Gilgo Beach Killer: The Questions Rex Heuermann's Plea Can't Answer
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
A plea answers for seven women. It doesn't answer for eleven. It doesn't explain Shannan Gilbert. It doesn't resolve the fact that prosecutors once said a different convicted killer was responsible for Sandra Costilla's murder before charging the accused LISK instead.
Eric Faddis — defense attorney and former felony prosecutor — joins me to walk through what a Gilgo Beach Killer guilty plea leaves behind. We talk about the families still waiting. The credibility of a prosecution that reversed its own theory on a suspect. The behavioral evidence — the alleged timing of killings when Rex Heuermann's wife and children were away from the Long Island home, the planning document, the internet searches — and what it reveals about the kind of compartmentalized existence the accused Long Island Serial Killer allegedly maintained for years.
Faddis addresses whether the remaining LISK cases stay active once the headline defendant is resolved, whether the Bittrolff argument could come back in an appeal, and how the legal precedents set in this case change serial investigations going forward. And he answers the question that sits at the center of everything: if the Gilgo Beach Killer case ends with a plea instead of a trial, is that justice — or just an ending?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brewski and Robin Dree. |
| 0:07.9 | Seven women have names attached to that guilty plea, but the families who've waited decades to hear those names spoken in a courtroom won't get a trial. |
| 0:18.0 | They'll get a hearing, a sentencing date, and silence where cross-examination |
| 0:22.7 | should have been. And they're not the only ones left without answers. Eleven sets of remains |
| 0:27.9 | were found along that stretch of Long Island and authorities have said they don't believe he |
| 0:31.8 | remained as responsible for all of them. Shannon Gilbert's case remains its own unresolved chapter. |
| 0:37.4 | The question hanging over |
| 0:38.4 | all of this is whether a plea closes the book or just closes the chapter, everyone was still |
| 0:44.8 | reading. I think that's the other thought that I had come to my mind right away when I heard, |
| 0:49.9 | oh, he's making a plea. There's a lot of remains that still have not been connected to anyone. |
| 0:57.6 | And remains, it seems like every handful of months, we hear another one that gets connected to Rex. |
| 1:03.1 | So the idea that Rex Heerman may not ever end up in a courtroom for a murder trial, I don't think, is completely impossible. |
| 1:10.4 | It just may not be |
| 1:11.1 | with these seven victims, although who knows if he is to be connected to one, he may do the same |
| 1:16.9 | thing and plead guilty. In any way, shape, or form, does him pleading guilty to the seven |
| 1:25.0 | hinder, slow down, down prevent or do anything to not connect him possibly |
| 1:34.0 | with these other other mysterious murders that have been out there is this in any way |
| 1:40.9 | shielding him from from any sort of connection out there? |
| 1:45.6 | I don't know the answer to that question. |
| 1:46.9 | I mean, I think I do, but I'm not sure. |
| 1:48.4 | From a legal standpoint, what do you think? |
| 1:51.2 | So, yeah, two things. |
... |
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