Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer charged with seventh murder
An architect accused of multiple murders is facing a fresh charge as grisly details emerge about the house of horrors where the killings allegedly took place.
United States
Don't miss out on the headlines from United States. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann has been charged with a seventh murder, that of a woman whose remains were found in 2000.
The New York architect had already been charged with the murders of six women whose bodies were found near Gilgo Beach, Long Island, between 1993 and 2010.
The remains of the new victim, Valerie Mack, were found in two locations: in a wooded area of Long Island in 2000, and then in 2011 not far from Gilgo Beach.
Prosecutors say that hairs found on the victim’s body match the genetic profile of Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter, Victoria Heuermann, who was a little girl at the time.
Prosecutors have said the family members were not involved with the killings.
They have alleged that Heuermann waited for his wife and children to leave on holidays before he attacked his victims in the basement of the family’s home in Massapequa Park, The New York Times reports.
Heuermann, who was initially arrested in July 2023, has pleaded not guilty.
At a hearing in Suffolk County court, Heuermann pleaded not guilty to Ms Mack’s murder.
Prosecutors said the accused killer allegedly carried out the murders following instructions he outlined in a grotesque “planning document”, The New York Post reports.
The families “are very grateful for the small bit of closure that the task force has been able to provide,” county district attorney Ray Tierney said. “The lives of these women matter.”
The remains of 11 murder victims — nine women, one man and a young girl — were found in 2010 and 2011 in the scrub along the parkway near Gilgo Beach, an Atlantic Ocean barrier beach on Long Island’s south shore.
The Gilgo Beach case had stumped investigators for years, with the bodies of the victims, most of them female sex workers, found along the same isolated stretch of beach but no suspects identified.
But in 2022, investigators narrowed their focus onto Heuermann, after he was discovered to be the registered owner of a vehicle one of the victims had been spotted in.
Since then, the case against Heuermann has been based on DNA evidence from a discarded pizza box, and mobile phone data linking him to the victims.
Heuermann also performed hundreds of internet searches about the investigation into the murders, asking questions such as “Why hasn’t the Long Island serial killer been caught?”
Heuermann is expected to go on trial in 2025.
— with AFP
More Coverage
Originally published as Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer charged with seventh murder
Raging LA fires tipped to grow amid ‘devil’ winds threat
Firefighters are battling to contain wildfires that have so far killed 16 people, displaced almost 200,000 and destroyed thousands of properties. Follow the live updates.
‘Never seen anything like this’: fight to save animals from inferno
Emotional staff at the Los Angeles Equestrian Centre share their horror stories as attention turns to the heartbreak of countless displaced and injured animals from the wildfires. See the video.