Tales of True Crime, episode 11: Is the Long Island Serial Killer a Cop?

It can’t be overstated. Disposal of the bodies along the highway on the southern shore of Long Island is a high risk proposition. It’s a beach landscape, only sparsely populated with residences. And while a body can be easily hidden in the scrub, a car parked anywhere along the road would quickly look out of place, just the kind of thing an eyewitness would remember.

In A&E’s The Killing Season, filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Rachel Mills spent an evening on Ocean Parkway with the stopwatch running to gauge how long it would take for a car to pass… the question being, if you were the Long Island Serial Killer and you were out there at 4 o’clock in the morning with your truck parked along the road while you’re dumping a body… how long would you have to escape before an oncoming car could see and identify your car out there? How long would you have to flee?

They determined it was about about one minute fifteen seconds. Not a lot of time to throw your implements in the trunk (or the boot, if you’re using the Queen’s English) and hightail it out of there.

But, let’s ask the question… what if the perpetrator didn’t need to flee? Only in the interest of examining alternate explanations, let’s just change that one fact.

The perpetrator flees.

No, the perpetrator doesn’t need to flee because there’s little risk of getting caught.

What inspires that confidence in the killer? The arrogance to believe he is safe in disposing of young women, repeatedly, in the same location, right out in the open, where any car could come along and see him out there.

If a neighborhood resident walked her dog past the killer’s car as he was disposing of a body in the brush, or another vehicle passed on the highway, and the Long Island Serial Killer didn’t feel the need to flee, then who does that make the Long Island Serial Killer? Who would the killer be?

You could say, anyone with a reason to be there. Theory: The killer drives a marked vehicle and likely wears a uniform. A power company truck parked along the road, even at odd hours, looks like a crew at work. The power company wouldn’t need to flee if Eunice Henderson walked her dog past at 4 am.

Almost anyone in an official business vehicle… A pizza delivery driver looking for directions on her phone. In the moment, it would not be considered suspicious if spotted along the road in the middle of the night.

It goes without saying that a Police Officer in a marked vehicle is the most beyond reproach. Nobody questions why a police cruiser is parked along the road. You just move on with your day, keep a close eye on the rearview mirror and hope they don’t have any questions for you.

Is the Long Island Serial Killer a Cop?

The question of whether the Long Island Serial Killer is a cop is a divisive one. Most of us feel compelled to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt in a case as heinous as this. This sounds larger than life, like something out of a B-Hollywood thriller with Ray Liotta in the starring role. However in recent years we’ve discovered that theories about police officers operating as serial killers are not as far-fetched as they might first seem.

Joseph DeAngelo, the accused Golden State Killer, was long rumored to be a police officer, and we found out later he had been a cop. There were those who theorized the BTK was a police officer. When Dennis Rader was captured we discovered he had been in the military, had a law-related degree, worked for a home security company, and was a city employee — a dogcatcher. Essentially, everything short of becoming a cop. Gerard Schaefer was a Sheriff’s Deputy and serial killer from 1969 to 1973. Some even insist to this day that the unidentified Zodiac killer was a cop. Maybe it’s just me, but the question of whether the killer is a cop is a little less outrageous than it used to be.

In the case of the Long Island Serial Killer, many of the circumstances fit.

Who would know better how to stymie a police investigation than a police officer?

When the killer called Amanda Barthelemy from her sister Melissa’s phone, he did so from crowded locations in New York City. The police could trace the call to the tower, but there were thousands of people on their phones in the neighborhood, and even if they were able to pull all of the surveillance footage from every camera for miles around, it would be impossible to pick out one person as a suspect.

Who would be knowledgeable enough to execute that? Who would understand the advantage of dumping bodies across county lines better than a cop?

The question then becomes, if the Long Island Serial Killer is cop, which cop is he?

James Burke, Suffolk County Chief of Police

As detailed by Vice in a March, 2016 story titled “The Strange Rise and Violent Fall of Long Island’s Dirtiest Police Chief” 26 year old addict and sometime burglar Christopher Loeb was arrested by the Suffolk County Police Department on December 14th, 2012. He had stolen a duffel bag from an unlocked black SUV and inside he had discovered things you would expect a police officer to own… an officer’s gun belt and handcuffs for example. But that wasn’t all that was in the duffel bag. The New York Times reported on November 3rd, 2016 the duffel bag also contained pornography and sex toys.

It was Mr. Loeb’s bad luck that the SUV and duffel bag belonged to James Burke, the Chief of Police in Suffolk County.

The Vice reporters deciphered the scene from court documents: The Suffolk County PD tracked down Chris Loeb and began roughing him up on the lawn of his mother’s house. When she arrived and saw what was happening, Loeb was transported to the police station, where the abuse continued. He was chained to the floor and Chief Burke, with several alleged accomplices, beat and tortured Chris Loeb. One of the officers told Loeb he was going to rape his mother. Another threatened to murder Loeb and make it look like he had overdosed on heroin. Loeb was reportedly punched and kicked in the head while restrained.

[Channel 7 Eyewitness News report on Burke Arrest]

It was Burke’s efforts at a coverup that eventually exposed the entire affair. Vice reported one cop even said he would be a “dead man” if Burke ever discovered he had spoken to the FBI. So ruthless were Burke’s efforts to keep his beating of Christopher Loeb (and all of his other excesses) secret, even other cops were afraid of him and what he might do.

[Channel 7 Eyewitness News report on Obstruction]

What made him do it? If James Burke was an honest cop, why would he risk his reputation and career to beat up a kid about some sex toys and porn? Why not just do the mea culpa, say you’re sorry, admit your shortcomings, and check yourself into rehab? Was he concerned if word got out that he was found in possession of sex toys and pornography, in the same duffel bag where he carried his work stuff, that he might be characterized as a deviant? The kind of deviant who might have other things to hide?

Allegations about the beating and torture of Chris Loeb started as a grassfire but quickly became an inferno that would burn down a corrupt county on L ong Island. James Burke was charged and plead guilty in the beating of Christopher Loeb, sentenced to 46 months in prison. In 2017, former District Attorney Thomas Spota resigned when he was indicted on federal charges of obstruction in the investigation into former Chief James Bur ke.

As of 2019, charges were still pending against more conspirators in the attack on Christopher Loeb and the ensuing coverup. Based on the guilty plea in the beating of Mr. Loeb, we can safely say Burke was a corrupt bastard. But is he the Long Island Serial Killer?

We’ve recently learned more about James Burke. In District Attorney Spota’s trial, one witness testified that James Burke had a thing for prostitutes going all the way back to the nineties.

[news 12 long island reports in 2019 burke caught with prostitutes]

There have been many allegations against James Burke. He has been accused of declining an offer of assistance from the FBI. The agency offered to create a profile of the Long Island Serial Killer, but Burke, in his capacity as Police Chief, reportedly refused the assistance.

As I told you about in the last episode, according to an investigation detailed on A&Es The Killing Season, someone edited the Long Island Serial Killer wikipedia page to suggest a corrections officer named Joe Foti was the killer. Those allegations were later deemed unfounded, but the person who edited the Wikipedia entry was using an IP address registered to… the Suffolk County PD.

In 2016, an escort came forward and told the Gilbert family’s attorney that she had sex with James Burke at more than one party on Long Island, that he liked it rough, and that he called her “whore” which some consider a clue since the man who called Amanda Barthelemy also used the word to refer to Melissa Barthelemy.

It’s Not Hollywood

If everything worked like it does in Hollywood, Chief Burke would go to prison but police would have more than enough time, 46 months, to make the case and prove he is the Long Island Serial Killer before his sentence was up, put him away for life and end the horror… but, this is not Hollywood, it’s the real world, where sometimes the road just stretches off into the distance… to a point beyond the horizon that cannot yet be seen.

Disgraced Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke was released from prison in April, 2019. At the time this was written, he has not been charged for anything related to the Long Island Serial Killer case. He is presently in his first year of supervised release, although there have been no reports as to his whereabouts since release other than an unnamed halfway house.

So where does that leave the investigation into the Long Island Serial Killer? In pretty bad shape, I’m afraid. If Burke is the Long Island Serial Killer, he was in charge of overseeing the investigations into his own crimes even before he was the Chief of Police, when he was the Chief Investigator of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, a job he assumed in 2006. If, as the court proceedings and media reports indicate, Chief Burke was joined in his conspiracy of lawlessness by a handful of officers and even the DA, then it stands to reason much evidence has been lost to corruption, and perhaps a failure to collect it in the first place. A complicated case gets more complicated by the day.

Without a doubt, the single most unfortunate circumstance handicapping the Long Island Serial Killer investigation is that there was not a timely investigation and the victims bodies weren’t discovered for years. Physical evidence has weathered away. There were no timely eyewitness reports of a call girl getting into a certain vehicle, no police sketch, nothing. All of the evidence in the case echoes up the beach from years ago, demanding that we examine it through the grainy fog of time.

This much is true… the Long Island Serial Killer is still out there. Has he continued killing? There are one or two later killings on Long Island which some say are the work of the Long Island Serial Killer. Writing for Psychology Today, Dr. Scott Bonn says the Long Island Serial Killer is an organized killer and has possibly moved on to a new geographic location, so he can reset and continue killing. Dr. Bonn says “In my opinion, the Long Island Serial Killer will absolutely not stop killing until he is apprehended. He may be dormant right now, lying in wait, or may have relocated and is currently targeting victims elsewhere.”

If you enjoy this podcast, please review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, because there will be more to tell on the Long Island Serial Killer.