Gilgo Beach Killings Suspect to Face New Charges Tied to Multiple Victims
A former New York engineer named Rex Heuermann is charged with killing four sex workers whose bodies were found on a beach on Long Island more than ten years ago. NBC News has learned that Heuermann will also be charged with killing several other people.
A source said that Heuermann, who is 60 years old, will likely be tried Thursday morning.
The source said that the charge was still sealed and that more information was not available right away. Investigators searched Heuermann’s home again last month in the Long Island town of Massapequa Park, which is where the new charges are likely to come from.
A spot in Manorville, which is about 40 miles from Heuermann’s house, was also looked through.
Late in July, Heuermann was caught and charged with murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27. Early this year, he was charged with killing 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Between 2007 and 2010, the women were not seen. In December 2010, their bodies were found near Gilgo Beach on the south shore of Long Island. The findings were made while police were looking for Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker who went missing from Oak Beach, a nearby gated community.
Gilbert, who is 23 years old, was last seen on May 1, 2010, running away from a client’s house. In December 2011, her body parts were found in a ditch. The police say they think she may have drowned, but a well-known forensic pathologist’s autopsy showed she had been a victim of violence, probably strangulation, but it didn’t say for sure how she died.
During the search at Gilgo Beach, the bodies of several other people were found, including those of Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack. Taylor and Mack, who were both sex workers, had parts of their bodies found in Manorville, which is about 45 miles east of Gilgo Beach.
Heuermann is being held without bail because he says he is not guilty of killing the four women. He hasn’t been charged with killing Taylor or Mack.
Authorities linked Heuermann to the earlier cases in part by using strands of his separated wife’s hair that they found in the burlap sacks where the bodies were found. The women Heuermann is accused of killing were going out of state with his ex-partner and children at the time of the crimes.
