How Many Women Did Rex Heuermann Really Kill?

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
The judge said it out loud at the sentencing of Rex Heuermann. Eight that we know of, Heuermann owned property also in South Carolina, had timeshares in Las Vegas. Can you imagine being the timeshare salesperson like, hey, you want that free dinner over at the IHOP? You just got to come over here. And I wonder how many certificates Rex, can I get an extra one? I really like the pancakes.
But he had timeshares. He had timeshares in Las Vegas and investigators have looked at ties to Atlantic City as well. Some of those states execute people for what Heuermann did. Eric Faddis, defense attorney, is with us to break down whether the number eight is where this ends or where it all starts. That plea deal, of course, protects him in Suffolk County for these eight women, and that could be prosecuted again. It's done. But if South Carolina finds a body connected to him, does that New York deal mean anything in their courtroom? Should information come about?

**Eric Faddis** (1:11)
The only thing it would mean, in my impression, is that it'd be much more likely that Rex Heuermann would put to death that this infant Carolina case is provable, because it certainly doesn't protect him in any form or fashion. If anything, it's just aggravating to the extent that he has been convicted of eight other murders. Oh, now we're on nine? Like, I think at some point, a jury and a judge might say, hey, this can't go on forever. You've got your chances. And I think it makes the death penalty way more likely.

**Tony Brueski** (1:43)
Resources are a big thing. How much incentive does Carolinas or any of these other areas where he may have been hunting, how much incentive do they have to put resources at trying to connect Rex Heuermann to unsolved murders from decades ago when he's already locked up for eternity? Is it something that would be high in the priority list of somebody there?
I guess, you know, for the right reasons, you can look at the, well, maybe if somebody's running for election and they want to crack a big case, this would make some headlines. But is it worth it, I guess, in terms of if there's not that other lever and some other motive to go after this case for South Carolina or another area to spend the resources trying to connect those dots?

**Eric Faddis** (2:34)
You know, I think that those authorities and those other locales would be remiss if they had significant leads and did not at least explore them. You know, although this although they would be cold cases, so those are extremely hard to investigate. All your evidence has eroded, witnesses have died, it costs a ton of money to pursue that. But on the flip side, you have these convictions of Rex and you have sort of a modus operandi, a pattern that he has used to time and again, to commit these similar atrocities. And if you can line up that pattern, with evidence you find in your locale, that makes it significantly easier to pursue a conviction. So upsides and downsides, resources are certainly front of mind.
But so are the optics of all this. I don't think any authorities in those jurisdictions want to say, yeah, this person died, but it was a long time ago, it's going to cost a lot of money. We're not going to look at them.

**Robin Drake** (3:28)
So I'm curious about this one, Eric, because we haven't quite seen it in any of the cases we've covered before. So say you have a family or a couple of families in South Carolina or in Vegas or somewhere that have a private investigator, they're able to do their own investigation, they're able to say that they believe that Rex was responsible for the death of their family member, and but South Carolina is not picking up as a criminal thing, can they then go after Rex civilly without a criminal case?

**Eric Faddis** (4:05)
But you're running into, under those circumstances, statute of limitations issues. Statute of limitations for civil claims are way shorter than on the criminal side. They're usually like three years or something, and there are tolling exceptions. But if you believe this guy did it, you would have to show some newly discovered evidence that would renew the statute. It would be a tall order to pursue that.

**Tony Brueski** (4:30)
I guess my question on that would be, what attorney would take up that case if there's not much to get out of it civilly, other than it's getting justice, the right thing to do, that sort of a thing. I mean, I get it. But again, I mean, nobody works for free, everybody needs to eat, and that would be a lot of work.