After more than a decade of investigating serial discoveries of the bodies of prostitutes near the beaches of Long Island, east of New York, a suspect has been arrested and charged in the murders of three of them, announced the authorities on Friday. In court on Friday, suspect Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old New York architect, was charged and pleaded not guilty to the 2009 and 2010 murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, while he is the number one suspect in the murder of a fourth, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a court document from the Suffolk County prosecutor’s office.
According to the American media, this father was arrested Thursday evening near his offices in Manhattan, while his residence, in the village of Massapequa Park which is near the beaches where the victims were found, was searched. The victims, discovered within a radius of less than 500 meters, were sex workers between the ages of 22 and 27. They were all found “in the same position, tied in the same way by belts or duct tape, and three of them were wrapped in a burlap-like material”, explained at a conference of urges prosecutor Ray Tierney.
The case began with the May 2010 report of the disappearance of a 24-year-old prostitute from neighboring New Jersey, Shannon Gilbert, for whom Rex Heuermann is not being prosecuted. In total, the remains of eleven human bodies, nine women, a man and a girl, were found between 2010 and 2011 along the beaches of Gilgo Beach, Oak Beach, in bramble bushes located between the sand and the road. , among the dunes.
These discoveries had frightened the local population and kept the police in check for years. According to the court document, the investigation focused on the architect as early as 2022 after police discovered that a vehicle in which a victim had been seen at the time of his disappearance was registered in his name. From there, investigators uncovered DNA and phone evidence against the suspect. According to the prosecutor, Rex Heuermann also conducted hundreds of Internet searches on the investigation, with questions such as, “Why hasn’t the Long Island serial killer been arrested?” Pornographic torture images were also found on his computer, the prosecutor said.
