The victory of the police?
More like a cheat.
Last week’s arrest of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuerman was hailed as a major victory, the result of more than a decade of police work. And it makes for a great story – a Hollywood ending, if you will.
Indeed, the case appears to have been sabotaged by former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke, who had many similarities to the serial killer he hunted: the use and abuse of sex workers, a penchant for violent pornography, and a year-long ‘reign of terror’ in his own arrest. final
The Gilgo Beach case has always been worrisome. It wasn’t that Long Islanders, myself among them, lived in fear. Instead, there was a pervasive fear that attends such cases — the fear that, given the victim profile, it may never be solved.
Of the ten bodies recovered from Gilgo Beach, six were female prostitutes. The remains of two other women, a child and an adult man have yet to be identified.
Those known victims belong to an extremely vulnerable group. The stigma surrounding prostitution often means there is little urgency when such women go missing or meet violent ends.
Multiple dead prostitutes found buried along the same Long Island beach, the same distance apart, wrapped in burlap?
Last week’s arrest of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuerman (pictured) was hailed as a major victory, the result of more than a decade of police work. And it makes for a great story – a Hollywood ending, if you will.
In truth, the case appears to have been sabotaged by former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke (pictured, center), who had much in common with the serial killer: abuse of sex workers, a penchant for violent porn and a ‘reign of terror’ culminating in his own arrest.
The fact that these women clearly did not appear to be the victims of a serial killer illuminated this police investigation.
Neither was the witness who told officers in 2010 that the first-generation Chevy Avalanche was seen alive in or around the home of first victim Amber Costello.
That same make of Chevy — a rare vehicle — has been parked outside Human’s house this entire time.
It’s police work 101: identify the car, run the plates, knock on the owner’s front door.
It seems crazy that nothing has happened in over a decade.
Other witnesses in the original case described the suspect to police as an ‘ogre’, a ‘large, white male, approximately 6′ 4″ to 6′ 6″, in his mid-40s, with black, bushy hair and a large oval- 1970s-style glasses.’
So we had a distinctive-looking suspect driving a distinctive-looking car, who lived 15 minutes away from Gilgo Beach.
This case was not just covered up. It was minimal and dismissed.
Here’s Melissa Cann, sister of Gilgo victim Maureen Brainard-Barnes, in New York magazine in 2011. (Heuerman has not been charged with Brainerd-Barnes’ murder, although investigators suspect him.)
‘I drove myself crazy for four years trying to figure out what happened to my sister,’ Cane said. She went to the police to report her sister missing, and whenever she told the police that Maureen was a sex worker, ‘it was like she didn’t care.’
Brainerd-Barnes disappeared on July 9, 2007. He was advertising on Craigslist, the same site where Heuerman was, we’re now told, looking for prostitutes.
But it was his sister who went through his emails and phone logs and text messages, trying to piece together a timeline and identify a possible suspect.
This case was not just covered up. It was minimal and dismissed. Here was Melissa Cann, sister of victim Maureen Brainerd-Barnes in 2011: ‘I drove myself crazy for four years, trying to figure out what happened. [her]… it was good [they] didn’t care.’ (Photo: Burke This Week)
Cops never treated Maureen as a high priority, Kane told New York magazine, not even when her cell phone went off in 2008 from a tower on Long Island.
“Someone was trying to access Maureen’s cell-phone voicemail,” Cann said. ‘I got myself to the point where I didn’t want to get up in the morning and brush my teeth. I don’t want to go to sleep. I just wanted to find out where my sister was. I have been fired from my job. I was like, I can find another job, but I can’t find another sister.’
Still, the police did little. Now we know why.
James Burke was promoted to chief of the Suffolk County Police Department a few months after the first four bodies were found in 2010, including Brainard-Burns.
A few months after the first four bodies were found, James Burke was promoted to chief of the Suffolk County Police Department.
Burke’s first order of business: get rid of the FBI, which has launched its own investigation into the murders.
‘Burke never wanted to implicate us,’ an FBI source said in 2015, ‘because he knew we were investigating him.’
Yes. A serial killer was lurking, occasionally calling and pranking victims’ families, but Burke was most concerned with finding and arresting the man who had stolen a bag from his car – a bag containing torture porn and sex toys.
Once that suspect, a young heroin addict named Christopher Loeb, was arrested, Burke brutally beat him and threatened to kill him in his own police station.
This led to an FBI investigation of Burke and much more was to be uncovered. For example: a 1993 incident in which Burke, then a uniformed police officer, was caught having sex with a prostitute in his squad car. He was reprimanded for that.
Apparently emboldened, Burke continued to patronize sex workers. He allegedly fathered a child with a prostitute and attended sex parties in Long Beach, Nassau County. A woman, who went by Lee Ann, said she saw Burke having ‘rough sex’ with another prostitute and ‘drag a girl by her hair.’
Sex workers talk to each other as a way to stay safe. If Burke was a known entity to them, how could he not be a known entity to the other police? The detectives?
What kind of moral decay allows Burke to be in charge of the investigation?
There’s more: Burke allegedly smoked crack. His office turns into an open bar at the end of each workday. He enjoyed cigars dipped in brandy, hung out with disgraced officials and had underlings ‘ritual surveillance’ over his girlfriends and her ex-lovers. Sounds more like stalking.
A ‘psychopath’ former colleagues described him.
Finally, in 2016, Burke was sentenced to 46 months in prison for hitting Loeb — a slap on the wrist.
One woman said she saw Burke having ‘rough sex’ with a prostitute and ‘drag a girl by her hair.’ What kind of moral lapse allowed him to be in charge of the investigation? (Photo: The first four Gilgo hunts, clockwise from top left, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman and Maureen Brainard-Barnes).
Now that Heuerman is in custody and the case has gained new momentum, it’s time to open another investigation: How was Burke able to hold so much power for so long? And how did the FBI so easily steer him away from this local but terrifying case?
If not for James Burke, would Rex Heuerman have been arrested sooner?
Well, consider that within a month of Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison forming a new task force in February 2022 — that included local police departments, the sheriff’s office, New York State Police and the FBI — Heuerman was identified as a suspect. .
A month.
Gilgo Beach victims are not limited to those who were murdered. Their families are also victims of a corrupt police force, led by its own kind of monster.
Remember that when you are patting the media or investigators on the back of the prosecutor in this case.
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said at a news conference Friday, ‘Rex Heuerman is a monster that walks among us, a predator that destroys families. The same can be said for Burke.
Yes, it was very good police work over the past 18 months that led to the capture of Heuerman. But for all the advances in DNA technology that police are citing, it’s clear they could have arrested him sooner.
This case should not have taken so long. All victims are owed an account.