Gilgo Beach: Inside the hunt for the serial killer behind a sex worker killing spree

The unsolved killings of 11 victims – most of whom were young female sex workers – have gripped the US for more than a decade and was even the subject of the Netflix film ‘Lost Girls’ in 2020. 

It was the frantic search for 23-year-old escort Shannan Gilbert, who disappeared in the coastal community of Oak Beach, New York, in 2010, which led officers to the remains of a different woman. 

But that grim discovery was just the start. Within days, three more young women were found, all within a short distance of one another, sparking fears that a serial killer was on the loose.

Now, 13 years after their human remains were found dumped along Gilgo Beach, US detectives believe they have finally caught the man behind a terrifying killing spree.

On Thursday night, investigators swooped in to dramatically arrest Rex Heuermann, 59, in midtown Manhattan outside his architectural office on Fifth Avenue.

The wealthy architect – who has been charged with murdering three women and is linked to a fourth – is believed to be the prime suspect in the historical Gilgo Beach murders. 

The mystery began with the search for 23-year-old Shannan Gilbert, an escort from New Jersey who had vanished in May 2010 after making a frantic 911 call

The first victim, Melissa Barthelemy (left), 24, was discovered by Suffolk County Police on December 11, 2010. The body of Megan Waterman (right), 22, was found two days later

Heuermann is charged with killing Amber Costello (right) and is linked with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes (left) 

Heuermann, who has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found, is charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27. All three were found on the Long Island coastline during the search for Ms Gilbert.

Having been under surveillance since last year, US cops changed their plan to build more of a case against Heuermann who they feared could flee the country. ‘He is a demon who walked among us,’ police said.

Heuermann, who pleaded not guilty to all three charges, is also a prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes – who was found near Ms Barthelemy, Ms Waterman and Ms Costello. 

The women, all of whom were sex workers, have been dubbed the Gilgo Beach Four.

Ms Barthelemy, an escort, vanished on July 12, 2009, and was found on December 11, 2010. The night she vanished, she told a friend she was going to see a man and would be back in the morning.

Not long after she vanished, Ms Barthelemy’s then-16-year-old sister began receiving calls from her phone. On the other end of the line was a man’s voice who told her her older sister was dead and threatened the teen.

Ms Brainard-Barnes, a sex worker, was last seen after taking an Amtrak train from New London, Connecticut, to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan in 2007. She was reported missing on July 14 and her body was found on December 13, 2010.

Ms Costello, also a sex worker as well as a heroin addict, was last seen leaving her home on September 2, 2010 – just months before her body was found. 

Partial skeletal remains of Valerie Mack (left) were located in a wooded area in Manorville in September 2000. Partial skeletal remains of Jessica Taylor (right), an escort working in New York City, were located in a wooded area in Manorville on July 26, 2003

The remains of an ‘Asian man’ were discovered on April 4, 2011. It’s believed they had been dead for five or six years

Heuermann appears in a still image from surveillance video in a cellphone store in the New York City borough of Manhattan, New York, U.S. May 19, 2023

Ms Waterman, an escort and mother-of-one and was last seen on June 6, 2010 boarding a New York-bound Concord Trailways. She was found the same day on December 13 that year.

All were sex workers who advertised their services on Craigslist, leading police to believe that is how the killer first made contact with them. 

After the Gilgo Beach Four were found, police discovered four additional sets of human remains on April 4, 2011. They were Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, 24, a female toddler and an identified Asian man.

Seven days later, two sets of remains were found off Ocean Parkway about seven miles from Gilgo Beach. One is believed to be the mother of the toddler and the other is known as ‘Jane Doe 7’. 

Ms Gilbert’s body was finally found in December 2011, three miles east of where the other remains were uncovered. 

She had vanished in 2010 after making a frantic call to police. A confused Ms Gilbert was heard claiming that someone was trying to kill her before she went missing on May 1.

‘Something is going to happen to me,’ she said on the call.

Crime scene investigators bring out evidence from the Massapequa Park home of Rex Heuermann who was arrested as a suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killing

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said Heuermann had been under surveillance since last year, and US cops moved in to arrest him over fears he would strike again

A map showing where eight of the victims remains were located along the barren stretch of Ocean Beach Parkway in Gilgo Beach, located on the South Shore of Long Island 

The Netflix film Lost Girls was based on the Gilgo Beach killer. It was released in 2020 

‘There’s somebody after me, I don’t know where I am. I am inside a house. I don’t know where I am. Can you trace where I am?’ At one point a man is heard laughing and saying ‘shut up.’

Neighbours of the area later said they saw her knocking on several doors before vanishing.

In total, 11 sets of human remains were found on the same stretch of Gilgo Beach between 2010 and 2011. 

Detectives declined to say whether Heurmann is suspected in the other murders, saying his task force was focused on the four victims tied to the architect, adding that those four cases had distinct ‘commonalities’. 

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters that Heuermann was arrested in the interest of ‘public safety’ and cited a number of red flags, including that he ‘continued to patronise sex workers,’ was using false IDs and burner phones, and had permits for an astonishing 92 firearms.

Long Island architect Rex Heuermann (pictured), 59, has been arrested in connection with the Gilgo Beach serial killings in a major police breakthrough

The suspect’s house sits directly north of Gilgo Beach across the South Oyster Bay  

Flanked by family members of the victims as he addressed reporters, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said: ‘Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us, a predator that ruined families.’ 

Prosecutors say a trove of evidence connects Heuermann to the murders, including DNA recovered from a pizza crust he tossed out that matched genetic material found on the women’s remains. 

Chilling similarities can be drawn between Heuermann, a married father-of-two, and the unknown suspect described in a 2011 FBI profile of the Gilgo Beach killer.

That profile described a ‘sadistic but charming average Joe’, who could blend into any environment unnoticed.

Rosemarie Kafka, 56, a former neighbour who had lived near the Heuermann family, told NBC that if he is found guilty, ‘he was living a double life’.

She added: ‘You know, the regular guy who goes to work, has kids in the local school and in a good neighbourhood, but he’s killing people on the side.’

During an initial court appearance, Heuermann appeared smug – puffing his cheeks out and nodding as some of the charges were read. He wore khaki pants and a grey collared shirt, and did not speak in court.

He pleaded not guilty to all six charges – three counts of first degree murder, and three of second degree murder.

After the hearing, his attorney Michael Brown said his client had cried out to him saying, ‘I did not do this.’

Prosecutors allege other evidence connects Heuermann to the murders which includes:

• His wife’s DNA was found on three of the victims’ bodies 
• One of his own hairs was found on one of the victims’ bodies 
• Calls made from a burner phone to the victims were traced to his office 
• A call made to one of the victims’ sisters after she died was traced to his office 
• His Tinder profile with photos of him was linked to the burner phone number
• His personal phones always pinged in the same areas as the suspect burners 
• His Chevrolet pick-up truck matched the suspect vehicle spotted by a witness 
• He matches the physical description of ‘ogre’ like man seen with one victim
• Heuermann conducted graphic searches for child porn and sexual torture
• He also searched Google for updates on the case, searching ‘why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer’

His name first came to attention in March 2022 when he was identified as once owning an identical truck to one seen by witnesses when a victim disappeared in 2010.

The Chevrolet Avalanche truck, which he owned in 2009 and 2010 when the women were murdered, was seen at the homes of at least one of the victims the day before she went missing.

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. 

His DNA from one of the crusts was a 99.6 percent match to a male hair found at the bottom of the burlap sack one of the victims was found in.

Prosecutors also discovered unidentified female hairs on three of the victims.

Heuermann grew up in Massapequa Park, attending high school with Billy Baldwin, and started working in Manhattan in 1987.

Heuermann was married once in 1990 and again years later to his current wife, Asa Ellerup, who is of Iceland descent.

He and Asa have an adult daughter Victoria, who works with Heuermann at his architectural firm, and a stepson, Asa’s son from a previous marriage.

Part of his job was to negotiate between the city of New York’s Department of Buildings and private architects.