authorities say they've caught a serial killer in multiple unsolved murders. >> rex heuermann a husband and father now charged with murder. >> tonight, the father of two under arrest, charged tonight with killing three women. >> rex, did you do it? >> police knew most likely very

quickly that this was a serial killer. >> there was really a jack the ripper on the loose in long island. it's a man who calls again and again, who says things like i'm watching your sister's body rot. >> we have four victim, the gilgo beach four. >> what's the thinking at this point to find this many set of remains near the same area? you know you've got something connected here. >> this becomes his trophy garden, the place where he can go bask in the memories. >> they suddenly start to find more and more bodies. >> a fifth victim, a sixth, a seventh, an eighth. it keeps going. now this is an international news story. >> but they never got the surveillance video tape from them. >> for some it was the story of the summer, but the mystery at gilgo beach really began over a decade ago with a terrified young woman who went missing in the nearby marsh.

♪ can't escape from this sinking feeling ♪ >> state police. >> yeah, there's somebody after me. somebody's after me. please. >> are you in suffolk county or nassau county? ♪ >> no, stop, no. what are you going to kill me? [ screaming ] ♪ buried deep in the ground ♪ >> april 30th, 2010. shannan gilbert is an escort who gets a call to go out to oak beach, long island. on that night, her client contacts her on craigslist, and she makes arrangements to meet

him at his home. she's got a driver named michael pak who takes her there. >> the drill was they would drive around town and wait for a call to come from one of shannan's craigslist ads. then michael would get a small part of the fee in return for driving her around. >> shannan gilbert was a lovely, sweet little girl who came from ellenville, new york. >> she'd had a rough childhood. she was in and out of foster care most of her life. by all accounts, she was intelligent. she graduated high school at age 16. >> she had all kinds of dreams about being an actress and being a singer. she was drawn to new york city where she thought she was going to find her career. >> she was looking for work, and she saw an ad, something about modelling or

something like that. she showed up. it wasn't about modelling. it was about something else. that's how she got into that business. >> that night was a slow night, and she wasn't getting response to her ads until finally she was hired by a guy who lived out in oak beach. >> he offered 2 hours for $450, so since there were not any other appointments, she said, "okay, let's go." >> she was in manhattan working. she called me. it was 1:00 a.m., saying she was going to long island and she'll call me when she's done. >> oak beach is really an interesting community. it's very insular. it's on the south shore of long island. there's nothing around there. there's no stores, there's no gas stations, there's no anything. >> you drive up, there's a gate you have to enter. so, shannan arrives at oak beach to her client, joseph brewer. she gets out of the suv.

michael pak waits for her, and she enters a house that she's probably never been to before. >> and the clock starts ticking, and michael pak stays outside in the car, sort of minding his own business, playing poker on his phone, and waiting for two hours to go by. >> around 5:00 a.m. the client, joseph brewer, steps out of his home, knocking on the car window of michael pak. it seems he is having an issue with shannon and wants michael to help get her out of his house. >> at some point, shannan gets it into her head that these men are trying to kill her. >> something has really scared her, and she dials 911. >> state police. >> yeah, there is somebody after me. >> where are you, ma'am? >> i don't know. can you trace where i am? >> no, i can't. >> no. no, stop, no! >> come on, let's go. all go outside. >> why are you going to kill me?

>> come on, you're freaking me out. >> i'm in the middle of nowhere. >> lets go back to manhattan, all right? >> she freaked out. and she said -- what'd you guys are trying to kill me. >> shannan sounds like she's fearing for her life. she's so scared that she dashes out of the house, leaving brewer behind, runs down the road, and begins knocking on the door of neighbor gus colletti. [ screaming ] [ knocking ] >> i was in shaving at 5:00 in the morning, and somebody knocked on the door and they were screaming, "help me, help me." >> and you can hear him on 911, having an interaction with her, making sure she was okay. >> what's the matter? is somebody after you? huh? >> hello. >> i need help. >> don't get yourself hurt. where are you going? >> gus colletti makes his own phone call to 911. >> suffolk police, what's the location of your emergency? >> i live at oak beach in the

association. there's a young girl running around here screaming, and there's some guy trying to follow her. >> shannan then runs down the road to the home of another neighbor and begins banging on that door. >> what is the location of your emergency? >> some woman is knocking at my door. she says she's in danger. >> do you know her or no? >> no, i don't. i'm not letting her in. >> during this whole time that shannan is running around knocking on doors at oak beach, her driver, michael pak, is trying to get her to come back into the car. >> at that point, she bolted out and ran down the road that way. he took off after her. that was the last i saw her. >> eventually michael pak can't find shannan. shannan has somehow disappeared. but at some point, he assumes that she'll get back to

new jersey on her own and he decides to leave. >> michael pak told me that he left oak beach in frustration. >> between joseph brewer's house and the front gate, my daughter disappeared. >> shannan's 911 call goes on for 20 minutes. by the time police arrive, there's no sign of her. she seems to have just vanished into the night. both joseph brewer and michael pak say they never threatened shannon, and police cleared them of any wrongdoing. >> around 6:00 a.m., i saw that she wasn't home. cause she usually gets home around that time. i kept calling the phone nonstop. i figured that she probably was in trouble.

we went to a police station. he goes, "maybe she just ran away." i'm like, "no, she would not do that." they didn't take it seriously. >> when my sister didn't come back home, i called suffolk county to try to file a missing person's report, but they said because of where she lives that i would have to file it through new jersey. >> we were ping-ponged back and forth. we were calling the police, calling the police. when are you going to look? when are you going to search? when are you going to try to find shannan? do something. >> it took four months before the connection was made between the new jersey missing person's report and shannan's disappearance in oak beach. i think there was definitely some prejudice with regards to taking this case so seriously. we're not talking about a cheerleader. we're not talking about a child here. we're talking about a sex worker.

>> we didn't hear another word about it until august. and in august, a plainclothes detective came to my door, and i asked him, why did it take four months for you to get around to looking for her? ♪ come to fight as the darkness follows ♪ >> despite the police's slow start in the search for shannan gilbert, her disappearance is about to unravel one of the biggest crime dramas in long island history. before my doctor and i chose breztri for my copd, i had bad days, (cough, cough) flare-ups that could permanently damage my lungs. with breztri, things changed for me. breztri gave me better breathing. starting within 5 minutes, i noticed my lung function improved. it helped improve my symptoms,

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>> december 11th, 2010, there is a canine officer out with his cadaver dog. he decides that he's going to go back to oak beach for training purposes to the place where shannan last was seen. >> john mallia i would describe as the best canine handler we had. he spent a lot of his uncommitted time on his own down back in oak beach searching for shannan gilbert. >> they wrap for the day, and he goes down ocean parkway. a couple miles. >> john made the decision that he was going to leave oak beach and search further west along ocean parkway. near gilgo beach. there's vines, there's sticker bushes, there's poison ivy. it's just extremely densely vegetated, and from the shoulder, you really can't see

far into that area at all. >> and the dog indicates something. he basically air scents. >> all of a sudden, there was like three helicopters going back and forth right over the rooftops, and i said, "oh, boy, they must have found something." >> on saturday, a cadaver dog searching this nearby stretch of brush led officers to the skeletal remains of a woman's body dumped in the thick brush. >> dog gave me an indication, and he started indicating to a spot off the shoulder of the parkway. at that point i saw the skeletal remains of a body. >> the body's that of a petite female that's badly decomposed and wrapped up in camouflaged burlap. it's been dumped in the thick brush near gilgo beach just yards from the highway. >> we had detectives come to the house. they told me that they were almost 100% sure it was my sister. i just remember thinking, oh, my god, she's dead.

i can't believe it. >> hoping to identify the body quickly, investigators are looking for a distinctive feature that shannan had. >> shannan gilbert had been struck in her face by her boyfriend, and as a result, she suffered an injury that the repair required a titanium plate be put into her jaw. >> we were young, too, so, very young. she was getting really physical with me, and then i kind of lost it and went overboard and i hit her. i regretted it back then. even after all those years, i still regret it today. >> the body that they found was severely decomposed. it had been out in the elements for an extended period of time, but this titanium plate would always be there. >> the lack of that titanium plate in the human remains, i think that helped determine that it was not shannan gilbert more rapidly than may otherwise have been the case. >> so, if this isn't shannan gilbert, who is it?

>> that body, we learned later, that's melissa barthelemy. melissa barthelemy was 24 years old. she disappeared in the summer of 2009. that's a year and a half when the police don't have any success finding her. >> there were similarities between melissa and shannan. both of them were about the same age. they were both petite, and they worked in the sex industry. >> you hear a lot of stories about the victims, particularly when they're escorts and you make a lot of assumptions about how they were truly lost souls. in melissa barthelemy's case, she had a family who loved her. >> she was so feisty, and she used to do crazy things. even when she was real small. she had a pet rabbit. if we had the camera out, she would climb inside the cage so you could take a picture of her in the cage. [ laughter ] she was quite silly. >> melissa was a decent student. she went on to get a cosmetology

degree. >> melissa wanted to eventually open up a beauty salon, so she moved to new york city. >> what happens to a lot of these girls is that they get picked up by what's called a romeo pimp. basically, it's a boyfriend who is going to take her away from her small-town life, and that's not what happens. the boyfriend subsequently ends up convincing the woman to become an escort. >> melissa had just gotten out from under the thumb of a boyfriend who had, in effect, become her pimp, and she was living independently and trying to support herself. and craigslist offered a way for her to be her own boss. you could just post a picture with your phone number, somebody would call you. >> it's believed that she had gotten a call, and she was going to go out to visit a client in

long island. >> a few days went by and no phone calls from her, and it just wasn't like her. >> i actually started calling hospitals, jails. nobody knew where melissa barthelemy was. it was like she vanished. >> soon after melissa disappears, her 15-year-old sister, amanda, starts to receive a number of phone calls around dinner time. >> amanda's phone rings, and she looks at it. and the caller i.d. is coming from melissa's phone, and she rejoices. her sister has finally resurfaced. >> amanda's like, "wow, oh, my god, it's melissa." and she answers the phone. there's a guy on the other end and she's like, where's my sister? who is this? >> it's a man who is taunting her and harassing her. >> the person said, i'm watching your sister rot.

>> the final call was he actually said what he did to her. he actually told amanda he killed her sister, you should have seen her face. >> five months later, back at gilgo beach, investigators are fanning out into the marsh near ocean parkway, searching for more clues, but nobody is prepared for what the landscape is about to reveal. >> they had found another body and another body and then another one. ( ♪ ) nissan has a car for everyone. (engine revving) every driver who wants more. more turbo. ( ♪ ) more freedom. ( ♪ ) more electric. ( ♪ ) (engine revving) at nissan, more is all we do. ( ♪ )

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after first finding the body of melissa barthelemy, police spent the next two days searching the area. this area is totally desolate. it's the open face of the ocean. there's nothing there. >> you hope to maybe find the murder weapon or find something else related to the killing. >> but what police stumble upon next would shock the seaside community to its core. not one, not two, but three more bodies hidden in the brush.

>> late this morning, suffolk county police announced details of a startling series of finds. >> the decomposed bodies were found off a roadway along gilgo beach yesterday, possibly dumped out of a car. >> what we have is we have four other bodies, and we realize they're not shannan. they're other women. and suddenly what was a missing person becomes something much larger. >> and what's the thinking at this point? i mean, to find this many sets of remains near the same area, you know you've got something connected here. >> i think it was pretty clear to everybody, although it was not publicly announced at the time, that there was a potential serial killer working in suffolk county. >> police find three women all in their 20s, and they'll later identify them as amber costello, maureen brainard-barnes, and megan waterman.

now, how easy would it be for somebody to come and dump remains out in this area? >> this was a -- i hate to say it -- but not a bad place to do it. the road is fairly straight. you can see traffic coming from miles. if it was at night, you would see the headlights of the cars coming. back then there was no guardrail here, so you could pull your car right up against the brush, discard human remains in there, and then drive off. >> they're found together. they are placed together, essentially. one by one, a short distance away from each other, each of them fully intact. they found three bound with what turns out to be burlap. >> i don't think its coincidence that four bodies ended up in this area. >> my expertise is in serial killers, and i've written 71 books. the way the bodies were handled definitely suggests somebody who knows the area. and once he has succeeded in placing a body in this location, this becomes his trophy garden, his -- the place where he can go

and bask in the memories of killing these women. >> these four women, who we now know as the gilgo beach four, they all fit an m.o. they're all petite, like 5 feet, and they had all been operating in the tri-state area as sex workers. >> the victims were engaged in a high-risk business, and people who are engaged in a similar business should be on very, very high alert. >> the women in the case weren't just escorts, as they were labeled at the time. they were also mothers, daughters. each had their own story. maureen brainard-barnes was the first of the gilgo four to go missing. >> maureen brainard-barnes was 25 years old when she

disappeared july 9th of 2007. maureen lived in norwich, connecticut. >> she had these bright blue eyes. she was very outgoing, very outspoken. >> maureen and sara met. and they immediately recognized kindred spirits in one another. >> she had just had her son, and she had had her daughter then. >> she, like a lot of the women in this case, struggled to have enough money to support family members, and she found a very easy and quick way of doing it. >> it was right around her birthday when she introduced me to it. she said, you like to sleep with random people. why don't you get paid for it? i was raised that escorting, call girls, prostitutes, hookers, whatever, they're -- dirty.

she ended the stigma for me when we went out for our first weekend in new york. you know, like, there was no standing on a street corner. and for the most part, the phone calls we got off of our ads, the guys were completely different. they were really nice. >> sara, for a time, turned out to be a pretty good partner for maureen. they had all kinds of rules set up for safety. >> the first one, always follow your instincts. if it doesn't feel right, don't do it. and there's no amount of money that's worth your life. that was the second. every time i talk about it, it doesn't get any easier. >> the weekend maureen disappeared was not a typical trip to new york. >> maureen was under a lot of pressure that weekend to make money. she was getting evicted. >> she wasn't making enough money that weekend.

and maureen said, you go back. i need to stay another night or two. >> this was an act of desperation for maureen. >> and she was just sitting in bed with the tv on, and i said, come on, just let's go. she was like, no, i'll be good. i'll be here when you come back on wednesday. she was not. >> two weeks after maureen disappears, her friend sarah gets a phone call from a man saying that he knows where maureen is. >> he goes, do you know marie? and marie was her escort name. i'm like, well, what does she look like? he said she's short. i said yeah. >> she's got dark brown hair to her shoulders. you. be on her right arm she has a tattoo that says nicole or something. well, that is her. that's my friend. he's like, she's not missing. i just saw her at a whorehouse in queens.

oh, yeah? that doesn't sound right to me. >> when sara hears whorehouse, it's not a term that's thrown around these days. you imagine that whoever was making this call is someone a little out of touch with the times. >> and i'm like, can you call me back unblocked? because i need to tell the cops and her family this so that they're not worried anymore. he's like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. never called me back. >> the idea that this man would call a victim's friend and taunt them like this is really sickening. >> but remember, this isn't the first time somebody close to one of the victims got a taunting phone call. >> is this a pattern? the investigation into another victim will eventually lead to a big break in the case. >> police finally come across their first real lead. a witness who describes an

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>> gilgo beach is a beautiful beach, and so for people to think that this is some seedy, dirty area where these bodies were thrown, that is not what is going on here.

this is a beautiful part of long island. >> gilgo beach has been around since the first grain of sand. >> i have been coming to gilgo beach since i was a teenager. it's beautiful. it's a surf beach. >> it's been known for surfing in new york for a really long time, since the '50s, since the '60s. >> it's different clothing and different shaped surfboards, but it's the same vibe as it was even before i was alive. >> as soon as i heard about the gilgo beach killer, it was very scary. never think for a second that something like that would be over here. >> people were very hungry for answers. and if they weren't getting their answers, they created their own theories on what they did have. and it turns out, we were all wrong. >> six weeks after the grisly discoveries of four human skeletons on this deserted barrier island, those bodies have names and faces.

>> one of the bodies that we found on december 13th has been positively identified as megan waterman. >> megan waterman is from scarborough, maine, and she grew up raised by her grandparents. she was a free spirit and a rebel, and she struggled to fit in. then she fell in love with a guy from new york city. he was a pimp. he and she would take trips to long island, and she would go to work. >> the last place she had been seen was leaving the hauppauge, long island, holiday inn. she left. she left her cell phone, and that was the last time anybody ever saw of her. >> a video camera captures her leaving the lobby of the hotel. it seems as if she's been told to walk a short distance from the hotel, to where she might get picked up by someone who doesn't want to be seen.

you could say that's the work of a clever serial killer, but you could also say that's the work of a john who doesn't want to be noticed by anybody at a hotel. >> i know my daughter. she had to have met this person at least five or six times to let her guard down enough to walk out of the hotel without her cell phone. it took suffolk county a month before they did anything. they don't care about the sex world. >> the level of effort that was put into the search by the suffolk county police department is evidence of the fact that we cared about these people regardless of what they did for a living. that didn't matter to us whatsoever. >> this killer, and serial killers in general, choose their victims because they believe they won't be missed. they choose people who are engaged in professions that society isn't kind to. >> it's the world's oldest profession, but yet it's also the one that people look down on the most. >> whoever was targeting these

individuals was doing it because of their business. anybody in the business in particular should be very careful who they meet and where they meet them. >> the women in this case are working as escorts at a time when escort work is changing dramatically. >> for so many years, we had street walkers. with the internet, that's totally changed. >> sex workers now can use the internet to do their own work, get their own clients. >> it works like this -- you post an ad, then you take a call to meet a john, but you never know who you're going to meet or what you're going to walk into. >> everybody thinks that this process is safer, but what we've all come to realize is that it's far more dangerous. >> the last of the gilgo four to disappear is amber costello. >> amber costello disappeared just three months after megan waterman in september of 2010. she and her sister kim both

lived in long island now, and they both were working as escorts. >> i met amber at church. she had a really bad childhood, and it just messed her up. >> amber's friend asked us not to use her name. >> amber had become dependent upon drugs, and she had been living with her boyfriend and a guy named dave schaller. >> amber, she was a sweetheart. if she had, you know, different channels, she would've been able to do something a lot better with her life. >> amber and dave schaller, they had a sort of setup that when a man would come see amber, dave would come into the house and pretend to be the angry boyfriend. the client would get so upset that this boyfriend had come in, that the client would just leave and amber would get to keep the money. >> one night they tried to run this scam, and dave gets a good look at the guy.

and he's unusual because he's so tall. he later describes him as an ogre. and he's unusual in another way too, which is because when he runs away, he gets into an unusual car -- a chevy avalanche. >> later on that night, amber got a text from this male client saying that wasn't very nice. he demanded a credit. >> when she went missing, she had called me earlier that day. she said, this guy keeps calling me. he won't leave me alone. >> she said, he wants me for the night. i said, did he throw money at you? yeah, $1,500. it just sounded like too much money -- 1,500 bucks. she gave me a hug. she bounced. she took off. >> after she leaves that night, amber is never heard from again. >> dave schaller basically told authorities, we had been running this ruse.

we ran it on a guy, and then amber disappeared. >> he remembered this interaction, and he remembered the chevy avalanche, so something in his mind knew at that time that something was off. >> by spring of 2011, i think law enforcement had realized they have a big problem on their hands, and that they should probably go search the entire area. >> they start sending legions of officers up and down ocean parkway. >> police officers, firefighters, emergency workers, people descended from cranes to go into deep bramble. >> the fbi was asked in to help with the technical part of this investigation. we help identify where bodies are located. >> they suddenly start to find more and more bodies. >> a fifth victim, a sixth, a seventh, an eighth. it keeps going and going.

>> law enforcement officers have been coming the tall grass here. >> i was right there when the canine officer realized that what she had found was a child, and it, i think, was a gut punch to all of us. >> unbelievably, there are now ten sets of human remains. >> are they dealing with one killer, two killers? how many killers could have been involved in these murders? inez, let me ask you, you're using head and shoulders, right? only when i see flakes. then i switch back to my regular shampoo you should use it every wash, otherwise the flakes will come back. he's right, you know. is that tiny troy? the ingredients in head and shoulders keep the microbes that cause flakes at bay. microbes, really? they're always on your scalp...little rascals... but good news, there's no itchiness, dryness or flakes down here! i love tiny troy. he's the best. make every wash count! little help, please.

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thursday april 14th, 2011. >> the manhunt for a serial killer underway right now on new york's long island. the fbi preparing high-resolution cameras to fly over the area where police found human remains. >> despite suffolk county police finding all of these bodies between december of 2010 and april of 2011, they still did not find shannan gilbert. >> this is not a television show where everything is solved in an hour. >> i am so very tired of him saying that. i'm not going to let this end until i find my daughter.

>> so, not only did we want to find shannan gilbert to give closure to her family, we just felt compelled to find shannan gilbert. so i suggested we go back into the oak beach area. this is the area adjacent to where she was last seen. >> it's a bunch of waterways, almost. and they're like -- sometimes they're like six feet deep depending on the water situation. >> the only way to find her body is to use these special vehicles that will allow detectives to go through the marsh but not get stuck in these deep canals. >> we were able to drive that around and much more rapidly searched the area. so during the search, again john mallia finds a pair of shoes, a pair of pants, and a pocketbook. >> with identification in the pocketbook belonging to shannan gilbert, we believe this is her pocketbook. >> then early in the morning on december 13th, we found a set of

human remains. >> after a year and a half, police on long island believe they have found shannan gilbert, a prostitute who vanished after partying with a client she met on craigslist. >> the police believe that my sister was either so intoxicated or so strung out on drugs that she just ran into the marsh, got stuck, and just expired. >> looking at the terrain, it's very easy to get engulfed with water, muck, and, you know, fall down and not be able to get out of there. >> police believe shannan may have drowned or died of exposure somehow in the marsh. her death doesn't follow the pattern of the gilgo four. she was found in a different area. she wasn't wrapped in burlap. but despite the authority's conclusion, shannan's family is convinced she was murdered by the same killer. >> shannan's death was not an accident. her death was not an accident.

>> and as far as the other bodies that were recovered, the suffolk county police are now asking, do they have one serial killer on the loose along the south shore or two? >> it's anybody's guess whether this is one killer who has refined his technique over time or whether the gilgo four are their own thing and this dumping ground is actually the work of several people. >> but the investigation hits a huge stumbling block in 2012 when the new chief of police, james burke, shuts out the fbi. >> it is the law that the federal authorities should be in this case. apparently, they've been boxed out and told to stay away by suffolk county. >> not only has burke kicked out the fbi, he's also in the crosshairs of a federal corruption investigation. the feds ended up investigating allegations that he brutalized a suspect, someone accused of stealing sex toys and pornography out of burke's own car. >> he did not want the fbi in

his business. >> james burke will now spend nearly three years behind bars. the former chief sentenced today for beating a suspect and then covering it up. >> unfortunately for the gilgo four, that means this case was paralyzed for years. >> when all the years went by and absolutely nothing was being done about this, i thought that they were never going to ever catch this man. >> the families had been outraged that this case had not only gone cold, that it was in a deep freeze, that this case was nowhere. >> so, i arrived in suffolk in april of '18. the thought was, all right, we

really need to kind of reinvigorate this investigation. >> thank you for joining us. >> she calls a press conference in january 2020. >> today we are releasing the first piece of new information. >> a belt that had been tied around one of the victims, maureen brainard-barnes. >> a black leather belt embossed with the letters h m or w h was recovered during the initial stages of this investigation. >> the press conference is notable mainly because for the first time in years, there's a police department proactively working on this investigation. >> and then two years after the belt tip is released, this case is invigorated yet again. >> in 2022, suffolk county, like other parts of new york state, undergoes a sweeping political change. you have ray tierney comes in as the new district attorney. rodney harrison, former top uniform officer in the nypd, becomes the new police commissioner.

>> how many agencies were involved in this? >> we had the state police, we had the sheriffs, we had the fbi, and we had the suffolk county district attorney's office all working together. >> we had our first task force meeting february 1st of 2022. >> then just six weeks later, the task force had an suspect for the very first time in 13 years. >> they were off to the races. >> police had a team surveilling his every move. >> the one thing we didn't want to do is have him be led that we're onto him. >> somebody probably living a double life, hiding in plain sight. >> they're putting the pieces of this puzzle together under the radar. >> the police watch and they wait. >> finally, after 13 years, an arrest. >> last night, members assigned to the gilgo beach task force did place one individual under arrest.

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rex , did you do it? >> tree lined streets. nice homes. it's quiet. >> except for the accused serial killer who lived there and allegedly hunts from there. many people would wonder how you could be married to somebody for 20-plus years and not know something. >> if it happened, it was a complete double life her husband lived.

>> i'm rex heuermann. i'm an architect. when a job that should have been routine becomes not routine, i get the phone call. >> law enforcement says they were able to review the suspect's google history. they found searches related to child pornography. >> it came to our attention he permits for firearms. >> that's a cache of weapons. now, is this a near-victim of the alleged killer who lived to tell? >> i'm so dwlad i got out of there. he said, "have you heard about the gilgo beach killings?" he was talking as if he was remembering it and reliving it. i've never been scared like that before. ever.

in december of 2010, the bodies of four women turn up in a remote part of long island. >> the skeletal remains of four people were found at gilgo beach. >> all four victims were bound and laid out in the exact same fashion. three of them were wrapped in camouflage burlap. >> it seems that we have a serial killer on our hands. >> it could be weeks or months before we identify the four people. >> i think these cases were dismissed and were not taken seriously because these were sex workers. >> i want to assure everybody that we're on top of this investigation. >> more body parts turn up. the fbi is brought in, but still the investigation goes nowhere for more than a decade until last year. >> they formed a new task force that sort of gave fresh eyes to the case. >> things moved quick.

but then once a suspect was identified, it moved even quicker. >> tonight, breaking news. the stunning arrest. authorities say they caught a serial killer in multiple unsolved murders. >> heuermann, a husband and father, is now charged with the deaths of three of the victims found on the barrier beach off long island's south shore. >> heuermann, a 59-year-old architect is taken into custody just blocks away from his office in midtown manhattan. >> he certainly doesn't try to run. we can't hear anything. he's very calm. >> it was as much of a surprise to me as it was to everybody else that was watching television that morning. >> i had no idea who he was or anything about him. >> rex, did you do it? >> but everyone's about to learn about rex heuermann. first off, while the arrest was in manhattan, he's actually a commuter. he lives in a small town on long island, massapequa park,

which isn't far from where the four bodies were found. and secondly, he's a really big guy. >> rex heuermann is a very large individual. if you look at his perp walk, he is like a head above any of the police officers who are leading him. >> he was this hulking, almost overweight, 6'4", 240 pound man. >> the 59-year-old architect and married father of two now charged with killing three women. >> heuermann is charged with both first- and second-degree murder for the deaths of melissa barthelemy, megan waterman, and amber lynn costello. he pleads not guilty. >> and as for the fourth victim, maureen brainard-barnes, heuermann is the prime suspect according to police. but he's not been charged in her death. >> we have people coming here from all over long island to get a look at rex heuermann's house.

you see it right there, the red house right there. >> just like in 2011, when the media descended, they all were back, and the public was there too., crowds of people outside of his house. >> i heard the helicopters, so it got me up by a quarter to 7:00. >> and it's like the entire world descended upon this tiny block in massapequa park. it was like a tourist attraction. >> massapequa park is only about 15 miles, a 20-minute drive to gilgo beach. if you wanted to take a boat, you could and it would be even shorter. >> massapequa park is exactly what you would think of as a middle-class commuter town on long island. tree-lined streets, nice homes. it's quiet. >> he was born and raised there. he even lives in the house that he grew up in. >> he was married.

he had a child with his second wife and also was a stepfather. >> even before he was taken into custody, heuermann stood out in his neatly manicured long island neighborhood. unlike the other homes here, his appears to be in a state of disrepair, which left his neighbors feeling a bit uneasy. >> i would take the kids, you know, trick-or-treating for halloween, and by the time we got to this block, it was just a bad vibe. >> when i first saw the news report and as soon as i saw the house, i knew exactly who it was. >> i was just like, wow, if i had to think of someone from school, he would fit the bill. >> i met rex heuermann when i was 8 years old. i was in second grade. >> so, we went to the same grammar school together and then junior high school. and then berner high school. rex was very introverted,

very shy, never really made eye contact with you. >> he didn't have any friends, and he was an unknown. he was always on the outside looking in. >> we do know with rex heuermann that he was socially unskilled in high school, that he was bullied, that he probably didn't get dates with the pretty girls. >> he later goes on to study architecture at the new york institute of technology. time goes by, and he opened up his own architectural firm in midtown. >> today on "interview," rex heuermann. >> in february 2021, he is interviewed in his office for a youtube real estate show. >> tell us, you know, who you are. >> rex heuermann. i'm an architect. i'm an architectural consultant. i'm a troubleshooter. >> he was very happy to be interviewed, i have to say. he really was really, really proud of his work.

>> when a job that should have been routine suddenly becomes not routine -- >> yeah. >> -- i get the phone call. >> i worked for rex's company in the summer of 2010. around the office, he was very self-important. >> part of my job became educate the city. >> i was 27, and he was just, like -- i don't know. he was, like, a little awkward. maybe wasn't used to talking to a young woman. i don't know. >> the interview with rex was very difficult. what has this job taught you about yourself? he couldn't relax. >> i think it's taught me more about how to understand people. >> he was calculating all the time his answers. >> it's disturbing. and i think you, very naturally, ask yourself -- what did you miss? what did he say? like, what have i forgotten? what details am i forgetting? you know, maybe they meant something at the time.

>> can you smile? there it is. >> rex often invited colleagues out shooting, hunting. most of the time people declined just because they weren't interested. >> that's it, folks. that was rex. >> so could we have seen anything with heuermann? well, first of all, he's not convicted of anything yet. but most typically, people who are close to a killer will have the most benign interpretation of their behavior because they don't want to think they're living with a killer. who does? >> there is a lot of intrigue around rex heuermann and who he is, but the big question is, how did police break the case? and what evidence do they say they've got to link him to the murders? we, the moms who have lost our children to social media harms. we, we, we have had... enough. our politicians have failed.

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this morning, cracking the case. investigators saying how modern police work led to the arrest of an alleged serial killer more than a decade after the case went cold. >> yes, the day has finally come when someone so depraved of heart is finally brought to justice. >> i have been covering this case since march of 2011. since then, there were seven police commissioners, three district attorneys, and a cast of agencies trying to figure out who this suspect was, and a eventually they come up with one suspect. >> when i took office in january 2022, i made gilgo a priority. >> what was the status of the investigation once you got here? >> my predecessors, the former commissioners, put a lot of work into this. i don't think the case was stalled. i just think investigations into homicides, especially a serial

killer case, are not easy. >> thanks to the advancement of cell phone technology and dna analysis that weren't available in 2010, the team was able to narrow down the field of suspects. >> so, there was not a lot of forensic value at the crime scenes. what we did have is we did have five hairs. there was one hair in particular that was stuck between the tape that was used to bind ms. waterman. >> using advanced dna technology, investigators say they determine that the hair found on megan waterman belonged to a caucasian male. >> so, we had the hairs, and then we also had the great work done by the fbi and their cellphone experts who had looked at some of the burner phones that the killer used, as well as some of the victim phones, and had established areas of interest. >> we had cell site hits in two

areas in massapequa park and also in midtown manhattan. there was a little bit of what we called a box, where our potential suspect was making these phone calls to our sex workers. >> and then with further analysis utilizing the tools that we invested in, we essentially went from over 1,000 homes to under 200 homes, and we were able to pinpoint the manhattan location to a very specific area of manhattan. >> it really helped us narrow in to saying that whoever is our suspect probably has a residence over in massapequa park and has some type of work in midtown manhattan. >> by 2022, even though authorities have narrowed down their search area and they've got a suspect profile, detectives still don't have that critical piece of evidence that points toward a name. but it turns out the biggest tip has been hiding in the case files for years.

>> it was a new york state police investigator who took another look at the fact that there was this identification of a vehicle that amber lynn costello had last been seen leaving in. >> amber was my roommate, one of my best friends. she started getting calls. she'd be on the phone with the guy for a while. >> the roommate is the one who gave us the information that she had a customer who drove a green avalanche, who was 6'6", 275 pounds, fuzzy hair. >> that information came in at the beginning of the investigation, in 2010, 2011, along with what was really thousands of tips. and unfortunately it gets -- it gets lost and buried. >> once we brought that state police investigator who had access to a different database and was able to track it down to that massapequa park box that we've identified, really put us

in a place where rex heuermann was our guy. >> so now that they have a name, the task force, of course, escalates the investigation. they begin closely surveilling heuermann and issuing more than 300 subpoenas over the next 16 months. >> what you're looking for is you're looking for additional information, whether it's financial records, phone records, forensic information. >> the bail document paints a really disturbing picture. law enforcement says they were able to review the suspect's google history. they say they found searches related to violent pornography, to child pornography, and they say they also found searches related to the gilgo investigation itself. >> in a 14-month period, he searched the gilgo investigation over 200 times. >> they started putting surveillance on rex heuermann, and they would follow him. >> but they needed dna evidence. you had a crime that was so many years old and they had nothing to tie anybody to the location. >> they needed something that

rex heuermann would throw out that would have his dna on it. and it's new york city. what's better than a slice of pizza? they were outside his office, and a detective saw him come out and throw out a pizza box. and so what does the detective do? great old-fashioned police work. goes right up to the trash can, digs it out, and there is a piece of pizza crust. >> in the end, prosecutors say the smoking gun was a pizza crust. police dug through heuermann's trash, matching dna from a partially eaten slice to previously unidentified hairs found on three of the gilgo victims. >> thanks to dna retrieved from the pizza box, investigators

were able to match that dna to dna collected at the scene to a 99% statistical probability. >> according to law enforcement, rex heuermann has these alias email accounts. we know that he has these burner phones, according to police. police say up to this year, heuermann was still attempting to contact sex workers. >> good morning. there's been some new developments in the gilgo investigation. last night, a little bit around 8:30 p.m., members assigned to the gilgo beach task force did place one individual under arrest. >> this could be a dangerous situation. how does this go down? >> we weren't planning on doing the takedown of rex heuermann that day, but we got concerned about information possibly

getting out due to the fact that we're going through a grand jury and trying to get him pre-indicted. >> so he's walking out unsuspecting, and the agents come up to him. what's his reaction? >> there wasn't any struggle or any fight. he goes, what am i being arrested for? we informed him what he's being placed under arrest. >> we're here at the corner of 1st avenue and michigan avenue and i want to show you this red house, this is the house police have been swarming. >> we wanted to execute a number of search warrants. so while that was happening in manhattan, there was a team going out to the house in massapequa park. >> police have now descended on the heuermann property, and the house and this long island suburb are completely upended. >> and then we did search warrant at his residence and recovered close to 300 firearms. >> every square inch of the house was removed. >> investigators spent much of the day searching heuermann's

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rex heuermann is now in jail. >> rex, did you do it? >> he's been charged with first-degree murder. and now police have an opportunity to dig up even more evidence. >> you saw the helicopters overhead. they were so loud here. >> they go into his house. they rip it apart, looking for any piece of evidence to potentially tie him to the murder victims. >> given the type of case it was, you wanted to get all types of evidence from large tangible pieces of evidence as well as microscopic evidence, forensic evidence -- hair, fibers, blood,

dna, what have you. >> with the shocking news that heuermann was accused of being a serial killer, his family was quickly displaced from their home. investigators would spend close to two weeks here, combing for additional evidence. >> tell me in detail if you would what went on during the search. >> every square inch of the house was removed. every item from every closet, every dresser drawer. the mattresses were taken. >> the mattresses were taken? >> all the mattresses were taken out of the house. a four-foot portion of the kitchen counter was cut out. the drain traps on the bathroom sinks and the kitchen sinks were taken and not replaced. so you turn on the water, it just runs right down to the basement to the floor. >> did they have to just essentially destroy the home? >> the house wasn't destroyed, but did we have to meticulously go through every little part of the house to see if there's anything that we can recover that could be connected to our victims?

absolutely. i don't regret us doing that at all. i think they were out 13 days, staying at a couple friends', hotels and a couple nights in the car. actually, a rented car because all the vehicles were seized by the police department as well. >> authorities already know that heuermann is in possession of a large trove of guns. >> it came to our attention that he had 97 permits for firearms. >> that's a cache of weapons. >> that is a cache of weapons, i agree. and then we did a search warrant at his residence and recovered close to 300 firearms. >> the defendant fancied himself a collector. >> heuermann owns two storage units very close to his house. one they went to immediately, and they were there for about five days processing that unit. and then they also processed another storage unit. we have never been told what they took from those locations. >> according to police, rex heuermann seems to be particularly skilled at leading a double life. he's a been a longstanding

husband and father, and now his family's life has been completely upended. >> and he's been married to asa ellerup since 1996. teenagers, and they stayed in touch despite being married to other people first. from what you know, they got married in iceland. >> they had the wedding in iceland. >> has she given you any indication about whether she was happy in her marriage? >> she has. i think they were -- any marriage after that time period you hit certain lulls. >> i feel very badly for rex's family, for his wife and children. their life will never be the same again. >> the couple shared a daughter, victoria, and raised asa's son christopher. they were all living in the home rex grew up in, and the question on everyone's mind is what did the family think? >> we know that victoria, rex's daughter, did work for him for a period of time in his office. >> she was still at the front

desk. he really wanted her to stay focused on the work. >> the public has convicted their father, yet i think they're looking to reserve judgment until they actually can see and hear what actual physical evidence there may not be. >> after rex heuermann's arrest, his defense attorney michael brown describes his client's reaction. >> we're looking forward to fighting this case in a court of law, not in the court of press. in terms of speaking to my client, the only thing i can tell you that he did say, as he was in tears, was "i didn't do this." >> authorities say they have compelling evidence against heuermann. it's a pretty unimaginable scenario, learning that your father is being charged as a serial killer. one person who understands this upheaval is like is kerri rawson, and she has watched this all play out on tv, having been there before herself. >> your whole life is being disrupted and you're constantly trying to process it. and you're verbally trying to process it with people.

>> her father, dennis radar, came up with his own serial killer moniker, btk, which stands for bind, torture, and kill. >> from 1974 to 1991, he murdered 10 people. >> in late july of 2023, from prison, dennis radar claims he notices similarities between him and suspect rex hueremann, saying, he's a clone. >> nothing in his victim profile is like dennis rader's victim profile. so, there are significant differences, and certainly the clone comment doesn't really apply. >> you're very angry from a trauma standpoint and grief. it's too much for you to process internally. >> victoria, christopher, and asa are already distancing themselves from rex hueremann. >> asa ellerup has filed for divorce from rex heuermann. she filed very quickly. >> when asa filed for divorce, i was so proud of her.

she's signaling, i'm in charge, i'm in control. >> many people would ask how you could be married to somebody for 20-plus years and not know something. >> she hasn't expressed any of that. the police commissioner has come out and said she's not a suspect or an accomplice. and they've actually said she was out of the jurisdiction when these alleged homicides took place. if they happened, it was a complete double life that her husband lived. >> but there were others who said they felt decidedly uneasy around rex hueremann. >> i know i went to dinner with the gilgo beach killer. i can tell you, i've never been scared like that before, ever. take a moment to pause and ask, why did you get vaccinated against pneumococcal pneumonia? i help others. but i need to help protect myself. honestly? i couldn't afford to get sick. i want to be there for this one. i can't if i'm sick. pneumococcal pneumonia is a potentially serious bacterial lung disease. you may be at risk if you're 19 to 64

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tonight, after more than a decade of terrorizing quiet communities on long island, police say the gilgo beach serial killer is a suburban dad, an architect, charged with murdering women he secretly solicited for sex. >> after rex heuermann's arrest makes national headlines, tips and details begin to pour in,

including how he allegedly met his victims. investigators included these images in court documents. they're selfies that heuermann allegedly took which authorities say he then posted online to search for escorts. in the days after the news breaks, a former escort named nikkie brass comes forward to share her story on tiktok. >> i'm so glad i trusted my gut and got the hell out of there. i saw it online. and right when i saw his picture, i was like, oh, my god, i knew it. if i had said yes to him, i don't think i'd be here right now. >> nikkie brass is 34 now and trying to make a career as a hair and makeup stylist. but years ago, she worked as an escort and says she met rex heuermann after he responded to one of her ads online. >> i connected with rex heuermann in the summer of 2015.

i'm not sure which site he found me on. he contacted me through one of them. we started messaging. typically, i wouldn't meet anyone for less than around $1,000 at the time. he did tell me that he was an architect, that he worked in manhattan. initially he didn't want to meet me in a public place, so i asked him if he would meet me at the steam room in port jefferson. he didn't really want to, and then he finally caved into "fine, i'll meet you there." we met by the door. his size is definitely intimidating. we sat down, and we talked briefly about what he did. and then he asked if i liked true crime. i do, i love it. we talked about a few different serial killers. and we got onto the topic of robert hansen. that was the one he was most interested in. >> in the '70s, robert hansen

was a baker and a family man living in anchorage, alaska. but the dark side of hansen's double life was something straight out of a horror movie. >> he would pick up women when his wife was away, take them to his house, rape them, and in some cases, take them out to wilderness to kill. >> it didn't set me off when we talked about the other killers. what got me was when he said, have you heard of the gilgo beach killings? that's when the alarm bells started going off, because he wasn't talking like a true-crime fan. he was talking as if he was remembering it and reliving it, and almost as if he was, like, enjoying it. specifically i remember him saying, how do you think they got rid of the bodies? and i said, i couldn't even begin to tell you. and he goes, well, what if they treaded through the marsh with camouflage burlaps?

they'd probably go very unnoticed. to me that was really weird. he was like, well, they were just like prostitutes or whores, anyway. it's not like the killer's out killing, you know, people that matter all that much. but then he'd be like, but don't worry. i don't mean like you. you have goals and things you want to do. don't think i'm talking about you like that. >> that wasn't exactly reassuring to her. nikkie says the conversation takes a dark turn and she begins to look for a way out. >> towards the end, when he asked if i was going to come back to his place with him, i wanted to try to be polite about it. so i was like, you know, listen, it's a really far drive. it's dark. he got agitated and he was like, well, i wouldn't want you to take your car anyway, get in my car with me. then informs me he lives by gilgo beach. there was no way i was going with him. he just shook my hand and left. but you could tell he was mad that i wasn't willing to go with

him. i never once as an escort feared for my life except for on that date. i've never been scared like that before, ever. i had a friend meet me in the parking lot of the steam room to watch and make sure i got to my car okay. i told everybody who would listen that i know i went to dinner with the gilgo beach killer, that i knew it. and people are like, well, why didn't you go to police? why didn't you go to police? well first of all, i'm on probation. i'm gonna walk in, admit to committing a crime, and then have police contact. i would get sent right back to prison. >> abc news reached out to rex heuermann's attorney for comment on nikkie brass's claims. he declined. >> nikkie's story has a happy ending. she's building a new career for herself and she's a mom of four. >> i love what i do.

seeing somebody look in the mirror and feel beautiful. for me, that's the best part of it. >> new developments in the gilgo beach murders. the investigation expanding. >> to include heuermann's property both in south carolina and las vegas nevada. >> remember that key piece of evidence for investigators, that green chevy avalanche? >> police seizing this older model chevrolet avalanche at heuermann's vacant lots in chester county, south carolina, the same kind of vehicle that an eyewitness told police he saw before one of the victims disappeared. >> police in these areas are asking, are there more buried bodies to be found? and so they are now analyzing all of their cold cases. >> what about those other bodies also recovered in the marsh? as for shannan gilbert's family, they say they still don't know what happened to her that night back in 2010. >> the attorney for shannan gilbert's family hires a forensic pathologist to do an independent autopsy.

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authorities say they have likely found a woman's remains, 24-year-old shannan gilbert. >> it was shannan gilbert's disappearance that led police to the discovery of the women known as the gilgo four. but more than a decade later, her family still has questions about how she died. >> the medical examine her ruled her death was inconclusive, undetermined. >> it does sound like the most outrageous coincidence. after all, it was the search for shannan gilbert that lead to the first of those gruesome discoveries. >> my condolences go out to the family, but it's unfortunate, but right now we believe it was just a horrible accident. >> you stand by the

investigator's conclusion that she was not connected to this case? >> i do. >> hello? do you need the police? >> remember, before she ends up in that marsh, she calls 911 for help. >> somebody is after me. >> somebody is harassing you? >> after me. >> who? >> no, stop it, please. stop it, please. [ screaming ] >> she was definitely in trouble. she wouldn't act like that just for no reason. she was in trouble. there are security cameras out here, but they never got the surveillance video tape from them? >> the police never came for the security cameras for many days. and in the meantime, it got erased. according to court documents, those security camera tapes were routinely recorded over. >> the police suggest that shannan was hysterical, that she ran into the marsh because she could see on the other side of

the marsh the lights of the highway. >> i'm told that the marsh can actually be more like a lake when it's holding a lot of water, so, you know, the water would've been very cold. she could have become hypothermic going in there. >> her pants and her purse were found at some distance from where police found her body. why would she be so far from her belongings? >> i believe that shannan was murdered. >> the family continues to have lingering questions about how exactly shannan died. >> the attorney for shannan gilbert's family hires a forensic pathologist to do an independent autopsy. >> his name is dr. michael baden. he reports that shannan's death was consistent with homicide and inconsistent with natural causes. >> they hired a pathologist who concluded the opposite of what investigators had said.

>> mm-hmm. >> does that change your view potentially? >> not at all. i'm not going to get into a debate with john ray. my investigators have ruled this investigation as a horrible accident. >> to this day, the family still doesn't know why shannan was so agitated and why she wound up in the marsh. >> we may never really know what happened. >> we came to this place at this moment in shannan's yet-unfinished calamity to comfort her family. >> mary gilbert died in 2016, never fully accepting the police version of what happened to her daughter or knowing how the case of the gilgo beach murders would be resolved. but her fierce fight in the search for her daughter may very well lead to justice for other families. >> mari had a growing devotion

to her daughter. i think there's a core love for her daughter she always had. and like any mother, she cared. she saw her daughter as a hero in the sense that her life and her sad ending at least had a value to it that went beyond herself. >> this arrest would not have happened in july of this year if it hadn't been for shannan gilbert. >> it was because of her that all of this evil was uncovered. she is the unintentional hero of this story, and that's what i hope people remember about her. authorities are building their case against rex heuermann, and tell us they are still combing

through the evidence. so right now we're talking about these three, now maybe four victims. what about the others then? a long time ago. and year after year, you weathered the storm and just lived with the damage that was left behind. but even after all this time your thyroid eye disease could still change. restoration is still possible. learn how you could give your eyes a fresh start at tedhelp.com. ♪i've got home internet from t-mobile.♪

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as of september 2023, rex heuermann has pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered three women -- melissa barthelemy, megan waterman, and amber lynn costello. >> heuermann has not been charged in the death of maureen brainard-barnes because there just is not enough evidence right now that prosecutors have, but they've made it clear that they expect that to come soon. >> i believe that the lab work, once it comes back, is going to attach that fourth unfortunate body that was discovered on

ocean parkway to rex heuermann. >> but remember, in addition to the gilgo four, six other bodies were discovered in the same area -- four more women, a man, and a toddler. >> what about the others then? how much progress are you able to make in those cases at this stage? >> we still have some work to do regarding getting these individuals identified. that's why this task force is going to stay in place. we'll continue to investigate the other bodies that were discovered on ocean parkway. >> rex heuermann's attorney declined to comment when asked if his client was involved in the deaths of maureen brainard-barnes or others found along ocean parkway. he tells abc news, in part, quote, in a court of law, what's required is evidence and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. we look forward to defending this case in a court of law.

>> i think the gilgo four case helped put a face on victims in a way that few serial killer cases do. >> these women were mothers, sisters, friends. and we need to remember that they are real people with real memories, with real childhoods. >> you could meet megan the first time, you'd fall right in love with her. >> melissa was just beautiful all the way around. >> amber was just full of love and life. she just loved life. always there for her loved ones, would move heaven and earth to help them. >> maureen's personality was very bubbly. she literally and figuratively would give anyone the shirt off her back.

i love you. i miss you, maureen. >> me and the other victims' families, we're one big family now. not by blood. we were brought as a family by tragedy. >> ready, let's go! >> people have tried to sort of shed light on the fact that the people in this case were vulnerable long before they were killed, that we need to do better to shine a light on people who are vulnerable.

>> those families brought together by something no one could have imagined, and their loved ones not victims but people with names and faces. we'll stay on this constantly evolving story and the likely trial to come. that's our program for tonight. thanks so much for watching. i'm deborah roberts. from all of us here at "20/20" and abc news, good night.

are revealing details about an incident that started with a mental health check. and ended with officers opening fire on a man. good evening. i'm ahmad daetz. and i'm larry. >> that shooting happened after a confrontation in the area of dover avenue and pullman street in san pablo. abc7 news reporter tim johns with more on exactly what led to the shooting. luh- larry alma. >> the investigation still unfolding here on dover avenue in san pablo. as you can see, police were working and collecting evidence late into the night and the man who was shot now in the hospital. the san pablo police department says it all began this afternoon