In this handout provided by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, Rex Heuermann poses for his booking photo on July 14, 2023. — Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office via Getty Images, FILE
(NEW YORK) — A new sketch of the Gilgo Beach victim known as “Asian Doe,” whose remains were recovered along Ocean Parkway in April 2011, will be released Monday as authorities ask for help in identifying the person.
The sketch will be released at a 10 a.m. news conference.
The rendering, created by studying the recovered remains, is what anthropologists believe the unidentified subject, long described as an Asian male, would have looked like.
The Gilgo Beach Task Force will publish the sketch of the biological male’s remains found off Ocean Parkway in 2011 as they seek to identify the individual. The man was found wearing a bra and may have identified as a woman.
The remains were believed to have been at the location for at least five years before being discovered.
It is not clear if the death of “Asian Doe” is linked to Rex Heuermann, who has been charged in six of the Gilgo Beach murders. Investigators found 10 other bodies in the search for missing sex worker Shannan Gilbert on a stretch of beach along Long Island’s South Shore.
Heuermann, a New York City architect, was first charged in July 2023 with the deaths of women known as the “Gilgo Four” — Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Amber Costello — whose bodies were found covered in burlap in December 2010, according to court records.
This year, investigators charged Heuermann with the murders of two more women — the 2003 murder of Jessica Taylor, whose remains were found on Gilgo Beach and in Manorville, and the 1993 murder of Sandra Costilla, whose remains were found in North Sea, Long Island, in 1993.
(NEW YORK) — Drew Spiegel was preparing to march in the 2022 Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park when gunfire rang out.
“In that short time span, seven people died, 48 more [were] injured,” the 19-year-old told ABC News. “I texted my parents that I might not be coming home from the Fourth of July parade. And my life forever changed.”
For more than a year after the shooting, Spiegel didn’t talk about it. That changed when he got to college and encountered the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
“They asked me straight up like, ‘Are you a survivor of gun violence?’ ” he said. “And I was like, no, but technically I was at a mass shooting. And they were like, so then yes.”
The U.S. sees 43,000 fatal shootings every year, and 120 people are fatally shot every day, according to Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive director of Moms Demand Action, an Everytown subsidiary group.
“If Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, is not safe from gun violence, then nobody is,” he said.
Now, Spiegel is sharing his story with people who may have different opinions than him.
“The change we’re fighting for, is not mutually exclusive with the Second Amendment. They can coexist,” he told ABC News. “We can have a country where people are allowed to have guns and also a country where you don’t have to worry about going to school.”
But he isn’t just thinking in terms of the next four years — he’s looking at how the laws made in the coming decades could save lives.
He’s found an ally in Rep. Maxwell Frost, who won election in Florida’s 10th Congressional District in 2022 and won reelection on Tuesday. The 27-year-old Democrat is also a survivor of gun violence and was previously the national organizing director for gun control advocacy group March For Our Lives.
That movement didn’t result in gun control legislation getting passed, but Frost accepts that change takes time.
“The way you measure the success of a movement is, you see the seeds are planted in people,” Frost told ABC News. “I’m the first person from that movement to be in Congress. That’s a win, right? And then we got the Office of Gun Violence Prevention[in 2023]. That’s a win.”
However, Frost warned ABC News in August that he foresees this progress being rolled back.
“If Donald Trump wins this election, one of the things he’s going to do on Day One is get rid of the office completely. Get rid of it,” he said. “This office is helping to save lives across the entire country. So getting rid of the office literally means more people will die due to gun violence.”
With Trump returning to the White House in January, it’s unclear how much progress gun control will make. In 2018, the Trump administration banned bump stocks, which allow guns to essentially operate as automatic weapons. However, the Supreme Court struck down that ban in June.
Despite this, Spiegel is hoping people will keep fighting for gun violence prevention laws, to prevent stories similar to his own from happening all over again.
“I think our rights and freedoms will be under a higher attack than ever before. But I don’t think it’s completely over,” he told ABC News. “I think there’s still a country and, more importantly, our friends and family in the country that are worth fighting for. And we just put our heads down and get back to work. You just keep fighting.”
(NEW YORK) — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced criminal charges against an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general in connection with an alleged failed attempt to assassinate a New York-based Iranian journalist.
Ruhollah Bazghandi, who is based in Iran and beyond the reach of law enforcement, allegedly orchestrated the alleged 2022 plot to kill the journalist, prosecutors said.
The charges name Bazghandi and six other Iranian operatives who federal prosecutors said plotted to kill Masih Alinejad, a prolific journalist and human rights activist who has been critical of the Iranian government.
Since at least July 2022, the Bazghandi network sought to assassinate Alinejad, as directed by individuals in Iran, according to the indictment.
The indictment details how the network of operatives surveilled Alinejad and quotes them talking about her in July 2022.
“I’m close to the place now brother I’m getting even closer,” the indictment quotes one operative as saying.
In response, another said, according to the indictment, “OK my brother dear don’t let her out of your sight. Let’s not delay it my brother dear.”
The operative — Khalid Mehdiyev — was disrupted when he was arrested near the victim’s home on July 28, 2022, while in possession of the assault rifle, along with 66 rounds of ammunition, approximately $1,100 in cash, and a black ski mask, according to the indictment.
Alinejad reacted to the federal charges in a statement on social media Tuesday, saying, “I will not be deterred.”
“Thanks to law enforcement, I am alive to witness the Islamic Republic’s humiliation,” she said. “I am determined to echo the voices of millions of Iranians, especially women, who are facing the same killers within the country.”
She said the alleged assassination plot is a “stark reminder of the brutal lengths to which the Islamic regime will go to silence dissidents, even those far beyond Iran’s borders.”
Alinejad said she has moved 21 times between safe houses in the past three years, following an alleged Iranian plot to lure and kidnap her in 2021.
The FBI released a wanted poster for Bazghandi, who is being sought on charges including murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire.
“Today’s indictment exposes the full extent of Iran’s plot to silence an American journalist for criticizing the Iranian regime,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement on Tuesday. “The FBI’s investigation led to the disruption of this plot as one of the conspirators was allegedly on their way to murder the victim in New York. As these charges show, the FBI will work with our partners here and abroad to hold accountable those who target Americans.”
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris said her heart is “full of resolve” after losing the presidential election to former President Donald Trump.
“My heart is full today — full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve,” Harris said Wednesday at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for. But … the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up,” Harris said.
“We must accept the results of this election,” she said.
Harris’ defeat came as Trump won the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin overnight. Trump won another swing state, Michigan, on Wednesday.
Trump’s victory underscores just how deep voters’ frustrations were surrounding inflation and immigration, Republicans’ two top issues this election cycle as polls consistently showed Americans’ unhappiness with how President Joe Biden handled them. Trump’s return to the White House also suggests that Democrats were not motivated enough by the prospect of electing the first female president and that its base’s fury over the Supreme Court’s revocation of constitutional abortion protections has waned since 2022.
Harris had an extremely hurried campaign, which began this summer when Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president.
Biden, who plans to address the nation on Thursday, spoke with Harris on the phone Wednesday to congratulate her on “her historic campaign,” the White House said.
Trump and Harris also spoke by phone on Wednesday, according to the Trump campaign. Harris told Trump she will work with Biden to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, unlike the transition in 2020, according to an email Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon sent to campaign staff.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
