NEW YORK -- Long Island architect Rex Heuermann pleaded not guilty Friday afternoon to charges of killing three women in the long-unsolved Gilgo Beach murders — a brutal spree that fascinated and horrified New Yorkers for more than a decade.
The defendant stood mutely during the Long Island hearing after stating his name, with defense attorney Michael Brown entering the plea before telling Criminal Court Judge Richard Ambro that his client insisted on his innocence.
Heuermann, 59, was busted in Manhattan before an army of cops descended on his Massapequa Park home Thursday night, searching his Nassau County residence as the once-cold case turned into a law enforcement inferno.
The suspect was arrested around 8:30 p.m. Thursday outside 373 Fifth Ave., near his real estate office — where state and Suffolk County investigators descended Friday with a search warrant, sources said.
“The Gilgo Beach task force ... did place one individual under arrest, and he’s currently in custody,” said Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison outside the suspect’s home.
A chilling 32-page court filing charged the defendant with three counts of first-degree murder and three more of second-degree murder for the killings of sex workers Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello in 2009 and 2010.
Heuermann was also identified as the prime suspect in the murder of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen alive on July 9, 2007, in New York City.
The veteran real estate executive, the father of two and a life-long Long Islander, used his e-mail account to conduct searches for “Long Island Serial Killer” and the names of the four victims over the last 16 months, according to court documents.
Court papers also detailed cellphone site tower information used in tracing the defendant’s whereabouts and burner phones used to contact his victims as part of the damning evidence in the case. A pizza crust pulled from the defendant’s garbage this past January also linked him to a male hair found on the burlap used to “restrain and transport” victim Waterman’s naked corpse, the papers alleged.
Harrison, who made the investigation a priority last year, spoke shortly before police towed a black pickup truck from the suspect’s driveway.
Task force investigators first targeted Heuermann after cell phone data put him in the area around Gilgo Beach at the point where one of the victims went missing, a source told The News.
That was enough to link the suspect’s DNA to samples recovered during their investigation, the source. The arrest was first reported by News 12 Long Island.
“I will say to you folks that it’s extremely circumstantial in nature,” said Brown of the case against his client. “The only thing I can tell you that he did say, as he was in tears, was ‘I didn’t do this.’”
The veteran real estate executive, the father of two and a lifelong Long Islander, was slapped with a half-dozen charges in the gruesome murders where he prayed on sex workers.
“This is a day that has a long time been coming, and hopefully a day that will bring peace to this community and to the families,” said Gov. Hochul. “Peace that has been long overdue.”
His arrest came more than a year after Suffolk County investigators announced a ramped-up effort for answers in the unsolved spate of slayings. A $50,000 reward was posted in May 2022 in the killings.
“The work is not done here,” said Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone. “But this is a major, major step forward in achieving the goal that we have had from the beginning and that is again to bring closure to these families and to bring justice to the victims.”
State police and cops from both Suffolk and Nassau counties closed off a portion of the street outside Heuermann’s suburban home as the investigation of the 12-year-old murders heated up after years without answers for the victims’ families.
Massapequa Park is roughly 15 miles from Gilgo Beach, where a total of 10 murder victims — eight women, an Asian man dressed as a woman and a toddler — were found in 2010 and 2011.
The bodies were recovered as police searched for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker who disappeared into a marshy area in Oak Beach, L.I., in May 2010.
Gilbert vanished after leaving a client’s house on foot in the seafront community of Oak Beach, disappearing into the wetlands.
Months later, a police officer and his cadaver dog were looking for her body in the thicket along nearby Ocean Parkway when they discovered the remains of a second woman. Within days, three other bodies were found, all within a short walk of one another.
By spring 2011, the number climbed to 10 sets of human remains. Some were later linked to dismembered body parts found elsewhere on Long Island, creating a puzzling crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort community on Fire Island and out to far eastern Long Island.
Gilbert’s body was found in December 2011, about three miles east of where the other 10 victims were discovered. Cops said her death was an accident, something her family has disputed for more than a decade.
In talking about the bodies near Gilgo Beach, investigators have said several times over the years it is unlikely one person killed all the victims.
In addition to Gilbert, cops identified Waterman, Barthelemy, Brainard-Barnes, Costello, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack as victims.
Waterman was seen on surveillance video at the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge in the days and hours before she was killed, according to police.
John Ray, an attorney for Taylor’s family said that he had been in contact with investigators on the case as recently as last week — and was told that detectives had received a “strong, credible tip” and were “closing in on an arrest.”
Cops released Gilbert’s chilling 911 call before her disappearance in the hopes to get more tips about the murders.
“There’s somebody after me!” Gilbert, 24, screamed in the rambling call. “Somebody’s after me, please. No! No! Stop no!”
The case was reopened with the aid of the FBI, and Harrison repeatedly asked the public for tips that can help them.
____
(With Tim Balk)
