1503: The Red Collar Killer part 1

Speaker: In all the years that I had escorted for, I had never feared for my life with him. I was terrified. Nicole Brass is a former escort from Long Island, New York, and she recalls a date that she had with a man that she met online back in 2015. He goes, well, have you heard of the Gilgo Beach killings? And I was like, yeah, I'm from Long Island. We all have. He said, how do you think they get rid of the bodies going unnoticed? And what's crazy is he's out with me. I'm escorting. And he's saying like, oh, but don't worry. They're not like you. They didn't have hopes or dreams. Nicole Brass says that it wasn't until eight years later in 2023 that she realized that the man who hired her for a date was Rex Heuermann, who we now know as the suspect behind the Gilgol Beach murders. It was almost like he was reliving it. He stood up straighter and like got a smirk on his face. Nicole Brass told News 12 reporters that she went on a date with Rex Hugherman back in 2015, before he was the suspected Long Island serial killer. But she knew deep down inside that something was wrong. I think if I had left my car in that lot and went with him, I never would have came home. We wouldn't be having this conversation. I'd be on the beach hoping that you guys connect me to the crime. And that's terrifying. The first human remains tied to this case were discovered in 1996 when passersby stumbled upon a set of legs wrapped in plastic. Located on a thin barrier island on the southern shore of Long Island. Then in 2020, 30 miles inland, another set of human remains were discovered. And then three years later, more body parts were found in the same location. Fast forward to 2007, and a woman from Connecticut by the name of Maureen Barnes disappeared. Maureen was a sex worker in New York City. Then, three other women disappeared right around the same time. The four women who disappeared were found along Gilgo Beach, under a thick brush covered in snow. The body count kept rising and by 2021, there were 10 possible victims linked to Heuermann Heuermann. Including a 12 month old baby and a teenage male. Then, in 2023, Rex Huerman, the 59 year old New York City architect, was arrested in midtown Manhattan and charged with three counts of first degree murder and three counts of second degree murder in connection with the deaths. Huerman checks off all the classic behavioral patterns of a serial killer. But there's another side to Rex Huerman that we're all overlooking. Subs Everyone is so caught up on the gory aspect of the story that we completely missed some of his other schemes. Did you know that between the time the murders took place, Heuermann was filing bogus lawsuits and jumping in front of cars for insurance money? I know, these white collar crimes are nowhere near as serious as the serial killing that he's accused of. But it got me thinking. Are white collar criminals capable of murder? If we draw a Venn diagram where the grifters are in one circle and the killers are in another, is there a sliver of criminals who share both criminal behaviors? If so, what do they have in common? Today we're going to talk about red collar criminals. Yes, white collar criminals who resort to violence to avoid being detected. Follow me as I go down this rabbit hole that started with the simple premise that And the answer on the other end of the tunnel that is not what I expected. I'm Javier Leyva and this is Pretend, stories about real people pretending to be someone else. If Rex Huerman is indeed the Long Island Killer, then he was pulling off some pretty shady scams in between his murders. Let me read you one of the lawsuits filed in Nassau County. After what appears to be a minor accident, Heuermann claims that the driver, Cynthia Martin, was driving an unsafe vehicle and failing to use her safety mirrors, which resulted in quote unquote violent contact with his vehicle. The lawsuit doesn't describe the accident. Was it a fender bender? Was it a total loss? Not sure. But one thing is clear. Heuermann demanded five million dollars. Then in 2013, Heuermann says that a taxi driver ran over his foot. The lawsuit against the cab company claims that the driver failed to apply his brakes in time, and as a result, Heuermann sustained severe and permanent injuries. Great pain, physical and mental anguish. Again, Heuermann demanded five million dollars for his suffering. Then, on a cold January night in 2017, Heuermann was walking home from the metro. That's when Barbara O'Sullivan suddenly hit him. But O'Sullivan argues that that was a staged accident and that Humerman threw himself in front of her car. This is a clip of an interview with O'Sullivan's boyfriend who spoke to News 12 in Long Island. He just came out of nowhere. He was like behind a tree or something right away. He was saying he was injured. He was angry. He banged, he banged the hood of her car. I thought he was kind of odd, right? Soon as I saw him, just his facial expressions, she was always afraid of retaliation from him after that. She was afraid he might do something bad to her house. I said to Barbara, that's, that's the house where that guy lives that you were in the accident with. She was very upset. Again, Heuermann sued, claiming serious impermanent injuries and causing, get this, loss of enjoyment of life. All these lawsuits seem to be a copy and paste of the previous one. And again, Heuermann asked for another 5 million dollars. Between the year 2014 and 2022, Rex Huerman filed four lawsuits in New York. Three of the cases were settled or dismissed in court. The most recent case is still ongoing. Court records also show that Huerman owed the state of New York's workers comp board a total of 68, 000 for not paying an employee. The workers compensation claim was eventually resolved and Huerman was not held responsible. Then there's this issue with his taxes. Heuermann's tax problems date back to 2005. He has decades of documented trouble paying the IRS. Nassau County records show that Heuermann owed more than 425, 000 for failing to pay his taxes. It seems Rex Huerman could be both a white collar grifter and possibly a violent serial killer. But does that make him a red collar criminal? Well, the answer depends on who you ask. So I started poking around, trying to see if anyone else has thought about this. And sure enough, I stumbled on a thesis about red collar crime, written by City University of New York graduate student Courtney McDonald. So, I gave Courtney a call. Can white collar criminals be violent, or resort to violence, in order to accomplish their white collar crimes? And that was the central question. Of your thesis, I want to know, like, how did you arrive at that idea? So when I was originally coming up with ideas for my thesis, I wanted to look at it from the academic approach. I wanted to know how that would compare to homicide in general. Is it a larger category of homicide as opposed to, let's say, reactional homicides, right? So there's a lot of emotions and it wasn't planned and those types of things. Before we define red collar crime, let's talk about what most people get wrong about white collar criminals. When we close our eyes and we imagine a white collar criminal, like what are we picturing? What are you picturing? When I first learned about it, I would picture a white man in a suit walking down the streets in New York, very clean cut, that kind of sort of thing. But that's not the case at all. And this person probably has a really good job, a good paying job. Their characteristics. So the outside world, they're probably spot on. They probably go to church. They probably take serious pride in the activities they do in the neighborhood. They probably cut their grass every week, make sure they're all clean, cut and tidy. They're probably really well educated. Well spoken, not who you would lock your doors. If you saw them walking by, yeah, you'd probably invite them into your home. But what we'll learn is that white collar criminals could come in all shapes and sizes and all kinds of flavors, right? You know, when people think of white collar crime, they automatically jump to the assumption that it's some Fortune 500 CEO, some mastermind corporate entity that's, you know, Embezzling stuff. So oftentimes it gets pushed under the radar as opposed to street crimes. A misconception is that they think that this is a one off, right? That this person is acting out of character and points of desperation to commit these types of crimes. But the more we look into, like, longitudinal studies over white collar individuals, like white collar criminals, we see that it's not so out of character, that maybe it just hasn't been recorded, but it doesn't mean that they haven't had, like, violent tendencies or criminal instincts overall. If somebody is successfully committing a white collar crime and gaining any type of benefit from it, The last thing that they're going to want is for that benefit to stop. And so if that means silencing, the one thing or the one person that can prevent them from getting their fill, then yeah, sure. It's like asking me, I'm not a violent person, but if somebody comes up to me and starts attacking my dog, I'm going to become violent real quick. It's a tool in their arsenal. Whether they choose to use it or not is really at their discretion. Exactly. And that's what red collar crimes is that, that little teeny tiny bit of justification of violence, meaning it's okay for whatever ends that they get. Let's define the term red collar criminal, coined by attorney and certified fraud examiner Frank Perry. According to Perry, red collar crime represents a subgroup of white collar offenders. who resort to violence in order to prevent the detection of their fraud schemes. In the case of Rex Huerman, his role in the alleged murders had nothing to do with concealing or getting away with his insurance fraud or vice versa. So therefore, he doesn't quite fit the profile of a red collar criminal, at least the way it's defined. So, I called the guy who inspired Courtney's thesis, Frank Perry, our conversation right after the break. My name is Frank Perry, and for about 30 years, I've been a trial attorney, criminal trial attorney, both working as criminal defense and prosecution. So I know both sides relatively well. In addition to my, my job and what I work at, I Published extensively on white collar crime and red collar crime. Frank Perry is the man who coined the term red collar criminal. Before Perry, no one really categorized white collar crime this way. So to cut to the chase, basically about almost 20 years ago, I participated in a case where one business owner had murdered another business owner. And that led me to think about white collar crime a little bit differently, and it was something that led me down to a path that was unexpected. Little did Frank Perry know that from this moment on, he He would dedicate his entire career to grappling with this idea. The case that inspired the concept for Red Collar Crime involved two business partners. One of the partners suspected the other of embezzlement, basically pocketing off the business profits. Eventually the business partner was murdered and it was by blunt force trauma in which the person's head was caved in. The motive was to silence a threat. After the conclusion of the case, it was a nagging question and I had to ask myself, what's bothering me about what just happened, people who actually are well educated are capable of resorting to violence, albeit for their own motives. And that led me to a 20 year search, basically to do a deep dive into white collar crime in general, and then specifically red collar. So. Often people think, why can't we just call them violent white collar offenders? And that's a fair point. And I would share with you is that what we're trying to do is to back into the motive. And that just to say that somebody is a violent white collar criminal doesn't necessarily tell you what the motive is behind the homicide or attempted violence. Creating a subcategory for white collar criminals isn't just an academic exercise. Profiling red collar criminals can change the way law enforcement and prosecutors approach a case. Right now, a lot of crucial data is just left on the table. And if you don't have a motive, it's just Often it's very difficult for a jury to understand how somebody who may not have a criminal record would resort to violence. It's such a simple idea. Even I knew what red collar crime was before I knew the term, right? It's kind of like, it's so simple, but yet nobody really defined it until you did. And like you aptly stated, there is a certain obviousness about it, but it's like the elephant is in the room, but we don't see it. And it was like this case that kind of brought together all the pieces. When Perry researched articles on white collar crime that turned violent, he found basically nothing. That's because most of us define white collar criminals as nonviolent offenders. And the reason why we believe that these criminals are non violent is because of Edwin Sutherland. Edwin Sutherland was a professor and sociologist who popularized the term white collar crime back in 1939, more than 80 years ago. What Edwin was saying was, don't just look at what I would consider, say, street level offenses as the only type of crime out there. Southerland wrote, nothing could be more erroneous than to continue to regard criminals as a product of slums, broken homes, or lower classes. That's why he says white collar crime, by those of high socioeconomic status, also engage in criminal behavior. What they didn't do was they didn't refine necessarily the behavioral profile of these offenders. Look at all the shows about serial killers. Or arsonists or sexual predators. Look at all of the type of detail that we've devoted to try to figure these people out. Have we really done that with fraud offenders? And I would have to say, no, we haven't. So 80 years ago, we had this blanket label for criminals. You murder someone, you're a criminal. You steal someone's identity, you're a criminal. But not the same type of criminal. It wasn't until Edwin Sutherland defined white collar crime that we started breaking criminals into categories. But it's been 80 years and no one has reduced that category even further. Until now. So I asked Frank Perry the same question I asked Courtney. What do we, the public, get wrong about white collar offenders? One of them is, is that they're one shot criminals that they don't have any type of criminality in their background. That is absolutely wrong. Number 2, often we say that their crimes are out of character, that somehow there was just something going on in their life that boy, if I just had another option, I never would have gone down this path of criminality. That's absolutely nonsense. We can say that the same thing about people who commit other crimes. Do we make excuses for them? Of course not. You know, if some drug dealer is selling to a child, are we going to say, well, you know what, I was forced into this? Probably not. I don't think we're going to accept that kind of explanation. Another one is what I call the seduction of appearances. We all have a mental picture of what a criminal looks like. So that if you have somebody who is well dressed, they got their MBA at Harvard, that there's something that somehow they're not as apt to go down a path of criminality. And what happens is, what does the research show? Typically when people have similar traits to us, we give them more credibility. And Frank Perry is right. White collar criminals tend to get lighter sentencing than your common street level offender. Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, was facing 19 years to 24 years in prison. You want to know what sentence the judge gave him? Not 24 years, not 20 years, not 15, not 10. He gave him four years in prison as punishment. This is a guy found guilty for laundering more than 18 million for a string of fraud charges estimated to have cost IRS millions of dollars. Four years is even below what Manafort's own attorneys argued that he deserved. A 2017 study reported that the majority of federal judges in white collar cases quote frequently sentenced well below the fraud guidelines. Other factors play into sentencing as well. Black men in America receive 19 percent longer sentences than white men for the same crime. That's according to a recent U. S. Sentencing Commission report. Maybe there's an implicit bias in our judicial system. Judges may feel as though they have more in common with white collar defendants than, let's say, a common criminal. They'll say, these are good people who went down this wrong path. And this is what I mean about the implied credibility. Would you say the same thing about somebody who committed rape? I Or arson or a terror stack. Well, these are good people, but they committed this act. You come home, somebody's in your house, trying to burglarize you. They want something you have and they'll take it. But you know what? Let's assume you tried to stop them. You're getting in the way of what they want. And you know what? They're willing to use violence in order to take you out because you're getting in the way. Red collar offenders. Guess what? Yeah. I want to be able to not have my fraud detected. You're in the way. Violence is the solution to my problem. The idea we're circling around here is that crime is not reserved for a specific socioeconomic class. Perry says that just because white collar crime is not visible does not mean that the perpetrators don't exhibit antisocial behavior. If violence could conceal their crime and they think they could get away with it, they will use, they'll use that tool if they have it. That's a tool no differently than somebody burglarizing your home. They want something that's in there and they're willing to use violence in order to take what they want and to make sure that they neutralize you as a problem. I'm sure you've heard of the series breaking bad. Yes. The main person there, his name is Walter white. He starts like a low level drug dealer, but watch the progression of how he ends up tapping into other criminal thinking traits that I just mentioned to get to where he's at. It's a beautiful show of a normal person. In essence, going down that dark path, but those dark thoughts didn't come out of nowhere. They were probably even harboring way earlier on. You can see his motivation in that company that he lost. And that's when you can see the immunity. I'm not going to get caught or what happens when he doesn't get his way. He's willing to kill somebody. So you see that progression with this man, and you can actually supplant Walter White with somebody who's a white collar criminal. Absolutely. And then they turn to a red collar criminal. But here's the real question. Do white collar criminals think of themselves differently? Absolutely, because guess what? They're relying on the same mythologies that everybody else is. They're basically equating criminality with a socioeconomic status. This is the difference in some respects because they may have been working, say in a legitimate business, they co mingled legitimate and illegitimate activities at the same time. So they're more apt to say, yeah, I committed fraud, but guess what? I kept the business going. I kept the charity. It's not really a crime. You know what? I just went off the deep end. I'm a good guy. Yeah, I go to church. I donate. Look at this person on the street. What did they ever contribute to society? Are all white collar offenders capable of committing violence? What I would share with you is, I think the question is, you don't even have to commit a crime to be capable of homicide. Many people have nothing in their background. They're not doing anything illegal. And then they commit a homicide. Frank Perry says that I'm thinking about it all wrong. He says that when it comes to red collar criminals, you have to look at the risk factors. Is this person harboring antisocial behavior? Telling lies to take advantage of others? Feeling no guilt about harming others? Or using charm to manipulate others to get personal gain? Harboring antisocial thoughts does not mean one will commit a crime. But it is a risk factor that elevates the probability. It's very hard with red collar crime because often you don't see the violence coming. Those risk factors are not apparent because often the red collar criminal knows who they're going to take out, but the victim doesn't think that they're capable of it. Because it's almost, uh, their defenses are down, right? Sure. Who's going to think that, oh, this is my son and by tomorrow I'm going to be dead. Nobody, nobody expects that. So now I want to go back To my first email with you, because what inspired this story to begin with was I was doing a research on Rex Humorin, which is the Long Island killer, the gigolo beach serial killer. Sure. He's been accused of throwing himself in front of moving vehicles so he could sue the person. He, he has some workers, uh, comp cases that he filed that were fraudulent. And then I think that you said, um, no, no, no, you got it all wrong because those fraud cases had nothing to do with his serial killing. Right? Like those were just two different things, right? Yeah. He's just engaged in other crimes. So by, by definition, Rex Humorin is not a red collar criminal. No, I don't believe so. I don't see any evidence. He's a violent offender, but he also commits fraud. But then again, we're talking to the guy who coined and defined the term red collar criminal. So if Rex Hueberman is not considered a red collar criminal, then who is? Next time on Pretend, we're going to talk about several red collar cases. A college student, while he was defrauding his parents, his parents said, we're going to go to the authorities if you do this. About 10 days after the threat of them going to the authorities, he drives from the University of Rochester back to upstate New York, sneaks into the house, And what I would consider to be a long handled ax cleaves the father to death, in bed, and also to the mother. Did the parents see this coming? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's next time, on Pretend. This episode was written by me, Javier Leyva, and edited by Poonath Shenoy, with the podcast pundits. I want to thank Frank Perry for coming on the show, Frank. is an attorney, CPA, certified fraud examiner, but he's also the author of a book called Red Collar, White Collar Crime. I read the book cover to cover before producing this episode and it is fascinating. Not only does he go deeper into the definition of red collar crime, But he really breaks down dozens of cases where red collar crime occurred. I think it's a fascinating read. And for my U. S. listeners, Thursday is Thanksgiving. I hope you and your family have a wonderful time. I'm sure everyone could use the break. But I would be remiss if I didn't say how thankful I am to have all of you listening to the show. You're both amazing. The OGs, the original gangsters who've been listening from, from, uh, year one to all my new listeners who have just discovered the show. Um, I, I, I could not do this without you. Remember, I am a one man band. I mean, I do have the help, some editing help, some producing help, but, um, this show could not be possible without you. I mean, point blank. And I am so thankful to have you on my side. And I love the discussion that's happening. Online, especially on Patreon and the Facebook group. If, if you have not signed up for the Facebook group for pretend, you know, we don't talk just about the episodes of stalker. We talk about things that we have in common because one listener wrote that pretend listeners, you know, we have a lot of similarities and we're good people, you know, so, uh, it's a good place to chat. So if you haven't found the pretend Facebook group, you know, Look for it. I'll also include a link to that in the show notes. So again, have a great Thanksgiving. Of course, we'll be back next week with part two of the Red Collar Killer. But if you can't wait for next week, it is available right now. Part two is available right now on Pretend plus on Apple Podcasts and on Patreon. So you can download it now. Binge it on your drive to go see your family this week. All right, we'll be back next week. Talk to you soon.