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Rex Heuermann’s arrest came as a shock to nearly everyone in the Long Island community of Gilgo Beach – but not for a man who came face to face with the alleged murderer and had reported him to law enforcement. For more than a decade, residents anxiously awaited new developments on a trail of murders that had gone cold, despite overwhelming evidence the slayings were the work of a serial killer. Most of the victims were sex workers in their 20s who went missing in 2009 and 2010 before their bodies were discovered wrapped in burlap along the stretch of a roadway. The Suffolk County police department led an unsuccessful 13-year investigation into the case amid a litany of internal scandals, before announcing earlier this month that Mr Heuermann was in custody. Police commissioner Rodney Harrison touted the work of a revamped task force as the reason behind the arrest, but largely glossed over the fact that the very detail that cracked the case was handed to authorities in the early stages of the probe. Dave Schaller told the Associated Press in an exclusive interview that, by the time Mr Heuermann’s mugshot was plastered on every local and national news channel on 13 July, he was very familiar with the Frankenstein-like figure with an “empty gaze” he had long ago described to investigators. In the winter of 2010, Mr Schaller told police that he had seen the man fleeing the house he shared with Amber Costello, whose body was among those found in Gilgo Beach. “When they told me she was dead, he was the first person who jumped in my head,” Mr Schaller told the AP. “I’ve been picturing his face for 13 years.” Mr Heuermann met with homicide detectives on multiple occasions during the initial years of the investigation. Two years after the bodies were found, Mr Schaller said he picked Mr Heuermann’s first-generation Chrysler Avalanche out of a line-up of photographs provided by the detectives. “I gave them the exact description of the truck and the dude,” Mr Schaller, who said he was angered by the delay in investigating his tip, told the AP. “I mean come on, why didn’t they use that?” Suffolk County district attorney Ray Tierney, who inherited the investigation when he took office in 2022, said the key to unravelling the case was the description of the truck, rediscovered by a state investigator after the launch of the new task force that took a fresh look at the evidence. Mr Tierney told the AP he did not know why police had not run a search earlier, but suggested the tip may have been “lost within a sea of other tips and information”. He stressed there were other elements that ultimately helped investigators arrest Heuermann, including new technology that helped match samples of DNA to the suspect. “This was a dark cloud over the community,” former police commissioner Tim Sini, who later became the county’s district attorney. “When you have the police department and the district attorney’s office blocking the FBI, that does not engender trust in law enforcement.” The arrest, Sini said, was the result of painstaking detective work that spanned multiple administrations and relied on a wide range of evidence. “[However,] I wouldn’t call it a major success. The case should’ve been solved earlier,” he said. “This was crucial information, and I don’t know why they didn’t share it,” Rob Trotta, a county legislator who worked as a Suffolk County police detective until 2013, also told the AP. “They made some serious blunders here.” Two high-ranking officials who worked closely on the case and attended briefings between 2011 and 2013 told the AP they never heard Mr Schaller’s witness statement. Mr Heuermann bought the pickup at a Chevrolet dealer on Long Island in 2002 and transferred ownership to his brother Craig in South Carolina in 2012. Authorities seized the vehicle last week. A search warrant stated investigators were looking for other clues in the vehicle or at property the brothers owned in Chester County, such as DNA, fluids, fingerprints, phones and what they described as possible “trophies” that may have belonged to the victims. Mr Heuermann is charged with the murders of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. He is also the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. As law enforcement closed in on Mr Heuermann, they served more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants that uncovered cellphone records for burner phones used to arrange meetings with three of the “Gilgo Four” victims before they went missing. Further analysis also allegedly linked Mr Heuermann to taunting calls made to family members of the victims, according to investigators. The calls were made from the Midtown Manhattan area, where the offices of Mr Heuerman’s architecture business are located. Among the evidence linking Mr Heuermann to the murders was a hair found on burlap material used to wrap Waterman’s corpse, according to court documents. DNA analysis had not been possible in the early stages of the investigation, but new technology allowed testing. A team surveilling Mr Heuermann collected a discarded pizza box that then confirmed a DNA match with the suspect on 12 June. Records also showed several online accounts under fictitious names linked to Mr Heuermann were used for illegal activities. Mr Heuermann allegedly used those accounts and burner phones to contact women for prostitution services, as well as making chilling online searches. The searches included sadistic, torture-related pornography, child pornography and disturbing content. Mr Heuermann is also accused of searching “why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer,” “why hasn’t the long island serial killer been caught” and “new phone technology may be key to break in case”. Mr Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. Authorities in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Las Vegas and South Carolina are looking into possible links between Mr Heuermann and unsolved cases. The Associated Press contributed to this report Read More Missing paddle boarder’s body pulled from Martha’s Vineyard pond next to Obama mansion Manhattan architect, family man and accused serial killer: Who is Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann? How the Gilgo Beach serial killer turned the Long Island shore into a graveyard

Heat searing enough to knock out mobile phones. Wildfire smoke that turns the skies an apocalyptic orange. Flash

Jill Biden met France’s first lady Brigitte Macron on Tuesday, 25 July, as she visited Paris to mark the United States’ official re-entry into United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). The US First Lady will attend a flag-raising ceremony to celebrate the re-entry into the agency after a five-year hiatus. She is expected to make a speech about the importance of American leadership in preserving cultural heritage. Under Donald Trump’s administration, the US pulled out of Unesco because of an alleged anti-Israel bias and a need for “fundamental reform” in the agency. It was the second time the US returned to Unesco after withdrawing, after previously leaving under Ronald Reagan’s administration in 1984 citing alleged advancement of Soviet interests, mismanagement, and corruption. The nation announced its intention to rejoin the agency in June 2023 before the agency’s 193 member states approved re-entry. Today’s ceremony will feature a speecy by Unesco’s director general Audrey Azoulay. Read More First Lady Jill Biden to mark US reentry into UNESCO with flag-raising ceremony in Paris Oui, oui: Jill Biden heads to Paris to help mark US return to UN educational and scientific agency Jill Biden welcomes proposal for Medicare to pay for navigation services for cancer patients

About 42,000 people are on the verge of starving to death in northeast Burkina Faso as Islamist militants

The number of so-called service-delivery protests in South Africa — demonstrations over the failure of municipalities to provide

The Central Bank of Nigeria’s first interest rate decision since Godwin Emefiele’s removal as governor will be a

China is set to lead Asian stocks higher on optimism of more economic stimulus to come from Beijing,

Before 25-year-old Carlee Russell went missing for a mysterious 49 hours – a disappearance, she admitted on Monday, that was staged – she posted a series of bizarre tweets. On the day she went “missing” on 13 July, she tweeted at 8.55pm: “today was a GREAT day God be looking out im telling you!!” One minute later, Ms Russell wrote: “someone to tell you ‘i love you’ and don’t got a reason.” Finally, she tweeted, “yeah i want a family now” at 9.19pm. Just moments later, around 9.30pm, the Alabama woman called 911 and told detectives that she was following a lost toddler along the interstate. After she returned home, Ms Russell claimed was abducted by a man with “orange hair,” before escaping. She later turned up on foot at her parent’s home with $107 tucked in her right sock, and alleged she had barely survived the encounter. Her tweets, in combination with her search history prior to her vanishing, raised doubts about the Alabama woman’s story. Police revealed that Ms Russell’s internet search history gave hints she could have staged her own kidnapping, as she looked up Amber Alerts, the movie Taken, booking a bus ticket from Birmingham to Nashville and “how to take money from a register without being caught.” A tweet on 10 July adds colour to this complicated picture, and indicates potential problems in her relationship. Ms Russell wrote, “I always say one thing i WONT do is stay with someone who cheated on me like you went and had sex with someone else and think it’ll be sweet one day?? hellll no.” Days earlier, she also tweeted: “everyone wants to feel wanted.” Her boyfriend, Thomar Latrell Simmons, had posted on Facebook upon Ms Russell’s miraculous return, and supported her story that she had been abducted. She had been “fighting for her life for 48 hours,” he wrote, but has since taken down the post. Two days earlier, her tweet revealed she may have been unhappy at work: “my job is really starting to get on my dang nerves.” She worked at Woodhouse Spa, the owner of which said on Thursday that he provided the police with “everything we uncovered.” According to the New York Post, Ms Russell tweeted on 19 July, “I’m thankful I know how to identify when the enemy coming for me now, makes life a lot easier.” But the post has been taken down. Police began expressing their doubts last week, saying Wednesday they were “unable to verify” most of Ms Russell’s claims regarding the events leading up to and during her disappearance. Read More Carlee Russell – latest: Confusion reigns over ‘kidnapping’ case after missing woman’s search history revealed Carlee Russell claimed she was kidnapped by a man with orange hair. Police say they can’t verify any of it Carlee Russell’s internet searches suggest she staged her own kidnapping, Alabama police say

Carlee Russell’s story about being abducted after stopping at the side of a road to help a distressed toddler was a lie, her lawyer has said in a statement. The 25-year-old from Alabama told police she was kidnapped after stopping to help a toddler in diapers who was walking alone on Interstate 459 on the evening of 13 July. She came back home two days after the alleged abduction. Her family had stuck by her story, even after police publicly expressed scepticism. However, Hoover Police Department Chief Nicholas Derzis on Monday said Ms Russell’s attorney, Emory Anthony, had now provided a statement on Monday saying there was no kidnapping The statement in part read: “There was no kidnapping on Thursday July 13. My client did not see a baby on the side on the road.” Earlier CrimeStoppers walked back a pledge to return almost $63,000 in donations to help find Carlee Russell after the 25-year-old’s kidnapping story fell under suspicion. More than $63,000 was raised during the two-day search for the Alabama woman. But the organisation that offers anonymous tips about criminal activity now said the money will not be returned after initially making the promise. Read More Carlee Russell sent several bizarre tweets before disappearing Alabama lawyer says police is using ‘every other synonym for lie except saying she lied’ in Carlee Russell case Boyfriend of Carlee Russell deletes social media posts after police cast doubt over her kidnapping story Police doubt Carlee Russell’s kidnapping claims. Could she face consequences?

The Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Texas on Monday over Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to install a 1,000-foot floating border barrier in the Rio Grande River near the city of Eagle Pass. “We allege that Texas has flouted federal law by installing a barrier in the Rio Grande without obtaining the required federal authorization,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement. “This floating barrier poses threats to navigation and public safety and presents humanitarian concerns,” the official added. “Additionally, the presence of the floating barrier has prompted diplomatic protests by Mexico and risks damaging US foreign policy.” The DoJ accused Texas of violating the Rivers and Harbors Act. The Texas project is also facing a lawsuit in state court over the buoy barrier. Last week, the federal government warned Texas it was considering taking legal action. On Monday, the Texas governor wrote a letter to the White House saying he intends to fight the DoJ’s lawsuit. “Texas will see you in court, Mr President,” the Republican governor wrote, adding, “All of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws.” White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan told The Independent that the governor’s plan isn’t effectively combatting unauthorised immigration. “Governor Abbott’s dangerous and unlawful actions are undermining that effective plan, making it hard for the men and women of Border Patrol to do their jobs of securing the border, and putting migrants and border agents in danger,” he said in a statement. “If Governor Abbott truly wanted to drive toward real solutions, he’d be asking his Republican colleagues in Congress why they voted against President Biden’s request to increase funding for the Department of Homeland Security and why they’re blocking the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures that would finally fix our broken immigration system.” In mid-July, Texas neared completion of a $1m, 1,000-foot wall of buoys and netting across the Rio Grande, claiming it would deter illegal immigration outside of ports of entry. The effort has proved extremely controversial. In addition to warnings from the federal government, Mexico said it is investigating whether the wall violates international treaties surrounding the border. The governor has also been sued by a local man named Jessie Fuentes, who argues the state has deprived him of his livelihood as a kayak guide and is acting outside of its authority over an international boundary line. “You’ve taken a beautiful waterway and you’ve converted it into a war zone,” Mr Fuentes recently told The Independent. Migrant advocates and even some Texas troopers working on the governor’s Operation Lone Star mission at the border warn that the barriers are increasing unnecessary danger to human life. “It’s been proven time after time that these so-called prevention through deterrence strategies don’t work,” Fernando García of the Border Network for Human Rights told The Independent. “They have not stopped immigration flows, but what they have done is they have put immigrants at risk.” In a series of emails shared with news outlets including The Independent, a border medic described questioning orders from superiors to push exhausted migrants back into the river and to refrain from giving them water if captured. “We were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning,” the trooper wrote. The state has denied the orders took place. The DPS source also claimed in the span of one week in late June, a teen mother was trapped in razor wire at the border while having a miscarriage, a 15-year-old broke his leg as he tried to find a way around the deterrence buoys, and a man lacerated his leg while trying to rescue his child from razor wire placed on a buoy. This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information. Read More Death, debt, and degradation: Trump’s border wall after four years Buoys, razor wire, and a Trump-y wall: How Greg Abbott turned the Rio Grande into an immigration ‘war zone’ Greg Abbott defies White House warning on floating Texas border wall: ‘See you in court, Mr President’ In a showdown Texas' floating border barrier, the governor tells Biden: `See you in court' Greg Abbott defies White House warning on floating floating barriers in Rio Grande Texas is using disaster declarations to install buoys and razor wire on the US-Mexico border

Northern Algeria has been experiencing a record heatwave with temperatures reaching 48C.

Twenty days after Emmett Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, Mamie Till-Mobley sat before a crowded courtroom in Sumner, Mississippi to testify in the trial of the two white men who were accused of killing him. Her 14-year-old son was tortured, lynched and tied to a cotton gin fan and bound in barbed wire before he was thrown into the river in August 1955. She identified the body and the ring he was wearing as her son’s, anticipating an argument from the defence that sought to cast doubt on the identity of the body, and hoping that the all-white jury would listen to the testimony of a grieving Black mother. Days earlier, before Till’s funeral in Chicago, she ordered that the casket remain open to “let the world see what they did to my boy”. On 23 September, the jury acquitted Roy Bryant and JW Milam for Till’s murder and kidnapping. Months later, the men confessed to the crimes in an interview with Look magazine. Carolyn Bryant Donhom, whose accusations against Till led to his killing, died earlier this year. No one was ever convicted for the Black teenager’s killing, which magnified Jim Crow-era violence that galvanised the Civil Rights movement, but his mother spent decades fighting injustice until she died in 2003. On 25 July 2023, on what would be Till’s 82nd birthday, President Joe Biden will sign a proclamation dedicating a national monument to honor both Till and his mother. “Our community has shown what reckoning and remembrance can look like,” according to a statement from the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. “This national monument designation affirms and shares this work on a national level. Racial reconciliation begins by telling the truth.” ‘The whole nation had to bear witness to this’ On 20 August 1955, Till-Mobley sent her teenage son on a southbound train from Chicago for a two-week stay in the small town of Money, Mississippi, where he would stay with relatives and spend late summer days with his cousins. “I told him when he was coming down here that he would have to adapt himself to a new way of life,” she said during the trial. “And I told him to be very careful about how he spoke and to whom he spoke, and to always remember to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, ma’am’ at all times.” Four days later, Till was milling around Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market after his relatives and friends left the store. It was then that Carolyn Bryant Donhom would later claim Till had grabbed her by the waist and then whistled at her as she walked to her car. Days later, at 2.20am, Roy Bryant and Milam pulled up to the home of Till’s great uncle Moses Wright. Milam was armed. They searched the home for Till, made him dress, and put him in their truck. Wright later recalled hearing a woman’s voice tell the men that they found the right boy. That was the last time Till’s family saw him alive. According to Bryant and Milam, the men shot Till in the head, tied a fan to his neck with barbed wire, and tossed him into the river. His body was found three days later beaten beyond recognition. Till-Mobley asserted that “the whole nation had to bear witness to this” when she ordered that her son’s coffin remain open for his funeral. “I wanted the world to see and I knew I could not tell anybody what I had seen. It was just too horrible,” she said in 1988. “When Emmett became the personification of race hatred … it was too hard to look at. People could not look at it and come away as if nothing had happened. It had to leave an indelible impression upon whoever viewed him,” she said in 2003. “Race hatred is something we’ve got to get rid of. We cannot afford to live in a world that is torn with race hatred.” ‘I will take that hurt to my grave’ More than 6,500 people, mostly African Americans, were killed in racist attacks between 1865 and 1950, in the aftermath of the US Civil War and emancipation, through white militia terror during Reconstruction and in the years surrounding the Civil Rights movement, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. An estimated 250,000 mourners attended public viewings for Till’s funeral over four days, according to The Chicago Defender. Photographs of Till’s body were published in Jet magazine and shared widely, fuelling widespread outrage and demands for justice. A grand jury in Tallahatchie County indicted Roy Bryant and JW Milam on 7 September. “They were going to turn the murder of my son into a case of self-defense, the self-defense of the Mississippi way of life,” she later wrote in her 2003 memoir Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. Following her son’s killing, she embarked on a nationwide speaking tour and worked with Chicago public schools for more than two decades. She also created The Emmett Till Players youth theatre troupe in 1973 to perform speeches from civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr to spread a message of “hope, unity, and determination to thousands”. “So far as the healing is concerned, I will never get over that. I will take that hurt to my grave. That influenced everything I’ve done,” she said in a 2002 interview included in the 2022 ABC documentary series Let the World See. Till’s name is among the first inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Till-Mobley placed her hand on the monument for its dedication in 1989. “It’s almost as if I were touching him,” she said at the time. “It’s almost as if I’m reliving the funeral, and yet my heart is full of joy that not only my son but all these other people who gave their lives for the cause are getting the recognition they are due.” Till-Mobley died in a Chicago hospital on 6 January 2003. She was 81. “She was a teacher, and she thought methodically and scientifically,” the Rev Jesse Jackson said following her death. “She had a sharp mind and a compassionate heart. And she really sensed the place of her son in American history and her responsibility to keep that legacy alive.” In 2008, eight signs outlining Till’s story were placed across north Mississippi. One year later, a sign alongside the Tallahatchie River where Till’s body was discovered was stolen and thrown into the water. A replacement sign was later shot up with bullet holes. That sign’s replacement also was riddled with bullet holes. A bulletproof sign was installed in 2019. Last year, President Biden signed a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime more than a century after such legislation was first introduced. Despite more than 200 legislative attempts to codify antilynching rules – beginning with a bill introduced in 1900 by US Rep George Henry White, then the only Black member of Congress – no measure prevailed. A federal hate crime statute was eventually signed into law in the 1990s. In a White House ceremony to sign the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, the president condemned the “pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.” “From the bullets in the back of Ahmaud Arbery, to countless acts of violence, countless victims both known and unknown … racial hate is not an old problem, it’s a persistent problem,” he said. “Hate never goes away. It only hides, it hides under the rocks. Given just a little bit of oxygen it comes roaring back out, screaming. What stops it is all of us, not a few.” The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will include three federally protected sites spanning Illinois and Mississippi central to the family’s story. One site includes Roberts Temple Church of God in Chicago’s South Side, where Till’s funeral was held. Another is Graball Landing along the Tallahatchie River, where Till’s body was discovered. A final site includes the county courthouse where an all-white jury acquitted his killers. By recognising those sites, “we will have an opportunity to acknowledge and reckon with our past – and an opportunity to tell the full American story,” according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Read More Emmett Till’s accuser Carolyn Bryant dies, leaving Till family searching for justice and answers