Investigators say they
are poring through new evidence
now after the arrest of a man suspected
of being a serial killer in New York.
Police arrested
Rex Human on Thursday
in connection
with the murders of three women
from over a decade ago.
And investigators say here
a man is a prime suspect
in a fourth murder.
CNN's Brant
Grass is live outside the suspect's home.
She's joining me now.
So, Brian,
what more are you learning this morning?
Yeah.
Kate, you know,
just a short time ago,
we saw investigators
putting on those full body Tyvek suits
going into the home of Rex Human.
They have been here
all weekend long collecting evidence
from that home.
We've also learned from sources
that inside the home,
in the basement, actually,
there was a lock door to a room.
And inside
that they found a cache of guns.
I want you to hear from the Suffolk
County police commissioner
about what he said about that finding
So over
200 guns,
he had an arsenal in his
in a vault that he had downstairs.
So concerning
regarding the guns being registered or
illegal or not,
that's something
that we're still taking a look at.
But of any time somebody has that type of
arsenal, we have some concerns
yeah.
Now, remember, initially it was
we were told
that was about 92 guns,
that they were thinking
that Rick Sherman had in his possession.
So this is way more
and we hear it's
anything from semiautomatic rifles
to assault weapons.
So investigators are certainly going
to hone in on why he had those
that many weapons.
Also looking inside
this home, we're told through sources
that they're looking
for possible souvenirs
that may be human,
may be kept after some of these killings.
Any personal belonging
that possibly belonged to the victims
that maybe just went under the radar
from those who lived inside the house.
Investigators say
that they're going to have to
be comparing that
not only forensically
but also talking
to the victims families to get an idea
if this is something that is important
to the investigation.
Another thing
to point out
that we've learned from sources
is that a storage area
not far
from where we are
is also being looked at by investigators.
So this investigation very far from over.
We know about the three murder,
six murder charges of the three women
that were killed
A fourth
one likely going to be linked
to him, German as well
in the coming weeks or days.
The district attorney wouldn't
give it a precise timeline about that.
But again,
the point here
is that this investigation is very far
from over, Kate.
Absolutely.
I mean, what the more they're
the more places they're going,
the more
obviously the more information
that they're uncovering
and so much more to go through
now as you're describing. Brennan.
Thank you very much.
District Attorney Tierney,
thank you for joining us.
I want to ask you something
about what
these Suffolk County
deputy Police
Commissioner Anthony Carter told CNN
just yesterday,
which is that
it is possible
that there are still more
victims out there.
Do you share that assessment?
My opinion doesn't matter.
I deal in what I can prove.
And right now,
where we can prove
we feel we can prove these three murders.
There are allegations at this point,
but we're confident with the evidence.
And we're also confident
that we're going to be able
to eventually charge that fourth murder.
And what are the strongest
pieces of evidence
that you have right now
that point to here, man,
being the perpetrator of these crimes?
I think we have
a description of of the last
individual
who saw the final victim,
Amber Costello, alive,
that matches that of of this defendant
who's
has a rather unique physical appearance.
We have phone evidence
and we also have that DNA evidence, DNA,
the defendant's DNA
was recovered off of one of the bodies
where whereas
his wife's DNA was recovered off of
to two other two of the two bodies.
And I want to show folks at home,
this is a picture of a belt
that was found at the scene here
in January of 2020.
Police released these images
and one of the Gil go beach crime scenes
that had the initials
that looked to be H m or perhaps W m.
Do you believe that
that belt belonged to human.
Well,
the the initials are the two h m or w h.
His last name is Herman.
And I believe he has relatives
with the name of William.
Okay.
So w h.
What can you tell us?
As our reporter was just telling us,
the family is now
being interviewed
as part of this investigation.
What kind of cooperation
are you getting from humans?
Wife and his two children?
Well, we don't disclose sources,
but we
I can tell you
that this has been
from the very beginning
since we've gotten on the case,
a very comprehensive investigation.
And we're going to look at
every single source of evidence,
whether that's a human source
or electronic or molecular or whatever.
Has anyone else come forward
with information about
human or about these cases
since this arrest was announced
on Friday?
Well, you know,
the one thing about an arrest, obviously,
it brings a lot of attention.
The other thing is we
we of have executed
a number of search warrants.
So right now,
we have a flood of information
and a flood of evidence coming in.
And it's going to take us a while
to sort of go through all of that.
And so far as we were just discussing,
human, it's been charged
with three of these killings
on Kilgore Beach.
When do you think
you'll have enough evidence to go forward
with actually charging him
with that fourth killing?
Well, we're going to continue
to work
through the grand jury process,
as we've been doing.
You know, we arrested him last Thursday
out of concern
for both the integrity
of our investigation
as well as the safety of the community.
But that investigation is continuing.
With regard to Maureen Brainard, Barnes
And, you know, we feel confident that
that we're going to be able
to eventually charge that
that murder,
but we're not going
to put a timeframe on it.
Do you think that this will get to trial
soon?
What's the timeline for a trial here?
Well, you know, it's an interesting case
because you're talking about something
that is 13 years in the making.
So when you talk about the
unbelievable amount of material
that was there
prior to me
assuming office in January of 22,
and then you also have over 300
search warrants and judicial requests.
So there is
a tremendous amount of information
which obviously,
you know, the defense is going to going
to want to look at.
Very difficult and troubling case.
Raymond Tierney, thank you for giving us
all of those updates.
Thank you.
Let's bring in now CNN's chief law
enforcement and intelligence analyst
John Miller.
John, so what is so incredible about
this case
is just the sheer number of victims.
Three, that he's been charged
with, a fourth, but also several
bodies, frankly, that
are still being investigated.
What do you think
are the prospects here
that we could have more charges
related to either
that fourth victim or others?
So I think
there's a good likelihood there
because you've got
three essential things.
First,
you start out with the crime
scenes back in 2010 that is what on earth
these remains
and the scant clues
that they had to go
by in terms of forensic evidence.
But now you have two other
interesting places to gather evidence.
One, the suspect's home.
Why is that important?
Because in these serial killer cases
what we see an offender
characteristics is that they keep things
from victims.
In these cases,
victims had property missing,
their phones were missing,
clothing items were missing.
And it is not unusual for these
these offenders, these suspects,
to keep these things
so that they can use them
to relive the murders, to fantasize
about it.
Again, they've got a search
that is still continuing,
even as we sit here
now this many days
after the arrest at the home.
And then,
of course,
you have the suspect himself
Now, they're not getting DNA
from a discarded pizza crust.
They're getting DNA
directly from him, hair directly from him
and other forensics that
are going to be helpful
Joe, can you take us behind the scenes?
I mean, the idea of this
all coming together finally,
this has been kind of a case
that had gone cold.
This has taken years and years
to actually get to this point.
What happened? What changed?
So when Rodney Harrison became police
commissioner of the Suffolk County Police
in 20, 21,
he did something very unusual
without knowing the outcome.
He vowed that
we were going to solve this case.
He was coming from the NYPD
as chief of detectives
and he basically assembled a task force.
The Suffolk County Police Department
had kind of gone
this alone
in large measure,
worried about other agencies
leaks about the investigation, people
taking over the case.
But he brought in the FBI's cast team.
They do the telephone work.
They're amazing.
He brought it
in the Suffolk County sheriff,
and they brought in Rich Zacarias,
who was another former
NYPD person
who was experience
with putting together
extraordinarily complex
cases out of
mountains of digital evidence.
They brought in, of course,
the experienced detectives
from Suffolk County Homicide,
who knew the case the best,
but also a state police investigator
who was
extraordinarily determined
and was actually the individual who
broke that clue
that connected the green pickup
truck to the suspect.
So what he really did was
he took his his off said statement,
which is,
you know, teamwork makes the dream work.
And he said,
we're going to build out
be on this department,
bring in the best
and the brightest technology in science,
and we're going to get this thing done.
It's a remarkable breakthrough.
John Miller,
thank you very much for reporting.