the yard fixed up.

-Now that home
with so much promise was an active crime scene.

-There were valuables
that were in the bedroom.

There was cash.

There was jewelry.

There wasn’t anything stolen.

-Investigators suspected Robin
was killed by someone she knew.

-They started looking
at the family dynamic.

They started looking
at the marriage.

-Was Ollie cooperative? -He was.

-But as authorities dug
further, they learned something.

Ollie had been having
an affair with a colleague.

-Then what does that mean? You think, “Oh, how convenient.

The weekend you go out of town
for three days, your wife is brutally murdered.

” -It just was surreal.

It really was like, for me, walking in a —
through a dream state ’cause you just can’t
make sense of it.

-Yeah.

-Just three days
after what would have been Robin’s 38th birthday, on November 26, 1994, her family and friends
gathered for her funeral.

-We were still very much
just.

bewildered.

and lost.

-Mary says Robin’s injuries
were so severe, the family had a closed casket.

-And that was hard for me ’cause I never got a chance
to see her one last time.

I always wanted to be able
to say goodbye and see her.

-As Robin’s family
mourned her death, investigators
pieced together a timeline and determined
that the last time anyone had heard from Robin
was around 6:00 pm on Friday, November 18th.

-We believe Robin
was killed around 9:30ish.

-Her body was discovered
two days later.

Investigators zeroed in
on her husband, Ollie, who they had discovered
was having an affair.

They followed up on his alibi.

-The detectives flew
down to the Bahamas, confirmed that he was on the
flight he was supposed to be on.

He was at the hotel
he was supposed to be at.

-Detectives also interviewed
Ollie’s lover but found no evidence
she was involved.

Robin’s sister and brother were surprised to learn
about the affair, but they say they never believed
Ollie had anything to do with Robin’s murder.

-I never thought that Ollie —
that he.

harmed her.

-And how ’bout you?
Did it ever cross your mind, “Maybe he’s involved
in this somehow”? -No, I didn’t think that.

He’s not that type of person.

-Ollie chose not to talk to
“48 Hours” about his experience.

Investigators didn’t have
much else to go on.

The killer left no fingerprints.

But something had caught crime-scene detective
Mark Garmin’s eye while he was documenting
the bathroom.

-On the towel rod
to the sliding tub door, there’s a washcloth.

I do notice a small stain on this towel right here — small brownish stain.

-That brown stain
turned out to be blood, and authorities extracted DNA
from it.

But it didn’t match anyone
close to the case, including Ollie or the woman
he had had a relationship with.

Detectives believed
it belonged to Robin’s killer and uploaded it to the FBI’s
national database.

The suspect’s DNA
is uploaded to CODIS.

-Yes.

-But CODIS also returned
no matches, and with no new leads,
the investigation stalled.

How much did
the adults tell you? -Nothing.

-Mary’s daughter,
Lauren Ovans, was just 8 years old
when her Aunt Robin was killed.

-I remember her being angelic.

-She says even though
her family avoided the topic, she could feel the void
Robin’s murder left behind.

-Out of all
of my family members, she was the most like me, so everybody
always called me “Robin.

” I just knew that they
were still thinking of her.

-Can you describe what you lost
when you lost Robin? -[Voice breaking] I think I lost
an extension of myself.

.

’cause she was the one who just taught me to be
comfortable with who I was, so.

you — you — I lost a piece of me.

-Lauren says she stayed close
with her cousin Nicole, who rarely spoke
about her mother.

-I think she didn’t know
much about her mother, so there wasn’t really much
to share.

And I didn’t want to
ever bring it up because I didn’t want
to make her anxious or make her nervous.

Um.

it was better
just left unsaid.

-The family eventually
resigned themselves to the idea that the case
may never be solved.

-When my mother died,
that was kind of like, “Well, she went to her grave
not knowing.

” -Right.

-“.

what happened to her child.

” And at that point, I said, “Well, just — I have to just
kind of let it go.

I have to let it go.

” -Then, decades later, in 2019, investigators turned
to Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA-technology company, hoping genetic genealogy
could identify Robin’s killer.

Ellen Greytak is the director
of bioinformatics at Parabon.

-We take DNA from a crime scene.

We upload it to GEDmatch
and to Family Tree DNA, which are two databases.

And what they give us back
is people in our database who share DNA
with your unknown person.

-Greytak says that while their
analysis showed Robin’s killer likely had European ancestry, tracing him
through his relatives proved nearly impossible.

-So, in this case,
the — the database matches were just really distant.

They only shared
little tiny pieces of DNA, which means that their shared
ancestor with our unknown person was pretty far back in time, and that means that those people
had a lot of descendants today.

-Parabon gave us a solvability
rate of zero on the case and essentially said, “You do not have the time
nor the money to get it moving forward.

” -Investigators say
they could have walked away.

But Liz, an amateur genealogist and volunteer
with the police department who asked
that her last name not be used, offered to take on the case
in her spare time for free.

-I just felt I wanted to give
something back to the community, and I believed
that I could actually be helpful in solving some of these cases.

-Investigators gave Liz
everything Parabon had uncovered about the suspect’s ethnicity.

-It was about half Eastern
European, about 25% Irish.

Another 25% was a combination
of, I think, English and Italian
and Scandinavian.

-.

along with a list
of cousins who shared his DNA.

-So what I got was
approximately 1,500 cousins.

I was not certain
that I could crack it.

There were no first cousins
or second cousins.

There was really more fourth
to sixth.

-As Liz worked
to trace the suspect through his family tree, Detective Wallace turned
to another DNA tool and asked Parabon to produce
a phenotyping sketch of Robin’s killer.

-DNA phenotyping —
it means actually predicting what that person looked like from their DNA.

-But would anyone recognize him? -In 2021, nearly 30 years
after Robin Lawrence’s murder, Parabon NanoLabs was tasked with producing a composite
of the man investigators believed
was her killer.

-So I get a report from
our bioinformatics scientists, and it lays out all
the predictions from the DNA.

-Scientists created
this facial model based on the DNA predictions.

-It starts off
with his skin color, which he’s predicted to have
very fair or fair skin color.

He’s most likely gonna have
a larger chin than average, wider jaw or cheeks
than average, kind of a narrower nose
than average.

-Tom Shaw,
a forensic artist at Parabon, says his job was
to refine the model by applying other details
like hair and eye color.

-I’ve kind of outlined
where his eyes are because I’m gonna be putting
new ones in.

So here’s one kind of that
dark blue that are predicted.

I’ll do eyebrows.

We’re looking at
kind of almost like like a lighter brownish hair, and so I gave him
a little bit lighter eyebrows to match what his hair color
is gonna be.

I’ll go and find a hairstyle,
something generic.

-Shaw says DNA
doesn’t reveal a person’s age, so the composites
are generated as a young adult, typically around 25 years old.

-So this is him.

-Does this look like
their mailman? Was this the neighbor’s kid?
Was it somebody from work? -Detective Melissa Wallace
set up a video call with Robin’s husband, Ollie, to see if he recognized
the man in the composite.

-I was really hoping
that when Ollie saw that, that he would go, “Oh, my gosh, that looks exactly like
so-and-so.

” -And did he?
-He did not.

He said, “That doesn’t spark
my memory at all.

Looks like nobody I know.

” -The investigation
stalled again.

But behind the scenes, volunteer genealogist Liz kept working with that list
of 1,500 cousins distantly related
to the suspect.

Liz had eventually traced some
of the suspect’s ancestors to Canada,
where they had settled.

That’s where she found
two cousins that were not related
to each other.

-And so I ended up with two
trees that were highly reliable, and they were the people that were truly cousins
to the suspect.

Where did their two trees
come together? -Liz says
if she could figure out where those two trees
were linked through a marriage, the suspect would be
a descendant of that couple.

-And what I found was
this woman on this tree married this man on this tree.

That was it.

That was the “Aha!” moment.

That was when I realized
that he is a descendant of this couple right here.

-After 3 1/2 years, Liz finally had a lead, and it pointed her
to a man named Stephan Smerk.

-I felt like
this really was him.

I didn’t know it for certain,
but I believed it was.

Contacted the detectives.

-So, she sends me an e-mail.

She says, “I think I found
someone of interest.

” -What happens as
you start looking into him? -Well, we find out computer
programmer up in New York, married to a defense attorney,
two kids in high school, nice house in the suburbs, not so much as a speeding ticket
on his background.

I’m thinking, “There’s no way
this is our guy.

” -But according
to Detective Jon Long, things got
a bit more interesting when they found
his yearbook photo at age 16.

-It looked very similar
to the phenotyping sketch.

We’re like, “Well, you know,
maybe this does make sense.

” -Stephan Smerk
lived in Niskayuna, a town in Upstate New York, so investigators decided
to pay him a visit.

-Does he know you’re coming?
-No.

No.

-They were hoping he would
cooperate and provide his DNA.

Wallace and Long say
he appeared to be home alone, so they knocked on his door.

-All we said is,
“We are detectives from Fairfax County, Virginia, and we’re looking
into a cold case from the ’90s.

Do you mind if we come in
and talk to you?” He said, “Sure.

”
He invited us in and — -Okay.

Hold on a minute.

So, you say,
“We’re from Virginia.

We’re investigating
this murder.

” His initial reaction? -No reaction.

None.

Stone-faced.

-None.

There was no surprise.

There was no fear — nothing.

-They found his demeanor
unusual.

-When we’re asking for DNA, this conversation typically
takes a solid 45 minutes.

People generally have
a lot of questions, like, “What do you mean,
someone in my family has committed a murder? Who was killed?” There was not
a single question from him.

We were in and out of his house
in five minutes with his DNA.

-Yeah.

-Consent form signed, swab collected, packaged up.

That was it.

-After the visit, detectives
checked in to their hotel.

But then Detective Wallace
got an unexpected call.

-It’s Steve Smerk calling me, and he says, “I’m at the police
department to turn myself in.

” And I said,
“Turn yourself in for what?” And he said, “I’m here to turn
myself in for the murder.

” A million things started
going through my mind.

-Smerk told detectives
he was having trouble getting into the Niskayuna
Police Department, which was locked.

-So then I’m thinking it must
be a smaller police station.

And I said, “Okay.

What I need you to do is we’re gonna hang up.

I need you to call 911 and tell
them that you’re there.

” -Stephan Smerk’s call
was recorded.

Wow.

So, when do you tell him? -Oh, my God.

I was freaking out, so I’m on — -She freaked me out.

-I run down to his room,
and I’m banging on his door.

I’m like, “We gotta go
to the police department.

He’s turning himself in.

” -Wallace also reached out
to local police, and Stephan Smerk was taken
into custody.

-The adrenaline was pumping
so hard because the reality hit, and it sounds like
he’s gonna talk to us about it.

-Detective Long says
they had to refocus fast and figure out
how they would handle Stephan Smerk’s interrogation.

-We need to make sure
this is a sound interview that could potentially be used
in court down the road.

-When they finally sat down
with him.

.

investigators say
he didn’t need much prompting.

-When investigators met
with Stephan Smerk on September 7, 2023, they were skeptical.

-This doesn’t happen every day, so we — we had
to really think through, “Well, why is he doing this?” -Detectives had not yet received
the results of the DNA sample
Smerk had provided, linking him definitively.

-We needed to be very careful to make sure that we weren’t
getting a false confession.

-So then what was
your approach gonna be? -We started talking about things
like, “Hey, let’s make sure that he’s gonna bring up
details of the case without us telling him first.

” -He starts volunteering
information, which is great.

-So it was just like he wanted
to talk about, you know, his weekend or, uh, some other family event
that he went to.

It was a very.

calm conversation — nonchalant.

-Stephan Smerk told detectives that back in November 1994, he was a 22-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Myer
in Arlington, Virginia, and on the night of the murder, he had been drinking beer.

He says he had been taking
ephedrine pills, a stimulant.

Smerk said he drove
to Robin’s neighborhood because he was familiar
with the area.

He visited friends
who stayed in a house nearby.

Smerk confirmed he entered
the house from the back deck and told detectives
he was wearing a ski mask and leather gloves.

He said he went down the hall to Robin’s bedroom.

He told investigators
one of the reasons he enlisted was because he wanted to kill.

-Okay.

-Detective Wallace knew
it was critical to link him to that washcloth
found in the bathroom, so she asked him
if he’d been injured that night.

-That’s when I knew that — that we were in business with putting him
in the bathroom and why his DNA was there.

That was the biggest
confirmation.

-As the interview wrapped up,
Detective Long asked Smerk if he wanted to express
any remorse to Robin’s family.

-I think what you see is
100% what you get from him — arrogance, entitlement.

He wanted to do it,
so he did it.

And that’s it.

-Detective Wallace
believes Stephan Smerk confessed because he knew he was caught and wanted to turn himself in
on his own terms.

-It wasn’t
because he was sorry.

It wasn’t because he was
tired of running for 30 years.

He wanted to maintain control.

-Former FBI profiler
Mary Ellen O’Toole, who reviewed the case
for “48 Hours,” agrees that Smerk
wanted to control the narrative.

-He was prepared
that he was gonna tell his version of the story.

-O’Toole says
she doesn’t buy Smerk’s claim that Robin’s murder was random.

She classifies it
as a mission-oriented homicide.

-He brought the weapon with him.

He had a mask.

He had gloves.

It also happens to be
on an evening when the victim’s husband
is in a travel status.

This was purposeful.

Went inside somebody’s home,
took enormous risk.

So, that suggests to me
more of a targeting than it does randomness.

-In her analysis, O’Toole says
she was struck by Smerk identifying himself
as a serial killer.

-I am a serial killer
who’s only killed once.

-He did come across as someone
that had admiration for them.

-So, here’s kind of, like,
the big question, though.

Do serial killers stop killing? -Yes.

They do.

-According to O’Toole, serial offenders can sometimes
channel their compulsion to kill into other crimes,
like stalking or voyeurism.

-I think it’s also possible that he engaged in other
behaviors much less serious than homicide that, um, satisfied him.

-He has no criminal history
of any kind.

How unusual is that? -Not very unusual.

But here’s the important thing
to keep in mind.

The absence of a rap sheet does not mean that criminal
behavior is absent.

It means that they didn’t get
arrested for it.

-I’ll take care of this process.

-Okay.

-After his confession,
Stephan Smerk was arrested and charged with the murder
of Robin Lawrence.

Detective Wallace says
her first phone call was to Robin’s daughter, Nicole.

-You could tell the shock, but she didn’t,
um, break down or crumble.

I could tell that she was like,
“Okay, now my job is to notify
the rest of the family.

” -How is it
that he could live his life with his family when he blew up our family
30 years ago? Where’s the justice in that? -Robin’s family prepared
for the next step.

-We really wanted to do a trial.

We wanted.

the world to know.

what he did, and we wanted the spectacle
of that, that satisfaction.

-But would they get that chance? -A week after Stephan Smerk’s
interview with police.

-I’ll take care of the process.

-.

forensic testing confirmed Stephan Smerk’s DNA was a match
to the blood on the washcloth found in Robin’s bathroom.

-It’s a one-in-over-7-million
chance that it would not have been
his DNA.

-On April 4, 2024, Fairfax County Commonwealth
Attorney Steve Descano’s office presented the case
at a preliminary hearing to determine if there was enough
evidence to move forward.

-Look, I’ve dealt
with murderers before.

I can tell you that, in my mind,
Stephan Smerk stands alone as somebody who represents
a true danger to the community.

-Robin’s family saw
Stephan Smerk for the first time
at the hearing.

-I was amazed how big he was.

He needed two bailiffs
around him.

The first thing
I thought of was like, “My aunt didn’t stand a chance.

” -Prosecutors played
Smerk’s confession, and the family heard
the details of Robin’s murder in Smerk’s own words.

-There was no emotion.

It didn’t feel real.

It just made me feel angry.

Like, how could he
have done that? -The judge found probable cause
that Stephen Smerk killed Robin and allowed the case to proceed
to a grand jury.

On April 15th,
a grand jury indicted him, but six months later, he accepted a plea deal
for first-degree murder.

-We get
guaranteed accountability.

-Descano says
the agreement ensured Smerk would be held accountable.

-We had the challenge
of some witnesses passing, other witnesses —
their memories becoming a little bit cloudy
and not as sharp.

-Robin’s family, however,
say they were disappointed.

-We wanted him
to be put on trial.

-On March 7, 2025, Stephen Smerk returned to court
for sentencing.

As part
of the mitigation strategy for a more lenient sentence, his attorney, Dawn Butorac,
told the judge that in the early ’90s, Smerk was a troubled young man struggling with alcohol
and substance abuse.

-He eventually decided,
“I’m gonna join the military,” thinking that that would be
a good choice for him to maybe get
his life stabilized.

-He said he joined the military
so he could kill people.

What did he mean by that? -I never asked him
what he meant by that.

I think it was an idea that “If I go, maybe I can take my anger out
on this.

Maybe this will get me back
on the right track.

” -According to Butorac,
Smerk was also crippled with an undiagnosed
mental illness.

-It wasn’t until
several years later that he eventually was diagnosed
with bipolar II disorder, and when you add
ephedra and alcohol, he was struggling a lot.

-The FDA banned
some ephedra products in 2004, and Butorac says
that was, in part, because when abused
with other substances, they could trigger dangerous
psychiatric side effects.

Did Steve Smerk tell you
that he ever had hallucinations or heard voices
or anything along those lines while taking ephedra?
-No, but you have to remember, at the time, also,
he had undiagnosed bipolar, so it’s hard to figure out
exactly.

what his mental state
was attributable to.

-She says by the time investigators came to Smerk’s
door nearly 30 years later, Smerk had sought help
for his mental-health problems and become sober.

Butorac says
her client confessed and waived his right to a trial because he felt genuine remorse.

But over the 30 years,
did he think about Robin? -Every day.

-Every day? -Every day, he’d think about it.

-But during his statement
to investigators, he doesn’t express empathy
or remorse.

-He always wanted to accept
responsibility.

Acceptance of responsibility
is one form of remorse.

-In the end, the judge sentenced
Stephen Smerk to the maximum sentence allowed
under the plea deal — 70 years with the possibility
of parole.

-I think what he got, as long as he never comes out
of prison, ever, brings closure for me.

-After the sentencing, Ollie Lawrence gave
a statement to the press.

-The Warr and Lawrence family are grateful that justice
has finally been done for the murder
of our beloved Robin.

-Lauren answered a few questions with Robin’s daughter, Nicole,
by her side.

-As much
as it’s a sigh of relief, we still have to live with this.

[Voice breaking] It just
doesn’t go away.

-She’s strong.

She stood next to me, and she held my hand.

Oh, my God,
if her mom could see us! [ Chuckles ] Um, it was great.

-How do you want people
to remember your aunt? -I want people
to remember her as creative, exuberant, very vocal, caring, a beautiful mother.

-She just had a light
that shined from within.

-I feel like she is living
through her art because her art.

-Is everywhere.

-.

emotes.

So, when you do look at her art,
what do you see? -I kind of see the spirit
of Robin.

who she was, how she looked at the world, you know, through her eyes.

And that was good things, happy things, warm things.

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.

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.

Well, 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 like 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 Herman plead not guilty.

I dropped my phone.

I couldn’t believe it.

So, just who is Rex Herman? An architect who ran a company called RH Consultants and Associates.

Rex.

Hello.

How 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 Herman 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’s 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’s 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, you know, his full profile from 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.

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 Shannon Gilbert.

In the early morning hours of May 1st, 2010, 23-year-old Shannon 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 flying to kill me.

Shannon starts running, knocking on doors.

Where are you, Shannon? She screams and then nothing.

Shannon was gone.

Hello.

Hello.

[Applause] K9 searched the area exhaustively for Shawn and Gilbert.

Dominic Veron was chief of detectives at the Suffach 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 Shannon Gilbert.

But it wasn’t Shannon.

Stunned searchers would go on to discover the remains of four other women.

The women were identified as Moren Brainer Barnes, Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.

Like Shannon, all were in their 20s.

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 4.

It’s really, really hard cuz 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 4.

Missy K will never forget the wintry day when she got the devastating news.

The detectives came to my house and just said that Moren has been positively identified as one of the victims on the Ocean Parkway.

Her sister, Maren Brainer Barnes, a mother of two, was the first to disappear on July 9th, 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 Moren had turned to escort work and that July went to New York City for a weekend to make [Applause] money.

On her way home, she called Missy from Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan.

Attention, please.

I could hear the commotion from the train station.

From the time that she called me, it was poof.

She was gone.

She reported Moren missing.

Eventually, officers would tell Missy that after her sister’s disappearance, someone had used Morin’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 2 years to the day that Meen vanished, 24year-old Melissa Bartholomew went missing in July of 2009.

Also from Midtown Manhattan.

Lyn Bartholomew 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.

And 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 believed 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.

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 like she has a special place in my heart.

No one can ever replace her.

Like the other two women, Megan disappeared in the summer on June 6th, 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 in 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 Masipiqua Park.

Amber Costella was the last of the Gilgo fort to disappear.

She lived here just 7 and a half miles from Masipiqua Park.

She used to say she was 411, but she wasn’t.

She was like 4’9, you know? I mean, she was small.

Amber’s friend and former roommate, Dave Showler, 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 Shaller 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, Shaller 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 She gave me a hug.

She’s like, “I love you.

” And she left.

It was nearly midnight.

Shaller says that when Amber left this house, she walked down the street and he never saw her again.

Shaller 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 the one of the only people who knows who he is.

It would be more than a decade before Shallor’s description would lead to a break in the case and a prime suspect.

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 Hermans out there.

Mary Shell and Muriel Henriquez worked with Rex Huerman 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 4 were discovered, Suffach County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison made the announcement.

Authorities believe Rex Huerman is the Long Island serial killer.

Rex Sherman is a demon that walks among us, a predator that ruined families.

The man he calls a demon is a 6’4 architect.

He’s charged with killing Melissa Bartholomew, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, and is the prime suspect in the death of Moren Brainer Barnes.

What has my client told me? He told me he didn’t do this.

Huerman was living about 20 minutes from Gilgo Beach in Masipa Park, the very same town where Megan’s phone last connected with the cell tower.

And Huerman worked here at his architectural firm in Midtown Manhattan, just blocks from where Moren 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, Huerman, lived in this run-down house and has a daughter and stepson with his second wife, Assa.

Assa, 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 Humeman killed the women.

You never got any kind of hint of another life.

No.

two to Muriel Henriquez worked at Huerman’s company RH Consultants and Associates and spoke exclusively to 48 hours.

She says she saw nothing alarming about the Rex Huerman 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, you know, I know everything kind of guy.

Pompus.

Pompus.

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 Huerman’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, you know.

And while she says it never occurred to her that Huerman 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, you know, 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 Huerman in the summer of 2010.

It was the same summer that both Amber Costello and Megan Waterman vanished.

He would talk about, you know, the meat in particular that bear meat 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 Huerman’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 uh 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, you know, that kind of that kind of thing.

John Perezy grew up with Herman.

He says Herman was bullied as a child.

I remember meeting Rex when I was in first and 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 Humman fight back.

He was big enough that if he got upset and started swinging, he would hurt somebody, but he never did.

As Humean 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 Huerman 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 humor men’s, actor Billy Baldwin, took to social media when the news broke, tweeting, “It was mindboggling.

” Rex, hello.

How 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.

Okay.

Been working in Manhattan since 1987.

There’s nothing in my interview that made me think that this person in front of me uh is a dangerous person.

Anwine 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 Huerman 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 that he could outwit the the system.

That’s it folks.

That was Rex.

But Antoine says he remembers it was hard to get Huerman to crack a smile.

It’s selfie time.

Selfie time.

Not even during the signature sunglasses selfies he takes with every guest.

Two.

Three.

Can you smile? That is If police are right, Rex Yur 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.

[Applause] For more than a decade after the discovery of the Gilgo 4, Rex Humeman’s name never appeared on a suspect list until a new task force was formed with Suffach County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison and Suffach County DA Ray Tyranny.

In February of 2022, we formed the task force and then a mere 6 weeks later, Rex Herman 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 Shaller? She’s like, “I love you.

” You know, 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 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.

Shaller 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 Moren, 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 Masipiqua Park.

They called it the box.

So, how large an area is that box? It’s, you know, a couple of blocks within within Masipua 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 aha moment when all of a sudden his name came up? Once we were able to attach the avalanche inside of that massipa box which then attached to Rex Herman, that was a moment where we said, “Okay, there’s something here.

” The task force now had a prime suspect.

And when they looked at Humeman’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 Masipiqua Park or in Midtown Manhattan.

It was always consistent.

Tyranny 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 Huerman does in fact use burner phones.

Investigators say he had two different burner numbers in 2022.

and they say they watched and 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 Hunter 1903.

And all linked to those burner numbers.

And prosecutors say that Huerman was using a burner phone to send these selfies to solicit and arrange for sexual activity.

One of those accounts linked to Huerman, 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 uh torture, uh porn, and depictions of women uh being abused, uh being raped, and being killed.

Investigators also say that while they were busy watching Humen, Huerman 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 their their sisters, their children.

Uh and he was trying to locate those individuals.

The circumstantial evidence was building, but investigators also had physical evidence from the Gilgo 4, 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 Huerman.

Police tailed Huerman and when he threw out this pizza box in this trash can here in Midtown Manhattan, they pounced the pizza, which was, you know, obviously very significant.

Tierney says that Huerman’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% of the population.

That was a remarkable day.

It was, you know, the weekend and, you know, you read, 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.

Uh, 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, we, you know, it was a sudden decision.

We did see him contacting a number of sex workers using a burner phone, which obviously is concerning.

Playing clothes, officers arrested him around the corner from his office.

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