This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, If you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his own rules. Segregation in the day, integration at night. It was like stepping on another world. Was he a businessman, a criminal, a hero? Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush you. Charlie's Place from Atlas Obscura and Visit Myrtle Beach. Listen to Charlie's Place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Tenderfoot listeners. We want to hear from you. We just launched a survey and want to know about your favorite shows, your merch requests, and what you'd like to listen to in 2026. Give us the gift of your feedback, and you might be one of our winners to get free merch and a $100 Amazon gift card. Head over to tenderfoot.tv slash survey for more. Thanks again. Now here's the show. Hey, Monster listeners, it's your host, Josh Zeman. So you're about to hear a conversation I had with investigative journalist Maggie Freeling. We talk about what led me to make Monster, and how her visiting old footage from another project about the Long Island serial killer led me to my own jinx moment. We'll also delve into the island's unsettling history with serial murder and how suburbia and the pressures of conformity can create real-life monsters. And of course, we'll discuss the upcoming trial, the alleged killer, Rex Yorman. Hope you enjoy our chat, and thanks again for listening. Josh, I'm super excited to talk to you. I am from Long Island. So naturally, you know, when this all became a thing, I was super interested in it, especially because I grew up with the visits. I went to school with them. So are you from New York? Yeah. So I am from Staten Island, but I was born in Long Island. I lived in Seacliff, Long Island before moving to Staten Island. And then my family moved back to Long Island, to the Port Jeff area. So always been connected with Long Island in some way, shape, or form. And as you know, being from Long Island, Long Island is just this very unique community, right? And the question is, why? Why is it so weird? And why were there four active serial killers in 1993 operating Long Island? And that's, you know, is it because it is the original bedroom community, Levittown? is it because you have all these people going out to Long Island who work theoretically in New York? And so is that pressure to be to conform and be bucolic? Does that result in a lot of really aberrant behavior boiling underneath the surface? There was a book recently I was scanning about the Pacific Northwest and why so many serial killers come from out there. And they were talking about some sort of pollution. And Long Island itself is quite polluted. I mean, we have a few Air Force bases, Grumman, Brookhaven Labs, power plants. I mean, so that could be there could be something to that as well. There could. You know, you're talking about Myrtle Land, which basically was saying that somehow lead poisoning may have like contributed to this. And, you know, interesting theory. But I really think a lot of this is about social conformity. Social. OK. I personally do. You know, granted, there's so many other amazing things about Long Island. I wrote a screenplay about Brookhaven Lab. Oh, wow. Yeah, just because it's cool. And then, of course, Stranger Things was based upon Long Island and all those kind of conspiracy theories about what happened out at Montauk. And so it's really culturally rich in terms of what's going on. But yeah, why so many serial killers in Long Island? But look, at the same time, Long Island is huge, right? Not many people know that. Not many people know how big Long Island is. We're really talking about a place that's the size of Phoenix or, you know, it's a big, big community. And it's in the shadow of New York City. Is your background in media, before we jump right into the case, you know, I want to get into your work a little bit. Cropsey, that was the first documentary I knew you for, but what were you doing before that? Tell me a bit about your journey. Well, I went to school for journalism, but I quickly got working in the film industry and production. I used to produce a lot of movies. I wanted to do my own horror film. And at the time, I couldn't get the money. But I was like walking in the woods in Staten Island. And like this mental institution was right there. And everything was right there. And this was at the time that Blair Witch had come out. So I was like, okay, bet. You know, can I do something that's real, that's just as scary as somebody trying to fake real? And I knew I had this Geraldo footage of this mental institution back in the 70s. I knew how disturbing that would be. So where they kind of did this fake footage to make it seem like a documentary, I said, let's take a documentary and try and give it a horror feeling. It was great. It scared the shit out of me. Me too. Were you always into like crime and kind of this morbid world? Yeah, my dad was the like, kind of like the executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America, which is this kind of like a whole bunch of mystery writers get together, a lot of old blue haired ladies. But then there were cool folks there as well. So as a kid, they were just like my parents had a library of books and it was all mysteries. And I got to meet Stephen King when I was a kid. He told me how to make fake blood. That's so cool. Yeah, like eight years old. He had just made Creepshow. So I was always interested in, you know, as a kid who grew up with Stephen King and things like that, I was always into mysteries. But my dad was like a Sherlock Holmes dude. And I was like, OK, this is just when documentaries are starting to come into their own. And I was like, OK, I want to be a filmmaker so we could take that whole idea of crime and mystery and move it into the documentary world. So your transition to podcasting, was this your first podcast? It's so interesting because as a filmmaker, you only get to tell so much of the story because of cutting. And so we did Sons of Sam on Netflix. And I want to tell a different part of the story that I didn't get to tell in the series. And so I said, hey, Netflix, can I make a podcast? And they're like, well, that's a lot of your marketing budget. I was like, I don't care. You know, I really want to make this podcast. And so I did a podcast. I did it with Tenderfoot. I did it with Donald, and so I brought kind of him on because I wanted one of the best. And I had met Payne at the first CrimeCon, and so I was making documentary doc series, and he was making podcasting, and we were kind of in two different orbits. But now I think those orbits have collided a little bit, And I think it's a lot harder to mix unique style of documentary series, especially like the stuff that I'm interested in, which is a little bit more morbid and a little bit more creepy and kind of the intersection between crime and urban legend and all that other stuff. So podcasting is just a natural extension of me just as a storyteller, to be honest with you. So let's go. The podcast. I love how you guys kind of flash between the killing season and the new information. And there's this one line where you say, like, we didn't even realize how close we got to him. And I'm thinking of this moment where you guys think you spoke to Hewerman on the phone. Explain to me when you guys were making the podcast, did you always think like, OK, we're going to flash back to these moments in the killing season? Just tell me about the process of making it and going back 10 years later. The moment Rex Yorman got caught is really the question. We had looked at so many potential suspects. And part of our thing was going through and looking at those suspects that people were talking about online in the chat rooms, but the police weren't addressing it. Anyone from Bissett to a whole bunch of other people. And so that was really important. We kind of felt like maybe we could clear up a lot of the chatter. So when Rex was arrested and it was him, I was like, oh, my God. Then it came out that there was a piece of information in a file somewhere from Dave Schaller, one of the roommates of Amberlynn Costello, the last victim, that he had told police that there was an ogre who came to the house with a green avalanche. And so when we heard this clue, we were like, oh, my God, Dave told us about this. but by that time, Netflix had already done their deal with Liz Garvis, and I was making another film at the time, and I couldn't just jump off to do another one. So we knew we had this one, at least one bit of information, but we knew we had other bits of information. For example, when we heard that he was a duck hunter, we're like, oh my God, that was the first scene Rachel and I ever filmed where we're looking, and it was duck hunting. So crazy. So that was something in the doc that I kind of brushed off. I was like, whatever. We did, too. It was like, Duck Hunter, you're nuts. Didn't even think about it. It was like a fleeting moment. And now that you guys are the podcast, you go back to that and it's so like, oh, my God, it's right there. Literally, it was one of the first scenes that we had ever talked about because part of the original sizzle was this online community that was kind of coming out of this case because the people weren't the police weren't talking about it. And this guy's like, Duck Hunter. Yeah, he's a duck hunter. And now in retrospect, it all makes so much sense. Like it's so easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but it makes complete sense. So there were all these kind of clues. And of course, when you go back and look through all the footage, there's all these really subtle moments like the original police chief was right. But now we know that there's all this there was all this corruption. And so it's just so interesting to kind of go back and look. And I think part of this podcast was realizing that the story is not over. There is a lot more kind of buried underneath the politics of what we're hearing. Elaborate on that. What do you mean by there's more? Do you mean there's more women to be found or go on? With regards to Dave Shaller, right? And this is what you'll hear in the final episode, which is the police have characterized they're missing this clue as if it had been something written down in a file and shoved away and it was kind of like lost and forgotten about. But when you go and you speak to Dave Schaller, Dave Schaller's like, no, it wasn't like some kind of one report that was filed away. Like the police came and interviewed me five or six times and five or six times I told them about the Chevy Avalanche. They came back with a board, like a lineup board of different vehicles and said, pick the vehicle out. He picked the vehicle out. Then they had another witness who corroborated this Chevy avalanche. So this wasn't one missed note. They were on to this Chevy avalanche They also knew at the time through numerous different sources that the perpetrator theoretically lived in Massapequa So they had the Chevy Avalanche they had a Massapequa. Supposedly, they did a search in this online database called Lawman, which they could have put the vehicle in. And for some reason, maybe because the vehicle is somewhat of a hybrid vehicle, it's both a half pickup and a half SUV that they didn't get it. but they just would have done this littlest curserial look. So the point is, I don't think it was somebody kind of like overlooking something that got pushed in a file. I think there had to be, had to be some sort of obfuscation where, and one of the theories that we put out is that information from the detectives was not being passed along to the higher-ups. and that is because we now know at the time, Chief Burke, James Burke, who we now know was arrested for some other things and the district attorney at the time were trying to take over the Suffolk County Police Department. So we believe that in trying to take over the Suffolk County Police Department, James Burke, who was friendly with all these detectives, was saying, hey, don't pass any information along, just wait till I get there and then we'll kind of go in and look at it. So we believe this clue was on purpose, not actioned. I'm not saying that they knew that this would have led to the killer. I'm just saying that they just generally like, hey, if you got good clues, just don't pass anything up the ladder. It's so shocking to find that out. And, you know, like you guys mentioned in the podcast, the lack of information just allowed rumors to swell. And I was always a big advocate that Burke was somehow involved in all of this. And I really liked you talking about that in the podcast and kind of really being like, no, he wasn't. He just sucked in a whole other way. You know, the thing about Burke, people are always like, oh, he's a killer. The tragic thing is he didn't have to. He didn't have to because he could just he was just such a, you know, bad guy that he could abuse his power, you know, go have these parties with women, do whatever he wanted to do. He didn't have to kill him. That's the tragedy. He was he was that untouchable. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun. Tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. he became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor! Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in the 10 years since making the killing season and monster i'm sure you thought about the case and i'm sure you were still pretty plugged in did you know an arrest was going to happen how much did you know what was going on behind the scenes were you kind of ready for this i i was getting calls all the time that arrests were going to happen. But there were a number of different people who were supposed to be arrested. There was a cop, you know, who was supposed to be arrested and that didn't happen. But a cop, it looked like there was this other cop that they were going to arrest. You know, Long Island is a messed up place. Suffolk County is a messed up place. There is so much corruption. I was telling people today, I was literally saying like, oh, you know, we did the killing season. We uncovered a bunch of corruption in Suffolk County. And the guy was live. He's like, yeah, you think? I was like, yeah, but in this case, like you had a district attorney go to jail. Yeah, that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. Like you have to be wicked corrupt to go to jail. And at the end of the day, it's about money. You know, why did they want to take over the police department? Because Suffolk County is the second highest paying police department in the United States. You got guys pulling down 300,000 a year, you know, pension funds. And what a lot of people don't talk about, and we didn't even get into like next level, is you have a police department that literally is its own super PAC. It's its own political party. And they control sway over everything that goes on in Suffolk County. So it's a recipe for corruption and disaster. How much of that still lingers today? That's the question. I was speaking with Gus Garcia Roberts, who wrote Jimmy the King, which is a great book. And he's like, look, you'd think that they'd learn their lesson. James Burke and D.A. Spoda were so bad that they ended up taking down the whole police department. But you would think that they would learn, but they haven't. James Burke still gets a pension. And you're like, what? This guy who's in jail still gets a pension? Oh, yeah, still gets a pension, still has the full support of the Police Benevolent Association. So it still goes on until you break that power chain, you know, that stranglehold where where the police benevolent association controls so much financial power. I don't think you're ever going to change it. It's just it's too alluring. It's it's the system is rigged in some respects. Sure. And like we've mentioned, Suffolk County is, you know, outside of New York City. It's all kind of part of this big empire of power concentrated right there. It's pretty wild. So I guess I want to know, do you think Amber was the last and how many more victims do you think there are? That's a really interesting question. So speaking to experts like Mark Safrick, FBI profiler, he just did a paper about sexual sadists specifically. Rex allegedly is a sexual sadist. So this is different from some other types. And he has found that typically their libido, if you will, goes down once they go over 50. You know, it's not just the desire is not there. It's just it takes a lot of work to do all this. So was she the last victim? I believe so. But again, I wouldn't be surprised if there were others. you also have to remember Shannon Gilbert had disappeared, you know, right around that time. So I think the police were definitely on onto him or at least looking. And so I think he probably kind of went underground for that reason. But then there was so people say, yeah, but there was so long between when they caught him. And yeah, you know, the question is whether he was kind of gearing back up again because he had gotten a burner phone. And that was one of the reasons why the police said that they arrested them when they didn't, even though they were like trailing him for so long. I also think it's hard to keep secrets in Long Island, which would another reason. But who knows? But from so we know, at least when we look at a lot of serial murders, sexual sadists, they tend to stop or go down or the desire, you know, kind of lessens. Of course, there are always anomalies that people will talk about Samuel Little, et cetera. But so chances are No, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. But I think the real question that everybody points to is whether Sondra Castilla is the first victim. And I think more of the consensus, if we're going to concentrate on like finding more victims, I think it's highly likely that there are far more victims. How many women do you think there are? logic says that he didn't start when he was i think we're saying like sondra castillo would have been like 30 so i think logic would say that um he started earlier than that and so it's hard to say it's really hard to say when we have like a serial killer like this people are like oh my god he could be the most prolific ever that's a hard number that's hard to do uh considering how bad some individuals are. But there's definitely more. I was always so struck by the killing season mentioning there could be two different killers, you know, the trophy killer and the torso killer. I forget if they were the same or different. It's been so long. But mentioning there was two killers on Ocean Parkway, potentially. Yeah. Thinking about it now, you know, you guys mentioned in the podcast, did he potentially know Bitrolf? They were hunting in the same lodge or same area, something like that. Can you talk to me a bit about Bitrolf and these questions of did they know each other? Most of it stems from if you look at the timeline We know that Bitrolf is connected to two women His DNA was found on two women Rita Tangretti and Colleen Maguire So what happens, and this is in 93, what happens is theoretically, John Bitroff kills his first victim, 93. I think it's November. Two weeks later, Rex Yorman kills his first victim, allegedly and theoretically, Sondra Castilla. So are we suggesting that somehow it's coincidence that this guy, John Bittroff, kills a woman and then two weeks later, Rex Hewerman kills his first victim? Is there a reason for that? Was Rex trying to, in some respects, like, you know, kill somebody allegedly and then that would somehow be blamed on Bittroff? Then we have the Manorville connection, which is Rex Eurman starts to deposit two of his victims in the first in 2000, Valerie Mack, and then secondly, Jessica Taylor in 2003. And he deposits them, their remains, their torsos in Manorville. Well, Bitroff lives in Manorville. You know, he lives five miles away. So here's a second strange coincidence. Like, why would Rex choose Manorville? We now know Rex is a hunter, and we knew that Bitroff was a hunter. And we now know that Rex Hurman, he had instructed and gone to competitions at the Peconic Sportsman's Club, which is in Manorville. So maybe that's why he chose Manorville, because he was connected to hunting, right? Duck Hunter, that's why he chose Ocean Parkway. Manorville, big hunting era. We also know that he's into marksmanship. So he's on the high school-like marksman's team. So there's all this hunting motif. And so we just wonder, like, did these guys know each other from hunting? And I'm not saying like they're calling each other up on the phone. But I am saying like there there could be a kind of competition or something like that. How do you account for Bitrov putting his first victim and then two weeks later Rex starting with his first victim? You know, when you say like some sort of competition, are you saying like they potentially knew? of each other? I'm not saying they knew of each other. I'm saying Rex, does Rex read in the paper that a sex worker has been killed and her body has been found in northern Long Island? And then he's like, well, you know, this would be a convenient way for me to kill somebody and dispose of a body. And so I'm going to take advantage of that. You know, we know Rex was doing all these forensic countermeasures not to be caught. So it's not out of the realm that he would, this would be a, quote, forensic countermeasure, you know, having another serial killer take the heat for one of his victims. And again, we know that the DA thought that to be true. So, you know, if it did, it worked. You know, otherwise, is it coincidence? Well, you know, while I believe in coincidence and you have to believe in coincidence, if you don't believe that Shannon Gilbert was killed, you know, this coincidence in this case is crazy. You said that in a way that makes me think that you do believe Shannon was killed. Look, I don't know what happened with Shannon Gilbert. I don't believe Joe Brewer and Michael Pack, the client and the driver, were connected because it would make very little logical sense for them to kind of like set themselves up like that. That would be like completely dumb. And also when you listen to Joe Brewer's 911 calls, he's calling 911, he's going out to do missing persons reports. I don't think Brewer's that smart, to be honest with you, to like to like put it all together. And I don't think, you know, everybody's like, well, why would Michael Pack the driver leave? And he's like, because he doesn't care. You know, he you know, he deals with a lot of sex workers driving them around all the time. And I'm sure, you know, he just doesn't care. That's why he left. He doesn't want to be there, you know. So. So everybody's like, why would he do it? Like he doesn't one guy is not that smart. The other guy doesn't care. But I don't think she's being chased in the woods. Do I think maybe somebody gave her a sedative that could have easily happened? So, no, I don't believe that Shannon Gilbert was hunted down, chased and hunted down in the woods. And if you don't believe that, then the fact that she led to the other victims is a crazy coincidence. So if you have to believe that coincidence, then I guess Rex Hewerman with Bittroff is another coincidence. But there will be so many coincidences. At some point, there can't be this many coincidences. When he was arrested, were you, what were your first reactions to who he was, this architect? Like, who did, what did you think? First of all, I was like, I don't believe it. Like, prove it, prove it, prove it. Because Suffolk County had done so many ridiculously incorrect things and other police departments. But then when I heard he lived in Massapequa, I was like, you know, and then when I heard he was an architect, I was like, you know, so there were like and then when I started to see like when I knew that he really started frequent sex workers, I was like, you know, and so then when I learned that he worked in New York City, I was like, like there were it started to all fall into place like, OK, you know, plus it was a new guy in Suffolk, Canada. The DA Tierney was obviously an adult versus the other guys who were criminals. Doing his job, yeah. He was doing his job versus like Spoda, you couldn't trust him on anything. Like, did he really believe that back in the day that Bitrov had been connected with all these victims? I mean, we now know, for example, that when D.A. Spoda is having a fight with the police chief, Richard Dormer, who's since passed away, they're having a public battle about how many serial killers they're dealing with. A public battle. Nobody would ever have a public battle because if you ever brought this guy to trial, the defense attorney would point back to this thing and be like, look, even the police chief and the D.A. weren't in understanding. We now know that that public battle wasn't really about the number of serial killers. We now know that D.A. Spoto was trying to publicly embarrass Richard Dorman because he wanted Dorman to be kicked out so that James Burke could be put in. So Spoto doesn't even care about the integrity of the investigation. He's just Machiavelli wants power and is willing to do whatever. So knowing this, you can't trust anything that happened in the past. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. he became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor! Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. for me I think one of the most shocking parts where I was like oh wow this really ties it ties it in because I work in wrongful conviction so I see them get the wrong person all the time that's what I do so for the first time I heard in your podcast that he had worked at Jones Beach during the summers. And that kind of just sold me. It just made sense. That's when I was like, okay, this is the guy. And then I had never heard all of those pieces of clothing were found at Jones Beach. Well, basically, they started redoing one of the beach houses at Jones Beach, and they found all these clothes buried and blouses and pocketbooks. And who would bury them and why? like, and that could be a couple of different things. Very, we all know that people scan, go through, um, the beach while people are swimming or people are sleeping and they'll go in and they'll steal people's stuff. Right. Happens all the time. You're lying there on a blanket, you're completely asleep or you're out in the water and somebody is walking around stealing stuff. And then they go through everything. And then rather than just throw in the trash, they bury it. Why would they not just throw in the trash? Because then they don't, because then somebody's going to be looking, know that like there's a thief around. So they'll bury it. So it could be that. However, the same week that this piece of information was put out that these workers had found all these buried clothes with like ripped buttons and maybe a bloody glove and that had been buried there for so long we had been speaking with John Parisi who was a like childhood friend of Rex Hewerman And he told us that Rex Hewerman used to steal girls clothing out of their lockers as a kind of trophy thing you know And then you're like, OK, that's really interesting. And like there were ripped buttons on them and things like that, broken zippers. And then it started like all kind of like, all right, is this connected? because it would make sense, right? He's stealing clothes out of girls' lockers, girls that theoretically had, like, upset him because he would go and ask them on dates and they would, like, laugh in his face because he was so big. And so he, like, brings them to work and then buries them, you know? Creepy. But then when you learn, like, how he loved Jones Beach and how he knew Jones Beach and Ocean Parkway and he went hunting on Ocean Parkway, like, obviously, obviously, the beach, Jones Beach and Ocean Parkway is a thing, a real thing for him. He's working there as a kid when his hormones are raging. You know, that's also important. He's driving around on SUV at night and then he's going hunting there with it. I believe he went hunting there with his father. And that's one of the reasons why there's, why there's, you know, the belt, the initials on the belt is not a coincidence. You know, it's an homage. So, you know, and we've got pictures of him standing in the water around those areas in Gilgo Beach hunting. So it's all about like feeling your power and sexual scripts. So in Monster, you go into a bit of Rex's childhood and his background. And there's always this question of nature versus nurture when you encounter these kinds of killers. Do you have an opinion on with Rex if that was nature and nurture? What did you find when you explored his childhood? Well, I think this is one of the really interesting things because I couldn't find a lot of information about Rex, about his personal life. You know, people had concentrated on the fact that he's so big and he looks like a monster. But when you go in and you really look at it, that's where it really becomes interesting. You learn how Rex was bullied. He wasn't bullied, interestingly enough, because he was a wimp, a small guy. He was bullied because he was so big and ogre-ish. And so the bullying, we see that with another Long Island serial killer, Joel Rifkin, also bullied. I also found out, I was like, oh, he was bullied by other boys. And John Parisi's like, uh-uh. The boys, that was like fighting. The girls, it was the girls who were like especially cruel. And I was like, oh, snap. Like suddenly the wheels start to turn. You're like, okay. So he's got serious anger issues. And then when we got into it and I learned, I didn't even know about this. Like I learned, for example, you speak to the psychological person, Joni Johnson, and she's like, look, it's like, people think it's connected to BDSM. And what people get off on on BDSM is another partner being compliant. Like they love that the partner loves that pain. And I was like, oh, yeah, of course. What a sexual sadist gets off on is the other partner saying, no, stop, please don't. And I was like, OK, that's that's kind of sick and nuts. I could see it, you know, but that's nuts. and so you learn about that and that's connected to the bullying and these fantasies these revenge fantasies are happening right at the point at which puberty is setting in so these revenge fantasies somehow get mixed in with sex and then you're like okay i get it and then and then at the same time they get mixed in with like you know he's obviously got angers anger issues against women. But then the fact that he goes to sex workers so much, it's like a way for him to use anger issues against women who are theoretically selling their bodies. So then he's like, you whore, you know, that that type of thing. And so it's like, oh, my God, this is so complicated. But then you also look and he had a father who was like a drunk who beat him. The father dies early at 12 years old. And you're like, oh, my God, it's all coming together. It's also interesting. So, but then he also has some, some obviously chemical imbalances, you know, in terms of narcissism and things like that. So you learn, and there's a statement that was, was very interesting. It's like nature is the gun and nurture pulls the trigger. Like everything can be there, but it's a mix, right? It's a mixture. It's a specific mixture and too much of this and it, it tastes bad and too little and it doesn't taste enough. So with serial murder, I think it's like the mixture has to be there. All the elements have to be there. And then it just has to be mixed in just the right fashion with just the right amount of ingredients. And then you get a Rex Heuermann. You know, this is the big question. Do you think it's possible to identify these things early and prevent a Rex Heuermann? Absolutely. I talked to I talked to Joni about that. And people are like, what? Why? Why even talk about Rex this way? And it's like, look. The signs were all there. The red flags were all there. he's a big ogre-ish kid who's sitting in the back of the room not talking and he's getting bullied okay, whose father had died early like if there was a coach a teacher, anybody who stepped in against the bullying they could have prevented eight or nine deaths and maybe more it's that easy it's like we don't have to have some like significant marker where it's like pre-crime you know, minority report Like, uh-uh. Like, it doesn't need to go that. It's like, find the kid who's being bullied and talk to the kid who's being bullied and find some way to get that kid some help. Find the kid whose dad has died, you know? Like, it's so easy. It's tragic. What are the questions that you have outstanding? What is next? Is there going to be a follow-up? I know you didn't think anything was really going to happen after killing season, and here we are. So what's next? What are your questions? I mean, two days ago, the Nassau County Police Department put an indictment in for a woman named Tanya Dykes. So Tanya is Peaches. And so Peaches, Tanya, her remains had been found in 1997. Her torso had been found in Hempstead Park, found in an ink glue container. We found out later that she was connected to remains also found deposited on Gilgo Beach, on Jones Beach, actually. She was originally Jane Doe number three. Now, she had a child who was with her, and that toddler was also found on Ocean Parkway. So everybody believed that this was allegedly wrecks because the body was found on Ocean Parkway, because it was a torso, because it was happening around the same time as some other victims had been dismembered. So we all always believed it was Rex Hewerman. And now suddenly the Nassau County Police Department have put an indictment out for her husband saying it's it's him. Now, I have reasons to believe that it's not him based upon where the where and how the bodies were found on Ocean Parkway and Jones Beach. Again, it would have to be an unbelievable coincidence for this guy to pick this one area. Basically, in 97, he deposits the remains of Tanya two miles from Karen Vergata, who was theoretically one of Rex's victims, picked up in 96. So that that would be a coincidence. and then burying the toddler tragically further away. The toddler would have been placed there in 97, but then allegedly, if we're to believe what Nassau County is saying, Rex Hewerman comes in and puts the remains of Valerie Mack only 211 feet away in 2000. So we're not just talking about like one coincidence of Jane Doe number three slash Tanya's remains being near Karen Bregada, but we're talking about the remains of this other individual, the toddler being next to Valerie Mack. So again, it doesn't really make sense. And of course, anything could be true, but just doesn't make sense. So we're finding out new things every day. It has been so great speaking with you, Josh. Is there anything else that you want to talk about or tease in the podcast? There's new stuff happening every day. We're taking this stuff. We're going to have additional episodes. We're also going to have new information coming out on my YouTube, which is Sinister with Josh Zeman, where you can get that pieces of information. But I look forward to, like, the trial. I mean, it's really going to be about the trial. There's going to be so many more answers that come out during the trial. And Monster, this series, is going to continue with that trial. Amazing. I'm so excited. Do you expect him to take any kind of plea deal? Oh, that's the million-dollar question. You've got to think about the families. I want answers, too, but I don't want to hear. And I'm sure the families don't want to hear how their loved one was tortured and brutalized and not just like regular torture. Like we're talking like sick, sick stuff. So as much as I want answers, the one thing I don't want is what happened like in the Karen Reed case. That's a travesty of justice. You know, we're all here to make sure that the victims get their names back, to make sure that the case is properly handled and that, you know, somebody's got to be watching the detectives, especially in Suffolk County, and that justice gets served. Those are the goals. It's not about likes and it's not about hot takes and it's not about, you know, all the things that happen in Karen Reed. So I get concerned. This was never a thing that happened originally in true crime. So we've got to keep our eyes on the prize here. Absolutely. All right, Josh, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 14 years in prison for killing a young woman. A 15-year sentence for a crash that caused three deaths. 12 and a half years for killing a child and critically injuring her mother. All true stories, all caused by marijuana-impaired drivers. No matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So, if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature, trees, and praying, and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is the government hiding proof of intelligent life beyond our planet? A new season of High Strange is here. The explanation keeps changing, but the stories don't go away. Videos appearing to show UFOs flying through the air are real. My name is Payne Lindsey, and my new season of High Strange goes deeper into real encounters, first-hand accounts, and the explanations that never seem to stick. Images of that rotating thing captured by U.S. Navy aircraft. I talked to scientists, military witnesses, pilots, and people who saw something they can't unsee. There is no other explanation for what we saw that day. I remembered those faces and they weren't human. High Strange is available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To binge the entire season of High Strange now, ad-free, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
