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Suspect Admits Strangling 8 Women in Gilgo Beach Serial Killings; U.S. Allies in Gulf Report Iranian Strikes Despite Ceasefire; Iranian Official: Israeli Strikes on Lebanon Violate Ceasefire; Artemis II Crew Two Days Away from Splashdown. Aired 2:30- 3p ET

Aired April 08, 2026 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... this morning he was in court and he pleaded guilty to seven counts of seven young women who he murdered that were in the indictments. And also, surprisingly, another victim, who was not charged at all, her name Karen Vergata, but she was also on Long Island. And what made this case so famous was the Gilgo Four.

That's how it became known around the country, four young women that went missing, parents who never saw their daughter again, young children who never saw their mother again, vanished in clear sight. And then in 2010, these four bodies were found wrapped in burlap on an isolated area of Gilgo Beach. And then other victims at different times were also found, different modus operandi with some of them.

Some of them were dismembered. But all in all, they honed in in 2023 to Rex Heuermann because of his cell phone records, because of his physical description, because of witness testimony. They searched his home, found a planning document of how to murder, dispose of bodies, make sure no one knew.

And then it was DNA. And they got his DNA from a pizza slice. And may I tell you, he was a very successful architect in New York City, Fifth Avenue office, family man, wife, two children who actually were there today and spoke.

But it was the attorney for Valerie Mack who stepped forward to talk about that now come the civil suits and one has already been filed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN RAY, ATTORNEY FOR SON OF VALERIE MACK: Now that Heuermann has admitted to the murder, murderers, in our case, which we've already started in court, it's been filed. It establishes liability and it would mean that we can seek a judgment on liability right away.

There wasn't a jot of remorse in that man's body or face. And there even -- I've seen him before in court and I've seen him look around the audience when he walks in and gaze with a sneer on his face, a slight sneer. He didn't have the sneer today. At least he removed that.

But he was as cold as ice. He was as cold as the dead that he killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: One other thing to note that is fascinating as part of this plea deal, and that's what it was called in court, he will be required to truthfully talk with the FBI in their behavioral analytics unit so the FBI can learn the mind of a serial killer. Fascinating.

And his sentencing is on June 17th. He is facing life in prison without any parole.

KEILAR: Yes, that is important. That helps them hopefully catch other people who have done similar things. Jean Casarez, thank you so much. Appreciate the update here.

Still to come, uncertainty in the Middle East as the U.S. ceasefire with Iran risks falling apart. An update from Saudi Arabia on what regional allies they are hoping to see.

[14:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Happening right now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is convening his security cabinet as the IDF confirmed new strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those attacks happened just hours after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that already appears to be in jeopardy. Iran says it is once again shutting down the Strait of Hormuz while at the same time launching new strikes against the UAE and Kuwait. A key oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia has also been attacked today, according to news reports.

Let's go live to the Saudi capital with CNN's Clarissa Ward. Clarissa, what's the latest you're hearing?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, literally just in the last 15 minutes, we have seen Mohammad Ghalibaf. He is the speaker of Iran's parliament, a former IRGC commander, and is expected or was expected potentially to take part in those direct talks with the U.S. in Islamabad on Friday, has taken to X and put up a post where he essentially goes through what Iran views as three violations already of the agreement between the U.S. and Iran, the ceasefire agreement, which he frames in the context of the 10-point Iranian plan.

He says that Israel's strikes in Lebanon today, which have been the most brutal and devastating since this war began, with more than 110 Lebanese people killed, many more injured. He says that those strikes and that Israeli aggression constitutes a violation of the ceasefire. He says that a drone was shot down in Iranian airspace.

He lists that also as an infraction against the ceasefire. And he lists the denial of Iran's right to enrich uranium, this apparently some kind of a response to President Trump's Truth Social post earlier on today, where he appeared to imply that the U.S. and Iran would work together to extract any remaining enriched uranium. And also, of course, we heard from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that any kind of enrichment program would not be allowed.

[14:40:00]

Now, Ghalibaf is saying that when you put all three of these infractions together, it constitutes in such situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations is unreasonable. So potentially here, we don't know, but the ceasefire and those talks on Friday potentially hanging in the balance right now -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: And what is the mood like there in Riyadh as a result of this? Obviously, the Gulf allies have borne much of the brunt of Iran's response to this.

WARD: You know, Boris, the day started here and there was such a palpable feeling of relief. People felt that a catastrophe had been averted. They were desperately frightened that if President Trump had carried out on his threat to decimate Iran's civilian infrastructure, that it would be countries like Saudi Arabia that would bear the brunt of Iran's retaliatory strikes.

But we have seen a heavy day of Iranian drone and missile strikes in the UAE, in Kuwait, in Bahrain, also here in Saudi Arabia, as you mentioned, nine drones intercepted, one actually hitting a pumping station in that crucial East-West pipeline. And so really, I think it's fair to say that there is increasingly a high level of concern that this ceasefire may be even more fragile than previously anticipated -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: And Clarissa Ward live for us in Saudi Arabia. Thank you so much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Let's talk more about what all of this means with Kian Tajbakhsh. He was a political prisoner in Iran for over a year. Now he is a professor of international relations at NYU.

Kian, thank you for being with us. I know you were skeptical of this announcement and the gaps between Iran and the U.S. from the beginning, a skepticism that appears to have been very warranted here. How are you looking at this now, especially with what we're hearing from Iran and what we just heard from the White House?

KIAN TAJBAKHSH, FORMER IRANIAN PRISONER: Well, thank you for having me on. Yes, I think the skepticism arose because if anyone read the, not the tweet that the Iranian foreign minister made, but the formal announcement that was made by the Supreme Council of National Security in Tehran, it seemed miles and, you know, universes apart from the claims that were being made by the U.S. administration. I would say actually this morning's press conference intensified the skepticism.

Secretary Hegseth claimed -- I mean, I think the big point that I took away was the one question that was asked was, is Iran in control of the Hormuz Straits? And it seemed that Secretary Hegseth did not respond to that. In fact, what he said is that Iran would open the Straits of Hormuz, but he seemed to confirm that it would be under the control of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And General Caine did not respond to that either. And I think that was extremely telling because when, when Secretary Hegseth said, yes, Iran is letting ships go through, this means essentially that from the Iranian point of view, they use the Straits of Hormuz to increase the costs on the U.S. so the U.S. would stop the war. And what we see is that the U.S. stopped the war.

And so Iran sees it as a victory. And indeed, if it is the case that they are in control of the Straits of Hormuz -- and recent reports just a few hours ago, is that the parliament in Tehran is doubling down, making clear the conditions and the parameters of the ships that they will let through. This is not a regime change in Iran, and this is not a victory as was claimed.

But in fact, it would seem to be on the face of it, unless we're missing something behind the scenes. It would be something of a humiliating defeat for the for the U.S.

KEILAR: It's an interesting point you make, because Karoline Leavitt was asked the very same question in the White House press briefing, and she also did not answer it directly, instead emphasizing that they have seen an uptick, as she put it, in travel of ships through the Strait. But again, she also did not answer that question, which was certainly appeared to be telling there.

When you look at Israel striking, as it says, Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and it was quite a day of strikes in Lebanon today. How are you seeing that front in this war and how crucial that is to actually coming to a ceasefire?

[14:45:00]

TAJBAKHSH: I think it's absolutely crucial. Again, referring to the formal statement by the Iranian government, they made clear that they would only honor the ceasefire if there was total cessation of hostilities against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And that means that, you know, they obviously Hezbollah is a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And so they see this is absolutely tied to the question of the ceasefire. It's not just simply the U.S. ceasing attacks. And so that's why I'm very skeptical that there is enough, you know, enough convergence on these points for the ceasefire to hold. I think that, you know, I mean, we have to be careful. Maybe there was there are some conversations being had behind the scenes, which we don't know.

But unless we get more information on that, it seems to be the case that the conditions that led to the war, all the causes, the layered multi causes that led to this war are still in play and they don't seem to have been allayed by the president's claim, which was very surprising that that he felt that the Iranian proposal was a good place to start for negotiations. I mean, they're so far apart. I just don't understand how that could lead to constructive negotiations.

KEILAR: Kian Tajbakhsh, thank you so much for being with us. We do appreciate it.

And still ahead, a historic mission around the moon coming to an end. We have an update from Mission Control next.

[14:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: The Artemis II crew is just two days away from splashdown here on Earth, and preps are underway off the coast of San Diego, where these four astronauts are expected to land on Friday night.

SANCHEZ: NASA has released some of the 10,000 photos the crew snapped during their journey, including some stellar photos of the Milky Way. That is preparations, by the way, for the splashdown. That's the picture of the Milky Way.

Randi Kaye is live for us in Houston at Johnson Space Center. And Randi, last hour, we talked about the training the crew received to take these photos. We should get a bit more into the food prep and what went into that.

There's like macaroni and some barbecue that kind of looks not great. But you got to do what you can in space.

RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You don't have that many options in space. Right. So it's not like you can get an Uber Eats order delivered.

So they did take enough food with them for 10 days, according to the NASA food scientist I spoke with. And they took about 139 pounds of food. They want them to eat about 2500 calories a day because they are working out and they're working very hard up there.

So we got to say we got a little sampling and a close up look at some of it. Of course, we've seen them on the live feed from NASA eating their shrimp cocktail. But we got look at the brisket.

We got to look at the mac and cheese that they actually have to rehydrate. That's what I'm holding there in my hand. They put water in it, but they don't have a microwave or anything.

So they just have a warming bin. So they add water and then they let that something like that sit if it needs to be rehydrated for about 10 or 15 minutes and then they can eat it. But something like the barbecue brisket is ready to eat.

And the NASA scientists talked about that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

XULEI WU, NASA FOOD SCIENTIST: This is a barbecue beef brisket. This is processed by radiation, but it's totally safe to consume. It's just using gamma radiation to make the food shelf stable with three year shelf life.

This is a collaboration between NASA and the Natick military combat feeding department. And I open this pouch.

KAYE: So that's ready to eat.

WU: This is ready to eat. Yes.

KAYE: Oh, how does that taste?

WU: It's pretty good.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAYE (on camera): I don't know about that. We didn't get to taste it, but I'm not sure I wanted to taste it, actually. But she said it's pretty good. And she is the food scientist here.

And the one thing about being up in space, also, they don't have plates with them. So they have to watch how much weight they take with them. So they use the tortillas that they take with them as plates.

And those don't make any crumbs, either. So there's that advantage as well.

SANCHEZ: Smart, smart. There was like just a second, a nanosecond of apprehension.

KEILAR: The hesitance.

SANCHEZ: But I think it's pretty good.

KEILAR: Great. Gamma Ray ravioli. I mean, the names here, they write themselves.

OK, so mission control, Randi, telling the crew they have a flag from Apollo 18 that never flew, that they want them to display. Tell us about this.

KAYE: Yes, there's the crew is actually going to speak with the media tonight in the 8:00 p.m. eastern hour, and they want them to display this flag. They're going to keep it in the packaging that it's in. But they want them to have it present.

And it was really important because this crew brought with them a lot of mementos that they wanted to have in space with them. And this flag, as you said, from Apollo 18, which ended up never flying. So it was really important for them to have that with them.

So the flag did get its time in space.

KEILAR: All right, Randi, thank you so much for that.

And listen, Boris, we would be remiss if we didn't discuss our favorite story involving Artemis today, which is that there was a urine release today.

SANCHEZ: A huge urine release. Waste management has been an issue on Artemis II. The toilet is broken now several times, in large part because it froze, I believe, was one of the consistent issues. And it seems like they got that figured out.

[14:55:00]

Our producers trying to get us to the soundbite to get out of this awkward moment talking about urine on TV. Let's watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VICTOR GLOVER, ARTEMIS II ASTRONAUT: The view is breathtaking.

CHRISTINA KOCH, ARTEMIS II ASTRONAUT: We love a good blizzard.

GLOVER: The less said about the snow, the better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right. They're saying all of that because actually they want to talk about it.

SANCHEZ: They do.

KEILAR: So let's talk a little bit about it. I've been writing chyrons, those lower third titles all day.

SANCHEZ: Haiku as well.

KEILAR: I wrote a poem. I told our team, listen, this is my project today. Free the Wii.

That was one.

SANCHEZ: Like that.

KEILAR: I had Artemis II goes number one.

SANCHEZ: That was my favorite.

KEILAR: That was my favorite, though. Actually, my favorite was Tinkle, Tinkle Little Star.

SANCHEZ: Brilliant. We're being told to wrap. Unfortunately, we could keep talking about this, but --

KEILAR: For so long.

SANCHEZ: The next hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END