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she was nobody knew what happened to her the first thing we do is look at the body
as it came in in this case it was wrapped in a plastic bag as they were unwrapping it they
realized there were several layers they had to very carefully remove the wrappings to assure
you didn’t destroy any trace evidence we want to be as careful as we can to not contaminate
the evidence so the police can take it back to the crime lab look for fingerprints DNA
uh to give them leads of who may have done this in examining the body it was determined
that it was a young female young and like her 20s i believe she was a light-skinned black
female but she could have been Latin she was missing her nose her ears her fingers her toes
and there was some skin removed from an ankle first thing that comes to mind is that
they’re trying to obscure the identity of the deceased with no fingers you
can’t take fingerprints with no toes if she had tow rings or tattoos
those are gone now for purposes of identification so it makes it harder
for the authorities to identify the body when someone is mutilated such that
their nose and fingertips and other identifying features are are removed it makes it
more challenging but not impossible to identify [Music] someone the front was burned
quite a bit more severely than the back that would mean that when she was set on
fire she was on her back and when they turned her over the area of her lower
back that was pressed into the ground was fairly well preserved and when you
looked at that area there was an area in her lower back where the skin was missing
and it wasn’t just missing it was evident when you looked at the body and you looked
at the photographs that it had been cut away my assumption is that there was a tattoo there
connecticut detectives scour the state datab bank looking for any light-kinned young women
reported missing with large tattoos on their backs they find nothing but when they expand their
search to neighboring districts they get a hit 80 miles away on Long Island New York the
person that was missing was Rebecca Coer the 24year-old girl rebecca is a nursing
assistant who lives at home with her parents the missing person’s report was filed by her
father Larry Ross he had called the police because he was notified by her employer
that day that she never showed up for work she was out with her friends that night
and no one had seen her since 3:30 that morning in the missing person’s flyer they
have pictures of what she looked like they had a description of her height and weight
and hair color and they also had specific identifying features such as the tattoo she
had she had a large I think it was a butterfly tattoo that was in the lower back [Music] area
despite the striking similarities between the women Connecticut detectives are skeptical
they have a match because of the distance involved they turn to Dr caner to see if he can
provide confirmation he discovers that the killer made a strategic error the perpetrator
left the teeth from the deceased intact dental records are a very very valuable
source because that is a foolproof form of identification of human remains providing that
the teeth have not been removed and even then even if the teeth are removed there are still
markers within the jaw of an individual that a radiologist can make a comparison to uh that
will assist you in that identification as well they reached out to Becky’s family and asked
uh for access to her dental records the Long Island police brought them up personally so my
office looked at the dental records looked at the teeth from the deceased and a match was
made which is just as good as fingerprints rebecca Coer of Long Island is the woman found
burning on the side of the road in Connecticut now you have to show up at the family’s house and you
have to give them the worst news they ever hear rebecca Coer of Long Island has been identified
as the Jane Doe found burning on the side of the road in [Music] Connecticut detectives steal
themselves for the awful job of notifying her parents my husband gets the
call the detectives were at the house they were waiting for me and I I looked at the detectives and
I asked them i said “It’s bad news.” And they said “Please come have a seat.” And
they said they found Becky that it was a homicide and that they were going to go
to great lengths to find out who did it to her i just grabbed my coat and ran outside i
remember running halfway down my down my driveway screaming killed my baby someone killed my [Music] baby detectives vow to find out how
this young woman came to such a horrific end so far from home i’m married i have two kids
so yeah something like this could happen to any family we’re dealing with the ultimate crime
and you want to make sure that whoever is responsible for this crime is going to
be held accountable for their actions so we started with talking to family and friends
to try and develop a timeline of Rebecca Costa’s last movements for that day before she
went missing becky was 24 years old and was a beautiful girl in fact she looked just
like her mother and they were very very close i’m a nursing assistant and Becky took the
class became a nursing assistant she did home care with developmentally disabled adults to
see her happy in her job made me feel like you know a success as a mom she was very bubbly very
vibrant young girl and like most people who were 24 you know Becky was very personable she liked
to go out you know she liked to have a good time detectives learned that the night her daughter
went missing Barbara was scheduled to work an overnight shift i remember I was leaving for
[Music] work and Becky was hovering over her brother trying to get French fries from him
becky told me that she was going out with her best friend Nicole and her boyfriend at the time
Dan they were going to go to their favorite spot hang out for a little while then she was going
to go home go to sleep and go to work in the morning dan was Rebecca’s boyfriend but
this was not a deep long relationship they had just begun dating and
it was certainly nothing serious i didn’t get to really know Dan too much
he seemed to be genuine in his affection he seemed like a nice guy i knew they had
their troubles um from what Becky had told me but otherwise I didn’t know too much as far as her
mother knew Rebecca went out with her friends that night and then returned home as promised rebecca
communicated with her mother via cell phone to let her know that she was home and that she was safe
and this was about 3:30 in the morning [Music] i was in the middle of morning rounds my husband
had called me stating that Becky didn’t show up for work i get her a call no answer i leave
her a message call her again no answer this was unlike Becky for her not to communicate or
respond back to her mother was very very unusual i go home and the only thing I can think of well
let me contact Nicole but Nicole has no idea where Rebecca is she says she went home early and left
Rebecca with Dan and some other friends anybody who was last with the victim uh before he or she
disappears is going to be you know a prime suspect and when you add a boyfriend to the mix it’s just
always you know somebody that you’re going to look at very hard detectives locate Dan and haul him
down to the station according to his version he and the others dropped her off at 3:30 a.m dan
said he walked her into the front door made sure she got in safely and they left her there and
that was the last time he saw or heard from her dan swore up and down i I sw I I loved Becky i
would never hurt Becky detective suggests that Dan could clear his name by taking a polygraph
test investigators will often broach the topic and ask a person if they’re willing to
take a polygraph as a way to determine if they could be hiding something if they
feel suspicious or guilty about something so it’s often used as a probe as
a way to try and see how guilty is a person dan submitted to a polygraph
the focus of the polygraph is if he had any knowledge of her whereabouts had any
knowledge of the events leading up to her disappearance the results of the polygraph were
that he was being untruthful despite the puzzling results investigators aren’t convinced that Dan
was involved in Rebecca’s murder polygraph can be used as an investigative tool but they’re
not 100% reliable and Dan cooperated fully with the investigation they interviewed him
thoroughly and the police searched his home from top to bottom and certainly there were no
red flags to them that that she’d ever been there we try and corroborate everyone’s story
with other people that were at the scene and Dan’s story and their friend story
all matched up they were all identical with no hard evidence linking Dan to Rebecca’s
murder they need to widen the suspect pool detectives turned to Dr caner to determine the
time of death the deceased was observed to be in a bar and having drinks in normal people
they metabolize about one drink per hour at autopsy we took specimens for toxicological
examination for drugs and alcohol and the alcohol came back negative as well as the
drug screen once you die the metabolism stops so that tells you that she was alive after she
left the bar for a period of time dr caner lists the time of death as 4 hours after Rebecca was
last seen but it’s only his best guess it’s really an inexact science no matter what’s written given
the estimated time of death investigators need to know if Rebecca spoke to anyone after Dan dropped
her off at 3:30 a.m her family was able to pull up Rebecca Costa’s phone records on the computer
to see of course who would be the last person to contact her they had saw that there were two phone
calls into her phone early that morning from the same number a 617 number they were at 4:10 and
at 4:27 in the morning it’s quite clear that this person um was probably the last person
to speak with Becky detectives suspect that whoever Rebecca spoke with on the phone at 4:27
in the morning is likely the person who killed her becky Coer like so many young girls made a
very foolish decision that night to trust that no harm could come to her becky never
believed that anybody would ever hurt her and I said “Becky you’re the prime target
because you’re beautiful and everybody wants you but there are demons out
there and they look like people police are trying to locate the source
of the two calls made to Rebecca Coer the morning she was murdered the police
were able to obtain very quickly the um cell phone records for that phone
number that had been contacting Becky when you talk on a cellular device your
conversations are bouncing off of cell towers all over North America and as you move your
conversation bounces from tower to tower to tower and in this day and age we can get those records
uh from the service providers and through a not very complicated formula they can triangulate
to some degree of certainty what area you are in police looked at the cell tower information they could clearly ascertain that the
person using that phone was moving now in communicating with her and he was moving in
a direction west to east to go to Rebecca’s house the first call at 410 was
for approximately 15 minutes and the call at 427 was for approximately 20 seconds so based on the location of the cell sites and
the duration of the last call it is my belief that this person was at Rebecca Costa’s house
letting her know that he was there but they still don’t know who the caller is or how Rebecca’s
body ended up in Connecticut 15 hours later we tried contacting that phone number and
there was no response and there was no phone record with the 617 number in our system or any
place that we could find it was never listed with heavy hearts they deduced that the number
must be attached to an untraceable burner phone so we had no idea who the 617 number was while
investigators try to identify the person on the other end of the phone number Dr caner struggles
to determine Rebecca’s cause of death if the uh body is burnt one of the questions that comes
up is was the person alive at the time of the fire one of the ways to detect that is
looking for soot in the deceased lungs and if there is that tells you she was
breathing at the time of the fire so we know she’s alive there was no s in the lungs
and from that you can imply that she was dead at the time of the fire the doctor searches
the body for other wounds that may have led to her death the external injury on the skin
uh was very difficult to uh find due to the uh burning it obscured it so we looked at all
the vital organs heart liver lungs kidneys and we saw a stab wound of the liver and associated
with the stab wound was several hundred cc’s of fluid and clotted blood in the abdominal cavity
so that tells me she’s got an injury of the liver but he isn’t certain the stab wound to the
liver is what killed her she had four sharp force injuries of the neck i just wasn’t sure if
they were pre or postmortem due to in part the burning there’s veins in the neck as well as
arteries and if the person is alive and you cut one of these veins of the neck it’s possible
that ear gets sucked into the vein and if you get what they call an air embolis it goes to the
heart and it just stops the heart being able to pump and the whole system backs up and
you’re dead as a doornail in a very short period of time dr caner takes X-rays to confirm
his suspicions you could see the blood air level on X-ray in the heart so that tells me that
the wounds of the neck at least one of them uh occurred while she was alive and air
got sucked into the Venus system went to the heart stopped the heart dead because of
the multiple sources of wounds Dr caner lists the official cause of death as a result of all
of them we know it was homicide that somebody did this to her and multiple stabilings of the
neck and the liver is what killed this woman armed with the cause of death police returned to
tracing Rebecca’s movements they knew from their interviews with the people that Rebecca was with
that they had gone to this particular bar Butcher Boy and they were able to quickly ascertain that
they had a surveillance system and they were able to view and and obtain all of the surveillance
footage from the night Becky was there when they looked at the footage they were able to determine
that Becky was in fact in the bar she’s sort of sitting by herself her boyfriend and her friends
are off talking to other people and they could see this person approaching Becky he was a little
bit older you know he wasn’t a 23-year-old he was dressed conservatively like a sweater type of
vest so he looked unassuming he enters her space and enters it quickly and there is communication
between them for a period of time watching the video you can see them both on their phones
together it appeared that they were exchanging uh some sort of information it looked like this
person took her phone and was punching in a number based on what they’ve just seen investigators
reinter the people who were with Rebecca that night and one of them a woman named
Jennifer remember something new she told us about this male subject at the bar that
she didn’t know that was sitting next to them she said that this subject made her very
uncomfortable that he was very pushy and did seem creepy uh with the questions that he was asking
her and he actually took her phone and put his name in her phone with his number hoping that she
would call him so we took her phone and computer crimes detectives were able to extract the
information We were able to see that a Jay Brown was put into her contact list with the 617 number
finally they have a prime suspect for Rebecca’s murder the 617 number that we saw on Rebecca
Costa’s phone records is the same 617 number that this person Jay put into Jennifer’s phone
but before investigators have a chance to track down Jay Brown they receive an urgent message
from the Connecticut Crime Laboratory the latent fingerprint examiner was able to process that
duct tape that had been wrapped around Rebecca’s body and they developed two thumbrints a left
and a right thumb print on the sticky side of that duct tape i’ve been doing this a very very
long time and you don’t often get fingerprints um on the sticky side particularly where
there’s been a fire detectives send the fingerprints to the state datab bank they did a
physical comparison of prints that were on file with the state and concluded that there was
an identification of both the left and the right thumb print to an Evans Ganthar in a
matter of hours investigators have unearthed two prime suspects for this horrific murder yet
the question of who killed Rebecca Coer remains unanswered investigators have two prime suspects
on their hands for the slaying of Rebecca Coer jay Brown has no criminal record but it’s a
different story for Evans Ganthier he had a criminal background it wasn’t particularly
serious but they were able to determine that among other things which were of
great interest to the police he had uh domestic incidents with his girlfriend and
there were allegations that he was um pimping her out and that he liked to
photograph women in his garage so there were a couple of things in his background
which were disturbing investigators asked their witness Jennifer to come back down to
the station for a second time we know that Evans Ganthier’s fingerprints are on the
tape that bound Rebecca Coster at this time so we then take Evans Gantier’s photo
and we put his photo in a photo array and we show that to Jennifer and Jennifer
positively identifies him as the person who took her phone identified himself
as Jay and put his number in her phone it’s a revelation jay Brown isn’t
a person he’s Evans Ganier’s alias investigators pour all their resources
into finding Ganthier we knew that he had a vehicle that he has had tickets
with and he had been arrested driving this vehicle which was a SUV and we knew that
his girlfriend had a residence in the Bronx so we were checking and surveilling the
residence one night there was a team of guys that were located his SUV parked next
to the residence where his girlfriend lived and the following day we observed him walk
into the vehicle and he was placed under arrest we bring him to our headquarters and
I interview him along with another detective he consents to the search of his vehicle and he
consents to the search of his residence ganthier claims there’s nothing for police to find as he
had no hand in Rebecca’s death so that residence was searched in the garage there was a roller a
scrub brush a broom cement cleaner and some paint and a paint tray and you could tell that there
was an area that had been cleaned over and painted over that definitely looked suspicious but there
was nothing that would link Rebecca Costa to that scene but then his vehicle is processed at
the crime lab and they discover questionable red stains throughout the car [Music]
there’s a console and on that console on the driver’s side on the passenger side
on the driver’s side there was a blood stain and the blood was dripping downward if
you ever sit in your vehicle you have your seat buckle next to you and you have that little
bit of space in between your seat and the console if you move the seat back and you go all
the way down to the floor that’s where the blood was pooling investigators take
samples of the blood found in the vehicle and send it for DNA testing this blood is
determined to be the blood of Rebecca Costa so we could tell that Rebecca Costa was in
this vehicle and it appeared that something violent had happened to her while she was in
this vehicle investigators confront Ganthier with this damning evidence but instead of
confessing he launches into an elaborate story of defense he says “I’ll tell you but
you’re not going to believe what happened.” He claimed he had met her in the bar they just talked and he decided that he
would call her because he wanted to continue his own party she had
given him directions to her house once in the car he said that she
explained that she couldn’t hang out long that she had to go to work in
the morning and then once on the way to his house she started foaming at the mouth
like she was having some medical emergency and when they arrived he opened up the garage
and Becky was unsteady on her feet so much so that she needed his assistance and he had to
put his arm around her just to walk her into the garage and keep her steady he claimed that
he brought her to the house to try and give her a glass of water and when they were walking in his
garage she had tripped over a set of dumbbells um hitting her head on the cement and
started bleeding profusely from her head he went on to explain that he put her in the back
of his SUV and he was going to drive her to Mather Hospital and on the way to Mather Hospital
he said he turned around and she had stopped breathing when he brought her back to his house
she died and well he he panicked [Music] so he tried to hide her identity and
make her look like a missing [Music] person he said that he cut
off her fingers he cut off her toes he admitted to carving the
tattoo out of her lower back [Music] then he told the police that he in fact
took her body wrapped up in the back of his SUV he drove on to Port Jefferson Ferry once he got to Connecticut he was
just driving and he ended up not far from Stonington he didn’t know what to do with her
he didn’t hurt her he didn’t kill her but you know what was he going to do cuz people might
not believe him so he admitted to the police that he bought some gasoline he drove around
and then he just panicked some more because now he he he’s been driving around with her
for so long he just wanted to get her out of the car so he just pulled over in the area
that her body was ultimately found threw her onto the side of the road poured a little bit
of gasoline on her and lit her on fire [Music] then you look at the sheer brutality and the gruesome acts that he engaged
in once you go to those lengths you’re not hiding or concealing the crime of accident
you’re trying to conceal the crime of murder [Music] evans Ganthier admits to mutilating and
burning Rebecca’s body but adamantly denies killing her he says she died as
a result of an accident when someone’s caught committing a brutal murder and they
know in their own minds that it’s over the only thing left for them is to save some
face and the way they do that is to try and minimize their involvement to extricate
themselves from the nasty part of this homicide evans Ganthier was very very
convincing cuz like most sociopaths he has no soul um he has no conscience and the only
thing he’s concerned about is protecting himself he stated that he just wanted to
remove her identity but clearly he was trying to remove any evidence that
showed that she was violently killed seasoned homicide detectives have a good sense
you know they they will can often say “This guy’s just lying to me i know it.” But you know
knowing it and being able to get your suspect to admit he’s lying are two different things
and the most successful way is to confront him with the truth you have investigators need Dr
canford to refute Ganthier’s story otherwise he could get off with a much lesser charge the
charge would be instead of murder it would be assaulting a dead body so you have to prove that
she’s alive at the time the incident occurred she was definitely alive with a stab wound of the
liver because there was a hemorrhage in the liver as well as fluid and cloud blood in the abdominal
cavity and she was alive for at least one of the stab wounds of the neck because we had the air
amilis which came from the air getting sucked in from one of the stab wounds of the neck he
tells us that uh she tripped I believe of a a weight struck her head and that’s what killed
her but when I examined the head there was no evidence of skull fracture there was no evidence
of subdural hemorrhage there was no evidence of trauma but what the autopsy did show is she had
stab wounds in the neck the stab wound of the liver and that’s what killed her not this
kakami story of she fell and hit her head armed with the medical examiner’s irrefutable
conclusions detectives charge Ganthier with seconddegree murder but even throughout the trial
he maintains his innocence he was the victim through this whole thing he didn’t do anything he
apologized for being a panicky person who didn’t do the right thing one of the biggest points to
the jury in not only just proving the obvious and disproving the ridiculous um was that we also
had what I thought was very compelling physical evidence if you looked at his story she
was never bleeding in the front seat of that car so that story was a lie he claimed
that he had put her into the back of his SUV not the front passenger seat you know
but the back according to him there was no injury and he never put her body
in the front even after he dismembered her so how else did that blood get there but for
the fact that an act of violence occurred in that car the trial lasts an excruciating 4 weeks
rebecca’s mom sat through every single day and and her heartbreak was palpable you know you could
feel it but she just wanted to make sure that she was there for Becky and she got justice for Becky
we weren’t planning on going to the arraignment and then I changed my mind it was arraignment
day that I found out the things that he did to my daughter and uh my head’s been in turmoil
ever since but that was the worst day of my life after deliberating for just 5 and a half
hours the jury finds Evans Ganthier guilty the jury believed that the cause of death and the
manner of death were homicide by stab wound beyond a reasonable doubt after the long process of the
trial you’re able to sit there in the courtroom with the family and listen to the juror’s verdict
you could feel the sense of relief that the family has a sense of closure that someone is being
held responsible for what they did to their daughter to have the jury say guilty was very
gratifying for us as prosecutors because we know that we brought this horrific killer to
justice and he is not walking the streets again the judge sentences Ganthier to the maximum
25 years to life and condemns his unthinkably cruel behavior after Rebecca’s death in
this case with Rebecca if we didn’t find what happened to her or with the the aid of
the police figure out who she was she would have just been buried in Potter’s Field and
nobody would have known anything so we did speak for the dead the medical examiner
of the police department yes we did finding him guilty yes I’m happy but it was more of a relief that he wouldn’t
be out there hurting anyone else but it doesn’t bring her back i wish I could
be the type of person to forgive but I can’t not in that case anyway
Every Identifying feature of her was removed – except one | The Horrific Murder of Rebecca Koster
