Suspected Serial Killer in Custody After Years-Long Manhunt

Authorities are accusing Rex Heuermann of multiple murders.

By Andrew Roberts

A Long Island man has been charged with multiple murder counts stemming from a series of unsolved killings on Long Island's Gilgo Beach around 2009. According to CBS News, Rex Heuermann from Massapequa, Long Island was identified as the suspect taken into custody on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.

Those three women and a fourth, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, were all found close together in the Gilgo Beach area in 2010. CBS News notes that the bodies of ten women were found in the area during the period and were believed to be the work of a serial killer.

"Members assigned to the Gilgo Beach Task Force, which consisted of numerous detectives and investigators from the Suffolk County Police Department, as well as our partners in the FBI, did place one individual under arrest," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said.

Heuermann was taken into custody on Thursday and appeared in court on Friday to plead not guilty. Despite the arrest, investigators aren't sure they're close to being finished. "This case is not over; it's only beginning," Suffolk County DA Raymond Tierney said in Friday's press conference. "We're continuing to execute search warrants and anticipate getting more evidence."

Police said evidence collected at the scene and cell phone data for burner phones, comparing cell phone data from the location and connecting it to numbers that reached out to each of the victims.

CBS News adds that court documents say the damning connective evidence was a hair found on the burlap the victims were wrapped in, tying it to DNA lifted from pizza crusts in a box. According to law enforcement, though, the evidence didn't play into the police's decision to arrest Heuermann.

"The initial plan was to allow the grand jury investigation to go a little further, but at a certain time, again, the task force felt for reasons having nothing to do with the evidence in the case, we had to take him down," Tierney said. The murders have been featured in numerous TV news magazines over the years and recently were given fresh treatment on Netflix with 2020's Lost Girls.

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