Rex Heuermann, who was charged in a series of murders that took place on Long Island over roughly two decades, pleaded guilty on Wednesday. In a routine hearing in Suffolk County, Mr. Heuermann, 62, admitted to shocking details in the deaths of eight women.
It was an unexpected end to a shocking case. Mr. Heuermann was arrested in 2023, years after the first four bodies were discovered in 2010. The crimes were left unsolved until Mr. Heuermann’s arrest in Midtown Manhattan. Before he was apprehended, Mr. Heuermann appeared to be an unassuming architectural consultant who had lived most of his life in Nassau County.
The Murders
In December 2010, the police on Long Island found the first four bodies in the Gilgo Beach area. All four were women who worked as escorts and were identified as Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello.
Remains of three other women — Jessica Taylor, Karen Vergata and Valerie Mack — were found close by in 2011. Sandra Costilla’s remains were found in 1993 roughly 70 miles away, but weren’t linked to Mr. Heuermann until 2024. In some cases, a dismembered victim’s remains were discovered separately at different times in different areas.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Heuermann created a grisly document in 2000 that outlined his methods of finding, imprisoning and murdering his victims. In the case of Ms. Mack, he even cut off a tattoo that could have been used to identify her body.
In a pattern he appeared to repeat over time, according to prosecutors, Mr. Heuermann would wait for his family to go out of town, contact his victims using burner phones, pick them up and then attack them in the basement of his family home in Massapequa Park on Long Island.
Mr. Heuermann was first charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of Ms. Costello, Ms. Waterman and Ms. Barthelemy, whose bodies were found wrapped in hunting camouflage burlap within a quarter mile of each other.
The Break in the Case
After years of stop-and-start investigations, hampered by dysfunction and corruption, a task force was set up in 2022 to re-examine the cold case of the first four victims, now known as “the Gilgo Four.”
The break in the case came shortly after, when investigators realized that Mr. Heuermann owned a Chevrolet Avalanche at the time of some of the killings — the same make and model that a witness said was parked in one of the victim’s driveways before she disappeared, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Heuermann had apparently looked up articles about the task force in the year leading up to his arrest as, unbeknown to him, investigators closed in. Cellphone data led them to Massapequa Park, where they narrowed their list of suspects to a handful men. Calls to victims in the hours before they disappeared were made from the area of Mr. Heuermann’s house and his Midtown office.
In July 2022, investigators took 11 bottles from a trash can outside Mr. Heuermann’s home. DNA on the bottles matched DNA extracted from hairs found on some of the victims’ bodies and appeared to belong to Mr. Heuermann’s wife. In January 2023, investigators took a pizza box that Mr. Heuermann had thrown away outside his office and analyzed the DNA on the discarded crusts, which matched hair found on a victim’s body. Mr. Heuermann was arrested that July.
Throughout the criminal proceedings that followed, Mr. Heuermann maintained his innocence, pleading not guilty to all counts brought against him. But on Wednesday, he reversed course.
As Raymond A. Tierney, the Suffolk County district attorney, named each of the victims, he asked Mr. Heuermann how he had killed them.
“Strangulation,” Mr. Heuermann said, for each one.
Claire Fahy reports on New York City and the surrounding area for The Times.
The post What We Know About the Gilgo Beach Killings appeared first on New York Times.
