Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann was charged Thursday morning with the decades-old killings of two additional women after authorities linked hair discovered near their bodies to him, court documents revealed.
The 60-year-old father of two was tied to the 1993 murder of Sandra Costilla and the 2003 death of Jessica Taylor through DNA from male hair found on the remains of both victims, the Suffolk County bail application stated.
Heuermann is already charged with the deaths of four other women whose remains were found wrapped in burlap along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach on the south shore of Long Island.
The hulking architect was arrested on July 13, 2023, in connection with the unsolved deaths of the young women, who are collectively referred to as the “Gilgo Four.”
He was initially charged with the murders of Megan Waterman, 22; Melissa Barthelemy, 24; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27. In January, prosecutors brought a fourth indictment for the killing of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Heuermann’s ramshackle home in Massapequa Park was extensively searched at least twice in the wake of his bombshell arrest.
Last year, police revealed that they found a concrete, sound-proofed room in the basement where Heuermann supposedly kept over 200 guns.
A second search warrant was executed at the home last month. It was not immediately clear if the additional charges expected Thursday were tied to findings from the searches, or from another line inquiry.
Suffolk County prosecutors tied Heuermann to the unsolved deaths through DNa matches – including from a discarded pizza crust and an energy drink that his adult daughter tossed in the trash.
Investigators also used cell phone towers to pinpoint calls Heuermann supposedly made to the victims, all of whom made a living as sex workers in the Long Island or New York City area.
The infamous case – sometimes referred to as the “Long Island Serial Killer,” or LISK – burst open in December 2010, when escort Shannan Gilbert, 23, vanished from a meeting with a client at the Oak Beach Association on May 1, 2010.
The search for Gilbert’s disappearance led police to the bodies of the Gilgo Four – all of whom were slight, petite women who had been working in the sex industry in the lead-up to their own disappearance.
The partial remains of Jessica Taylor were found along Ocean Parkway on March 29, 2011. Her remains were initially found in a wooded area in Manorville in July 2003.
Like the Gilgo Four, Taylor was working as a sex worker at the time of her disappearance.
Sandra Costilla was killed in 1993. She had not been linked to the Gilgo Beach killing spree until now.
Authorities also turned up the skeletal remains of a yet-to-be-identified Asian man off Ocean Parkway in April 2011, as well as the additional remains of Valerie Mack, a Philadelphia-based sex worker whose partial remains were found in Manorville in 2000.
The initial investigation also stumbled upon the remains of a toddler whose was later found through DNA testing to be the daughter of “Peaches,” a black woman whose partial remains were found in Hempstead Lake State Park
Heuermann – who spent his entire life on the south shore of Long Island – was identified as a suspect in the case two months after former NYPD chief Rodney Harrison took over as Suffolk County police commissioner.
His arrest last summer marked the first public break in the unsolved string of murders, which had haunted Long Island for over 10 years.
