It’s been more than a decade since the bodies of several young women were found wrapped in burlap and buried in a Long Island marsh, and now there’s been an arrest in the case that’s linked to three of the deaths.
Police say suspect Rex Heuermann, 59, an architect in Manhattan, has been taken into custody.
The killings, often referred to as the “Long Island Serial Killer” case, were first revealed in December 2010, when the bodies of Amber Costella, Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman were found in a marsh along Gilgo Beach in Babylon, Long Island.
The women had all worked as online escorts and went missing between 2007 and 2010. Their bodies were discovered accidentally as police searched for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old escort who went missing after meeting up with a client and fleeing the man’s home.
The bodies of six more people, including a toddler and an Asian person — possibly a transgender woman — were found buried in the area in March of 2011. Gilbert’s remains were later found in December of 2011, approximately five kilometres from the area where the other 10 bodies were found.
According to his bail application, obtained by NBC, Heuermann is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Barthelemy, 24; Waterman, 22; and Costello, 27.
Though Heuermann was not charged with crimes in connection with the disappearance and murder of Brainard-Barnes, 25, he is the “prime suspect in her death” and the investigation is ongoing, the document states.
Heuermann was arrested late Thursday in Massapequa amid a renewed investigation that tied him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010. Detectives later recovered Heuermann’s DNA from a pizza crust he discarded in Manhattan and matched it to genetic material found with the bodies, which were bound and hidden in thick underbrush along a remote beach highway.
After linking Heuermann to the pickup truck, prosecutors said investigators were able to connect him to other evidence, including the burner cellphones used to arrange meetings with the slain women, and taunting calls that a person claiming to be the killer made to one of Barthelemy’s relatives using her cellphone after she disappeared in 2009.
In recent months, Heuermann sought to keep tabs on the probe and “searched obsessively” on the internet for facts about the Gilgo Beach killings, including the names of women he’s accused of killing, as well as podcasts and documentaries about the case, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said.
Until his arrest, Heuermann continued to use burner phones, patronize sex workers and search the internet for sadistic materials, including sexually exploitive images of children, Tierney said. He also has access to 92 handguns, the prosecutor said.
The Long Island murders have attracted national headlines for many years and the unsolved killings were the subject of the 2020 Netflix film Lost Girls – the same year police shared photographs of a black leather belt, stamped with the letters “HM” or “WH” that they believed might belong to the killer.
According to The Associated Press, Heurmann was taken into custody in Massapequa, N.Y., late Thursday and investigators were at his home on Friday morning.
Determining who killed the 11 victims, and why, has vexed a slew of seasoned homicide detectives through several changes in police leadership. Last year, an interagency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as state and local police departments, aimed at solving the case.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us — a predator that ruined families,” Suffolk County police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said. “If not for the members of this task force, he would still be on the streets today.”
The formation of the Gilgo Beach task force represented a renewed commitment to investigating the unsolved killings of mostly young women whose skeletal remains were found along a highway on Long Island, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said at the time.
In talking about the bodies found, investigators have said several times over the years that it is unlikely one person killed all the victims.
On Friday, the lawyer who represents the families of victims Gilbert and Jessica Taylor told NBC that he’s “delighted” there’s been an arrest but feels “very strongly” that the suspect is not responsible for all 11 murders, including those of Gilbert and Taylor.
“It gives us something of a sigh of relief, but it’s partial,” John Ray told the outlet. “There’s still much to be done on this.”
Ray said he believes Heuermann’s arrest is only connected to the so-called Gilgo Four – the four victims who were first discovered in 2010.
“There undoubtedly is” another suspect, Ray said.
The news of an arrest came as a shock to some of the relatives after so many years of waiting for a break in the case. In a text message to AP, a sister of one victim said her family wasn’t ready to speak publicly because they “really haven’t had a chance to process the news today.”
Actor Billy Baldwin tweeted Friday morning that he knew the suspect.
“Woke up this morning to learn that the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect was my high school classmate Rex Heuermann,” the actor shared.
“Mind-boggling … Massapequa is in shock,” Baldwin wrote.
According to NBC New York sources, Heuermann is from the Massapequa area in neighbouring Nassau County, across the bay from where some of the bodies were found.
Police and other officials were searching his Massapequa Park home Friday, and a reporter watched as the suspect’s truck was towed away from the small red house.
“I’ve lived with the Gilgo Beach investigation for my entire tenure as county executive, and I can tell you that during that time, the focus for me (and) members of our team have been on bringing justice for these victims and closure to these families who have suffered,” Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone told reporters gathered outside the home.
“Today’s developments take us a major step forward in doing exactly that,” he said, adding, “the message to the public is that we have never stopped working on this case.”
According to the outlet, Heuermann is a married father of two. He is a licensed architect with a small Manhattan-based firm that, according to its website, has done store buildouts and other renovations for major retailers, offices and apartments.
— With files from The Associated Press
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