What Rex Heuermann Told a Victim's Family After He Killed Their Daughter

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
We're going to move over to another event of the week. Rex Heuermann. Judge called Rex Heuermann a disgusting, despicable coward and told his officers to get him out of the courtroom. The family's chanted ogre as he was led away.
That part felt right. But here's the part that doesn't feel right before any of that happened. Heuermann has agreed to sit down with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit and walk them through everything. How we picked them up, how we killed them, how we got away with it for 17 years. And he's probably going to enjoy it. That's the part that makes your skin crawl. But the FBI has been doing this for 50 years and they keep coming back to the table. There's a reason for that. And the reason is it's actually solved cases. So let's dive into this. And I can't think of better folks to do that with. Jennifer Coffindaffer, retired FBI special agent and Robin Drake, retired FBI special agent, former chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. So the judge told the guy he's a coward, threw him out of the courtroom. Same deal, though, gives him a seat across from the FBI where he gets to walk through every detail of what he did.
And and he's probably going to love it. Walk me through. Jen, I'll start with you. Why the FBI wants a seat on the table with him anyway?
And what sort of information might they glean off of ol Rex?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (1:36)
Well, look, this is a salivation moment for anyone that is in the BAU. And quite frankly, for anyone, even me, who studies this, who investigates this sort of thing, it's, I wish I could be there. Why? Not because I think anything of him. It would, you know, I have to plug my nose going in there. But you want to understand, he's a prolific serial killer. I know there's eight bodies that have been attributed to him so far. I think there's going to be many more that he confesses to. And you got to, when you look at somebody that's hiding in plain sight, an architect, so well known, even on camera, you know, even though he by then had all of these victims, and actually somebody had seen him, remember what, you know, there's that terrific witness. And yet he's on camera going out there living a normal life. You want to understand how somebody like that ticks. Is he three years old and can't wait to find an animal to kill?
How many did he kill?
What made him into the monster he became in that capability? So I mean, this is an opportunity that they cannot turn down. And it does help with cases in the future.

**Robin Drake** (3:09)
Yeah, everything Jen was saying.
It's, he's very, each one of these guys has a very unique aspect to him. But I think the most unique thing about Rex was the fact that he really controlled his entire environment. He was enacting all his sadistic crap in and taking advantage of these girls. I think definitely the way he targeted people is of a huge interest how he even targeted who he's going to marry to provide his cover, how he controlled his environment. And I still think that they're going to be really looking at how he controlled multiple environments with all these other timeshares and places he had control of. And they're going to be looking at how his sadistic fantasy world evolved over time, how he evaded or attempted to evade law enforcement over time, how he was then outpaced by law enforcement. I mean, all these data points help create the profile, which is the filter by which we look at other cases through, thereby helping us and we're getting, like in the Nancy Guthrie case, from getting 20,000 or 30,000 leads in or even more, it helps you whittle these down. I'm not saying Nancy Guthrie obviously isn't a serial killer case, but in these types of cases, this is where it helps a lot.

**Tony Brueski** (4:21)
What are some of the things they're looking to glean off of Rex? Like, for example, if they do learn he was killing puppies at 10 or whatever, weird things he might have been doing in his childhood. You know, we've seen that in other killers and things of that nature. It gets added to the stats of, okay, here's another one who was doing these horrible things and then went down this sort of path.
Other than adding to the stats of, okay, here's the type of recipe that makes this type of person, what does the FBI get out of it that they can then apply to other investigations, active investigations with other folks that they're looking at, that the investigation of Rex brought to light, is it more so, oh, okay, tells us what other people are truly capable of, that the mind can do these sort of things? Give me some insight there, Jen, as to what, how this might then be applicable elsewhere.