MURDERER PLAYS SICK TEXT MESSAGE GAME

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime kiss today we're going to be talking about a very vicious murder from new york the aftermath of this murder is one of the most brutal i think i've ever covered on this channel but what's characteristic about this particular murder were the sick and twisted games that the murderer played with the victim's parents the victim's family in the aftermath of the murder but before we get into that before we get into this case i just want to thank function of beauty for sponsoring this video and making this video possible function of bc you guys know is the only brand i ever use for hair care products the only brand that i trust with my hair they formulate their products specifically for your hair type and your hair needs so every product they make is unique to you all you have to do is fill out a quick two-minute quiz on their website tell them what kind of things you want to improve about your hair so i always improve like the 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let's get into the case but before we do i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i cover in this case this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video rebecca costa more affectionately known as becky was born on june 12 1985. in 2009 she was 24 years old living in medford in long island new york with her mother barbara and her stepfather larry rebecca worked as a home healthcare aide so she would go to the homes of like the elderly and disabled and kind of make sure that they were washed that they'd gotten dressed that they'd taken their medication she just helped people from their homes she was a very confident very social girl her best friend nicole longa was quoted saying that she was bubbly lively and loved everyone and everything rebecca's mother barbara said that it was very rare that rebecca would have a bad day she was just such a positive such a smiley girl she was such a fun loving girl as well her uncle said that this would rub off onto the people that she hung around with like if you were hanging around with rebecca you knew that you were gonna have a good day because she just she just made it happen she was just a good energy rebecca loved going to bars she loved going on nights out she loved dancing she had a lot of friends she was gorgeous she got a lot of male attention as well but none of that really mattered to her because she actually had a boyfriend she'd been with this man a few months 28 year old dan mayer and that is exactly who she was with on december 3rd 2009 rebecca went out with her boyfriend dan her best friend nicole and a bunch of other friends they went to two different bars in suffolk county so not too far from where she actually lived and they were just having a great night they were dancing they were drinking they'd done this so many times around 3 30 a.m all the bars on that kind of strip began closing and so the group decided to call it a night and go home rebecca shared a house with her mother and her mother actually worked as a nurse on the night shift and so when rebecca went home that night she was going home to an empty house so her group decided that she would be one of the first to be dropped off so that they could make sure she got home safe and they did they dropped her off she got inside safe she texted her mother barbara just letting her know that she was home and that she was about to go to bed because her mother her mother barbara worried a lot about her she always wanted her to text and update her let her know that she'd got home safe as many mothers do and so she did she texted her mother saying that she was home her mother received this text at work and that was the last time that anyone would actually hear from rebecca costa when barbara arrived home from her shift the following morning everything seemed normal at the house everything seemed fine rebecca's car was still in the driveway everything was still in place all of rebecca's things were still there but there was just no sign of rebecca herself so barbara tries calling her she tries texting her but she receives no response thinking that she probably just spent the night either at her boyfriend's or one of her friends she decides to just go to sleep you know as she often did when she got home from the night shift however when she woke up a few hours later and there were still no responses to the texts or the calls rebecca still wasn't home barbara started to get really worried she went into rebecca's room and realized that her work uniform was actually still in there and so was her pocketbook and so she knew that rebecca hadn't come home to get changed for work or take her work things meaning that she hadn't shown up at work that day which was totally unlike rebecca so barbara called rebecca's boyfriend dan and just asked if she was there with him or if he knew where she was and he said oh no i dropped her off last night at 3 30 i thought she text you and she had rebecca had text her mother saying that she was home and that she was about to go to bed and that was the last time anyone saw her her boyfriend her friends when they dropped her off that night that was the last time they saw her so what had happened since she sent that text message so barbara wasted no time getting in contact with police and reporting rebecca costa as missing so police immediately went and interviewed all of the people that last saw her which was her boyfriend her best friend nicole all of her other friends that they were out with that night but again they all said the same thing the last time they saw her was when they dropped off at home around 3 30 that night and they hadn't seen or heard from rebecca since so while police got to work on the case investigating her friends and family decided to go out manually searching for rebecca they all split up into teams and went to all of the places that rebecca went to often so the places she would go walking her favorite food places some family members even stayed at home creating and printing off missing persons posters they went round knocking on doors in the area handing out these posters asking anyone if they'd seen or heard of rebecca but nothing really came up they asked all the neighbors to keep an eye out for her anywhere just hoping that maybe she would turn back up at her maybe she'd gone somewhere met up with someone and then she was going to come home naturally meanwhile her family had found this phone tracker service online and they were trying to track her phone but she wasn't using it and you can only see when people are currently on the phone and she wasn't using it so that was no help they received a few general locations where she'd been kind of in the last few days but that wasn't any help either and all of this the way that her friends and family reacted just shows how out of character this was for rebecca it's not even been 24 hours and they're already making missing persons posters trying to track her cell phone like anyone's friends and family would be concerned if their family member went missing however this just shows that this was so unlike her that they knew something must have happened to her rebecca was always the type of person to keep her mother in the loop as you can tell from when she got home that night when she was drunk she was tired it was 3 30 in the morning but she still made shaw to text her mother letting her know that she was home safe that's just the kind of girl that she was and so the fact that she hadn't contacted anyone for 24 hours shows that this was serious something must have happened to her so anyway as all of these searches are going on police are doing their best to look into rebecca's last known movements so they know that she went to two bars that night and while the group said that they didn't stay at the second bar for very long that was the last place that rebecca was kind of in public if that makes sense so if anyone was to see her if she was to meet up with anyone speak to anyone you know they might get clues from looking in the last public place that she went so police went to that bar they interviewed some staff and they were actually able to collect some cctv footage from that night this cctv footage unfortunately isn't public footage so i can't put it in this video however i do have some quotes from people and a bit of an explanation as to what police saw so they see rebecca in the cctv footage she's dancing she's having fun she's drinking with her friends as they expected her to be however there was one section of cctv footage that police were particularly interested in so at one point rebecca goes to the bar to go and order a drink she's by herself she left all the friends over where they were sitting and while she's at the bar she gets talking to this guy and they're talking for a while they're kind of obviously visually flirting and at one point she actually gives this guy her phone so that he can type something in and then he gives it back to us so police concluded that he was probably putting his number in her phone and this opened up a whole new line of searching who was this man had something happened with this man what had he been saying to her you know had she possibly planned to meet up with him after she went home and maybe that's why he gave her the number who knows so police went and spoke with her friends and her boyfriend and stuff and asked them if they knew who this man was they showed them the cctv footage and none of them had seen this man before none of them knew his name so they couldn't really help police there it seemed as though this was quite a secretive thing with rebecca since she did have a boyfriend and you know she was with him that night at the bar it wasn't like she was gonna go get this man's number at the bar and then run back over to her friends and be like oh look i got this guy's number she she kept that a secret when she went back so police set about trying to trace this man from the bar however this was going to be pretty hard since no one no one knew him no one knew his name no one had seen his face before it was going to be hard to track him so as police were faced with this seemingly impossible task the searches continued with her family they were going out night and day still giving out posters still knocking on doors and then three days into the search barbara receives a text and it's from rebecca and in this text rebecca claimed that she was being held captive by her boyfriend dan saying that she didn't know where she was and she was scared and she needed help so barbara said that she panicked she tried calling rebecca on her phone knowing that she was on her phone however rebecca didn't answer and when she didn't barbara decided to call 9-1-1 as soon as she got off the phone with 9-1-1 she called pretty much everyone that was out searching for rebecca friends family everyone updating them on this text that she received and she told them all to head straight over to dan mayer's house and so they all turned up pretty much all at once and when they did police were out on dan's drive already interviewing him police went in and searched his home they searched his basement his bedroom every single wardrobe closet he had but there was no sign of rebecca although police weren't convinced that he was innocent just yet maybe rebecca wasn't in his home but after all he was one of the last people to see her alive that night potentially the last if he'd gone up to her house with her to kind of kiss her good night and she did say in the text to her mother that she didn't know where she was and that she was scared you know it wouldn't make sense if she was at dan's house because she'd been there before she she would know where she was so there's always the possibility that maybe he'd taken her somewhere else to keep her hostage maybe dan had gotten jealous that night maybe he somehow saw or found out that she'd been flirting with other guys at the bar maybe she he found out that she'd got this other guy's number and so that gives a potential motive as to why he might want to do this why he might want to hurt her barbara said that she didn't even know what to think at this point she trusted dan and she knew how much her daughter loved dan but you know they'd only been dating for a few months so how much did they really know this man was he capable of doing something like this to her daughter all of the evidence so far seemed to have been pointing to dan and now they have rebecca herself saying that she's being held captive by dan and then just a few hours after that first text barbara receives another text from rebecca this time saying that dan had her chained up in a basement the text even said at the end in capital letters don't tell dan or he'll kill me like i said earlier rebecca's friends and family had been trying to track her cell phone on this kind of online cell phone tracker service and they can only get a location when she's on her phone and when she's active so when she's either sending calls or sending texts and now they had that now she just sent a text so they could track her location they located the fund to be around 20 miles away in a place called cormac in new york and so the family jumped in the car and went straight there thinking that rebecca was being held captive there however this this kind of locator service didn't give a specific location just a kind of general area and so once the family got to comac they didn't really know what to do they went round banging on every single doll they could handing out all the posters asking if anyone had seen or heard anything they were running up and down the street screaming rebecca's name but ultimately they got nothing out of it no one had seen her no one had heard from her but by now her family is starting to think well hold on rebecca's a very smart girl if she has access to her phone why is she using it to text her mother and not to call 911 and save herself it's not even like she's texting her mother and asking her mother to call 9-1-1 on her behalf you know maybe she's in a situation where she can't call 9-1-1 she can't talk but she's not even asking her mother to do that in these texts to them it didn't make sense it was almost as if these texts weren't rebecca you know rebecca rebecca had a lot more to her than these texts you know she would be trying to save herself but regardless they were holding on hope that maybe this was rebecca and maybe she was just so distressed that she wasn't in a place to think about what she was doing although this didn't quite seem like it was her barbara and her friends even went to psychics at this point it had been a few days since rebecca went missing and all of these psychics were saying to barbara that your daughter's alive she's just in a dark place at the moment but she'll be back safe and sound very soon but within a day or two of these psychic visits the koster family received the news that they never wanted to receive it was now six days after rebecca had gone missing however five days prior to this so the morning after she went missing a body had been found around 85 miles away and it remained unidentified until now the body was that of a young female and it was horrifically mutilated and that was the exact reason why it had remained unidentified for so long because forensics just couldn't they couldn't identify this body and especially because it was found so far away it was actually found in a whole other state it was found in connecticut over 80 miles away and so this was a whole other police force that was dealing with this this jane doe police over there weren't aware of rebecca or her disappearance and so they hadn't made that connection so police called rebecca's mother barbara and they told her that they had some bad news and all she could say was just no don't say it don't say it but this body was finally identified as that of 24 year old rebecca costa the autopsy showed that she'd been stabbed multiple times to death the fatal wound being won straight through her liver her body had been horrifically mutilated like i said but in a way that it was obvious what her killer was trying to do her killer was trying to make sure that her body wouldn't be identified all her fingertips were severed her toes as well her killer had even cut out chunks of her skin where she had tattoos of course tattoos are a huge thing in being able to identify bodies that are otherwise unidentifiable but worst of all her killer had even tried to cut her whole face off her nose her ears anything kind of identifiable about her face they'd severed it all some sources even said that rebecca costa was beheaded i'm not sure if they're referring to her face being cut off i can't completely confirm whether she was beheaded or not whatever was left of her body was then wrapped in blankets and plastic bags and transported to a random field on the side of a highway in connecticut covered inflammable liquid and set a light and that was the final step for her murderer to make sure that nothing of her body was identifiable or you know could possibly trace back to them themselves the killer that there was no forensics no fingerprints no dna left on rebecca however there was one thing that the killer forgot about when trying to make sure that rebecca was unidentifiable and that was her teeth her dental records were the thing that were able to identify her in the end immediately following her body being found all of her friends and family just assumed that it was dan mayer assumed that it was her boyfriend and they just thought that he was going to be arrested and that was how this was gonna go you know he was the last to see her alive all of the text messages from rebecca herself incriminated dan said that dan was the one that was doing this to her and besides there was a potential motive like i said he might have seen her flirting with this guy at the bar but despite all of this suspicion building up against dan mayer police ruled him out as a suspect entirely they said that this wasn't him he was completely innocent and they were looking elsewhere for a suspect which left the family thinking well if this wasn't dan who could it be they couldn't think of anyone else that that knew rebecca that could have done this to her that could have got her out of her house in the middle of the night to do this to her there were no signs of the breaking on the house so it wasn't like she was abducted it didn't seem as though she was abducted well police were actually already on to their next suspect at this point in the case they'd been able to get in contact with rebecca's fun network company they hadn't been able to locate her phone but they could get in touch with her network and asked to see her phone records and they found that after she'd been dropped off at home that night by her friends and by dan and after she texted her mother letting her know that she was home safe she'd actually taken two phone calls one of the phone calls was actually over 17 minutes long so she was spending a while talking to this person and police were able to trace this phone call and the person that was calling her and police found that this phone number belonged to a 33 year old man this man was named evans ganthia they asked rebecca's friends and family if they'd heard of him or seen him or met him before but none of them had any idea who he was but as soon as police saw this man's face they knew exactly who he was this was the man that was seen giving his number to rebecca on cctv at the bar that night so police immediately went to arrest evan scanthia and they brought him in for an interview but he denied everything he said yes he met her in the bar that night but he hadn't seen her since he had nothing to do with this he didn't even know that she'd gone missing or that she was found dead and you know while this did look really bad for him police didn't have any you know specific evidence to say that he'd done this to her maybe this was an unfortunately timed phone call and so they had to let him go until they could find concrete evidence that he'd actually harmed rebecca before they let him go from the police station they actually took a dna swab from him so that they could test it against any evidence that they found you know on rebecca on the things that she was wrapped in when she was killed police pretty much knew that this guy had to be the guy but they just needed that that concrete physical evidence they needed you know a fingerprint or some blood or some dna fibers anything and so while they waited for that dna evidence to come back they actually decided to obtain search warrants both for ganthia's house his garage and his car in his house they didn't find anything really anything at all however when they went in his garage they noticed that it had a very strong bleach smell and it seemed immaculately clean as if it had just been scrubbed meticulously which people don't often do in their garages you know garages are sometimes dirty it's where you keep your car it's not you know it's not the most clean place in the house but it was when they searched his suv that they realized that this had to be the guy there was blood everywhere all over this car particularly pulled under the passenger seat so ganthia was brought back to the police station for questioning and to be confronted with the results of this search and it just so happened that around the time that he was brought back in the results of the dna test came back and finally police had their concrete piece of evidence one of evan's ganthia's fingerprints was found on the duct tape that was wrapped around rebecca costa's body so now police had enough evidence to arrest and charge evans ganthia but first they wanted to present him with all of this evidence that they had and see if he could explain it see if he could defend himself see what he would say when presented with this would he just confess so in this second interview you know he couldn't really deny it at this point and sir evan's ganthea admitted that he had called rebecca that night and they had planned to meet up they arranged for her to spend the night at his place and so he drove down to her house picked her up and they drove back to his house he said that everything was fine on the way there however around the time that they arrived back at his house rebecca started feeling very unwell she was coughing she was firming at the mouth he said that she was very dizzy she was light-headed she was still wearing her high heels and she tripped over one of his gym weights in his garage he said he bent down to try to you know look after her care for her after she just tripped and he realized that she was unconscious evans ganthia quickly concluded that rebecca costa was dead and he said that he began panicking at this point he thought that his only option was to mutilate her body beyond recognition so that she could never be identified and try to dispose of her body because he thought if he was to contact police or get an ambulance or something this would be pinned on him you know they would think that he killed her so immediately he got to work he began severing all the parts of her body that he thought could identify her so all of her fingers all of her toes parts of her body that had tattoos on them her nose her ears and then he wrapped her body in blankets in plastic bags and then loaded it into the trunk of his car he said he drove to a ferry port close by to where he lived in long island and got a ferry all the way over to connecticut he then drove his car out into connecticut until he found you know a large field on the side of a highway he parked up his car and dragged her body out into the middle of this field he then covered the body in a flammable liquid set it on fire went and got back in his car and went back home to clean his garage get rid of any evidence that he could but of course police didn't really believe this story i mean they did but they didn't believe that it was an accident they believed that he had done all the severing and stuff like that and taken the body out on a ferry but they didn't believe that this was an accident and that she got ill and then she tripped over a gym where evan scanfield was actually seen on the ferry cctv footage just walking around it was one of those ferries where you can just drive your car on and park it and then go up into the ferry and you know go to the shops and whatever and he was just walking around as if he didn't have a dead body in the back of his car he just didn't seem panicked at all you know but that's what he said he was he said that this girl had just died in his company and he he was terrified he thought that this was gonna be pinned on him but you know he looks so calm in this cctv footage as if you know nothing had just happened this did seem planned to a degree so of course there was no way for him to plan this all in advance because he didn't know he was going to run into rebecca in the bar that night although it did seem as though he'd thought about how to hide a body before how to dispose of a body how to make sure that it wasn't going to be identified police theorized that evans ganthian murdered rebecca costa in his car because you know there was so much blood in there and it seemed to pool under the passenger seat and in the middle bit kind of where the cup holders are and stuff it seemed as though he'd stabbed her while she was still in his car they then believed that he carried her body into his garage where he began the mutilation process the motive is still a mystery no one knows what his motive was that night why had he done this was it possible that he was expecting to get sex from rebecca that night and maybe she changed her mind on the way to his house or maybe she'd kind of put it out there that she wasn't going to do that tonight and maybe he flipped or had evans ganthia been planning to kill her all along had he taken her number in the club that night with that intention had he texted her and called her planning to meet up with her planning to take her back to his house with the intention of killing her that would explain why he knew what he was gonna do step by step it seemed he did this carried out this whole thing relatively intelligently as well yes he did get caught but he thought about a lot of things in the process maybe he'd thought about this in detail before and he knew that he wanted to kill someone but he was just waiting for a victim to present themselves and maybe that was what rebecca costa was that night but the sickest part about this whole case were those texts that ganthea was sending to rebecca's panicked and grieving mother making her believe that her daughter was still alive out there somewhere that they had hope of bringing her home safe and sound this man evans ganthia seemed truly sick even if his story was true that rebecca died accidentally in his company what was the purpose of those text messages what was the why why did he need to do that anthea really was a twisted individual he was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 25 years he'll be eligible for parole in about 15 years in 2035. rebecca's mother barbara has since campaigned for young people to think twice before trusting strangers one night stands and things of that nature are always a risk when you don't know the person or when you barely know the person there's safe ways to have fun and then there's unsafe ways to have fun you need to make sure that someone knows where you are at all times try to stick with a friend at all times on nights out think twice before you trust anyone that you kind of meet in a club or a bar you don't know who's safe to trust out there you don't know what their intentions are in the moment you might think it's a good idea but you know nothing is worth this nothing is worth your life ending any degree like rebecca costas did but that is all i have on this case thank you so so much for watching thank you so so much to function of beauty for sponsoring this video if you want to try out their amazing haircut amazing body care they are very kindly offering you guys 20 off when you go through my link down below in the description huge thank you to all of my channel members for helping me decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the join button on a desktop or there'll be a link in the description of this video but yeah thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed make sure you leave a thumbs 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Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 933,990

Rating: 4.9621892 out of 5

Keywords: eleanor, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, bbc, itv, netflix, storytime, forensic files, 2020, crime watch daily, dateline, interview, news, creepypasta, horror, rebecca koster, costa, rebecca, long island, new york, conneticut, cold case files, real stories, text, messages, texts, game, games, saw in real life, saw, twisted, crime documentary

Id: 0a6MPF4-_oc

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020