Suspect in Long Island Gilgo Beach serial killings arrested; identified as architect Rex Heuermann: police sources
NEW YORK -- A Long Island man was arrested in the long-unsolved Gilgo Beach murders of 10 victims in a brutal killing spree targeting young women more than a decade ago, police said Friday.
Rex Heuermann, 59, was busted in Manhattan before an army of cops descended on his Massapequa Park home Thursday night, searching his Nassau County residence, police said.
The suspect was arrested around 8:30 p.m. Thursday outside 373 Fifth Ave., near his real estate office — where state and Suffolk County investigators descended Friday with a search warrant, sources said.
“The Gilgo Beach task force ... did place one individual under arrest, and he’s currently in custody,” said Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison outside the suspect’s home.
Harrison, who made the long-cold case a priority last year, added the case was already before a grand jury and an indictment was expected Friday afternoon. He spoke shortly before police towed a black pickup truck from the suspect’s driveway.
Task force investigators first targeted Heuermann after cell phone data put him in the area around Gilgo Beach at the point where one of the victims went missing, a source told The News.
That was enough to link the suspect’s DNA to samples recovered during their investigation, the source. The arrest was first reported by News 12 Long Island.
The veteran real estate executive, the father of two and a life-long Long Islander, was expected to face criminal charges in the murders. No details were available on the timing of his initial court appearance.
“This is a day that has a long time been coming, and hopefully a day that will bring peace to this community and to the families,” said Gov. Hochul. “Peace that has been long overdue.”
His arrest came more than a year after Suffolk County investigators announced a ramped-up effort for answers in the unsolved spate of slayings.
A $50,000 reward was posted in May 2022 in the killings of eight women, an Asian man dressed as a woman and a toddler. Several of the victims were sex workers or worked as escorts, police said.
A press conference with more details was expected later Friday at the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office in Yaphank, L.I.
“The work is not done here,” said Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone. “But this is a major, major step forward in achieving the goal that we have had from the beginning and that is again to bring closure to these families and to bring justice to the victims.”
State police and cops from both Suffolk and Nassau counties closed off a portion of the street outside Heuermann’s suburban home as the investigation of the 12-year-old murders heated up after years without answers for the victims’ families.
Massapequa Park is roughly 15 miles from Gilgo Beach, where a total of 10 victims — eight women, an Asian man dressed as a woman and a toddler — were found murdered back in 2010 and 2011.
The bodies were recovered as police searched for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker who disappeared into a marshy area in Oak Beach, L.I., in May 2010.
Gilbert vanished after leaving a client’s house on foot in the seafront community of Oak Beach, disappearing into the wetlands.
Months later, a police officer and his cadaver dog were looking for her body in the thicket along nearby Ocean Parkway when they discovered the remains of a second woman. Within days, three other bodies were found, all within a short walk of one another.
By spring 2011, the number climbed to 10 sets of human remains. Some were later linked to dismembered body parts found elsewhere on Long Island, creating a puzzling crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort community on Fire Island and out to far eastern Long Island.
Gilbert’s body was found in December 2011, about three miles east of where the other 10 victims were discovered. Cops said her death was an accident, something her family has disputed for more than a decade.
In talking about the bodies near Gilgo Beach, investigators have said several times over the years it is unlikely one person killed all the victims.
In addition to Gilbert, cops have identified Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack as victims.
Waterman was seen on surveillance video at the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge in the days and hours before she was killed, according to police.
John Ray, an attorney for Taylor’s family said that he had been in contact with investigators on the case as recently as last week — and was told that detectives had received a “strong, credible tip” and were “closing in on an arrest.”
Cops released Gilbert’s chilling 911 call before her disappearance in the hopes to get more tips about the murders.
“There’s somebody after me!” Gilbert, 24, screamed in the rambling call. “Somebody’s after me, please. No! No! Stop no!”
The case was reopened with the aid of the FBI, and Harrison repeatedly asked the public for tips that can help them.
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(With Tim Balk)
