A 59-year-old architect has been arrested in the long-running Gilgo beach murders in the US in which the list of victims extended up to 11. Rex A. Heuermann has been charged with the murder of three of the victims and the prosecutors have called him the prime suspect in a fourth. His lawyer says Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges and insists that he did not commit those murders.
What is the Gilgo beach murder case?
What began as a search for a missing woman in December 2020, snowballed into a major hunt for a serial killer whose victims mostly were young women who had been sex workers. Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker, had called 911 as she ran from a client’s home, claiming someone was chasing her. In her search, police came across the remains of Melissa Barthelemy, who was last seen alive in 2009. As they went forward with the case, the police found more and more bodies.
The case lived through five police commissioners, over 1,000 tips, several theories and supposed conspiracies. Last year, a fresh review found a link between an old clue, about a pickup truck, and Heuermann.
Heuermann also used a victim’s cellphone to call her relatives. In one such call, he said he had killed her.
Old clue linked to Heuermann
The authorities found out that Heuermann owned an early-model Chevrolet Avalanche and lived in Massapequa Park which earlier had been highlighted because of some of the victims’ cellphone activity. Witnesses had earlier told the police that a man had parked an Avalanche outside a victim’s house, Amber Costello, the night before she died and that she had arranged to meet the man again the next night, court filings showed.
Investigators dove into Heuermann’s background and found his cellphone had been in the same general areas, around the same times, as the burner phones used to contact three of the victims, Barthelemy, Costello and Megan Waterman. The burner phones and his own cellphone were even found to have travelled together at times. The architect’s phone location also matched for from where Barthelemy’s phone was used to call her relatives after her disappearance.
Heuermann’s credit card records were also looked into. Investigators also found Heuermann’s searches on the Gilgo beach murder case. Among his searches, they found, “Why hasn’t the long island serial killer been caught.”
Discarded pizza box linked Heuermann to a murder
Investigators in the case reexamined hairs found on a belt buckle, duct tape and burlap restraint used in the killings. Meanwhile, Heuermann was tailed. They rummaged through his garbage and picked up 11 bottles from his bin and a partially eaten pizza he had tossed on a sidewalk trash can. The DNA on the pizza matched a hair found on burlap which was wrapped around a victim.
(With inputs from Associated Press)