Gilgo Beach murders: Rex Heuermann’s potential ties to Atlantic City probed as sister-in-law speaks out

Police carted more boxes of potential evidence Tuesday out of the Long Island home of Rex Heuermann, who has been charged with killing at least three women and leaving their remains alongside a remote stretch of beach highway.

Items pulled out of Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park in recent days have included more than 200 firearms, a large doll in a glass case, a large portrait of a woman with a bruised face and a filing cabinet, according to the Associated Press.

Investigators, some dressed in “crime lab” T-shirts and protective suits, were seen Tuesday carting away a desktop computer, a large picture frame, a mirror and many other household items.

It remains to be seen whether any of those items will help authorities build their case against Mr Heuermann, an architect who was charged with murdering three women and was said by a prosecutor to be a suspect in a fourth slaying.

Mr Heuermann pleaded not guilty to the crimes on Friday.

The Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect’s architecture business was hired for a 2018 project at the Trump Building in New York City, according to unearthed records.

Rex Heuermann, 59, was arrested last week and charged with the murders of Amber Costello, Megan Waterman and Melissa Barthelemy, who vanished between 2007 and 2010 before their bodies were found dumped in Gilgo Beach.

The suspect lived in Massapequa Park, Long Island, with his wife and two adult children and ran architecture firm RH Consultants & Associatess in Midtown Manhattan.

Now, New York City Department of Buildings records obtained by real state publication The Real Deal have revealed that Mr Heuermann’s firm was hired in 2018 by a third party for a plumbing job at the Trump Building on 40 Wall Street.

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The sister of one of Rex Heuermann’s alleged victims has spoken out to say that his arrest means she can finally “move on”.

Mr Heuermann has been charged with the murder of Amber Costello, a 27-year-old sex worker who vanished in September 2010.

Her body was found dumped along Gilgo Beach later that year.

Costello’s sister Kimberly Overstreet told News 12 Long Island that she will forgive her killer because it’s what her sibling would do.

“It brings me peace to know that my sister is laying with my family,” she said.

“And that if my parents were here, if my sister was here, she would say ‘Thank you, and I forgive him.’ I forgive him and she would too. I don’t know if it makes a difference to him, but it makes a difference to me, and I can move on.”

Now, she hopes that the families of other victims whose bodies were found dumped along the Long Island shores will also get answers soon.

The wife of accused Gilgo Beach serial killerRex Heuermann has filed for divorce just six days after New York police arrested him on suspicion of murdering at least three women and dumping their bodies along Long Island.

Online court records show that Asa Ellerup – the accused serial killer’s wife of two decades and mother of his children – filed a matrimonial complaint in Suffolk County Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The filing – titled Asa Ellerup v Rex Heuermann – states that the divorce is “uncontested”.

The case records include a complaint, summons and a “notice concerning continuation of health care coverage” all filed on Wednesday, though the contents have not been made public.

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Court documents, filed as part of prosecutors’ request that bail be denied, revealed that hair belonging to Mr Heuermann’s wife was allegedly found on the bodies of three of the four victims.

Prosecutors say that two female hairs had been found on Waterman, one of them on the tape which the killer wrapped around her head. One female hair was found on tape used to wrap burlap around Costello and one hair was found in a belt buckle used to bind Brainard-Barnes – who Mr Heuermann is yet to be charged over.

To identify the female who the hair belonged to, investigators trawled through the trash at the Heuermann home in Long Island.

In July 2022, they recovered 11 bottles from the trash and they were swabbed for DNA.

Forensic testing found that the DNA on the bottles matched the female hair found at the crime scene, concluding that the hair belonged to Mr Heuermann’s wife.

The accuracy is such that more than 99 per cent of the North American female population can be ruled out, according to the court documents.

Prosecutors found that the suspect’s wife was out of town at the time of the three murders for which he has been charged but that her hair could have transferred to the crime scene through her husband’s clothing or through him using items such as tape taken from the family home.

She has not been named as a suspect and there is no suggestion that she was involved – or knew about – the murders.

Rex Heuermann, a New York City architect and “family man”, was dramatically arrested outside of his office in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday 13 July and charged with the murders of three women whose remains were found on Gilgo Beach, Long Island, a decade ago.

The 59-year-old was formally accused of killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, all of whom were working as sex workers, and is also the prime suspect in the homicide of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, with Suffolk County district attorney Ray Tierney saying on Monday he is “confident” Mr Heuermann will be charged with her murder too.

In all, 11 sets of human remains were found dumped along the four-lane Ocean Parkway route running alongside the Atlantic-facing beachfront between 2010 and 2011, nine of which belonged to women, one to a man and one to a toddler. Some have still not been identified.

This is what we know about the four victims Mr Heuermann has been connected to by investigators:

Attorney John Ray represents the families of Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor. Mr Ray told The Independent on Tuesday that he has long suspected that a woman may have helped the killer lure the victims.

“We have a number of reasons to think a woman may have been involved. Nothing is certain here, [I want] to emphasize that, but there was some evidence that a woman was involved,” Mr Ray said.

The attorney said that some of the evidence that could suggest a woman was involved in the killings is the way a baby Doe’s body was found.

The child’s mother, dubbed “Peaches” for a tattoo on her torso, was found in Nassau County in 1997. Additional remains and those of her child were found years later, and the murders have been linked to the Gilgo Beach case.

“The baby was wrapped in a blanket of some kind. And that’s something, you know, if you’re a depraved murderer, as a man ... Would you take the time to do that?” Mr Ray said. “But a mother might do that. That’s just one I use that as one of several reasons why we think that, but we don’t have any dispositive evidence that it was so.”

A former escort who claims she once went on a date with suspected Gilgo Beach serial killerRex Heuermann has described chilling comments that he allegedly made about the then-unsolved murder case.

Thirteen years after a trail of bodies were discovered in the shoreline community of Gilgo Beach, the Suffolk County Police Department made a long-awaited arrest in the case last week. Rex Heuermann, 59, was taken into custody and charged with the murders of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman.

Long Island resident and former escort Nicole Brass has since come forward with claims that she went on a date with Mr Heuermann sometime between 2014 and 2016. Ms Brass, 34, first claimed in a TikTok video that she had met Mr Heuermann at a seafood restaurant in Port Jefferson and he then decided to bring up the Gilgo Beach murders while trying “to make it look just like someone who was very interested in the case”.

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The sister of Shannan Gilbert, whose disappearance in May 2010 led to the discovery of a string of human remains, also spoke out about the arrest.

“I am overwhelmed but relieved that they finally caught him. It’s been a long time coming and I never gave up hope that one day justice would be served,” Sherre Gilbert said in a statement to NBC News.

“The suspect (Rex) deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life. He destroyed many lives so while it won’t bring our loved ones back, it does help that one less monster is off the streets and he can’t ever hurt anyone else!”