A suspect has been arrested more than a decade after a serial killer began terrorizing Long Island, killing women and then dumping their bodies along Gilgo Beach in a mystery that enthralled the nation.
The murders puzzled the Suffolk County Police Department and frustrated family members of the victims for years. There were no developments in the case until New York City architect Rex Heuermann, 59, was arrested as a suspect at his Manhattan office Thursday night.
However, police sources have said Heuermann is being looked at for the killings of the first bodies found- known as the Gilgo Beach four – and not the additional five that were uncovered afterwards.
The serial killer riddle began with the search for 23-year-old Shannan Gilbert, an escort from New Jersey who had vanished in May 2010 after making a frantic 911.
As police looked for Gilbert in the beach community where she was last seen, they encountered the bodies of other women who had been dumped by the Gilgo Beach shore.
The mystery began with the search for 23-year-old Shannan Gilbert, an escort from New Jersey who had vanished in May 2010 after making a frantic 911
Long Island architect Rex Heuermann, 59, has been arrested in connection with the Gilgo Beach serial killings in a major police breakthrough
As police looked for Gilbert in beach community where she was last seen, they encountered the bodies of other women who had been dumped by the Gilgo Beach shore
Most of the 10 victims were prostitutes with petite frames and green or hazel eyes.
The first victim, Melissa Barthelemy from New York, 24, was discovered by Suffolk County Police on December 11, 2010.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, from Connecticut, Megan Waterman, 22, from Maine, Amber Costello, 27, were all found two days later nearby within 500 feet of each other.
Known as the ‘Gilgo Beach four,’ their bodies were not buried and stuffed in burlap sacks.
They were not identified until the next year. Some of the four had been missing for three years by the time their bodies were found.
All were sex workers who advertised their services on Craigslist, leading police to believe that is how the killer first made contact with them.
Some had also told friends that they planned to meet a client the day before they vanished.
By December 15, 2010 the FBI had offered its forensic and investigative services in the case and the next month authorities announced the four victims were the work of a serial killer.
The said they were probably killed and disposed of at different times.
Another four bodies were found in the same area, including that of a toddler, in March and April 2011, as police continued searching for Gilbert.
In March 2011, police found the skull of a prostitute named Jessica Taylor, 20. Most of the rest of her body was found in a wooded area of Manorville shortly after she disappeared in 2003.
‘Gilgo Four’: These photos show the first four victims who were found a decade ago near Gilgo Beach, Long Island, as part of an investigation into a serial killer
Partial skeletal remains of Valerie Mack were located in a wooded area in Manorville in September 2000. Partial skeletal remains of Jessica Taylor, an escort working in New York City, were located in a wooded area in Manorville on July 26, 2003
A map showing where the victims remains were located along the barren stretch of Ocean Beach Parkway in Gilgo Beach, located on the South Shore of Long Island
Body parts found near Gilgo Beach were also linked to another corpse found in Manorville in 2000. That female victim, hitherto known only as ‘Jane Doe No 6,’ was identified using genetic genealogy tools in May of this year as 24-year-old Valerie Mack.
Mack, who also went by Melissa Taylor, was an escort from Philadelphia who vanished near Atlantic City, New Jersey in 2000 at the age of 24.
An unidentified woman known as ‘Peaches’ or ‘Jane Doe No. 3’ was discovered on April 4 less than half a mile away from where the body of her toddler daughter was also found wrapped in a blanket.
The same day, the remains of an ‘Asian man’ now thought to have been a transgender sex worker were discovered. It’s believed they had been dead for five or six years.
Gilbert’s remains were finally found on December 13, 2011 in a swamp around a half mile from where she was last seen alive.
Detectives had long maintained that Gilbert’s death was accidental and excluded her from the list of the serial killer’s confirmed victims
Investigators said soon after her remains were found that she drowned in a drug-induced haze after wandering into the wetland; her relatives have long disputed that determination.
The suspect’s house sits directly north of Gilgo Beach across the South Oyster Bay
In January 2020, investigators revealed a previously unreleased photograph of a well-worn black leather belt with the initials ‘WH’ or ‘HM’ found at one of the crime scenes that they said was handled by an unknown suspect.
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart declined to say exactly where the belt was found and which one of the victims it was linked to. She said investigators determined that the belt was not owned by any of the victims.
‘We do believe that this item was handled by the suspect and did not belong to any of the victims,’ said Hart at the time.
Years later, Heuermann was taken into custody outside his Manhattan office last night after he had left for the day.
Today, his home Massapequa Park is flooded with cops. The modest property sits directly north of Gilgo Beach, where the bodies were found in 2010 and 2011, with only the South Oyster Bay separating them.
Heuermann, who is married and has two kids, has lived in the house since the 1980s.
Law enforcement sources tell DailyMail.com he has been on their radar since last year. Investigators matched him to the crimes by tracking the phone calls made from burner phones to the victims’ cell phones over 10 years ago.
The source added that ‘good, old fashioned police work’ cracked the case, rather than any DNA developments.
