New look at old clue led to suspect

Authorities followed NY architect due to tip on pickup truck

MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. — The first find was startling: a woman’s skeletal remains cast into the dunes along a remote Long Island highway.

Then came the shock. Days after that discovery in December 2010, police discovered parts of three more women nearby on a spit of sand known as Gilgo Beach. The remains of six other people were found along several miles of the same parkway during the next few months. An 11th person, whose disappearance had spurred the initial search, was found dead by the highway in December 2011.

What became known as the Gilgo Beach murders — the victims mostly young women who had been sex workers — flummoxed investigators for over a dozen years. The case endured through five police commissioners, more than 1,000 tips, countless theories and supposed conspiracies. Then a fresh review last year tied an old clue, about a pickup truck linked to a victim’s disappearance, to a new name: Rex A. Heuermann.

Energized by the truck tidbit, investigators charted the calls and travels of multiple cellphones, picked apart email aliases, delved into search histories and collected discarded bottles — and even a pizza crust — for advanced DNA testing, according to court papers.

On Friday, Heuermann, 59, was charged with murder in three of the killings, and prosecutors called him the prime suspect in a fourth.

Heuermann, an architect, has pleaded not guilty.

But police and prosecutors paint a picture of a scheming predator who outwardly maintained the life of a suburban professional, while secretly killing women when his wife was out of town.

The case began with a search for Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker who had called 911 as she ran from a client’s home, saying someone was chasing her. Police were looking for Gilbert in December 2010 when they stumbled upon the remains of Melissa Barthelemy, last seen alive the year before.

As the toll of victims grew and the search expanded, police used horses to reach the remote area, climbed firefighters’ ladders to see over poison-ivy-infested thickets, scoured parking ticket records and got aerial surveillance photos from the FBI. FBI experts profiled the killer and evolving DNA techniques were used.

Suffolk County police Commissioner Rodney Harrison announced a new task force to work the case shortly after he became commissioner in January 2022. He’d been a high-ranking New York Police Department official and brought new energy and perspective to the investigation.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said a breakthrough came six weeks into the group’s work, when a New York State Police investigator used a database to determine that Heuermann owned an early-model Chevrolet Avalanche and lived in Massapequa Park, an area that had come into focus because of some victims’ cellphone activity.

The Avalanche was key because witnesses had told police that a man had parked one outside the home of victim Amber Costello the night before she died, and that the sex worker had arranged to meet that man again the next night, according to prosecutors’ court filing.

Using subpoenas and search warrants, investigators dug into Heuermann’s background. They learned that his cellphone had often been in the same general areas, around the same times, as prepaid anonymous cellphones that had been used to contact Barthelemy, Costello and victim Megan Waterman, the court papers said. The “burner” phones and Heuermann’s phone sometimes even traveled together.

His phone’s location also roughly matched up with some places and times when a man used Barthelemy’s phone to call her relatives after her disappearance, according to the documents.

Combing Heuermann’s credit card records, investigators found payments to a dating site and followed that thread to uncover email addresses under fictitious names and more burner phones. The emails were linked to searches for violent pornography and information on the Gilgo Beach case, and to apparent selfies of Heuermann that were sent to arrange sexual trysts, court papers said.

The phones contacted massage parlors and sex workers as recently as this year. Heuermann was carrying one of the phones when arrested Thursday night, according to prosecutors.

Using advanced DNA testing not available early in the case, authorities also reexamined hairs found on a belt buckle, duct tape and a burlap restraint used in the killings.

Meanwhile, investigators employed more old-fashioned methods to snare a sample of Heuermann’s DNA: They tailed him and sifted through his garbage to pluck 11 bottles from his home bin and grab partially eaten pizza crusts that he’d tossed into a trash can on a Manhattan sidewalk.