The Long Island Serial Killer: Gatekeepers, Gore, and Grifting: Attorney John Ray’s Press Conference

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[00:01:40] sexual violence, torture, bestiality, and murder. On June 13th, 2024, attorney John Ray held a press conference near his office in Miller Place, Suffolk County, Long Island in New York. We recently reviewed WFLA's live stream of the press conference in which Mr. Ray discussed

[00:02:06] a variety of topics around the Long Island serial killer case, also known as the case against Rex Huerman, a New York City architect from Massapequa Park, Long Island who is now accused of murdering a number of women in Long Island, most notably a number of sex workers around

[00:02:25] Gilgo Beach. So a number of our listeners actually reached out to us about this press conference wanting to know what we thought and wanting to know essentially what our take on this was.

[00:02:37] So I took the liberty of reviewing all of it today and we're going to talk about what we thought and what we think this might mean for the case going forward. My name is Anya Kane, I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee, I'm an attorney.

[00:02:56] And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is the Long Island serial killer, gatekeepers Gore and Grifting,

[00:03:12] attorney John Ray's press conference. For those of you who may not be as familiar with the Long Island serial killer case, John Ray is an attorney who represents the family of Shannon Gilbert.

[00:04:08] Shannon Gilbert was a young lady, a sex worker who went missing on Long Island after being asked to come as an escort to a home near Gilgo Beach. And her body was ultimately found

[00:04:26] not too far away from the documented alleged victims of Rex Huerman, but she has never been officially listed as a victim. Our understanding is that police essentially believe that this may have been an accident. So she goes missing in 2010. It's the search for her that ultimately

[00:04:50] leads to the discovery of the other bodies. So it's a very bizarre thing, and it's something that I think a lot of us have gone back and forth on. What are the chances? What are the chances

[00:05:01] that a sex worker goes missing in these circumstances and then other bodies are found, but then she's found and maybe it's not related? It's very confusing. It's very bizarre. It's a lot to unpack. And so it's understandable that her family sought out the representation of an

[00:05:18] attorney, in this case, John Ray, to look after their interests in the case. He's been very, very vocal over the years. He's been praised for keeping interest in the case alive to a certain

[00:05:30] extent and for advocating for the Gilbert family. He's also been criticized by making some outlandish claims. We're going to kind of come into this a bit clean and look at the press conference for

[00:05:41] just what it is and what is stated there and talk about that. And to give credit where credit is due, I had to be out of the house on unavoidable business. So as Anya says, she's the one that

[00:05:55] reviewed this. And so you'll be getting my reactions off the cuff as she gives us her take on what happened. Just to make sure, usually we do all this together. This is an Anya production.

[00:06:07] So you're blaming me if this all goes off the rails. That's what you're doing. Classic attorney move. I in no way co-sign any of this. It's one of those things, I really was like,

[00:06:19] I could just do this. I can knock this out. It was a hard to watch press conference for a number of reasons. And let me just add, Rex Huerman only came up in this case recently. He was only

[00:06:32] arrested and charged relatively recently. This has all been going on since 2010, 2011. Was like late last summer. Yeah. And one of John Ray's big moves was to sue a man named Dr. Charles Peter Hackett,

[00:06:47] who was a guy who sort of seemingly, according to Ray, sort of inserted himself in the case that he blamed for the wrongful death of Shannon Gilbert. He apparently made claims about like,

[00:07:00] I tried to help her that night. She was kind of running around between the houses yelling, help me, help me. And he made claims that then the family was suspicious of. So that is an ongoing lawsuit. This is a civil attorney. This is not a prosecutor. He's not

[00:07:14] a defense attorney necessarily for anyone because he's representing victims' families. But it's important to kind of codify who he is. Because I think when people hear lawyer, they just, they don't, what does that even mean? So that's something.

[00:07:28] A lot of people understandably tend to, you hear the word lawyer tossed around. You give that person some credibility. See, I'm married to a lawyer, so I don't do that. A lot of people are suspicious of lawyers. I think

[00:07:43] we should take what people are saying based on what they're saying and not necessarily attribute. I mean, one thing. And also one thing with the lawyer is lawyers don't get into cases or anything like that for their

[00:07:56] health. They get into a case and start making statements and stuff because they are representing someone's interests. And so they're biased. Yeah, that's very true. I actually, I joke about the lawyers sometimes. Again, you see on TV,

[00:08:13] on podcasts, someone is brought on just as a lawyer and they don't necessarily know anything about a case. But that actually happens with investigative reporters too. A lot of people claim the mantle of investigative reporter without really necessarily

[00:08:26] earning that, in my opinion. So I think that it's important to kind of look at what someone is doing specifically rather than just what their job title is. Because as much as I do trust experts on cases, having a specific job title does not an expert make.

[00:08:43] But in this case, there's a lot of claims of expertise here. So at this press conference, to give a nutshell of what claims were made. You said it was hard to watch. Yes. Before we get into the claims, I'm just curious. What made it hard to watch?

[00:08:58] I'm not trying to sound kink shaming here. I'm really not. But there was a lot of kind of gross imagery around sexual stuff, around cannibalism that just made me feel kind of ill. And a lot

[00:09:13] of talk about furries and bestiality. So it did not make for pleasant viewing. And personally, John Ray's mannerisms and bravado grated on me a lot. So there were a couple of reasons why I just

[00:09:30] found it difficult to watch the content and also the delivery, I guess. So all of it. Are you trying to lose weight and feeling like you're getting absolutely nowhere? Well, weight loss can be a uniquely challenging goal, one that leaves many of us feeling isolated and frustrated.

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[00:12:06] You've told me just a little bit about what this press conference is about, but before I get into those claims, you talk about kink shaming and things of that nature. I think it's important to realize that no matter what your particular interests are in that area,

[00:12:23] they can sound ridiculous to people who don't share them. And so I encourage us all to be open and not be judgmental because a person has an interest in an area that we maybe don't understand

[00:12:38] or don't get. To me, as long as everybody's consenting, there are no children involved, and there's no animals being harmed for the most part, that's between you and whoever you're doing it with. So I'm certainly not trying to kink shame. But that being said, it can be jarring

[00:12:59] to listen to some of this stuff because it's just kind of, to me personally, gross. So with this lengthy preamble out of the way, get to it. So the nutshell of this press conference is that John Ray is going after Rex Huerman's daughter,

[00:13:15] Victoria Huerman, and saying that essentially we should all be looking at her as a possible co-conspirator, co-murderer, co-serial killer with her father based on her online activity, which seemingly from her Tumblr evinces an interest in kinks around cannibalism,

[00:13:39] furriedom, things like that. So he's saying that she's a suspect. Basically he wants to criminalize her sexual interests with no evidence that her sexual interests actually led her to commit any criminal acts? Is that what you're saying? Yes. Essentially, she is related to a possible serial killer and

[00:14:03] likes morbid macabre art and possibly has morbid and macabre sexual interests. And therefore we should scrutinize her very carefully. Now, he tried to do the lawyer thing where he kind of walked up to a line, but he went over the line quite a lot. And I

[00:14:21] will be very curious to see what you think about that in terms of a libel suit. Well, also I'm just interested. This sounds like something you'd hear on some corner of YouTube. Why was this man making this a press conference? What did he hope to accomplish?

[00:14:40] Well, let's talk about YouTube for a second because one person he actually brought on was Dr. Gary Bacotto. And that's a name I recognized when he mentioned that to me. And I recognized it because that's a gentleman who has appeared on some YouTube channels,

[00:14:58] at least one in particular that I'm thinking of that I think of as having been especially disreputable. I believe the videos of their interviews with him are no longer available. I believe they've been taken down because of some side drama we don't need to get into.

[00:15:14] But when I see someone being interviewed repeatedly by an outlet that I know is disreputable, it frankly makes me think a little bit less of that person. Well, he is introduced as a clinical and forensic psychologist and researcher with some expertise

[00:15:33] on mass murder, serial killing. He has some sort of position at Boston College and is an expert on the Cold Case Foundation panel. So I tend to take true crime expertise with a grain of salt because

[00:15:50] there's so much fraud out there, but I'm going to just treat him in good faith here and assume that he does have an expertise in this. I will tell you this. Any concerns you had about appearing on

[00:16:01] YouTube, I think apply to this situation too, because I think psychologists and people who are in mental health space tend to be more careful about speaking on issues involving people that they have not themselves examined. Let's go in order though, because I want to break it all down.

[00:16:21] He's going to come up later. Again, I'm going to assume in good faith that he's got the goods here, but that doesn't necessarily absolve anyone from appearing on camera at this thing. We'll get into

[00:16:33] why as we go along. This is a quote that Ray starts out with. This is when he basically starts out by addressing Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who of course has really led

[00:16:49] the push against Heuermann, has brought charges against him and is very much seen as somebody who is playing a very important role obviously in this case right now. Quote, first, I have nothing but admiration for the work of the District Attorney Ray Tierney and

[00:17:04] his task force in their use of technology and DNA, but we disagree on two very important subjects, the murder of Shannon Gilbert and the suspicion of culpability of the family of Rex Heuermann. So he's immediately starting in on Rex Heuermann's family, which of course consists of daughter

[00:17:20] Victoria, former wife, I believe they're getting a divorce, Asa Ellerup, who is originally from Iceland and another son who I believe might have some disabilities. Ray describes himself as the gatekeeper of the Gilbert case and all the cases from the end of 2011 onward. Kind of an interesting

[00:17:42] terminology, isn't it? He's the gatekeeper of the case. It kind of implies like a level of ownership, a level of he's deciding what goes and what is true and what is not true. I find it interesting to publicly declare oneself a gatekeeper in this case.

[00:18:00] I don't know if this is what you're getting at, but to me it feels like a very conscious effort to try to build a brand, to try to establish an identity with media. The media, for a variety of

[00:18:16] reasons, isn't really able to go in depth on a lot of stories the way they did in the past. So if someone refers to themselves as the gatekeeper, maybe that shows up in an article

[00:18:27] or a headline or two and then the media would say, oh, this guy is the gatekeeper and start going back. I need to pay my tolls here from now on. I need to contact this person again and again whenever I want to do a story about this case.

[00:18:41] Yes. And it frankly seemed... Was that your impression? That was my impression. Honestly, I found it a bit gauche, I guess, scarish, I think, declaring oneself that. But you know, that's a minor thing. Now, I want to mention this because a lot of people might be wondering,

[00:18:59] by doing any of this, by essentially accusing or soft peddling an accusation towards other family members, is Ray in fact harming the case against Huerman? Is he, by essentially saying, I think Ray Tierney and the police are wrong and they got this wrong and there are other people

[00:19:18] involved, could he be actually harming the case against Rex Huerman? I have thoughts on that, but I was just curious, do you have any thoughts on that? You want to go first? My thoughts are no, he's not harming it. Yeah, that's what I...

[00:19:31] I don't think he's harming it at all. I don't think he's harming it at all because the jury would never hear any of this stuff and I don't think... If he was somehow actually involved in the case or something,

[00:19:45] maybe we could talk, but this guy seems very much, from what you're telling me, seems to be very much of a fringe figure. I think it's not hurting the case. I don't think... Some people I saw criticizing him

[00:19:55] are saying, oh my gosh, he's going to get the case thrown... I think that is way too over the top. I think his argument is that... It's also not that Huerman is not involved. He's saying,

[00:20:09] I think he is involved and so are these other people. So he's also saying, I think there are additional victims. He's not saying, I think they're wrong about the whole thing. So I think this doesn't have any real bearing on the case is what I'm saying.

[00:20:22] Next, Ray outlines his reasons for doing all of this. So this is what he has to say for himself. Just so it's clear, because we've heard critics, I have not made one penny in this case from

[00:20:33] anyone. And the man I sued has no money. We will make no money from all the work that I've done from the beginning. We're not in this for the money and never have been. I'm in pursuit of

[00:20:43] Shannon Gilbert's killers and the full truth and the facts and circumstances surrounding all of these murders as I've been from the beginning. That's interesting because there's a bit of a truism. If someone tells you it's not about the money and they say that repeatedly,

[00:20:58] the odds are it's about the money. Maybe not directly, like maybe he's not giving the press conference and the next day someone gives him a big novelty check for a million dollars. But that would seem to be what his ultimate goal from all this would be.

[00:21:16] He's talking about, of course, the suit I mentioned earlier from Dr. Hackett saying he has no money. I guess we're supposed to take his word for that. Even if that's true, I would say that there is

[00:21:27] a lot of money in getting free marketing around a very high profile case that has been picked up by the national and in some cases international press. Especially if you're the gatekeeper of the

[00:21:39] case. If you're the gatekeeper of the case and you're getting those sweet ad dollars for free, that's earned media right there. He's not having to necessarily pay money to put his ad in the New

[00:21:51] York Times. He's getting cited in the New York Times as an expert. And people are reading that and they're saying, this man is a high profile, high powered attorney. I want him in my corner

[00:22:00] for my case. So there are values that can be kind of thrown around here that are not necessarily monetary in nature that can still have a big financial boon for somebody. I also think that

[00:22:14] the cynic in me says that. And also to me, the money issue is always kind of weird and true crime because I think, I don't know, I don't have a problem with professionals in the media

[00:22:27] and in the legal sphere making money. That's how the system works. It's naive to think that we should just expect people to donate their time and labor for free for anything around this because

[00:22:40] it's like that's how you get a bunch of hacks who are doing it part-time in their basement. I'm sorry. That's just my feeling on it. So I feel like the weird stuff about money,

[00:22:49] it's like he's thinking about this in an odd way. But I also think you can be doing something for the right reasons and be very earnest and sincere and also completely wrong. So it doesn't really

[00:23:00] factor into my thinking one way or the other, I would say. In this case, so he's representing not only Gilbert, but some of the victims that he claims may have been stalked or attacked by humor men. So he's sort of expanded his role in this to just...

[00:23:18] So he's also representing people who he claims were stalked or attacked? He says they claim, maybe those people are totally credible. Maybe not. I just don't know. I guess we'll have to see. But he's continuously made an effort to expand this case out by saying,

[00:23:33] here are more people, here are more people. That's also a great way for a lawyer to get more attention is to say there are other victims and I'm the one that represents them and I'm the one that can help tell their stories. Yeah, he said...

[00:23:47] I'd like to see the evidence. Yes. Well, I think you might've tuned into the wrong thing here then, Kevin, because here's what he has to say next. Now look, if you're of the school that you say all that happened to Shannon Gilbert was a

[00:24:00] coincidence, all those things were coincidences and circumstantial evidence, no matter how strong the evidence was or is, you say it's not proof enough to suggest that she was murdered, then you don't need to stay here. You don't need to. And you don't need to watch this conference

[00:24:13] on streaming on the internet because you will be disappointed. Most of the things that we know happened, we know from circumstantial evidence and what we have here is circumstantial evidence. But if you're able to accept that circumstantial evidence can be strong, as a great lawyer once

[00:24:29] said, as when you find a trout in the milk, that circumstantial evidence can be filled with right-minded inferences, real inferences in the scapable conclusions, this is the conference for you. What do you think about that? If you have any critical questions about my line of reasoning,

[00:24:49] get out. I'm going to start actually saying that at the start of every podcast, I think. If you disagree with me and you have any questions about how I got to my conclusions,

[00:25:00] you can just take your butt out the door. I don't need you. We don't need you. And someone's going to clip this so it sounds like I'm actually just saying this. So that's great. So I'm glad I did

[00:25:11] that to myself. But anyways, what do you think? You're speaking in jest. I'm speaking in jest. Obviously. Just for humor. I find this completely ridiculous and outrageous that he said this, but what do you think? Well, I'd like to adopt your comments as my own.

[00:25:24] It's really embarrassing to get out there and say basically if you have any doubts or you expect me to give any real concrete evidence of something happening, get out because you're going to be

[00:25:35] disappointed. I think this, I mean, if we lived in a just world at this point, the media would have just packed up and walked away from the press conference. But of course they want to see what he

[00:25:46] has to say. I wonder if he does that in a trial. Yeah. If he stands up in front of the jury and says, well, he won evidence, you're in the wrong place. But we're having some fun.

[00:25:53] Now also, I found this interesting. So I was actually familiar with this. Some people were commenting, what is he talking about? Trout in milk. That actually, he totally got that wrong. He attributes that bit to a great lawyer. The quote is actually some circumstantial evidence

[00:26:09] is very strong as when you find a trout in the milk. That is from the diary of author Henry David Thoreau, not a lawyer. So what the heck did Thoreau mean by this? Well, the Hartford Current has a

[00:26:20] pretty helpful primer that I will include. But in the 19th century, people would receive these big metal containers of milk. But if you're a unscrupulous dairy farmer and you want to get

[00:26:32] more money, but kind of stretch out your milk supply, you add water to the milk in order to thin it out and then you get more money. And what would be evidence of you doing this? Well,

[00:26:42] if you dunk the milk into the river, there might be a trout inside. So why would there be a trout in the milk? It's because the circumstantial evidence points to a dairy farmer thinning out

[00:26:53] the milk. So what does circumstantial evidence mean? Because we hear a lot about this. It's sort of perceived in the true crime community as lesser than, it's not good evidence. This could

[00:27:05] not be further from the truth. I would say like, I mean, I don't know, I would feel like most cases rely on circumstantial evidence in some capacity. Absolutely. DNA can be circumstantial evidence. DNA can be circumstantial evidence because

[00:27:19] if your DNA is found on the knife next to the victim and they've been stabbed, we can infer, we're not seeing you stab the victim, but we can infer that that's what happened. So Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute defines circumstantial evidence as

[00:27:36] indirect evidence that does not on its face prove a fact in issue, but gives rise to a logical inference that the fact exists. Take the fish. We don't see the farmer putting the fish into the

[00:27:47] milk. We don't see what happened there, but we can infer that he dunked the milk into the river. The trout fell in and that's how it got in there. Does that make sense to anybody? It makes sense to me.

[00:27:58] Okay. So in other words, he's saying that we should just take everything he's saying uncritically because it's circumstantial so we shouldn't immediately dismiss it. I agree with him to a point on circumstantial evidence, it shouldn't be immediately dismissed. Also, circumstantial

[00:28:18] evidence can build up to make a case and prove someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But I would say that being so defensive in the beginning, the burden is on him to do this.

[00:28:29] It's not up to the public or law enforcement or tyranny to just capitulate to whatever he's saying because he feels it's good or because he's courting the press. To me, it continues to be unclear

[00:28:44] exactly how or what happened to Shannon Gilbert. I do feel the timing is suspicious and it's certainly very odd and disturbing, but her death certainly did not bear the hallmarks of the other

[00:28:56] Gilgo victims, being bound, being in burlap, some of the other things. It would be a rather extreme coincidence. The background of that is she fled the house of the client she was called to that

[00:29:12] night and seemed to be having some sort of breakdown, was screaming, saying she was in danger. But wouldn't stop. She ran away from the man she hired as her driver. She seemed to be

[00:29:23] panicked. So I mean, did she just happen to run into a serial killer that night? I think it's more likely that she met with an accidental death, frankly. Again, that's a frustrating answer because we want this all to be connected. I understand that. But if there's no evidence

[00:29:37] that he was involved, then it could just be a tragic and disturbing coincidence. And I think you need to get us proof in order for us to go beyond that. He's a lawyer. John Ray is a lawyer.

[00:29:48] He knows this. I mean. I don't know the whole that this just rubbed me the wrong way. So next we get into claims about Victoria Heuermann. And this again is Rex Heuermann's daughter. Yes. And correct

[00:30:04] me if I'm wrong, Ms. Heuermann has not been charged with any crimes in connection with these murders. No, she is not. And in fact, Ray himself indicates that Tierney's office does not believe Heuermann's family was involved in the murders in any capacity. In their charging documents,

[00:30:21] they've discussed how they believe that Heuermann would commit the murders in his home whenever his family was out of town for vacations and things like that. So he would time things so

[00:30:33] that he would be able to do things while he was alone. And. What what Ray is saying is that the way he talks to you is just very like off putting to me, because you would hope in a

[00:30:47] situation like this, if someone felt like they had really good information that was being ignored, I could understand the need to kind of go to the press and say, we need to you know,

[00:30:56] we need to do something about this. Look how good this is. But I don't think you need to gild the lily. I think you can kind of get up there and say, here is the information. That's it.

[00:31:04] He's doing this whole like building up thing where like we're talking about people who are involved and interested in torture. We're talking about the potentiality of cannibalism. You know, we're talking about the use of porno to affect what has happened. He's not

[00:31:18] plain speaking. He's not just spitting it out. It's all this buildup and flash and sizzle. When you're doing that in a case that. That is a red flag, in my opinion.

[00:31:29] My pardon the French, but my B.S. detector has been really put through the ringer over the years doing true crime because there's so much of it and in true crime and people making claims and

[00:31:45] making theories. And it's just surprising to see a lawyer in this case engaging in this level of kind of. I don't know, I don't know how to describe it in a polite way. It's just

[00:32:00] it's not it's not helpful, in my opinion. Like and I we're going to talk about why he did this, but I'll be curious to get your thoughts by the end. So he's vamping at some points. He's like

[00:32:13] stalling saying general truisms like, you know, a person by the company he keeps. Does do any of us deny that? He points out. So he's printed all these packets for the media present. They're handed out. He adds quite colorfully, by the way, the full color ones

[00:32:31] were extremely expensive and we have a budget because he was saying, like, if everyone doesn't get them, I'll post them online. It's just the whole thing just seems very unprofessional. And he concludes, quote, The evidence that we have suggests that we've been sold a story by

[00:32:44] the Heuermann family. He goes in on Victoria by claiming that she appeared in what he described as a little girl's outfit and from the press, she was just, I mean, dressed normally wearing her hair

[00:32:59] in a bun. She's twenty seven and he says she's a very innocent looking person. Then he goes in on her for fashion choice where she was photographed wearing a T-shirt with a human skeleton on it.

[00:33:15] He says, quote, I thought it was odd when I saw you'll notice she's wearing a shirt that depicts right after her father is indicted for these murdered women. It depicts a human skeleton. That's what she's wearing. He's so excited about this. Like, this is some gotcha.

[00:33:29] Am I crazy or is that just a very weak? That seems pretty weak and obviously on the last person to criticize other people's fashion choices. And then he breaks out the Tumblr. So he's talking about he's found information from

[00:33:48] her old Tumblr that she was interested in Vore, which is a type of fetish. It's short for Vore. I may be saying this wrong. Vorare filia, which is from the Latin vorare to devour it. Hard

[00:34:06] Vore is when I looked it up, is described as sexual fantasies about cannibalism. Soft Vore is more like when a victim is devoured but remains alive. It basically has to do with like being eaten or eating people fantasies, sexual fantasies. So it's a sexual fetish.

[00:34:25] And he just yeah. I mean, I personally was not a Tumblr kid. I didn't have a Tumblr, but it seems like from what he described himself that this was a pretty active community on Tumblr of people who were into this fetish. And I can't help but say that

[00:34:44] a lot of this, what he was describing felt to me like looking at what Dennis Rader did. Of course, he's the serial killer who was formerly known as bind torture kill. His hallmarks were binding and

[00:34:57] strangling his victims. It feels like looking at then someone close to him who happened to have a bondage fetish, who wasn't doing any of that and saying they must be involved just because

[00:35:06] they're also into this thing. That seems like guilt by association in a way that doesn't really make any sense to me unless you have some evidence that somebody was directly involved. So then he

[00:35:19] kind of tries to get out in front of some victim blaming accusations. He says, quote, Please do not indulge in moral posturing that I am merely shaming her, who is also a victim of sorts,

[00:35:29] and she is a victim for sure of her family. Don't do that because she's a 27 year old woman who tore off the cloak of victimhood when she chose to take a handsome profit for herself and

[00:35:39] for her lawyer from Peacock for openly displaying the pretend picture of this innocent girl, little girl persona who had nothing to do with what went on in that house. She did that at the

[00:35:48] real victim's expense for a price she marketed. She herself marketed her false image, her true self, a vastly different self, is fair game because of what she's done. She has witnessed what she

[00:35:59] has perhaps gone beyond witnessing. You draw the inference. I'm not going to feed it to you. You draw the inference. Very coherent. So. First of all, I think a lot of us would agree with him

[00:36:15] to the extent that the deal the family made with Peacock, the Heuermann family made a deal with Peacock. That is troubling. Can you remind us what that deal was? So our understanding is that

[00:36:29] Peacock is a streaming service owned by NBC and that the Heuermann family made some sort of lucrative contract with them in order to essentially sign over their life rights and have them document the trial from their perspective. I personally feel uncomfortable

[00:36:44] with that. Yeah, I don't know what I think about it, but I'm uncomfortable with it. So I think criticizing for them, I think criticizing them for that is completely justifiable, completely fair game in my opinion. And if I were the victim's families in this case,

[00:36:59] I would be disgusted not only with them, but with the streaming service Peacock for essentially having people profit from being related to a person who brutally murdered my relative. But if his position is if you do something the least bit morally questionable, then it's open

[00:37:17] season on you. Then if that's the position he wants everybody to take, he's in trouble. Yeah, that's a very good point. And also let me just say there's something very creepy and I felt

[00:37:27] vaguely sexist about this whole thing about she pretends to be a little girl because that's how I perceive her. But then it looks like she likes to have sex and has weird fetishes. So she's not

[00:37:38] really it's like what? Like does that ring to you as like very like, oh, I guess she should have just gone into the nunnery at that point because that's the only way that she would have been able

[00:37:48] to live up to his expectations. One thing I learned a long time ago is if you want to try to figure out if particular language is sexist or racist or what have you, just flip it. So try to

[00:38:05] in this case, imagine that he's saying some grown man is dressing like a little boy. It's just creepy. The whole thing would sound odd. I know what he's trying to say.

[00:38:15] It would sound sexist. I know what he's trying to say. So I'm not saying that that was his intention there. I'm just saying like, what does it matter what she projects to the world? Like

[00:38:27] he's basically saying she lied to us. She appeared in public in a messy bun and kind of baggy clothing. So that made everyone think she was innocent, but she's not. It's like that doesn't really follow. How you dress doesn't necessarily indicate everything about you. You're not wearing

[00:38:44] sponsors on your chest to show all your fetishes and darkest secrets. Very few people go through life telling everybody they meet about what their sexual fetishes are. So I just felt like this is

[00:38:58] unreasonable, and he's using this as a preface to attack her in a way that I find deeply unfair. And as I said, you and I, we were very uncomfortable with the peacock thing. They should be criticized

[00:39:08] over that, in my opinion. I could understand their reasoning. You know, our life got upended. We want money. But I think the families of the victims are totally right to complain about that.

[00:39:19] Ultimately, the decision makers at Peacock, in my opinion, are the people who had the power in that situation, and they chose to do that rather than perhaps working with the victim's families. So they have more culpability, in my mind. But it's still uncomfortable. You lose the point.

[00:39:38] You lose the moral high ground, though, when you do something like this. And I've seen a lot of people criticize this Peacock deal. And I would say, if you are truly

[00:39:47] troubled by this Peacock deal, then the thing you should do is not watch it. Because if it doesn't get big numbers, then we won't see this happen again. If it does get big numbers, then we'll

[00:40:00] see this in other cases. So if you're truly outraged by it, don't watch it. At the end of the day, most of this true crime sort of, I've called it the true crime industrial

[00:40:13] complex. It's driven by money. And if people, there's a sense here that obviously there's an opportunity because here's the family of a possible serial killer. Let's get their inside story. And people will watch that and we will get ad revenue from it. And if that does not happen,

[00:40:28] then they would be inclined to say, people don't like that. So let's not do it again. That is, you're absolutely right. That is the way to deal with it. And it certainly doesn't

[00:40:39] justify just saying whatever you want about them and saying they must be involved in the case with no evidence. So that's... It's like what most of us probably learned when we were children, two wrongs don't make a right.

[00:40:54] So let's go into her Tumblr blog a little bit more. He gave a little bit more detail subsequently. Her handle was Vin, it's an Icelandic word apparently, Vinandamator. And he said that his research indicated that that had some sort of Icelandic implications

[00:41:14] at devouring. So her mother, Eise Elirup is Icelandic. So it could be some sort of reference there. They unveiled a number of posters of things that either one instance where she created the artwork, most of the other ones were where she reblogged artwork on her Tumblr. So what

[00:41:38] that means is how Tumblr apparently worked was like, it wasn't just you posting, you could almost retweet content from somebody else and it would appear on your site, but that other person did it.

[00:41:50] If Kevin drew a nice picture of Lanny, our dog, I could reblog it on my Tumblr and show everyone, but you're the one who originally did it. Does that make sense? Dr. Justin Marchegiani I think so. Taryn Varrick So some of the posters,

[00:42:05] some of the exhibits that he sort of unveiled here, one... I'll talk about six that I sort of caught a glimpse of. One was like a painting or drawing of like a cut up body, like innards

[00:42:17] spilling out, seemed to be like a naked woman. It was pretty gross. Another, the second was a woman lying impaled on an elk, like an elk's horns, kind of just like a kind of a painting again or

[00:42:32] some sort of image. There was like a long text meme that started with, it's technically illegal to keep a person chained in your basement, use their holes whenever you please. Sort of like,

[00:42:42] like kind of a haha, but like that's what I like to do sort of thing, I guess. Then there's an image of a drawing of someone slicing body parts. Another disturbing drawing

[00:42:55] of a killer sort of mutilating a woman tied to a bed and then a drawing or image of corpses hanging in a hallway. And they talked about how they tracked her down. Victoria's LinkedIn

[00:43:09] used an identical selfie, a selfie identical, like her profile picture was a selfie that was also posted to this Tumblr. She signed some of the artwork. The URL of her old website was

[00:43:23] also the same as her handle on Tumblr and that was also the same as her now deleted Instagram account. They wrote at the press conference, they said that she re-blogged a lot of furry pornography

[00:43:37] and a lot of macabre art. So that was the kind of primary use of her Tumblr. So again, this is not my cup of tea. Yeah. Some of the images really grossed me out. I'm not gonna lie. I didn't see the images.

[00:43:57] It was creepy. I mean, it's the sort of thing I would have been like off put by, like, you know, but I wouldn't necessarily, I think the fact that there exists a community there on Tumblr,

[00:44:11] I do not believe that this is a cult of serial killers who are all definitely involved in violence. I think sometimes people are into things that you don't necessarily understand and that's it.

[00:44:20] I don't understand furries. I don't understand a lot of these fetishes, but I don't judge the people who have them. Perhaps I might have some interests that they don't understand. And that's

[00:44:31] just part of the way the world works. And I also know some people are attracted to horror in images of horror for one reason. Maybe that may help them deal with the things they were afraid of. I don't know.

[00:44:43] I don't like horror movies. I don't like anything like that. So, but then again, let's all be real. We're all listening to a true crime podcast. We're making a true crime podcast. If someone

[00:44:53] looked at my internet history based on that, they'd be like, wow, you must be a serial killer because you're always looking up these serial killers. And it's like, you can be interested in something without wanting to perpetuate violence.

[00:45:04] I'm a comic book guy. I know there's a lot of, in the history of comics, there's been a lot of pretty graphic horror comics published that have been popular, continue to be popular.

[00:45:17] I know collectors who really enjoy the old EC horror comics from the 1950s, which have some pretty gruesome things in them. And that doesn't mean that they're going out and disemboweling people just because they saw it in a comic book.

[00:45:33] Art can be a safe way to unpack some of your darkest desires or have fun with things like that in a way that's safe and not hurting anybody. So I think that's an important thing to remember.

[00:45:45] Art is not necessarily a predictor of what you want to do. I love the Fast and Furious films, but aside from one unfortunate incident up in Peru, I don't try to speed or do anything that's

[00:45:57] going to get me pulled over. It's just fun to watch them driving around. And maybe on some level, you want to drive around really fast and do cool things and jump out of a car and be caught by your

[00:46:06] husband and then jump into another car and then there's an explosion. That's maybe what you want to do on some level, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to try to do that.

[00:46:15] I have a surprisingly large collection of sad sack comic books. These are comic books about a soldier who's not very good at being a soldier and never in my life did I consider joining the army and failing at it. You considered joining and succeeding though.

[00:46:36] All of this is to say that I think when Ray is talking about like, don't moralize at me about this, it's very interesting because ultimately I think he's the one who's moralizing about moralizing about somebody's choices. And I'm of the opinion that anyone involved or who had

[00:46:59] knowledge of something this horrific as what Hureman is alleged to have done should be punished. So I'm not of the mindset of like, oh, no one else could have helped him. I'm saying if there's

[00:47:08] evidence of other people helping him or covering up for him, I want that all to come out. But this is not it. This is not evidence of anything other than this young woman being interested in some

[00:47:17] things that we don't understand. This also raises to me interesting questions about how she was raised. I don't think grooming is the right word, but if the father has some deeply perverse interest that he acts upon, maybe he talks about it and tries to normalize the general interest

[00:47:37] with his family. I don't know. I mean, they do try to go at that angle a few times. So they kind of try to say, well, maybe it's Stockholm syndrome and we'll get to that later. But the problem with

[00:47:47] that is that they've already introduced this idea that they're attacking her and that she has some involvement. There's more here that we're not looking at. So and also there would be no reason

[00:47:58] to call a press conference if you just thought that maybe he normalized some stuff. You know, it's a hit on her, but they do bring that up. And I think that is a reasonable point in general of

[00:48:11] saying, well, maybe things were normalized. You know, there could be some level of victimization. If Anya ever posted on Facebook an image from a Sad Sack comic book, you wouldn't assume she

[00:48:23] likes Sad Sack. You'd say, oh, that poor dear. She's just it's a cry for help because she's living with somebody who likes the Sad Sack comic book. Yeah, she's been brainwashed.

[00:48:32] That would be the only reason. So these are some of the like to give you a sense, though, I mean, because we can all say like this guy is accused of doing these horrific things to

[00:48:44] these women. Is it interesting that his daughter might have been interested in the macabre and disturbing imagery? I mean, perhaps. But this is like the extent to go that the extent that Ray

[00:48:56] tried to claim that these things are relevant. So he says Sandra Castillo, a woman who was recently identified as someone who the tyranny's office believes Heuermann killed in these recently

[00:49:05] charged with her death. He says she was missing a shoe and look here on her Tumblr. She posted this image of people hanging in a hallway, seemingly which seems to represent both men and women,

[00:49:19] by the way. And one of the figures is missing a shoe. Is that linked? Are you kidding me? He says, quote, Perhaps this is a stretch and perhaps not. Let me tell you, that's a stretch.

[00:49:32] He also says an anime like image of a man cutting up a woman in a bed looks like it looks like the man has Heuermann's hairstyle. Like they both have, I guess, kind of wavy hair. The anime looking guy

[00:49:44] looks nothing like Heuermann. I don't I don't know. I'm curious. I don't know. Is he right? Is he right to do any of this? Am I being unfair? No. I really tried to listen to this with a

[00:50:06] completely open mind and just sort of see where he took it and kind of say, maybe there's something there. That's how I went into it. I had concerns about stuff he was doing in the past because it

[00:50:16] just seemed like he was more interested in media attention than anything else. But sometimes someone can be interested and motivated by media attention and be correct and be right and be doing things in the proper way. But. Yeah, being into sexual fetishes that we find baffling isn't a

[00:50:34] crime. My understanding is that Victoria would have been a little girl throughout a lot of the attacks and murders against these women. So is she an accomplice when she's in middle school or

[00:50:47] elementary school or whatever? I mean, what are we saying here? I mean, let's talk about art, creating art. I did AP visual art in high school. My topic was saints.

[00:51:01] And I remember I made a piece that was like, I was not good at drawing. So I just kind of like slapped together some collages. I remember I did one of St. Lucie and I cut out a bunch of

[00:51:13] magazine pictures of eyes and made her dress. You could look at that and be like, Anya Kane might be interested in gouging people's eyes out or look, here's St. Sebastian tied to a tree shot with

[00:51:27] arrows. What's she going to do? You know, don't let her take the archery class. There there's macabre art. I mean, again, mine was nowhere near as macabre as some of this stuff, but

[00:51:39] that's kind of an element of art sometimes. And we can maybe find it in poor taste or find it kind of creepy, but I think you need somebody doing something or someone saying,

[00:51:51] Victoria Heuermann victimized me in this way in order for me to really take it beyond that. And I don't know. I mean, he even goes as far as comparing the I mean, this is what this is

[00:52:06] the level that we're working at here. Remember, I mentioned the image of a woman impaled on an elk horns on an elk. He says he went to look at the background of this image. It's in a marsh.

[00:52:18] And look at this woman lying on the elk. She's on her back, just like Shannon Gilbert. Are you kidding me? I don't know. I just don't know. I think we talked about this in an earlier episode that a lot of these things come down to a filter.

[00:52:41] You have a predetermined conclusion, and then you see everything through that filter and you interpret things through that filter. If, for example, you concluded that Ani and I fought a lot

[00:52:55] and you see me in a store buying flowers and roses, you think, oh, this is proof that they fight a lot because he's trying to make up to her, even though it could just mean I'm buying her flowers to be

[00:53:07] nice or maybe I'm buying them for a sick relative. I think I used that example in an earlier episode. So, like, the fact that a picture exists doesn't mean that it fits the interpretation he is giving it.

[00:53:22] Yeah. As sort of an aside, at one point he mentions that he talked to the night manager who was working at a hotel in July 2007 where Heuermann's family was allegedly said to have stayed when Maureen

[00:53:36] Brainerd Barnes, one of the victims, disappeared. And apparently, according to this night manager, they didn't check in when they said they did. So that could be interesting. I'd like to know more about that. But frankly, at this point, I'd be more interested in hearing about that from the

[00:53:51] law enforcement and from tyranny because I don't think that they're just setting out to prove their point no matter what. I think they're looking at evidence and using that to prove their point. So I, you know, I the self-importance of Ray is really off putting to me.

[00:54:12] You know, again, he repeated his his theme, quote, I said, you can tell from this where the gatekeepers were in pursuit of the killers. That's his that's his branding. That's his call to action that he

[00:54:23] wants everyone to remember. I mean, this man, I mean, you can't make this up. Do you know what the background of his website is? No, what is it? It's the famous painting Liberty leading the

[00:54:36] people by Eugene Delacroix. You know, that one where a woman is holding a French flag, storming the barricades with the people behind her. So this, I guess, is how he sees himself. And I find when someone is exhibiting this level of self-importance without really giving any goods,

[00:54:58] that is something that just does not impress me and makes me lose a lot of faith in the person. I think a lot of this is I think some attorneys do this thing where they like cosplay what they

[00:55:08] think people want to see. And I would just urge people to be really skeptical of that and think more about what they're saying than, you know, how much they proclaim that they are good and doing

[00:55:22] the right thing. Right. I think that matters a lot more whether you're talking about a defense attorney, a prosecutor, when someone's just relying on rhetoric and this kind of like, we'll search for the truth no matter what. And here's a bunch of random stuff that doesn't

[00:55:36] really add up, then that is that's a huge red flag. They kind of finish it up by having Dr. Bacatta come out and say a couple of things. He says, quote, I think it's also important to

[00:55:49] mention that I have not examined Mr. Huerman, his daughter, his wife or any other member of the family. I've kind of personally felt at that point he should just stop talking.

[00:56:01] I think I don't I don't know what how credible he is, but if he is credible at all, I think adding his expertise to back this sham of a press conference is shameful and a misuse of, you know,

[00:56:17] what he's supposed to be doing. He he says basically he wanted to make some general comments about how serial killers work. I mean, he says things like if he is indeed guilty, so he's

[00:56:28] obviously trying to kind of fall back on his professional training. But again, why then appear next to a person doing any of this? And he mentions things like David Parker Ray, a serial killer who

[00:56:41] would torture victims in trailer John Wayne Gacy. He brings up the fact that this guy had John Douglas's books. Huerman had John Douglas's books and kind of just randomly mentions. And he's the chairman emeritus of the Cold Case Foundation. OK, thanks. It's. I don't understand why somebody

[00:57:01] like this who, again, has not worked on this case directly with with examining Huerman or examining this family would even show up to something like this to. Kind of hint that there must be more to

[00:57:16] the story. And based on so little, he says he also said that in families doing serial killing together, it tends to be two groups, one traumatized victims who are essentially suffering from what, you know, I believe Stockholm syndrome has been widely discredited as a syndrome, but like

[00:57:34] basically Stockholm syndrome where they're scared of somebody and they're sort of doing something to make them happy or because they're also perverted. And and then at the end, Ray talked about how he's not looking to sue the Huermans or anything

[00:57:51] like that. He's not even saying Gilbert is a victim of human. But doesn't this all make you think? What does it make you think, Kevin? It makes me think the press conference a waste of time.

[00:58:04] I saw some Newsweek tends to have terrible headlines on this case for whatever reason. This is just always very sensational. This is one they ran. Victoria Huerman's demonic artwork breakdown of the sadistic images. I think that's pretty irresponsible framing. I love the Long

[00:58:21] Island Press did a good job framing this, which was attorney John Ray blasted for claims about Gilgol Beach serial killer suspect Rex Huerman's daughter. That seemed a lot more on the money here.

[00:58:30] A lot of people have criticized him for this. To me, on the off chance he is correct and more people were involved in this than it initially appears, then he has done a lot of harm

[00:58:44] to his case by basically going after somebody's old Tumblr account. Is this unethical for an attorney to do, Kevin? Like something like this. To basically publicly accuse someone of murder?

[00:59:00] Like kind of walk it. I mean, if he was walking up to the line and then tripping over it and then going back over and then tripping over it again. Yeah, it's unprofessional. It really does

[00:59:14] seem like going through somebody's Tumblr account to try to find embarrassing things and then post them. That really seems like a YouTube. Yeah, we have a there's like a YouTube-ification of the

[00:59:27] law. Yeah. I don't know. I don't get it. I don't. Could she sue him for this? I would imagine she could. Defamation and libel law. I remember the first day of class, my defamation and libel

[00:59:45] professor said, it's really, really complicated. I know. I know it's hard to win. It's very, very difficult to win a case. First of all, you'd have to ask yourself, there are two different

[00:59:57] standards you would use to one standard. Is this person a public figure or is this person not a public figure? If she's a public figure, it'd be much harder for her to win the suit because we

[01:00:10] want generally to encourage talk about people in the public eye and public figures. If she's not a public figure, it'd be a little bit easier for her to win. And there's also something called limited

[01:00:21] purpose public figures where maybe she is a public figure but only for the limited purpose of circumstances around this case. And I think you could probably make an argument that she's a limited purpose public figure because of her connection to Rox Hirman.

[01:00:36] There seems to be a maliciousness to what he's saying that goes beyond any sort of like just curiosity or kind of speaking off the cuff. There's this kind of like, she acts like a little girl,

[01:00:47] but she's probably a murderer thing going on. And I wonder if you've subpoenaed some of this, if you could find some pretty damning stuff about the way he's talked about her particularly that

[01:00:57] could be ultimately pretty damaging to him in a lawsuit. That's just, I mean, again, I don't know if it's, I don't know if you'd win that, but I think you could absolutely make a big mess for him.

[01:01:14] That's my personal take. But I don't necessarily think it would be a slam dunk because of what you said, it's a limited purpose public figure. And, you know, he could argue, well, I'm just doing

[01:01:26] what's best for my clients and yada, yada, yada. And all I'm doing is calling attention to publicly available information about her and inviting people to draw their own conclusions. Yeah. He did

[01:01:39] repeatedly say, draw your own inferences. I'm not going to do it. But he did draw the inferences for everyone. That was pretty clear. I wonder if this could also push Rex Hirman to, you know,

[01:01:52] maybe change a plea, right? If you feel like your family's being dragged into things and being blamed for what you're alleged to have done and you know that you did it, then you might want to put a stop

[01:02:04] to it before it gets worse. Well, I don't know how much faith we should put on Rex Hirman being a good family man. I completely agree. I don't think that this, the fact that they like, I mean,

[01:02:17] they're said to like live in hoarding conditions. It seems like things were definitely not in a good situation there, you know? So I wouldn't, but I just saw some people say, like, I wonder if this

[01:02:28] could apply. So I figured I'd shout that out. I think John Ray, I mean, I don't have any faith in him or he doesn't have any credibility with me after this. I don't know why he would with anyone.

[01:02:43] This whole thing was just embarrassing. And I think he has a misplaced ownership of this case. And I frankly think that he's not really serving anyone's interests, even the people he claims to

[01:02:54] represent here by doing this because I think it just muddies the water. I mean, why don't we let the, why don't we let the, why don't we let the, let's let Tierney make his case and we'll see if

[01:03:05] anything implicates other members of Hirman's family. I'm not closed off to possibilities there, but I am closed off to using very, very scant internet evidence against somebody to draw all sorts of wild conclusions based on that. I don't know. The whole thing is very distasteful

[01:03:26] to me. Well said. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. Take care of yourselves and hopefully we won't have to talk about Tumblr ever again on this show.

[01:03:41] Thanks so much for listening to The Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheetatgmail.com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

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[01:04:23] Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for The Murder Sheet. And who you can find on the web at kevintg.com. If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered,

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