Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer faces new charge days after search of his Long Island home
Rex Heuermann, 60, who has been held without bail since his arrest on July 13, has pleaded not guilty to four murder charges
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Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann is expected to be back in court this week to face a new charge on yet another killing just days after investigators conducted a second search of his Massapequa Park home.
Heuermann, 60, will appear in a Riverhead courtroom on Thursday for the arraignment before State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei, multiple sources told Newsday. The sources did not say what charges Heuermann is facing or which victim they pertain to.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office confirmed to The Independent that Heuermann will appear in court on Thursday.
Heuermann has been charged with the 2009 and 2010 murders of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes — known as the “Gilgo Four” — whose bodies were the first of 10 found along a remote beach parkway on Long Island between late fall 2010 and early spring 2011. All four women were sex workers, authorities have said.
The Manhattan architect, who has been held without bail since his arrest on July 13, has pleaded not guilty to the four murder charges. He was previously due back in court for a status hearing on June 18.
The arraignment comes just days after Gilgo Beach Task Force investigators completed a second search of Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park and a search of an area of Manorville where the partial remains of two Gilgo Beach victims — Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack — were found more than two decades ago.
A first search of the house back in July lasted 12 days and turned up more than 200 firearms, including dozens stored in a basement vault. Investigators also tore up a wooden deck, used an excavator to dig up the backyard and scanned for buried objects with specialized equipment, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who is prosecuting the case.
He briefly visited the house last month for the second search as investigators photographed the front porch, collected paint chips and other materials and placed them into evidence bags.
Robert Macedonio, who represents Heuermann’s estranged wife, Asa Ellerup, talked to Newsday after inspecting the condition of the Massapequa Park property following the search.
“It seems to be that the focus was in the basement,” Macedonio said. “There doesn’t seem to be much disturbance in the bathrooms [and] bedrooms.” But details of what exactly the investigators were looking for in the basement remains a mystery.
The case began back in May 2010 when Shannan Gilbert, a young woman working as a sex worker, vanished after leaving a client’s house on foot near Gilgo Beach. She called 911 for help saying she feared for her life and was never seen alive again.
During a search for Gilbert in a dense thicket close to the beach, police discovered human remains. Within days, four victims had been found. By spring 2011, the number of victims rose to 10.
Gilbert’s body was then found in December 2011. Her cause of death is widely contested with authorities long claiming that it is not connected to the serial killer or killers but that she died from accidental drowning as she fled from the client’s home.
However, an independent autopsy commissioned by her family ruled that she died by strangulation and her family continues to believe she was murdered.
Court records show that Heuermann was linked to the “Gilgo Four” murders through a tip about his pickup truck, a stash of burner phones, “sadistic” online searches and phone calls taunting victims’ families.
Email accounts allegedly used by Heuermann were used “to access and/or conduct searches related to pornography, rape, torture, and sex workers several thousand times,” prosecutors said.
Among the harrowing searches were: “autopsy photos of female”, “stories of rape audio”, “escorts manhattan”, and “very skinny white teen tied up porn.”
His DNA was also found on one of the victims, while his wife’s hair was found on three of the four women he is connected to, according to prosecutors.
Investigators are continuing to work to determine if Heuermann is also linked to any of the other victims – while law enforcement officials across the country are probing cold case murders for any potential ties.
He has not been charged in the killings of any of the other victims whose remains were found along Gilgo Beach.
A trial date has not been set.