Gilgo Beach serial killings suspect in police custody in New York
A New York exec has been arrested on suspicion of being a serial killer of sex workers after a pizza slice led to a breakthrough in the cold case.
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A suspected serial killer who has been arrested over a series of deaths of women close to New York City more than a decade ago was tracked down partly due to a half eaten pizza crust.
Rex Heuermann, 59, a New York City executive, was arrested at his home in Massapequa Park, 66km west of Manhattan on Long Island on Thursday night, reported The New York Post.
He is married with two children.
As the years passed the unknown culprit of the spate of killings – 10 people – became known as the “Gilgo Beach Killer” or “Craigslist Ripper”.
The former name was due to the beach near where the bodies were found and the latter because many of the victims were sex workers who advertised on the website Craigslist.
Police said a DNA sample left on a hessian sack that wrapped Megan Waterman, 22, – one of the victims – matched that found on a discarded pizza box linked to Mr Heuermann.
On Friday afternoon, US time, Mr Heuermann pleaded not guilty to six murder counts in connection with the murder of three people.
Through a lawyer, Mr Heuermann was adamant in his innocence. “I did not do this,” he said.
“He’s destroyed. He’s clearly destroyed about the charges here,” said his lawyer Michael Brown.
Prosecutors said the “heinous nature of these serial murders” and the “planning and forethought” that went it to them meant the suspect should be held behind bars without bail, a request that was granted.
In a bizarre twist, in a tweet, Backdraft and Forgetting Sarah Marshall actor William Baldwin said Mr Heuermann “was my high school classmate”.
The arrest is tied to three of the so-called “Gilgo Four,” women found wrapped in hessian sacks near Gilgo Beach on Long Island, within days of each other in late 2010.
Mr Heuermann was charged into connection with three of the four victims – Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Amber Lynn Costello, 27, as well as Ms Waterman. He is also the prime suspect in the murder of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Four women murdered in quick succession
Mr Heuermann is the owner and founder of Manhattan architecture firm, RH Consultants and Associates, which counts Catholic Charities and American Airlines as its clients, according to its website.
Fears of a serial killer emerged when the body of Ms Barthelemy was found along Ocean Parkway, a highway on Jones Beach Island that passed the small community of Gilgo, on December 11, 2010. The remains of the three other women were found shortly after.
They were found whole, wrapped in hessian sacks less than one kilometre apart from each other near the highway adjacent to the beach.
Detectives have alleged Mr Heuermann used the phone of Ms Barthelemy to phone her family to admit to her sexual assault and killing and to taunt them, reported CNN.
By spring 2011, the number of bodies found had climbed to 10 — eight women as well as an unidentified man and toddler.
Mr Heuermann has not been linked to these other deaths.
The bodies were found during a search for missing Jersey City-based sex worker Shannan Gilbert, whose body wasn’t found until December 2011, a year after the Gilgo Four.
How the suspect was tracked down
The arrest came after the police commissioner of Suffolk County on Long Island created a special Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force in February last year.
It included help from state police, local sheriffs, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office as well as the FBI.
“I believe this case is solvable and identifying the person or people responsible for these murders is a top priority,” Commissioner Rodney Harrison, the NYPD’s former chief of department, said at the time.
According to CNN, the reopening of the cold case initially centred on a “burner phone,” a cheap mobile phone that people often deliberately use to cover their tracks, that had been used in both Manhattan and Massapequa Park.
Police have said the phone was used in connection with meeting sex workers via Craigslist.
An email address linked to the phone was allegedly used to conduct searches of sex workers, violence against women and child pornography, detectives claimed.
In addition, the email account was also linked to internet searches on the Gilgo Beach murders including the search “Why hasn’t the long island serial killer been caught?”
Detectives narrowed their search down to people living near the mobile phone tower aided by a description of the suspect. Starting with thousands of people over the course of two years there were able to whittle down the possibilities to a handful of people.
Mr Heuermann lived near the Long Island tower and worked near to the Manhattan one.
Police were then able to get a DNA sample from a close family member. A laboratory analysis showed the person from who they got the DNA sample from was related to a person whose DNA was found on the hessian sack that had been found with one of the three victims.
DNA retrieved from a discarded pizza box in January then further helped the detectives pinpoint Mr Heuermann as a suspect.
Police have said that the suspect’s wife and children were outside of New York State when the three murders occurred.
He is due back in court on August 1.
Originally published as Gilgo Beach serial killings suspect in police custody in New York
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