Saturday marks the first anniversary of Rex Heurman’s shocking arrest in a brutal Gilgo Beach murder as police continue their investigation ahead of his September trial.
In a horrific case that stunned the world, Heuerman, 60, a mild-mannered Manhattan architect who lives with his wife and children in Massapequa Park on Long Island, was arrested on July 13, 2023, on suspicion of murdering three women.
The following year he was charged with three more offences.
“His motive, meticulous planning and clear intent were clear. His intent was no other than to murder these victims,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said in June when police released digital “to-do” lists Heurman allegedly created regarding the murders.
“The task force believes this is a written plan that Heurman used to plan his murder in great detail,” Tierney said.
The case, which has unfolded like a gruesome detective drama, appears far from over, as new charges filed last month dramatically expanded Heuerman’s timeline to include a 1993 murder, suggesting he may have left behind three decades’ worth of victims, with more likely to come.
The brutal murders have baffled police and terrified locals for years, ever since a string of strangled, beaten bodies wrapped in burlap were discovered on Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011.
In total, Heuermann is accused of murdering six women between 1993 and 2010.
The hulking 6ft 4in serial killer was first charged with the murders of three women in their 20s – Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Costello – in July last year.
“Rex Heurman was a devil who roamed our midst, a predator who destroyed families,” Suffolk County Police Chief Rodney Harrison said at a news conference announcing Heurman’s arrest last July.
Six months later, he was indicted on a new murder charge in the death of Maureen Brainard Barnes.
All four women were petite and had worked as escorts between 2007 and 2010, two of whom had children. All had been found bound by the ankles or feet and wrapped in burlap, indicating they had been strangled.
Brainerd Barnes, who disappeared in 2007 at age 25, was found bound with a distinctive belt stamped with the initials “WH” or “HM” – prosecutors have previously said the belt may have belonged to Ms Heurman’s grandfather, William Heurman.
The women were among the first of 10 sets of bodies discovered in or near Gilgo Beach between the fall of 2010 and the spring of 2011, sparking a years-long police investigation.
In June, Heurman was indicted on charges of murdering two more victims: Jessica Taylor in 2003 and Sandra Costilla, whose body was found in North Sea, Long Island, in 1993.
Ms Taylor, a 20-year-old sex worker, was found dead and dismembered, while Mr Costilla, from Trinidad and Tobago, was found beaten with a sharp object.
Police came close to solving the case in 2011 when a witness identified Heurman’s green Chevrolet Avalanche truck and claimed to have seen a man described as a “demon” in his mid-40s driving away in a car from the location where Costello was last seen.
But the leads went cold until more than a decade later in 2022, when state and federal law enforcement agencies formed the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force.
Police eventually solved the case when they matched DNA from a pizza peel Heuerman had discarded to a hair from the victim, and cell phone and computer records also linked Heuerman to the crimes, authorities said.
Investigators uncovered in June that more recent evidence also included a digital plan with a to-do list for transporting the body and a distorted note titled “Next Time” that detailed a plan to punch the woman in the face and neck.
The two new murder charges were filed last month after police again searched Heurman’s Massapequa Park home in May and were filmed removing boxes believed to be full of evidence from the home.
Heuerman has pleaded not guilty to all charges and his children, whose lives have been turned upside down by their arrest, have vowed to support their father as the trial progresses.
“You could say they’re on a dark journey together,” Beth Miteff, attorney for the suspected killer’s children, Victoria Heurman and Christopher Sheridan, said in June.
“They are two young people who have done nothing wrong and are trying to prevent their lives from being completely destroyed in this turmoil,” the lawyer said.
His murder trial is scheduled to begin in September in Suffolk County Superior Court.
“He wants a trial. He has maintained from the beginning that he was not the killer. He has said that over and over again,” Heuerman’s lawyer, Michael Brown, said in April.
