Suspect taken into custody in long-unsolved string of killings on Long Island
A suspect has been arrested in connection with a series of killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders on New York’s Long Island, a case that has puzzled authorities since the remains of the victims were first discovered a decade ago.
The suspect has been identified by authorities as Rex A. Heuermann, an architect from Long Island.
Heuermann faces three counts of murder in the first degree and three counts of murder in the second degree in the killings of three women in 2009 and 2010, according to a bail application filed in Suffolk County Court on Friday. The district attorney’s office asked the court to remand him without bail.
Heuermann was arrested by Suffolk County police officers on Thursday, according to the district attorney’s office. A search of his Massapequa home as well as other locations remains ongoing, officials said.
“Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us. A predator that ruined families and if not for the members of this task force he would still be on the streets today,” said Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison at a Friday news conference.
According to LinkedIn, Heuermann owns RH Consultants & Associates, an architectural and design firm established in 1994, based in midtown Manhattan. RH Consultants has worked with government agencies and nonprofits, according to its website.
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Attempts to reach Heuermann’s office, family and associates were not successful Friday morning.
What began as a search for a missing woman a decade ago became a head-scratching mystery that captured national headlines as the investigation led to the discovery of more human remains along a beachside highway in a remote area of Long Island in 2010 and 2011. In all, authorities discovered 11 victims: Most were young women who had been sex workers. Several of the bodies were found in thickets along a sandy stretch known as Gilgo Beach. Heuerman has only been charged in relation to the killings of three of the victims.
The New York Times reported that authorities announced in 2020 that a black leather belt bearing the initials “W H” or “H M” collected early in the investigation was an important piece of evidence. The FBI and state and local police departments established a joint task force to investigate the killings last year.
The case took off after Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker from New Jersey, was reported missing in May 2010. According to reports, Gilbert vanished after leaving a client’s house on foot in the private community of Oak Beach, just three miles from Gilgo Beach.
Months later, authorities discovered the remains of four bodies wrapped in burlap along Ocean Parkway. By the spring of 2011, 10 more victims were discovered, including eight women, one man and one toddler.
Some were later linked to dismembered body parts found elsewhere on Long Island, making for a puzzling crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort community on Fire Island and out to far eastern Long Island.
Gilbert’s body was found in December 2011, about three miles east of where the other 10 sets of remains were discovered.
In talking about the bodies near Gilgo Beach, investigators have said several times over the years that it was unlikely one person killed all the victims.
A bail application filed Friday laid out the extensive investigation that, through cellphone billing records, a recovered vehicle and DNA evidence, led authorities to Heuermann.
According to the documents, an officer who was conducting a training exercise with a police dog along Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach discovered a set of human remains on Dec. 11, 2010, that were later identified as Melissa Barthelemy, who lived in the Bronx and went missing around July 10, 2009.
Two days later, police found three more sets of remains recovered within a quarter-mile of where they found Barthelemy. Those victims were later identified as Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.
All four women were in their 20s and believed to be sex workers whose cause of death was homicide, according to the bail filing.
Heuermann is charged with the killings of Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello.
He is also the prime suspect in the ongoing investigation into the death of Brainard-Barnes, which is “expected to be resolved soon,” the filing said.
In March 2022, there was a significant breakthrough in the investigation: the discovery of a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche — the same type of vehicle that a witness to Costello’s disappearance described to investigators as the vehicle believed to have been driven by her killer. The car was registered to Heuermann at the time of the murders.
The probe zeroed in on Heuermann, and investigators issued hundreds of subpoenas for evidence. Among the most significant evidence that prosecutors say tie Heuermann to the killings are phone records, including from burner phones that were active in midtown Manhattan and Massapequa at the time of the women’s disappearances. The district attorney’s office said in the court document Heuermann used the phones to communicate with the victims before they vanished. Prosecutors say Heuermann also used some of the women’s phones after they disappeared to check their voicemail messages and make “taunting calls” to relatives.
The investigation also found numerous online accounts linked to Heuermann but operating under fake names and used for illicit activity, the court filings said. One such email, [email protected], contained “thousands of searches related to sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography and child pornography,” the papers said. Between March 2022 and June 2023, the thawk email was also used to conduct hundreds of searches on serial killers and the cases on Brainard-Barnes, Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello, according to court papers.
Additionally, a “male hair” from the burlap that the killer used to wrap Waterman matched DNA obtained from a pizza thrown out by Heuermann and collected by a surveillance team positioned outside his office in January, the papers said.
Heuermann faces multiple sentences of life in prison without parole if convicted on the current charges, the district attorney’s office said.
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Law enforcement personnel raided a small red house early Friday in Massapequa. Dozens of residents mingled alongside police and media, watching as a half-dozen investigators in protective suits conferred outside the front porch, which was in disrepair, its roof propped up by two-by-fours.
The home belonged to a family that had long kept to themselves, neighbors said, noting that the dilapidated property seemed out of place among rows of single-family homes with well-kept lawns in the small community.
“This house sticks out like a sore thumb. There were overgrown shrubs; there was always wood in front of the house,” Gabriella Libardi, a 24-year-old teacher, told the Associated Press. “It was very creepy. I wouldn’t send my child there.”
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Barry Auslander, another neighbor, told the AP that the man who lived in the house commuted by train to New York City each morning, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase.
“It was weird. He looked like a businessman,” said Auslander. “But his house is a dump.”
The formation of the Gilgo Beach task force represented a renewed commitment to investigate the killings, Police Commissioner Harrison said.
“We’re happy to see that they’re finally active, the police, in accomplishing something. Let’s wait and see what it all leads to,” said John Ray, the attorney for the families of two victims, Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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