♪ this is "nightline." new charges in the case againsted alleged gilgo beach killer. >> a demon that walks among us. >> rex heuermann, suburban husband and father, indicted for a fourth murder. the victim's daughter speaking out for the first time. >> for years, it looked like there might not be charged against any suspect for the murder of my mother. >> andrew: the chilling internet sources authorities say they

discovered on heuermann's devices. >> probably the worst i've seen in a decade in the city. >> andrew: how investigators closed in and the web of evidence they say points directly to their suspect. annette bening, the "american beauty" star making a splash as the renowned long distance swimmer diana nyad. >> i love being in the water but i'd never been a trained swimmer. >> i need you to look at me. >> no, it's over, no. did we different? i can make it up. >> andrew: her grueling training for the role propelling her to oscar buzz. >> i sort of underestimated what it was going to take. >> andrew: the career actress opening up about life in the spotlight. >> juju: what do you say to young people about this elusive idea of having it all? ♪ let's just keep on dancing ♪ >> andrew: no doubt fans, the band's got hella good news. sometimes your work shirt needs to be for more

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maybe we'll even get married one day. i wonder what i will be doing? probably still living here with mom and dad. fast, reliable speeds right where you need them. that's wall-to-wall wifi on the xfinity 10g network. ♪ thank you for joining us. i'm phil lipof. tonight, a new indictment returned against alleged gilgo beach serial killer rex heuermann, who police say targeted and murdered young women, burying their bodies along the long island coast. heuermann accused of killing

25-year-old maureen brainard-barnes in 2007. the evidence authorities say they've uncovered is chill is. here's abc's stephanie ramos. >> we said at the very beginning that we're going to take a comprehensive look at the gilgo four cases. i think we've done that. >> reporter: a moment years in the making. today a fourth murder charge levied at the alleged long island serial killer. >> this is a seminal case people are going to be talking about for years and years, generations. >> it strikes me that the evidence is fairly strong, considering how old this case is. >> reporter: in court today, rex heuermann, a former new york city architect and father of two who's already facing murder charges in the deaths of three women -- melissa bartholmy amber costello, now maureen brainard-barnes, the last of the

so-called gilgo four who they say were sex workers. >> maureen brainard-barnes was 25 years of age when she lost her life. she was an intellectual, she was a writer, she was an artistic person. she cared very deeply about the people that she loved. >> i'm here to speak for my mom, maureen. >> reporter: brainard-barnes' daughter, nicolette, speaking to the public for the first time. >> i was only 7 years old when my mother was murdered. her loss drastically changed the trajectory of my life. the indictment by the grand jury has brought hope for justice for my mom and my family. >> reporter: disturbing new details about the alleged murderer's depravity now coming to light. perhaps most alarming, a deep dive into heuermann's digital footprint. investigators say they have uncovered a collection of torture pornography. google searches on serial killers and even autopsy photos. >> let me put it this way.

i've been a public defender for nine years in this city. and i have done sex worker cases where you have to go to the d.a.'s office because the child pornography is so horrible, you can't send it over email. this is worse. what he's searching is worse than probably what i've seen in almost a decade in this city. he's looking up things like "autopsy photos," "medieval torture of women." the list goes on and on. >> reporter: the investigation covertly utilizing heuermann's daughter's dna scraped from a monster java energy drink can to tie him to the alleged murder. investigators following heuermann's daughter on the long island railroad. >> they show a picture of her on the long island railroad, and someone, i guess law enforcement, surveilling her. she's drinking a can of energy drink. and they show here that she discards it. it's the exact same

investigation of the pizza box and the pizza. >> the idea that you can collect dna from people of things that they discarded is fairly common. it's not that difficult. but it also gives you so much information because of where dna and genealogy is today. >> reporter: also, prosecutors claim they have found a bank statement showing that his wife and two children were away in atlantic city during the time in which drainard barnes' murder allegedly took place. but the smoking gun in this case might just be this belt buckle found wrapped around the victim's leg emblazoned with the letters "wh" on it, which officials speculate could be the initials of one of heuermann's relatives, and a piece of human hair which investigators say is tied to his wife. through the dna evidence they obtained from their daughter. >> now all of a sudden, you take that dna you had, that hair that was retrieved from one of the

belts that she was bound with, and you test it against that. you get the mitochondrial hit of the mother and daughter. >> so the connection there, they're arguing, is he must have used his grandfather's belt to tie up this woman after he murdered her. now in that belt buckle, there's a hair. take victoria heuermann's dna, test her dna against that hair. law enforcement and the office of medical examiner are saying there's a 7.9 trillion likelihood that that hair belongs to someone that is related to rex heuermann's wife. what's the connection between his daughter, his wife, and that belt? law enforcement says it's rex. >> reporter: through his attorney, heuermann has pleaded not guilty to each of the murder charges. >> four bodies and counting. >> police are worried they have a serial killer on the loose. >> investigators are now considering the possibility of a serial killer at work. >> reporter: it's a story that for more than a decade remained unsolved and had a community on

edge. after four bodies -- three wrapped in burlap -- were dumped in a marshy area along this long island beach. the bodies found within a quarter mile of each other in 2010. >> it put a lot of fear to a lot of people on long island who use those beaches. it's a creepy feeling when you go -- you know that gilgo beach now has this reputation for this. >> reporter: prosecutors say all the women were in their 20s, petite, and sex workers. >> sadly, sex workers tend to have disruptive or troubled lives. but they're also unbelievably vulnerable. and that's why people like this suspect, and other folks that have been defined as serial killers, target sex workers. >> reporter: but those cases went cold, and the so-called gilgo beach serial killer remained on the loose. >> for the next 13 years, their cases went unsolved. until today. >> reporter: investigators took

heuermann into custody at 8:30 in the evening, july 13th, outside his fifth avenue architecture firm in manhattan. before that, his life seemed pretty mundane. >> rex heuermann is a demon that walks among us. >> there's a term called "compartmentali "compartmentalization." some forensic psychologists call it cubing. they act one way with their wife, one way with their boss, one way with their children. they're big into manipulation and control. >> i'm an architectural consultant, born and raised on long island -- >> reporter: 2022, heuermann appearing in this youtube video around the time investigators formed a new task force and began to suspect he could be a killer, saying they zeroed in on him using dna technology, his car, and cell phone data. prosecutors say the killer contacted his victims using burner phones and later took the victims' cell phones. those cell phone records narrowed the area where the

suspect could be, tracking them to locations near his office in midtown manhattan and heuermann's home in massapequa park. >> we recovered two burner phones from the defendant at the time of his arrest. >> this man was using different burner phones. i'm not saying it's criminal conduct, but it suggests this pattern, that he used these things to disguise himself from being caught. >> reporter: detectives looked to see who in that area owned a distinctive vehicle allegedly tied to one of the murders, a chevrolet avalanche, reducing the pool of possible suspects from thousands to dozens. >> now you have a community doing this. you're looking through that lens as well. you start peeling back. now i have this box in massapequa park, let me do a deep dive, see who owns this car. >> reporter: this trash can is where police say they found pizza crusts they used to take a dna sample. after his arrest, police combed through every inch of the long island home, at times even bringing in a backhoe and using

ground-penetrating radar to search the property, looking for evidence. among the items police say they pulled from heuermann's home, more than 200 guns. >> we wanted to take him into custody somewhere outside of the house because of access to those weapons. >> reporter: all of this evidence went into charging heuermann for the first three murders, leaving brainard-barnes' case without answers for six more months. as well as many questions for her loved ones. >> today is another important chapter in the long pursuit of justice for marie. it has been 16 years since the last time i saw my sister. losing marie became a wound that never truly heals. for years, it looked like there might not be charges filed against any suspect for the murder of my mother. there are countless times i needed her, and she was not there. i remember she read to me every night, and now i can no longer remember the sound of her voice. i wish she was here today, but she was taken from us.

>> phil: our thanks to stephanie. when we come back, annette bening immerses herself in her latest role as long-distance swimmer diana nyad. with my moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. with my psoriatic arthritis symptoms. but just ok isn't ok. and i was done settling. if you still have symptoms after a tnf blocker like humira or enbrel, rinvoq is different and may help. rinvoq is a once-daily pill that can rapidly relieve joint pain, stiffness, and swelling in ra and psa. relieve fatigue for some... and stop joint damage. and in psa, can leave skin clear or almost clear. rinvoq can lower your ability to fight infections, including tb. serious infections and blood clots, some fatal; cancers, including lymphoma and skin; heart attack, stroke, and gi tears occurred. people 50 and older with a heart disease risk factor

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♪ >> phil: welcome back. annette bening is a four-time oscar nominee whose acting career spans more than four illustrious decades. she was just nominated for a s.a.g. award for her latest project, diving into the role of diana nyad who purported to be the first person ever to swim

over 100 miles from cuba to florida's coast. she sat down with "nightline" coanchor juju chang. >> annette >> thank you. >> juju: we know you from "the grifters" to "american beauty" to "the kids are all right." i know you spent your teens in san diego working on a boat, actually scuba diving. tell us about being drawn to acting and how spending time in the water might have helped you in this role. >> that was lucky, wasn't it? i never anticipated playing a marathon swim letter are as a kid i worked on a scuba diving boat and got certified. part of the certification is jump off a boat, do an ocean dive. so we went out on this boat, then subsequently i got a job on the boat. so i cooked on the boat for a year. and so i did spend a lot of time in the water. that was definitely helpful. i love being in the water, but i'd never been a trained

swimmer. >> juju: you spent a lot of time on stage before breaking through in movies. before we dive deeper, let's take a quick look at a clip from the film. >> diana, stop, stop, look over there. >> i can make it up, i'm not getting out -- >> you see that, the horizon? you see it? >> is it the sun? >> no. that's not the sun. those are the lights of key west. diana? there's not going to be another night. just one big push. if you can really bring it, really, really bring it? then you're going to reach florida today. >> juju: i know you're one of the greats when it comes to acting. but you look like you're in agony in that clip. tell us a little bit about the training process. i know you trained with an olympian, and you spent three to maybe eight hours a day in the water? >> well, it was -- i loved the training. i didn't train that much per day. but i had about a year to get

ready. and i approached it with a lot of humility, quite frankly, because i'd sort of underestimated what it was going to take. i also -- i think when i first got into it, i didn't really know how much i would actually do. i fell in love with it, with the swimming and the challenge. i think that's something we all kind of want and need in our lives is a new challenge, a new skill, something new to open up to. so that ended up just being a joy. i still swim. i love it. >> juju: i read that you had two stunt doubles who didn't have a lot to do? >> well, i thought it might not look right if somebody else did it. >> juju: it shows. you can see all of the physicality of it. but i'm interested. one of the big themes is that it's not just a physical challenge that she underwent, it was the mental toughness. >> i've always studied athletes, they're amazing, especially the great ones and their mentality. but every athlete has to stop. diana is very eloquent in her book, talking about what that was like for her. to have been a marathon swimmer

all her twis, she retired, she was done. and so it never really left her, that thirst for that feeling of when you're an athlete trying to reach a certain goal. when she turned 60, just because of a number of circumstances in her life, she decided that was the time. and when she told bonnie, who jodie foster plays, her best friend, "i need to do this, i need you to do it with me." bonnie said, "you're 60, they'd ridiculous, you couldn't do it when you were 20." what diana says is that she has something up here now that she didn't have before. and that she was convinced that because of her brain and because of her life experience and who she had become as a person, that she thought she could do it. >> juju: tell me about working with your costar, jodie foster. you have legendary careers, both of you. what was it like playing off of her? to what extent was it metaphor for women of a certain age in hollywood, too? >> jody is one of the best.

she's an overall movie maker. she directs, writes, she can produce. been in the business since she was 4 or 5 years old. she was an incredible asset in terms of narrative structure, as well. in the moment to moment play, she's just an incredible person. and so giving. and we did welcbecome friends. good friends. i'm very grateful to her. >> juju: you were both nominated for s.a.g. and golden globes, very exciting. the movie is based in part on diana's memoir, right? >> yes. >> juju: you lean into the prickly personality of it. jodie foster's character says you have a superiority complex, it's all about me, me, me. what made you unafraid to lean into that part of her character? >> i don't know. i think some of these things are judged differently when it's a woman than when it's a man. what extreme athlete who can swim 54 hours is a sweet,

pleasant personality all the time? by the way, she is. she's an incredibly charismatic, warm, loving woman. but yes, she did have this obsession. also, she allowed us to take a few liberties. because we needed to create a character arc for her. >> juju: outside of your roles, i'd be curious how you address this idea of having it all. you've had this 30-year marriage, four grown kids, and this incredible career. what do you say to young people who ask you about this elusive idea of having it all? >> oh, there's a lot of illusion in fame. and it comes with the territory. so it's part of how -- we have to navigate it ourselves, what people project onto us, verses who we actually are. i don't know. i love the work. i love the craft. and i loved it before i became famous. so i was as dedicated and enjoyed it just as much at that point. so i'm kind of lucky that i did have almost all of my 20s before i became a more public person. i think it helped.

>> juju: you are true to form. gracious and a true pro. thank you so much, annette bening, for joining us. >> thank you for having us. >> phil: our thanks to juju. watch annette bening now in "nyad" streaming on netflix. when we return, no doubt says they will reunite on stage this year. type 2 diabetes? discover the ozempic® tri-zone. ♪ ♪ i got the power of 3. i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. i'm under 7. ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart attack, or death in adults also with known heart disease. i'm lowering my risk. adults lost up to 14 pounds. i lost some weight. ozempic® isn't for people with type 1 diabetes. don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. don't take ozempic® if you or your family ever had medullary thyroid cancer, or have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if allergic to it. stop ozempic® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck,

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♪ finally tonight, gwen stefani and the rest of no doubt set to hit this year's coachella. ♪ i'm just a girl ♪

♪ they all sit there with their♪ >> phil: gwen stefani and no doubt bandmates announcing their first gig in nine years, hella good news for bands. the band famous for "just a girl" appearing today on instagram chat and teasing a show. now set to take the stage at this year's coachella. ♪ don't think i know what you're thinking ♪ >> phil: fans immediately posting city wish lists, but so far additional shows are something the band members don't speak about. ♪ i know what you're saying ♪ >> phil: see what we did there? it's going to be a fun show. that's "nightline." you can watch all our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you right back here at the same time tomorrow. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america.