NEW YORK — Investigators with the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force returned Monday to the Long Island home of murder suspect Rex Heuermann.
He has pleaded not guilty to killing four women whose bodies were found near one another in a marshy stretch close to Gilgo Beach.
The bodies of the Gilgo Beach Four — Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello – were all found wrapped in burlap.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office declined to comment other than to say the investigative work goes on.
“As District Attorney Tierney has previously stated, the work of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task force is continuing,” the statement said. “We do not comment on investigative steps while ongoing.”
Prosecutors previously revealed they seized hundreds of electronic devices from Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home and Manhattan office following his arrest.
He used the devices to search for the deceased victims and their family members; the status of the investigation; for software that would assist in wiping or erasing data from computers and other similar digital devices and purchase digital masking and forensic wiping tools, prosecutors said.
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — New charges were filed Tuesday against accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann.
It comes six months after his arrest.
He was indicted Tuesday in the death of his fourth alleged victim, 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes of Connecticut.
For the first time, her grieving family spoke publicly.
Suffolk County district attorney Ray Tierney inside Judge Timothy P. Mazzei’s courtroom at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024, where alleged Gilgo Killer Rex Heurmann was indicted in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
James Carbone
“I was only 7-years-old when my mother was murdered. Her loss drastically changed the trajectory of my life,” daughter Nicolette Brainard-Barnes said. “While the loss of my mom has been extremely painful for me, the indictment by the grand jury has brought hope for justice for my mom and my family.”
Nicolette’s family had prayed for a resolution.
Investigators said they linked Brainard-Barnes’ murder to Heuermann via DNA from a female hair found in the buckle of a belt used to bind her ankles, feet and legs – eight trillion to one that it matched Heuermann’s wife Asa Ellerup or daughter Victoria, who was tailed on an LIRR train and threw out an energy drink, according to court documents.
Read the superseding bail application in the Gilgo Beach murders case
Prosecutors made it clear they believed all hair transfer were made from Heuermann to his alleged victims. The family was out of town for the murders of the Gilgo Beach Four.
“Asa Ellerup and her children were not involved, not even in the jurisdiction, when these murders took place,” Ellerup’s attorney Robert Madedonio siad.
The accused serial killer, his hands shackled behind his hulking back, showed no emotion at all. He was wearing a tie and gray suit, and barely made eye contact with anyone during the court proceeding.
“You’re talking about a gentleman who has never been arrested before. He’s a productive member of society. He’s going to work every day. He’s supporting his family, and he’s incarcerated. And he’s claiming he didn’t do this. But he is looking forward to having his day in a courtroom,” Heuermann’s attorney Michael Brown said.
“Your reaction to the hairs linked to his daughter and wife?” CBS New York’s Jennifer McLogan asked.
“Miraculously, nuclear DNA testing and results have come forward,” Brown said.
DA Ray Tierney says it’s not a time for sarcasm, and it was worth the wait, and that nuclear DNA will help bring justice to the four murder victims.
“Science has caught up. I would, a good break for justice. A good break for the investigation,” Tierney said.
New court documents also reveal how the accused killer used burner phones to reach out to sex workers as recently as last year. They said the hundreds of electronic devices seized from his Massapequa Park home included searches for the Gilgo victims, and software that would wipe or erase data.
“She was an intellectual. She was a writer. She was an artistic person. She cared very deeply about the people that she loved,” Tierney said. “It’s been an honor and a privilege to work these cases, and to provide that small measure of closure.”
“It has been 16 years since I last saw my sister, 16 years since I heard her voice, because 16 years ago, she was silenced,” Brainard-Barnes’ sister Melissa Cann said. “Maureen was a mother of two amazing children, and they will forever be without their mother. Maureen was my older sister, who was always there for me when I needed her.”
When Heuermann was arrested in July and charged as the elusive Gilgo Beach serial killer, prosecutors said his DNA from discarded pizza and burner phone evidence tied him to three murdered women — Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello — whose bodies were found along Gilgo Beach in 2010.
The petite 25-year-old from Norwich, Connecticut, was a mother of two. She was working as a Craigslist escort in Manhattan when she disappeared in July 2007. Her remains were found three years later near three other women’s bodies, dumped along desolate Ocean Parkway on Long Island.
Police dubbed them the “Gilgo Four.” They were all sex workers, wrapped in burlap. Now prosecutors say they were all murdered, at different times, by Heuermann.
The DA said the grand jury will continue to try to solve the remaining murders at Gilgo Beach.
New York criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor David Schwartz spoke with CBS New York ahead of Tuesday’s court appearance to put the developments into perspective. He called it a “scientific case.”
“Heuermann was indicted and remanded for the first three murders. They made the strategic decision to make the arrest at that moment in time, because they were already surveilling him for about a year. They just didn’t want anything to go wrong,” he explained. “So they made that arrest, and in the meantime, they were investigating the fourth murder. They were waiting for the mitochondrial DNA analysis on the fourth murder.”
Schwartz went on to add “DNA is not a layup.”
“They didn’t use nuclear DNA, which specifically points to a particular person. They used mitochondrial DNA, because of — 13 years later, all this time went by, which excludes 99.6% of the population,” he said. “So it’s scientific evidence, plus circumstantial evidence — they have his truck, they have phone records, they have all types of other evidence that they’re going to piece this case together. So I expect this case to be a complicated case, and I expect it to last a good amount of time.”
During her decades-long career, Jennifer McLogan has been recognized for her coverage of breaking news and live reporting on major stories that include the September 11 attacks, Superstorm Sandy, the Gilgo Beach Murders, the Long Island Rail Road massacre, the crash of TWA Flight 800, the Philadelphia Police firebombing of the radical group Move, the Hamptons’ Pine Barrens fires, and major snowstorms crippling the Northeast. In sports, she covered Super Bowl XLVI, World Series with both the Yankees and the Mets, NBA Finals with Michael Jordan and the death of Arthur Ashe.
What began as a search for one missing woman led to multiple bodies and the capture of a man police say is a serial killer.
May 1, 2010: Shannan Gilbert disappears
Shannan Gilbert
GilgoNews.com
Shannan Gilbert, 23, was working as an escort. In the early morning hours of May 1, 2010, Gilbert made a frantic phone call to 911. She had been at a client’s home on Long Island, and said she believed someone was after her. She took off running and told the 911 operator there were people trying to kill her. Then, Gilbert vanished.
Police would do an exhaustive search for Gilbert. Months passed without a sign of the missing woman and then, in December 2010, near Gilgo Beach, a police officer and his K-9, Blue, found human remains. But it wasn’t Gilbert. Instead, they found the bodies of four women.
December 2010: The Gilgo Four
The Gilgo Four. From left, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman and Melissa Barthelemy.
CBS News
Police found the bodies of four women near Gilgo Beach on New York’s Long Island. The women became known as the Gilgo Four and were identified as Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman and Melissa Barthelemy. Police say all of the women were petite and three of them were wrapped in burlap. Police began their hunt to find a serial killer.
The killer had a type
Dominick Varrone was chief of detectives at the Suffolk County Police Department,
WCBS
Dominick Varrone, who was Suffolk County chief of detectives at the time, said there were striking similarities among the Gilgo Four. “Very petite. 5 foot or under, 100 pounds,” Varrone said. The women were also all in their 20s and were all working as online escorts.
July 6, 2007: Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ final weekend
Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, was the first of the Gilgo Four to disappear. She had been working as an escort in New York City when she vanished in July 2007.
Melissa Cann
Maureen Brainard-Barnes is often referred to as the first of the Gilgo Four. She went missing in July 2007. Brainard-Barnes was a single mother of two living in Norwich, Connecticut. She had begun working as an escort, posting ads on Craigslist and other websites to meet clients. On July 6, 2007, her cellphone was contacted by a burner cellphone — a prepaid phone that anyone can buy and use anonymously. Between July 6 and July 9, there were 16 interactions between the caller using a burner phone and Brainard-Barnes’ cellphone.
July 8, 2007: Missy Cann’s last call with her sister
Melissa Cann says her sister Maureen’s death is always in the back of her mind. “It’s really really hard … I miss her so much.”
CBS News
Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ sister, Missy Cann, received a call from Maureen late at night from Penn Station in midtown Manhattan. In an interview in 2020, Cann told “48 Hours” Maureen said she was going to take the train at midnight. Cann never saw or heard from Maureen again.
July 2009: The disappearance of Melissa Barthelemy
Melissa Barthelemy
Barhelemy family
Melissa Barthelemy, 24, moved from Buffalo, New York, to New York City to work as a hairdresser. At some point, she also began working as an escort. In July 2009, nearly two years to the day that Brainard-Barnes went missing, Barthelemy disappeared.
July 17, 2009: Taunting phone calls begin
Melissa’s younger sister Amanda. (“48 Hours” agreed not to show her face.)
CBS News
In the weeks following Barthelemy’s disappearance, police say her then 15-year-old sister, Amanda, received a series of phone calls from a man calling from Melissa’s cellphone. The first of these calls came on July 17, 2009 at approximately 12:40 p.m. A number of calls followed in the coming weeks. In one, the caller told Amanda he had killed Melissa.
June 5, 2010: Megan Waterman
Megan Waterman, 22, was the youngest of the four victims whose bodies were discovered near Gilgo Beach. Megan was last seen on June 6, 2010, leaving a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge, N.Y.
Handout
Megan Waterman, 22, a mother from Scarborough, Maine, was also working as an escort. On June 5, 2010, she was contacted by a burner phone which had just been activated that same day.
June 6, 2010: Megan Waterman vanishes
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison released video never seen by the public of a lobby of the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge on June 4 and 6 in 2010. Seen in a yellow top is Megan Waterman in her final hours.
Suffolk County Police
At 1:31 a.m., Waterman’s phone was again contacted by the same burner phone as the day before. Security video showed Waterman leaving a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge, Long Island, around the same time. This was the last time she was seen alive.
“I can’t bring her back”
Lily Waterman tells “48 Hours” that if she could talk to her mom, she would tell her how much she loves her. “I never got to really say those words.”
Elizabeth Meserve
Liliana Waterman was just 3 years old when her mother disappeared. In her first television interview in 2020, Liliana (pictured with Megan Waterman) told “48 Hours” that if she could talk to her mom, she would tell her how much she loves her. “I never got to really say those words,” Liliana told correspondent Erin Moriarty. She said she misses her mom every day.
Sept. 2, 2010: Amber Costello disappears
Amber Costello, 27, disappeared in September 2010, after she left her home on Long Island to meet a client. In 2011, her roommate Dave Schaller told “48 Hours,” “she was an amazing person, she really was.”
Handout
Amber Costello, a 27-year-old escort living on Long Island, was contacted by someone using a burner phone. The next day, she left her house to meet a client and never returned.
After Costello’s disappearance, police say her roommate Dave Schaller told them about her clients. He described one of them as looking like an “ogre” and having “a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche.” On the night she went missing, Schaller says, a client offered Cistello $1,500 for the night – six times her hourly rate.
In 2011, Schaller spoke to Moriarty. “This guy was so relentless,” Schaller said. “He called several times. He was on the phone with her for quite a while each time.” He says the client got Costello, an experienced escort, to do something she never did: leave home without her purse or cellphone and meet him in his car. At nearly midnight, Schaller says Costello left the house, walked down the street, and he never saw her again.
Dec. 16, 2010: Still no Shannan
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Throughout the spring of 2011, investigators continued a wide-ranging search for Shannan Gilbert.
May 2011: Six more sets of remains discovered
By May 2011, police had discovered six more sets of remains in the area, bringing the total to 10 sets of remains — including the Gilgo Four. Investigators were not sure the same killer was responsible for all the murders.
Suffolk County Police Department
By May 2011, police had discovered six more sets of remains in the area, bringing the total to 10 — including the Gilgo Four. Investigators were not sure the same killer was responsible for all the murders.
Victim No. 5, Jessica Taylor, is an escort who went missing in 2003.
Another set of remains police called “Jane #6” has now been identified as Valerie Mack, who also worked as an escort and went missing in 2000.
Number 7, to investigators’ surprise they found a toddler girl.
Number 8 was an Asian male dressed in women’s clothing.
Number 9 was a female skull belonging to Karen Vergata, an escort who disappeared in 1996.
Number 10, female remains, from a victim cops nicknamed “Peaches” because of a tattoo on her torso. Although her remains were found 6 miles away, police say DNA has confirmed that “Peaches” is the mother of that toddler.
Dec. 13, 2011: Shannan Gilbert is found
In December 2011, a year-and-a-half after she went missing, police found Shannan Gilbert’s belongings. Her purse, cellphone, shoes and even her jeans were found in the marsh eight miles from Gilgo Beach. A week later, her skeletal remains were found about a quarter mile from her belongings. Investigators are not convinced Shannan was murdered and theorize that she may have died of hypothermia or possible drowning.
Alex Diaz
In December 2011, a year-and-a-half after she went missing, and a year after the Gilgo Four were found, investigators found Gilbert’s remains. But they don’t believe she was murdered.
Years later, the Suffolk County Police Department released the full audio of Shannan’s 21-minute 911 call on May 1, 2010, the morning she disappeared. Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said in an interview with Erin Moriarty, Gilberts’s death was likely not a murder. “It’s an unfortunate incident, but right now we believe that she just ran into the marsh and unfortunately drowned,” Harrison said.
February 2022: A fresh look at the case
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney exits after a court appearance by Rex Heuermann, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, in Riverhead, N.Y.
AP/John Minchillo
For nearly a decade after the discovery of the Gilgo Four, the investigation stalled. Until, in February 2022, a new task force was formed by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison and Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney. In an interview withMoriarty, DA Tierney said, “… a mere six weeks later … Rex Heuermann was identified for the first time.”
A tip from the past
After Amber Costello disappeared in 2010, police say her roommate Dave Schaller told them about her clients. He described one of them as looking like an “ogre” and having “a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche.”
CBS News
How did investigators get a suspect in six weeks? It turns out that in the original case files were a number of critical clues that the new task force was finally able to connect. Costello’s roommate Dave Schaller had previously described one of Costello’s clients and the type of vehicle he drove to investigators. The vehicle was a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche.
With a description of an”ogre-like” man, and the make and model of his truck, police took a closer look at Costello’s phone records from 2010. Schaller had told them that before Costello disappeared, there was one client that called her incessantly.
The burner phone clue
Police back then knew the client was using a burner phone. And they knew that the Brainard-Barnes, Barthelemy, Costello and Waterman had all been in contact with burner numbers right before they disappeared.
In 2012, with the help of the FBI, police determined that most of those calls connected to cell towers inside a small area of Massapequa Park, Long Island. They called this area “the box.” According to DA Tierney, “the box” consisted of a couple of blocks within Massapequa Park.
A suspect in sight
Rex Heuermann was observed by law enforcement at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan on May 19, 2023.
Suffolk County District Attorney
Armed with their small radius of “the box” and the description of an “ogre-like” man that drove a Chevrolet Avalanche, the task force now had a prime suspect. Police identified an architect named Rex Heuermann as the man they believed may have been responsible for the murders.
And when they looked at Heuermann’s personal cellphone records, they say that his phone was in the same area as those burner phones when they were used to contact victims. They also say that when the burner phones contacted victims, they were often in Massapequa Park, where Heuermann lived, or midtown Manhattan, where his architectural firm was located. In 2023, they noticed Heuermann going into a phone store to make a payment on a burner phone.
A DNA hit
Detectives tailing Rex Heuermann recovered his DNA from pizza crust in a box that he discarded in a Manhattan trash can.
Suffolk County D.A.
Police began to tail Heuermann. When he threw out a pizza box into a trash can in midtown Manhattan, investigators found that Heuermann’s DNA on the pizza crust was consistent with a DNA profile found on a male hair discovered with Megan Waterman’s body. With DNA evidence, along with the cellphone records linking Heuermann to the burner phones, officers made an arrest.
July 14, 2023: A suspect in custody
Suspect Rex Heuermann leaving the Suffolk County Police 7th Precinct in connection with the Gilgo Beach murders on his way to court on July 14, 2023.
Splash by Shutterstock
Rex Heuermann, of Massapequa Park, Long Island, was charged with multiple counts of murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Heuermann is currently the prime suspect for the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, but he has not been charged with her death.
When asked about Heuermann’s innocence at a press conference, Heuerman’s attorney Michael Brown said, “What has my client told me? He told me he didn’t do this.”
Digging for evidence
An excavator is seen at the home of Rex Heuermann.. According to law enforcement sources, investigators are looking into whether any victims may have been killed at the house.
CBS New York
Police spent 12 days looking through Heuermann’s house, pulling guns out of the basement, and digging in the backyard. Another important piece of evidence taken into possession was a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche registered to Heuermann at the time of the murders. It was sitting on property he owns in South Carolina when they recovered it.
An opportunity to kill?
A married man, Heuermann has a daughter and stepson with his second wife, Asa Ellerup. Ellerup, who was born in Iceland, would take the children to see her family there in the summers. It was during these trips and others, police believe, that Heuermann killed the women.
Heuermann pleaded not guilty
Rex Heuermann is seen in a booking image from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office.
Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office/AP
Heuermann was arraigned in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, New York. He pleaded not guilty to the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. The judge ordered that he be held without bail in a Suffolk County jail where he is currently awaiting trial.
Remembering Amber, Melissa and Megan
From left, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman and Melissa Barthelemy
CBS News
Investigators hope that the arrest can give victims’ families a sense of peace. Police Commissioner Harrison told Erin Moriarty, “He took away somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister, not just one person, multiple individuals.”
Other investigations?
Investigations spread to South Carolina and Las Vegas where Heuermann owns property, with detectives there taking a fresh look at cases of missing women. Heuermann has not been charged in any additional investigations.
As for the other bodies found near Gilgo Beach – Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Karen Vergata, “Peaches”, the toddler girl, and the Asian male – none of them have been linked to Heuermann.
Not far from a quiet stretch of Gilgo Beach on Long Island, New York, investigators uncovered the hidden remains of four young women. The mystery of who they were and how they got here might have stayed a secret if not for a woman named Shannan Gilbert.
FINDING THE GILGO FOUR
In the early morning hours of May 1, 2010, 23-year-old Shannan Gilbert, working as an escort, called 911.
911 OPERATOR: State Police.
SHANNAN GILBERT: Yeah, there’s somebody after me.
The call came from a neighborhood not far from Gilgo Beach.
SHANNAN GILBERT (to 911): These people are trying to kill me.
Shannan Gilbert
GilgoNews.com
Shannan starts running, knocking on doors.
911 OPERATOR: Where are you, Shannan?
She screams. And then, nothing. Shannan was gone.
911 OPERATOR: Hello? Hello?
Dominick Varrone: K-9 … searched the area … exhaustively for Shannan Gilbert.
Dominick Varrone was chief of detectives at the Suffolk County Police Department. Months passed without a sign of the missing woman. Then, in December 2010 near Gilgo Beach, a police officer and his K-9 named Blue found human remains.
Dominick Varrone: Everyone assumed it was Shannan Gilbert.
But it wasn’t Shannan. Stunned searchers would go on to discover the remains of four other women. The women were identified as Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Like Shannan, all were in their 20s. All were online escorts. All petite. Three of the four were wrapped in burlap — the kind you can find in hunting stores. They became known as the Gilgo Four.
Missy Cann: It’s really, really hard. …’Cause I miss her so much.
“48 Hours” has reported on this case since 2010. Over the years, we’ve secured exclusive interviews with the family and friends of the Gilgo Four. Missy Cann will never forget the wintry day when she got the devastating news.
Missy Cann: The detectives came to my house and just said that Maureen has been positively identified as one of the victims on Ocean Parkway.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, was the first of the Gilgo Four to disappear. She had been working as an escort in New York City when she vanished in July 2007.
Melissa Cann
Her sister, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a mother of two, was the first to disappear, on July 9, 2007.
Missy Cann: She was very smart and very creative.
Erin Moriarty: She liked being a mom?
Missy Cann: She loved being a mom.
But life as a single mom living in Norwich, Connecticut, was difficult. Cann didn’t know it, but Maureen had turned to escort work, and that July went to New York City for a weekend to make money. On her way home, she called Missy from Penn Station in midtown Manhattan.
Missy Cann: I could hear the commotion … from the train station. … From the time that she called me, it was poof. She was gone.
She reported Maureen missing. Eventually, officers would tell Cann that after her sister’s disappearance, someone had used Maureen’s cell phone to make a call from Long Island. It wasn’t known then, but those two locations – Long Island and midtown Manhattan – would become important clues in the hunt for a serial killer.
Nearly two years to the day that Maureen vanished, 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy went missing in July 2009 – also from midtown Manhattan. Lynn Barthelemy is Melissa’s mother.
Melissa Barthelemy, 24, went missing in July 2009. In the weeks following her disappearance, her 15-year-old sister was terrorized by a series of frightening phone calls made by a man calling from Melissa’s cell phone. Police believe the man who made these phone calls is, in fact, Melissa’s killer.
Barhelemy family
Erin Moriarty: How often do you think about Melissa?
Lynn Barthelemy: Every single minute of the day. … And It just didn’t happen to the girls. I mean it destroyed all of our families.
Melissa moved from Buffalo to New York City to work as a hairdresser. At some point, she also began working as an escort and then disappeared. About a week after she went missing, Melissa’s then-15-year-old sister, Amanda, started getting calls from Melissa’s phone.
Steven Cohen: And she answers, you know, “Melissa, where have you been?” … And this voice is saying, “Oh, this isn’t Melissa.”
Steven Cohen was the family’s lawyer at the time.
Steven Cohen: He … was taunting Amanda … and he said, “Do you know what I did to your sister?” … “I killed Melissa.”
Lynn Barthelemy: All I can say is he’s sick. And he’s going to make a mistake. And we’re going to catch him.
Those calls from Melissa’s own phone may very well have been that mistake. When police traced them, the calls placed the person they believed to be Melissa’s killer in midtown Manhattan.
Megan Waterman, 22, was the youngest of the four victims whose bodies were discovered near Gilgo Beach. Megan was last seen on June 6, 2010, leaving a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge, N.Y.
Handout
The following year, Megan Waterman, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, disappeared from a hotel on Long Island.
Liliana Waterman: Part of you is, like, missing. It’s just, like, something’s always off.
“48 Hours” spoke with Megan’s daughter, Liliana, in 2020.
Liliana Waterman: I would do anything to bring her back, but I can’t and it just, like, frustrates me so bad.
Megan’s family says the 22-year-old was a creative, but troubled, young woman who loved fashion and was devoted to her daughter.
Erin Moriarty: What would you say to your mom if you could?
Liliana Waterman: I would just want to tell her that, like, I love her. … I just want her to know, like, she has a special place in my heart, no one can ever replace her.
Like the other two women, Megan disappeared in the summer. On June 6, 2010, she was working as an escort on Long Island.
Liliana Waterman: No matter what her job was … she was a person … and … she needs justice.
Haunting video from a Holiday Inn Express is the last time she was seen alive — moments before she went to meet a client. Cellphone records later placed her phone in a Long Island neighborhood called Massapequa Park.
Amber Costello, 27, disappeared in September 2010, after she left her home on Long Island to meet a client. In 2011, her roommate Dave Schaller told “48 Hours,” “she was an amazing person, she really was.”
Handout
Amber Costello was the last of the Gilgo Four to disappear. She lived seven-and-a-half miles from Massapequa Park.
Dave Schaller: She used to say she was 4’11”, but she wasn’t. She was like 4’9″, you know. I mean, she was small.
Amber’s friend and former roommate, Dave Schaller, spoke with “48 Hours” in 2011.
Dave Schaller: She was an amazing person, she really was.
He says Amber was addicted to drugs and used sex work to support her habit.
Dave Schaller: But as amazing as she was, was as tormented as she was.
After Amber disappeared, police say Schaller told them about her clients. He described one of them as looking like an “ogre” and having “a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche.” On the night she went missing, Schaller says, a client offered Amber $1,500 for the night – six times her hourly rate.
Dave Schaller: This guy was so relentless. … He called several times. He was on the phone with her for quite a while each time.
He says the client got Amber, an experienced escort, to do something she never did: leave without her purse or cellphone and meet him in his car.
Dave Schaller: I walked out the front door with her. She – she gave me a hug. … She’s like, “I love ya.” And she left.
It was nearly midnight. Schaller says that when Amber left their house, she walked down the street and he never saw her again.
Schaller told “48 Hours” that he didn’t see the client’s face that night but suspects he had seen him before.
Erin Moriarty: So, this is a guy you might have seen?
Dave Schaller: Yeah, this is somebody that I seen. … I might be the — one of the only people who knows who he is.
It would be more than a decade before Schaller’s description would lead to a break in the case — and a prime suspect.
WHO IS REX HEUERMANN?
Muriel Henriquez: My co-worker called me and … she said, “Did you hear what happened to Rex?” And I’m like, “no.”
NEWS REPORT: A New York City architect charged with murder.
Muriel Henriquez: She says, “It’s Rex.” I said, “No way.”
NEWS REPORT: This house was a main focus and they brought out a lot of evidence.
Mary Shell: I just didn’t think it was real.
Mary Shell: I even thought to myself, “it’s crazy that there’s two Rex Heuermann’s out there.”
Mary Shell and Muriel Henriquez worked with Rex Heuermann and couldn’t wrap their heads around the news.
Muriel Henriquez: We never thought he would be that kind of person.
Mary Shell: It’s shocking.
In July 2023, nearly 13 years after the Gilgo Four were discovered, Suffolk County police commissioner Rodney Harrison made the announcement: authorities believe Rex Heuermann is the Long Island serial killer.
RODNEY HARRISON (news conference): Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us, a predator that ruined families.
Rex Heuermann seen in a booking image from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office.
Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office/AP
The man he calls a demon is a six-foot-four architect. He’s charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. And he is the prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
MICHAEL BROWN | REX HEUERMANN’S LAWYER (to reporters): What has my client told me? He told me he didn’t do this.
Heuermann was living about 20 minutes from Gilgo Beach, in Massapequa Park. It’s the very same town where Megan’s phone last connected with a cell tower. And Heuermann worked at his architectural firm in Midtown Manhattan, just blocks from where Maureen disappeared. The same area where several of the threatening calls to Melissa’s little sister were made.
NEWS CONFERENCE: The cause of death with regard to the three victims is homicidal violence.
A married man, Heuermann lived in a run-down house, and has a daughter and stepson with his second wife, Asa Ellerup. Ellerup, who was born in Iceland, would take the children to see her family there in the summers. It was during these trips and others, police believe, that Heuermann killed the women.
Erin Moriarty: You never got any kind of hint of another life?
Muriel Henriquez: No, no.
Muriel Henriquez worked at Heuermann’s company, RH Consultants & Associates, and spoke exclusively to “48 Hours.” She recalled a gift he gave her in the summer of 2007.
Muriel Henriquez with the sweater she received as a gift from Rex Heuermann.
CBS News
Muriel Henriquez (holding sweater): This is a sweater he asked his wife to bring back from a trip to Iceland.
Henriquez, who says she was touched at the time by Heuermann’s thoughtful gesture, now wonders if his wife’s absence that summer gave him an opportunity to kill Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who disappeared on July 9, 2007.
Erin Moriarty: How do you feel about this sweater now?
Muriel Henriquez: No, I’m definitely not going to wear the sweater now.
Still, she says she saw nothing alarming about the Rex Heuermann she saw daily.
Muriel Henriquez: A little bit of a nerd in a way. … he liked to talk about himself, what he knew … not a narcissist, but a little bit of a, you know, I know everything kind of guy.
Erin Moriarty: Pompous.
Muriel Henriquez: Pompous.
She remembers him running to and from job sites eating fast food on the run.
Muriel Henriquez: Pizza. That was his number one thing.
When she heard that police had recovered almost 300 firearms from a vault in Heuermann’s basement, she was surprised only by the number. She knew him as an avid hunter.
Muriel Henriquez: Going out shooting, hunting, that was his passion.
Erin Moriarty: What was it about hunting he liked?
Muriel Henriquez: I don’t know. I guess — I guess it was like, he — he liked the idea of having a prize.
Erin Moriarty: Stalking prey?
Muriel Henriquez: Stalking prey and winning. He liked to win.
And while she says it never occurred to her that Heuermann could be dangerous, she does remember a time when his tracking skills unnerved her. It was her 40th birthday and she had booked a cruise vacation.
Muriel Henriquez: “Where are you going?” I said, “I’m going to — you know, I’m going to be in the middle of the ocean. You’re not going to find me in the middle of the ocean.” … He said,” Oh, yes, I can.”
Henriquez didn’t think much of the comment, until the second day of her trip.
Muriel Henriquez: There was a white envelope under my door … it was a note from him. The note said, “I told you I could find you anywhere.”
Mary Shell: He had photos from hunting trips.
Mary Shell was just out of art school in the summer of 2010 when she worked for Heuermann. It was the same summer that both Megan Waterman and Amber Costello vanished.
Mary Shell: He would talk about the meat … in particular that bear meat could keep in the freezer for months.
Hearing authorities now say some of the victims were wrapped in a burlap that hunters often use was chilling.
Mary Shell: The burlap really got to me.
Since Heuermann’s arrest, Mary has written about her experience with him. She’s also talked to other former female employees who said they weren’t always treated with respect.
Mary Shell: He would have one of them, uh, clean the toilet if he thought the cleaning person hadn’t done a good enough job.
Erin Moriarty: A woman in the office?
Mary Shell: Yes. Mm-hmm. … he — more than once commented on women’s bodies … if someone perhaps had gained some weight, you know, that kind of — that kind of thing.
John Parisi grew up with Heuermann. He says Heuermann was bullied as a child.
John Parisi: I remember meeting Rex when I was in first or second grade. … he was a loner, not many friends. … The children were super mean to him … made fun of him and teased him.
But Parisi says he never saw Heuermann fight back.
John Parisi: He was big enough that if he got upset and started swinging, he would hurt somebody. But he never did.
As Heuermann got older, John points out, things didn’t get much better.
John Parisi: He was rejected by many girls. … we all go through that awkward stage growing up, and it seemed like that awkward stage stayed with him longer than usual.
Still, he says, many in the community find it hard to believe that Heuermann is the notorious serial killer living a double life for more than a decade.
John Parisi: People … were saying, oh my God, I can’t believe we have a serial killer in our town, and we grew up with, and we walked amongst the killer.
Another classmate of Heuermann’s, actor Billy Baldwin, took to social media when the news broke, tweeting it was “Mind-boggling.”
The awkward Long Island teenager grew up to be a confident and seemingly successful architect. Antoine Amira met and interviewed him in 2022.
REX HEUERMANN (“L’Interview”): Born and raised on Long Island … then working in Manhattan since 1987.
Antoine Amira: There’s nothing in my interview that made me think that this person in front of me is a dangerous person.
Amira is a hotel food and beverage manager in New York who loves real estate. He has a YouTube interview show called “L’Interview”where he handpicks guests whom he thinks are interesting and accomplished.
Amira says Heuermann was well known for his skill at helping companies and individuals get building permits.
REX HEUERMANN (“L’Interview”): I’m an architect, and architectural consultant, a troubleshooter.
REX HEUERMANN: When a job that should have been routine suddenly becomes not routine, I get the phone call.
ANTOINE AMIRA: Gotcha.
Antoine Amira: What really, uh, uh, stood out for me was that he — he was very, very, very smart.
And known, says Amira, for his ability to find loopholes in the rules.
Antoine Amira: He was pleased when he was doing it.
Erin Moriarty: That he could —
Antoine Amira: That he — could outwit the — the system.
But Amira says he remembers it was hard to get Heuermann to crack a smile. Not even during the signature sunglasses selfies he takes with every guest.
ANTOINE AMIRA (YouTube interview show): That’s it, folks. That was Rex.
ANTOINE AMIRA: It’s. Selfie time. Can you smile?
REX HEUERMANN: That is.
If police are right, Rex Heuerman was able to hide a life as a serial killer — and if he did, his habit of eating pizza on the go would turn out to be his undoing.
CONNECTING THE CLUES
For more than a decade after the discovery of the Gilgo Four, Rex Heuermann’s name never appeared on a suspect list until a new task force was formed with Suffolk County police commissioner Rodney Harrison and Suffolk County D.A. Ray Tierney.
Ray Tierney: In February of 2022 we formed the task force … and then a mere six weeks later … Rex Heuermann was identified for the first time.
A suspect in six weeks? So how did they do it? It turns out that buried in the original case files were a number of critical clues that the new task force was finally able to connect. Remember Amber’s roommate Dave Schaller?
Dave Schaller: She’s like, “I love you.” You know, she gave me a hug. … And she left.
He had told police about one of Amber’s clients and his vehicle.
Ray Tierney: Just a large, built man … and that, he was driving this, this first-generation Chevy Avalanche.
A first-generation Chevy Avalanche. With a description of an ogre-like man, and the make and model of his truck, police took a closer look at Amber’s phone records from 2010. Schaller had told them that before Amber disappeared, there was one particular client calling incessantly.
DaveSchaller: He called several times. He was on the phone with her for quite a while each time.
Police back then knew the client was using a burner phone. That’s a prepaid phone that anyone can buy and use anonymously. And they knew that Maureen, Melissa and Megan had all been in contact with burner numbers right before they disappeared.
In 2012, with the help of the FBI, they determined that most of those calls connected to cell towers inside a small area of Massapequa Park. They called it “the box.”
Erin Moriarty: So how large an area is that box?
Ray Tierney: It’s, you know, a couple of blocks within — within Massapequa Park.
The new task force began the search for a large-built man who also lived in that small area and owned a Chevy Avalanche at the time of the disappearances.
Erin Moriarty: Was there a “aha!” moment when, all of a sudden, his name came up?
Rodney Harrison: Once we were able to attach the … Avalanche inside of that Massapequa box, which then attached to Rex Heuermann, that was a moment where we said, OK, there’s something here.
The task force now had a prime suspect. And when they looked at Heuermann’s personal cellphone records, they found that his phone was in the same area as those burner phones when they were used to contact a victim in Massapequa Park or in midtown Manhattan.
RAY TIERNEY (at news conference): it was always consistent.
Tierney says this was also true for those awful calls Melissa’s family got from that man using her phone back in 2009.
Steve Cohen: He said, “Do you know what I did to your sister?” … and he said … “Well, I killed Melissa.”
The task force says that it confirmed that Heuermann does in fact use burner phones. Investigators say he had two different burner numbers in 2022, and they say they watched him put money on one of those accounts at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan.
And according to court papers, the team also documented three email accounts using fake names, including John Springfield, Thomas Hawk and Hunter1903a3, and all linked to those burner numbers. And prosecutors say that Heuermann was using a burner phone to send these selfies to “solicit and arrange for sexual activity.”
One of those accounts linked to Heuermann, prosecutors wrote, was used to conduct “thousands of searches related to sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography and child pornography.”
RAY TIERNEY (at news conference): There was a lot of torture, porn, and … depictions of women, being abused, being raped, and being killed.
Investigators also say that while they were busy watching Heuermann, Heuermann was trying to watch them — conducting searches on the task force and the Gilgo victims.
RAY TIERNEY (at news conference): Not only pictures of the victims, pictures of their relatives … their sisters, their children, and he was trying to locate those individuals.
The circumstantial evidence was building, but investigators also had physical evidence from the Gilgo Four—including one male hair that was found in the burlap used to “restrain and transport” Megan Waterman’s body. They wanted to see if they could link it to Heuermann.
Detectives tailing Rex Heuermann recovered his DNA from pizza crust in a box that he discarded in a Manhattan trash can.
Suffolk County D.A.
Police tailed Heuermann, and when he threw out a pizza box in a trash can in midtown Manhattan — they pounced.
Ray Tierney: The pizza, which was … obviously very significant.
Tierney says that Heuermann’s DNA that was found on that pizza crust was consistent with a DNA profile from the hair found with Megan Waterman’s body, and that DNA profile is only found in .04 percent of the population.
Ray Tierney: That was a remarkable day. It was, you know, the weekend and, you know, you read, you get the report and you read it and then you read it again, and then you read it a third time and then you read it a fourth time, and then you start making calls.
With the DNA, the search histories and the burner phone evidence, the team felt it was time.
Ray Tierney: When we decided to take down the case, we, you know, it was a sudden decision. … We did see him contacting a number — of sex workers … using a burner phone, which obviously is concerning.
Plainclothes officers arrested him around the corner from his office.
Rodney Harrison: I don’t think he had any clue. I don’t think he had any clue that we were onto him.
Police spent 12 days looking through Heuermann’s home, pulling those guns out of the basement, and digging in the backyard. They say it will take some time to comb through what they have now, and they were tight lipped about what they found.
REPORTER 1 (at news conference): Has the search been fruitful?
RODNEY HARRISON: Great question and the answer’s yes.
REPORTER 2: … Can you elaborate on fruitful? You said yes, it’s fruitful.
RODNEY HARRISON: There have been items that we have taken into our possession, that makes it fruitful.
And one more big piece of evidence taken into possession: a first-generation Chevy Avalanche Heuermann once used. It was sitting on property he owns in South Carolina when they recovered it.
RAY TIERNEY (at news conference): We were able to seize that Chevy Avalanche pursuant to a search warrant. And we’re certainly going to analyze that.
But there were female hairs found on some of the victim’s bodies that don’t belong to the victims. So, who do they belong to?
THE FAMILY OF A SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER
After Rex Heuermann’s arrest, his quiet neighborhood in Massapequa Park was overrun byinvestigators and media, focusing intense scrutiny on the ramshackle home and its remaining residents: his stepson, Christopher Sheridan; daughter, Victoria Heuermann, and his wife more than 25 years, Asa Ellerup.
Bob Macedonio: So, their life going forward is always gonna be the wife or the children of (a) suspected serial killer. That’s what it’s gonna be from now on.
Asa Ellerup
MEGA Agency
Attorney Bob Macedonio represents Ellerup, who has since filed for divorce from Heuermann. He says she was as stunned as anyone by the accusations.
Bob Macedonio: She had no idea any of this was going on … The allegations are shocking. Nobody wants to think that they’ve been living with, sleeping next to a serial killer for the past 25 years.
As it turns out, Ellerup may have inadvertently helped focus the investigation on her husband. Investigators say they’ve identified strands of female hair that were found on two of the victims.
D.A. Ray Tierney | Suffolk County: One hair on Waterman … comes back to his wife, or the DNA profiles are consistent. And then … the DNA profile from Costello is consistent with … the wife.
Although prosecutors have evidence that Ellerup was out of town when those murders occurred, they will have to explain how those hairs got on the victims. Suffolk County D.A. Ray Tierney says it could be as simple as transfer.
Ray Tierney: You live at home with a spouse a little bit of your hair falls on your shoulder, as well as your spouse’s. Then you go out and you interact with the third party and that hair gets on them.
Ellerup has not been charged or named a suspect in any of the murders.
Erin Moriarty: You don’t believe that Rex Heuermann’s wife was involved in this in any way?
Ray Tierney: There’s no evidence to indicate that. No.
Along with the public scrutiny of Ellerup, there has also been support from people that perhaps know all too well what she’s going through. Kerri Rawson, the daughter of serial killer Dennis Rader, who named himself BTK, tweeted: “Asa and her kids are also victims.”
MELISSA MOORE (at news conference): I can tell that they are going through hell.
And from Melissa Moore, the daughter of Keith Jesperson — a serial killer known as the “Happy Face Killer” for taunting authorities with letters signed with a happy face.
BOB MACEDONIO (at news conference): She reached out immediately to myself and we put her in contact with Asa.
At a news conference, Macedonio announced Moore set up a GoFundMe page for Ellerup, which raised over $50,000. It is money he says will largely go to medical bills — Asa is battling breast and skin cancer. And because Rex Heuermann was the sole provider for the family, Macedonio says she will soon lose her health insurance.
BOB MACEDONIO (at news conference): Asa would like me to express her thanks for the support she has received. Um, she is going through a very difficult time.
Ellerup’s children have also paid a heavy price. Her daughter, Victoria, who worked for her father at the architectural consulting firm, and her son, Christopher, are both now unemployed. Ellerup struggles to support them, says Macedonio, while she’s also trying to figure out how to start over.
Erin Moriarty: How is she getting through every day?
Bob Macedonio: Honestly?
Erin Moriarty: Yeah.
Bob Macedonio: Minute by minute. … She has no one else to turn into at this time. … Family and friends have been hesitant to have her come over because they don’t want the media attention. She gets followed wherever she goes.
Asa Ellerup and her children continue to live in the house in Massapequa Park, Long Island, which the family says was excessively damaged when police searched it shortly after rex Heuermann’s arrest.
Robert Macedonio
For the moment, she and her children continue to live in the house in Massapequa Park, which the family says was excessively damaged during the police search. It’s a daily reminder of the unimaginable crimes her estranged husband is charged with and the investigation that continues into what else he may have done.
THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY?
Rex Heuermann, awaiting trial, is locked inside a Suffolk County jail in a 60-square-foot cell. He denies killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello — their voices now silent as the sand where they had been ruthlessly discarded.
The Gilgo Four: Clockwise from top left, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard Barnes and Melissa Barthelemy.
CBS News
Erin Moriarty: How sure are you as you’re sitting here now that Rex Heuermann is the Long Island serial killer?
Ray Tierney: So, we’re just at the beginning stage of this case … but we would not have brought this indictment if we weren’t confident in our case.
Rodney Harrison: He took away somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister — not just one person, multiple individuals.
Heuermann is currently the prime suspect for the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
And for investigators, an obvious question still hangs heavy: if Heuermann is a killer, are there other victims?
Erin Moriarty: I mean, isn’t there a real concern that there may be other victims out there?
Ray Tierney: Always.
Rodney Harrison: Who’s to say there’s not more bodies out there that we need to investigate?
In 2011, police did find other bodies along Ocean Parkway after finding the Gilgo Four.
There is victim number 5, Jessica Taylor – an escort who went missing in 2003.
The remains of “Jane Doe #6” were identified as Valerie Mack, left. Karen Vergata
Suffolk County Police/CBS New York
Another set of remains police called “Jane Doe # 6” is now identified as Valerie Mack, also working as an escort.
Number 7: To investigators’ surprise they found a toddler girl.
Number 8: An Asian male dressed in women’s clothing.
Number 9: A female skull belonging to Karen Vergata, an escort who disappeared in 1996.
Number 10: Female remains from a victim cops nicknamed Peaches because of a tattoo on her torso. Although her remains were found six miles away, police say DNA confirms Peaches is the mother of that toddler.
None of those victims have been linked to Heuermann.
Erin Moriarty: Is it that you can’t connect him yet, or you believe he probably isn’t the person who killed these other individuals?
Rodney Harrison: I don’t know.
Investigations spread to Las Vegas and South Carolina, where Heuermann owns property, with detectives there taking a fresh look at cases of missing women.
And then there is Nikkie Brass.
Nikkie Brass: I remembered him because one, he’s massive. And how many massive, like 6-foot, 5 architects work in Manhattan and live in Massapequa?
Now a hairdresser, Brass claims she may be one that got away. She told us she used to work as an escort. And while “48 Hours” cannot substantiate her story, Brass claims she can’t shake her memory of the night she says she was solicited for sex by Rex Heuermann, and says she fled the restaurant where they met.
Nikkie Brass: I had never gone anywhere and like felt, fear. My gut was telling me I needed to get away and I never had that before.
Brass says what she found most disturbing is that Heuermann himself brought up those bodiesbound in burlap by Gilgo Beach.
Nikkie Brass: He wanted to, like, really get into it. Like, he asked me how I thought they could get rid of the bodies without being caught in that area. And I said, like, I’ve never been over there. … I’ve never even seen Gilgo Beach. … And his response was, well, it’s really dark and desolate.
Brass is now represented by John Ray, an attorney who is also representing Shannan Gilbert’s family. In December 2011, investigators finally found Shannan in the marsh not far from Gilgo Beach. But they don’t believe she was murdered.
Rodney Harrison: It’s an unfortunate incident, but right now we believe that she just ran into the marsh and unfortunately drowned.
A former investigator told us that he believes Shannan was high on drugs that night and says her death was an accident — something John Ray just can’t believe. While he doesn’t think Shannan was a victim of Heuermann, he does believe she was murdered and points to that 911 call.
John Ray (December 2013): It makes absolutely no sense that she’s found where she is, except that someone else put her there, or killed her there.
While questions remain about Shannan’s last hours, there’s no question she’s the reason so many families may finally be getting answers they have long waited for. “48 Hours” spoke to her sister, Sherre Gilbert, in 2011.
Sherre Gilbert: Yeah, if my sister, you know, didn’t make that 911 call … I don’t think that these other women would have been recovered yet
Now investigators hope that with an arrest they can give the victim’s families, who stood with them, a sense of justice and of peace.
Ray Tierney: I’ve gotten to know the families and I’m inspired by them, and I’m impressed by their patience.
A local legend has it that Gilgo Beach was named for a skilled fisherman called Gil, the silver-gray waters once his secret hunting ground. Today, this beach area is better known for a relentless hunter of human prey — a serial killer, whose chilling presence can still be felt in the ocean air.
Produced by Betsy Shuller, Mary Ann Rotondi, Lauren A. White, Sarah Prior, Richard Fetzer and James Stolz. Gregory McLaughlin is the producer-editor. Sara Ely Hulse, Michelle Fanucci, Elena DiFiore, David Dow and Cindy Cesare are the development producers. Charlotte A. Fuller, Anthony Venditti and Shaheen Tokhi are the field producers. Atticus Brady, Doreen Schechter, Marlon Disla, Grayce Arlotta-Berner, Marcus Balsum and Michael Vele are the editors. Morgan Canty and Dylan Gordon are the associate producers. Patti Aronofsky and Lourdes Aguiar are the senior producers.Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney revealed details about the investigation into the arrest of Rex Heuermann, 59, saying it involved more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants.
“This case is not over; it’s only beginning,” Tierney told reporters Friday afternoon of the probe into the long-unsolved killings of women whose bodies were found on Long Island’s Gilgo Beach more than a decade ago. “We’re continuing to execute search warrants and anticipate getting more evidence.”
In court Friday, Heuermann, of Massapequa Park, pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, according to the indictment. Those three women, along with Maureen Brainard-Barnes, were all found in close proximity to one another in 2010 and have been called the “Gilgo Beach Four.”
Heuermann was ordered held without bail. His next court appearance is scheduled for August 1.
In a bail application, prosecutors outlined how investigators re-examined old clues that led to the suspect and developed new evidence to close in on him after so many years.
Tracking a suspected serial killer
In January 2022, a team of federal, state, and local investigators joined forces to launch the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force. According to the court documents, investigators began a “comprehensive review of every item of evidence” in the case.
Rex Heuermann is pictured in this screenshot from RH Consultants and Associates’ website.
RH Consultants and Associates
The Avalanche and “the ogre”
About two months later, Heuermann, an architect, and married father of two, was first identified as a suspect. In March 2022, detectives linked Heuermann to a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche pickup truck registered to him at the time of the murders, similar to one reported seen by a witness when one of the victims, Amber Costello, disappeared in 2010.
Heuermann was described by the witness to police as appearing like an “ogre.”
The pizza crust and a hair
According to the court documents, on or about Jan. 26, 2023, a surveillance team recovered a pizza box thrown by Heuermann into a garbage can on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The pizza box was sent to the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory for analysis.
On April 28, 2023, a detective hand-delivered a portion of male hair that was found on Megan Waterman that had been preserved as evidence to the same lab where the pizza crust had been tested.
Detectives tailing Rex Heuermann recovered his DNA from pizza crust in a box that he discarded in a Manhattan trash can.
Suffolk District Attorney
According to the court filing, on or about June 12, 2023, the forensic lab compared the mitochondrial DNA from the pizza and the hair and determined that the “DNA profile(s) are the same” — specifically that 99.96% of the North American population would be excluded as matches to the hair.
“It is significant that (Heuermann) cannot be excluded from the male hair recovered near the ‘bottom of the burlap’ utilized to restrain and transport Megan Waterman’s naked and deceased body,” prosecutors wrote.
Retesting hair samples
Authorities recovered hairs found with each of the victims, which were too degraded to test for DNA with the techniques available at that time. But the technology improved, Tierney said, and investigators were able to test the hairs with more advanced methods.
In July 2022, 11 bottles were collected from a trash can outside of the Heuermann home and sent for mitochondrial DNA testing. DNA profiles generated from the bottles were tested against previously tested hair samples recovered on the remains of Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Results found that Heuermann’s wife could not be excluded from either of the female hairs recovered on the remains of Waterman and Costello. The hair was believed to have been transferred from her husband’s clothing. Heuermann’s wife was out-of-state at the time of each of the murders, according to the court filing. She has not been charged.
Burner phones, selfies and Tinder
The investigation also turned up connections with burner cellphones and other phone data allegedly linked to the suspect. Tierney said FBI analysts were able to compare the cell site data of the victims’ cellphones and data from seven prepaid, anonymous burner phones the suspect allegedly used to communicate with each of the victims.
“Then, shortly after the death of the victim, he would get rid of the burner phone,” Tierney told reporters.
According to the court documents, Heuermann used a burner cellphone to contact the three women.
Rex Heuermann’s “selfies.”
Suffolk District Attorney
Over the course of the investigation, investigators located a number of online accounts and burner phones linked to Heuermann, which were held by him in fictitious names and used for illicit activities, according to the court filing.
A search warrant conducted on a fictitious AOL Account revealed “selfie” photographs that appeared to have been taken by Heuermann of himself and sent to solicit and arrange for sexual activity. American Express records obtained via subpoena revealed recurring “Google Pay” payments made by Heuermann to the dating app “Tinder,” which linked to a burner phone.
A review of call records for two additional burner cellphones revealed that both cellphones were used extensively between 2021 and 2023 for prostitution-related contacts.
Heuermann was observed by law enforcement at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan on May 19, 2023.
Suffolk District Attorney
On May 19, 2023, Heuermann was observed by law enforcement at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan, where they say he purchased additional minutes for a burner cellphone.
An arrest
Heuermann was arrested by Suffolk County Police Officers at his office in Manhattan on July 13, 2023. At the time of his arrest, Heuermann was carrying a burner cellphone which was linked to a Thawk Email Account used to conduct the online searches, according to the court document.
Authorities say in a 14-month period, Heuermann had more than 200 Google searches on the Gilgo investigation and additional searches looking for photos of the victims and their family members.
New details are being released about the suspect arrested in connection to the Gilgo Beach serial killings — a cold case that plagued Long Island for more than a decade. Former FBI profiler and program director of the George Mason University forensic science department Mary Ellen O’Toole joins CBS News to discuss the latest updates in the case.
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A Long Island architect was charged Friday with murder in the deaths of three of the 11 victims in a long-unsolved string of killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders after detectives pursuing a new lead say they matched DNA from a pizza he ate to genetic material found on the women’s remains.
Rex Heuermann, who has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found, is charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. He is also considered the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman whose body was bound and hidden in thick underbrush along a remote beach highway, authorities said.
Investigators have said over the years that it’s unlikely one person killed all 11 victims.
Heuermann, 59, was arrested late Thursday amid a renewed investigation that first identified him as a suspect in March 2022, when detectives linked him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
In March, detectives tailing Heuermann recovered his DNA from pizza crust in a box that he discarded in a Manhattan trash can and matched it to a hair found on a restraint used in the killings, authorities said.
Heuermann’s lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf Friday in state court in Riverhead. Judge Richard Ambro ordered him jailed without bail, citing “the extreme depravity” of his alleged conduct.
Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, said they just learned about the charges Friday morning. Speaking to reporters after the arraignment, he said Heuermann told him: “I didn’t do this.”
Heuermann, wearing khaki pants and a gray collared shirt, did not speak in court.
Heuermann lives in Massapequa Park, a community just north of the sandy stretch of Gilgo Beach where the remains were found in 2010 and 2011. Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers. Their deaths long stumped investigators, a mystery that fueled immense public attention and led to a 2020 Netflix film, “Lost Girls.”
Determining who killed them, and why, vexed a slew of seasoned homicide detectives through several changes in police leadership. Last year an interagency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as state and local police departments, aimed at solving the case.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us — a predator that ruined families,” Suffolk County police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said. “If not for the members of this task force, he would still be out on the streets today.”
After connecting Heuermann to the pickup, prosecutors said, investigators were able to link him to other evidence, including burner cellphones used to arrange meetings with the slain women, and taunting calls that a person claiming to be the killer made to one of Barthelemy’s relatives using her cellphone after she disappeared in 2009.
In recent months, Heuermann sought to keep tabs on the probe and “searched obsessively” on the internet for facts about the Gilgo Beach killings, including the names of women he’s accused of killing, as well as podcasts and documentaries about the case, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said.
Tierney said authorities moved to charge Heuermann now with three of the killings “out of concern for this defendant fleeing and the danger to the community.” They are continuing to work toward charging him in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Until his arrest, Heuermann continued to use burner phones, patronize sex workers and search the internet for sadistic materials, including sexually exploitative images of children, Tierney said. He also has permits for 92 guns, the prosecutor said.
“This is a day that is a long time in coming, and hopefully a day that will bring peace to this community and to the families — peace that has been long overdue,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said during an unrelated appearance on Long Island.
The arrest came as a shock and a relief to some of the victims’ relatives.
“I never thought they’d find this person,” Barthelemy’s cousin, Amy Brotz, said.
Law enforcement personnel converged Friday morning on Heuermann’s home, a small red house on 1st Avenue. Dozens of residents mingled alongside police and media, watching as a half-dozen investigators, some in protective suits, conferred outside the front porch, which was in disrepair, its roof propped up by 2-by-4s.
The home, where Heuermann has lived since childhood, belonged to a family that had long kept to themselves, neighbors said, noting that the dilapidated property seemed out of place among rows of single-family homes and well-kept lawns.
Barry Auslander said the man who lived in the house commuted by train to Manhattan each morning, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase.
“It was weird. He looked like a businessman,” Auslander said. “But his house is a dump.”
Heuermann, married with a daughter and a stepson, is a licensed architect with a Manhattan-based firm that, according to its website, has done store buildouts and other renovations for major retailers, offices and apartments.
“We’re happy to see that they’re finally active, the police, in accomplishing something. Let’s wait and see what it all leads to,” said John Ray, the attorney for the families of two other women whose remains were found, Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor.
Gilbert’s disappearance in 2010 triggered the hunt that exposed the larger mystery. A 24-year-old sex worker, she vanished after leaving a client’s house on foot in the seafront community of Oak Beach, disappearing into the marsh.
Months later, a police officer and his cadaver dog were looking for her body in the thicket along nearby Ocean Parkway when they happened upon the remains of a different woman. Within days, three other bodies were found, all within a short walk of one another.
By spring 2011, that number had climbed to 10 sets of human remains — those of eight women, one man and one toddler. Some were later linked to dismembered body parts found elsewhere on Long Island, making for 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 3 miles east of where the other 10 sets were discovered.
The suspect arrested in connection with the unsolved serial killings of women found along a New York beach highway has been identified as Rex Heuermann, of Massapequa,Long Island.
Court documents show Heuermann, 59, is being charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of three women — Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello — in 2009 and 2010. They were among at least 10 victims whose bodies were found in the area, in a case that stymied investigators for years.
Heuermann, who worked as an architectural consultant in Manhattan, was taken into custody by Suffolk County Police and state police late Thursday night. There was a large police presence Friday morning at his home in the village of Massapequa Park.
Booking photo of Rex Heuermann (inset), arrested in connection with a string of unsolved killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders on Long Island. Police searched a home in Massapequa Park, New York, on on July 14, 2023, after he was taken into custody.
Background: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / AP; Inset: Obtained by CBS New York
Heuermann was arraigned in court Friday and pleaded not guilty. The judge ordered him held without bail.
The arrest comes more than a decade after the discovery of the remains of numerous victims along Long Island’s Gilgo Beach. The long-unsolved killings were the subject of numerous CBS “48 Hours” reports and the 2020 Netflix film “Lost Girls.”
According to court documents filed by prosecutors, investigators began a “comprehensive review of every item of evidence” in the case in 2022. Authorities said that led them to take a closer look at a Chevrolet Avalanche registered to Heuermann at the time of the murders, similar to one reported seen by witnesses. The investigation also turned up connections with burner cellphones and other phone data allegedly linked to the suspect.
In addition, the court filing says a hair found on burlap that wrapped one of the victims was determined to be a DNA match to Heuermann, based on a DNA sample retrieved from crusts in a pizza box he discarded.
Heuermann is an architect who founded the New York City firm RH Consultants and Associates, in 1994, according to the company’s website. His clients included Target, Foot Locker, Catholic Charities and American Airlines, the website says.
A “Meet the team” link on the firm’s website with Heuermann’s photo has been taken down but CBS News obtained a screenshot before it was removed.
Rex Heuermann is pictured in this screenshot from RH Consultants and Associates’ website.
RH Consultants and Associates
“Throughout the years, Rex Heuermann has provided services to other city agencies, not for profit agencies, builders, developers and individual owners of buildings in regard to ADA, NYC and NY State Codes as well as Zoning Consultation,” according to the company’s website.
Residents of Massapequa Park told CBS New York they were stunned by the news.
“We’ve been here for about 30 years, and the guy’s been quiet, never really bothers anybody,” next-door neighbor Etienne DeVilliers told the station. “We were kind of shocked, to tell you the truth.”
DeVilliers said Heuermann is married, with two children. He added that his neighbor told him he was an architect.
“Like I said, we’re shocked. Because this is a very, very quiet neighborhood. Everybody knows each other, all of our neighbors, we’re all friendly. It’s never been a problem at all,” DeVilliers said.
In a 2022 interview with Bonjour Realty that was posted to YouTube, Heuermann says he was “born and raised on Long Island”
“Woke up this morning to learn that the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect was my high school classmate Rex Heuermann,” Baldwin tweeted, saying they went to Massapequa’s Berner High School and graduated in 1981.
Heuermann told Bonjour Realty last year that has worked in Manhattan since 1987.
“I’m an architect, I’m an architectural consultant, I’m a troubleshooter,” he says, adding that he’s adept at interpreting arcane building codes and handles lots of negotiations with the buildings department.
“At home, I have an extensive library of obsolete books” about building codes from the past century, he said.
On Friday, officers converged on a small red house that had been raided earlier in the morning in the suburb about 40 miles east of midtown Manhattan, the Associated Press reported. Investigators were seen outside the home, which appeared to be in disrepair.
“This house sticks out like a sore thumb. There were overgrown shrubs, there was always wood in front of the house,” neighbor Gabriella Libardi told the AP. “It was very creepy. I wouldn’t send my child there.”
Barry Auslander, another neighbor, told the AP the man who lived in the house commuted by train to New York City each morning, wearing a suit and tie.
“It was weird. He looked like a businessman,” said Auslander. “But his house is a dump.”
In the 2022 interview with Bonjour Realty, Heuermann was asked hypothetically what tool he would be to help elevate his business. He replied that he would be a hammer.
“I have one tool that’s pretty much used in almost every job. It’s actually a cabinet maker’s hammer,” he said. “It is persuasive enough when I need to persuade something and it always yields excellent results.”
