LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — This week marks a grim milestone for the family of a young Las Vegas woman whose cold case murder is now being probed for a link to the Gilgo Beach murders in Long Island, New York.
13 Investigates learned that Jodi Marie Brewer, whose body was discovered 20 years ago on Aug. 29, 2003, is among the Las Vegas sex workers whose deaths are being re-evaluated for possible connections to suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann.
The Brewer family spoke on camera for the first time to 13 Investigates.
"She looked like Madonna when she walked out the door," said Jodi's mother, Pam. "She was so sociable. She was so easy to love. She was like the Mary Sunshine in my life."
20 years after Jodi's murder, the grief is just as raw for her mother Pam and younger sister Jaqueline.
"That doesn't go away," said Pam. "We live this every day of our lives."
"When she went missing, I was only 13," Jacqueline recalled. "Losing her was like losing a part of me because, you know, she was always there."
Pam worked as a cocktail waitress at Binion's while Jodi was a student at Cheyenne High School.
"And she dropped out, and then she got her GED, and she was going to beauty college for a little while there until they took the grant away and she couldn't go anymore," Pam said.
Aug. 14, 2003 was the day her 19-year-old daughter disappeared.
"She had gone out for the night and she said, 'I love you mom.' She said, 'I'll see you in the morning.' And I said, 'I love you too, Jodi.' And... I never saw her again," Pam said.
Jodi's torso was discovered wrapped in cloth and plastic two weeks later in the Mojave Desert.
"There was some specific information that kind of pointed toward a serial killer theory, correct?" 13 chief investigator Darcy Spears asked Jodi's mother.
"Right," Pam said. "They said that there was a surgical saw used to dismember her and then it was used with precision."
Now, two decades later, Jodi's long cold case is getting a second look.
It's part of a wider effort to hunt for more possible victims of suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann, who owns a timeshare just a few miles off the Las Vegas Strip and previously owned another.
"It seems to me like the areas that he bought the condos in were prostitution areas, and that it would have been really easy for him," Pam speculated.
Like the Gilgo Beach murder victims, Brewer says her daughter had turned to prostitution after falling into the wrong crowd and using drugs.
"And when you learned that was the path your daughter was going down, how did you deal with that?" Spears asked Pam.
"I remember her telling me over the telephone and, um... I screamed. It's all I could do. You know, I didn't know... I didn't know what to do and didn't know how to take it or how to deal with it at the time. It was just kind of a shock," Pam said.
A close review of 266 Las Vegas cold case murders shows that Jodi's tragic fate was also shared by four other sex workers, between 2003 and 2006, who died in similarly suspicious circumstances.
A law enforcement source tells 13 Investigates he has no doubt that "one person is to blame for at least several of those cases."
But is that person Rex Heuermann?
Our source says the DNA evidence could take many months to process since the older it is, the more it degrades over time.
"Hearing the whole Rex (Heuermann) thing. It's totally different now, because it gives us a little hope, in a weird way," Jacqueline said. "Just for everybody like the survivors and the victims... hopefully we can get some resolutions."
"The pain is still there," said Pam, "but it would be nice to know what happened."
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