Gilgo Beach murders | Suspected serial killer pleads not guilty

(Massapequa Park) A Long Island architect was charged Friday with three murders related to a long string of unsolved homicides known as the “Gilgo Beach murders.” The man was arrested after investigators matched DNA on a pizza to genetic material found on the women’s remains.

Rex Heuermann, who for decades has lived near a bay from where the remains were found, is accused of killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. He is also considered the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman whose body was tied up and hidden in thick undergrowth along a secluded beach road, authorities said. Seven other bodies were found in this area.

The 59-year-old Heuermann was arrested Thursday night in a new investigation that linked him to a van that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims went missing in 2010. In March, detectives Heuermann recovered his DNA from a pizza crust in a box he threw in a Manhattan trash can and compared it to DNA from a hair found on a restraint weapon used in the murders , authorities said.

Heuermann’s attorney pleaded not guilty on his behalf Friday in Riverhead State Court. Judge Richard Ambro ordered the defendant jailed without bail, citing the “extreme depravity” of his alleged conduct.

Heuermann’s attorney, Michael Brown, said they only learned of the charges Friday morning. Speaking to reporters after the arraignment, he said Heuermann told him he did not commit the murders.

Heuermann, dressed in khaki pants and a gray collared shirt, did not speak in court.

“This is a day that we have been waiting for a long time and that will hopefully bring peace to this community and to the families ― a peace that is long overdue,” said New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, at an unrelated public appearance on Long Island.

The news of the arrest came as a shock to some family members, who had been waiting for so many years for a resolution to the case. In a text message, the sister of one of the victims said her family was not ready to speak out publicly because they “really didn’t have time to process the news today”.

Mr Heuermann lives in Massapequa Park, a locality just north of South Oyster Bay and the stretch of sand known as Gilgo Beach, where skeletal remains were found along an isolated road by the shore. of the ocean in 2010 and 2011. These deaths have long puzzled investigators. Most of the victims were young women working in the sex industry.

The case has captured the public’s attention for more than 10 years. The mystery made national headlines for many years and the unsolved murders were the subject of the Netflix movie Lost Girls in 2020.

Figuring out who killed the victims, and why, has frustrated many seasoned detectives over the years. Last year, an interagency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as local and state police departments, in an effort to solve the case.

After linking Heuermann to the van, prosecutors said investigators were able to link him to other evidence, including the burner cell phones used to arrange dates with the slain women and the provocative calls that a person claiming to be the killer did to one of Barthelemy’s parents using his cell phone after he disappeared in 2009.

In recent months, Heuermann has sought to keep tabs on the investigation and has ‘obsessively searched’ the internet for facts about the Gilgo Beach murders, including the names of the women he is accused of. killed, as well as podcasts and documentaries about the case, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said.

He added that authorities decided to charge Heuermann now with three of the 11 murders because they feared he was on the run. They continue to work to indict him in the death of a fourth Gilgo victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

Until his arrest, Mr. Heuermann continued to use cell phones, date sex workers and search the internet for sadistic material, including images of child sexual abuse, Mr. Tierney said. He also had access to 92 handguns, the prosecutor said.

Law enforcement converged on the little red house that was raided early Friday in this suburb about 40 miles east of midtown Manhattan. Dozens of residents mingled with the police and the media, observing half a dozen investigators in protective suits who conferred in front of the entrance porch, in poor condition, whose roof was supported by beams.

Heuermann, married with a daughter and a stepson, is a licensed architect with a Manhattan-based firm who, according to his website, has done store construction and other renovations for major retailers. , offices and apartments.

“We are happy to see that they are finally active, the police, to achieve something. Let’s wait and see what all of this leads to,” said John Ray, the attorney for the families of two other women whose remains were found, Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor.

Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance in 2010 sparked the hunt that uncovered the larger mystery. The 24-year-old sex worker vanished after walking from a client’s home in the beachfront community of Oak Beach.

Months later, a policeman and his human remains search dog were searching for the young woman’s body in the thickets that line Ocean Parkway, when they came across the remains of another woman. A few days later, three more bodies were found, all within walking distance of each other.

In the spring of 2011, the number of human remains stood at 10, those of eight women, a man and an infant. Some were later linked to parts of dismembered bodies found elsewhere on Long Island, resulting in a confusing crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort town on Fire Island and to the far east of Long Island.

The body of M.^me Gilbert was found in December 2011, about three miles east of where the other 10 sets were discovered.

Of the bodies found near Gilgo Beach, investigators have repeatedly asserted over the years that it is unlikely that a single person killed all of the victims.