Suffolk County Police arrested a man in Massapequa, New York in connection with the strings of murders attributed to the long-unsolved Long Island Serial Killer (LISK), a case that long perplexed authorities and became the focus of countless true crime offerings.
While Suffolk County Police didn’t comment on the arrest, pending a court hearing Friday, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Ray Tierney told Newsday, “I can confirm there has been a significant development in the Gilgo beach case — and that there will be a court proceeding today in Riverhead.”
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement to Rolling Stone that “Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney, Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon, Jr., as well as representatives from the New York State Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation will hold a [4 p.m. EST] press conference to announce a significant development in the investigation by the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force.”
The suspect was subsequently identified as 59-year-old Rex Heuermann, CBS News and NBC News reported, the founder of the architectural firm Rex Heuermann Consultants & Associates based in New York City; NBC News reports that Heuermann was arrested in New York City Thursday night, while a large police presence was seen outside his Massapequa home.
Rex Heuermann Consultants & Associates
Actor Billy Baldwin, whose family grew up in Massapequa, tweeted Friday that he went to high school with the suspect:
Despite working in architecture and real estate, Heuermann’s Massapequa home was described by neighbors as “dilapidated” and rundown. “You’d think he’d have a better house, for an architect,” neighbor Mike Cafiero told the New York Times. Another neighbor, Cheryl Lombardi, told CBS News, “Every time we would walk past the house, we would say why aren’t we fixing this house up? It’s the only one in the neighborhood that looks like that. And there were never any answers.”
At least 10 bodies were recovered from the desolate stretch of Gilgo Beach along Long Island’s southern coast beginning in Dec. 2010, but the investigation has largely focused on the four women since dubbed “The Gilgo Four,” as the similarities between their murders suggest they were all killed by the same person.
The remains of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello, all four of whom were sex workers who advertised their services online at the time of their death, were each found wrapped in burlap in close proximity to one another.
“We’re happy to see that they’re finally active, the police, in accomplishing something. Let’s wait and see what it all leads to,” John Ray, the attorney for the families of Jessica Taylor and Shannan Gilbert, whose disappearance in the Gilgo Beach area ultimately resulted in the discovery of the other bodies, told the Associated Press; Gilbert herself is not believed to be a LISK victim.
“I am overwhelmed but relieved that they finally caught him. It’s been a long time coming and I never gave up hope that one day justice would be served,” Sherre Gilbert, the sister of Shannan Gilbert, said in a statement to NBC News. “The suspect (Rex) deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life,” she continued. “He destroyed many lives so while it won’t bring our loved ones back, it does help that one less monster is off the streets and he can’t ever hurt anyone else!”
The town of Massapequa had long been a focus of the investigation as LISK reportedly harassed the family of Melissa Barthelemy following her 2009 disappearance, calling and texting them using Bathelemy’s phone. According to the New York Post in 2011, police ultimately triangulated the killer’s calls to her family, with the cellphone pinging in both Manhattan (in the vicinity of Times Square and Madison Square Garden) and Massapequa.
The arrest comes over a year after Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison publicly shared “previously unreleased information” regarding the case. “We believe now is the right time to disseminate this previously unreleased information in hopes of eliciting tips from the public and providing greater transparency about the victims,” Harrison said in April 2022.
In recent years, there have been significant developments in the investigation, although none have brought police closer to catching the killer: In Jan. 2020, Suffolk police released photos of a portion of a belt found at the crime scene that investigators believe belonged to the suspect. Four months later, the remains of a “Jane Doe” recovered at the Gilgo site were identified as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old woman who went missing in 2000. Suffolk police also launched a then-new website, gilgonews.com, as a catchall for information pertaining to the case.
The arrest also comes a day after police in Suffolk County uncovered human remains off the Southern State Parkway in West Islip, at a spot almost directly north of the Gilgo Beach site. It remains unclear if those remains are connected to the LISK case.
This is a developing story.