Saturday marks the 1-year anniversary of Rex Heuermann’s shocking arrest for the gruesome Gilgo Beach murders — as police continue to investigate ahead of his September trial.
In a chilling case that stunned the world, Heuermann, 60 — a mild mannered Manhattan architect living with his wife and kids in Massapequa Park, Long Island — was arrested on July 13, 2023 for the killings of three women.
Over the next year he would be charged with three more.
“His motivations, meticulous planning, and clear intent was obvious. His intent was nothing short but to murder these victims,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said in June, as cops revealed a digital “to-do” list Heuermann allegedly made about the killings.
“The task force believes that this is a planning document that was used by Heuermann to plot out his kills with excruciating detail,” Tierney said.
The case, which has played out like a grisly cop drama, appears to be far from over as new charges last month dramatically expanded Heuermann’s timeline to include an alleged 1993 murder — a sign he may have left 30-years worth of victims in his wake, and that more could emerge.
For years, the vicious killings baffled cops and terrified locals after the burlap-wrapped bodies of strangled and beaten sex workers began to appear in Gilgo Beach between 2010 and 2011.
In total, Heuermann has now been charged with murdering six women between 1993 and 2010.
The accused serial killer, who stands at a hulking 6-foot-4 inches tall, was first charged with murdering three women in their 20s — Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Costello — in July of last year.
“Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us, a predator that ruined families,” Suffolk County Police commissioner Rodney Harrison said during a press conference announcing his arrest last July.
Six months later, he was hit with another murder charge for the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
All four women were petite, worked as escorts between 2007 and 2010, and two of them had children.Their bodies were all bound at the ankles or feet, wrapped in burlap and they appeared to have been strangled.
Brainard-Barnes, who disappeared in 2007 at age 25, was found bound by a distinctive belt stamped with the initials “WH” or “HM” — which may have belonged to Heuermann’s grandfather, William Heuermann, prosecutors have previously said.
The women were among the first of 10 sets of remains found in or near Gilgo Beach between fall of 2010 and spring of 2011, sparking a years-long police investigation.
In June, Heuermann was with charged with killing two more victims — Jessica Taylor in 2003 and Sandra Costilla, whose remains were found in North Sea, Long Island, in 1993.
Taylor was a 20-year-old sex worker found dismembered and Costilla was a native of of Trinidad and Tobago found beaten with a sharp object.
Police came close to solving the case in 2011 when a witness identified Heuermann’s green Chevy Avalanche truck and claimed she saw a man, who she described as an “ogre” in his mid-40s, drive away from an area where Costello had last been seen.
But the lead went cold until a state and federal law enforcement formed the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force more than a decade later in 2022.
Law enforcement eventually cracked the case by matching DNA from a pizza crust discarded by Heuermann to hair found on a victim. They also used cellphone and computer records to tie him to the crimes, authorities have said.
Recent evidence also includes a digital planning document with a to-do list for body transportation along with twisted notes titled “NEXT TIME,” which detailed his alleged plans to strike women in the face or neck, investigators said in June.
The two new murder charges last month came after cops conducted another search of Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home in May and were photographed hauling boxes, apparently filled with evidence, from the house.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his children — whose lives were turned upside down by their father’s arrest — have vowed to stand by him as the trial unfolds.
“They are along for the dark ride, one might say,” Vess Mitev, a lawyer for the accused killer’s kids, Victoria Heuermann and Christopher Sheridan, said in June.
“They’re two young adults that have done nothing wrong and they’re trying to keep their lives from completely crumbling in the midst of all this,” the lawyer said.
His murder trial is expected to begin in Suffolk County Supreme Court in September.
“He wants to get to a trial. He maintains from the beginning he is not the guy. He has said that over and over,” Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, said in April.
