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A lawyer representing an architect charged in three of the killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders has told Newsweek that prosecutors have focused on him "despite more significant and stronger leads."
Rex Heuermann, 59, is charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. Prosecutors have called him the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.
His attorney Michael Brown told Newsweek that Heuermann has "insisted he did not commit these crimes."
Brown described his client as a "hardworking" licensed architect with his own firm in New York City with no prior criminal history.
"He is a loving husband to his wife of over 25 years and an involved and dedicated father to his daughter and stepson," he said.
"There is nothing about Mr. Heuermann that would suggest that he is involved in these incidents," Brown added. "And while the government has decided to focus on him despite more significant and stronger leads, we are looking forward to defending him in a court of law before a fair and impartial jury of his peers."
However, police and prosecutors described Heuermann as a "predator" who killed the women while his wife and children were out of state.
At a news conference, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said authorities moved to charge Heuermann now with three of the killings "out of concern for this defendant fleeing and the danger to the community."
He said: "We are going to convict him, and we are going to hold him responsible for what he did."
The case began in December 2010 when police looking for Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old sex worker who disappeared months prior, stumbled upon the remains of 24-year-old Barthelemy, who had not been seen alive since the year before.
Days later, authorities found the remains of Costello, 27, Waterman, 22, and Brainard-Barnes, 25. The woman, dubbed the "Gilgo Beach Four," were all sex workers who were last seen between July 2007 and September 2010.
The remains of six other people—all of them women, but one man and one toddler—were found in the area in 2011. Gilbert was found dead by the highway in December 2011.
The murders stumped investigators for more than a decade.
A new task force to investigate the murders was formed in February 2022.
A breakthrough came just six weeks into the force's work, Tierney said, when an investigator determined that Heuermann owned a Chevrolet Avalanche and lived in Massapequa Park, an area linked to some victims' cellphone activity.
Witnesses had told police that a man had parked an Avalanche outside Costello's home the night before she died, and that the she had arranged to meet that man again the next night, The Associated Press reported, citing a prosecutors' court filing.
Using advanced DNA testing that was not available early in the case, authorities matched a hair found on burlap wrapped around one victim to Heuermann. They snared his DNA by tailing him and sifting through the garbage from his home bin to retrieve discarded bottles. They also grabbed partially eaten pizza crusts that he had thrown into a trash can in Manhattan.
Other hairs were matched to a relative of Heuermann's who isn't a suspect, investigators said. They believe he got that person's hair on him at home.
Prosecutors said Heuermann used a victim's cellphone to torment her relatives with calls and "searched obsessively" for information about the investigation.
Investigators learned that Heuermann's cellphone had often been in the same general areas, at around the same times, as prepaid anonymous cellphones that had been used to contact Barthelemy, Costello and Waterman, the court papers said, according to the AP.
Those "burner" phones and Heuermann's phone sometimes even traveled together. His phone's location also roughly matched up with some places and times when a man used Barthelemy's phone to call her relatives after she disappeared, the documents said.
After looking through Heuerman's credit card records, investigators found payments to a dating site and uncovered email addresses under fake names as well as more burner phones.
The emails were linked to searches for violent pornography and information on the Gilgo Beach case, and to apparent selfies of Heuermann that were sent to arrange sexual trysts, according to the court papers.
Heuermann was carrying one of the phones when arrested on Thursday night, prosecutors said.
Newsweek has contacted the Suffolk County Police Department and the Suffolk County District Attorney for further comment via email.
About the writer
Khaleda Rahman is Newsweek's National Correspondent based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on education and national news. Khaleda ... Read more