Chasing a Serial Killer [8]

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1:02This podcast deals with violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on Someone's Hunting Us. And then he just book it out to me like, oh, I'm sorry to say this, but we found her skeletal remains. She had a rope around her neck. More of trying to get an idea of what could make this guy so angry that he would strangle women. There has to be something in his past. I feel like feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw that message was like, oh my god, I can just imagine. On a weeknight about a year ago, I kissed my kids good night and ran off to meet Rebecca at an eye hop about an hour away. It's off the Jersey Turnpike and perfect since it's halfway between our houses. But sadly, we weren't there for pancakes. Which sucks because I love breakfast for dinner.

2:03Yeah, no. Our mission for the night. To charm a charmer. To win over a serial killer. And on his terms, or at least on his turf, an app. In the freezing parking lot, we turned on the warmth, you know, the smiles, the sweet voices. We put the phone camera on selfie mode and hit record. Hi. I'm Daisy. I'm Rebecca. We just wanted to hop on here because we realized that we hadn't heard from you and that we haven't even told you what the project we're working on actually is. So it's an in-depth podcast series. We've done these before. They've got millions of listeners around the world. And we really think it's a good way for you to tell your story. Yeah, we just wanted to make sure that we were really including you in this because we want to give you the platform to share your truth and to tell people what would really happen. I hope that you'll let us go visit you. Yeah, that's us. Sending Khalil Wheeler Weaver, a man who is in prison for killing women he targeted on a social media app.

3:04A cute little videogram. We sound casual, right? But really, I felt sick thinking of him watching this. Because here I am acting like a fawning schoolgirl to get a source to do an interview, I felt like a total fraud, even if he is a killer. Would you like to include a prepaid reply? Yes. Yes. To me, it was all in a day's work. I mean, we had to try. We needed him to say yes to letting us visit him in prison, encouraging him to share his truth might just do the trick. He's never shown remorse about his disease, so I wasn't going to lose sleep over this. Okay, so just send? Yeah. Yeah, let's do it, right? So we did it. We hit send and hoped for the best, but somehow I still wasn't prepared for his reply. I'm Rebecca Everett. And I'm Daisy Kalavia Robertson, and this is the final episode of Someone's Hunting

4:08a podcast by Angie.com and the star ledger about a serial killer you've never heard of and the women who took him down. I'm not sure I ever expected that serial killer to respond to us, but when he did, I had no idea what I'd find when I opened the app. Here's Daisy and I talking about it. And I'm like, also like got this rush of fear, like, what if he does say, okay, you can come visit me, like, then we have to go visit him, but that's not how it went down. Because with someone as slick as Cleal, you never know what you're going to get. Here's Rebecca reading one of his emails. So in response to our question of, can we come visit him? It says no thank you dot, dot, dot, I'm innocent. And your company is one of the main ones that have pushed a one-sided narrative of the situation. I know it's not you guys personally, however, the company that you work for isn't for me.

5:13Thank you, but no, thank you. Enjoy your day. So nice and polite, right? I was like, well, there it is. He said no. And I was like, no way. We have to keep trying. So we did. We messaged him about our interview with his buddy, Richard Isaacs. And he seemed curious about it. So it felt like we were making progress. But then he ghosted us. And that's when we went the video route. It was our chance to try to convince him to open up to us. And do what serial killer expert Dr. White suggested, establish a rapport. Three days after we videogrammed him, I saw the notification. He'd replied with a video of his own. I facetime Daisy so we could watch it together. Okay. So let me turn my screen around. Okay. Yikes. I'm like already so creeped out. Are you so creeped out? The thumbnail on my screen, a close-up of the lower half of his face and his very muscular

6:18chest and shoulders. He was leaning over this kiosk that inmates used to record these videos. It was going on, Becky and Daisy, you got your own message. And first, I don't know, I really wasn't. I wasn't thinking about applying back. I don't know why. I guess I just need to know more about the actual project itself, get to know more about it. There is outs. I really don't know too much about it besides what you told me so. And that same talk to me is going on. When I saw how he looked and heard the way he spoke to us, so confident, kind of smooth I thought, is this some kind of flex? The way he talked was so, you know, chill and normal. It almost makes you forget that you're talking to a serial killer. And it made me think, oh, so this is how he turns it on to full women. Still, it was a win. He'd replied, I figured he just wanted to keep getting videos from us, from two women.

7:21But a big part of me wanted to never message him ever again. And I sure as hell didn't want to go to this prison just to hear him lie to us about what happened. I remember you had to give me a little pep talk about it. I don't love this. Like trust me. I know you. I don't like it. But I just think that like we can still challenge whatever he says, but if we want to even have a shot at doing that, we have to try to get him to talk to us. So we sent another video describing our project again. But that was it. No more replies. Maybe he just enjoyed stringing us along. We know he gets off on power. Then a few weeks after he'd ghosted, Khalil emailed us out of nowhere. We'd just interviewed Ron Brown, the friend he talks to every day. And Khalil asked us how the interview went. We pressed him again about talking, but he was still hesitant. Here's me reading Khalil's message today.

8:24But then he says, give me a little bit of time and maybe we can set up an in-person visit if you guys would like. Then you can explain more and we will see where we can go from there. I have visits scheduled for about the next month. Wow. Contact visits are on the weekends here. Let me know what you guys think. This felt like an exciting step closer to finally meeting him face-to-face, to finally starting to build that rapport and hopefully even finding some answers for the victim's families. Right. We've done all this to learn more about him, his relationships, his feelings towards women. Like, how did we get here? But then another twist. Turns out, Khalil wants to know where we live. He asked us for our home addresses. He said they'd have to match our IDs or the prison guards wouldn't let us in. Yeah, I'm not happening, Khalil. Now, we know he's locked up, but there was no chance we were sending our addresses to

9:29a serial killer. So we called the prison officials directly to see if they could set a meeting. We were thinking, at least we'd sit down and talk. During our mics, just in case he'd let us record. But in the end, after months of chasing Khalil, he turned us down. Here's his email. Administration came to me today about you and Daisy. I had declined to do the interview right now due to the legal advice from my counsel. I have things going on and we don't want to risk anything with the interview. I apologize about this. I wanted you to hear it from me. Is this email like it's not you, it's me? Yeah, he's still playing the part of the smooth, nice guy. I'm guessing the things going on that he mentioned is his petition for post-conviction relief. That's a kind of appeal. He never responded to any other messages. We tried a few more things, including seeing if Ron Brown would do a group call.

10:30But it seems Khalil said no to that too. When we learned Ron isn't the only person on the outside Khalil talks to, he has people keeping him updated because we'd reached out to many of his friends requesting interviews. And one of them had forwarded our email to Khalil. In a message on JPE, Khalil quoted the email back to us as proof that we had already made up our minds about him. Here's Daisy reading it. It says, honestly, I am still hesitant. It comes more so from how an email was worded that went out to someone who you guys wished to interview. It, in essence, said something to the effect of, quote, come to terms with what he did, end quote. And when I heard that, I was like, but I didn't and I'm innocent. That is more so where my hesitancy stems from. Then people try to twist things and so on and so forth. Talk about twisting things. For me, this whole thing was so uncomfortable, playing this game, being nice to him, trying

11:34to gain his trust. But after all that, he clearly hadn't fallen for it. He was always trying to stay one step ahead of us. And to be fair, he was right about us. We had made up our minds about him. He killed these women. He took away their chance to grow up, fall in love, have a child or grow old with their families. Of course, he's denied all of it since day one. He says the stories about him are nothing but, quote, one-sided narratives. But lines like that are all he has. He has no counter-narrative, just like he had no evidence to present at trial. But we had to try one last time. So in December 2025, as we were completing production on this podcast, we opened up the JPA app to give him one final chance to come clean. Hi, Khalil. How are you? We're reaching out to you one last time because we're recording the final episode of the

12:36podcast. And we wanted to give you a chance to talk to us. Yeah, you know, we've tried for a while to talk to you, but we've seen all the evidence from the trial now. And that's what we have to go on, is that evidence from the trial. So that's what we're going to be reporting. Now we know you don't want that, and we know that you've always said that you're innocent. So if there's anything at all you want to say to us, this is your chance. As of this recording, he still hasn't responded. Life is full of choices, but the choice between getting crispy chicken nuggets or a crunch wrap slider isn't one you'll have to make. The new crispy chicken crunch wrap slider at Taco Bell. All white meat chicken nuggets, breaded in tortilla chips, wrapped up sauce and all inside a slider-sized crunch wrap. Choose from creamy chipotle or jalapeno honey mustard. Well, there we go. Life is still full of choices. The new crispy chicken crunch wrap slider, a brand new classic, only at Taco Bell. And participating in those Taco Bell locations for limited time and loss applies last. Shocked today after an arrest in the infamous Gilgobeech murder.

13:39The morning of July 14, 2023 is one I'll never forget. The day they finally caught him, Lisk, the Long Island Serial Killer. 59-year-old Rex Heuerman from Long Island is now charged in the murders of three women. Ten years earlier, we had gone on our own hunt for Lisk. And even though we didn't find him, I had no idea how close we came. We're learning that Rex Heuerman may have called a documentary filmmaker. Will you win my house tonight? Yes. We're looking for you. It's not a good thing to do. But as we dug deeper, we discovered the hunt for a Serial Killer. It was only half the story. There's no other way to describe this except explosive. Former Suffolk County Chief of Police James Burke was put in handcuffs. Do you still deny any accusations? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. I said before that I've watched and rewatched that first press conference back in 2016

14:42when they announced Cleal's arrest. Announced the fact that they've made an arrest in the death of Sarah Butler, whose body was found December the first. I included the press conference in my original pitch to make this podcast years ago. Because I can't get over how badly it's aged. There's about a dozen people on stage. Almost everyone gets a turn at the mic and they're all patting each other on the back for the great work they've done. And whenever any reporter asks how they caught their man, That it was around the clock police work literally, literally having work around the clock. And the homicide task force has been on this around the clock. They've been working day and night on this investigation. There were legions of people on it around the clock since then. Yes, Sarah Butler's case was investigated right away. Everything about her disappearance set off alarm bells. There was a press conference and the room was packed with news outlets. But where was the round the clock police work for the other victims?

15:43And where were we? Where were all the reporters and cameras then? Khalil Wheeler-Weaver thought most people wouldn't care about the girls he disappeared. But did all of us, police, media, their communities, have to do such a good job of proving him right? Nobody cared, plain and simple. So I wondered, what if there's other girls like Mawa out there? Other victims who disappeared, but no one cared. What if they just haven't been found or identified? The authorities wouldn't talk about it with us. So we scoured a federal database for missing people or unidentified remains. That could be related. We dug into a few cases, but they didn't seem in any way related to Khalil Wheeler-Weaver. Then I remembered that some years ago, my coworkers and I had created a database of New Jersey homicides. So I pulled it up just to check if there were any other murder victims who matched Khalil's M.O.

16:46That's when I noticed the last name I'd entered into the database for Essex County. I stared at the screen and I swallowed the lump rising in my throat, and I recorded a voice memo. And then I realized that the very last one in this database is Jane Doe, Black Female, killed by ligature strangulation. And I realized that it's Mawa. And I don't know why that bothered me so much. It bothered me so much because I don't even have any memory of it. Didn't I wonder who Orange Jane Doe was? Why didn't I at least call up the prosecutor's office, request reports, see if I could get a story together about her? Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference at all in getting Mawa's case solved sooner. But what if it had? Sure, the police and the system failed Mawa.

17:50But so did I. Christopher Maag, the columnist we heard from earlier, told me his newsroom dropped the ball, too. He said it took him a week to realize how big this case was and start covering the trial. His colleagues hadn't been there every day either. Yeah, I think it's pretty clear cut that if any of the victims had been an attractive white woman, CNN, the cable news, all the radio and all the TV stations I believe would have been there every day of the trial. It happens all the time. Remember when we were looking for missing girls from Jersey in the database? There were a handful whose names I had never seen or heard. What happened to them? Like Erica Alvarez, she was 15, disappeared from Union City in April of 2016. But what do we know about her? Almost nothing. There are no press releases about her, no articles, not even a photo. Or Tijureen Boudale.

18:51She was 27 and disappeared from Newark in 2020. Still missing. We did write a short story when Denasha McCullough went missing from South Jersey in 2016. But we've written nothing since. It has gotten some attention. Lots of internet sleuths suggest she was kidnapped, but she's never been found. The truth is we're not covering them consistently, not then and not now. Of course, it's bigger than us. Newark police have gotten better about posting about missing kids on their website. But when we write the stories, they're not read or shared widely. And in the comments, you'll see people say, oh, this girl's just to run away. And they just keep scrolling. We are going missing at a disproportionate rate. And when it comes to people of color going missing, the resources just aren't there. That's Derricka Wilson, the co-founder of Black and Missing, a foundation that tries to level the playing field

19:53for people of color who disappear, partly by helping them get media coverage. What we have found without organization is that we can't wait on anyone else. We control the narrative. But I hate that people of color have to write these careful press releases, describing missing loved ones as a college student or a star athlete, just to try to get people to see beyond just another missing Black person and see their humanity. And even that requires family or loved ones willing to raise the alarm. Otherwise, it just isn't going to happen. Right, that's why Sarah Butler's disappearance did get attention. But as we saw by the time the trial rolled around, it had become a different type of story, one about sex workers, marginalized women. Christopher said it's probably a big reason most people haven't heard of Khalil Wheeler-Weaver. Even though people are so fascinated

20:54with serial killers. You know, it's really a thing though that as sad as the story is, and as many things as went wrong here, it probably would happen again. I think so. Yeah, I don't think there's anything changed. What if a sex worker was attacked today? Would police handle it any differently? If you have someone with an established criminal record, somebody who's subjected to drugs, somebody who has a history of being a sex worker, and they call police, something's really bad. That person should not be treated with distrust. They should be treated as a canary in the coal mine because whatever is being to done to them probably is being done to other people. But the thing is, the stigma of sex work is everywhere, not just from police. Even loved ones of the victims tried to minimize it.

21:55They know the label strips away their humanity. Here's Pranisha, again, talking about Robin. It was like, yeah, that's what she was doing, but that's not who she is. Like, it's not like we were, like that's something that we did all of our life. We literally had just started doing it. Sarah Butler's family struggled with this too. I emailed her father a request for an interview, and he declined, but it was clear I'd upset him because he felt like I suggested his daughter was like the other victims and not just a girl who made a mistake. That made me so angry that even one of the victims' parents could, without even thinking about it, devalue the lives of some of these women. Najela Rhee told us decriminalizing sex work could end the stigma, make them all safer, and maybe it would. But the truth is, as long as sex work exists, we know there will be violence against sex workers.

22:58Listen, we can go on and on about what police can do better, what we journalists should do more of, that when we do write stories about missing people, the general public should care, but that's just not the reality. Which is why people of color in these situations just go out there and do it themselves. Exactly. We're not waiting to be saved. We can't afford to. We have to take action. And when we do, usually it's with help from people in our own communities. Right, just look at all the things the black women in this case did. They were searching for each other when police wouldn't, warning each other about violent men even trying to catfish a serial killer. Even when they were disbelieved, even when they were mistreated, they still showed up for each other and for themselves. Hey guys, we're back at Everett here and I want to tell you about a podcast I binged that I think you're going to like to. It's season four of the Unforgotten Kill site.

24:01Now you know I'm a journalist and my favorite podcasts are made by other journalists because they just know how to tell a great story and they always uncover whatever the people in power are trying to cover up. This season of the Unforgotten is just like that. It's about the death of Christopher Whiteley in Texas. Five years ago after discovering a gruesome scene, authorities tried to say this guy got killed by a mountain lion case closed. But experts say there's no way that's true. So what really happened to Christopher Whiteley and did police bias get in the way? The journalists on this case, Wes Ferguson and Charlie Scudder aren't going to stop looking for the truth. So check out season four of the Unforgotten Kill site. And then you can binge all the other past seasons just like I did. It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey Shore. Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver,

25:0319 year old Sarah Stern. Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows. Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life. I'm Juju Chang from 2020 and ABC audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts. Last spring, I met Maui's friends at Riverbank Park in Newark. It's a nice grassy park on the edge of the Pasey River about six blocks from their old high school. I had texted Janisha that day to tell her I was thinking of Maui on her birthday, May 7th. And she invited me to meet up with her or Deanna and Kiki. I love how you kicked that guy out of the parking spot. You're like, nah. I was trying to be, he wasn't being, I feel like he was being ignorant. You seen her standing there. When I saw them,

26:03Kiki's daughter was running ahead of the sidewalk and they were carrying a collage of photos of Maui. I brought a small bouquet of pink flowers and a pair of giant gold balloons with the numbers two and four bobbed over their heads. It was Maui's 24th birthday. It isn't just that they miss Maui. They feel separated from her in a physical way. They wish there was a memorial they could go to, a place to remember her. But they've had to make their own. So is this a parking place you used to come to a lot? Well, we used to go to each side. So I remember we walked past this park before and under the eye you used to come here a lot. These three friends don't really see each other that much anymore. Yeah, this day releasing balloons for Maui was the first time I saw all three of them together. Things change. And I mean, really, Maui was always the glue in the group. At the park, it felt like Janisha wanted Maui to see.

27:05They hadn't stopped showing up for her. They never would. She made fun. Maui, girl, I brought them out here. You did that. Love you. Oh my gosh. Next time I see them all together, it'll probably be a Khalil Wheeler reverse trial. Here's Janisha at one of our interviews. I want to be front row see because it's like you didn't only hurt her family, but you hurt her friends and people that she loved. Maui had people that cared for her. Maui was only 15. You killed a teenager, a kid and you're disgusting. You're disgusting. I know they really want to lay eyes on this guy. We do too. And I thought we'd just see him at his hearings in court. But that didn't work because in more than a year, Khalil hasn't been in court. As far as I can tell, it seems like he's no closer to being tried for Maui's death than he was a year ago. So he's probably more focused on appealing his 160 year sentence than on this new case.

28:11I called an old source of mine, George. He'd actually just been released from the same prison. So he'd see Khalil every week without fail working diligently in the prison's law library. That he comes down, he works on his case. I see him in the ILA doing some type of legal work. I mean, I don't know exactly what it was. Didn't fly into that, but he was doing legal work. I figured George would know him by reputation, but he didn't know what Khalil was in for. Oh, wow. I had no idea. Yeah, it does surprise me because he's such a quiet guy, a calm quiet, reserved guy. Khalil's appeal was denied in 2024. Currently, he's working on his appeal for post-conviction relief. Apparently, he's sitting in the stacks every week and reading endless law books through his black glasses, trying to get out of this. Well, he might be there a while.

29:13Almost nothing has happened with Maui's case since he was charged three years ago. Khalil got assigned a new attorney, and since then, at every court date, there's been some delay. Boogie at Attula, the lawyer representing Khalil in Maui's case, told me the prison was making it difficult for him to even have a first meeting with his client. Back in September, before he'd even spoken to Khalil, Boogie told the judge he expected the case would, quote, resolve quickly, like a plea deal since he's already serving life. But it seems very unlikely that Khalil will plead guilty. He'd be admitting that the M.O. prosecutors accused him of is, after all his denials, exactly his M.O. When we talked to Khalil's lawyer again just before the podcast release, he said he'd finally met with Khalil and talked over the case. He told us Khalil still didn't want to meet with us. He won't continue to do what he has to do to regain his freedom.

30:14He needs to tell me to clear his name 100%. I can't wait till the day I can tell Janisha all the waiting is over, and the trials finally been scheduled. You can come, when I find out he's going to be in court, you can come to home. No, I want to. I please, please. I want to go, and I want to face him. I want to tell him how, how could you let this money so small? Like, I know when you look at her, you tell him you didn't feel nothing like no sympathy. Nothing like, oh my god, let me stop. They want to stand up in court and tell him, you extinguished every dream this little girl had. She had plans. Deanna told us about her last conversation with Mawa. Mawa said, I see you striving, fighting through foster care, getting good grades, trying to make something of your life. Mawa told her, I'm going to be better too. We can do it together. Because she talked about her future a lot. She was waiting for it. She wanted to be grown.

31:14She kept saying like, I can't wait to just be on my own, have my own apartment with my own family. Her friends are doing it now, but without her. They're in their mid-twenties, building lives and families, carrying the good things Mawa taught them, but also still trying to escape the bad things that came when she disappeared. Trying to shake off the feeling that they need to be always looking over their shoulders. And for Kiki, the shame she's felt for years. I feel ashamed of, I wasn't there at that moment. Like if she was in a bad situation, I wasn't there to like protect her or be there for you. You know what I mean? You did the best that you could. And you know, knowing what I know about Mawa from all the interviews with the people that have shared about her. Like she was really craving love. And you, and Janisha, and Diana, you guys gave her so much love. So I think that you should feel proud of that.

32:17When we first sat down to interview Kiki that day in 2024, she was so quiet, nervous, and shaking. But by the end of that interview, she seemed a little different. I kind of feel a little bit better to that. I'm finally talking about it because I held it in like that. Everything changed. I'm a mother now. Everybody tripled apart. But it's for the best. But we still have that strong love for Mawa. It means everything to me that we're finally telling this story. We should have told back then. That Janisha, Diana, and Kiki feel listened to the way they should have on day one. And I'm very grateful that you all care about us and care about what happened to her because her story needed to be told. Janisha thinks Mawa will be at peace after Kaleel's next sentencing.

33:21When her loved ones can finally stand up and be her voice. She was just a little 15-year-old girl who was just trying to make it out here. She was just like everybody, every other teenager out here who wanted to have fun, live life, work, who had dreams. That's who Mawa didn't be a was. For now, they'll just keep finding her in all of life's small and big moments, like that day at Riverbank Park. The girls joked and shared memories about Mawa and we took turns writing sweet messages to her on soft balloons. She was just trying to make her think her favorite color. Finally, we stood by the river with the sun setting behind us and said a few words for her. Here's Kiki. I know guys up there right now making sure that you're okay and you're safe. And I know he got a nice room up there.

34:21But I'm saying, Kiki, you know, Kiki love you, okay? The whole gang is out here. We never forget about you. Kiki said it was a happy, sad day. We all had tears in our eyes, but her little daughter kept us smiling too. Just before releasing the balloons, Kiki called her over and put the string of one of them into her little hand. To send it up for Mawa, the beautiful auntie she never got to meet. Happy birthday, Mawa. Happy birthday, baby. Happy birthday, baby. We love you, Mawa. This has been Someone's Hunting Us. Follow the podcast for updates on the case and coverage of Khalil Wheeler-Weaver's trial in the death of Mawa Dumbia.

35:23Someone's Hunting Us is a production of N.J. Advanced Media. The podcast is reported and produced by me, Daisy Calavia Robertson and Rebecca Everett. Our executive producers are Christopher Kelly, Jessica Beam, Jeff Roberts and Jess Mazola. This podcast is recorded and mixed by Alex Graves at Sound on Sound Studios in Montclair, New Jersey. Our composer is Blake Maples. James Shapiro is our associate audio engineer. Our website is designed by Alas Saleem. Special thanks to each and every person who shared their story with us. If you want to see photos, videos, timelines, and other extras from this story, check out our website, SomeoneShuntingUs.com. You can contact us at inbox at SomeoneShuntingUs.com. Follow someone's hunting us, and if you're enjoying it, please rate and review it. Word of mouth is huge, so please help spread the word.