Burner phones and search history led police to Long Island killings suspect
A New York architect, who allegedly made taunting calls to the relative of a victim police investigators suspected he murdered, is in custody facing accusations that he is the so-called Long Island serial killer.
Rex Heuermann’s arrest and indictment on Friday, on six charges of murder, marks a key moment in a case that has captivated the public and confounded authorities for more than a decade.
The Suffolk county district attorney’s office on Friday released charging documents outlining why Heuermann, of Massapequa Park, has been tied to 11 sets of human remains found in 2010 and 2011 along an isolated stretch of remote Gilgo Beach, on a barrier island on the Atlantic coast, about 40 miles east of New York City.
Heuermann appeared in court on Friday afternoon to be arraigned on three charges of first-degree murder and three charges of second-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty to each charge through his attorney and was told to return to court on 1 August.
Police in Suffolk county and New York state troopers arrested him the previous night at his home. Video footage from local reporters showed law enforcement vehicles gathered in Massapequa Park, a Long Island neighborhood.
Heuermann’s charges stem from the killings of three of the so-called “Gilgo Four” – Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Amber Costello, 27, and Megan Waterman, 22.
Heuermann is the main suspect in – but has not yet been charged with – the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, according to the district attorney’s office.
Court documents released on Friday detail a sprawling investigation into Heuermann, which included more than “300 subpoenas, search warrants and other legal processes to obtain evidence”.
Incriminating items that police allege to have found included cellphone billing records for Heuermann that corresponded to cell site locations for “burner” – or temporary – devices Heuermann allegedly used to arrange meetings with three of the murder victims.
The billing records and cellphone site locations also were consistent with taunting calls made to a relative of Barthelemy, and a separate call a detective placed to Barthelemy’s cellphone while looking into her disappearance.
Similarly, the billing records and cell site locations also allegedly tied Heuermann to calls checking the voicemail box on Brainard-Barnes’s cellphone after she went missing.
Meanwhile, Heuermann, the victims and his phones had connections to either Massapequa Park or midtown Manhattan, where Heuermann lived and worked.
The court documents show various graphics of where Heuermann’s sus
pected burner cellphones had “activity”, alongside the cellular tower data nearest to that. Investigators allege Heuermann had a series of online accounts in addition to the burner cellphones, which were held under “fictitious names, and [were] used for illicit activities”. Some of those names included “Andy” – Heuermann’s middle name is Andrew – as well as “Andrew Roberts” and “John Springfield”.
On one burner email account he created, authorities alleged, he conducted “thousands of searches related to sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography”, and imagery depicting child sexual abuse.
On that same account, he purportedly conducted 200 searches between March last year and June this year that related to active and known serial killers. The searches also sought specifics about the disappearances and murders of Brainard-Barnes, Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello, and the police investigations into their killings.
Searches during that period that police noted included: “Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the Long Island serial killer”, “Why hasn’t the Long Island serial killer been caught”, “Long Island killer”, “Long Island serial killer phone call”, and more.
Documents allege Heuermann also searched for and read news articles about the creation of the law enforcement taskforce that arrested him.
The mystery surrounding the killings with which Heuermann has been charged dates back to when Shannan Gilbert – who had been a sex worker – vanished in May 2010 after she met a client at nearby Oak Beach. Gilbert made a 22-minute 911 call in which she reportedly said: “They are trying to kill me.”
Police found her body in a marshy area about half a mile from where she disappeared.
Soon after, police discovered four other women – Barthelemy, BrainardBarnes, Waterman and Costello – in the same area, each body covered in a burlap cloth. Investigators found six more sets of remains, including more female sex workers, a man and a toddler.
If he is convicted of murder, Heuermann could spend the rest of his life in prison.