It’s Past Time To Change Our Culture’s Conversation About Men Who Kill Women
Long Island Serial Killer/Gilgo Beach Killer suspect Rex Heuermann is the dark side of online dating and patriarchy
I’ve written humorously about online dating over age 50. I still tell people that 9 out of 10 men I ever went out with were married.
When I saw published photos of the Gilgo Beach Killer suspect Rex Heuermann — I thought “He looks a lot like the online dating guy who told me ‘Women say I look just like Brad Pitt’”.
“I’m Brad Pitt” guy as well as several others, said they were looking to have sex with someone they thought was “attractive.” They often said, “I have lost sexual interest in my wife.”
I wasn’t going to fill that role for them, but that is where sex workers come in.
The first part of the conversation about this type of crime that needs to change is the low priority placed upon crimes committed against sex workers. After that, our culture needs to cease criminalizing, shaming, demeaning, and demonizing sex workers.
It needs to put its attention, shame, blame, and demonization on the real criminals: men like Heuermann.
Ogres Have A Tough Time Getting Dates
Heuermann used burner phones and fake email addresses to locate and meet with sex workers. A witness description dates from his attempt to hire victim Amber Costello prior to her murder. She and her pimp played a common game on him: when he arrived at the hotel room for his date, her “boyfriend” threatened him and took his money.
Surviving witnesses described the client from this meeting as “6’4’ to 6’6” in height, in his mid-forties, with “dark bushy hair,” and “big oval style 1970’s type eyeglasses.” A witness described him to police as appearing like an “ogre.”
That’s what Brad Pitt guy really looked like. It’s also similar to the man who raped me in 1983. It’s — unfortunately — a “type.” Although Heuermann is married and reportedly has two children, his marriage and family were obviously not his priority.
Heuermann May Not Have Stopped Offending
Heuermann has been charged with murdering Melissa Barthelmy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello, whose remains are among at least ten victims found on Gilgo Beach on Long Island. These victims were murdered in 2009 and 2010.
But among the evidence in the charges are recent records of internet porn searches from Heuermann’s burner phones.
Rex was looking for “teen girl begging for rape porn” and “10 year old school girl.” There’s an entire list of “girl” related porn searches, with ages ranging from 10 to 13. Lots of blonde and blue-eyed girls, but also red hair and one Black girl.
Heuermann’s daughter has red hair.
It’s probably not illegal to look for such things, but it is absolutely illegal to complete the search, download, view, and possess this type of child pornography.
I wonder how many women are out there searching for “10 year old school boy” and using burner phones to arrange sex with very young male escorts whom they then beat, strangle, rape and kill, dumping their bodies on Gilgo Beach wrapped in burlap.
Yeah, every day I go looking online for “teen boy begging for rape porn” (not).
But I bet there’s a lot of men who are doing that right now. People are talking about how long it took Suffolk County Police to apprehend the killer. But they weren’t just fighting a lone criminal with a sophisticated MO and resources as a Manhattan-based architect and apparently, respected local resident who went to high school with one of the Baldwin brothers.
They were fighting against a culture that protects men like Heuermann and really doesn’t care that young women who did sex work were getting strangled and dumped out along Gilgo Beach. A culture that also doesn’t really care that an Asian man was killed and dumped, along with a toddler. By the way, one of Heuermann’s porn searches was for a young Asian male “twink.”
Obviously Heuermann’s kink is strangling, raping, and killing others who are much smaller, younger, and weaker than he is — whether male or female.
Technology Enabled Investigators To Apprehend Heuermann
Much of the evidence against Heuermann consists of matches between cell phone records of Heuermann’s burner phones and the victims’ cell phones. Technology has made this possible by using AI and machine learning to search through huge amounts of cell phone and Google search data. Heuermann bought and used burner phones and fake email addresses for online dating sites like Tinder throughout 2009 and 2010, continuing to the present day. The complaint has video evidence of him adding minutes to one of the phones in Manhattan.
DNA technology has advanced to the point that confident matches have been made with strands of a woman’s hair found on each of the three victim bodies and Heuermann’s wife (she is not suspected of or charged with crimes — this is transfer hair). Heuermann’s own DNA has been matched to a man’s hair found on the bodies. In both cases, maternal haplogroups were identified that indicate a high level of probability that the hairs belong to one of the Heuermanns.
Overall, the complaint that resulted in Heuermann’s charges is in-depth, using a lot of advanced investigative techniques, AI, and forensic DNA analysis that’s possible now, but which wasn’t possible at the time the bodies were discovered over a decade ago.
In this case, technology really is aiding in criminal investigations in ways that were never possible before.
Men’s Rights Groups, Violent Porn, and Hatred Toward Women
It’s hard to imagine a man hating women any more than the Gilgo Beach Killer hates women. If Heuermann is indeed guilty, he has also shown the ultimate hate and disrespect toward his wife and daughter.
I remember when the Long Island Serial Killer case first came to public attention. There were many comments of “Oh, it’s just sex workers.” Decades earlier, the same attitudes fueled the lengthy murder sprees of the Green River Killer and the Grim Sleeper in Los Angeles.
However, as families of the victims of other crimes, like Jeremy Bell, strangled and murdered by his school principal, a serial sex offender named Edgar Friedrichs Jr., learn — it takes years for investigations to proceed and the perpetrators of these crimes may never be brought to justice.
The Suffolk County Police Department that was/is responsible for solving the Gilgo Beach crimes was led by disgraced, criminally-convicted former chief James Burke, who was notorious for beating, strangling and abusing sex workers as well as a young man who stole a bag containing sex toys and a reported “snuff film” from his vehicle.
Groups that aid and abet serial sexual criminals who prey upon both women and men include Men’s Rights advocates who prowl the internet to tell others that “women rape men as often as men rape women” and child porn advocates, who say that children under age 13 can willingly consent to violent and harmful sexual acts that are then filmed and sold to men like Heuermann —
Yeah.
It’s all tolerated.
When is the last time you heard of a woman searching the internet for “boy hog tied torture porn”? Replace “boy” with “girl” and that was one of the 26 child porn searches Heuermann is charged with committing — in January of this year.
I don’t want this to be “my lane.” I’m not thrilled that I have written books on Forensic Anthropology, where I read about the different bodies found on Gilgo Beach, including the unidentified toddler and a young woman nicknamed “Peaches.”
I didn’t want the man who raped me in 1983, who was suspected of raping and strangling unidentified women who had been found in the Mojave Desert, to do what he did, either. Nothing ever happened to that man: until he died in a single-car accident on Mount Baldy Road.
I thought that the “ogre”-like man who told me he looked “just like Brad Pitt” was a little bit funny before.
Now I wonder if it was funny: at all.
This is one aspect of our world that, all things considered, casts white male supremacy into harsh relief, making all of its ugliness clear.
It’s a continuum. From the men who body shame their wife or sister or who stalk online to make horrible comments to female celebrities to full-on serial killer child porn perverts —
We haven’t dealt with this problem. We’ve let it fester.
Who would suspect this man? He looks “just like Brad Pitt.”
He says he is not sexually interested in his wife any more as she gained too much weight.
It’s long past time that this conversation changed.
Misogyny is unfortunately a part of society, Amy. But we must continue to tell these stories and yell as loud as it takes until we've converted them all, one troglodyte at a time! Our lives are too precious to do any less. ♥️
One thing : on social media apps like Twitter, rife with toxic testosterone, we have the advantage! They can't reach out and strangle us through the internet. But we can be smart if we can't afford extra protection and keep our location turned off, don't share our hometowns or phone numbers. Do give bullies the chance to come after us. Then we can shame the online haters for the garbage people they are!
But please keep us updated on any new technologies that come out to help catch these killers! Thank you. ♥️