Killing Grounds: The Gilgo Beach Murders (2026) s01e03 Episode Script

[traffic hums]
[Antoine]
All right, my last question.
If you were a tool or an object
to bring your business
to greater heights,
what would it be?
That's an interesting question.
[Antoine laughs] I know.
Because for what I do,
we have to have so many tools
in the toolbox.
-[Antoine] Just one. Just one.
-Just one.
I have one tool that's pretty much used
in almost every job.
And it's actually
a cabinetmaker's hammer.
Oh, okay. Cabinetmaker hammer. Okay.
It is persuasive enough
-[laughs]
-when I need to persuade something.
-Not someone.
-Something.
[laughs]
Sometimes, I have to be
the heavy framing hammer.
[Antoine laughing]
The heavy framing hammer!
Other times, I'm the lightweight hammer
just to nudge things along.
[Antoine]
All right, I guess it's a hammer.
We got it.
-Selfie time.
-Selfie time.
You're fast.
Ready? One, two, three.
Ah!
-Can you smile?
-That is.
[laughs]
[menacing music playing]
[Tierney] Because this case
gained such notoriety,
I knew that it would be very easy
for the person
who perpetrated these crimes
to utilize the internet to try
to figure out what we were doing.
So, that's why I was very quiet
and didn't show up on Gilgo Beach
with a big magnifying glass
and talk about all the things
we were gonna do.
Because I wanted the perpetrator to think
that it was business as usual.
We were spinning our wheels.
We weren't making any progress.
To maintain that investigative secrecy,
not everybody in my office
knew what we were doing.
Not everybody in the PD
or the FBI.
It was just the members
of the task force.
We had our first task force meeting
February 1st,
and I think March 14th of 2022
was when Rex Heuermann
was identified as the suspect
for the first time.
There was a new level of energy
injected into this task force.
They were finally starting to see
some meaningful movement on this case.
But what we think
doesn't matter as prosecutors.
It's what we can prove.
So, we would just work
to try to establish more connections
to those murders.
So, we were surveilling him
for a number of months.
[dramatic music playing]
[Thorne]
They tracked where he went.
They tracked him on the train,
the LI-double-R.
They tracked him going to his office
in Midtown.
[Tierney] For the most part,
his activity was business as usual.
He would go to work.
And go home.
That is nothing
that is in any way atypical.
But
we saw within a very short period of time
Rex buy a prepaid phone,
which we confirmed on the camera.
Remember, the killer used burner phones.
So now, we looked at the phone
in his name.
And what was the activity,
and was it consistent with the times
when the burner phones
were being utilized?
And it was.
That was arguably one of the most
significant points in this investigation.
[dramatic music playing]
[Tierney] There was this tension
because we knew through his use
of burner phones
that he was continuing
to contact sex workers.
That's obviously concerning.
But you still don't have enough evidence
to prosecute.
When you looked
at the original crime scene,
there wasn't a lot of evidence.
But what we saw was
these five questioned hairs of interest
discovered in December of 2010
with the Gilgo Four.
There was one that as recovered
on Amber Costello.
And then, there were
three questioned hairs obtained
from Megan Waterman.
And then, hair that was recovered
from the belt buckle
of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
The hairs found on the victims
were not a match to the victim,
nor any other profile within CODIS.
The hairs belonged to an unidentified
male of Caucasian descent,
as well as three different females.
We need more DNA profiles
to compare against.
[Tierney] Maybe these hairs
would be associated with the suspect.
The task force obtained DNA samples
from the suspect's house.
So, we were able to develop
four genetic profiles
off of bottles.
Those genetic profiles
were for family members
who lived at the residence
in Massapequa Park.
The suspect was married.
They had a biological daughter,
and she had a son
who was unrelated to the suspect.
And now, we have to actually see them
discarding things that they eat or drink,
and then get the DNA samples
so you know for sure
that you have the right profile.
[tense music playing]
It was painstaking because you're still
trying to keep the suspect in your sights,
do the surveillance, obtain this evidence.
But you don't want
to blow the investigation.
[Thorne]
One day, Rex comes out of the office,
and he throws away his box of pizza.
I just loved hearing this
because it's just good
old-fashioned detective work, right?
The detective was standing there,
blending in with everybody else
in New York City.
Went over, got the pizza box
and therein was a piece of crust.
And he went, and they took
that pizza crust, and they ran it.
[Tierney] When I read it, I realized
it sounds like we have a match here.
And then, I started calling people in.
I said, "Read this."
And we all agreed.
It was on.
We had enough probable cause
to arrest Rex Heuermann.
For a myriad of reasons,
we had decided
that we wanted to arrest him
in Midtown Manhattan
coming out of his place of business.
[suspenseful music playing]
It was exciting. It was, uh, it was scary.
Um, because you know
what this person was capable of.
So, you know, you really worry
about keeping people safe.
[tense music playing]
[man 1] We got him!
All right.
[inaudible]
[man 2] It's happened.
[Udice]
It's not easy when you go into a case
and you are looking for that needle
in the haystack.
There were tens of thousands of hours
placed into this investigation
by Suffolk County Police,
the FBI, the district attorney's office,
the sheriff's department,
the State Police.
That task force was, in my opinion,
a game changer.
[ominous music playing]
[newscaster 1] For 13 years, the public
has been just so fascinated by it,
and law enforcement
has been confounded by it.
[newscaster 2]
There has finally been an arrest.
A Massapequa Park man
charged with the murder
of three women.
[newscaster 3]
Rex Heuermann stayed silent
as he walked out
of Suffolk County 7 Precinct
to face a judge on Friday afternoon.
[Schaller] My friend, she called me
and she was like, "Are you watching TV?"
I was like, "No, why?" She's like
"Your exact description of an ogre."
"Six-foot-seven, 350 pound-man."
She's like, "He's being arrested right now
for Amber's murder."
I've seen what
that motherfucker looks like.
Sorry, but that's being nice still.
And he looks like
an AI-generated
version of Grimace if he was a human.
[Barthelemy]
The first time I saw pictures of him,
I was like, "Wow, what a monster."
Just huge.
And these girls are all so tiny.
And then, the scenarios
started coming in my head
of this accused's big body,
and hers, she's so tiny.
And now I have those nightmares
in my head
on top of everything else.
If this is the person,
it's gonna save a lot of lives.
No other girl is gonna get hurt
the way our girls got hurt.
Our hope is that those families
are experiencing some level of comfort
and some level of relief
knowing that the person responsible
for their loved one's death
is now being held responsible.
[Schaller] It was later on that day
they came out with the truck.
And it was just like, holy shit.
They had that, you know,
everything for 13 years in front of them.
They just never used it.
If it comes out that this guy's
been killing girls
since they could have had him in 2010,
that's what bothers me.
That's what's gonna cause me
to lose sleep.
[indistinct chatter]
[somber music playing]
[newscaster]
Kristin Thorne is live outside the home
where neighbors were shocked
to learn of today's arrest.
Sade, this is sort of the place to be
on Long Island right now.
[man] When I come down with my car
to drop my wife off,
I see him walking
just like every other
American-type person, I guess.
I saw it on Facebook this morning,
and I was at work.
And I was just like,
"Listen, I got to take
some personal time."
"I gotta go down here
because this is a big case."
[man 2] You know, we gotta see
how it plays out too.
We're talking about the Gilgo Four,
so you all know
that's not the end of the story, right?
[Ophals]
I was at work watching it on TV.
In-In just joking fashion to the guys,
I was just like, "Hey, I probably
went to high school with him."
And I found out about three hours later
that they named the suspect,
and it was Rex Heuermann.
We went to the same schools growing up.
He was, uh, more of a recluse.
He was very introverted.
Very skinny and tall.
You know, we would bully him.
You know, we used to call him
Herman Munster.
And he never bullied anybody, you know?
He was-- He wasn't that type of person.
When I saw his house,
I was more surprised
because I thought maybe
being an architect,
he would do something a little nicer.
This is a very nice neighborhood,
and the house does stand out.
Most of the people in the neighborhood
didn't want to be closer,
mainly because of the condition
of the house and stuff like that.
[woman] Because he's an architect,
for you to have a house like that
in a neighborhood like this,
on this block,
how come you haven't done your house?
You go down the street,
normal house, normal house,
serial killer, normal, normal.
You know what I mean?
You know, then we started
hearing from neighbors, like,
that was the house they told the kids
at Halloween don't go to.
[Tierney] The condition of the house
was very cluttered.
We found a large number
of electronic devices, phones, laptops.
We found 116 or so handguns in the house,
and about 163 long guns.
And if you look at the profile,
here's an individual who hunts,
an individual who target shoots.
The main reason why we wanted
to arrest the defendant
at his place of business
rather than his home
was we wanted to avoid those guns.
You know, and then, of course,
we were also looking for trace evidence.
You know, blood, hair, stains.
[Thorne]
When Rex Heuermann is arrested,
we're all rushing to figure out,
who is this guy?
You have to remember,
this is years of not knowing
who the Long Island serial killer was.
And now, we have a name.
I was doing legal research
on my computer,
and I saw the name Rex.
And I thought,
"Not a lot of Rexes, but okay,
there's another Rex."
And then, I saw his last name.
And then, I saw "an architect."
And then, I saw "serial killer."
And I thought I was hallucinating.
This was impossible.
And then, I saw his mugshot.
[Shell]
I thought, "There's no way that's him."
Like, oh, there must be
another Rex Heuermann.
It's so crazy that there are
two Rex Heuermanns.
And then, I was like,
"No, that's him. That's like his face."
Like, and also,
there aren't two Rex Heuermanns.
[laughs]
[Shepherd]
I just couldn't believe it.
I thought somebody had
[laughs]
just played a joke on me.
There's no way.
I was 26 years old
when I started working with Rex.
I was a pretty girl,
but he just tells jokes
and never hit on me.
To me, he was never a scary person
or anyone you should ever fear.
[Shell]
He was a licensed architect.
There were mostly women
working in the office.
Usually, one to two other architects,
um, and then the had, um,
you know, a handful of people
who helped him
really grind out the work.
[Sturman] When I worked for him,
my job was to be his assistant.
The office was a disaster area.
It was a mess.
There are blueprints all over the floor.
It was dirty.
Um, so, I spent the day cleaning.
Inside his own office,
you know, he's the main event.
[Sturman] He doesn't have
a very high emotional intelligence.
He-He can't read people very well.
But I can't envision him being a killer.
I just think he's so large and bumbling,
you know, I just can't imagine it.
No.
Like, here's the kind of lumbering guy
who shuffles around.
You don't look at him and think,
"Here's the most agile,
fearsome killer."
[Shepherd]
I am a survivor of sexual assault.
And my guard is totally up
most of the time.
And he didn't even register on my radar.
I'm trying to reconcile why I didn't
take better care of myself,
or how could I have not known, you know?
But I think no one
could have ever known.
Those girls never had a chance.
Because he tricked them,
just like he tricked everybody else.
[Thorne] Here we had a killer
who was hidden for all these years.
And so far, we believe that we've got him.
When he was first arrested,
his lawyer told the media
that Rex was crying,
he was very upset.
That he said he had
nothing to do with any of this.
He didn't even know these women.
And that he didn't know
any of what was going on.
[newscaster] Officials cite DNA
and cell phone data as evidence,
alleging he used burner phones.
Defense attorney Michael Brown
calls the evidence circumstantial.
[Brown] I don't believe everything
the government says.
Do you believe everything
the government says?
The press has convicted my client
without seeing a shred of evidence.
So, he doesn't stand a chance
with the press.
And we're not gonna try the case
in the press.
I doubt that any one of you for a moment
have even contemplated
the possibility
that they have the wrong guy.
The government is looking
to convict my client.
What has my client told me?
He told me he didn't do this.
So, am I starting? Am I leading off?
[Thorne] Ray Tierney
wants the buck to stop with him.
It's like the biggest case
of the century, right?
If anything goes wrong
with this prosecution
[Tierney] The indictment of defendant
Rex Andrew Heuermann,
59 years of age,
for the murders of Melissa Barthelemy,
Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.
The investigation
of Maureen Brainard-Barnes
is ongoing.
[Thorne] Maureen Brainard-Barnes
was not included.
The reason is they didn't have
enough time to get her DNA
into that indictment.
But they felt they had to arrest him
when they did
because they could see his activities
in terms of trying to reach sex workers,
and they were worried
that he was a threat to public safety.
[Tierney] We've been able to associate
eight or so burner phone
accounts to him.
Primarily, those burner phones were used
to speak with a large number
of sex workers.
It was, you know, precisely
what we've been talking about all along
with this tension between public safety,
grand jury secrecy,
and obtaining the evidence.
So, we continued to prosecute
those three cases in court
while still investigating
the Brainard-Barnes case
and the grand jury.
Look, prosecutors do not like
to move forward in a case
without having everything together.
Of course they wanted
the four of them ready to go at one time.
But unfortunately, in this situation,
there was still some outstanding DNA.
So, we definitely know
that Maureen Brainard-Barnes
had been restrained
by three leather belts,
one of which was utilized to tie
Barnes' feet, ankle and legs together.
And on the belt had the initials W.H.
or H.M.
W.H. are the initials
of Rex Heuermann's grandfather.
Could be coincidental.
But most importantly,
they found on the belt one female hair.
The hair that was recovered
from the belt buckle
of Maureen Brainard-Barnes,
uh, that was consistent with his wife.
There is this known phenomenon in science,
it's called transference.
If you live with a person,
oftentimes their hair
will get on your clothes,
you'll come in contact
with a third party,
and both those hairs could then
be transferred to that third party.
[Thorne] Rex's wife's hair was found
on Maureen's body.
Could this be transference?
Or could it be that Maureen
had actually been in Rex's house?
And then, you have the people
who theorize that Asa
may not be telling us
everything that she knew
about what was going on
and may have interacted
with some of these women.
[Macedonio] She had no idea
any of this was going on,
or the allegations,
or even her husband was a suspect.
She's not a suspect.
She has not been questioned
by the police regarding any of this.
It's been extremely overwhelming
for her and the children,
trying to piece life back together
to what it was two and a half weeks ago.
I think there's still a lot of concern
and suspicion
about whether these women
were ever in the house.
I mean, there's an incredible amount
of Asa and Victoria's DNA
on these female victims.
There's a lot of supposition and noise
surrounding the wife,
but what we've been able
to prove conclusively
is during the time of the commission
of these four charged murders,
the wife and the rest of the family
were out of the state
at the time of the commission
of the murders.
[dramatic music playing]
[Thorne] The first round of charges
against Rex Heuermann
were for Megan Waterman,
Amber Costello,
and Melissa Barthelemy.
Six months later,
he was charged
with Maureen Brainard-Barnes,
the fourth of the Gilgo Four.
[Tierney] So, good afternoon, everyone.
Thanks for coming.
We're here to discuss
the superseding indictment.
The only change in that indictment
is that we've charged
the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes,
which hap-- which occurred
in July of 2007.
It's important that we keep in mind
what this case is about.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes
was 25 years of age
when she lost her life.
She was a devoted sister,
devoted mother,
devoted daughter.
And this is what this case is about.
This is what this case should be about.
[Karnes]
I went for the press conference
when the asshole was charged
with my friend's murder.
Justice needs to be served.
And I hope
he just never, ever sees the light of day.
I'm attorney Gloria Allred.
And today, I'm here
at the Suffolk County New York courthouse
with five of my six clients
who were relatives or a friend
of alleged victims
of defendant Rex Heuermann.
They have asked me to represent them
as their victims rights attorney
in this case, and I'm honored
to support them.
Next, I would like to introduce
Nicolette Brainard-Barnes,
who is the daughter of Maureen.
I'm here to speak for my mom, Maureen.
I was only seven years old
when my mother was murdered.
Her loss drastically
changed the trajectory of my life.
I remember she read to me every night,
and now I can no longer
remember the sound of her voice.
For years, it looked like there might not
be charges filed against any suspect
for the murder of my mother.
While the loss of my mom
has been extremely painful for me,
the indictment by the grand jury
has brought hope for justice
for my mom and my family.
[Allred] I'm a women's rights attorney.
I've represented 20 victims
of Jeffrey Epstein,
a number of victims
against Harvey Weinstein.
I don't judge people.
Life is a challenge
for every woman I know.
And I understand what women
have to go through in life
because I've lived it.
After I became a teacher
and moved to California,
I went to Mexico
on a vacation with a friend.
And there, I met a doctor.
Uh, and went on a date with him
and ended up being raped at gunpoint.
And had nobody who could help me.
I didn't know attorneys. I--
So, I remember when I didn't know
and why I didn't know.
And it just always motivates me
to help win change.
The people who are involved
with the Gilgo Beach case
contacted me and asked me to help.
I felt that I had the ability to help,
I have the opportunity to help,
and I have the desire to help.
But there's a long way to go
to learn if they're going
to win any justice.
It took years to even discover
the bodies of their loved one.
And some bodies
have not yet been identified.
The Gilgo Four definitely received
a lot of attention.
Mainly because that's where
the investigation has focused.
And because, quite frankly,
they're all identified.
The remaining six victims
attached to this crime scene,
with the exception of Jessica Taylor,
were all John and Jane Does.
Every time there is a press conference
on this case,
we ask about these other victims,
and police will only say
they're continuing to do their work,
they're continuing to investigate it.
ID'ing a body is so important.
It is the first step
that allows law enforcement
to go and try to figure out
who killed someone.
You cannot find out who killed someone
if you don't know who the victim is.
[Corson]
The FBI approached Suffolk County
and offered to deploy
investigative genetic genealogy
in order to resolve the identities
of the remaining bodies--
Jane Doe number 6,
Fire Island Jane Doe,
as well as Jane Doe
found in Hempstead Lake Park,
Peaches, and her baby,
as well as Asian male.
Their DNA profiles
were submitted into NamUs.
That is the national database
for missing persons, for DNA profiles.
And there were no hits.
So, from there, the FBI used
investigative genetic genealogy
to build out the family trees.
And in the end, the identity
of Jane Doe number 6 was resolved
to Valerie Mack.
Peaches, Tanya Jackson.
Tatiana, that's her baby.
And Fire Island Jane Doe,
Karen Vergata.
And the work to identify Asian male
remains ongoing.
The investigation into the remaining
six victims is extremely active,
and more active than it's been
in a very long time.
We don't know yet if Rex Heuermann
will be charged with their murders.
But Jessica Taylor will, in my opinion,
be the most valuable
of the remaining victims
to have a suspect associated with them.
She could be the link that links
not only those other victims,
but links back to the Gilgo Four.
[Thorne] Jessica Taylor's body
was found at Gilgo Beach,
but parts of her body
were also found years prior
in Manorville, Long Island.
Jess Taylor was 20 years old.
She had a rough upbringing,
but a mom that loved her
and two brothers that loved her.
And she fell into the wrong crowd
who introduced her to sex work.
[Corson] In July of 2003,
her torso was found in Manorville,
and she remained unidentified
for about a year.
Jessica had a tattoo on her back.
The tattoo had been mutilated
in a way to disfigure it
so that it was not, um,
reasonably identifiable.
But the medical examiner's office
effectively pushed the skin together.
Sent out a photo,
blasted it around
to local police agencies,
and a detective in Washington, D.C.,
that had arrested Jessica
the preceding year
recognized the tattoo,
and called Suffolk PD and said,
"I know who she is."
So, Jess Taylor's body
was found right about here.
Maybe ten feet set back.
Right by the tree.
She had been decapitated.
Her hands and her feet
had been cut off.
And she had been posed
to maximize the shock value,
and also to increase
the amount of humiliation to the victim.
A neighbor reported seeing
a large Chevy pickup truck,
dark color, pull into this service road,
stop for a bit, for maybe ten minutes,
and then leave around 10:30 at night.
That's when we believe
the perpetrator drove up,
took out Jessica's--
effectively, her torso--
posed it on a medical U-Drape tent,
and left her here to be found.
And from what I understand
from her family members about Jess,
she would not have gone softly.
She was not going down without a fight.
She was tortured pre- and postmortem.
She probably inflicted some degree
of humiliation onto the perpetrator.
And so, he inflicted it back.
Her head and her hands,
the remaining body parts,
were found along Ocean Parkway
in March 2011.
Jess's case was crucial
to the identification
of Jane Doe number 6, Valerie Mack.
She was a 24-year-old female
from South Jersey
who was involved in sex work.
Both Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor
had both of their torsos
and other body parts
recovered in Manorville
in 2000 and 2003 respectively.
[Tierney] Jessica Taylor's body
was found on Halsey Manor Road,
which bisects with Mill Road.
The location of Valerie Mack's body,
they were found
less than half a mile from each other.
And if you look at the manner
in which both Valerie Mack
and Jessica Taylor's bodies were left,
it was very similar.
[Corson] Both victims
were decapitated and dismembered
at their arms below their elbows.
During the course of the investigation,
it became pretty evident
that it was necessary
that the task force
expanded the search for victims.
After they had a DNA profile
from Rex Heuermann,
they looked for cold cases
going back decades
in Suffolk County for victims
that may have had DNA evidence
linking to this potential suspect.
Sandra Costilla was one of those victims.
[Tierney]
In the early stage of the investigation,
Sandra Costilla was a case
that we thought was of interest to us.
The similarities between
Sandra Costilla and Jessica Taylor
were so striking in the way they were left
and the manner of their death.
[Corson] So, this is the site
where Sandra Costilla's body was found.
November 20th, 1993.
She was not covered.
She was not put in a bag.
She just was there out in the open.
The official cause of death
was asphyxiation.
She had multiple slash wounds
across her body.
Her arms were above her head.
Her legs were spread apart.
Uh, her top was shoved up
above her head so that
It just compounded
the humiliation of it all.
Several of her injuries,
from what I understand,
were postmortem as well.
So, she's dead,
and he's still defacing her body.
[Rampersad] As a journalist,
I advocate on behalf of women
who had in some way been brutalized,
in some way been harmed.
I saw this one face.
And something about the face told me
that if I could not be sure
that she was Trinidadian,
I knew she was Caribbean.
So, I proceeded to run an investigation
to try to figure out
who Sandra Costilla really was.
Sandra Costilla was born
in Trinidad and Tobago.
The family was by no means wealthy,
but they were also not impoverished.
And it seemed that the unit
was a fully functional
and happy unit and a happy family.
Her mother and father
died in very tragic circumstances.
Sandra and her brother
were immediately and instantly orphaned.
And then eventually,
Sandra left Trinidad for Queens, New York.
The police seemed to assume
that her lifestyle
was quote, unquote "substantially similar"
to the lifestyle of the other victims,
meaning that she did interface
in some way with sex work.
There's nothing that I have discovered
to suggest that she was a sex worker.
She worked in bookkeeping.
And through that job,
was in Manhattan quite often.
There's one suggestion that perhaps
that he may have come to her
in a bar.
On November 13th, 1993,
there was a best friend she had
who was living in Massachusetts,
and she phoned her in some distress.
She told her life was not going well.
And her friend suggested,
"Why don't you just pack up
and come to Massachusetts?
You can stay with me."
And Sandra said, "Yes, I will do that.
I wanted to do that."
And her friend waited for her to come.
And waited, and waited, and waited.
And Sandra never showed.
And about a week later,
received a phone call.
The person, it was a gentleman,
and he said, he claimed,
he was a police officer.
He said that Sandra had died,
her body had been found,
and that her friend's contact information
had been found on Sandra's person.
And that is how the contact was made.
And from then to now,
there has been no further contact
from the police.
Her friend is unsure
whether it was the police who phoned
or whether it was someone else.
Sandra Costilla was found
by two hunters in the area.
At the time, this area
was open up to hunters.
And a number of the residences
that are nearby now did not exist.
They weren't here.
So it was a relatively secluded area
and a decent dumping site
for someone looking to dispose of a body
to go undetected.
[dramatic music playing]
He was really into hunting.
He had been for years.
That was known. He loved guns. Um
All types of hunting.
He was a duck hunter.
He went hunting for big game.
He would go to Alaska to hunt bear.
He was crazy. He's like,
you're gonna set a trap, you know,
and lie in wait
for this dangerous animal to come,
and then, like,
spring into action or whatever?
He liked to talk about going out
and shooting bears
and skinning 'em.
And he would just like to watch people
get nauseated from his story.
What makes it so spooky
for those of us who knew him
and worked alongside him at any point
is just that he's created a world
where he can boss around
a room full of women,
many of whom are,
you know, on the petite side.
And then, on the weekends,
he's allegedly out hunting women
of the same stature.
[ominous music playing]
[Tierney]
We were continuing to work the case.
As we were doing that,
uh, we were getting back forensic
evidence from some of the devices.
[dramatic music playing]
During the search of the house,
we found a couple of laptops,
standalone computers.
There was some evidence
of further searches
with regard to torture porn,
with regard to monitoring
the investigation,
uh, looking up the Gilgo investigation,
the victims, the victims' families.
We also recovered I think
the most pertinent piece of evidence
that we were able to retrieve
out of unallocated space,
which means it was erased originally,
but we were able to forensically
retrieve it nonetheless,
was the planning document.
The task force discovered
a Microsoft Word document
entitled "HK2002-2004."
We didn't have much of a conversation,
but, uh, yeah, he's in a bad place.
[Tierney]
This document shows his intent.
And that intent is
to meticulously plan and premeditate
the murders of the victims in this case.
This document is unlike anything
I've ever seen.
This guy's an architect,
and he's allegedly
made a blueprint for his crimes.
[intense music playing]