Why Did Long Island Produce So Many Serial Killers? What Robert Shulman's Letters Revealed

[00:00:02]Does Long Island allow people to live a double life?

[00:00:07]I can't think of another area of the country [music] that has so many serial killers.

[00:00:13]>> Long Island, New York, home to the Gilgo Beach serial killer, Rex Huerman. Home to Joel Riiffken, Richard Codingham, John Bitro, and during the very same years, another serial killer, Robert Schulman.

[00:00:29]>> [music] >> What was it about these men that grew up on Long Island?

[00:00:35]>> You might not recognize the name Robert Schulman, but his story sits at the center of the Long Island serial killer phenomenon. Schulman confessed to murdering at least five [music] women.

[00:00:48]He prayed on vulnerable victims, disposed of their bodies around Long Island's roadways, [music] and committed his crimes during a period when at least six other serial offenders were active in the same small region. That fact alone raises uncomfortable questions.

[00:01:10]Rifken confessed to murdering 17. We have Herman admitted to killing [music] eight. We have Schulman admitted to killing five.

[00:01:19]>> Was it chance? Was it access [music] to vulnerable victims, shared childhood experiences? Or are we [music] looking at something bigger, a social phenomenon rather than a series of isolated offenders?

[00:01:33]As part of our ongoing investigation into the Long Island serial killers, I've tracked down something that has [music] never been examined publicly. A trove of letters written by Robert Schwan. Now, we're [music] talking about years of correspondence, and they reveal how Schulman wanted to be remembered and perhaps what he was trying to hide.

[00:01:59]>> One woman that I spoke with, she had put me in contact [music] with his friend that had the letters. This is the first time the contents of these letters have been presented publicly. By the end of this episode, you'll know who Robert Schulman really was [music] and whether his life helps explain why Long Island produces so many monsters.

[00:02:22]>> They just have no regard for human life.

[00:02:24]They never saw these women as human. So, there's nothing to be ashamed of in their minds. If anything, they're they're proud of it.

[00:02:32]>> I'm James Buddy Day. This is Unmarked.

[00:02:37][music] Over the years, the Long Island serial killer has gone by a number of names.

[00:02:48]The Ocean Parkway killer, the Gilgo Beach killer, the Craigslist ripper. And that's because we now know that the Long Island serial killer isn't [music] one investigation. It's many. a series of overlapping cases involving multiple offenders who hunted the same vulnerable populations over the course of four decades.

[00:03:11]By conservative estimates, well over 100 women were murdered by serial offenders operating in and around New York during this period, and 200 victims is no longer outside the realm of possibility.

[00:03:26]So, we're unpacking these crimes over a series of episodes. We've already examined Richard Codingham and Joel Rifkin. We've begun following the Rex Herman case as prosecutors continue to reveal new evidence. And if you've seen any of those episodes, you'll recognize some of the patterns here. But if you haven't, this episode is a perfect place to start.

[00:03:49]>> I can't think of another area of the country that has so many serial killers.

[00:03:54]So it it is interesting, right? Like what what is going on that has contributed to these men uh engaging in this sick activity? Right.

[00:04:07]>> That's Kristen Thorne, a five-time Emmy award-winning investigative journalist who spent years covering crime on Long Island. She's reported extensively on the Gilgo Beach investigation and has been following the Rex Hurerman case from the moment of his arrest.

[00:04:24]>> Does Long Island allow people to live a double life? Cuz we see that with a lot of these guys, right? They had their their normal life where they worked at the post office or they were an architect in Midtown Manhattan and then on at night they were these crazy people.

[00:04:40]>> Now, if you've never heard of Robert Schulman, you're not alone. Unlike Rex Herman or Joel Riiffken, his name has largely faded from public memory, but it shouldn't have. Schulman's life may be one of the clearest windows into why Long Island produced so many serial killers during the 1980s and 1990s.

[00:05:04]But before we get into all of that, let me catch you up.

[00:05:08]In 1996, Robert Schulman was a 42-year-old postal worker from Hicksville, Long Island. After his arrest, he confessed to murdering and dismembering three women. Years later, he admitted to killing at least two more. That's five victims that we know of. For years, the details of his crimes remained fragmented. But that's begun to change. Advances in DNA have helped identify his victims, clarify timelines, and fill in important gaps in the investigation.

[00:05:43]But if you've listened to Unmarked, you know that's not enough for us. Police reports will tell us how investigators solved the case. But what they rarely tell us is what was happening inside the offender's mind. What fantasy was he chasing? How did he explain himself?

[00:06:01]What story did he tell about his own life? That's where this new evidence becomes so valuable.

[00:06:08]>> So, I work in the post office that Robert Shman actually worked in and was apprehended from uh back in uh the '9s when all this stuff was happening.

[00:06:22]>> That's Nick Greystone. He's not a detective or psychologist. Nick lives in the same community and working with investigative journalist Kristen Thorne, Nick helped uncover something extraordinary. A former coworker had kept decades of correspondence with Schulman after he was sent to prison. A lot of people alienated him after the after the fact, but you know, he referred to him as Bob. He was like, "Bob was my friend, you know, and I I kept in contact with him." And I wrote to him while he was in prison. The next day, like he brought in this manila folder and it was full of these letters, [music] about maybe 50 or 60 of them that he wrote to him up until about 6 months before he passed. I've spent days reading these letters. They're fascinating [music] and reveal not only how Schulman saw himself, but how he saw others within the Long Island serial killer investigation.

[00:07:22]>> The most interesting thing that I thought when I was reading is he talks about his interactions with these other killers cuz he's in with Joel Riiffken and it's so interesting. There's like this level of the way they view each other. like he doesn't see his own depravity, he sees it in other people.

[00:07:43]>> That's the part I want to understand.

[00:07:46]What was driving Robert Schulman? Do we see the same psychological patterns that we found in Rex Herman, Joel Riiffken, Richard Codingham? Or does Schulman tell us something different?

[00:07:57]>> He says about Joel Ripken, um, he always has a stupid smile on his face and brags about his crimes. He's he gets angry at people who aren't taking responsibility for what they've done. Show some remorse. Why are you bragging? Yet, he never took responsibility for what he did. What Kristen is describing is one of the central contradictions in these letters. Despite giving multiple detailed confessions after his arrest, Schulman spent years proclaiming his innocence. It's one of the many paradoxes that we'll unpack throughout this episode. But to understand Robert Schulman, we first have to understand the place that shaped him. The same Long Island that produced other serial offenders. The same Long Island where Schulman's childhood laid the foundation for the man he would eventually become.

[00:08:52]And for that, we have to go all the way back to the beginning.

[00:08:58]Imagine Long Island during the post-war boom.

[00:09:06]You have to picture endless rows of Cape Cod homes, new Levittown subdivisions spreading to the [music] east, young families chasing the American dream.

[00:09:17]It's a place built on optimism, clean streets, good schools, and the promise of a better life. This is where Robert Schulman is born. March 28th, [music] 1954.

[00:09:32]For the rest of his [music] life, almost everyone calls him Bob. He spends his childhood in East Meadow, moving to Texas for a brief period before eventually settling on Hicksville, Long Island.

[00:09:46]>> Joel Riiffken in [music] um East Meadow, the Amityville Horror.

[00:09:52]Robert Schulman being in Hicksville.

[00:09:54]Like this was all just stones [music] throw away. It's everyday suburbia. You know, I live in Bellemore, so it's like a couple of towns over, but it's really just middle class, all houses in a row.

[00:10:06]Why neighborhood?

[00:10:08]There's nothing outwardly remarkable about these neighborhoods. They're not isolated. They're not impoverished.

[00:10:14]They're the kind of places where children ride bicycles, where families mow their lawns on Saturdays, [music] and everyone assumes they know their neighbors.

[00:10:25]Back in the late 1950s, Bob is one [music] of four boys. Sheldon, known as Shelly, is the oldest. [music] Then there's Steve, Bob, and finally the youngest, Barry. They're raised by Jules and Mildred Schulman.

[00:10:40]>> I mean, I think that it was a very tumultuous household. I think that there was a lot of seemed like there was some abuse in the household, you know, whether emotional, physical.

[00:10:50]Kristen Thorne is absolutely right, but tumultuous almost feels too gentle.

[00:10:56]Years later, during Robert Schulman's sentencing, a member of the family would describe the house as quote, "a horrific combination of filth, grime, and inept parenting." [music] End quote. Those words stayed with me because they capture something police reports rarely do. Neglect isn't just the absence of care. It's the whole environment. It's the place where a child learns who they are.

[00:11:23]>> So, there's three brothers, right?

[00:11:24]There's the older brother, uh, who, um, I have spoken with. I'm going to keep what he said private because he asked me to, but, look, [music] he was nothing like his younger brother. Um, and, uh, you know, really, um, look, loves his brother. it was his brother. But he it sort of also raises the question of you can have all these different people in a family and some [music] end up completely normal.

[00:11:51]>> According to Thor's reporting, Shelley is the one brother who appears to emerge with the fewest [music] lasting scars.

[00:11:58]That observation points to something very important. When we ask why a sibling becomes a serial killer while another doesn't, there usually isn't a single answer. There's just probabilities. The takeaway here is that for Bob Schulman and his brothers, they grow up in a home of instability. And much of that instability appears to center on their mother, Mildred. He had um a mother that was a um very flirtatious woman. She was like an alcoholic. There was some signs of abuse. There's little question that Mildrid struggled with significant mental illness, although the records never establish a formal diagnosis. What I found instead were contemporary descriptions.

[00:12:49]Neighbors remember a woman who seemed consumed by her own life, more interested in parties and dancing than raising four boys. Those accounts are subjective, but they're remarkably consistent. They describe a home defined by emotional neglect and a mother who often seemed psychologically unavailable.

[00:13:11]This is where Bob Schulman grows up in a house where affection is scarce. Dinner is sometimes little more than undercooked spaghetti [music] covered in ketchup. His siblings later remember their mother sleeping through much of the day, groggy and detached. Things like birthdays are easily forgotten.

[00:13:31]To a child, [music] experiences like these become something much deeper than disappointment.

[00:13:37]Children rarely conclude that their parent is [music] incapable. Instead, they come to believe that they are somehow unworthy of love. And as we'll see, this pattern becomes much darker as Bob [music] comes into adulthood.

[00:13:53]But at this point, it's locked away.

[00:13:55][music] Part of Bob's internal story.

[00:13:58]Neighbors remember a quiet, withdrawn boy. [music] They report poor eye contact, dirty clothes, little attention to hygiene. Looking back, it's impossible to know whether [music] we're seeing the early traits of psychopathy, the effects of chronic neglect, or some interaction between the two. But school records offer some insight. Bob struggles academically. Reading is difficult for him. His emotional development appears delayed. There are repeated signs of truency, behavioral problems, and difficulty regulating emotion.

[00:14:36]And by the time Bob Schulman is 13 years old, another tragedy strikes. In 1967, Bob's father, Jules, dies from complications of Hodgkins lymphoma.

[00:14:50]Bob is devastated, and so is the rest of the family. Years later, while reading through Schulman's prison letters, I came across this passage. I'll read it to you now. Quote, "Never was I disrespectful to my father.

[00:15:07]Even though he died when I was just 13, I knew this would have never changed [music] because I still miss him." End quote.

[00:15:16]Now, whether or not we believe everything that Robert Schulman wrote, this letter reveals something important.

[00:15:23]He was capable of attachment. And that's significant because psychopaths are often described [music] as incapable of meaningful emotional bonds. Yet Schuman's history is more complicated.

[00:15:36]After his father's death, the surviving brothers appear to become [music] even closer in the face of their mother's neglect.

[00:15:44]That's consistent with what psychologists call scaffolding. When children experience chronic trauma or the loss of a caregiver, older siblings often begin providing the emotional support that parents [music] cannot.

[00:15:58]These siblings become protectors, role models, sources of stability that help the younger siblings regulate emotions and navigate the unpredictable world.

[00:16:08]And researchers have found that these sibling relationships can become unusually strong. and the Schulman brothers. They appear to fit this pattern.

[00:16:20]Back in 1967, Bob's mother, Mildred, meets a man through a support group called Parents Without Partners, and within 5 days, they're married.

[00:16:31]By now, this family has already endured years of neglect, and [music] that has a realworld cost.

[00:16:39]In 1978, Bob's elder brother Steve dies due to self harm after years of depression and substance abuse. [music] And just 2 years later, in 1980, Bob attempts the same thing. He tries to take his own life by locking himself inside his eldest [music] brother's family garage with the engine of a running car. He survives this, but the attempt offers an important snapshot into who Robert Schulman is at this point. He's drifting, working odd jobs, [music] still carrying the emotional weight of a childhood defined by neglect [music] and instability.

[00:17:21]When I compare that history with what Robert Schulman later says after his [music] arrest and what he writes in these letters, I don't see someone simply hiding from reality. I see someone retreating, falling back into an increasingly elaborate internal [music] world, a world of fantasy.

[00:17:45]I found a fascinating study published in 2020 and it's called a behavior sequence analysis of serial killers lives from childhood abuse to methods of murder.

[00:17:57]What caught my attention wasn't simply the conclusion but the methodology.

[00:18:02]Rather than looking at isolated risk factors, the researchers use behavioral sequence analysis to identify statistically significant pathways between specific forms of child abuse and the behaviors that serial killers later exhibit towards their victims. If you look at this chart created by the researchers, you'll notice that the arrows vary in size and direction. Now those arrows represent the strength of the statistical relationship between these particular childhood experiences and the later behaviors. Now this part is important. The researchers are not arguing that abuse creates a serial killer. The overwhelming majority of abused children never become violent.

[00:18:46]Instead, what this study suggests is something much more nuanced among individuals who are already neurologically vulnerable. And I'm talking about people whose brains may already be predisposed to linking things like sexual arousal and violence.

[00:19:04]Certain forms of childhood trauma appear to influence how those fantasies developed and in some cases how they're ultimately expressed.

[00:19:14]And using this research and Robert Schulman's letters, we have something incredibly valuable. Because when we compare what he writes about himself to what we know about his childhood, we can begin testing whether his life follows the same developmental patterns described in the research. What we can see in the letters is, you know, it's almost like he wants to love somebody, but he he either doesn't know how to, or there's always a reason that these love stories that he thought he was going to have with these women didn't work out.

[00:19:50]But you can also tell that he definitely feels in the letters that he is not worthy.

[00:20:03]What Kristen is describing is what psychologists often call a shame schema.

[00:20:09]It's more than low self-esteem. It's a deeply held belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

[00:20:15]that you're somehow defective, unlovable, or undeserving of affection.

[00:20:21]And when we look at Robert Schulman's childhood and combine it with the research, that's exactly the pattern that I see. A mother who appears emotionally unavailable throughout his upbringing. A father he loses at 13 years of instability, neglect, and isolation. And over time, these experiences leave Bob with something deeper than sadness. They leave him with shame.

[00:20:47]While reading through Bob's letters, I came across this passage. Quote, "My worst nightmare has come true. Being penniles, homeless, and helpless. You could never even imagine what it feels like to have absolutely no control over your life.

[00:21:06]It's gone way past bitter feelings towards those few gutless cowards that took my life away.

[00:21:14]Reading that, the fantasy jumps off the page. Control again and again. His writing returns to the same emotional state. Humiliation, helplessness, resentment, and the longing to regain control.

[00:21:31]Back in 1979, Bob's mother passes away when he's 22 years old. Decades later, he writes, quote, "My appeal hearing took place on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005."

[00:21:46]That date happens to be on the eve of my mother's death, 29 years earlier.

[00:21:53]That's psychologically significant.

[00:21:55]People who grow up with inconsistent or emotionally unavailable caregivers often develop what psychologists call ambivalent attachment. The relationship is painful, sometimes abusive, yet emotionally unfinished.

[00:22:11]Even after the parent is gone, the child continues searching for meaning, resolution, or connection that never really existed.

[00:22:20]And often these individuals seek out a sense of family with their peers. And for Bob, we can see that in the late 1980s when he's a young man and finds work as a male sorter at the Hicksville post office. He loved everybody at the post office. That seemed to be like his safe place that he really enjoyed working at and the camaraderie. And so he's probably putting that in the letters cuz he want he doesn't want to disappoint them. They're like his only friends. He doesn't really have any family. So these these were like his his peer group.

[00:22:53]>> Kristen's observation is important because it challenges a common misconception about serial killers that they're mindless sharks incapable of relationships. Robert Schulman wasn't incapable of forming relationships. He appears to have [music] desperately wanted them. The post office gives him something he's rarely experienced growing up, a place where he belongs.

[00:23:15]For someone whose childhood was defined by instability, [music] this kind of environment can become profoundly important.

[00:23:23]>> They was saying that he was a quiet guy, you know, he led like a very private life, very work uh driven, like he was obsessed with making the most amount of money in the time that he was here.

[00:23:39]The more I read Schulman's letters, the more I realize he wasn't simply reminiscing about his job. He was attempting to preserve it. The names of co-workers, [music] overtime shift, seniority, the politics of the workplace, the post office becomes a reoccurring theme throughout hundreds of these pages. And as Nick Greystone explained to me, it remained one of Robert Schulman's defining [music] preoccupations long after he was sent to prison. It's about a year before he died. He asked if the seniority list was the same, and did it look something like this? He proceeds to write down about 50 people's names, their start dates in order of them getting hired, him being towards the top, and he was like, "Yo, is this the way that the seniority list is still?" This man hadn't stepped into the post office building for about nine years at this point going 10 years, but he still had this this memory of, you know, he was obsessed with like his uh retirement and this overtime and everything.

[00:24:50]>> That detail fascinates me. Nearly a decade after his arrest, [music] Robert Schulman could still recite the seniority list from the Hicksville Post Office by memory. Dozens of names, higher dates, the order in which people started.

[00:25:07]This isn't nostalgia, it's fixation.

[00:25:11]By this point, it's 1989. Bob is living alone in a small rented bedroom in Hicksville. An elderly landlord occupies the house while his younger brother Barry rents another room upstairs. His life settles into a routine that will largely remain unchanged for nearly 20 years. He sleeps through the day. He reports to the Hicksville Post Office for the overnight shift, working from 10:30 p.m. [music] until 7:00 a.m.

[00:25:40]Sundays and Mondays are his days off.

[00:25:43]Co-workers describe him as quote filthy and hostile. Neighbors remember him shuffling in and out of the house wearing the same worn army jacket and flannel shirt every day, climbing into a battered blue Cadillac that he shares with his brother. And almost always he's accompanied by women that witnesses describe as quote sleazy.

[00:26:10]Now he also did a ton of drugs, right?

[00:26:12]He was uh addicted. that he uh crack cocaine one is something along those lines um which he would lure the women with and they would engage in drugs together and so he was also a drug addict.

[00:26:25]>> There's one letter that caught my attention because it says far more than I think Robert Schulman intended. quote, "I was not willing to work hard and bring up a son, and then at 15 or 16 or so, he decides to be a drug addict for something I had no control over."

[00:26:45]Throughout these letters, Schulman repeatedly condemns people in this way.

[00:26:49]He's able to see other people's struggles, but not able to acknowledge them in himself. Psychologists call this projection. It's not necessarily conscious dishonesty. It's a defense mechanism that allows someone to preserve a version of themselves that feels more acceptable than reality.

[00:27:08]Which brings up something else Schulman is never willing to discuss. The true barrier to his ability to establish meaningful relationships.

[00:27:17]Just as we saw with Joel Riiffken, Robert Schulman becomes increasingly obsessed with a population of sex workers in Queens.

[00:27:26]But before we go any further, we need to understand New York in the early 90s because Robert Schulman is not operating in isolation. Neither is Joel Riiffken who's active during the same time period, nor John Bitro, nor decades later, Rex Hume.

[00:27:43]So, how is it that multiple serial killers operate in the same region without anyone realizing it? Part of the answer lies in the city itself.

[00:27:56]During the 1980s, New York launches an aggressive campaign to reclaim neighborhoods overwhelmed by drugs and street crime. One initiative alone is called Operation Pressure Point in 1984.

[00:28:10]It results in the arrest of more than 11,000 people. Officers issue tens of thousands of summones in response, most related to drug offenses. And over the next several years, that number continues to climb. Now, on paper, it looks like remarkable success. But in reality, it produces an unintended consequence.

[00:28:34]>> They started cleaning up and so all of this started to [music] to filter out.

[00:28:38]>> This is a key finding as we continue to investigate the Long Island serial killers because the crackdown addresses where crime is happening, but it doesn't address why. Drug addiction doesn't simply disappear. Poverty doesn't disappear. Sex work doesn't disappear.

[00:28:54]The vulnerable people move.

[00:28:56]>> We see that a lot of these sex workers came from the Bronx and from Queens. So they they were pushed out of out of Manhattan, right, the Times Square area and lower Manhattan.

[00:29:06]>> By the early 1990s, hundreds of women have been pushed out of Manhattan and are now working along Roosevelt Avenue and Jamaica Avenue in Queens. depending on traffic about a 40inut drive from Time Square. So whether intentionally or not, New York City has concentrated exactly the kind of vulnerable population that serial predators look for.

[00:29:32]According to investigative notes, when detectives begin canvasing Jamaica Avenue after the murders, [music] sex workers repeatedly describe the same customer, a man named Bob who drives a battered blue Cadillac and lives in a filthy one-bedroom apartment in Hicksville on Long Island.

[00:29:51]And I came across another excerpt in the [music] letters that sheds light on Bob Schulman's inner thoughts during this time. quote, "There are many nice guys who remain single, never wanting to be tied down with marriage and children. I was one of those guys. Too much responsibility." End quote.

[00:30:12]What strikes me about that passage [music] isn't the excuse that Bob gives, it's how ordinary he believes his life would have been. He doesn't describe himself as someone fundamentally different from everyone else, even though we've established that he clearly is. He casts himself as simply an average man who simply chose another path. But his goal was never companionship. [music] Bob Schulman spends an excessive amount of time seeking out sex workers while in the letters he writes longingly about his desire for marriage. How can both of these things be true? The answer may lie in the fact that there are two completely different fantasies at play here. What's interesting, you see in the letters, is that he was in love with two women at this post office branch, one of which he says he proposed to. You can tell in the letters that he really wanted to be married. He wanted to have that stable life, but there just there must have been something dark in him.

[00:31:18]>> Now, this isn't necessarily reality. in the letters Bob Schillman writes about these two co-workers extensively. Though it appears that he was only casually acquainted with either, but it gives us a window into Schulman's fantasy world.

[00:31:34]The women he imagines building a life with are not the women he seeks out. One represents the attachment that he longs for. The other represents the control he exerts.

[00:31:47]Years later, Schulman will describe a deep-seated hatred towards sex workers despite seeking them out compulsively.

[00:31:58]We don't know exactly when Robert Schulman crosses the line. His first known homicide occurs in August of 1991, but remarkably, Schulman doesn't confess to this murder until nearly 20 years later, long after he's already been sentenced. and convicted. That delay is significant. It reminds us that even years after his arrest, we still don't know the full extent of his crimes.

[00:32:29]Case in point, I found this newspaper clipping from 1995. This is a year before Robert Schulman's arrest. It lists seven unsolved homicides from the same period, including Schulman's first known victim, Lorie Vasquez.

[00:32:46]Now, looking back today, the list reads very differently. Of the seven, we now know that two of these women were murdered by serial killer Francisco Asdo.

[00:32:56]Another victim was linked to suspected serial killer Lucius Crawford.

[00:33:01]Two of the women remain unsolved and the final two victims, they belong to Robert Schulman.

[00:33:07]Think about that for a moment. A single newspaper clipping, seven victims, at least three different serial offenders, all operating in the same region during roughly the same time.

[00:33:19]>> When I think about the amount of bodies that are buried in New York City, it just like blows my mind, right? Um, so I do think [music] that there potentially are more victims of these killers that have just never been found. They're buried somewhere deep or they're now completely decomposed.

[00:33:36]>> What we know is that Lorie Vasquez was 24 years old. She was living in Brooklyn and surviving through sex work.

[00:33:45]According to the autopsy, she dies from blunt force trauma to the head. [music] And as we'll see, that becomes one of the reoccurring features of Schulman's murders.

[00:33:55]The investigative file also establishes something else. Lorie Vasquez is killed inside Robert Schulman's bedroom. That detail is significant. Schulman isn't living in some abandoned farmhouse or isolated cabin. He's renting a room in the suburbs. He has neighbors. He has a landlord that lives in the same residence. His younger brother lives right above him. How does someone repeatedly bring vulnerable women into a suburban home, commit murder, transport bodies, and attract so little attention?

[00:34:31]Now, that question doesn't just apply to Robert Schulman. It's one of the defining questions running through nearly every Long Island serial killer case.

[00:34:40]I remember when I first moved to to Long Island from uh the DC area and I remember going to meet my neighbors and I [music] would introduce myself and it they were like they thought it was very strange, you know, that that I wanted to know who my neighbors are and so Long Island is very it can be very insular.

[00:35:03]Whether that insularity contributed to these crimes is impossible to measure, but it does help explain how someone like Robert Schulman could remain almost invisible.

[00:35:15]Lorie Vasquez's body is discovered on August 31st, 1991 inside a dumpster in Yonkers.

[00:35:23]Then for nearly a year, the trail appears to go cold. Schulman's next known homicide doesn't occur until June 27th, 1992. At least that's what we know today. The victim I'm referring to is the same unidentified woman from the newspaper clipping we already discussed.

[00:35:42]Her name is Marica Hammonds, 31 years old. Like Lorie Vasquez, she is supporting herself through sex work. And according to the investigative record, Schulman picks her up, brings her back to his rented room on Long Island, murders her there, and later transports her body to a dumpster behind a pizza restaurant in Yoners.

[00:36:05]Already a pattern is beginning to emerge. The victims are drawn from the same vulnerable population. They're brought back to the same room. They're killed in the same private space. And then they're discarded miles away, separated from the place where the murders actually occurred. And that brings us to something unusual.

[00:36:26]Robert Schulman is not known to commit another homicide for almost 2 years. At least that's what the record tells us.

[00:36:34]The gap raises an obvious question. Why?

[00:36:37]Nothing else in Chman's life appears to have changed. He's still working the overnight shift at the Hicksville post [music] office. He's still driving around the same battered blue Cadillac.

[00:36:48]He's still cruising the streets of Queens, picking up sex workers and bringing them back to the same rented bedroom on Long Island. And when detectives finally search that room 2 years later in 1996, they document more than 2,000 blood stains belonging to multiple victims in that single room.

[00:37:12]parts of Long Island are very desolate where you can't see your hand in front of your face at night. That's how dark it is. Gilgo, for example, is extremely dark. Manorville, all of these areas um that that some of these bodies were found in. Uh there are not you cannot see a car go by for 5 or 10 minutes, right? Which gives you enough time.

[00:37:32]>> Are there other victims during this gap in Schulman's timeline? The honest answer is that we don't know. But given what we now understand about serial offending, I would say it's highly possible. What we know is that the next victim we can place in Robert Schulman's timeline is still known only as Medford Jane Doe. More than 30 years later, no one has been able to give her back her name.

[00:37:59]>> Medford Jane Doe is a victim that Robert Schulman has taken responsibility for but was never able to identify. So, no one knows who this woman is. Uh, but he said that he killed her.

[00:38:17]>> According to his later confession, Schulman meets this victim in December of 1994. She is a sex worker. He brings her back to his room in Hicksville.

[00:38:28]There, he later tells investigators he kills her with blunt force trauma using a baseball bat. That method, as we know, is significant. By now, we're seeing the same pattern repeat. The victims are brought to the same locations and killings are carried out in broadly the same manner. And according to the autopsy and investigative record, the violence does not stop when the victim dies. Schulman spends a considerable amount of time with the body, not just attempting to conceal the victim's identity before disposing of the remains, but inflicting unnecessary violence. The behavior tells investigators something important. The murder itself is only one part of the ritual.

[00:39:11]>> Look, she was found brutally murdered.

[00:39:15]Her family is clearly she still has family members out there somewhere who who want to know uh whatever happened to her. She deserves to have her identity uh her identity known. According to witness statements, another sex worker later tells detectives about a screenedin porch that is attached to Bob Schulman's room. She describes a workbench, a hacksaw, a hammer, and other tools.

[00:39:42]Investigators will later conclude that it's this area that is used during the multiple homicides.

[00:39:49]>> Jane do Medford has not been been identified for 30 years. recently up until like the last year like it was case closed. They didn't, you know, they didn't really uh care to look into it anymore. They don't really have that much evidence on her. They have a description that you could find on names and everything. But like for her now, they opened up the case to the public to see because I feel the um the Gilgo case really brought this to the forefront where these women now are getting treated like human beings.

[00:40:25]Just a few years ago, Suffach County investigators released a new facial reconstruction, hoping advances in forensic genealogy and renewed public attention might finally restore this victim's identity. It's a reminder that these cases are not historical. They're still unfolding.

[00:40:45]Back in 1994, the body is discovered on December 7th by an employee with the Suffach County Department of Public Works.

[00:40:55]The victim had been placed inside a brand new Rubbermaid garbage container lying on its side amongst roadside debris. At the time, the investigation is minimal. But after Robert Schulman's arrest, we learn something even more astonishing.

[00:41:13]Robert Schulman's younger brother, Barry, later confesses that on three separate occasions, including this murder, he helped Robert Schulman dispose of human remains.

[00:41:25]>> Barry, the younger brother, was convicted of helping his Robert Schulman, his older brother, dispose of these bodies. When I spoke with Kristen Thorne, I wanted to understand how this could happen. Was your impression that Barry is helping hide the bodies, dispose of the bodies, however you want to put it. Is it because he shares that disregard, that callousness for for other people, or is it out of this, you know, intense bond he would have had with his brother having both grown up in a very traumatic situation? I think it's probably a combination of the both. I think Barry also uh you know to be able to do this you have to show an incredible lack of regard for human life and he seemed to have been involved in at least a few of these.

[00:42:20]In April of 1995, Robert Schulman picks up 18-year-old Lisa Anne Warner, bringing her back to his room in Hicksville. According to his later confession, he kills her with a hammer.

[00:42:34]Her body is discovered on April 6th by employees at a Brooklyn recycling facility. And even today, investigators continued to debate Barry Schulman's role.

[00:42:45]>> You know, there's been a lot of back and forth about how much was Barry involved.

[00:42:52]You know, was he really just disposing of them? There's if you talk to people who worked on the case many years ago there they felt that Barry was more involved than he led on but there was never enough to prosecute him for that.

[00:43:11]>> Remember Barry and Bob Schulman both work at the Hicksville Post Office. They live at the same address. They share the same blue Cadillac. So the obvious question is this. Are we dealing with Killer Brothers? The honest answer is that we don't know. Barry is later convicted of helping dispose of human remains, but no evidence has ever been presented that conclusively places him at the murders themselves.

[00:43:38]Investigators have long suspected he knew more than he admitted. But suspicion is not evidence. What we know is this.

[00:43:50]On December 8th, 1995, Robert Schulman is cruising Jamaica Avenue near the intersection of 198th Street and Francis Lewis Boulevard, when he picks up a woman he knows only as Melanie. Now, her real name is Kelly Sue Bunting, 28 years old.

[00:44:10]Several witnesses later identify Schulman as a familiar face in the area and [music] reports seeing him with Bunting on that night. According to his later confession, Schulman brings Kelly Sue Bunting back to his room in Hicksville where he kills her using a dumbbell. He then wraps her body in plastic garbage bags and sleeping bags before placing her in the trunk of the blue Cadillac he shares with his brother. He later tells investigators that he disposes of her clothing separately and throws a small paper bag containing her severed hands into a garbage container outside a fast food [music] restaurant. One story that I heard is he did come to work one time and he was all disheveled and he said, you know, he was like frantic about something. He was like sweating and uh he had said that this is what one of his co-workers said that he got in trouble and he was scared that it was going to come back to him and haunt him and get him in trouble to get fired. And they're like, "No, dude."

[00:45:20]Like, no one heard about this. Like [music] he was really paranoid.

[00:45:23]They're thinking now that possibly he had killed one of these sex workers [music] and then this came to work straight from it and then uh you know went on the clock. What makes the account noteworthy is that it fits the pattern we've already seen. Robert Schulman appears capable of compartmentalizing his life to an extraordinary degree. One moment he's transporting a body through a Long Island. A short time later, he's reporting to work at the post office, sorting mail alongside people who have no idea what has just happened. This is exactly what Kristen Thorne meant at the beginning of this episode when she asked whether Long Island somehow allowed these men to live double lives. Within 6 months of that is when he got arrested.

[00:46:10]>> Within a month, Robert Schulman is in custody. Not because of a serial killer task force, not because of sophisticated forensic technology, and not because investigators have been tracking him for years. He's caught because detectives begin to talk to the sex workers along Jamaica Avenue about the disappearance of Kelly Subunting.

[00:46:32]And these women, they know exactly [music] who they're looking for. In fact, they offer to take detectives to Bob's house.

[00:46:41]one of the detectives, I believe his name was Detective White, who's since retired and everything, but she went there and he spoke to one of the call girls there, and they said that the last time she was seen, she was picked up by a guy named Bob who would frequent there uh in a blue Cadillac.

[00:47:00]And that's the Cadillac that he shared with his brother. Think about that for a moment. For years, Robert Schulman moves almost unnoticed through Long Island.

[00:47:10]Yet, among the women that he's targeting, he's anything but anonymous.

[00:47:15]They know his first name. They know his car. They know exactly where he lives.

[00:47:21]Robert Schulman is arrested inside the post office, and when the interrogation begins, investigators describe him suffering a [music] nervous breakdown.

[00:47:31]Schulman ultimately provides four written statements detailing the murders of Kelly Sue Bunting, Medford Jane Doe, and Lisa Anne Warner. Detectives also collect hair, blood, and saliva samples that further connect him to the victims.

[00:47:47]On April 16th, 1996, Robert Schulman pleads guilty to multiple counts of murder. Later that year, he's sentenced to death for three of the killings.

[00:47:58]returning to court afterwards for the final two. After New York's death penalty statute is struck down in 2004, [music] those sentences are automatically converted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

[00:48:14]But it's his brother Barry Schulman's sentence that remains controversial.

[00:48:19]Barry pleads guilty to helping dispose of two bodies despite admitting involvement in at least three. He receives just 6 months in prison followed by 5 years probation. According to Kristen Thorne, Barry has lived a quiet, reclusive life ever since and has never publicly spoken in detail about what happened with his brother.

[00:48:42]For Robert Schulman, prison quickly settles into routine, and the letters he writes begin to change.

[00:48:49]>> You can tell by 2002, he's actually saying he wishes he would die, that they would put him to death. So [music] the death penalty was outlawed in New York.

[00:48:57]He was first sentenced to death and then it was outlawed in 2004. It was ruled unconstitutional. [music] So in 2002 he still would have had an option to have been put to death. And you can see in the letters by that point he was saying he wishes that they would just do it. Reading those letters what struck me wasn't remorse. It was resignation. The fantasies that had sustained him for decades were gone. The routines that once gave his life structure had all but disappeared.

[00:49:26][music] All that remained was time.

[00:49:30]Robert Schulman dies in prison in April of 2006. [music] At the time, he's only 52 years old.

[00:49:38]>> Robert Schulman was a disturbed individual. It's too bad he only got 9 years in prison before he died. I finally did the math and I was like, "Oh, that's it. That's disappointing."

[00:49:47]Um because he really should have suffered more for what he did to these women, [music] right? When I began researching Robert Schulman, I thought I was telling the story of another forgotten serial killer. Instead, I found something much larger. Schulman's life follows many of the same patterns we've already seen in the Long Island serial killers. A childhood marked by neglect, a neurological vulnerability that we can never fully measure. years of isolation, fantasy, and resentment, and finally access to a population of vulnerable women who had been pushed to the margins and largely ignored. Long Island's tragedy is that during the 1980s and '90s, society supplied the missing pieces almost by accident. As New York cleaned up Manhattan, thousands of vulnerable women were pushed into new neighborhoods along the city's edge. And at that very moment, men like Robert Schulman and Joel Riiffken were descending deeper into violent fantasy.

[00:50:51]An increasingly isolated population of men and a vulnerable population of women. The perfect storm. Not because anyone intended it, because no one even recognized what was happening.

[00:51:05]>> What was it about these men that grew up on Long Island, right? Um they they were from here. uh what and and you know they moved around a little bit so we should specify you know from here they some [music] went to New Jersey and then kind of their families took them to different parts of the country but uh they ended up back here so it still begs the question [music] like what what is in the water before we wrap a few show notes my thanks again to investigative journalist Kristen Thorne for joining me on this episode. You can follow her work on Instagram. She's easy to find @ Kristen Thorne. If you'd like to support the show, you'll find adree and early access to our audio episodes, including extended interviews, source documents, and supporting research inside Unmarked Case Files on [music] Patreon.

[00:52:01]We've also just launched YouTube memberships where you'll find many of the same benefits along with exclusive content as we continue to expand this channel. outside the podcast. If you've been thinking of picking up my book, Charles Manson: The Last Words, now's a great time. It's available on Kindle, Amazon, and through Kindle Unlimited exclusively. And if true crime isn't enough, my dark fantasy novel, A Plague of Steel, is available now on Kindle, Amazon, and Kindle Unlimited. It is a grim, dark war story about what war leaves behind. If you do decide to read it, I'd really, really appreciate you leaving a review. For independent authors like me, reviews make an enormous difference. And finally, if you want to see what I'm researching, what I'm reading, what I'm thinking about for future episodes, you can follow me on Instagram. I'm also easy to find, James Buddy Day. This episode of Unmarked was produced by John Nado, edited by Dave Alderson, and our additional producer is Jesse Deereay. Until next week, this is Unmarked.