The Long Island Serial Killer (Update: Arrest)

There has been an update in the Long Island Serial Killer case (episodes #14-16 from 2016). On Friday, 14 July 2023, police officials announced the arrest of 59-year-old Rex Heuermann, an architect from Massapequa Park. A lifelong resident of Long Island, Heuermann has been charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello... 

Back in 2016, I first covered the story of the Long Island Serial Killer, a previously-unidentified killer who had been killing young sex workers in the area around New York City, and then dumping their bodies on or near Gilgo Beach, Long Island. At the time I covered those stories nearly seven years ago, LISK - as he has come to be known - had been dominant for at least a handful of years, but had left behind remains dating back to nearly a decade beforehand.

Nobody was aware that this area was a serial killer's dumping ground until December of 2010. That is when a police officer took his dog out for a training exercise in the same area, to try and find a young woman named Shannan Gilbert, who'd gone missing earlier that year, in May. Beforehand, she'd made a panicked phone call to 9-1-1; a phone call I've covered extensively on this podcast. That police officer's training exercise didn't find Shannan Gilbert's remains, but ended up discovering the remains of another missing woman, Melissa Barthelemy. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, several additional bodies would be found. Almost all had been victims of homicide. Shannan Gilbert's remains were found months later, but her death has been attributed to "misadventure" by investigators.

In the decade that has since passed, a lot has changed. This case has been profiled extensively in news stories, books, podcasts, documentaries, even a feature film released on Netflix a couple of years back.

If you've been following along with my updates over the years, you might recall that police have been pretty tight-lipped about... almost everything tangentially-linked to this case. As I mentioned a moment ago, Shannan Gilbert has been named a victim of misadventure, not murder, by police. But at the same time, that same police force defied several court orders to avoid releasing the audio of her panicked 9-1-1 call, claiming that it was pertinent to their ongoing murder investigation. To learn more about that, I'd defer you to my previous update episodes on this very case.

Suffice it to say, however, my time spent covering and researching this story has been full of frustration. Not only because of what I believe to be investigative and administrative missteps by the police officials involved, but because of the grim, unsolved nature of the entire story... which has seen many family members and friends of the victims pass away, unable to see justice done for their murdered loved ones.

Yet, those frustrations seemed to fade away for at least a little while on Friday morning, when I woke up to numerous text messages and emails from people telling me the great news: that police had identified and arrested a suspect in this white whale of a cold case.

At the time of his arrest, on the evening of July 13th, 2023, Rex Heuermann lived in Massapequa Park, New York, in an older, rundown home, along with his wife and two children. It was the home where Heuermann, 59 years old, had lived his entire life.

Rex Heuermann graduated from local Berner High School in 1981, alongside - of all people - actor Billy Baldwin. Later, Heuermann graduated from the New York Institute of Technology with a degree in architectural technology, and began a long career working in construction and as an architect - a career which carried on until just a few days ago. He served as the president of his own company, RH Architecture Design, which he's owned since 1994. Those that worked with him have described him as a meticulous worker, but also adversarial... sometimes unnecessarily so.

In his personal life, it appears like Heuermann was engaged to his first wife in 1989, and the two married in 1990. The couple had at least one child together. He later divorced and remarried, but for the sake of his family (who are already dealing with a lot of shit at once), I'd like to refrain from posting any personal information about them. I hope others do the same.

Heuermann lived with his family in Massapequa Park, less than 20 miles from Gilgo Beach, where the bodies of several LISK victims were found just over a decade ago. While many neighbors recall not paying him much attention over the years, others say that he and his tall, imposing frame were a "creepy" presence over the years. Some state that he would glower at them from his yard or front porch, and per a New York Times article published on July 15th, others say that they refused to walk in front of his house, even claiming to have avoided his house during trick-or-treating on Halloween.

If you're wondering why this individual wasn't on the public's radar until this past week - fret not, you're not alone. It seems like the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, assembled just recently, didn't have him on their suspect board until just last year, 2022. He was reportedly linked to the case using "good, old fashioned police work," per a source, and was arrested Thursday evening just outside of his office in Manhattan. Surveillance footage released online shows him walking down the street, and police officers quickly surrounding him, in what were his final moments of unassuming freedom.

The news broke on Friday morning - July 14th, 2023 - and he was arraigned later that afternoon. Throughout the day, investigators were seen by news crews outside of his home going in and out in a search for evidence, and at one point, were seen carrying out a large freezer.

There, outside the home, police officials broke the silence, confirming what anonymous sources had been reporting for a few hours.

As it turns out, Rex Heuermann has only been charged with killing 3 out of the original 4 victims found on Gilgo Beach - the women often referred to as the "Gilgo Four" or the "Lost Girls," thanks to Robert Kolker's amazing book on the subject.

The three victims whose murders Heuermann has been charged with are Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. He has not yet been charged in the death of the fourth, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, although he is still considered a "prime suspect in her death," per police sources. In the chronology of the case, she was the first of these four victims to go missing, more than two years before the rest, and it was made clear in the prosecutor's documents that there just isn't enough digital evidence to connect Heuermann to her disappearance. However, as we'll cover, there is definitely enough evidence to overcome that gap, and it's likely that we'll see charges in her case before long.

To-date, it remains unknown if Heuermann was involved in any of the other cases linked to the Long Island Serial Killer. This includes Valerie Mack (formerly "Manorville Jane Doe" or "Jane Doe No. 6," identified in 2020), Jessica Taylor (who was killed back in 2003, and whose remains were also found in Manorville), as well as the other unidentified Doe victims (such as "Fire Island Jane Doe," "John Doe," or "Peaches," who was killed alongside her child, "Baby Doe"). Similarly, Shannan Gilbert's case remains labeled a death by misadventure; her case unaffected by Friday's revelation.

In the three cases that Heuermann is accused of committing - Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello - he has been charged with first and second degree murder. He pleaded not guilty on Friday, and his lawyer, Michael Brown, told reporters about the state's case:

"I will say to you folks that it's extremely circumstantial in nature. In terms of speaking to my client, the only thing I can tell you that he did say, as he was in tears, was 'I didn't do this.'"

Yet, despite his assertion through tears that he didn't do this, the state's case against Heuermann in the three murders he's been charged with - along with the fourth, that of Maureen Brainard-Barnes - is incredibly damning.

As I mentioned a moment ago, Rex Heuermann wasn't even considered a suspect in this case until 2022. It was last March, in fact, that a new task force - launched to spearhead this case - identified Heuermann as a possible suspect because of the vehicle he drove at the time.

At the time the original "Gilgo Four" victims went missing and were killed, Heuermann drove a first generation Chevrolet Avalanche, which - at the time, at least - were pretty unique-looking, compared to other trucks at the time. Heuermann had an Avalanche registered to him at the time, and this can even be seen in old Google Maps images of his home, parked along the street.

We know this vehicle was seen in relation to at least one of the victims. Witnesses that knew Amber Costello recall a client of hers driving a vehicle of this make and model, and this was the last client she had been seen with. Other witnesses recall a similar vehicle driving down the street at around the same time she disappeared. In addition, Rex Heuermann himself bore a striking resemblance to this final client of Amber Costello's, who'd been with her shortly before she originally went missing. Per the documents released on Friday:

"According to witnesses, around the time of these communications between the burner cellphone and the Costello Phone on September 1-2, 2010, a prostitution client showed up at Ms. Costello's residence located in West Babylon, New York. After the client entered the home, a ruse was executed on the client whereby a person pretended to be the outraged boyfriend of Amber Costello and the client left from the residence, while Amber Costello retained the money the client had brought to pay for her services. Based upon interviews, that client was described as a large, white male, approximately 6'4" to 6'6" in height, in his mid-forties, with 'dark bushy hair,' and 'big oval style 1970s type eyeglasses.' A witness described him to police as appearing like an 'ogre.' Furthermore, a witness noticed a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche parked in the driveway of the residence. According to the witness, following the ruse, this client said he was 'just her friend,' 'tell her I'll give her a call,' and walked out the front door. Thereafter, at approximately 1:18 a.m., on September 2, after the ruse had been perpetrated, the burner cellphone sent a text message to the Costello Phone, which stated, 'That was not nice so do i credit for next time.' Phone records show that the burner phone was located in Massapequa Park, within two minutes of this text message being sent."

Afterward, this client refused to go to the same house, using the aforementioned ruse as an excuse to meet Amber Costello and take her to another location. He reportedly only returned once more on September 2nd to pick up Amber Costello, and that was the last time she was seen alive, having left her cell phone behind.

It's also worth pointing out that Rex Heuermann fits the description of the man witnesses had seen back in 2010 to a 'T'. While he's now 59, he would have been in his mid-forties at the time, as described, and is incredibly tall and stout. In fact, even when surrounded by police officers, he appears to be an Ed Kemper-esque figure, for those that are familiar with him. Also, his description fits that described by the witnesses to an uncanny degree... I mean, I'm no adonis, but Rex Heuermann is objectively not a handsome man.

Per the bail application, additional evidence used to link Heuermann to the crimes included:

"... cellphone billing records for Defendant Heuermann corresponding to cell site locations for 1.) the burner cellphones used to arrange meetings with three of the four victims, 2.) the taunting calls made to a relative of Ms. Barthelemy, 3.) a call made by a detective to Ms. Barthelemy's cellphone while looking into her disappearance and 4.) calls checking voicemail on Ms. Brainard-Barnes' cellphone after her disappearance. In addition, Heuermann lived in Massapequa Park where the victims were believed to have disappeared from, and he worked in Midtown Manhattan, in the vicinity where the taunting calls were made to the sister of Ms. Barthelemy... Defendant Rex A. Heuermann is believed to be the person who used the burner cellphones to communicate with each of the four victims prior to their disappearances and who used Ms. Brainard-Barnes' cellphone and Ms. Barthelemy's cellphone after their deaths."

If you recall, in my original three episodes published back in 2016, I told you that the killer had made phone calls to family members of the victims; in particular, the younger sister of Melissa Barthelemy, who was the second of the "Gilgo Four" to be killed, in 2009. At the time, this sister was just a child. Police released little information about those calls, only that the individual made sexually explicit comments to Melissa's little sister, and alluded to him looking at her dead body as they spoke. Later, it was revealed that this killer had a white inflection, and that the calls had been traced to midtown Manhattan.

Well, it sounds like these taunting phone calls - once the most haunting part of the story, in my opinion - may have been the nail in the coffin for the defendant, so to speak. While making these calls, Heuermann also had his burner cell phone and his company-provided cell phone on his person, and all three pinged off the same cell towers at the same time.

If this wasn't enough, in the time frame for the three crimes he's been charged with, Heuermann's family was out of town on vacation. In each case, Heuermann's wife and children had left the state of New York, leaving him alone in their home. The dates are almost impossibly coincidental.

In July and August of 2009, the time frame of Melissa Barthelemy's disappearance and death, his family had traveled to Iceland. While they were gone, she'd gone missing and her killer had made taunting calls to her family (July 17th and 23rd). Those calls stopped, correlating to the same time that Heuermann had joined his family in Iceland. However, the day after he returned - August 5th - the taunting calls to Melissa's loved ones continued.

Then, in June of 2010 - the time that Megan Waterman disappeared - Heuermann's family traveled to Maryland and were out of the house. The same thing happened later that year, in August and September of 2010, when Amber Costello had gone missing. Heuermann's family had been in New Jersey during that time frame.

The document released on Friday explicitly states that a lot of this information from 2007 hasn't been uncovered or retained, so it's unknown if Rex Heuermann's family had traveled out of the area in 2007, when Maureen Brainard-Barnes disappeared. It's possible that this is the only information investigators are still seeking to pin down, preventing charges in her case from being filed. Yet. Only time will tell if that clears up.

To make matters even worse for Rex Heuermann, the burner phones that he's reported to have used were linked to numerous online accounts, including email addresses he'd used to contact sex workers, massage parlors, etc. He'd even signed up for a Tinder account with an alias, and emailed selfies of himself to send to sex workers to confirm his identity.

However, the burner phones linked to one of these email accounts had made several grim and sadistic internet searches, including:

"girl begging for rape porn"

"teen girl begging for rape porn"

"tied up and raped porn"

"girl hog tied torture porn"

"Asian twink tied up porn"

Yet, it somehow gets even worse. Other searches included:

"Girl with face beat up"

"Chubby 10 year old girl crying"

"Preteen girl with makeup"

"pretty girl with bruised face porn"

"Crying girl painful anal"

Honestly, this is just horrific-sounding shit. It seems to me like (assuming that Heuermann is the LISK), that his violent streak may have been aimed at underage girls, and the fact that the Gilgo Beach victims were all smaller in size and stature indicates that he had a "type." And that, more than anything, he seemed to enjoy looking up images of young-looking girls being beaten, bound, and raped.

The inclusion of "Asian twink tied up porn" also indicates to me, at least, that some of the other victims found near Gilgo Beach (such as the still-unidentified John Doe found in women's clothing) may also have some link to Rex Heuermann. But that's just me speculating.

This burner phone was found on Rex Heuermann at the time of his arrest, and he had still been using it - and the accounts found on it - to contact sex workers to this day. Who's to say whether or not his crimes ever came to an end?

Using these burner phones and their associated accounts, Rex Heuermann also reportedly specifically looked up information about the Long Island Serial Killer case, including searches like:

"why hasn't the long island serial killer been caught?"

"why would law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer"

"Mapping the Long Island Murder Victims"

He reportedly even sought information related to the victims and their families, including specific members of their family... perhaps the ones he'd spoken to years beforehand. He'd also reportedly looking up podcasts and documentaries regarding the case. Who knows, maybe he listened to my original episodes? If he did, I really don't know how to feel about that. I know that killers have listened to this podcast before, and the feeling is an uneasy one, to say the least.

Once police finally uncovered a link to Rex Heuermann through the prior witness descriptions and the burner phones, they began the process of comparing small hairs found at the crime scenes to Heuermann and his family. They took trash from outside his home, and discovered that some of the small hairs found on the belts and rope used to bind the victims belonged to Rex Heuermann's wife, who'd been out of town at the time the victims disappeared and had presumably been killed. However, as someone who's currently married, I can testify that I find my wife's hairs everywhere; similarly, she constantly rails about finding my beard hairs everywhere. It seems like Heuermann had not been cognizant of this fact, as not only were his wife's hairs found at the crime scene, but one small male hair found on Megan Waterman's remains was later confirmed to belong to Heuermann himself. Police had taken his DNA from a piece of pizza crust he'd thrown outside of his office in Manhattan.

At a press conference held on Friday afternoon, police officials laid out the case against the accused.

The press conference held on Friday is nearly an hour long, so I only played for you a small snippet. I thought I'd spare y'all from the rest, as it's full of a lot of thank you's and congratulations to various police officials and agencies, which... I'm not sure how to feel about.

On one hand, I do want to applaud the investigators and administrators that did bring this case to a potential resolution. That's an amazing feat, and they've helped bring answers to dozens of loved ones that desperately need it.

But on the other hand, I'd just like to remind the police agencies involved that it took them over a decade to do so, and it's not like this require any state-of-the-art DNA technology to do so. In fact, according to a police source I quoted earlier in this episode, the newly-formed task force cracked this case through "good, old-fashioned police work," which is what we saw late last year when police cracked the case of the Delphi Murders. In both cases, it seems like all investigators had to do to break the case wide open was to... revisit some early leads (such as the sighting of the Chevy Avalanche at Amber Costello's house and the physical description of that client) and, I dunno, take it seriously?

Like, I get it, investigative work is hard. It is. I've spoken to many investigators who work long hours and do thankless work. However, in this case, the killer lived twenty minutes away from where the victims' bodies were found, lived in the town they'd all gone missing from, matched the description of someone seen with a victim right before she'd gone missing, drove the same type of vehicle seen by the aforementioned witnesses, and had left behind his own AND his wife's hairs at the crime scene. That's not even getting into the burner phones, the potential link to Massapequa Park and midtown Manhattan, and the other distressing things displayed by Rex Heuermann in his personal life.

Like... how did this guy not get examined as a serious suspect until 2022? Neighbors described him as creepy, the type of guy whose house should be avoided on Halloween, and who was a noted asshole to most people in his own professional circle. How the hell did this guy - who stands 6'6"-ish and weighs 300 pounds, at least - avoid suspicion? I just don't get it.

Like I said, I do want to applaud the investigators who worked on the task force, and took over the investigation just last year. It seems like they quickly narrowed in on Heuermann and identified him as a probable suspect, and then realized the walking and talking red flag before them. But how many years were wasted doing fuck-all while the victims' families had to plead for justice? For simple awareness? How many weeks or months were these families attempting to report their loved ones missing to a brick wall? Or how many years did Suffolk County waste defying court orders and refusing FBI assistance?

Sorry, I know I shouldn't be so cynical, especially in light of such a major break in this case... something that should be a cause for celebration. I know that these cases require a lot of cops doing thankless work to reach this type of resolution, and they should be rightfully rewarded and applauded. But I just ache for the family members that are still awaiting justice, such as Maureen Brainard-Barnes, or the other victims found near Gilgo Beach whose identities remain unknown or whose cases remain unsolved. I only hope that they don't get forgotten in this maelstrom.

If anything, I think that this case can serve as an example of what to do... and maybe what not to do. A lot of great police work over the past year or so led to this arrest and indictment, but there were a lot of systematic issues that led to Rex Heuermann being overlooked as a suspect for over a decade. I hope that we all learn the right lessons from this case, and begin taking credible leads seriously early on.

Anyhow... sorry about that. I'll step off my soapbox now. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

If you're interested in listening to or watching the rest of the press conference, I'll make sure to include a link in the show notes.

While this case is far from over - I'm sure you'll be hearing more from me on this front - I think we're inching closer to yet another case getting resolved.