NEW YORK. A 59-year-old architect has been arrested on suspicion of being the serial killer who killed several women over 13 years ago, burying their bodies on New York’s Gilgo Beach. The man, Rex Heuerman, was indicted thanks to traces of DNA on the cardboard of a pizza he had eaten, which match those found on at least three of the victims, according to the American media. Arrested Thursday night, Heuerman pleaded not guilty. The judge validated his arrest, emphasizing the “extreme depravity” of the crimes he is accused of. The man was indicted for the murders of three prostitutes – Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello – whose bodies were found in 2010 in Gilgo Beach and he is also suspected of the death of a fourth, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, whose remains have been found nearby. The four women, District Attorney Ray Tierney said, were found “in similar positions, similarly bound with duct tape or straps, three of them wrapped in burlap.”
The allegations against Heuerman are based on telephone traffic data linking him to the victims and a pickup truck seen near the women’s home. The alleged serial killer communicated with his victims via disposable phones. Later the investigators compared the DNA of a hair found on the burlap that wrapped the bodies with that found in January on a pizza box that Heuerman had thrown in the trash can in front of his Manhattan home. The alleged murders all occurred while Heuermann’s wife and children were out of town.
Brainard-Barnes had disappeared in 2007, Barthelemy in 2009, Waterman and Costello in 2010. But the crimes could have been even more. Between 2010 and 2011, the remains of 11 people (nine women, a man and a small child) were found on Gilgo Beach. Four of the bodies, including that of the man and the child, have not yet been identified.
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