Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary

A man used Melissa Barthelemy's phone to call her 15-year-old sister five times over five weeks. The calls were vulgar, mocking, sadistic — and operationally precise. Under three minutes each. From crowded Manhattan locations. The caller hung up on Melissa's mother and spoke only to the teenager. Law enforcement described his tone as emotionally flat, monotone, controlled. In the final call, he told Amanda her sister was dead.
Episode 5 of "The Seven." Melissa was 24, from Buffalo, living in the Bronx, working toward a cosmetology career. She'd started doing escort work through Craigslist because the salon job hadn't materialized. On July 12, 2009, she told a friend she was meeting a man. She deposited $900. She tried to call an ex-boyfriend who didn't answer. Nobody heard from Melissa again.
Prosecutors allege the burner phone she'd connected with traveled from Massapequa Park to Midtown Manhattan that day — mirroring Rex Heuermann's commute. Her own phone then traveled the reverse route. Her remains were the first found in December 2010 along Ocean Parkway. The phone calls, the commute trail, the search history, and Melissa's full story — all covered here.
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod
X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#MelissaBarthelemy #RexHeuermann #GilgoBeach #GilgoFour #LISK #HiddenKillers #TheSeven #TrueCrime #TauntingCalls #GilgoBeachKiller

Two cases. Three women. And the same question running underneath all of it — what does the mind do when the truth is something it cannot afford to see?
Rex Heuermann is charged with murdering seven women along the Gilgo Beach corridor and is reportedly expected to enter a guilty plea. His ex-wife Asa Ellerup shared a life with him for nearly three decades and has maintained she saw nothing. Prosecutors allege he timed the crimes for when his family was away, kept violent content and detailed checklists on his devices, and allegedly operated a double life so meticulous that the case went cold for over a decade. Their daughter Victoria has publicly said she believes her father most likely did it.
Joseph Duggar, 31, is charged in Florida with lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under twelve. He allegedly admitted to the abuse twice. Kendra Duggar, 27, faces eight misdemeanor charges in Arkansas, reportedly tied to exterior locks on their children's bedroom doors. Their four children have been removed. Michelle Duggar reportedly knew about Josh's abuse of her own daughters over twenty years ago, sent him to manual labor instead of treatment, and wrote a parenting magazine article about her family's success weeks after he came home. According to former Arkansas state senator Jim Holt — whose daughter was being courted by Josh — Michelle allegedly planned not to disclose Josh's history until after the marriage.
Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott connects the psychological threads across both cases — examining how a serial killer's spouse and a woman shaped by authoritarian religious conditioning can both arrive at the same place: unable or unwilling to see what's happening in their own home. The mechanisms are different. The denial is the same. And the people who pay the highest price are the ones who never had a choice.
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod
X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#RexHeuermann #GilgoBeach #DuggarFamily #KendraDuggar #MichelleDuggar #AsaEllerup #IBLP #CriminalPsychology #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime

The image that will define this case forever: small fingers pushing through the slats of a sealed trailer on a Flagstaff highway. But what happened after that traffic stop might be more disturbing than the stop itself.
Bateman posted bond and went home. Federal agents raided his compound two weeks later. Nine children were placed in foster care. From a detention facility in Florence, Arizona, Bateman used shared institutional tablets to direct three of his wives to extract eight of those girls from state custody. The children vanished. For weeks, nobody knew where they were. The FBI traced a follower's Airbnb account to Spokane, Washington, and a sheriff's sergeant caught the vehicle leaving during a welfare check. Eight girls recovered. Hundreds of miles from Arizona.
Every institution designed to protect children failed at every point in this sequence. Bond after a man was caught hauling children in a trailer. Unrestricted communication access for a man under investigation for child trafficking. A foster care system that couldn't prevent a coordinated extraction by the same network it was protecting children from. And underneath all of it — girls who went willingly with the women who came for them, because the conditioning taught them that rescue was punishment and the prophet's world was God's plan.
This episode also covers the forensic interviews where the girls said nothing — and the journals where they wrote everything. The older girls influenced the younger ones to stay silent. The written record contradicted the spoken testimony. And at sentencing, one of those same girls stood in court with a red-ink list and told Bateman she never needed him. The distance between silence and that statement is the distance this case traveled.
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod
X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#SamuelBateman #FLDS #LittleFingers #FosterCareKidnapping #FalseProphet #TrueCrime #HiddenKillers #ShortCreek #Flagstaff #TrustMeNetflix

Most people think of denial as a moment. A flinch. A refusal to look. Michelle Duggar has turned it into something else entirely — a structure that has reportedly spanned over two decades, survived a federal conviction, and now faces a second son's arrest.
She reportedly knew about Josh's abuse of her own daughters as early as 2002. She and Jim Bob reportedly sent him to manual labor for a family friend instead of professional treatment. Weeks after he came home, she wrote a parenting magazine article celebrating how well her family worked. Then came years of television. A brand built on the image of faithful, functional family life. A public platform that sold a lie to millions of viewers.
Josh was convicted in federal court for possessing child sexual abuse material. He is serving a twelve-and-a-half-year sentence. Michelle wrote the judge asking for leniency. And according to Jim Holt — a former Arkansas state senator and longtime Duggar family friend whose daughter Kaeleigh was being courted by Josh — Michelle allegedly said the family wasn't going to disclose Josh's history to the Holts at all. The plan, Holt says, was for Josh to confess to Kaeleigh after they were married. If that account is accurate, that's not passive denial — it's an active decision to conceal an abuser's history from a young woman and her family.
Now Joseph, 31, is charged in Florida with lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under twelve. He allegedly admitted to it twice. Kendra faces eight misdemeanor charges. Grandchildren have been removed from the home. Michelle released a three-sentence statement through a spokesperson, days after the arrest.
Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott examines the psychological architecture behind decades of sustained denial — how a belief system scripts your response to the unforgivable, what the shift from public performance to silence reveals, and whether someone who has built their entire identity around not confronting the truth can ever be forced to face it.
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod
X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#MichelleDuggar #DuggarFamily #JoshDuggar #JosephDuggar #IBLP #DuggarCoverup #ReligiousAbuse #GenerationalAccountability #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime

She needed three thousand dollars. She was about to be evicted. If she lost the apartment, she could lose her kids. So Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, took the train to Manhattan from Connecticut and checked into the Super 8 Motel to work as an escort — the same thing she'd done before, earning enough to get through another month. On July 9, 2007, she told a friend she had a client lined up. That was the last anyone heard from her.
Episode 4 of "The Seven." Maureen was the first of the Gilgo Four to disappear and waited the longest to be found — more than three years, before her remains were recovered in December 2010 alongside the others, wrapped in burlap on Ocean Parkway. Her family described her as a dreamer, an artist, a songwriter. Her daughter Nicolette was seven when her mother was killed.
Prosecutors allege burner phone data traced the man who contacted Maureen back to "the box" — a cluster of cell towers in Massapequa Park. They say Heuermann checked her voicemail after she vanished. DNA on a leather belt binding her remains matched his wife's profile. Maureen's life, her family's fight for accountability, and the full prosecution case — covered here.
Join Our SubStack For AD-FREE ADVANCE EPISODES & EXTRAS!: https://hiddenkillers.substack.com/
Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8-vxmbhTxxG10sO1izODJg?sub_confirmation=1
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/
Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod
X Twitter https://x.com/TrueCrimePod
This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.
#MaureenBrainardBarnes #RexHeuermann #GilgoBeach #GilgoFour #LISK #HiddenKillers #TheSeven #TrueCrime #ColdCase #LongIslandSerialKiller