Suspected Long Island serial killer arrested 13 years after murder victims found in Gilgo Beach
07/14/2023 12:53 pm PDT
LONG ISLAND, N.Y. (TCD) -- Police in Suffolk County arrested a 59-year-old man at his office in Manhattan this week several years after 11 people were found dead over the span of several years in what became known as the Gilgo Beach murders.
On Thursday, July 13, at approximately 8:30 p.m., Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison announced officers took Rex Heuermann into custody on 35th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City and transported him to headquarters. The case was sent to a grand jury, and police "anticipate an indictment" returning July 14.
According to NBC News, officers surrounded Heuermann’s home in Massapequa on Friday and were also searching his office at the architecture firm he owns and runs.
According to Suffolk County Police, 10 adults and one toddler were killed in the Gilgo Beach area between 1996 and 2010. One of the first victims, Shannan Gilbert, disappeared May 1, 2010, after leaving a client’s home in Oak Beach. The client reportedly called a driver to take Gilbert home because she was "acting irrational and erratic."
Investigators found her body 18 months later.
Eight months after Gilbert’s disappearance, on Dec. 11, 2010, investigators searching for Gilbert found another woman’s remains. She was initially named Jane Doe 1 but was later identified as 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy.
Two days later, on Dec. 13, 2010, the bodies of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 27-year-old Amber Lynn Costello, and 22-year-old Megan Waterman were found. They became known as the "Gilgo Beach Four."
The New York Times reports the three women’s bodies were wrapped in burlap.
Suffolk County Police said all four women were sex workers who advertised on Craigslist between 2007 and 2010. According to the New York Times, detectives do not believe Gilbert died at the hands of a serial killer, but her family reportedly disagrees.
In March 2011, Suffolk County Police uncovered partial human remains a few miles from where the Gilgo Beach Four were found. Jane Doe 5 was identified as Jessica Taylor, and her DNA matched other human remains discovered in 2003.
A month later, three other sets of human remains, including those of a male, a toddler, and a woman, were located on Ocean Parkway. The following week, two more victims were found, including the toddler’s mother. Detectives reportedly discovered some of the mother’s remains in 1997, and she was known as “Peaches” due to a peach tattoo on her body.
In 2020, she was identified as Valerie Mack. She went missing in 2000 from Philadelphia.
The Suffolk County Police Department dedicated an entire website to the Gilgo Beach murders, including a page about all the victims.
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