weight of everything yeah babe i hold it down ♪ ♪ floating into the same old empty i feel it now ♪ ♪ i've been giving away my comedy i've been playing the crowd ♪ ♪ floating into the same old empty i feel it now ♪ ♪ [ cheers and applause ] >> thank you! this is nightline tonight. >> did you do it? the man accused of being the gilgo beach killer, now charged with a

seventh murder but denying all charges. >> greg sherman is a demon that walks among us. >> inside his alleged plans to hunt and kill. >> he is talking about preferences, ways to improve. hit harder next time. >> and the woman who believes she got away. >> i remember everything about that night because he scared the crap out of me. >> plus, they call her the scam goddess. >> what was the moment where you realized you felt like you were going to get away with it? >> in this moment of wall to wall con jobs? meet a woman who's hunting down fraudsters. >> how did these people get to the point where a fake ghanaian prince scammed people out in dayton, ohio? >> what she says is the most outrageous scam of all. >> it's just the audacity of these people that intrigues me. >> and i know who killed laura palmer. remembering legendary twin peaks director david lynch. >> nightline will be right backs better than shopify. the

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>> gilgo beach, a spot that had once been synonymous with summer surfing and fun in the sun. that is until police started finding body after body. for more than a decade, those unsolved murders kept long island's shore towns on edge. >> could four murders on long island be the work of a serial killer? >> we want to bring to justice this animal that has obviously taken the lives of a number of people. how much did this rock long island? >> oh, it was horrible. there was a dark cloud over the entire island. >> at least 11 bodies. most of them women. many of them dismembered. the remains strewn across a half mile stretch of gilgo beach and in woods further east. police say a serial killer was on the loose. >> the acts of depraved and heinous. >> he has been on the hunt for sex workers who he has brutalized. >> the sheer number of victims that were discovered shows the

magnitude of the kind of offender we may be dealing with. >> rex, did you do it? >> authorities say the man who committed most of these monstrous crimes is rex heuermann, an architect, husband and father by day. and they say a killer by night. >> rex is a demon that walks among us. a predator that ruined families. >> i probably could have cheated death a thousand times and never knew it, but with him, i think i cheated death, and i knew i did. >> rex. hey. hi. how are you doing? good to see you. >> likewise. this is the seemingly mild mannered father of two profiled in an online video about new york real estate. >> when a job that should have been routine suddenly becomes not routine. yeah, i get the phone call. >> what authorities say brutally murdered seven women. he's pleaded not guilty to all the charges. >> he's a man who's never been arrested before. he's maintained his innocence from the inception of this case. >> 13 years after the first bodies were uncovered at gilgo

beach, authorities finally zeroed in on rex heuermann. plainclothes officers surrounding him on a busy street in manhattan. >> when they did make an arrest, i was stunned because there had been no media attention on the case at all for 11 months, not even a news article. so i was worried that behind the scenes, they had lost steam with the arrest. >> nonstop news coverage began. an orchestrated perp walk to finally show his face. >> i've seen rex in court, and he is a kind of a hulking figure. he's tall, wide. he even makes some of the court officers look small. >> for days, authorities turned his home upside down, even digging up the backyard. curious onlookers were there for every discovery. >> police ended up seizing hundreds of electronic devices from his house. they discovered a single word document that ended up becoming one of the most disturbing parts of the case. this document, according

to prosecutors, reads like a plan for how to go about killing victims, where to bury them, what to keep in mind for the next time. if something wasn't quite right, the kind of hardware that would be necessary for killing and dismemberment. >> he is talking about preferences, ways to improve. he's saying things like hit harder next time. just really devastating plans for the next person he intends to target. >> so as far as the planning document, he had pointed out that the ropes broke and so he needed a thicker rope to bind these these women to. so it tells us that he's getting off on the planning, but also that he's learning from past mistakes, and he wants to make sure that he's correcting his errors so that he maybe one day will get to the perfect crime. >> there's also a section that investigators say appears to be a reference to potential targets. >> so trg seems to indicate in this document a victim he's

looking at. he even explicitly said small is good. >> he went after smaller women. >> he went after smaller women for the purpose of making cleaning up easier. >> we know that he was targeting smaller bodies. we know that they are sex workers, women who were feminine and small, and probably couldn't put up as much of a fight. >> according to investigators, this planning document was created the exact same year. valerie mac, whose death herman was charged with just last month, was murdered. authorities say she fit the profile of what he was hunting for small, only five feet tall and a sex worker just 24 years old when she went missing, valerie mac struggled with drug use, and that led her to engage in survival sex work. valerie's decapitated remains were discovered about 40 miles from gilgo beach, a few months after her disappearance in 2000. parts of her body were bound with rope. more than a decade later, the rest of her body

would be found during the search at gilgo beach. how many times have you actually been out to gilgo beach? >> i've probably been here like 15 or 20 times. >> i come out here kind of as often as i can. it just helps you get some greater perspective on what we're dealing with here. >> alexis linkletter is from long island and has lived and breathed this case for much of her life, and there's no doubt that the entire nation is completely enthralled and mystified by this case. she hosts her own podcast on the murders unraveled for investigation discovery. >> this whole path here didn't used to be here, so trucks used to be able to essentially pull right up to this, which is probably what our suspect did in this case. >> if you're looking at all this brush and marsh right here, like if you're looking to dump a body, it's extremely remote at night. >> there's no street lights. so you would see someone coming from miles away in either direction. and before this bike

path was here, you really could just back your vehicle up to it and do whatever you needed to do and have no mcu. >> i remember everything about that night because he scared the crap out of me, and nobody's ever made me scared or uncomfortable like that. like when he got arrested, i was like, i knew it. >> nikki brass considers herself lucky. she says her date in 2015 with him left her terrified. >> i was on seeking arrangements like escort alligator and i posted looking for a sugar daddy. i'm not sure which one he contacted me on because it's been over ten years, but he messaged me, she says they messaged back and forth for a few days, and that some of the messages were concerning. so first of all, he wanted me to meet him directly at his house. he didn't want to meet public, which i don't do. i'm not coming directly to a stranger's house to not want to meet in public. was kind of like a big red flag for me, even in the messages. yeah, but i ignored it like he was someone that was like, i

have a lot of money. i could take care of you. >> they decide to meet, she says at a restaurant. what was he like? how did the day go? >> so when we sat down, it was basic small talk, like normal stuff you would talk about when you first sit down on a date. so this is what you do for a living. what do you want to do? what are your dreams like? basic stuff. that's when he asked if i like true crime. i was like, yes. like i was excited to talk about it because most people don't want to. >> even a true crime conversation, she says, didn't set off any red flags until once he said, have you heard of the gilgo beach killer? >> and i said, yeah, he got like very, very excited. like his body language changed. he like, moved in to the table and i got his elbows on it. like he was very like wanting to talk about that and was excited that he was able to. >> and what's going through your head? >> i mean, i just thought he was a buff, but then, like, he seemed way too weird. it didn't seem like somebody who was just nerding out. it was somebody who was like reliving what they did and enjoying reliving what they

did, she says. >> their date didn't end well. >> he was like, so you're going to come back to my house, right? and i was like, trying to be polite. so i was like, it's late. you know, i really don't know the area. i don't want to be driving at night. and he was like, oh, no, no, no, like you would leave your car here. why would we take two cars? that makes no sense. you're getting out. at that point, i had already texted somebody to meet me at the door and he got angry. like you could tell he was trying to hold it together and not seem angry, but he was, like, very angry. >> right after that night and in the years leading up to herman's arrest, nikki says she told people she had gone on a date with the gilgo beach killer. no one believed her. there are still three unidentified bodies found at gilgo beach, including the body of a male found dressed in women's clothes who police called asian doe. >> there was another that police called peaches because of a distinctive tattoo. there was a

toddler that was identified as peaches toddler because of some jewelry they had in common, and dna testing. >> another gilgo beach victim, who has since been identified is karen vergara, a 34 year old escort who went missing in 1996. none of them have been tied to heuermann. >> prosecutors have no doubt. they say rex heuermann is their guy is the serial killer. they've charged him now with seven murders. and i would expect that if they can build the evidence, they will charge him with more. >> do you suspect that there's more bodies? >> i absolutely think, sadly, that there will be many more victims associated with this case. >> our thanks to austin. for more on this story, watch the full episode of impact! by nightline. gilgo beach murders a serial killer's secrets, now streaming on hulu. when we come back, we're one on one with the scam goddess tracking down flim

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been saved. >> welcome back. laci mosley calls herself the scam goddess and her true fraud podcast audience. her congregation. she's made it her mission to investigate real life scams and flim flam. here again, nightline's laci mosley. >> welcome to nightline. >> hello. i'm so happy to be here. >> thanks so much for joining us. congrats on the new show. you traveled the whole country covering scams. i mean, from brooklyn to l.a. is there

anything that surprised you as you were covering these scams? because you've seen it all already, right? >> i mean, i've seen quite a bit of it over the past six years hosting the podcast scam goddess. but i will say that there are always things that surprise me. one thing that surprised me is i went to dixon, illinois, and only to find out that the scammer who stole over like around $54 million from this town. >> and i said, jim, i have something to tell you. i said i'd gotten a statement from fifth third. i said, i've never seen this bank account before. so he immediately called the fbi. >> no hesitation. >> no, i had a chance to watch that episode. it was crazy. it was crazy. literally robbed the town. you mentioned that you've been covering scams since you started your podcast back in 2019, scam goddess i feel like you've seen all the scams that there is to see. when you were making this show, was there any new scams that surprised you or shocked you? >> i will say as scamming is the second oldest profession in my opinion, it is always evolving and so we wanted to get a sense

of the town, the vibe, the culture, like how did these people get to the point where a fake ghanaian prince scammed people out in dayton, ohio? you know, you read that headline and it's so ridiculous, but then you get to know the people in that town and these victims and their hearts and their empathy, and you can really quickly realize how close this could get to your own doorstep. >> how do you look people in the eye that you care about and do this to them? the community public works was significantly neglected. we had people driving around and pickup trucks with holes in the floor. the projects that weren't able to be completed because we didn't have that money. >> you talk a little bit about being fascinated by the gall of these scammers, right? you know, you i think you actually said they make up their rules to their own world. yes. what is it about scammers that attract you? and i think your fans, you call them the congregation. >> the congregation capital c o n. yes. >> well, it's the confidence, right? right. so they're con artists, but i kind of call them confidence artists because they're walking into rooms that they do not belong in. they all

put on an accent, they'll wear a doctor's coat knowing seen anybl school. and it's just the audacity of these people that intrigues me. i don't like what they do when they're causing harm to other people, but inherently they're unserious, hilarious people. >> i mean, so many of the scams that you cover, they seem so unbelievable, just the extent and the nature of them. what are your tips for people at home who may want to avoid being scammed? >> to become comfortable with the fact that you might be scammed? a lot of us we associate being scammed with being stupid or, you know, like not being intelligent or you didn't see the signs and we blame ourselves. and when you take the shame out of being scammed, which all of the people that we spoke to during scam goddess did and they were so brave to share information, you start to realize you can see flags, weird things way faster if you believe it could happen to you. because if you're like oh my gosh, this would never happen. not in my life, not on my cul de sac. then you might let some stuff slide and end up in a slippery situation.

>> a scamming pastor was pimping the congregation. he's like, if you give me your money, you too can look rich like me. >> i hope that what people take away from the show is a fun time of me making fun of scammers. some real empathetic, heartfelt moments with people who were victimized by scammers but who also stood up and shared information and a lot of times built back better. >> lacey, you started out as a theater kid. you're a comedian. you performed at the famed ucb theater. how does your background in theater make you perfect for this time? for this role as the scam goddess theater comes into play with scammers, they are performing. >> they're putting on a show 24 over seven. what was the moment where you realized you felt like you were going to get away with it? and i'm so intrigued because at times i'm like, you lie so much, you must keep a journal. you have to have a lie journal. how do you keep up with who you told people you were today? like they have aliases they need to remember. like if i if my name wasn't laci mosley. and let's say i was going by three other

different names, like, how am i going to remember when they're like teresa? and i'm like, oh yeah, i'm teresa, i'm teresa. hello. you know, so it fascinates me how they perform their way through their entire lives. >> lazy. over a decade ago, you made an instagram post and you had a caption that said something to the effect of in three weeks i moved to nyc to chase my dreams. wow. now you're here with one of one of the most popular podcasts in the country. you've got a new show coming out. i mean, what could you say to that younger laci mosley? >> wow. i will say new york city scammed me. they got me a few different times, a few different ways, so it's nice to come and scam them back a little bit. but i would say keep hope alive little kid. and yeah, you'll get scammed, but you can build back better. >> laci, thanks so much for joining us. >> yes, please watch, learn, have fun. >> our thanks again to oshin. the scam goddess airs on wednesdays at 10 p.m. eastern on freeform and streams the next day on hulu. when we come back remembering legendary director remembering legendary director david lynch.

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side. his first feature film, eraserhead, a cult classic. the elephant man in 1980. i am not an animal. blue velvet in 1986. and it wasn't only film. lynch was known for his groundbreaking tv series twin peaks right here on abc in the early 90s. last year opening up about his emphysema diagnosis, david lynch passing away just shy of his 79th birthday, his family tonight writing there's a big hole in the world now that he's no longer with us. but as he would say, keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole. tonight, actor kyle mclaughlin, posting to saying lynch had a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him and was the most authentically alive person i'd ever met. >> our thanks to david. that's nightline for this evening. we'll see you right back here. same time tomorrow. thanks for the company, america. good night.