The so-called Gilgo Beach murders, a famous unsolved case that has been leading the US police upside down for thirteen years, are getting closer to being cleared up. The key could be in the arrest of Rex Heuermann, whom the investigation points to as the serial killer responsible for at least three women among the eleven bodies found at Gilgo Beach in Massapequa Park, so far.
Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect, was arrested late Thursday and charged with the alleged murder of three of those women, who have been identified as Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Heuermann, is also the prime suspect in the death of a fourth victim, according to court documents.
Heuermann appeared this Friday before a judge in the Long Island (New York) region to plead not guilty to the accusations, according to local media, which ensure that the alleged serial killer did not show any kind of emotion during the hearing.
The man, married with two children, is accused of a series of crimes that date back to 2010 and that were highly publicized in the United States. The case has been the subject of several documentaries and inspired the film Lost Girls, released in 2020.
The case was opened as a result of the disappearance in May of that year of a woman who worked as a prostitute on Long Island; In the months that followed, while searching for clues to her whereabouts, police discovered several bodies in a remote coastal area near where she had last been seen.
All of them turned out to be young women who were prostitutes and, over time, the remains of a total of nine women (including the one originally sought), as well as a man and a baby, were found in the area.
For years, the police have considered that at least several of them would be victims of a serial killer.
After a long time with the investigation at a standstill, in 2020 the authorities published a photograph of a belt marked with initials that they believed could belong to the alleged murderer and asked for citizen collaboration to try to identify it.
Ultimately, investigators made progress thanks to a vehicle registered to his name and using technology to determine the location of several disposable mobile phones that they believed the killer may have used to contact his victims, according to investigative sources cited by The New York Times.
This led to two areas: one in the town of Massapequa Park, where Heuermann resided, and another in midtown Manhattan, where he had his office.
Last January, according to various media outlets, police officers recovered pieces of pizza from his garbage and analyzed DNA remains, which were compatible with others that had been recovered from a corpse.
Authorities accessed the Internet history of the suspect, who between March 2022 and June 2023 reportedly made more than 200 searches related to the Gilgo Beach case.
Google searches include “why haven’t police been able to trace the calls made by the Long Island serial killer?”, “why hasn’t the Long Island serial killer been caught?”, “in the Long Island Serial Killer Investigation, New Phone Technology May Be Key,” among others.
Heuermann’s digital trace also shows that he is a habitual consumer of child pornography and that he used the Internet to track down and contact prostitutes.
The investigation remains open and Heuermann’s involvement in more murders has not been ruled out.
