jeremy: This is Mark Williams Thomas and me, Jeremy Vine. Mark: Welcome back to Thirty Minute Crime. So Jeremy, what are we going to talk about today? jeremy: We are discussing a man who has a number of different titles. Some people call him Lisk, Long Island serial killer. Some people call him the Gilgo Beach killer. His name is Rex Hoyerman. He killed at least eight young women and has only just been convicted after a very, very long process. And I know you will have been watching carefully, Mark, because we're dealing here with a classic serial killer who finds out how to avoid detection over. over a number of years. Mark: Yeah, it's a really fascinating case. And I think for our listeners and viewers, we're gonna break it down into three segments. We're gonna look in terms of the crime itself, or the crimes, the investigation. The investigation is really crucial, particularly when the FBI become involved. And then thirdly, which is what always fascinates people, is the psychology, the mentality, the background of him, and in terms of why has he become This infamous serial killer. jeremy: Yeah, when we look at the the actual mechanics of the crime, we see one after the other victims who were in that classic catchment. And you saw it with your Savile investigation where they are the people who don't get missed. And I get I've got a note of all their names here. The very first was in 1993. So here we are. And he's just been convicted in 2026. You know, it's it's 30 years or more that he was on patrol as a serial killer. Sandra Costilla's remains. Then in 96 Karen Vergata. Then multiple disappearances in the 2000s. And so what he was doing and the way he operated was to go on social media sites, go on hookup sites and you know all these different sites for I suppose renting people for the night and then killing them. And the problem is that they weren't being missed. He would kill them, dispose of their bodies. was so weird about it, this will come out when we talk about the investigation, is he was spotted a number of times with these women and no one put two and two together. But he chose his victims carefully, didn't he? Mark: Yeah, I it's a fascinating case because when you look at it, he is Quite a unique character. He's huge. He's huge for a start. He is very dominating, and it doesn't look as though he's put that many things in place to protect himself from being caught. He was sometimes what happens, serial killers in particular, so those people that kill more than one person, and in case of a serial killer, that's three or more in the space of more than 30 days. So that's what makes him a serial killer. But what ends up happening is once they get away with it a couple of Times they need a bit of luck, and he had an incredible amount of luck. I mean, you talk in terms of the first murder, the first murder in 1993, but it wasn't until 2010 when actually the police became aware, gosh, there's a serial killer operating here. So he committed all of his murders that he was subsequently convicted of prior to the first victim being found, which is quite fascinating. jeremy: You know what, that's... That is really interesting. I hadn't even thought of that. That by the time the police were onto him, he had already buried seven or eight or nine or ten women. We know he was convicted of seven. He admitted an eighth. But there could be more. He chose a particular place to bury them, which is windswept, which is very overgrown. Gilgo Beach area. If you look at Long Island, although it's known for being pretty posh Long Island, in sort of suburb of New York and all that, actually it's got quite a lot of wild... areas and he chose one and he went back there again and again and again but but we should also say that when he started killing in the 90s they didn't have the DNA they didn't have the same level of forensic ability they have now they they were there with it in part but they couldn't do what they could do now and I sort of think, you you want to believe that he couldn't operate like this now. There would have been surely on these social media sites where he was connecting with women who were disappearing, surely there's a digital trace apart from anything else. Mark: Yeah, and of course, what enabled him to get away with it for so long was the fact that the bodies weren't found. So because the bodies weren't found, obviously that give didn't give rise to the police subsequently doing investigation. Now, what is quite interesting is that area of Long Island is actually used quite a bit to dispose of and hide bodies. It's some 10 miles from New York, and it has a reputation within the mob mobster community of often being a place where they will kill somebody and then they'll just go and dump the body out there. So, and in fact, it wasn't just the here his victims they found, they found other people's victims out there as well. It's got sadly, it's got a bit of a reputation now of being a place where you know killers will go and d dispose of their bodies, of their victims. But as crucial is, is for the period of time between 93, when we know of his first confirmed killing, that isn't to say he hasn't killed before that. But it took till 2010, of course, to the police to get involved. But then it took even longer for them finally to get hold of him. And I think this is very much about an environment where they're the policing was quite poor in the early stages and the attitude jeremy: for sure. Mark: of the police was terrible. jeremy: Yeah, I mean, think when you look at what happened, you see this patchwork of different attacks and murders. No one puts them together. That's the crucial thing that often happens in where the serial killer gets away with it because no one realizes it's one person doing all this. But then this heroic mum appears, mother of one of the victims, Mark: Yeah. jeremy: and says, I am not going to let my daughter just disappear like this. And it hasn't happened before because probably there was a bit of shame among families that their daughters had gone to New York City and they were doing sex work and everything or whatever. It's a classic story, isn't it? So they didn't want to draw attention to it. came forwards and started a campaign. And that suddenly embarrassed the police. But even then, they took forever to get stuck into it. Because I think you're right. Once you start looking for bodies there, if you find 10 bodies, you may have 10 killers. And they weren't ready to start that investigation. So he must have known that. He must have seen that he had got away with it. And that made him do more and more and more. And one of the things, we'll come to talking about it in a moment, but One of things that's really scary about him is that he has this classic, bi-fold personality and the people who saw him in the moments when he was a client of a woman and he was clearly focused on killing her said it was like an animal. And that's nothing Mark: Yeah. jeremy: like what we saw in court. Mark: I tell what you you you actually make the really valid point, which is actually this this occurred, and the reason that the authorities took action was because, and this is always the case, somebody takes exception to it and says, look, the decision of the police, the findings of the police are wrong. So Shannon Gilbert, who is the crucial person that starts this off in 2010 when her body is recovered, the The pathologist examines and says that the most likely cause of her death is drowning and therefore determined her death to be undetermined. It wasn't murder. Now, Maria, who is the mother, said that's not right. My daughter has been murdered. And she campaigned to the police to say, please, please, this is a murder investigation. My daughter has not drowned. And it took her Getting an independent forensic psych psycholog pathologist to look at it, who then says, No, no, no, she's got a neck fracture and she's got other injuries to her body. And that is what gave rise to finally the police going, do you know what? Actually, this is a murder. And then, of course, we've got the terrible situation of the Suffolk senior police officer. Who refused to allow the FBI, having found 10 bodies, refused to allow the FBI to come in and to investigate it. Now he subsequently got prosecuted, went to jail. And then, of course, it all unravels when finally the FBI are asked to come in and look at it. They set up a task force. And from 10 years of nothing, over the space of four months. and one significant piece of information after media peels that they get on to Rex Herman and in that space of the four months they've got their man. jeremy: Well, let's talk about that investigation because the problem with these things, these situations where you get body after body found in a remote location is it doesn't lead to any suspect. It's very hard, particularly if bodies are being found 10 years after they have been killed and sadly, you know, maybe animals have been involved in everything else. You can't lead back to anything. You can't work out who they saw on the night they died or anything. And he will have been watching. He lived nearby. This is the crucial thing. lived nearby and the police had so many clues but they could never ever believe it was him. So it rather reminds me a little bit of the the Yorkshire Ripper case where the guy was interviewed so many times, Peter Sutcliffe, in his workplace his workmates nicknamed him the Ripper. and he actually Mark: Yeah. jeremy: was the Yorkshire Ripper and he kept on working until the day he was arrested. And Hoyemann is a bit like that. It kept pointing back to him and they kept thinking, it's not him, Mark: Yeah. jeremy: it's not him. And the time I became aware of this case, Mark, was when it all concluded with his arrest. And then probably like you, we then look back at the lead up to it and it all seems so obvious. But from your point of view as a police, former police officer, of course the police are working in the opposite direction and it's not so obvious, is it? Mark: Yeah, of course it hindsight's fantastic. It's like when you get these television programmes to go, you know, they behaved in a certain way, it's obvious they were lying. It's like, well, you know that that you've got them now because they're convicted. So of course you're gonna be able to say that. Hindsight's fantastic. and it's a difficult task for the police, and and we must multiply it by ten in terms of the American s American caseload compared to ours. You know, when there's one murder in the UK, there's ten murders in in America, you know, it literally is times ten of any crime. But I think one of the things that was really crucial here was The evidence that he left. So, for example, he's a very distinguished individual, as in size. He's huge. He was described by the friend of one of the victims, and I'll read that as a an auger-like man. It's a massive. But the other two things that were really crucial is that he had a burner. And the burner phone that he had, he would use that to talk to the young girls. And he was he he did it on a large scale. So some of the victims, some of the other girls that he'd spoken to, he talked to them hundreds of times. He had this very unique car, a Chevrolet Avalanche, first generation. That was crucial for them because, of course, it's quite a unique car. And they were able to then tie that to Rex. They also had a they were able to geolocate the mobile phone signal to his area of Manhattan. So that was able, that was midtown Manhattan, which was crucial, obviously, identifying that. So then you get Big Man, owns a Chevrolet, lives in Manhattan. Okay, there's the he he's starting now to get they're starting now to build a picture of him jeremy: I just, once you say that, I was trying to give the police a break here and say, well, it's impossible, you've got 10 bodies and, you know, the oldest corpses maybe killed 27 years ago. However, What you've just described surely points to a catastrophic investigation. The guy is at least six foot five, maybe six six. He's enormous. He's described by witnesses and one or two girls who got away as this guy had these black eyes, this enormous Mark: Yeah. jeremy: frame. He has a distinctive car and he works in Manhattan. And he, by the way, lives not far from the site of the burials. So come on, there's only one guy. And I think, yeah. Mark: And they had that information already. They had that information. jeremy: And this is what I think, yeah, and this is why we're doing this podcast, isn't it? Because actually... The reason why nobody thought it could be him because when you look at his performance in court, he's done a Mark: Yeah. jeremy: publicity video for his, he runs an architect's business in the center of Manhattan for crying out loud. He's got an address in Manhattan. He's an architect. Nobody, he takes people around his office. You can see this online. This is the office. This is where my secretary works. This is where I get my business done. This is where, and he's like, this is just a very, very soft, like a teddy bear. You can't believe he's killed seven, eight, nine, 10 people. And I think that's probably where all of the evidence just fell apart. didn't really lead them where it should have led them because he didn't look like Mark: Well they failed. The jeremy: a killer. Mark: Suffolk County police failed. They had this information. they didn't piece it together. It wasn't until a task force was appointed and the FBI got involved that it literally ran really quickly. And and ultimately they pieced together the car, they pieced together Manhattan, they pieced together him as an individual and the sheer size of him. You know, if you put him in a in a population, he's going to be in a tiny percentage given the size of him and his uniqueness in terms of the stare and everything. But then of course. they their ceiling fate for him was the pizza. So they were following him, jeremy: Yum. Mark: they'd had him under surveillance. He they obviously wanted to get his DNA, and they got his DNA off a pizza box. So that was really crucial. And in fact, I won't tell you now, but in due course, I'm going to tell you about a case that I travelled over to Thailand where we were given the details of an individual who's potentially a murder suspect having killed three people in the UK. And the task I had was to get his DNA in a week from him covertly without. Him knowing and a fascinating you know trip that we did to be able to get that and we got it in the end. Actually, it wasn't him, but the police got his DNA and that led to it. And of course, that then tied him to a number of the victims. They were able to put the DNA connection to him, and of course, crucially, this very significant belt. that was used on one of the victims that didn't tie back to to Rex Urban himself, it tied back to his wife. jeremy: Yeah, well. It's funny, once they, as you say, once the FBI were involved, once they could take in a way the emotion out of it and just say, who does this point to? And they weren't going to be put off by the idea, well, it can't be him because he's a very upstanding member of the community. But I always wonder this thing about getting people's DNA surreptitiously, why that's necessary. There's a case, very famous case called Eron's, which is East area rapist, original night stalker. And I think his name was John James Ramirez, ex-police officer, vicious man. about him one day but again with him they got DNA tracing to him they thought it might be him and they then had to get a sort of trace from a water bottle and I'm thinking why can't you just go in and ask the guy why do you Mark: Mm-hmm. jeremy: why do you have to surreptitiously find a pizza box in the case of Rex Hoyman? Mark: Well, the reason being of course you don't want to give them the the draw the attention that they are a potential suspect, particularly if you've got them under surveillance. You don't want to do that. And and obviously they'd have to you couldn't take it, well you could take it from them, but you'd have to do go through the process of getting screening DNA done rather than just targeting one person. You'd have to screen DNA and there's legislation that allows that to take place. So when you take covert DNA from someone, you're taking it on the basis of of a single suspect or persons of interest to either eliminate or you know put them as in in the frame of the suspect. So that's done covertly. It's quite interesting that they did a pizza because I would my concern I have with the pizza is that you've got to be able to prove continuity. So as a police officer I'm always looking at continuity. So if I seize an item if I seize this pen, the life of that pen and who it goes to is the continuity of that pen. And if it suddenly ended up being touched by somebody else You potentially have cross contamination, and so with a pizza box, I would be concerned as to well, did he touch the pizza box or did other people touch the pizza box? What about the person who is in the pizza store? And you know, did he touch that? So when we take DNA from people, I want the continuity. For example, if I take a knife from someone or a fork from someone or for a glass from somebody, I want to visually see that they are drinking from that, and then I'll take it from there. Else has touched that, and also to the degree that if I'm particularly setting up, like we went to Thailand, we would have bought glasses, they were clean, we put them on the table, and nobody touched them from the point we touched, we cleaned them, put them on the table. So continuity is really important. But the police had obviously done a really good job, the FBI, they got him in, and but then it unfolds. What's quite fascinating is what he then says about the crimes. Because initially he completely denies any wrongdoing, doesn't he? jeremy: Well, yeah, tell me more about that because he clearly after his arrest believed he could still get away with it. Mark: He did. So for the early stages, the he basically said to the prosecutors, You got the wrong man. It's got nothing to do with me. I'm not involved in this anyway at all. And he refused to accept that he'd done anything wrong and didn't engage in any way at all. jeremy: Well, he clearly believed he'd managed to, you know, with the burner phones, with everything else, getting rid of the bodies. There wasn't any evidence. He didn't realize the case they'd created. Mark: That's the point of course, is that they connected him through DNA. So they connected him through DNA fibers on one of the victims. They connected his wife through DNA on the belt that had been used on one of the victims. And of course, they were able to place him through his through the connections with the bird of phones at the Manhattan address, but also connecting that to the contacts that he'd had with a number of the victims. And also this unique car, of course, that was a that was a that was a kind of the gold. d the the the silver bullet, the gold bullet for them when they suddenly realize, gosh, that is his car. jeremy: I'm just, to me, I it's a bit like another case we'll discuss, Levi Belfield and the Milly Dowler car. We all knew Levi Belfield owned Mark: Yeah. jeremy: a car that was the same as the one that was seen taking Milly Dowler away. And we just somehow couldn't put the two things together. this car thing, well, again, we're back, aren't we? He's a giant of a man. He's six foot five. He's an architect. But the other thing is, we haven't mentioned, is the house. Now, if you've seen pictures of Rex Mark: Yeah. jeremy: Hoyman's house, to me, that is a red flag. guy who lives in basically a very very swish area but in a hovel and wrecks Mark: Mm-hmm. jeremy: is the house on the street that all the other neighbors complain about and the guys in architects is something is amiss here you know I'm not saying you could just say he's a murderer as a result of that but there's something very very strange about the house and what they you know when they went into it was an utter mess it was a mess on the outside it was a mess on the inside just like him Mark: Yeah, and he bought that from his mum, so he lived with his mum, he bought the address so he l was lived with mum, mum dies, he buys the house, he then lives there, and of course this is a married man, so he's married, he's got two children, and what we do know is that for all of the crimes, on those occasions his wife and children were at were away. They weren't around. jeremy: Yep. Mark: and of course, we see we saw that with many killers. We saw that with the the killer in Suffolk. So the he was when he committed his jeremy: Steven, right? Mark: crimes, Stephen Wright, when he committed his crimes, his wife was at work, she was a nurse. So we often see that, although that's not always the case. So, for example, with Peter Sutcliffe, Peter Sutcliffe would go out on a Friday and Saturday night and commit his crime, and very often Sonia Sutcliffe would still be at home. So it's about them feeling confident. That yeah, there isn't anybody else that changes, and when in a minute let's talk in terms of him as a person. But I want to tell you an interesting story about Rex Herman. So he's on remand, and when you're on remand, you have different rules applied to you because you're not at that stage convicted. So, the way of course the law of the lamb works is that you're innocent until proven guilty. So he's on remand, and whilst he's on remand, he's written to by a guy that became known as and I'll Use the phrase because I'm going to explain why he became known as this. He became known as the happy face killer. This is a guy called Keith Jefferson. Right, he was a lorry driver, and over a period of his offending behaviour, which was between 1990 and 1995, he was convicted in relation to the murder of eight women. Now his his victims were very similar to Heffman's in terms of what he would do is that they were the victims were were working girls and street sex workers. So those were his victims. Whilst Rex is in jail, Jefferson writes to him. He writes to him on three separate occasions and they engage with each other. But because of the rules of the criminal justice system in New York are such that he's innocent until proven guilty, they are not allowed to look at what he writes in his letters. So these two killers are chatting to each other. And what we know in terms of of him as an individual is that he became fascinated with Jefferson. And the reason he became known as the happy face killer is that he taunted the police. He taunted the police that on on he'd send letters to the police, he'd write in toilets, he'd send letters to the press, and he did a smiley face on all of these. Now he is believed to be responsible for 160 murders. And what we know about Rex Herman is he is fascinated by other killers. In his remand cell, he had books that he was reading about killers. So here's an individual who has literally that's become his style. And one of the Suffolk senior police officers said he hasn't changed. His stoic behaviour and attitude. From the moment we first dealt with him to how he is now hasn't changed. There's no apology, there's no remorse. He literally is this blank canvas who literally showed very little emotion. But that just goes to show you this is the person. And then and when we start to delve into him and his background, we start to realise this is a man who had everything but was hiding and nobody saw any of him. jeremy: And do you know when he brought that into the court, we had one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen at the conclusion of a trial. And we must mention this judge who basically lost it. I don't think I've ever seen this before. The judge was so infuriated. We probably need to see this more often, but he shouted at him and he said, people say you're a big man, you're not, you're a small man, you're a coward. And the judge is so angry, he's almost, he looks like he's on the edge of tears. And I think that's, the judge speaks for all of us in that. in that we can't understand what makes this guy tick. The fact that he's six foot five, six foot six and he looks like a giant bear is also suggests he's sort of not human in a strange way, not superhuman, but subhuman. So I guess we come back to this a lot, Mark. He doesn't make sense to the rest of us. How could you be on remand for murders you deny and building a library on serial killers? How the hell can you do that? It doesn't make any sense. Mark: No, I mean I think that I watched that judge's comments, I have to say, I mean at one stage I thought he had tears in his eyes. He was really cr really emotional. and good on him. you know, Rex Herman has never Properly discussed anything, he's never talked in any detail about them. You know, he's only been charged with the eight murders, but there are clearly more that he's responsible for. And if you put him into the context of a person that I think he admires, which is the Jefferson, you know, I think he's admired him. And as a result of Jefferson's never fully admitted to the crimes that he's committed. And that tells me that Rex Herman is unlikely to do it as well. I think he'll take to his grave the other murders that he. He's committed, and in fact, it is incredibly rare for a serial killer to talk about their killings. That's not what serial killers do. So when it does happen, we have to take that really, really seriously because serial killers do not talk about their victims. But let's look at him as a person. So if you saw him, so you're having your house rebuilt and you've appointed an architect to do it, and he turns up, they live amongst us, don't they? jeremy: Well, yeah, I mean, would in terms of looking at him online before he struck, before we knew what he was, you see a professional guy. mean, you can't see his house at this point. So you don't know that he's living a disordered personal life. He's well dressed. He wears a suit. He works in the center of Manhattan. He has a, you know, his name on the on the desk. So and he probably talks a good game. So he obviously has I think it was Ted Bundy who was by the police as being really difficult to deal with because for the first time they found someone who literally hunted women. That's what he wanted to do, to hunt women. And I think that with Hoyman it's the same. What I think is so nasty is that he chose the most vulnerable people in their most vulnerable Mark: Yeah. jeremy: period of their life. And not to take us off Hoyman, but just for a moment on the victims. I I thought we got beyond the York rip-a-face mark where the police said you know a lot of these girls were prostitutes but then some of them were completely innocent you know that nonsense Mark: Yeah. jeremy: where you think they somehow had it coming and it looks as if even though the police would never say that now they behave as if they feel that Mark: And that's absolutely right, because what we have as a society is a value. You have a value on your head, I have a value on my head. And let's use a simple analogy. If you're a white inner white middle class girl who's got parents of a profession in terms of job, you'll get huge publicity, you'll get an immediate response from the police, and it will be everywhere. But if you're a black inner city boy. Who has parents who don't have a profession and they're probably actually not living together, the response of the media, the response of the police is completely different. Everybody has a value on their head. And when we look at sex workers, the value that they have on their head is very, very different. They are vulnerable, but because we don't please to vulnerability, we please to status. That means that individuals who are vulnerable are more likely to be attacked, and particularly when they have a different lifestyle. So you and I may have keep a diary, we talk to friends, we communicate to where we're going. If you're a sex worker, you have a transient life. You have a life that might also involve dependency, alcohol, or drugs, and as a result of that, your lifestyle is very different. You won't necessarily be missed one of the victims. The mum, she'd already died, she'd been murdered. Mum thought she was in rehabilitation. You know, so actually what we've got is we've got vulnerable people in society who are easy prey for people who want to target them. And I often talk about this in so much as we could reduce the level of murders if we policed the vulnerable, but we don't. We don't please the vulnerable if we looked after them because the vulnerable are by that very nature on the outsides of society and they don't complain, we don't listen to them, and therefore their voice isn't considered in the same way as other people who shout louder and have a position in society. jeremy: Alright, well what about this for a counterpoint? When one of the documentaries about Rex Hoyman was released, there was an extraordinary account from a male young man who was a friend of one of his targets. And he basically came to the house because she said, this guy's with me and there's something really badly wrong. And he came in and he said, you're going to have to go to Rex Hoyman. And he barred the way, thus saving her life. And he said, Hoyman's eyes were just burning. black and he was looking over his, i.e. the young male's shoulder at the woman who he had thought he would kill tonight and he wasn't going to be able to and he said it was like an animal. This is before Hyman was captured. God, he said he's six foot five and he looks like a grizzly bear. police didn't pay attention. Now, if he's got a switch in him that does that, right, Mark: Yeah. jeremy: how has his wife not seen it? And I do come, I'm sorry, this sounds very judgy of me, but I do think you look at Dennis Rader who's known as BTX. who killed 10 people and the most vicious man, buying torture kill in the States, happily married with daughters. You wouldn't expect the daughters to see. Could the wife not see it? Sonia Sutcliffe has taken out numerous legal actions based on the suggestion that she must have seen something. Primrose Shipman is drawing an NHS pension. Did she not realize Mark: Yeah. Yeah. jeremy: her husband had a death rate of 253? Did she not see that? So I always think we do depend on the spouse a bit to be the sentinel. and I'd love to know more about Rex's spouse and so on. It may be that these people are so good at hiding they hide most of it from their nearest and dearest but I just would love someone in the house for once to do the investigating. Mark: Yeah, I mean I think listen, let's look at these individuals. Those the majority of serial killers are psychopaths. Okay, so they don't have a mental illness in so much as one that can be treated through medication. you know, these are individuals who are able to compartmentalize their life. So if you have schizophrenia, that's noticeable, that's treat treatable by drugs, and your living one, your loved ones around you will know that. But if you're a psychopath, if you are able to compartmentalize elements of your life and that psychopathy that they have, some of that will be present. You know, industry leaders have a lot of the signs of psychopathy about them: narcissism, control, you know, elevation, all of those things, self-grandiose worth, all of that aspects fall into. Psychopathy. I would say that Rex Herman is a psychopath. He was able to control those elements of his life. And if you look at him as an individual and how he has grown up, I mean, this is a person who was certainly motivated. In such a way that he used his status, in such as he you know, he was a respected member of the community. He used his status in terms of his size. This was a person you know, serial killers, serial killers are not born serial killers, and it's really important, I think, for people to understand. So you don't you're not born in a position where you are born as a killer. What you are born as is with influences both inside the womb and outside. So the first The most crucial developmental years are the first three years, including your time in the womb. So if your parents involve in drug, involved in alcohol, perhaps victims of domestic abuse, that all plays a part of your developmental stages as a fetus. Then when you're born, what's happening around you plays into that as well. Now what we don't know is Rex Herman's lifestyle within his family context, within his mum, within his dad. We don't know properly the background to that. But he will have, for many, many years, potentially, or for many, many months, been focused on some of the elements of his killings. So he would have gotten this position where he's viewing pornography, which involves tying up and which involves abuse, which we know that's some of that element is true. He also would have been fantasizing about some of his killings and about that. But those will all be fantasies in his head. Until he gets to a point which sometimes can be years down the road when he acts upon it. And of course, now once you've acted upon it, you end up in this cycle potentially, unless you stop it yourself, and you convince yourself that actually it's okay. And what convinced him was he wasn't caught. He commits his first offense that we know about in 1993. It wasn't until 2010 that he would have known on the headlines that bodies are found. At that point, he's suddenly thinking, Am I in trouble? Am I gonna get caught? But he had between 93 and 2010 to basically free reign. And he wasn't the only serial killer like that. If we bring this back to the UK, Levi Belfield. When Levi Belfil eventually caught, he'd done all of the killings before them. jeremy: Yeah, isn't that interesting that once people start to be chased, they tend to at least stop killing, but they will kill until the moment when their first body is found. And then you get to the Suffolk killer, who we mentioned already, Stephen Wright, who had to almost do serial killings in real time while the police investigation was going on because he Mark: Yeah. jeremy: was caught so rapidly. I'd love to believe that we can't have a Rex Heumann anymore because the pizza box DNA would catch him much earlier because the burner phones surely you've got to find out earlier. Surely the social media is now not simply being deleted at the end of the day. I'd love to believe that but somehow I don't. Mark: Well, society has changed, hasn't it? And so we've brought in t we've brought in legislation, we've brought in things that try to reduce that. For example, getting a burn burner phone now is meant to be much, much harder. You know, so you're meant to be meant to have to give your details across so it gets registered. Burner phones still exist and they're not registered to people. So that happens. Social media changes, so people communicate much more. But there's no doubt that if you there are serial killers amongst us, right? No doubt about that. There are people who have committed offences, particularly Particularly in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, who have not yet been caught. When I did a piece, I did a review of unsolved murders where we identified there was over 3,000 unsolved murders. And one of the criticisms, and I did quite a lot of pub press around this at the time, one of the criticisms I had about the police is that There is no central database for linking murders. So every single police force has its own database of unsolved murders. There's no central point. So you couldn't, for example, think, okay, there's a there's an MO, so basically the style of you committing your crime, and I'll see if that Correlates with something else, particularly bearing in mind now that you jump on a rot motorway and within three hours you've travelled a huge distance. So gone are the times when Peter Sutcliffe, I mean Peter Sutcliffe got away with his ongoing offending behaviour, part of the incompetence of the police is you know not doing the investigations right, but because he moved counties, or he he moved actually counties, he moved from Manchester, so he moved from West Yorkshire over to Manchester, and the different police forces, so they didn't communicate. With each other. That was happening then. Now, still 2026, we don't have police forces talking and communicating together. So I'm much more confident, of course, some elements of these serial killers won't occur, but we can't rule it out. And there are still serial killers walking amongst us, holding the door open at the supermarket, that haven't been caught. jeremy: I think the Rex Heumann case is... absolutely vital for us to understand because it is the classic where the respectable guy is committing heinous acts and we as human beings can't put the two together and the police are human too and they didn't do it and people died as a result. Mark: Yeah, they failed for a long time. Eventually fs yeah, luckily they caught him. I just hope That the police won't stop there. I hope that the police will do everything that they can to keep communicating with him, get information from him, and hopefully get to a position where all those other families who still don't have answers will eventually get the answers that their loved ones was killed by Rex Herman. He is undoubtedly a serial killer who has killed an awful lot more than the eight that he's in jail for. jeremy: Thank you so much for watching and listening. This is 30 Minute Crime with me, Jeremy Vine, and Mark Williams-Thomas. 30 minute crime next week wherever you get your podcasts. I just put that in. Mark: Take care and we'll see you next week.