A Long Island architect was charged on Friday with murder in the deaths of three of 11 victims in a long-unsolved string of killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders after detectives pursuing a new lead said they matched DNA from a pizza he ate to genetic material found on the women’s remains.
Rex Heuermann, who has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found, is charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. He is also considered the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman whose body was bound and hidden in thick underbrush along a remote beach highway, authorities said.
Investigators have said over the years that it is unlikely one person killed all 11 victims.
Photo: Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office via AP
Heuermann, 59, was arrested late on Thursday amid a renewed investigation that first identified him as a suspect in March last year, when detectives linked him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
In March, detectives tailing Heuermann recovered his DNA from pizza crust in a box that he discarded in a Manhattan trash can and matched it to a hair found on a restraint used in the killings, authorities said.
Heuermann’s lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf on Friday in state court in Riverhead.
Judge Richard Ambro ordered him jailed without bail, citing “the extreme depravity” of his alleged conduct.
Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, said they just learned about the charges on Friday morning.
Speaking to reporters after the arraignment, he said that Heuermann told him: “I didn’t do this.”
Heuermann lives in Massapequa Park, north of South Oyster Bay and the sandy stretch known as Gilgo Beach where the remains were found in 2010 and 2011. Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers. Their deaths long stumped investigators, a mystery that fueled immense public attention and led to a 2020 Netflix film, Lost Girls.
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